The Culture: BattleTech, Braunstein, And The Bros

Last night, Dunder Moose hosted the folks behind a BattleTech Braunstein, "BroTech".

This stream is a group After Action Report, a Debrief, once folks got settled in.

If you want to read the Session Reports, start here and read to the Conclusion.

Note the lessons here:

• Have your boundaries and specific rules ready before the fact.
• If you have NPCs on the table, have your Invisible Player procedure in place before the fact.
• Design your scenario to compel player interaction.
• The AARs, as they are post-morten play analysis, reveal everything a player needs to know to get better at playing the game.

The game, as we see, is not just working the rules. It is also knowing how to read other players; all you Poker players know what I am talking about. It is also knowing how to handle your errors before hostile players can recognize and exploit them, or to mitigate damage if they do.

It also means that the best players are those with the fastest capacity to recognize things for what they are and adapt to overcome them- and not just on the hex map where your Stompy Boys are putting in work. It's in the ability to recognize Intelligence failures before they create conditions for disaster to strike. It's in the ability to recognize the need to secure resources and prepare logistics networks before embarking on an operation. Each of these makes victory easier to achieve, and when all are in order miracles can happen because the liminal spaces wherein individuals can make far outsized impacts can occur- like what happened at Twycross, as the Black Pants Legion covered last weekend.

There's plenty more to take away from this game. Rewatch as you require to learn all that you can.

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For Birthday gifting, if you desire: Steam, GOG, Amazon (Fiction, History, Gundam, Anime, OSTs, Tabletop, Vidya), and a hat from Metokur's Hat Shop (in blue).