Catalyst trying to poz BattleTech again.
To which I must remind people that Razorfist made the perfect rebuttal years ago.
Oh, you don't need minis at all to play. Chits, counters, and 2D standees are just fine. They're better because you can download the art, print them at home, and carry them around in Ziplock bags to go with your vintage FASA rulebooks.
"Fantasy" is fake.
"Science Fiction" is fake.
This is the list from Appendix N of the AD&D1e DMG.
The "Fantasy" side:
The "Science Fiction" side:
There is NO DIFFERENCE! The trappings are not the genre. The setting is not the genre. The genre is in narrative structure, not marketing a product; these stories all have the same narrative structure, so they are all the same genre: fantastic adventures.
Therefore they can all fit into--and use exactly as written--the same ruleset because they're all part of the same game: a fantastic adventure game of Braunstein play.
This is why, decades before Banpresto gave us a different example of the same thing in Super Robot Wars, AD&D1e could and did handle all of this using the rules as they are- and it explains why, despite the Boomerism of its designer and publsher, RIFTS maintains its enduring appeal as it too put the lie to "Fantasy", "Science Fiction", and "Horror" as separate and distinct genres- they are, at best, product categories following Madlib templates like Harlequin reduced love stories to Chicklit mass production content output- something that LLMs can do better than any human writer could ever achieve.
This is why, believe or not, these are Fair Game for the Real Game.
It's time for the reminder.
Robotech the RPG, had many other vehicles that I'm sure most GMs never even thought of using besides the Veritechs or Destroids.
— Lutra Gaming (OtterPops) 🦦 (@Lutra_Gaming) January 31, 2026
GM, there is a whole world out there besides Pew Pew Me Mech that is so rich if you only open your eyes. pic.twitter.com/ezOVw5HuXm
*ahem*
BattleTech understands the assignment; that's why everything other than a BattleMech is a deathtrap, and barring very specific situations you will lose if you aren't in a robot when the other guys in their robots come a-stompin'.
So no, there is nothing other than Robot Go Pew-Pew. It's like being in anything other than a Mobile Suit in a Gundam series; unless your name is "Bright Noa", you're fucked. It's why Star Wars is really about the space wizards first, the flyboys second, fleet commanders third, and everyone else a very distant Doesn't Fucking Matter (N.B. Andor/Rogue One is EXACTLY the DoomerPorn Bleakfic that Star Wars was made to combat, you shit-eating bugmen; Blake's 7 did that better decades ago on a shoestring and a prayer.)
There is a core premise to a game. Not fulfilling that premise is a Failure State. Saying "But you can not engage in the premise" is no different than saying "But you can smoke crack and fly by leaping off the roof" in that you're saying words, and even a coherent statement, but it's still meaningless gibberish nonsense that misses the point.
There ARE ways around this, but not in Conventional Play; for that you need to play the Real Game, and that's only possible in the Clubhouse.
The Game Formerly Known as "BattleYolk" has a new Jon Mollison video.
The game gets attention from The Last Redoubt in a recent article also.
"With the first set of turns done, we’re taking a pause. The broom managed to completely screw up shooting at the red ‘roo, and lost all of its chaingun ammo. The ‘roo in the meantime badly dinged up the jalapeno. Also, after chatting with the creator of the TTS module, they intend to provide an example terrain key, and also moved/shot chits that were overlooked. One feature of AESMAG is that there are not a lot of rules in place for terrain, but the basic language of rough terrain, and partial and full blocking of LOS allows for a lot of flexibility out of whatever is crafted. They also hope to have tiles and or more options / models available to place terrain on the table."
I'm pointing this out for a reason.
The origins of this hobby was that hobbyists made games, wrote up rulesets, played them, got feedback, and then revised them until the game hit that Good Enough mark to lock it down and go to print.
This was the 1970s. You couldn't outsource things to a bot, or even have any word-processing software, so it was hand-written notes rewritten into something to reference before you sat at a desk, put a sheet of paper and a fresh ribbon into a typewriter, and transformed those hand-written notes into a manuscript that could be mimieographed or (later) photocopied (back when that was a big deal) and the better ones formatted into two column standard layouts. Any illustrations or other graphics had to be done by hand, often by the author or by one of a few collaborators; if you see anything by Palladium Books made originally in the 1980s, you'll know what I'm talking about.
Today? That's easily done by one man by himself with free tools. Need a wordprocessor that can format? LibreOffice. Illustrations? Pick a LLM-based bot and learn how to use it. Flowcharts or similar tech manual graphics? MS Paint is part of Windows, if you want to do it by hand; you can also use free online resources for that- like you can for assembling a cover for Print On Demand printing (instead of mimiegraphed/photocopied copying, or paying for print runs). You can save in PDF or EPub in LibreOffice, and then use another free tool (Calibre) to convert to MOBI for those Kindle users out there.
In short, the tools are now free to make stuff by hobbyists for hobbyists. You don't need to beg on Kickstarter. You don't need to get loans from a bank, or to save your pennies to pay others for things/services, either. Get it made, formatted properly, put into PDF (and, if demand is there, Epub/MOBI) and put it up at DriveThru/Itch/Wherever and (if you have one) on your Patreon/Subscribestar/Whatever page.
In the ongoing collapse, there will be no commercial viability in product production outside The Only Game That Matters within a few years- just a lot of people mainlining copium like they're terminal patients needing to be doped to the gills to dull the pain. Distribution will follow, now that Diamond's gone under as that will destroy most of what retail is left out there, leaving only the largest options to weather that storm. (Yes, Amazon will be fine; WOTC's storefront will be fine, maybe DriveThru, but others? Doubt.)
That will flush out those out only for the money, especially as making a living will again be refocused to the real economy and not the bullshit service economy due to rebuilding of industrial capacity and relocalization of supply chains accordingly coupled with remigation of unwanted aliens and foreigners and the imprisonment/execution of the 5th columnists bringing them in.
Wizards of the Coast--and thus Current Edition D&D also--will remain on top, but everything else is vulnerable to destruction due to economic collapse wrecking their business models. The Clubhouse will thrive as it is not based on that model. Non-commercial games will thrive because they don't need to do anything but fund themselves; non-commercial games that are Real Games, using Clubhouses for organizing and play, will beat those that do not- so optimize for the Clubhouse going forward if you want to be someone after the changes have done their damage and the collapse concludes.
Sven van der Plank released a new video on the last campaign of the Third Succession War. It's long, but good.
We're seeing units with 85 and 95% casualties taken.
I see you, VetBros. Yes, that's insane. Yes, that's 40K levels of "Dude, what the fuck?!" Fighting like Vraks, but it's not even close to Vraks, is insanity- and thus, bad writing, because even given certain allowances there is just so much Nope going on here that cannot be justifed.
All this over a Star League Defense Force supply cache, by the way. They thought it important enough to send hundreds of BattleMechs, entire Air Wings of fighters, entire squadrons of DropShips, and six-figure or more numbers of personnel to one planet and--because of leadership that is decidedly pre-Modern in sensibility--they kept going well past the point of practicality which was the same as throwing good after bad and making things worse.
Sven did a fantastic job; I can't wait for him to do the Fourth Succession War, 3039, Clan Invasion, etc.
Perhaps you saw this late last week.
That's right, Temu VOTOMS has a third Vidya adaptation in the works now.
Good question.
I posit this as an answer: Those Quebecoi Andys actually did the smart thing with the post-3rd Edition collapse and refocused on a Brand that could be salvaged. This lead to a refocus on the origins of the Brand as a skirmish-scale wargame (Blitz) which led to a spinoff (Arena) while keeping old material available as PDFs and POD offerings. This decision satisfied two of Dream Pod 9's desires: the desire to rebuild the Brand back to something that breeches the Normiesphere (and it did; there were PC games and a TV series) and compete with BattleTech (which it does), and the desire to use Gaming as a backdoor into the more popular and profitable Narrative media industry.
What you see is exactly that happening. That's why there was big hype for the 4th edition of the Tabletop adventure game two years ago, and now this new Vidya adaptation.
What you don't see is Dream Pod 9 learning why that collapse happened: using the wrong medium for the job. You also don't see Dream Pod 9 realizing that they, like FASA and its successors, are going to run into problems if they get too big for their britches because the owners of Armored Trooper VOTOMS want a Western audience.
Dream Pod 9 is going to have a bad time in court if the owners or desigated agents thereof decide on lawfare. This won't be like G-Dubs going after MCA Hoegarth over "Space Marine"; Prior Art is not on DP9's side, and the resemblace is brick-to-face obvious to casual observors--the Reasonable Man standard--so they're relying on the hope that they are sufficiently Legally Distinct to not get bent over in a courtroom, and that presumes an American or Canadian court. Japanese? Nope; they're fucked. Somehow I doubt that DP9's corporate structure is sufficiently robust to make such events irrelevant. (That's a hint, you Temu Frogs; you have enough to make it worthwhile so do it already, and he does take Canucks like you lot as clients.)
Over at the Clubhouse I'll talk about how Heavy Gear, Jovian Chronicles, Gear Krieg,, and CORE Command should be used- and thus should be developed, published, and supported.
The Bros are not being complacent. More work is being done turning products into games.
Lancer needs this expansion work to turn it into a full game, and Rube is just the man to do it as he's taking his work on the Grand Campaign that he developed for Current Edition and applies it to Lancer.
Have your notepad handy. Rube's putting on a clinic in this stream, and you'll learn something- even if you aren't keen on Lancer. There's a lot of incomplete hobby products out there, and most people aren't keen on fixing what is sold to them as broken or incomplete, so having Bros been seen fixing them and solving the problems such things present where others can see it matters.
That's why this needs to be seen. Once they see the Bros solve the problem, the solutions will be widely applied. BROZER proves this.
Dunder Moose is back with a second episode this week.
Yep, we have a Mech-v-Kaiju game, getting such a game out before Mark Kern gets his Emb8r MMO out of Alpha.
This is a game whose design, with plenty of factions, is ready for Braunstein as even the designer admits. That approach would solve all of the problems that typically dog adaptations of this style of media into the Tabletop Gaming medium and hobby, especially things like putting pressure on the opposition and .
And yes, if you know the Deep Lore then you'll catch all of the inspirations that go into this game. Plenty of things for you to play with. The campaign is not yet live as of this post, but it will be soon. Here's the link.
Good luck!
And remember the mission:
Gelantinous Rube went on with Dunder Moose last night to talk Lancer and Braunstein.
Rube having a filter for prospects is a good idea. I'll be revisiting at the Clubhouse next week because this filtering mechanism and procedure is a load-bearing feature of the Clubhouse, but for now let's focus on the immediate utility.
This is the sort of thing that we're going to see more of now that BROZER is out and people are going to do this themselves because Conventional Play fails to satisfy.
What we're going to need is the ability to discriminate. Each Referee has an upper limit on what he can handle, and filtering out players that (a) would be a net-drain on the campaign, (b) would be a problem player, and (c) would not enjoy what you want to run sounds cruel or mean but being up-front like this respects everyone's time by declaring from the get-go what Is and what Is Not regarding the campaign.
You'd think this was the norm, but there's several YouTube channels making years of content all about the fact that this is not the case.
Yes, I think you should be selective, be discriminating, and be upfront about doing this. Your experience as Referee will be better. Your experience as a player will be better. Your time in either role is better respected, and the quality of play is improved by filtering out the bad fits before the fact.
This filtering process, scaled up, is the Prospect Procedure for gaining admittance to (and membership in) the Clubhouse.
This past week, Sven van der Plank released a new BattleTech lore video- the second about the Third Succession War.
I want you to watch it, because Sven's excellent work (as with that of the Black Pants Legion) inadvertently reveals how to make a property like BattleTech into a proper hobby campaign game instead of a Brand slaved to the commercial concerns of a publisher.
Specifically, it presents a way to explain how the Real Hobby works to those unfamiliar with it- including a lot of Cargo Cultists.
"Replace all of those publisher-dicatated actions by nobles, generals, admirals, Comstar officials, etc. with the decisions of players running those characters and the factions at their command. That's how you begin a positive feedback loop of perpetual gameplay."
"Where's the stompy robot action?"
"Created as a consequence of the big picture action, along with the scnerios for aerospace fighter action and space fleet action, including what the objectives are and what the consequences of success or failure will be."
Watch the lights go on between their ears. Those with any time spent watching military history videos or reading the (often superior) books will instantly grok all of that. Alas, too few in the hobby have such familiarity these days so you do have to spell it out in small words very patiently to them.
Now a lot of things make sense: restrictions on available designs, available technologies, morale issues, logistics issues, strict timekeeping, strict rules adherance (because, again, Player-v-Player always compels this), and the restoration of the Referee as neutral and disinterested arbiter.
Why? Simple: it is now a game to be won, not a passtime to vibe with.
The two other notable Real Robot game properties in the hobby can work the same way: Totally Not VOTOMS Heavy Gear and Totally Not UC Gundam Jovian Chronicles. Each of the states on Terra Nova (and a few other notable organizations or groups) as well as every state and organization in the future solar system of JC can be set up as a campaign in the same manner.
I see you there, Mike. Yes, your precious Algol (Mekton) can be set up the same way.
Take away the robots and you can do this with something like Renegade Legion.
Take away the space adventure and you can do this with Twilight 2000.
Take away the real world and you can do this with D&D.
Because the real hobby is a fantastic adventure game, which is a wargame, and this structure will always work no matter what trappings you put on it.
Yes, even for Super Robots.
Yes, even for Super Robot Wars.
You don't hear this talked about a lot, but there is one reason for why--outside of Horror--you don't see successful comteporary adventure games that lack some superpower element is because Things Change Over Time.
Palladium has Ninjas & Superspies, TSR had Top Secret, AEG has Spycraft, GDW had Twilight 2000, and there's been others in this mode over the years. All of them ground themselves in what was Here And Now at the time, and they are intended to be some form of Action Adventure Game.
Because they are meant to be set Here And Now, that opens the game to be vulnerable to the changes in technology, culture, standards, and practices over time. Handling that means adding to the game. This is easier and harder than it seems.
You don't need to wait on someone to publish product for the game.
You can just look up product maker websites directly. You can use Google Maps (etc.) to scout locations. The Chans, Kiwifarms, etc. are good places to lurk (and fucking lurk, not post) for those dealing in Weird Shit in their games. YouTube (etc.) has plenty of intro-level videos on topics across the board, so if you want to throw together your own Mission: Impossible thing (which is what Spycraft is for) then you can directly consult source material for everything.
Glamorous villa location for your players to trash in a firefight? Plenty of Real Estate search sites (and channels) to look at to find the right one in the right place, which you can then geo-locate via Google Maps and figure out travel times (and passage fees).
Going to do Action Movie Action sufficient to ressurect Cannon Films? Every firearms manufacturer and accessory manufacturer is online, and getting current pricing isn't that hard either. The same applies to cars, trucks, motorcycles, boats, planes (yes, including yachts and private jets). Yes, including the Bespoke sort that have six or seven figure pricetags (or more) and are in batches of a score or less.
Clothes? You got it all online. Bespoke stuff. Off the rack. Clearance. And in many cases your players' mans can order them online and have them shipped to whatever address they provide. Price quotes? Check. Shipping times? Check.
Hotels? You can check them online in real time. Weather conditions and forecats are online. The basics of security procedures (enough to extraopolate from there) are extensively documented.
And almost all of it is out in the open.
It has never been easier to just put the real stuff into the game. But-
When it's time to put the mechanics into action that's when your System Mastery shows itself. Your man has the latest iPhone. Can he use it Hack The Gibson and bypass the electronic security controls?
Or, more likely, can your man crack a card reader to skim the user data of those swiping their cards (or tapping their phones) and use it to get past whatever.
Your man's pistol uses 5.7 ammunition. What, in mechanical terms, are its performance characteristics? (Yes, this means "XdY damage" is not sufficient.) What Rate of Fire can he achieve, given how the game's combat systems work? (Remember, you're talking about a setting where people, in earnest, still use firearms from the 19th century in combat; this matters.)
That late model Ford F-150 has no remote kill switch, right? Your man isn't moving around sufficient funds to trigger automatic reporting, is he? (There are multiple ways for this to happen.) He hasn't been kicked off Stripe, has he? Had his bank accounts closed, like what happened to Nigel Farage? And does he realize that his iPhone is a snitchbrick that always reveals his location via GPS, and has fireware-level backdoors into its microphone and camera?
Those are all things that need to be sorted out in terms of mechanics and procedures, which means that you need to translate Real Life to Game World terms.
That, by the way, is what a lot of apologists for Conventional Play use as a fallback position to justify the Conventional Play model of the supplement treadmill- of pushing reams of product. "You're paying him to do that for you" they say, only that they don't and they just half-ass it.
If you know how to approach it, it's easier. That requires having a solid game product with clear technical documentation as to what the rules are, how they work, and why; you will also have a bitch of a time finding that product because they're buried under blizzards of bullshit.
With that in hand, figuring out how to use Current Day things in game terms becomes trivial; you have a rubric, you use it, it works, and Bob's your Uncle.
Without it, you're making (at best, informed) wild-assed guesses and tinkering your way to something that passes for playable in a dark alley at midnight- like how Bizzaro passes for Superman under poor lighting. That gets tiresome fast for most people, and wears even the most dedicated (or austistic) hobbyist down over time.
And now you see why it's usually Horror that remains popular, because so much of this hassle does not apply.
Because of all this variability over time, contemporary settings are dynamic to the point of distraction and undesirability for most people. Things that Work This Way in reality don't in the game because the game's rules are pisspoor and can't address the situation properly.
Fantastic otherworldly adventure games don't have this problem because they are static. A sword is a sword is a sword, and the differences between types is easily handled as AD&D1e proved conclusively over 40 years ago. Such settings, because they are easier to handle and run, have far greater appeal to Normies and Hobbyists alike as a direct result of this fact- and it also explains why anything smacking of Modernity in terms of technology is steadfastly refused and gatekept out.
You'll also see that the mass popularity of any given fantastic futuristic setting also showcases this static quality- e.g. Uncle George's Space Opera. A lot of the grumbling, bickering, and complaining comes about because this stasis is broken somehow (e.g. the Clans in BattleTech) and the response as a result is a fracturing of the user base. For a product category wholly dependent upon Network Effects, this is incompetence in action- you are Fucking With The Money.
This, by the by, validates my position that Official Settings should just tell the backstory and then stop- as Harn does. Never advance the timeline because that's the players' job.
In different circles I run in, there is a saying: "The future belongs to those that show up."
If you want to know why, despite how Not-A-Faithful-Mecha-Adaptation that BattleTech is, it dominates the niche for Giant Stompy Bot Gaming that is all the explanation that you need.
Let's go over the alternatives that tried:
Palladium and Stone Mountain (the two licensors) both fucked up by not having a solid wargame product as the cornerstone of the publication business model.
It then created useless supplementary material where you spent more time Not Doing Stompy Boy Things than doing Stompy Boy Things, which is a massive turn-off to the target audience because Conventional Play doesn't allow for players to solve this problem by having more than one man active in the campaign at a time- and Palladium is all about the Cargo Cult so it's all about Conventional Play.
Yes, some of it was not useless; sourcebooks for different eras (representing the different shows in the source material) are fine. I'm talking about the modules, and that does include the one I am sentimental about because it would make for a fantastic MOSPEADA graphic novel side story (Lancer's Rockers).
With disappointing product, a gameplay model that (a) doesn't make sense or (b) satisfy the desires of the target audience, it's no surprise that it never surpassed BattleTech despite having lore-accurate information and direct ties to source materials.
The result was a product doomed to fail because it lacked player agency (the core appeal of the hobby and the medium) and did not satisfy the target audience's demands. It is no surprise that Invid Invasion was the most popular era to play in, and "Do a Guerilla War Without End" only goes so far before it gets old.
(This also applies to Macross II and Splicers.)
Dream Pod 9 did not make the core gameplay business model error, but they made the same error that Palladium and Stone Mountain (and everyone else) did by not having the cornerstone wargame product be the foundation for all of the fantastic adventure gaming that they promised.
All the lore supplements, while nice, are terrible in terms of application at the table. The same lack of player agency also applies, which is why the arena games were very popular and the core appeal of being military pilots in uniform did not sell. (Nevermind things like Peace River Gambit not even bothering with the mecha most of the time.)
No one likes a mecha product where you don't get mecha action most of the time. No one plays fantastic adventure games to be bossed around like a bitch. Neither of these DP9 games nor Gear Krieg fixed this issue, which is why they always came across as repurposed TV Series Bibles with a wargame attached and not a real game.
Maximum Mike got closest.
Then he published Operation: Rimfire and fucked it all up. That is a TV series repurposed as a campaign module.
Yes, MZ and MZ Plus are fantastic. Good stuff. It's everything after that (and the aforementioned Rimfire as well as Mekton Empire for Mekton II) that screwed the pooch so hard.
Because, unlike the others, this is a DevKit product where the setting is determined by the Referee and not by the publisher and thus the potential for player agency is greater here than in the aforementioned games (and in the smaller also-rans).
But, because he indicated through his design and his supplementary product that he's still got it bad for Muh Drama! and for Conventional Play, user experiences soon soured and they dropped it with some reaction between disguist and disappointment.
TLDR: Your Giant Robot game has to focus on the giant robots. This is not film, television, comics, or prose; your target audience is not there for Muh Drama!- they are there to PLAY A WARGAME!
Failure to center your entire gameplay loop on the thing that the target audience shows up for is how and why each of these competitors--whatever merits they posssessed otherwise--would falter and fail in due course.
The default and core gameplay assumption for BattleTech is that you are a mercenary MechWarrior. This is maximum Player Agency.
The core of the game is a wargame. The rest of the game builds off this wargame foundation. Your other adventure scenarios tie directly into your core mercenary Stompy Boy action, and you do a clear minority of them as you spend most of your time in the cockpit aiming to pound other BattleMechs into scrap and get paid.
(This is why Mechwarrior 5 and the PC version of BattleTech are such fantastic adaptations; they focus on the core experience of the brand.)
Of course there's questionable supplementary products out there--all that lore that Tex, Sven, Big Red, etc. make videos about comes from somewhere--and as I said previously the actual gameplay experience has sweet fuck-all to do with the Macross, Dougram, and Crusher Joe source material (which is all Save Or Die, and not the Dreadnaught era naval combat that BattleTech actually is).
In other words, BattleTech wins because it's as close to an actual game that the target audience wants that can be had at this time.
You also have your way foreward if you want to compete, win, and dominate: you have to not only make a complete and competent fantastic adventure wargame, you have to make one that appeals to mecha fans' desires- and you have to stay in print and available for sale, shoving your product in your targets' faces (and never making them go out of their way).
You don't need a massive loredump. You don't need TV Setting Bible crap. You need a solid wargame, plenty of stompy boys, and reasons to go at it- and that's where studying the genius of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition and others like it (Classic Traveller, Gamma World 1e, Car Wars, etc.) does you credit because those games will give you good examples of Good Practices That Work to draw upon to make the game that conquers BattleTech.
Despite my criticism of BattleTech, it can be a fun time taken on its own terms.
Which means that "Don't give money to people that hate you" comes into play due to Catalyst Game Labs being pozzed and aggressively subversive to the detriment of the properties that it exploits.
The Excellence of Elocution has a timely rant, given the season, on how to square that circle.
Albris can be found here. Half-Price books here. Books-a-million here. Abebooks is here. There are others that you should consider, and hit up friendly local game stores that sell used product.
As for 3d Printed miniatures, that's something to ask around about. Same with counters.
And for online play, MegaMek still exists.
(NB: XMas Wish Lists are in this post. No BTech tabletop specified, but I'll take it.)
Jeffro talking Palladium leads to a larger point on the hobby product business.
The reason that Palladium system gets played more than GURPS in spite of its complete lack of brilliant game design ideas is this: Palladium solves the problem of getting players something exciting to play while GURPS turns getting characters ANYTHING to play into a problem.
— Cardinal Jefforieu (@JohnsonJeffro) November 18, 2023
He is correct.
The proof is right there in Palladium's tenacity despite all of its known, and well-documented, flaws and fuckups- both in terms of product and in terms of business.
"Something exciting to play" is the hobby version of Rhetoric trumping Dialectic in terms of persuasive power. That thing that looks cool, that has sizzle to it, that feels like fun (despite whatever the reality is)- that's far more persuastive to many people than anything else. Palladium gets what sells in this hobby, and it's not what Death Cultists and Tourists say it is. You can look at the catalog yourself if you doubt me.
Palladium gets that prospective players want something that's familiar (no need for a lore dump) yet exciting conceptually. This is why you get (or had) licenses like Robotech, offshoot knockoff crossovers like Splicers and Nightbane, several separate magic-using classes in Palladium Fantasy, and some of the best original artwork in the hobby for these products.
If you want players, most of whom otherwise are Normies, to want to get into the technical manual side of things then you need to pull them through with a compelling--nay, magnetic--promise that learning these rules and procedures will result in them getting the satisfying fantasy experience on the other side.
In short, if you promise Bob that he can be a Valkyrie Pilot if he learns Robotech, then he better be able to pull off stunts like this at the table.
Palladium's problem has always been about delivering on that exciting promise.
The sales work is great. The problem is that the sales work sells a subpar product that doesn't do what it claims to do, which pisses people off and has them either playing something else or (more commonly done) using external product to fill the gaps that should not be there in the first place.
That, by the by, is what GURPS is known for: a machine that actually works. The problem? No idea on how to sell it or who to sell it to. (The answer is "To publishers and designers" because GURPS isn't a product, it's a development kit- same as HERO.)
You can, as Palladium proves, hang on for a long time just on this form of Rhetoric; Stupid British Toy Company has the exact same problem, doubled-down by turning its terrible tech writing into an excuse to churn its customers every three years or so, and look where they are now.
You cannot just rely on stellar technical writing. That's where Traveller, among many others, went wrong and that's why they languish while exciting product promises such as those that Palladium (and every D&D edition, Spycraft, Legend of the Five Rings, Feng Shui, and many more) make to prospective players gets sales and thus forms fandoms.
The winning play is to master both halves of the business. Gamma World 1st Edition, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition, Adventurer, Conqueror, King, TORG's 1st Edition, and many others have this down. That may require a team, but not a big team; a duo or trio will be sufficient if they get along and have the necessary skills between them.
It may require a team; after nearly 50 years, there's enough good and bad examples around that a one-man band can do it himself and succeed.
And as things are going on the business side, that is going to be a smart move to make going forward.
It's been 28 years since my lifepalm went black.
Despite a couple of close calls in the last few years, I'm still here.
And I intend to be around a while longer. There's deeds to be done, wars to be won, and jewelled thrones that need trodding under by sandalled feet (even if one of them is fake these days).
No grand pronouncements today. Just enjoy Jeffro and the gang doing wacky stuff in RIFTS (despite itself), BDubs doing #BROventloft stuff, and more while I go have me some of the best pizza around.
Thanks to Vomitron for gifting me Divinity: Original Sin on Steam. Truly a surprise, and a welcome one at that. Anyone else that feels so inclined, hit up last Saturday's post and scroll down to the end.
"BattleTech is a game of armored combat" say the BT Stans.
Let's take a look at the source material, shall we? Let's start with the most BT-friendly source, Fang of the Sun Dougram.
Jeffro made an observation about mecha gaming, and people got mad.
This image is what everyone wants from a giant robot game.
— Cardinal Jefforieu (@JohnsonJeffro) October 1, 2023
It is the exact opposite of what BattleTech gives you.
And yet you turkeys will still sit through 8-hour long lore videos where you pretend this is not a problem. https://t.co/xGLfKyeqrU
This is not the first time he said something like this, and last time I noted that his discontent is valid because the game doesn't fulfill the expectations provided by the source media.
BattleTech is a game of 19th Century/early 20th Century Dreadnaught-era naval warfare masquerading as a game of giant robots.
"But-"
There is no Robotech game that nails how things work in Macross/Southern Cross/MOSPEADA (or Sentinels/Shadow Chronicles for that matter) either. That same problem carries over to all Palladium gameplay experiences with mecha, great and small alike (and vehicles generally) so it applies to RIFTS and Splicers too.
Dream Pod 9, to date, is the best we've gotten with their not-Gundam (Jovian Chronicles) and not-VOTOMS (Heavy Gear), and people shit on both of them because of how combat works despite that being how it is in the source media (when they bother to play at all; again, both are Setting Bibles masquerading as games).
And, as much as I think fondly of it, Mekton Zeta doesn't deliver on its implicit promises either and a lot of other products that offer some form of mecha don't center on it as the highlight of the game so they aren't thought of as mecha games (e.g. Champions and other superhero games).
Gelantinus Rube swears by Lancer; he knows more about it than I, so I refer you to him on that.
Yet, for all of this, Jeffro is right about one thing: we have yet to produce a successful and proper tabletop mecha game. BattleTech succeeds due to a lack of competition, and against any significant contender always ends up faltering- especially away from the tabletop medium. (Look how fast Armored Core 6 and the recent Front Mission releases sucked up all that attention away from Mechwarrior 5.) Even games that aren't in its specific lane do this (e.g. Super Robot Wars 30 and the V/X/T series).
It's not hard to succeed when you're all that most people ever seen on the shelves. It is when near-pear or better alternatives show up and begin to crowd you out.
That's what Catalyst--like FASA, Wizkids, and Fanpro before them--have to contend with. It doesn't help in the least that the experience of play has sweet fuck-all to do with popular mecha combat entertainment media; BT stans can cope, seethe, and mald all they like but when Jeffro says that missiles are weak he's right and that's just one direct hit he's landed- especially in light of a comparable real-world war going on right now in Ukraine and the nigh-ubiquitous combat footage both sides release showing this in action.
Jeffro's said that Car Wars is a better game, and he's right- it is. If SJ Games bothered to promote it properly, it could and would compete and win against BT (and I do mean the "Classic" version, not that new thing on sale).
So, predictable as it is, the BT stans are just living out this meme and looking stupid doing it.
Here's a hint, BT players: in a game of armored combat, a proper ruleset is Save Or Die when you're hit- just like the real thing (and fiction with proper verisimilitude).
Y'know, like the Real Robot mecha shows your favorite product shamelessly stole (and steals) from.
As the saying goes, "Amateurs study strategy. Professionals study logistics."
Fantastic adventure wargames are no different, and nowhere does this become more obvious right away than when the adventuring scenario involve mechanization.
Be it Traveller, Twilight 2000, RIFTS, Robotech, Mechwarrior/A Time of War, Battlelords of the 23rd Century, TORG, Heavy Gear/Jovian Chronicles/Gear Krieg, Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, etc. you have a milieu where adventures rely on using tools that have significant wear and tear just from intended use as well as consumables like fuel and munitions.
What does this mean? It means that there is an implied economic element to successful play, economics means logistics, and logistics (a) means mandatory downtime and self-generating scenarios for gameplay.
Guns need ammunition. Explosives (including missiles and rockets) need to be replaced. Machines need repairs, great and small alike, which means parts (etc.) need to be sourced and labor employed in spaces capable of allowing (if not improved to facilitate) such work- shops, factories, yards, etc. Vehicles (and some other things) need fuel and have limited range.
The stupid thing to do is to ignore all of this. Conventional play ignores all of this because players whine about it being inconvenient. Conventional play is stupid.
There are ways to handle this.
(Following from yesterday's post.)
From Soft released Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon yesterday.
As with other anticipated titles such as Elden Ring and surprise hits like Cuphead, this is a series notable for being difficult- where victory takes effort from the get-go- the sort of effort that Tourists object to, and complain about.
5 minutes. Don't let yourself be filtered by AC6's Soldier of Godrick, the PCA Heavy Combat Helicopter. It's tough, but it AIN'T invincible. pic.twitter.com/miar9iX7H1
— TitaniumLegman (@TitaniumLegman) August 25, 2023
That helicopter is the tutorial boss.
People hit a ragequit moment because they can't be bothered to calm down and trouble-shoot their performance until they figure out what it takes to beat it. Up to this point, the game does tell you what you need to know--what you need, not what you want--so those ragequitting are those that did not pay attention or those or figure out how to apply what they learn.
Nonetheless, as with the other aforementioned games, this has already hit big and will likely be another smashing success for From Soft despite the current review bombing by Tourists that got filtered by the Tutorial Boss.
