question about battletech/mechwarrior

[ngilop]

So, I have a question, maybe a series of questions, about this RPG. I am hoping that they are able to be answered and I do not make them too confusing.

SO first off, the last time I remember playing the RPG it was maybe 2004, give or take a year. Before that I had played a few sessions in the mid 90s.

I remember combat being an intricate chess dance compared to what one would have in a D&D game for example. Does that still stand for the latest edition?

I see there is a 4th edition, but it seems to not be that well liked, since I do not remember much form my previous experiences the pros and cons I find discussed do not help due to my ignorance.


Do quick start/fast play rules exist?

What is the actual core rulebook(s) called. I kept finding books that seemed to be rulebooks, only to be books of rules. What i mean by that is, it is not book for how to play the game, i.e. character creation and such. But more like books of rules on the different houses, clans, or mechs.

[Gnoman]

I don't have experience actually playing the thing, but I can help you with one thing.

The current edition of the RPG is called Battletech: A Time Of War. I believe this is the fourth edition of the ruleset.

https://store.catalystgamelabs.com/p...letech-rpg-pdf

There is also an older version called Classic Battletech RPG - this is a direct reprint of Mechwarrior Third Edition with a different cover.

https://store.catalystgamelabs.com/p...letech-rpg-pdf


There is also apparently a stripped-down version called MechWarrior Destiny, which (unlike A Time Of War) uses it's own rules for mech combat (A Time Of War, like all earlier editions, expects that you'll simply handle mech fights in Battletech proper)
https://store.catalystgamelabs.com/p...arrior-destiny

[kyoryu]

Yes, Battletech itself is a war/skirmish game, not an RPG. There have been various RPG supplements for it over the years, but your assessment is spot on.

[Corsair14]

Destiny is the more table friendly RPG for Battletech. It is very story driven and fairly rules light. A Time of War is very complicated and daunting to begin play. I liken it to Shadowrun in complexity of character creation and game play.

[Mutazoia]

Destiny is the more table friendly RPG for Battletech. It is very story driven and fairly rules light. A Time of War is very complicated and daunting to begin play. I liken it to Shadowrun in complexity of character creation and game play.

In the 90's, "Mechwarrior" was the RPG add-on for Battletech. Otherwise, you were just playing a wargame with minis. If you wanted the actual rules, you either purchased one of the boxed sets (rules + maps + counters) for Battletech or Citytech, etc., or bought the Rules Compendium. The other books were mostly fluff. The house source splats were rather useless for the most part, unless you were running a Mechwarrior game. The only splats that had any real value were the Technical Manuals that had the stats for new mechs/vehicles/dropships (and later rules for designing your own mechs).

[SaurOps]

Tech Readouts (TROs) weren't splatbooks or splats, but rather descriptions of 'Mechs, vehicles, and other unit classes (classes in a military sense of a vehicle or element) that didn't come with record sheets (you had to fill those in yourself). The house books, mercenary handbooks, along with the warden and crusader clan books, would have been splats, as they constituted different faction types and hence, different character types. Also, later faction books often had RPG material for some iteration of the RPG; this started with Mechwarrior 2nd edition and progresses on with MW3/Classic BattleTech RPG (very unfortunate abbreviation there), and finally you have books like Interstellar Players 3: Interstellar Expeditions (present rpg stats and some really interesting lore).

Speaking of A Time Of War, its most recent printing, in my opinion, ratcheted chargen complexity down a bit by presenting regular point buy as the default. It used to hawk its life module system front and center, but that was honestly just a more baroque and confusing version of point buy; it's still there, but doesn't get main billing for chargen methods. The system as a whole does still have some rough edges that I would disregard for the most part, like age-based attribute mods and traits that alter skill costs, but at least there aren't any more "variable complexity skills".

If you can find it, a copy of MechWarrior 2nd edition might be a bit easier to digest at first. It has the downside of making Attributes super-important and, as noted, being out of print without any pdf to use, though. Oddly, its companion volume is available as a pdf; if you're really curious, you might be able to use it to gauge whether or not you want to look into getting a vintage copy of it (which can run you way more than its 1991 MSRP, though not past 40 USD).