...and I'm confused as hell by a couple things. One in particular- the timeline. Is anybody else reading through the sourcebooks and finding they completely contradict the timeline in the main book? Specifically, the timeline ends with the Dark Legion returning after having been basically gone for 1200 years.  On the other hand,  all the sourcebooks talk about this generations-long war of attrition being fought against the Dark Legion in various places like the Doughpits, Venus, Mercury and so on.  Each faction has organizations and plots devoted to dealing with the Dark Legion war as if it's been a thing for a while, with entire clans priding themselves around being demon hunters and monster slayers.

So am I just supposd to assume all the sourcebooks begin several decades after the end of the timeline or what?  I wouldn't have a problem with this if it wasn't for the fact that there's an as-yet-unreleased setting that actually does take place some point (I don't know how far) after the end of the timeline.

Which version is this?

In the original if I recall correctly all hell broke loose pretty much all at once and various planets invaded after the seal was broken. Earth though was a mess even before all that. Not sure of the Legion ever even bothered with approaching Earth.

I assume the newest version screws that up somehow?

Quote from: Omega;887275Which version is this?

In the original if I recall correctly all hell broke loose pretty much all at once and various planets invaded after the seal was broken. Earth though was a mess even before all that. Not sure of the Legion ever even bothered with approaching Earth.

I assume the newest version screws that up somehow?

Not...really. At least not in the core book. The core book timeline basically goes like this- Dark Legion attacks, is barely defeated. A thousand years go by with the Church fighting pockets of heretics here and there, occaisional incursions, and the masses sort of forgetting about the whole thing.  Then, the Dark Legion returns in all it's brutal glory in the last year of the timeline- the 2nd Dark Legion War.

The problem is that all the sourcebooks talk about the war as if it's been going on for multiple generations, with all the sides firmly entrenched.  So there is an un-addressed time-skip of like 3-4 decades or more between the end of the timeline in the game, and the sourcebooks that talk about long battles of attrition, statues built to honor the best warriors, and fortified fortress-cities on the front lines.  Holy Orders of Knights devoted to combatting demons. Ruined cities that human forces occaisionally try to re-claim from the bad guys.


Or at least, I *assume* there's a 3-4 decade time skip, because I can't make heads or tails of it otherwise.  It makes a good chunk of the source material useless or confusing for somebody who wants to start a game at (or just before) the return of the Dark Legion, when the timeline ends.

Yeah that sounds more than a little off. Like whomever was doing the books was working off a different timeline.

About all you can do then is either shrug and ignore the anomalies. Or push the timeline ahead far enough to make room for said anomalies.

Keep in mind that MC has gone through several iterations now. So make sure you arent using books from a different version. Pretty sure the originals arent compatible with the new.

Quote from: Omega;887279Yeah that sounds more than a little off. Like whomever was doing the books was working off a different timeline.

About all you can do then is either shrug and ignore the anomalies. Or push the timeline ahead far enough to make room for said anomalies.

Keep in mind that MC has gone through several iterations now. So make sure you arent using books from a different version. Pretty sure the originals arent compatible with the new.

Yeah, this is definitely all new stuff, at least in the sense that it has been released over the past couple weeks (3rd edition is brand new). But now that you say that I wonder about incautiously lifted text from previous editions being a possible explanation for the problem.

Unlikely. As I recall the older stuff was better organized.

Its possible that there is some sort of skip forward thats buried in the core books.

Though in the older books there was alot of fighting between the factions long long before the Legion came around. So check and see if they arent referring to interfaction battling instead.

I think the disconnect is that they've set up the game to play in three different eras, represented by the three little circle icons on careers and so forth.

The first era is the early days of the dark symmetry after the opening of the seals on Pluto.  In this time Illan and Semi are the most active apostles and computers are going haywire.  If you thought Virus was bad in Traveller, well, in Mutant Chronicles that snarl of cables behind your computer is quite likely to get up and try to kill you.  It's an excellent era for horror and investigation games because people don't necessarily believe anything is going on.

The second era is the corporate wars period before the return of the dark legion.  If you want to focus on corporate entanglements and warfare this is a good period because the return of the dark legion makes everyone settle down and work together a bit.

The third era is the dark legion era and the citadels are back in business.  Within this period there appear to be two distinct periods.  The first hundred years or so of the war lead up to the corporations returning to earth in what has been described as the final battle against the dark legion.

The fluff has been tweaked in a number of places but it looks to me like whole sections of the core rule book have been repeated in the corporate source books and may even be copied verbatim from the original versions.  I never had all of the source books so I'm uncertain of the changes but it looks like Cybertronic's Immortal has a different origin in the RPG than he does in the war game.

The key to MC3 is to take it all in, keep the cool, make it your own, kick out the trash, and enjoy.

One nice thing about secrets and conspiracies is that they only come into play if the GM decides to bring them into play.

With the supplements bringing in more careers and iconic careers, the only things I'm not really happy with are the dice mechanics.  The problem is that, in my experience, players don't want to hand the GM power at any point and just won't use the dark symmetry points but it's awfully easy to wind up with difficulties that can't be overcome without them.

I don't mind dread, the idea that increasing levels of stress increase the risk of mistakes is actually very realistic and functional for a horror game.  Chronicle points are a bit story game but I like advantages and disadvantages and they really do the same kind of thing.  

I still need to see it in play more to get a handle on it.  It looks like everything from interpersonal to shopping uses the same roll d20s to generate successes, roll dark symmetry dice to generate effect levels and special effects model.  I'd prefer a much longer skill list and more freedom to buy the skills you want but that's just the Rolemaster fanatic in me.

On the downside, I really, really want Prodos to do a ship to ship miniatures game now.

David- thanks for the info.  I think my problem is that I'm looking to straddle the last two eras- my idea was to have a couple of sessions, maybe a full scenario pass during the of the 2nd corporate war, right at the end of the timeline in the book- spring 1291.  Then while the players are in the midst of some inter-corporate bullshit, the Dark Legion returns, and they get to experience the change around them as things they thought were important become irrelevant, alliances reforge, and etc.


It sounds like that 'first hundred years' you talk about is after the end of the timeline, but before the beginning of their (as yet unpublished) third era.  And yet, all the faction books seem to  be written from a perspective squarely within those 100 years, if I'm not mistaken.

Mechanics-wise, the core 2d20 mechanic seems solid, and Dark Symmetry dice are weird and kitchy but ultimately easy to understand.  I am kind of worried about having three point-pool mechanics going on at once in combat (Chronicle Points, Dark Symmetry points, and banked Momentum)- I can already tell a couple of my players are going to be completely confused trying to remember what they can get for each kind of point.  Heck, I will be too for a while.  I may end up ditching banked Momentum, at least for the first bunch of sessions.

I like the Dark Symmetry point thing for the reason you said you don't like it- it's got a disincentive to use, but the difficulty of the game creates it's own incentive. The player knowing they are gonna pay down the road for taking extra dice seems like a fun 'gambling' mechanic.  Some of it is bullshitty- the idea that I would pay DS points for 'reinforcements' when in any other game I'd just have reinforcements show up if I felt like it anyway seems dumb at first, but I like the *idea* of the players seeing me take the points off the table, and knowing the extra squad of mutants is there because they let the DS Pool build up.   It seems like the whole point of the Dark Symmetry pool is to let your players actually see it build up and go down for effect- keeping track of it on my laptop would spoil half the purpose.