TheRPGSite

Hey, this thread is gonna have cuture war stuff.


I found this video timely considering Battletech was mentioned in the previous Custodes thread.

Greetings!

Battletech has been corrupted by the Woke BS too? So sad.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

The video mentions that Catalyst has had several "non-BattleTech" Kickstarters that have failed to get funded, but he doesn't seem to recognize that the BattleTech Kickstarters for the last few years have been wildly successful. It is implied that the failure of these "non-BT" Kickstarters is a sign of Catalyst's impending financial failure, but it just means that they are concentrating on where the money's at (i.e., in BT). Razorfist says BT can't afford to lose even a few customers like him, but the Kickstarters seem to offer evidence to the contrary (and the Mercenaries one, at least, was definitely after it had already "lost" him).

I want to see more about that whole demo team fiasco.

I used to love Battletech.   Sadly, I think once Catalyst got ahold of it they made it more complicated and more out of reach for many players.

I have been picking at designing my own Battletech style game, without the stupid heat issues and fixing some of the stupidity found in the rules which has kind of pushed me away from Battletech.

Quote from: GhostNinja on April 26, 2024, 12:22:21 PMI used to love Battletech.  Sadly, I think once Catalyst got ahold of it they made it more complicated and more out of reach for many players.

I have been picking at designing my own Battletech style game, without the stupid heat issues and fixing some of the stupidity found in the rules which has kind of pushed me away from Battletech.

I got the Catalyst Battletech box, and it seems to be the same as the FASA heat system. What exactly did they do to make it more complicated?

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 26, 2024, 06:23:01 PM

Quote from: GhostNinja on April 26, 2024, 12:22:21 PMI used to love Battletech.  Sadly, I think once Catalyst got ahold of it they made it more complicated and more out of reach for many players.

I have been picking at designing my own Battletech style game, without the stupid heat issues and fixing some of the stupidity found in the rules which has kind of pushed me away from Battletech.

I got the Catalyst Battletech box, and it seems to be the same as the FASA heat system. What exactly did they do to make it more complicated?

They didn't do anything to the heat system. However, they have bulked upt the rules to cover a lot of different things. If you play with the BattleMech Manual, you have a slimmed down but fairly robust (more so than Beginner Set) set of rules for 'Mechs. If you play with Total Warfare, you can add in almost every other type of unit for a moderate increase in complexity. Add in Tactical Operations, and you can complicate the hell out of things real quick with all sorts of special and/or optional rules, and there are even a few things beyond that if you buy into all the books.

Quote from: HappyDaze on April 26, 2024, 07:01:40 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 26, 2024, 06:23:01 PM

Quote from: GhostNinja on April 26, 2024, 12:22:21 PMI used to love Battletech.  Sadly, I think once Catalyst got ahold of it they made it more complicated and more out of reach for many players.

I have been picking at designing my own Battletech style game, without the stupid heat issues and fixing some of the stupidity found in the rules which has kind of pushed me away from Battletech.

I got the Catalyst Battletech box, and it seems to be the same as the FASA heat system. What exactly did they do to make it more complicated?

They didn't do anything to the heat system. However, they have bulked upt the rules to cover a lot of different things. If you play with the BattleMech Manual, you have a slimmed down but fairly robust (more so than Beginner Set) set of rules for 'Mechs. If you play with Total Warfare, you can add in almost every other type of unit for a moderate increase in complexity. Add in Tactical Operations, and you can complicate the hell out of things real quick with all sorts of special and/or optional rules, and there are even a few things beyond that if you buy into all the books.

To be fair, it's not like the extra rules are required, but yes, an increase in complexity is entirely reasonable when moving from essentially a squad-level skirmish game to a regimental-level game with air power, artillery, transport, and maintenance sections now playing roles in what is now a campaign long set of battles to resolve.

At least their expansions make sense. Basic Box is small-unit Mechs; Total Warfare covers all the other varied things that can turn up in a face to face skirmish.

Tactical Operations moves it up a level with artillery and repair. Strategic Operations adds Jump/Warships. Interstellar Ops goes into "when stellar nations go to war" factors.

If all you want is squad-level Mech battles, then you need exactly one book to play and honestly, outside of needing specific advanced equipment rules for a few advanced designs, the basic box rules covers nearly everything... get the Clan Invasion box set and it'll cover 90% of the advanced equipment that turns up... and most of those are just slight tweaks (ex. pulse lasers are have a to-hit modifer, streak missiles skip the roll for how many hit, LB-X autocannons use the missile hit table for their cluster rounds, etc.)

Quote from: HappyDaze on April 26, 2024, 07:01:40 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 26, 2024, 06:23:01 PM

Quote from: GhostNinja on April 26, 2024, 12:22:21 PMI used to love Battletech.  Sadly, I think once Catalyst got ahold of it they made it more complicated and more out of reach for many players.

I have been picking at designing my own Battletech style game, without the stupid heat issues and fixing some of the stupidity found in the rules which has kind of pushed me away from Battletech.

I got the Catalyst Battletech box, and it seems to be the same as the FASA heat system. What exactly did they do to make it more complicated?

They didn't do anything to the heat system. However, they have bulked upt the rules to cover a lot of different things. If you play with the BattleMech Manual, you have a slimmed down but fairly robust (more so than Beginner Set) set of rules for 'Mechs. If you play with Total Warfare, you can add in almost every other type of unit for a moderate increase in complexity. Add in Tactical Operations, and you can complicate the hell out of things real quick with all sorts of special and/or optional rules, and there are even a few things beyond that if you buy into all the books.

I've fallen in love with BattleTech, and perhaps it comes from inexperience, but I've yet to play a game that didn't take a few hours. Great game, but I don't know how some of these guys can play 16k double lances and have a game done in a day.

Quote from: 1stLevelWizard on April 29, 2024, 11:01:37 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on April 26, 2024, 07:01:40 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 26, 2024, 06:23:01 PM

Quote from: GhostNinja on April 26, 2024, 12:22:21 PMI used to love Battletech.  Sadly, I think once Catalyst got ahold of it they made it more complicated and more out of reach for many players.

I have been picking at designing my own Battletech style game, without the stupid heat issues and fixing some of the stupidity found in the rules which has kind of pushed me away from Battletech.

I got the Catalyst Battletech box, and it seems to be the same as the FASA heat system. What exactly did they do to make it more complicated?

They didn't do anything to the heat system. However, they have bulked upt the rules to cover a lot of different things. If you play with the BattleMech Manual, you have a slimmed down but fairly robust (more so than Beginner Set) set of rules for 'Mechs. If you play with Total Warfare, you can add in almost every other type of unit for a moderate increase in complexity. Add in Tactical Operations, and you can complicate the hell out of things real quick with all sorts of special and/or optional rules, and there are even a few things beyond that if you buy into all the books.

I've fallen in love with BattleTech, and perhaps it comes from inexperience, but I've yet to play a game that didn't take a few hours. Great game, but I don't know how some of these guys can play 16k double lances and have a game done in a day.

For us, the answer is: Play Alpha Strike.

Seriously, I love BattleTech, but I'm warming to Alpha Strike (though we play it on the hex maps). However, it's not the same game, and I do miss some of the options and gameplay of BattleTech. In particular, I don't care for Alpha Strike's "free facing changes" because I've seen how ludicrous it can be when retrograding can be done at full speed.

Quote from: 1stLevelWizard on April 29, 2024, 11:01:37 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on April 26, 2024, 07:01:40 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 26, 2024, 06:23:01 PM

Quote from: GhostNinja on April 26, 2024, 12:22:21 PMI used to love Battletech.  Sadly, I think once Catalyst got ahold of it they made it more complicated and more out of reach for many players.

I have been picking at designing my own Battletech style game, without the stupid heat issues and fixing some of the stupidity found in the rules which has kind of pushed me away from Battletech.

I got the Catalyst Battletech box, and it seems to be the same as the FASA heat system. What exactly did they do to make it more complicated?

They didn't do anything to the heat system. However, they have bulked upt the rules to cover a lot of different things. If you play with the BattleMech Manual, you have a slimmed down but fairly robust (more so than Beginner Set) set of rules for 'Mechs. If you play with Total Warfare, you can add in almost every other type of unit for a moderate increase in complexity. Add in Tactical Operations, and you can complicate the hell out of things real quick with all sorts of special and/or optional rules, and there are even a few things beyond that if you buy into all the books.

I've fallen in love with BattleTech, and perhaps it comes from inexperience, but I've yet to play a game that didn't take a few hours. Great game, but I don't know how some of these guys can play 16k double lances and have a game done in a day.

The key is internalizing the hit location table and using a small die next to your minis for their movement modifers (some will even use three different colored d6's so they can tell at a glance if they'd walked, ran or jumped).

Those two things alone can shave half the time or more off each turn's length.

Best part on the table memorization is you really only need one guy who can do it to speed up the whole table since you can just rattle off the hit locations and they'll announce what the location is.

There are other tricks to counting range (on a hex map the shortest distance is always out count out from you to the same hex line the target is in, then count in to the target), then figuring out all your other modifers and adding range last (since that's the only variable that will vary between weapons) and then rolling by range group (and using different colored dice to roll multiples of the same weapon type... four medium lasers is 8d6 with two red, two green, two blue, and two black dice then checking all those vs. the same target number)... all of which speed things up immensely.

There are other rules of thumb for force composition that many groups abide by to keep games from dragging, but the above make a huge difference.

Another play speed up comes from digital tracking sheets like Flechs Sheets (https://sheets.flechs.net/) that make it easy to mark off effects quickly (though no one I know who plays live bothers with the automation, it's just really nice for having most static modifers already recorded and keeping you from forgetting heat and damage effects when they apply).

A related relevant bit to this discussion too is the Battletech community exists more DESPITE Catalyst than because of it. If you quizzed the half dozen players I meat up with every Wednesday after work, none of them would even be aware of any of the outrage here about Catalyst going woke... they're just there to play a match of "big stompy robots" and vent about their work... it's basically hitting the bar after work for nerds.

Quote from: HappyDaze on April 30, 2024, 12:28:41 AMFor us, the answer is: Play Alpha Strike.

Seriously, I love BattleTech, but I'm warming to Alpha Strike (though we play it on the hex maps). However, it's not the same game, and I do miss some of the options and gameplay of BattleTech. In particular, I don't care for Alpha Strike's "free facing changes" because I've seen how ludicrous it can be when retrograding can be done at full speed.

Alpha Strike is fun and fast, but there's definitely an appeal to "cool my LRM20 just hit with - allllll twenty. Gimme those dice."

Quote from: Thornhammer on April 30, 2024, 05:01:51 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on April 30, 2024, 12:28:41 AMFor us, the answer is: Play Alpha Strike.

Seriously, I love BattleTech, but I'm warming to Alpha Strike (though we play it on the hex maps). However, it's not the same game, and I do miss some of the options and gameplay of BattleTech. In particular, I don't care for Alpha Strike's "free facing changes" because I've seen how ludicrous it can be when retrograding can be done at full speed.

Alpha Strike is fun and fast, but there's definitely an appeal to "cool my LRM20 just hit with - allllll twenty. Gimme those dice."

I've heard this is a possibility, but among my gaming group, we consistently roll shit on the cluster hits table.

Quote from: Thornhammer on April 30, 2024, 05:01:51 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on April 30, 2024, 12:28:41 AMFor us, the answer is: Play Alpha Strike.

Seriously, I love BattleTech, but I'm warming to Alpha Strike (though we play it on the hex maps). However, it's not the same game, and I do miss some of the options and gameplay of BattleTech. In particular, I don't care for Alpha Strike's "free facing changes" because I've seen how ludicrous it can be when retrograding can be done at full speed.

Alpha Strike is fun and fast, but there's definitely an appeal to "cool my LRM20 just hit with - allllll twenty. Gimme those dice."

Oh yeah. I think a lot of the "clunky" rules are what gives Battletech combat it's big stompy mech feel. In something like Macross fights are fast and furious with mechs blowing up from the slightest damage. In Battletech, mechs toss huge amounts of weapons fire into each other and roll hit locations and critical locations and aside from the rare but memorable Cockpit Hit, keep dragging their blasted carcasses towards each other until one finally succumbs to it's damage and keels over.

I first got a whiff of this stink when I heard they were removing the Rommel tank from the game.  I suppose the historical name of Erwin Rommel as a general for the wrong army was all it took to offend somebody in HR department.

I already have my BattleTech books.  The only thing I would want from Catalyst now are plastic miniatures, but I own a Elegoo Mars 3D printer now.  I also am quite good at making my own 3D models. 

The new stuff that BattleTech has put out has SO not appealed to me that I've actually regressed back to basics and only play BattleTech in the 3025 era of the 3rd Succession War.  I don't even like the Clans now.   Give me the introductory rulebook, the 3025 and 3026 tech readouts, and I'm good. 

I do miss power armor infantry.  I may retcon those back into my games, and I use a completely different space navy game for ship combat.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on May 03, 2024, 01:24:09 AMI first got a whiff of this stink when I heard they were removing the Rommel tank from the game.  I suppose the historical name of Erwin Rommel as a general for the wrong army was all it took to offend somebody in HR department.

The Rommel isn't going into any future products, but they didn't remove it from existing products. It still appears in TR: 3039 and a variant in TR: Prototypes. So while it's not going to get any new coverage, it's still in the game if you want to play it.

Quote from: HappyDaze on May 03, 2024, 04:03:02 AM

Quote from: weirdguy564 on May 03, 2024, 01:24:09 AMI first got a whiff of this stink when I heard they were removing the Rommel tank from the game.  I suppose the historical name of Erwin Rommel as a general for the wrong army was all it took to offend somebody in HR department.

The Rommel isn't going into any future products, but they didn't remove it from existing products. It still appears in TR: 3039 and a variant in TR: Prototypes. So while it's not going to get any new coverage, it's still in the game if you want to play it.

They also didn't send the cops to take your old books/miniatures and replace them for new editions without it...

Battletech seems like a really easy IP to spin-off. Ctrl+F Steiner -> Replace with -> SomeOtherName, rinse and repeat.

Joking obviously, but realistically, bitching & moaning about Battletech being owned by a shite company doesn't do much and the simplest and easiest solution is just for fans to rally around an IP made by a fan, taking the best elements and adding some innovation and freshness on top. (I always disliked the Clans, so I would probably downplay & give them more interesting twist in a spinoff, for example).

Quote from: Zelen on May 12, 2024, 09:36:39 PMBattletech seems like a really easy IP to spin-off. Ctrl+F Steiner -> Replace with -> SomeOtherName, rinse and repeat.

Joking obviously, but realistically, bitching & moaning about Battletech being owned by a shite company doesn't do much and the simplest and easiest solution is just for fans to rally around an IP made by a fan, taking the best elements and adding some innovation and freshness on top. (I always disliked the Clans, so I would probably downplay & give them more interesting twist in a spinoff, for example).

Exactly. I don't understand why fans aren't making their own IPs. Are they just not creative and committed enough to try?

Mecha is not a hard genre to make. Japan churns out disposable mecha anime by the truckload. Mechs are versatile and can be used for combat, construction, sports, etc. Not to mention that you can do any regular plot that involves humans and the scifi genre. Slice of life, romance, mystery, bug hunt, bug war, war against space elves, the war of earthly aggression, psychic powers, espionage, etc.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 13, 2024, 08:28:45 AM

Quote from: Zelen on May 12, 2024, 09:36:39 PMBattletech seems like a really easy IP to spin-off. Ctrl+F Steiner -> Replace with -> SomeOtherName, rinse and repeat.

Joking obviously, but realistically, bitching & moaning about Battletech being owned by a shite company doesn't do much and the simplest and easiest solution is just for fans to rally around an IP made by a fan, taking the best elements and adding some innovation and freshness on top. (I always disliked the Clans, so I would probably downplay & give them more interesting twist in a spinoff, for example).

Exactly. I don't understand why fans aren't making their own IPs. Are they just not creative and committed enough to try?

Mecha is not a hard genre to make. Japan churns out disposable mecha anime by the truckload. Mechs are versatile and can be used for combat, construction, sports, etc. Not to mention that you can do any regular plot that involves humans and the scifi genre. Slice of life, romance, mystery, bug hunt, bug war, war against space elves, the war of earthly aggression, psychic powers, espionage, etc.

Battletech may attract its players with the big stompy robots, but what tends to keep (most of) them is the huge body of fiction. Not every piece may be a winner, but there is plenty to choose from between game books and pure fiction (novels, Shrapnel magazine, etc.). It would be crazy to think that a fan-made IP could even come close to this level of development without decades of work by a great many people.

Quote from: HappyDaze on May 13, 2024, 08:56:03 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 13, 2024, 08:28:45 AM

Quote from: Zelen on May 12, 2024, 09:36:39 PMBattletech seems like a really easy IP to spin-off. Ctrl+F Steiner -> Replace with -> SomeOtherName, rinse and repeat.

Joking obviously, but realistically, bitching & moaning about Battletech being owned by a shite company doesn't do much and the simplest and easiest solution is just for fans to rally around an IP made by a fan, taking the best elements and adding some innovation and freshness on top. (I always disliked the Clans, so I would probably downplay & give them more interesting twist in a spinoff, for example).

Exactly. I don't understand why fans aren't making their own IPs. Are they just not creative and committed enough to try?

Mecha is not a hard genre to make. Japan churns out disposable mecha anime by the truckload. Mechs are versatile and can be used for combat, construction, sports, etc. Not to mention that you can do any regular plot that involves humans and the scifi genre. Slice of life, romance, mystery, bug hunt, bug war, war against space elves, the war of earthly aggression, psychic powers, espionage, etc.

Battletech may attract its players with the big stompy robots, but what tends to keep (most of) them is the huge body of fiction. Not every piece may be a winner, but there is plenty to choose from between game books and pure fiction (novels, Shrapnel magazine, etc.). It would be crazy to think that a fan-made IP could even come close to this level of development without decades of work by a great many people.

No shit, Sherlock. But the fans don't have a choice in the matter. They can either suck woke nazi dick and complain about it like entitled sheeple brats, or they can man up and invest in new IPs that take time to cultivate. I have zero patience or sympathy for these idiots anymore.

It's never a good idea to invest your personality in IP monopolies subject to corporate whims, and now the fans are suffering the well-deserved consequences of their bad decisions. I have seen every single IP I was even vaguely interested in get arbitrarily killed or driven into the ground and then killed. Novelty and creativity has been strangled and replaced with cargo cult nostalgia and leftoid fascism. I have been saying for decades now that we need to decentralize IPs and reform copyright for precisely these reasons, but nobody listened to me then or now. It's so fucking obnoxious that I can't even feel schadenfreude anymore.

"But what about the lore?!" Fuck lore. I've come to despise the entire concept of lore. I don't even write lore in my original fiction because I hate it so much. Lore is cancer. We need to move past the obsession with lore and focus on things that actually matter, like gameplay or plotting.

Quote from: HappyDaze on May 13, 2024, 08:56:03 AMBattletech may attract its players with the big stompy robots, but what tends to keep (most of) them is the huge body of fiction. Not every piece may be a winner, but there is plenty to choose from between game books and pure fiction (novels, Shrapnel magazine, etc.). It would be crazy to think that a fan-made IP could even come close to this level of development without decades of work by a great many people.

What I've found over the years is that the people who read the lore books are not the same as the people who play the game. There is some crossover, sure, but the people who are mainly interested in the game want a good game, not expansive lore.

The biggest aspect of having large amount of lore is that there are more people familiar with the franchise so it is easier to attract new players. But, at the same time, the lore-readers are the main ones demanding that the lore be made more woke and inclusive with little concern for any established canon or how the changes affect game play. So it's a double-edge sword.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on May 13, 2024, 10:24:48 AM

Quote from: HappyDaze on May 13, 2024, 08:56:03 AMBattletech may attract its players with the big stompy robots, but what tends to keep (most of) them is the huge body of fiction. Not every piece may be a winner, but there is plenty to choose from between game books and pure fiction (novels, Shrapnel magazine, etc.). It would be crazy to think that a fan-made IP could even come close to this level of development without decades of work by a great many people.

What I've found over the years is that the people who read the lore books are not the same as the people who play the game. There is some crossover, sure, but the people who are mainly interested in the game want a good game, not expansive lore.

The biggest aspect of having large amount of lore is that there are more people familiar with the franchise so it is easier to attract new players. But, at the same time, the lore-readers are the main ones demanding that the lore be made more woke and inclusive with little concern for any established canon or how the changes affect game play. So it's a double-edge sword.

And now that free wikis and lore vids are a thing, most of them don't even buy the books anymore but still act entitled to the IP.

Re: The players don't care about the lore...

There's so much wrong with this

The two "oldest" and biggest wargames today are WH40K & Battletech, what do they have in common? Deep lore.

The lore sells itself and the game and plastic, try introducing a new faction by just dropping the army books with pure stats.

Now even OPR Grimdark Future has it's first lore book. Guess they all failed market research.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on May 13, 2024, 12:22:57 PMRe: The players don't care about the lore...

There's so much wrong with this

The two "oldest" and biggest wargames today are WH40K & Battletech, what do they have in common? Deep lore.

The lore sells itself and the game and plastic, try introducing a new faction by just dropping the army books with pure stats.

Now even OPR Grimdark Future has it's first lore book. Guess they all failed market research.

There are different ways that people enjoy lore. After seeing it self-destruct dozens of times in every single IP I ever showed interest in, and being cyberbullied by lore worshipers in some fandoms, I no longer give a flying fuck about lore. These writers don't give a fuck about their continuity, and toxic fans use it as an excuse to bully people for wrongthink, so why should I care? Bring on the multiverse shenanigans!

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 13, 2024, 03:01:02 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on May 13, 2024, 12:22:57 PMRe: The players don't care about the lore...

There's so much wrong with this

The two "oldest" and biggest wargames today are WH40K & Battletech, what do they have in common? Deep lore.

The lore sells itself and the game and plastic, try introducing a new faction by just dropping the army books with pure stats.

Now even OPR Grimdark Future has it's first lore book. Guess they all failed market research.

There are different ways that people enjoy lore. After seeing it self-destruct dozens of times in every single IP I ever showed interest in, and being cyberbullied by lore worshipers in some fandoms, I no longer give a flying fuck about lore. These writers don't give a fuck about their continuity, and toxic fans use it as an excuse to bully people for wrongthink, so why should I care? Bring on the multiverse shenanigans!

You're exercising your God given right to not give a flying fuck about whatever you choose not to.

Doesn't mean the rest of us have to follow you or that those of us who do care are "toxic" (whatever that means).

Me caring about the lore doesn't mean also I have to keep giving my hard earned pesos to whatever corporation that has shown they don't care about their IP and hate the very same people that kept them going for decades.

Which is why I stopped buying anything from DC/Marvel, fuck them in the ass with a barbwire wrapped baseball bat. SIDEWAYS!

Which is why I advocate for people to buy a 3d printer and stop giving money to GW/Catalyst/whoever.

Furthermore people should dump their games and start playing something else similar enough to scratch that itch, like Grimdark Future.

My stance is that lore is incredibly important, but anyone who cares about lore at this point should see the writing on the wall for Battletech.

It's a lot less damaging for "the lore" to accept a spin-off with renamed factions + characters that keeps the underlying themes, tone, style, than to continue on supporting a game/IP which is compromised by malicious actors whose expressed goals are to subvert that story/setting.

Quote from: Zelen on May 13, 2024, 09:22:41 PMMy stance is that lore is incredibly important, but anyone who cares about lore at this point should see the writing on the wall for Battletech.

It's a lot less damaging for "the lore" to accept a spin-off with renamed factions + characters that keeps the underlying themes, tone, style, than to continue on supporting a game/IP which is compromised by malicious actors whose expressed goals are to subvert that story/setting.

100% Let Catalyst and it's IP burn, make a new thing or embrace an existing one, if possible one that (while keeping the game free from IRL politics) is made by explicitly anti-woke people.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 13, 2024, 03:01:02 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on May 13, 2024, 12:22:57 PMRe: The players don't care about the lore...

There's so much wrong with this

The two "oldest" and biggest wargames today are WH40K & Battletech, what do they have in common? Deep lore.

The lore sells itself and the game and plastic, try introducing a new faction by just dropping the army books with pure stats.

Now even OPR Grimdark Future has it's first lore book. Guess they all failed market research.

There are different ways that people enjoy lore. After seeing it self-destruct dozens of times in every single IP I ever showed interest in, and being cyberbullied by lore worshipers in some fandoms, I no longer give a flying fuck about lore. These writers don't give a fuck about their continuity, and toxic fans use it as an excuse to bully people for wrongthink, so why should I care? Bring on the multiverse shenanigans!

OK, so what they did with their property hurt your feelings and you want to lash out against them in impotent rage. Sorry you feel that way.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on May 13, 2024, 10:50:04 PM

Quote from: Zelen on May 13, 2024, 09:22:41 PMMy stance is that lore is incredibly important, but anyone who cares about lore at this point should see the writing on the wall for Battletech.

It's a lot less damaging for "the lore" to accept a spin-off with renamed factions + characters that keeps the underlying themes, tone, style, than to continue on supporting a game/IP which is compromised by malicious actors whose expressed goals are to subvert that story/setting.

100% Let Catalyst and it's IP burn, make a new thing or embrace an existing one, if possible one that (while keeping the game free from IRL politics) is made by explicitly anti-woke people.

If it's free from IRL politics, then why would it matter who it's made by?

Quote from: Zelen on May 13, 2024, 09:22:41 PMMy stance is that lore is incredibly important, but anyone who cares about lore at this point should see the writing on the wall for Battletech.

It's a lot less damaging for "the lore" to accept a spin-off with renamed factions + characters that keeps the underlying themes, tone, style, than to continue on supporting a game/IP which is compromised by malicious actors whose expressed goals are to subvert that story/setting.

What part of the Battletech story/setting has been subverted? How has it been subverted, and what do you believe is the "writing on the wall" and anyone should see?

Quote from: HappyDaze on May 14, 2024, 12:31:43 AM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on May 13, 2024, 10:50:04 PM

Quote from: Zelen on May 13, 2024, 09:22:41 PMMy stance is that lore is incredibly important, but anyone who cares about lore at this point should see the writing on the wall for Battletech.

It's a lot less damaging for "the lore" to accept a spin-off with renamed factions + characters that keeps the underlying themes, tone, style, than to continue on supporting a game/IP which is compromised by malicious actors whose expressed goals are to subvert that story/setting.

100% Let Catalyst and it's IP burn, make a new thing or embrace an existing one, if possible one that (while keeping the game free from IRL politics) is made by explicitly anti-woke people.

If it's free from IRL politics, then why would it matter who it's made by?

Because I won't give my money to people that have made it very clear they hate me and want to see me and mine dead. Something all the woke assholes have made perfectly clear.

Feel free to give YOUR money to those who want to see you and yours dead if you like.

Quote from: HappyDaze on May 14, 2024, 12:33:50 AM

Quote from: Zelen on May 13, 2024, 09:22:41 PMMy stance is that lore is incredibly important, but anyone who cares about lore at this point should see the writing on the wall for Battletech.

It's a lot less damaging for "the lore" to accept a spin-off with renamed factions + characters that keeps the underlying themes, tone, style, than to continue on supporting a game/IP which is compromised by malicious actors whose expressed goals are to subvert that story/setting.

What part of the Battletech story/setting has been subverted? How has it been subverted, and what do you believe is the "writing on the wall" and anyone should see?

Oh I don't know, maybe go buy the Battletech Pride Anthology 2023? Since you seem determined to play defense for Catalyst and want to give them money.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on May 14, 2024, 02:32:03 AM

Quote from: HappyDaze on May 14, 2024, 12:33:50 AM

Quote from: Zelen on May 13, 2024, 09:22:41 PMMy stance is that lore is incredibly important, but anyone who cares about lore at this point should see the writing on the wall for Battletech.

It's a lot less damaging for "the lore" to accept a spin-off with renamed factions + characters that keeps the underlying themes, tone, style, than to continue on supporting a game/IP which is compromised by malicious actors whose expressed goals are to subvert that story/setting.

What part of the Battletech story/setting has been subverted? How has it been subverted, and what do you believe is the "writing on the wall" and anyone should see?

Oh I don't know, maybe go buy the Battletech Pride Anthology 2023? Since you seem determined to play defense for Catalyst and want to give them money.

OK, I'll give you that product. However, I still don't see how the story/setting is subverted by that. It's not as if the three setting pieces done in recent years (Dominions Divided, Empire Alone, and Tamar Rising) show any evidence that they are trying to 'subvert' the setting into anything it hasn't been in it's 40+ years.

If you want to go political, then things like Shattered Fortress show that "utopian socialist societies" like the Republic of the Sphere are full of corruption (dark deeds done in the name of the "greater good" and will self-destruct without constant application of these terrible measures).

Sorry for the angry ranting. I'll try to be calmer in the future.

I don't have anything against a writer writing anthologies set within a shared universe, and I don't have any respect for corpos that make everything about "The Message", but I've gotten very frustrated with the actual execution and fandom interactions.

Nobody is Tolkien. Eventually the lore becomes so bloated that it becomes a hindrance and even the writers get bored of it and want to do something new. Old Star Trek and Star Wars had continuity errors and expanded universes that were absolute nightmares. Tolkien knew when to stop, but everyone else is content farming.

Hasbro reboots Transformers all the time and that's not a bad thing. If they didn't have the freedom to experiment with reboots, then the IP wouldn't have what it does now. Much of the IP is composed of elements that were introduced in reboots. It's an example of how reboots can be a good thing. And the reboots canonically share a multiverse too, before Hollywood drove multiverses into the ground.

Anyway, I get bored of the same thing for years and years. I get exasperated with the declining quality caused by this content farming. Maybe I'm just in the mood for something different. Well, there's not much else because these de facto monopolies have killed the competition. In recent decades I've noticed that people in general are stupider, less creative, and lazier with every passing year. It creates this frustrating cycle: indie creators work for years only to fail because fans just jump on the big creator bandwagon, big creators inevitably shit the bed because corpos don't give a shit about art, fans have no options, indie creators scramble to take advantage of the vacuum, fans complain indies don't have decades of lore, all the while the quality overall declines.

The indies would have decades of lore ready and waiting if fans had supported them when they were still publishing decades ago. Now many of those indie creators are too old or dead to make things anymore, and the younger indie creators don't have the upbringing and wealth of experience and learning their predecessors did. The fans have no one to blame but themselves for putting all their eggs in one basket.

That's why I prefer multiverses. Every setting inevitably goes through shit phases due to writer burn out, lack of hindsight, or whatever, but having a bunch of settings gives you options when that happens. That's why fantasy gaming hasn't turned to 100% shit like scifi and scifantasy has: although D&D dominates, there are thousands of published settings that can easily substitute for Faerun or Golarion.

But the scifi and scifantasy genres are not unsalvageable. The fans can still make their own stuff if they have the conviction and work ethic, or support those who do. Most of the indie creations from yesteryear are locked in copyright jail, but you can still take inspiration. But it will be a long and hard road. Rome was not built in a day.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 14, 2024, 10:45:00 AMSorry for the angry ranting. I'll try to be calmer in the future.

I don't have anything against a writer writing anthologies set within a shared universe, and I don't have any respect for corpos that make everything about "The Message", but I've gotten very frustrated with the actual execution and fandom interactions.

Nobody is Tolkien. Eventually the lore becomes so bloated that it becomes a hindrance and even the writers get bored of it and want to do something new. Old Star Trek and Star Wars had continuity errors and expanded universes that were absolute nightmares. Tolkien knew when to stop, but everyone else is content farming.

Hasbro reboots Transformers all the time and that's not a bad thing. If they didn't have the freedom to experiment with reboots, then the IP wouldn't have what it does now. Much of the IP is composed of elements that were introduced in reboots. It's an example of how reboots can be a good thing. And the reboots canonically share a multiverse too, before Hollywood drove multiverses into the ground.

Anyway, I get bored of the same thing for years and years. I get exasperated with the declining quality caused by this content farming. Maybe I'm just in the mood for something different. Well, there's not much else because these de facto monopolies have killed the competition. In recent decades I've noticed that people in general are stupider, less creative, and lazier with every passing year. It creates this frustrating cycle: indie creators work for years only to fail because fans just jump on the big creator bandwagon, big creators inevitably shit the bed because corpos don't give a shit about art, fans have no options, indie creators scramble to take advantage of the vacuum, fans complain indies don't have decades of lore, all the while the quality overall declines.

The indies would have decades of lore ready and waiting if fans had supported them when they were still publishing decades ago. Now many of those indie creators are too old or dead to make things anymore, and the younger indie creators don't have the upbringing and wealth of experience and learning their predecessors did. The fans have no one to blame but themselves for putting all their eggs in one basket.

That's why I prefer multiverses. Every setting inevitably goes through shit phases due to writer burn out, lack of hindsight, or whatever, but having a bunch of settings gives you options when that happens. That's why fantasy gaming hasn't turned to 100% shit like scifi and scifantasy has: although D&D dominates, there are thousands of published settings that can easily substitute for Faerun or Golarion.

But the scifi and scifantasy genres are not unsalvageable. The fans can still make their own stuff if they have the conviction and work ethic, or support those who do. Most of the indie creations from yesteryear are locked in copyright jail, but you can still take inspiration. But it will be a long and hard road. Rome was not built in a day.

They don't do a Battletech reboot because reboots inevitably alienate as many as they please. Instead, they encourage you to find a place in the Battletech timeline that you like and explore it. My favorite time period(s) for Battletech range from 3049-3081 (Clan Invasion through Jihad). I'm not a huge fan of the original (late) Succession Wars period, and I really don't find Dark Age/ilClan very appealing (but there are a few good bits in there too), so I don't put much of my effort into exploring that part of the timeline. If others like those periods, so be it, that doesn't infringe on my enjoyment of the parts I like. This is largely because the Battletech rules change very little from one period to another, and the biggest impact would be on a Battletech RPG. I'd certainly play a Battletech scenario even in a time period I don't really like, but I wouldn't run (and probably wouldn't play) a Battletech RPG outside of the periods I like.

Quote from: HappyDaze on May 14, 2024, 10:58:08 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 14, 2024, 10:45:00 AMSorry for the angry ranting. I'll try to be calmer in the future.

I don't have anything against a writer writing anthologies set within a shared universe, and I don't have any respect for corpos that make everything about "The Message", but I've gotten very frustrated with the actual execution and fandom interactions.

Nobody is Tolkien. Eventually the lore becomes so bloated that it becomes a hindrance and even the writers get bored of it and want to do something new. Old Star Trek and Star Wars had continuity errors and expanded universes that were absolute nightmares. Tolkien knew when to stop, but everyone else is content farming.

Hasbro reboots Transformers all the time and that's not a bad thing. If they didn't have the freedom to experiment with reboots, then the IP wouldn't have what it does now. Much of the IP is composed of elements that were introduced in reboots. It's an example of how reboots can be a good thing. And the reboots canonically share a multiverse too, before Hollywood drove multiverses into the ground.

Anyway, I get bored of the same thing for years and years. I get exasperated with the declining quality caused by this content farming. Maybe I'm just in the mood for something different. Well, there's not much else because these de facto monopolies have killed the competition. In recent decades I've noticed that people in general are stupider, less creative, and lazier with every passing year. It creates this frustrating cycle: indie creators work for years only to fail because fans just jump on the big creator bandwagon, big creators inevitably shit the bed because corpos don't give a shit about art, fans have no options, indie creators scramble to take advantage of the vacuum, fans complain indies don't have decades of lore, all the while the quality overall declines.

The indies would have decades of lore ready and waiting if fans had supported them when they were still publishing decades ago. Now many of those indie creators are too old or dead to make things anymore, and the younger indie creators don't have the upbringing and wealth of experience and learning their predecessors did. The fans have no one to blame but themselves for putting all their eggs in one basket.

That's why I prefer multiverses. Every setting inevitably goes through shit phases due to writer burn out, lack of hindsight, or whatever, but having a bunch of settings gives you options when that happens. That's why fantasy gaming hasn't turned to 100% shit like scifi and scifantasy has: although D&D dominates, there are thousands of published settings that can easily substitute for Faerun or Golarion.

But the scifi and scifantasy genres are not unsalvageable. The fans can still make their own stuff if they have the conviction and work ethic, or support those who do. Most of the indie creations from yesteryear are locked in copyright jail, but you can still take inspiration. But it will be a long and hard road. Rome was not built in a day.

They don't do a Battletech reboot because reboots inevitably alienate as many as they please. Instead, they encourage you to find a place in the Battletech timeline that you like and explore it. My favorite time period(s) for Battletech range from 3049-3081 (Clan Invasion through Jihad). I'm not a huge fan of the original (late) Succession Wars period, and I really don't find Dark Age/ilClan very appealing (but there are a few good bits in there too), so I don't put much of my effort into exploring that part of the timeline. If others like those periods, so be it, that doesn't infringe on my enjoyment of the parts I like. This is largely because the Battletech rules change very little from one period to another, and the biggest impact would be on a Battletech RPG. I'd certainly play a Battletech scenario even in a time period I don't really like, but I wouldn't run (and probably wouldn't play) a Battletech RPG outside of the periods I like.

"Reboots alienate too many people" is a silly argument. There's plenty of reboots that were good, like Transformers Prime or Thundercats 2011. You might as say we shouldn't write new fiction period and just keep making endless sequels and requels. That's worked out terribly so far.

But anyway, I just don't like the BattleTech setting. There's no alternatives, so I have to give the entire mech genre a pass. Just like I do every genre nowadays.

Quote from: HappyDaze on May 14, 2024, 09:34:52 AM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on May 14, 2024, 02:32:03 AM

Quote from: HappyDaze on May 14, 2024, 12:33:50 AM

Quote from: Zelen on May 13, 2024, 09:22:41 PMMy stance is that lore is incredibly important, but anyone who cares about lore at this point should see the writing on the wall for Battletech.

It's a lot less damaging for "the lore" to accept a spin-off with renamed factions + characters that keeps the underlying themes, tone, style, than to continue on supporting a game/IP which is compromised by malicious actors whose expressed goals are to subvert that story/setting.

What part of the Battletech story/setting has been subverted? How has it been subverted, and what do you believe is the "writing on the wall" and anyone should see?

Oh I don't know, maybe go buy the Battletech Pride Anthology 2023? Since you seem determined to play defense for Catalyst and want to give them money.

OK, I'll give you that product. However, I still don't see how the story/setting is subverted by that. It's not as if the three setting pieces done in recent years (Dominions Divided, Empire Alone, and Tamar Rising) show any evidence that they are trying to 'subvert' the setting into anything it hasn't been in it's 40+ years.

If you want to go political, then things like Shattered Fortress show that "utopian socialist societies" like the Republic of the Sphere are full of corruption (dark deeds done in the name of the "greater good" and will self-destruct without constant application of these terrible measures).

Me > Walk in my kitchen and find a stranger, pants down on top of the counter in the classic position to take a dump

Me > "Hey! Why are you shitting on my kitchen!?"

Stranger > "How do you know it's shit? It isn't even out yet!"

Setting politics =/= IRL politics tho they may overlap to some degree.

Publishing an identity politics laden product IS the writing in the wall you were asking for. You can choose to ignore it as "it's just one thing", but you don't get to ask me to do the same.

We've seen this movie before: Marvel changes Nick Fury to a black man, some of us complain, we get told SLJ is a great actor and to give him a chance and it's not a big thing and the best actor for the role, etc, etc.

Several years latter and lots of fan money given to Disney where are we?

When they made The Master a woman? Same story.

I can go on and on with different examples and how they've played out.

Now, you can choose to believe that a current year corporation that hires woke writters won't go any more woke than the odd thing here and there you can choose to ignore and buy only the good stuff.

But that's still funding them, that's still helping them pay the woke, you do you boo I know what I'll be doing.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 14, 2024, 10:45:00 AMSorry for the angry ranting. I'll try to be calmer in the future.

I don't have anything against a writer writing anthologies set within a shared universe, and I don't have any respect for corpos that make everything about "The Message", but I've gotten very frustrated with the actual execution and fandom interactions.

Nobody is Tolkien. Eventually the lore becomes so bloated that it becomes a hindrance and even the writers get bored of it and want to do something new. Old Star Trek and Star Wars had continuity errors and expanded universes that were absolute nightmares. Tolkien knew when to stop, but everyone else is content farming.

Hasbro reboots Transformers all the time and that's not a bad thing. If they didn't have the freedom to experiment with reboots, then the IP wouldn't have what it does now. Much of the IP is composed of elements that were introduced in reboots. It's an example of how reboots can be a good thing. And the reboots canonically share a multiverse too, before Hollywood drove multiverses into the ground.

Anyway, I get bored of the same thing for years and years. I get exasperated with the declining quality caused by this content farming. Maybe I'm just in the mood for something different. Well, there's not much else because these de facto monopolies have killed the competition. In recent decades I've noticed that people in general are stupider, less creative, and lazier with every passing year. It creates this frustrating cycle: indie creators work for years only to fail because fans just jump on the big creator bandwagon, big creators inevitably shit the bed because corpos don't give a shit about art, fans have no options, indie creators scramble to take advantage of the vacuum, fans complain indies don't have decades of lore, all the while the quality overall declines.

The indies would have decades of lore ready and waiting if fans had supported them when they were still publishing decades ago. Now many of those indie creators are too old or dead to make things anymore, and the younger indie creators don't have the upbringing and wealth of experience and learning their predecessors did. The fans have no one to blame but themselves for putting all their eggs in one basket.

That's why I prefer multiverses. Every setting inevitably goes through shit phases due to writer burn out, lack of hindsight, or whatever, but having a bunch of settings gives you options when that happens. That's why fantasy gaming hasn't turned to 100% shit like scifi and scifantasy has: although D&D dominates, there are thousands of published settings that can easily substitute for Faerun or Golarion.

But the scifi and scifantasy genres are not unsalvageable. The fans can still make their own stuff if they have the conviction and work ethic, or support those who do. Most of the indie creations from yesteryear are locked in copyright jail, but you can still take inspiration. But it will be a long and hard road. Rome was not built in a day.

As a hired gun writer you can get bored with the lore, that's fine, what you don't get (or at least the corpos should have enough brain to prevent you from it) is to treat the IP as if it's yours and do canon breaking stuff.

I'm NOT a writer, I do get some ideas but translating those into a coherent work of fiction? Not gonna happen I've tried.

But I could use a non-woke/anti-woke writer to write some lore for my stuff, heck he/she could go hog wild and publish a novel with MY blessing and zero IP bullcrap. What I don't have is the money to hire anyone, so it would be a risk the writer would have to take, write, edit, publish and if it sells, great you made money, all I ask in return is I don't know 5%? of the profits AND free publicity for MY game in the books.

I only have the following creative constraints:
NO MULTIVERSES! that's why Marvel and DC are shit right now.
No IDPol whatsoever
NO current year IRL politics

Quote from: GeekyBugle on May 14, 2024, 01:06:08 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 14, 2024, 10:45:00 AMSorry for the angry ranting. I'll try to be calmer in the future.

I don't have anything against a writer writing anthologies set within a shared universe, and I don't have any respect for corpos that make everything about "The Message", but I've gotten very frustrated with the actual execution and fandom interactions.

Nobody is Tolkien. Eventually the lore becomes so bloated that it becomes a hindrance and even the writers get bored of it and want to do something new. Old Star Trek and Star Wars had continuity errors and expanded universes that were absolute nightmares. Tolkien knew when to stop, but everyone else is content farming.

Hasbro reboots Transformers all the time and that's not a bad thing. If they didn't have the freedom to experiment with reboots, then the IP wouldn't have what it does now. Much of the IP is composed of elements that were introduced in reboots. It's an example of how reboots can be a good thing. And the reboots canonically share a multiverse too, before Hollywood drove multiverses into the ground.

Anyway, I get bored of the same thing for years and years. I get exasperated with the declining quality caused by this content farming. Maybe I'm just in the mood for something different. Well, there's not much else because these de facto monopolies have killed the competition. In recent decades I've noticed that people in general are stupider, less creative, and lazier with every passing year. It creates this frustrating cycle: indie creators work for years only to fail because fans just jump on the big creator bandwagon, big creators inevitably shit the bed because corpos don't give a shit about art, fans have no options, indie creators scramble to take advantage of the vacuum, fans complain indies don't have decades of lore, all the while the quality overall declines.

The indies would have decades of lore ready and waiting if fans had supported them when they were still publishing decades ago. Now many of those indie creators are too old or dead to make things anymore, and the younger indie creators don't have the upbringing and wealth of experience and learning their predecessors did. The fans have no one to blame but themselves for putting all their eggs in one basket.

That's why I prefer multiverses. Every setting inevitably goes through shit phases due to writer burn out, lack of hindsight, or whatever, but having a bunch of settings gives you options when that happens. That's why fantasy gaming hasn't turned to 100% shit like scifi and scifantasy has: although D&D dominates, there are thousands of published settings that can easily substitute for Faerun or Golarion.

But the scifi and scifantasy genres are not unsalvageable. The fans can still make their own stuff if they have the conviction and work ethic, or support those who do. Most of the indie creations from yesteryear are locked in copyright jail, but you can still take inspiration. But it will be a long and hard road. Rome was not built in a day.

As a hired gun writer you can get bored with the lore, that's fine, what you don't get (or at least the corpos should have enough brain to prevent you from it) is to treat the IP as if it's yours and do canon breaking stuff.

I'm NOT a writer, I do get some ideas but translating those into a coherent work of fiction? Not gonna happen I've tried.

But I could use a non-woke/anti-woke writer to write some lore for my stuff, heck he/she could go hog wild and publish a novel with MY blessing and zero IP bullcrap. What I don't have is the money to hire anyone, so it would be a risk the writer would have to take, write, edit, publish and if it sells, great you made money, all I ask in return is I don't know 5%? of the profits AND free publicity for MY game in the books.

I only have the following creative constraints:
NO MULTIVERSES! that's why Marvel and DC are shit right now.
No IDPol whatsoever
NO current year IRL politics

No multiverses, eh? What exactly would you call the plethora of official campaign settings for D&D? Much less all the 3pp settings? What would you call Chronicles of Darkness? What would you call GURPS?

I'm sick and tired of some dead boomer's stagnant IP dominating [insert genre here] for decades on end, strangling alternatives, and then shitting the bed. It's not going to kill you if somebody makes a game with more than one setting. The game police are not gonna break into your house and burn the books you already bought for that game you liked.

Like, One Page Rules is releasing its own setting books, but nobody is forcing you to use their setting. The setting isn't baked into the rules. You could write a lot of settings using the same rules. (Also, I heard the writer is a furry who can't help but write the furry races as heroic persecuted minorities, so there's that.)

Worldbuilding isn't a one-size-fits-all. The SST tabletop miniatures game has been out of print for decades, the books were pulled from Drivethru due to losing the license, and there's no alternatives that I know of. One Page Rules Grimdark Future is a pastiche of 40k and doesn't have any army comparable to the Federation, the Skinnies or the Arachnids. This is a good example of how 40k's dominance is detrimental to the hobby as a whole. It actively reduces the amount of creativity and diversity of ideas in the genre.

Federation marines are not religious roided up supersoldiers. They're space Muricans in powered armor. The Arachnids are not just tyranids with a different coat of paint: a brain bug is completely different from a hive tyrant, in the original novel they use conventional technology instead of psionics and biotech, in the OOP ttrpg one of the castes was literally a cockroach used for espionage like that scene in The Fifth Element, etc. The Skinnies... I don't even know what their shtick was besides breathing methane. There's no shortage of other OOP scifi miniatures games with neat ideas that got forgotten.

Apparently OPR has an army builder that supports custom armies but you have to pay a fee to see it, so I have no comment on that.

I'm sorry, but this entire argument over "lore" is stupid.  Because there's no such thing as "lore" in an RPG.  There are only setting conceits and background information.

Roleplaying works best when players can get immersed in their characters.  When they can think like their characters would in the situations their characters find themselves in, that is when "roleplaying" happens.  And this is often dependent on the player's understanding the setting well enough to make informed choices with proper evaluation of possible consequences.  That requires an understanding of the setting and its conceits (basic assumptions).  And background information (i.e., the history of the setting, the cultures of the setting, the past and present conflicts, etc.) help provide context, models, motivations, and examples of what does happen in the setting when X does Y. So-called "lore" only exists as a tool to allow players to understand the setting and its conflicts, such that they can make decisions because of this.  If the last king to raise a demon ended up causing a continent-wide apocalypse, the local villagers will look upon your attempts to raise a demon differently than if the rich and powerful use demons every day to do their housework. It's one of the reasons so many WotC campaigns turn into "modern day Seattle with swords";  these asshats don't have the knowledge, worldbuilding, or talent to competently express a fictional world such that they can provide enough suspension of disbelief for players to effectively roleplay in their settings!  It's also one of the reasons I've always said that "modern" settings are the crutch of weak role-players and DMs. If you have to fall back on modern expectations to buoy your  setting, you've failed as a worldbuilder.

So, sorry BCT, but whining about the (mis)use of lore and "IP" is a fundamental misunderstanding of what roleplaying is and how you do it.  A game that provides lots of hooks for players is a good game (and setting).  And what you call "lore" is one of the fundamental methods of doing so.  Where "lore" becomes a problem is when it saps the agency and choices of the players (a la DM-PC or metanarrative the world must follow).  Of course, Vampire does this, because it's a terrible game made by terrible people whose primary motivation was LARPing all of their social and sexual fetishes with tween girls.  The problem isn't the "lore"; it's the fact that the lore is both useless and counterproductive to roleplaying anything but a perv and sex-pest.

And this is why the female Astartes is a bridge too far.  Part of the setting conceits of WH40K is the way that humanity has needed to become something different (and arguably less than human) in order to survive.  It's not the right place for "representation."  It jars many players out of the setting when the happy, lesbian girl-boss sweeps in to save the day.  That's not WH40K.  So, where the "lore" in WH40K makes it harder to immerse yourself (due to contradicting what you as a player have internalized to help you understand the setting and place), it is stupid and wrong.  Lots of other minor details have been changed in the setting that produce no outcry, primarily because those changes didn't contradict something vital to the ability to immerse the player.  And lots of changes having nothing to do with modern politics have seen 40K players lose their minds, because it affected the tenor of the setting in ways that broke immersion.  It's just that modern woke people are so fucking narrow and talentless that they can't even hide their "message" enough to allow people to still immerse themselves in the setting.  They demand you come back to reality to pledge your allegiance!  Were I woke, I'd be embarrassed that my side was obviously so devoid of talent and intelligence that the best they could conjure was this.  But, hey, I guess if they were self-aware, they couldn't be woke!

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 14, 2024, 03:23:56 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on May 14, 2024, 01:06:08 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 14, 2024, 10:45:00 AMSorry for the angry ranting. I'll try to be calmer in the future.

I don't have anything against a writer writing anthologies set within a shared universe, and I don't have any respect for corpos that make everything about "The Message", but I've gotten very frustrated with the actual execution and fandom interactions.

Nobody is Tolkien. Eventually the lore becomes so bloated that it becomes a hindrance and even the writers get bored of it and want to do something new. Old Star Trek and Star Wars had continuity errors and expanded universes that were absolute nightmares. Tolkien knew when to stop, but everyone else is content farming.

Hasbro reboots Transformers all the time and that's not a bad thing. If they didn't have the freedom to experiment with reboots, then the IP wouldn't have what it does now. Much of the IP is composed of elements that were introduced in reboots. It's an example of how reboots can be a good thing. And the reboots canonically share a multiverse too, before Hollywood drove multiverses into the ground.

Anyway, I get bored of the same thing for years and years. I get exasperated with the declining quality caused by this content farming. Maybe I'm just in the mood for something different. Well, there's not much else because these de facto monopolies have killed the competition. In recent decades I've noticed that people in general are stupider, less creative, and lazier with every passing year. It creates this frustrating cycle: indie creators work for years only to fail because fans just jump on the big creator bandwagon, big creators inevitably shit the bed because corpos don't give a shit about art, fans have no options, indie creators scramble to take advantage of the vacuum, fans complain indies don't have decades of lore, all the while the quality overall declines.

The indies would have decades of lore ready and waiting if fans had supported them when they were still publishing decades ago. Now many of those indie creators are too old or dead to make things anymore, and the younger indie creators don't have the upbringing and wealth of experience and learning their predecessors did. The fans have no one to blame but themselves for putting all their eggs in one basket.

That's why I prefer multiverses. Every setting inevitably goes through shit phases due to writer burn out, lack of hindsight, or whatever, but having a bunch of settings gives you options when that happens. That's why fantasy gaming hasn't turned to 100% shit like scifi and scifantasy has: although D&D dominates, there are thousands of published settings that can easily substitute for Faerun or Golarion.

But the scifi and scifantasy genres are not unsalvageable. The fans can still make their own stuff if they have the conviction and work ethic, or support those who do. Most of the indie creations from yesteryear are locked in copyright jail, but you can still take inspiration. But it will be a long and hard road. Rome was not built in a day.

As a hired gun writer you can get bored with the lore, that's fine, what you don't get (or at least the corpos should have enough brain to prevent you from it) is to treat the IP as if it's yours and do canon breaking stuff.

I'm NOT a writer, I do get some ideas but translating those into a coherent work of fiction? Not gonna happen I've tried.

But I could use a non-woke/anti-woke writer to write some lore for my stuff, heck he/she could go hog wild and publish a novel with MY blessing and zero IP bullcrap. What I don't have is the money to hire anyone, so it would be a risk the writer would have to take, write, edit, publish and if it sells, great you made money, all I ask in return is I don't know 5%? of the profits AND free publicity for MY game in the books.

I only have the following creative constraints:
NO MULTIVERSES! that's why Marvel and DC are shit right now.
No IDPol whatsoever
NO current year IRL politics

No multiverses, eh? What exactly would you call the plethora of official campaign settings for D&D? Much less all the 3pp settings? What would you call Chronicles of Darkness? What would you call GURPS?

I'm sick and tired of some dead boomer's stagnant IP dominating [insert genre here] for decades on end, strangling alternatives, and then shitting the bed. It's not going to kill you if somebody makes a game with more than one setting. The game police are not gonna break into your house and burn the books you already bought for that game you liked.

Like, One Page Rules is releasing its own setting books, but nobody is forcing you to use their setting. The setting isn't baked into the rules. You could write a lot of settings using the same rules. (Also, I heard the writer is a furry who can't help but write the furry races as heroic persecuted minorities, so there's that.)

Worldbuilding isn't a one-size-fits-all. The SST tabletop miniatures game has been out of print for decades, the books were pulled from Drivethru due to losing the license, and there's no alternatives that I know of. One Page Rules Grimdark Future is a pastiche of 40k and doesn't have any army comparable to the Federation, the Skinnies or the Arachnids. This is a good example of how 40k's dominance is detrimental to the hobby as a whole. It actively reduces the amount of creativity and diversity of ideas in the genre.

Federation marines are not religious roided up supersoldiers. They're space Muricans in powered armor. The Arachnids are not just tyranids with a different coat of paint: a brain bug is completely different from a hive tyrant, in the original novel they use conventional technology instead of psionics and biotech, in the OOP ttrpg one of the castes was literally a cockroach used for espionage like that scene in The Fifth Element, etc. The Skinnies... I don't even know what their shtick was besides breathing methane. There's no shortage of other OOP scifi miniatures games with neat ideas that got forgotten.

Apparently OPR has an army builder that supports custom armies but you have to pay a fee to see it, so I have no comment on that.

Yeah, no multiverses, IDGAFF about D&D's different settings, especially BECAUSE they are a multiverse not really different settings.

IPs dominate the market BECAUSE it's what the market wants, how are you gonna fix that? Force people to buy/play/reads/whatever different stuff?

You have a creative brain, write up the setting for a totally not SST RPG, I bet there's lots of developers waiting to get their hands on something like that. But that's lore and you hate lore.

Here, go read Armaggedon 2419 AD and the sequel Airlords of Han, then use that as the starting point for your own lore, it's public domain. Add whatever you want to, power armor included.

That's where Buck Rogers got it's start, but while Buck is Copyrighted the original novel is public domain, expand on it, add more enemies, aliens, bugs, whatever, add space travel for the humans. Boom you have a setting for RPGs with lots of room to play in, WITHOUT multiverse bullshit, the party jumps on a ship and goes to a different planet, where the sentients aren't the same as in the last planet.

I'm working on a game with THAT characteristic, where you can play in different planets, but it's set in the past, not the future, it's the future as it never was from the 1920s-1930s point of view.

If the market wants to destroy itself, then be my guest. I've done everything I could do.

I'm sure lore, or "background and conceits", can be used well, but after my experiences with the Vampire LARPers and Blizzard games I'm just exasperated with the entire concept. It's used badly more often than it's used well.

If I want to play a vampire mad scientist, then the Vampire LARPers would force me to play as a samosa clan (or whatever, I don't care to get the name right) that has a ton of other baggage that I'm not interested in. I have never appreciated D&D's division of races, backgrounds, classes, factions, etc. more than I have after experiencing that dumpster fire fandom.

If I want to play voracious space bugs, then my options don't look good. Tyranids are a faceless force of nature and don't have any utility as a storytelling tool beyond that because they can't have characters, dialogues, or proximate objectives. Also, I'm not spending a fortune on figurines to those assholes at GW. The zerg are a fucking joke, dumb animals under the control of a psychotic succubus with boyfriend/daddy issues. It's so obnoxious.

I am writing original settings with backstories (like that not!SST thing), because I am exasperated with this kinds of things but I still want to see them done well. I'm more interested in exploring themes and plots than I am expositing trivia, so I don't limit myself to only those settings.

On the other hand, I don't have as much motivation to write as I would like. Beyond general self-doubt in my writing ability, I don't get the impression that there's an audience.

I posted 10,000+ words of original fiction to one of those fiction writing sites a couple months ago. It currently sits at a paltry 70 views.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 14, 2024, 07:56:00 PMIf the market wants to destroy itself, then be my guest. I've done everything I could do.

I'm sure lore, or "background and conceits", can be used well, but after my experiences with the Vampire LARPers and Blizzard games I'm just exasperated with the entire concept. It's used badly more often than it's used well.

If I want to play a vampire mad scientist, then the Vampire LARPers would force me to play as a samosa clan (or whatever, I don't care to get the name right) that has a ton of other baggage that I'm not interested in. I have never appreciated D&D's division of races, backgrounds, classes, factions, etc. more than I have after experiencing that dumpster fire fandom.

If I want to play voracious space bugs, then my options don't look good. Tyranids are a faceless force of nature and don't have any utility as a storytelling tool beyond that because they can't have characters, dialogues, or proximate objectives. Also, I'm not spending a fortune on figurines to those assholes at GW. The zerg are a fucking joke, dumb animals under the control of a psychotic succubus with boyfriend/daddy issues. It's so obnoxious.

I am writing original settings with backstories (like that not!SST thing), because I am exasperated with this kinds of things but I still want to see them done well. I'm more interested in exploring themes and plots than I am expositing trivia, so I don't limit myself to only those settings.

On the other hand, I don't have as much motivation to write as I would like. Beyond general self-doubt in my writing ability, I don't get the impression that there's an audience.

I posted 10,000+ words of original fiction to one of those fiction writing sites a couple months ago. It currently sits at a paltry 70 views.

If it's not fanfiction why not go ahead and selfpublish it?

Quote from: GeekyBugle on May 14, 2024, 11:58:48 PMIf it's not fanfiction why not go ahead and selfpublish it?

Maybe in the future.

I think my next BattleTech campaign will start in 3025 and run in real time.  That way I don't have to deal with the Clan story line for the next 25 years.  :-)

Quote from: zircher on May 29, 2024, 01:12:35 AMI think my next BattleTech campaign will start in 3025 and run in real time.  That way I don't have to deal with the Clan story line for the next 25 years.  :-)

If you're going for real time, make sure to play out the weeks (or even months) it takes to transit from one star system to another.

Here are two games that are BattleTech clones, but not actually BattleTech products. 

MachaForce.  Basically, BattleTech without hit locations.  There are four weight classes.  There are jump jets.  Weapons are energy based, cannons, and missiles, each having a big and small version of the type, and a small flamethrower tacked on as a 7th weapon. Moving and shooting build up heat, and you use heat sinks to get rid of that heat.  The game plays in four phases;  Movement, shooting, melee, and finally heat phase.

And you can build a custom mech. There are also stats for a tank, attack helicopter, and infantry.

The rule book is only 8 pages long and only cost $2 for the PDF.

It's a BattleTech clone if there ever was one. 

Wargame Vault Link to MechaForce (https://www.wargamevault.com/m/product/107836)

The other one is called C.O.R.E. Mech Warfare.  This one is more like Gundam, and suggests that you use 144:1 scale Japanese plastic model kits.  That's the scale of the basic "HG" Gundam model kits.

Try it for free.  There is a free demo set of rules. 

Gameplay, there are three sizes of mechs, each class has a dice you roll to generate energy for your turn, then you spend the energy to move and attack. 

It's a Gundam game.  Don't let the AI art of the rule book fool you. 

Quote from: weirdguy564 on June 13, 2024, 06:17:33 PMHere are two games that are BattleTech clones, but not actually BattleTech products. 

MachaForce.  Basically, BattleTech without hit locations.  There are four weight classes.  There are jump jets.  Weapons are energy based, cannons, and missiles, each having a big and small version of the type, and a small flamethrower tacked on as a 7th weapon. Moving and shooting build up heat, and you use heat sinks to get rid of that heat.  The game plays in four phases;  Movement, shooting, melee, and finally heat phase.

And you can build a custom mech. There are also stats for a tank, attack helicopter, and infantry.

The rule book is only 8 pages long and only cost $2 for the PDF.

It's a BattleTech clone if there ever was one. 

Wargame Vault Link to MechaForce (https://www.wargamevault.com/m/product/107836)

The other one is called C.O.R.E. Mech Warfare.  This one is more like Gundam, and suggests that you use 144:1 scale Japanese plastic model kits.  That's the scale of the basic "HG" Gundam model kits.

Try it for free.  There is a free demo set of rules. 

Gameplay, there are three sizes of mechs, each class has a dice you roll to generate energy for your turn, then you spend the energy to move and attack. 

It's a Gundam game.  Don't let the AI art of the rule book fool you. 

MechaForce (or is it MachaForce?) sounds really limited compared to even a BattleTech starter set. It sounds like it gets the feel right, but there just doesn't sound like it has enough to it to keep it on the table for long.

If the other game is a "Gundam" game, then it's not going to play/feel much like BattleTech (IMO).

It's copycat games, or download older rule books. 

I just got my favorite rule book recently.  BattleTech Compendium. 

I even like the Aerospace fighter rules. 

Quote from: weirdguy564 on June 14, 2024, 05:56:34 PMIt's copycat games, or download older rule books. 

I just got my favorite rule book recently.  BattleTech Compendium. 

I even like the Aerospace fighter rules. 

Why "older" rulebooks when even the "current" rulebook (Total Warfare) is 18 years old?

Make a new game?

Quote from: HappyDaze on June 15, 2024, 12:27:04 AM

Quote from: weirdguy564 on June 14, 2024, 05:56:34 PMIt's copycat games, or download older rule books. 

I just got my favorite rule book recently.  BattleTech Compendium. 

I even like the Aerospace fighter rules. 

Why "older" rulebooks when even the "current" rulebook (Total Warfare) is 18 years old?

Because of the AeroTech rules, and the lack of bloat from all the super weapons.  I mean we have a Heavy Medium laser now.  To me that means we've lost the plot. I don't like all of that.

AeroTech in the Compendium had a chart of acrobatic maneuvers.  That was a good idea I liked. 

Even then, I still prefer just the introductory rules or Alpha Strike.  Alpha Strike is really all I have time to play, and my son can play too.  He is only six.

Back when my son was young, I made a fast kill version of BTech for him and his friends.  Basically I simplified the sheet and changed weapon damage so that every five points was 1d6.  This created a version with more 'fun' dice rolling and let the players run several mechs in case one of theirs got taken out.  It went over very well with the boys running several lances together against a GM controlled combined arms force at a factory.

Panther PNT-9R            35 tons
               
Walk    4    SRM4      OOOOO OOOOO   
Run     6              OOOOO OOOOO   
Jump    4              OOOOO   
Heat    13           
               
              Head       
              O cockpit       
R. Arm        O sensors      L. Arm
O destroyed   OO             O destroyed
O servos                     O servos
O PPC         Torso          OOO
OO            O explosion       
              O engine       
R. Leg        O gyro         L. Leg
O destroyed   O engine       O destroyed
O servos      O SRM4         O servos
O jump 2      OOOOO          O jump 2
OOOO          OO             OOOO


Quote from: weirdguy564 on June 17, 2024, 10:50:34 AM

Quote from: HappyDaze on June 15, 2024, 12:27:04 AM

Quote from: weirdguy564 on June 14, 2024, 05:56:34 PMIt's copycat games, or download older rule books. 

I just got my favorite rule book recently.  BattleTech Compendium. 

I even like the Aerospace fighter rules. 

Why "older" rulebooks when even the "current" rulebook (Total Warfare) is 18 years old?

Because of the AeroTech rules, and the lack of bloat from all the super weapons.  I mean we have a Heavy Medium laser now.  To me that means we've lost the plot. I don't like all of that.

AeroTech in the Compendium had a chart of acrobatic maneuvers.  That was a good idea I liked. 

Even then, I still prefer just the introductory rules or Alpha Strike.  Alpha Strike is really all I have time to play, and my son can play too.  He is only six.

Now? The Heavy Lasers (including the Heavy Medium Laser you mentioned) have been around since 1998. It is not a "super weapon" in any way.

You want a simplified game, then sticking to Alpha Strike will keep you in your comfort zone. Of course, it includes mechs with heavy lasers, but the effects are abstracted like all other weapons.

I don't even like the Clans.  I prefer 3025.

I would like combined arms with infantry and tanks. 

MechaForce seems like a good compromise.

I'll also give Renegade Legion Centurion a go as well, though it's another universe from FASA. 

Quote from: weirdguy564 on June 18, 2024, 10:31:38 AMI don't even like the Clans.  I prefer 3025.

I would like combined arms with infantry and tanks. 

MechaForce seems like a good compromise.

I'll also give Renegade Legion Centurion a go as well, though it's another universe from FASA. 

My joke about Renegade Legion is that someone at FASA looked at the rules for Battletech and said "That's for babies!" :D

Great universe, great system, crunchy as hell.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on June 24, 2024, 05:59:09 PM

Quote from: weirdguy564 on June 18, 2024, 10:31:38 AMI don't even like the Clans.  I prefer 3025.

I would like combined arms with infantry and tanks. 

MechaForce seems like a good compromise.

I'll also give Renegade Legion Centurion a go as well, though it's another universe from FASA. 

My joke about Renegade Legion is that someone at FASA looked at the rules for Battletech and said "That's for babies!" :D

Great universe, great system, crunchy as hell.

I enjoyed Centurion, but their other products not so much. I remember the damage chart for Interceptor looking like an electrician's diagram turned into a flow chart and just shaking my head.

I really loved SSI's original take on Interceptor.  They kept all the tactical fun but automated/hid the (very faithful) mechanics  of the game.  Played multiple campaigns as Renegade and TOG.  Jacob's Star was just... ick... an attempt to catch some of Wing Commander's audience.

The current incarnation of FASA's Aetherstream: Interceptor has a lot of that RL:I spirit, but they switched from a flow chart to a dice pool system.  It does result in faster more 'modern' play.  Shame that the rights to the original setting are buried in a swamp.

I just bought this used off Amazon this past week.  It's the original all-in-one BattleTech rule book that combined BattleTech with CityTech and with AeroTech.

BattleTech The Rules of Warfare (https://www.sarna.net/wiki/BattleTech_Manual:_The_Rules_of_Warfare)

This is the original game without Clan technology, but has infantry, tanks, and AeroTech. 

I see nothing wrong with wanting a trimmed down rule book that is not full of gadgets and gizmos that I'll never use. 

Also, I like this version of AeroTech as it's the only version I actually have played. 

That being said, what I actually want is a rule book for Alpha Strike that is just Inner Sphere set in 3025.  Again, ditch all the rules for weird stuff like protomechs, c3 networks, alternate Autocannon ammo types, etc. 

It's kind of why I like MechaForce.  It's a good halfway point between BattleTech and Alpha Strike.   

My Mercenaries kickstarter box is supposed to be delivered tomorrow. I bought in at the Battalion level and added on a bit so I'd have plenty of vehicle minis (including some VTOLs) to go with the mechs I already have.

I like buying the newest BattleTech minis, but I'm not interested in the Clans or anything later. 

I tend to stick to just 3025 era.

Is the Mercenary stuff mostly Clans?  3060?

I was hoping to get minis of the "OST" series of mechs now that there is good art for them.

I'm not hating on those later eras of play.  It's just I prefer to keep it simple.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on July 16, 2024, 05:42:09 PMI like buying the newest BattleTech minis, but I'm not interested in the Clans or anything later. 

I tend to stick to just 3025 era.

Is the Mercenary stuff mostly Clans?  3060?

I was hoping to get minis of the "OST" series of mechs now that there is good art for them.

I'm not hating on those later eras of play.  It's just I prefer to keep it simple.

Mercenaries will give you the Ostsol in the main box. It's a good-looking solid mech. The others show up in some of the associated boosters.

There are no Clan mechs in the main Mercenaries box, but Mercenaries boosters do include some Clan stuff along with some Inner Sphere stuff that never showed up before the Clans (like Inner Sphere Battle Armor).

However, the big thing that Mercenaries brings is combat vehicles--tanks, missile carriers, personnel carriers, VTOLs, and the like. Most of these have both early (3025 or even earlier) versions as well as upgraded (Clan Invasion and beyond) versions.

The defaults for the included map of the Inner Sphere are 3058 (late Clan Invasion era) and 3151 (eve of the ilClan era), but this is just a poster, not a game piece. The included tactical maps are great and era-neutral.

I played a little battletech in the late 90's early 2000's, got back into it about 2-3 years ago when I saw it at a convention.  I had heard of previous catalyst battletech things but they had shitty plastic miniatures, the minis actually look nice now, its too bad they have hired so many marxists to run their community events and they have chosen to demonize many people who kept battletech alive when it was dead, I know I wasn't one of the people who kept it alive, but I've re-discovered the cartoon show, and a bunch of older stuff too.
Catalyst is such a small company it really only takes a few dedicated evil people to totally twist the company towards their crazy ideas, and now that author they have flagshipping the franchize is a totally knob.

Actually, the standard "Mini" for BattleTech has been the card stock Standee with a color picture of the mech on the front and back.

We used to draw our own by cutting up old cereal or soda can boxes into 1x4 inch strips.  Then fold it in half to make a 1x2 standee with the brown and blank side outwards.  Just add a little cross foot with half a notch on the foot and half a notch on the bottom of the standee. Then draw your mech.

Quote from: Banjo Destructo on July 17, 2024, 09:56:35 AMthat author they have flagshipping the franchize is a totally knob

Which author?

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 18, 2024, 02:17:44 AM

Quote from: Banjo Destructo on July 17, 2024, 09:56:35 AMthat author they have flagshipping the franchize is a totally knob

Which author?

This man seems like he's the new "flagship" author of battletech.  https://www.sarna.net/news/answering-questions-an-interview-with-author-bryan-young/

Quote from: Banjo Destructo on July 19, 2024, 03:11:11 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 18, 2024, 02:17:44 AM

Quote from: Banjo Destructo on July 17, 2024, 09:56:35 AMthat author they have flagshipping the franchize is a totally knob

Which author?

This man seems like he's the new "flagship" author of battletech.  https://www.sarna.net/news/answering-questions-an-interview-with-author-bryan-young/

He's certainly leading the way in writing about the Jade Falcons in the current era, but I don't think calling him the "flagship" author is justified. Battletech has always had numerous authors that collectively create the fiction to follow and support the game materials as directed by Catalyst.

I've read two of his novels and a few of his shorter pieces. None were outstanding, being neither fantastic nor terrible. His work is about what I expect from gaming fiction.

As far as his being "a totally [sic] knob," I don't really see any issues showing up in his writing, so I'm not going to condemn BatteTech for having him around. OTOH, if he ever goes forward with putting a Jar-Jar Binks character into BattleTech...

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 14, 2024, 12:36:27 PM"Reboots alienate too many people" is a silly argument. There's plenty of reboots that were good,

And ten times as many that were fucking god awful.

But yes. Reboots, new editions lose you about 50% if your fan/customer base. EVERY TIME.

Quote from: Omega on July 19, 2024, 07:02:53 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 14, 2024, 12:36:27 PM"Reboots alienate too many people" is a silly argument. There's plenty of reboots that were good,

And ten times as many that were fucking god awful.

But yes. Reboots, new editions lose you about 50% if your fan/customer base. EVERY TIME.

That's still a poor excuse. Everything worthwhile in life isn't guaranteed success. None of the decades old lore that nerds obsess over would exist if people didn't come up with new stories. These IPs didn't spring fully formed from the ether, they were created piecemeal over years. They don't deserve to be worshipped like religions, they're fiction. But because corpos and nerds alike now refuse to make or patronize new stories, pop culture has turned into a giant ingrown toenail full of blood and pus.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 19, 2024, 09:08:42 PM

Quote from: Omega on July 19, 2024, 07:02:53 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 14, 2024, 12:36:27 PM"Reboots alienate too many people" is a silly argument. There's plenty of reboots that were good,

And ten times as many that were fucking god awful.

But yes. Reboots, new editions lose you about 50% if your fan/customer base. EVERY TIME.

That's still a poor excuse. Everything worthwhile in life isn't guaranteed success. None of the decades old lore that nerds obsess over would exist if people didn't come up with new stories. These IPs didn't spring fully formed from the ether, they were created piecemeal over years. They don't deserve to be worshipped like religions, they're fiction. But because corpos and nerds alike now refuse to make or patronize new stories, pop culture has turned into a giant ingrown toenail full of blood and pus.

The thing about being a one-note musician is that you have to make sure that one note is a good one.  Conflating people developing new IP and people getting irritated with a company because it invalidates everything you've previously bought via the edition treadmill is just stupid.  Be better.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 19, 2024, 09:08:42 PM

Quote from: Omega on July 19, 2024, 07:02:53 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 14, 2024, 12:36:27 PM"Reboots alienate too many people" is a silly argument. There's plenty of reboots that were good,

And ten times as many that were fucking god awful.

But yes. Reboots, new editions lose you about 50% if your fan/customer base. EVERY TIME.

That's still a poor excuse. Everything worthwhile in life isn't guaranteed success. None of the decades old lore that nerds obsess over would exist if people didn't come up with new stories. These IPs didn't spring fully formed from the ether, they were created piecemeal over years. They don't deserve to be worshipped like religions, they're fiction. But because corpos and nerds alike now refuse to make or patronize new stories, pop culture has turned into a giant ingrown toenail full of blood and pus.

Love him or Hate him but Rippa created new IP and the "nerds" (geeks actually) supported it to the tune of about 5 million dollars IIRC.

Be the change you want to see, either by creating new stuff, supporting it or promoting it.

Lot's of new stuff is created constantly, but dies because it's hard to reach the people.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on July 20, 2024, 12:33:29 AMLove him or Hate him but Rippa created new IP and the "nerds" (geeks actually) supported it to the tune of about 5 million dollars IIRC.

Be the change you want to see, either by creating new stuff, supporting it or promoting it.

Lot's of new stuff is created constantly, but dies because it's hard to reach the people.

We need more people with balls like Rippa has. Regardless of what anyone thinks of his work, he is at least trying. Which is more than I can say for most complainers.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on July 19, 2024, 10:30:00 PMThe thing about being a one-note musician is that you have to make sure that one note is a good one.  Conflating people developing new IP and people getting irritated with a company because it invalidates everything you've previously bought via the edition treadmill is just stupid.  Be better.

Companies don't have a choice. They have to keep making new editions, including reboots, or they'll go out of business. Reboots are made for financial reasons more than anything else. Long running lore gets obtuse and intimidating after a while, for both customers and writers. You should see how comic books handle it. Batman used to have a pair of revolvers!

Complaining about the edition treadmill, reboots, etc is complaining that capitalism, storytelling, and entropy exist. If you're upset about a company rebooting something you liked, then make your own thing to your specifications. Like Rippa or One Page Rules. Amateur publishing is easier than ever.

To use Battletech as an example, I would love a universal mech game that gave you multiple different settings to play with. I wish that existed and had a community. Maybe someday...

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 20, 2024, 08:36:20 AMCompanies don't have a choice. They have to keep making new editions, including reboots, or they'll go out of business.

Business-wise, BattleTech seems to be doing just fine these days without a reboot. They're doing well by making new (and far more visually appealing) minis and successfully using Kickstarter to launch them in bulk at lower risk. However, the momentum of that plan may start falling off as many of their whales (myself included) now have damn near every mini I will ever need. OK, perhaps there are a few more I should buy...

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 20, 2024, 10:45:39 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 20, 2024, 08:36:20 AMCompanies don't have a choice. They have to keep making new editions, including reboots, or they'll go out of business.

Business-wise, BattleTech seems to be doing just fine these days without a reboot. They're doing well by making new (and far more visually appealing) minis and successfully using Kickstarter to launch them in bulk at lower risk. However, the momentum of that plan may start falling off as many of their whales (myself included) now have damn near every mini I will ever need. OK, perhaps there are a few more I should buy...

Rebooting doesn't make the previous continuities stop having been written. It's this damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. They've written all the original material they could ever write and are now just repackaging the same thing over and over with minor variations. It's stagnant. I wouldn't mind if there were alternatives, but they hold a de facto monopoly on the mech genre in the Anglosphere. If you're bored of or not interested in Battletech, then you're fucked. Same for every other genre: it's de facto socialism.

This creates a vicious cycle. Corpos inevitably drive their IPs into the ground when they have no competition to drive improvements, and almost nobody wants to invest the effort in making new IPs, ultimately leaving consumers with nothing. Copyright only worsens the issue by legally barring fans from preserving and recycling abandonware.

There are so many abandoned IPs that I'd love to get my hands on.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 20, 2024, 12:02:32 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 20, 2024, 10:45:39 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 20, 2024, 08:36:20 AMCompanies don't have a choice. They have to keep making new editions, including reboots, or they'll go out of business.

Business-wise, BattleTech seems to be doing just fine these days without a reboot. They're doing well by making new (and far more visually appealing) minis and successfully using Kickstarter to launch them in bulk at lower risk. However, the momentum of that plan may start falling off as many of their whales (myself included) now have damn near every mini I will ever need. OK, perhaps there are a few more I should buy...

Rebooting doesn't make the previous continuities stop having been written. It's this damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. They've written all the original material they could ever write and are now just repackaging the same thing over and over with minor variations. It's stagnant. I wouldn't mind if there were alternatives, but they hold a de facto monopoly on the mech genre in the Anglosphere. If you're bored of or not interested in Battletech, then you're fucked. Same for every other genre: it's de facto socialism.

This creates a vicious cycle. Corpos inevitably drive their IPs into the ground when they have no competition to drive improvements, and almost nobody wants to invest the effort in making new IPs, ultimately leaving consumers with nothing. Copyright only worsens the issue by legally barring fans from preserving and recycling abandonware.

There are so many abandoned IPs that I'd love to get my hands on.

It is not de facto socialism. If anything, it's an example of the brand power of BattleTech to continue to be successful in a niche market. BattleTech does not hold a monopoly, and Catalyst doesn't do anything to stop competition. However, despite your feelings towards it, it continues to vastly overmatch all other western mecha tabletop games. What you're calling socialism, I'd counter by calling it a story of capitalism.

As for your complaint that it's stagnant, there are obviously many that disagree. The current changes to the setting, now the year 3151 in-universe, are more than just minor variations. Entire factions have risen and fallen, and the state of interstellar communications has become dramatically less connected than even during the worst of the Succession Wars (this is a rather big deal in the setting). Sure, many of the dramitic elements remain familiar, but that's because the BattleTech setting & fiction focuses on one key unchanging component: mundane humanity and its struggles. If you take that away in the interests of making something new and fresh, you won't have a setting that is recognizably BattleTech. You may not care about that, but the property exists and is profitting on interest of those that do.

Story of capitalism? Like the Crowdstrike blue screen of death?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 21, 2024, 07:37:46 AMStory of capitalism? Like the Crowdstrike blue screen of death?

If you're being serious, explain your comparison and I'll be happy to discuss it further.

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 21, 2024, 11:18:56 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 21, 2024, 07:37:46 AMStory of capitalism? Like the Crowdstrike blue screen of death?

If you're being serious, explain your comparison and I'll be happy to discuss it further.

I jest.

In general, I think it's a hugely bad idea to put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to anything, media franchises in this case. They always rot eventually and a plethora of choices is always better than one. The media landscape is bland and homogenous as a result of concentrating in a handful of franchises.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 21, 2024, 12:09:03 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 21, 2024, 11:18:56 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 21, 2024, 07:37:46 AMStory of capitalism? Like the Crowdstrike blue screen of death?

If you're being serious, explain your comparison and I'll be happy to discuss it further.

I jest.

In general, I think it's a hugely bad idea to put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to anything, media franchises in this case. They always rot eventually and a plethora of choices is always better than one. The media landscape is bland and homogenous as a result of concentrating in a handful of franchises.

A major correction: The Corporate Media is bland and homogeneous as a result of corporations trying to maximize their ROI by appealing to the greatest number of people AND the woke infiltration AND the fact that Blackrock and co demand certain things when they buy your soul.

BUT... This is only true of megacorps (mainly, the exception being true believers that unless they get a cash injection by Blackrock and co will be dead shortly), small/indie creators are able to push out stuff that's not the same grey slop the megacorps are shitting out.

Those franchises have decades of good will and love built in, it takes time for the megacorp to truly destroy them and then put them in a vault to languish.

IF, any megacorp were to REALLY turn the ship around and start pushing out GOOD content free of political/religious (I go to church to get preached at, not to the movies thank you) propaganda you might see the others react. But those are huge ships, you can't expect them to make a 180 degree turn as fast as a small more nimble boat.

Now, while they are vomiting and shitting their grey slop is the perfect time for someone REALLY creative (like yourself) to publish something different and "new", others are busy doing so.

I think you still need to reach the point of not really caring for the brand, for instance I OWN the OT and prequels of SW, I also own WEG's Star Wars, I have no need for Disney nor do I care what they do with the brand.

Don't get me wrong, I'll still engage in the honored geek pastime of pointing out all the BS they are doing but there's exactly ZERO emotional attachment to it anymore.

There's currently several market niches waiting to be filled by SOMEONE, who (as Rippa proved) will make bank IF that someone knows how, where, when and to whom to market their product.

Heck, Pundit LIVES OF publishing INDIE RPGs and supplements. Never before has been self-publishing so easy.

I think most Battletech players basically ignore everything post-Tukayyid anyways, because the aftermath of it is simply uninteresting or fanfic-level bad.  The initial clan invasion was the high water mark of the property, and nothing since has kept that going.

Totally agree with that, my son and his friends have no interest in the post-clan invasion timeline.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 21, 2024, 12:09:03 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 21, 2024, 11:18:56 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 21, 2024, 07:37:46 AMStory of capitalism? Like the Crowdstrike blue screen of death?

If you're being serious, explain your comparison and I'll be happy to discuss it further.

I jest.

In general, I think it's a hugely bad idea to put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to anything, media franchises in this case. They always rot eventually and a plethora of choices is always better than one. The media landscape is bland and homogenous as a result of concentrating in a handful of franchises.

Whose eggs? Whose basket? There is no limit to how many eggs can be produced, but you have to really sell your eggs to get others to want to fill their baskets with them. If you can contribute to widening the available range, then do it. However, don't expect those that are currently producing their own eggs to handicap themselves (like, with a reboot) to give you a better chance.

Quote from: Valatar on July 21, 2024, 09:44:16 PMI think most Battletech players basically ignore everything post-Tukayyid anyways, because the aftermath of it is simply uninteresting or fanfic-level bad.  The initial clan invasion was the high water mark of the property, and nothing since has kept that going.

Catalyst seems to feel differently. While they seem to have limited support for the Jihad and early Dark Age eras, they seem to be full-on in their efforts on late Dark Age/ilClan era development, especially with all of the money and interest they've pulled in over the past 5 years (BattleTech now being bigger than ever before).

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 22, 2024, 02:06:49 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 21, 2024, 12:09:03 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 21, 2024, 11:18:56 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 21, 2024, 07:37:46 AMStory of capitalism? Like the Crowdstrike blue screen of death?

If you're being serious, explain your comparison and I'll be happy to discuss it further.

I jest.

In general, I think it's a hugely bad idea to put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to anything, media franchises in this case. They always rot eventually and a plethora of choices is always better than one. The media landscape is bland and homogenous as a result of concentrating in a handful of franchises.

Whose eggs? Whose basket? There is no limit to how many eggs can be produced, but you have to really sell your eggs to get others to want to fill their baskets with them. If you can contribute to widening the available range, then do it. However, don't expect those that are currently producing their own eggs to handicap themselves (like, with a reboot) to give you a better chance.

No, I want to reform copyright so that everyone is empowered to make and sell their own versions of Battletech. It works out fine for the bazillion third party D&D settings.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 22, 2024, 08:42:23 AM

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 22, 2024, 02:06:49 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 21, 2024, 12:09:03 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 21, 2024, 11:18:56 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 21, 2024, 07:37:46 AMStory of capitalism? Like the Crowdstrike blue screen of death?

If you're being serious, explain your comparison and I'll be happy to discuss it further.

I jest.

In general, I think it's a hugely bad idea to put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to anything, media franchises in this case. They always rot eventually and a plethora of choices is always better than one. The media landscape is bland and homogenous as a result of concentrating in a handful of franchises.

Whose eggs? Whose basket? There is no limit to how many eggs can be produced, but you have to really sell your eggs to get others to want to fill their baskets with them. If you can contribute to widening the available range, then do it. However, don't expect those that are currently producing their own eggs to handicap themselves (like, with a reboot) to give you a better chance.

No, I want to reform copyright so that everyone is empowered to make and sell their own versions of Battletech. It works out fine for the bazillion third party D&D settings.

Why should others be empowered to parasitically profit off of the works of FASA/Fanpro/Catalyst/whoever holds BattleTech? Why not have every soda company that makes cola just be allowed to brand it as Coca-Cola? You were the one that flung out "it's socialism" but here you want to take a "means of production" (of a specific dominant brandname) and put it "into the hands of the people"... Sounds like what you have a problem with is capitalism.

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 22, 2024, 11:49:44 AMWhy should others be empowered to parasitically profit off of the works of FASA/Fanpro/Catalyst/whoever holds BattleTech? Why not have every soda company that makes cola just be allowed to brand it as Coca-Cola? You were the one that flung out "it's socialism" but here you want to take a "means of production" (of a specific dominant brandname) and put it "into the hands of the people"... Sounds like what you have a problem with is capitalism.

No, trademark would still protect the name Battletech. Copyright and trademark are different laws.

For example, the Burroughs Estate owns the trademarks for Tarzan and Conan. While anyone is free to write and sell their own fanfic, since the stories are public domain, they aren't allowed to use the trademarks. This is why you don't see Disney trying to profit off their Tarzan movie anymore.

The problem is that copyright lasts for over a century due to Disney lobbying Congress, so corpos have free reign to destroy IPs and fans have zero recourse. By the time the copyright expires, all the fans who cared will be dead. See here: https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/

A good example of how public domain helps the longevity and health of an IP would be the Cthulhu Mythos. Nobody owns the mythos, so anybody is free to make their own works using it. This prevents corpos from driving it into the ground and ensures that it doesn't get forgotten due to apathetic owners.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 22, 2024, 02:28:18 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 22, 2024, 11:49:44 AMWhy should others be empowered to parasitically profit off of the works of FASA/Fanpro/Catalyst/whoever holds BattleTech? Why not have every soda company that makes cola just be allowed to brand it as Coca-Cola? You were the one that flung out "it's socialism" but here you want to take a "means of production" (of a specific dominant brandname) and put it "into the hands of the people"... Sounds like what you have a problem with is capitalism.

No, trademark would still protect the name Battletech. Copyright and trademark are different laws.

For example, the Burroughs Estate owns the trademarks for Tarzan and Conan. While anyone is free to write and sell their own fanfic, since the stories are public domain, they aren't allowed to use the trademarks. This is why you don't see Disney trying to profit off their Tarzan movie anymore.

The problem is that copyright lasts for over a century due to Disney lobbying Congress, so corpos have free reign to destroy IPs and fans have zero recourse. By the time the copyright expires, all the fans who cared will be dead. See here: https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/

A good example of how public domain helps the longevity and health of an IP would be the Cthulhu Mythos. Nobody owns the mythos, so anybody is free to make their own works using it. This prevents corpos from driving it into the ground and ensures that it doesn't get forgotten due to apathetic owners.

Explain how this would work with BattleTech. What would you produce? How would it be different from just making your own mecha property?

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 22, 2024, 02:31:03 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 22, 2024, 02:28:18 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 22, 2024, 11:49:44 AMWhy should others be empowered to parasitically profit off of the works of FASA/Fanpro/Catalyst/whoever holds BattleTech? Why not have every soda company that makes cola just be allowed to brand it as Coca-Cola? You were the one that flung out "it's socialism" but here you want to take a "means of production" (of a specific dominant brandname) and put it "into the hands of the people"... Sounds like what you have a problem with is capitalism.

No, trademark would still protect the name Battletech. Copyright and trademark are different laws.

For example, the Burroughs Estate owns the trademarks for Tarzan and Conan. While anyone is free to write and sell their own fanfic, since the stories are public domain, they aren't allowed to use the trademarks. This is why you don't see Disney trying to profit off their Tarzan movie anymore.

The problem is that copyright lasts for over a century due to Disney lobbying Congress, so corpos have free reign to destroy IPs and fans have zero recourse. By the time the copyright expires, all the fans who cared will be dead. See here: https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/

A good example of how public domain helps the longevity and health of an IP would be the Cthulhu Mythos. Nobody owns the mythos, so anybody is free to make their own works using it. This prevents corpos from driving it into the ground and ensures that it doesn't get forgotten due to apathetic owners.

Explain how this would work with BattleTech. What would you produce? How would it be different from just making your own mecha property?

From my personal knowledge of how D&D and its clones work, I would say that a direct comparison of BattleTech would be,  you could make a game that uses the same rules, and plays exactly the same as BattleTech, and all you'd have to do us use different names for things, have a different story/setting, and not directly copy any of the visual designs of the mechs/units. 

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 22, 2024, 02:31:03 PMExplain how this would work with BattleTech. What would you produce? How would it be different from just making your own mecha property?

I have no emotional connection to Battletech and barely know anything about it, so I would probably make my own mecha property. What other mecha properties are there, anyway?

Anyway, what I mean is that there's a lot abandoned or ruined IPs that would become salvageable if copyright was reformed and terms reduced. Fans could take the material, do their own thing with it, and sell that for profit to support further material. They wouldn't be at the mercy of apathetic evil corpos that arbitrary destroy IPs.

Quote from: Banjo Destructo on July 22, 2024, 02:56:39 PMFrom my personal knowledge of how D&D and its clones work, I would say that a direct comparison of BattleTech would be,  you could make a game that uses the same rules, and plays exactly the same as BattleTech, and all you'd have to do us use different names for things, have a different story/setting, and not directly copy any of the visual designs of the mechs/units.

No, that's different. D&D clones have to work around copyright, whereas if copyright was reformed then they could outright copy material that entered public domain. It's hard to explain because Disney lobbied multiple times to extend copyright to over a century, so nothing relevant to our contemporary audiences has entered public domain for a really long time.

Let me think... oh, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is an example. Most of the text is identical to Pride and Prejudice, but the writer altered some things and inserted new elements like zombies.

For Battletech it means that anyone could copy books that entered public domain, although they wouldn't be allowed to advertise themselves using the Battletech trademark. Although how trademark interacts with public domain names is iffy. Here's an explanation of how Dracula interacts with trademark law from a UK attorney: https://www.citma.org.uk/resources/intellectual-property-bites-trade-marks-and-dracula-blog.html

However, the purpose of trademarks is to prevent scammers from scamming customers by pretending to sell products from a particular origin. Trademarks can become invalid as a result of passing into common usage, such as with kleenex. This is called trademark dilution.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 22, 2024, 03:44:48 PMI have no emotional connection to Battletech and barely know anything about it, so I would probably make my own mecha property.

There's nothing stopping you from doing this. BattleTech isn't stopping you from doing this, just as you can bottle your own cola and sell it against Coca-Cola. You are very unlikely to dethrone either of the big names, and are very likely to fail, but you can try.

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 22, 2024, 05:08:39 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 22, 2024, 03:44:48 PMI have no emotional connection to Battletech and barely know anything about it, so I would probably make my own mecha property.

There's nothing stopping you from doing this. BattleTech isn't stopping you from doing this, just as you can bottle your own cola and sell it against Coca-Cola. You are very unlikely to dethrone either of the big names, and are very likely to fail, but you can try.

Okay? I didn't say there was anything stopping me.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 22, 2024, 05:46:34 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 22, 2024, 05:08:39 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 22, 2024, 03:44:48 PMI have no emotional connection to Battletech and barely know anything about it, so I would probably make my own mecha property.

There's nothing stopping you from doing this. BattleTech isn't stopping you from doing this, just as you can bottle your own cola and sell it against Coca-Cola. You are very unlikely to dethrone either of the big names, and are very likely to fail, but you can try.

Okay? I didn't say there was anything stopping me.

What you said was:

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 22, 2024, 08:42:23 AMNo, I want to reform copyright so that everyone is empowered to make and sell their own versions of Battletech.

So, again, why would it be necessary to reform copyright if there's already nothing stopping you (or anyone else) other than the fact that you'll be competing with a big name?

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 22, 2024, 07:12:50 PMSo, again, why would it be necessary to reform copyright if there's already nothing stopping you (or anyone else) other than the fact that you'll be competing with a big name?

I personally might not want to, but I cannot speak for anyone else.

It's a lot more than that, tho. There's numerous orphaned works and abandonware that are faded into obscurity and cannot be revived by fans due to fear of being sued for copyright infringement. The only way to address the problem is through a reform of the laws.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 23, 2024, 02:18:53 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 22, 2024, 07:12:50 PMSo, again, why would it be necessary to reform copyright if there's already nothing stopping you (or anyone else) other than the fact that you'll be competing with a big name?

I personally might not want to, but I cannot speak for anyone else.

It's a lot more than that, tho. There's numerous orphaned works and abandonware that are faded into obscurity and cannot be revived by fans due to fear of being sued for copyright infringement. The only way to address the problem is through a reform of the laws.

I get that with "abandoned" properties, but we're talking about BattleTech here. Whether you like the direction it's going or not, it's certainly not orphaned or abandoned today. You might have had an argument (briefly) when FASA shut down, but even then the ClickyTech thing happened (I was not a fan) and then the 'Classic' tabletop game suffered on life support before pulling through and doing it's rehab. Today, it's performing better than ever, but yes, it does still carry the scars of that ugly period.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 20, 2024, 08:36:20 AMCompanies don't have a choice. They have to keep making new editions, including reboots, or they'll go out of business.

This has been proven false for decades.
They do it to gouge the customers.

Games Workshop is a master class in this level of fuckery.

Quote from: zircher on July 26, 2024, 01:34:34 AMGames Workshop is a master class in this level of fuckery.

Very true, and a great example of what I do not want to see happen with BattleTech.

Although the aerospace side of BT (including warships) has been left to rot like a GW special line 2 years after release...

Yeah, AeroTech and BattleSpace were always the red headed stepchildren.

Hell, I fundamentally disagree with AeroSpace fighters being essentially flying armored tanks that die thru attrition. 

In the case of BattleSpace, that was totally broken from the start.

If you have to add up, then average out a ship's weaponry to get a "fire factor" for an weapon, just stop and rewrite it so that the ship has a weapon with those stats mounted there in the first place.

We switched to using free tabletop warship game rules for pre-dreadnought ships from the 1900's for our space naval battles.  It works well for that.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on July 29, 2024, 08:45:50 PMYeah, AeroTech and BattleSpace were always the red headed stepchildren.

Hell, I fundamentally disagree with AeroSpace fighters being essentially flying armored tanks that die thru attrition. 

In the case of BattleSpace, that was totally broken from the start.

If you have to add up, then average out a ship's weaponry to get a "fire factor" for an weapon, just stop and rewrite it so that the ship has a weapon with those stats mounted there in the first place.

We switched to using free tabletop warship game rules for pre-dreadnought ships from the 1900's for our space naval battles.  It works well for that.

Yeah, they've tired to keep the same weapons for everything, whether Mechs, Aerospace Fighters, or DropShips & WarShips (at least for WarShip non-capital batteries). It gets weird, especially when they tell you to accept the really short ranges BT gave the weapons...but then the same weapons can shoot MUCH further on an aerospace unit (even in atmosphere). So, why not mount those aerospace versions of the weapons on Mechs?

Quote from: weirdguy564 on July 29, 2024, 08:45:50 PMWe switched to using free tabletop warship game rules for pre-dreadnought ships from the 1900's for our space naval battles.  It works well for that.

What are the rules you're using? Either the name or a link is enough.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on July 29, 2024, 08:45:50 PMIf you have to add up, then average out a ship's weaponry to get a "fire factor" for an weapon, just stop and rewrite it so that the ship has a weapon with those stats mounted there in the first place.

I miss FASA's sometimes unusual approaches to things. Peculiar as some were.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on July 30, 2024, 05:20:18 PM

Quote from: weirdguy564 on July 29, 2024, 08:45:50 PMWe switched to using free tabletop warship game rules for pre-dreadnought ships from the 1900's for our space naval battles.  It works well for that.

What are the rules you're using? Either the name or a link is enough.

It's called Portable Pre-dreadnought. 

Portable Pre-Dreadnought Rules (http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~warden/BlogFreeDownloads/FreePNavalPreDreadnought.pdf)

It's an amateur written set of rules meant for ships between the US civil war and World War-1. 

I felt that pre-dreadnought ships seemed similar to BattleTech warships, so those types of rules were what we looked at.  I'm also into what is called Rules-Lite.  If I want to play, I don't want to read a 300+ page rulebook for what is likely to be a one-time game.  Portable Pre-Dreadnought all fits on one page, and that's good enough.

Starmageddon Rules (https://www.angelfire.com/games2/warpspawn/Star.html)

Starmageddon is another set of simple rules.  It's a bit more complex than Portable Pre-Dreadnought, but still counts as rules-lite.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on September 24, 2024, 05:26:31 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on July 30, 2024, 05:20:18 PM

Quote from: weirdguy564 on July 29, 2024, 08:45:50 PMWe switched to using free tabletop warship game rules for pre-dreadnought ships from the 1900's for our space naval battles.  It works well for that.

What are the rules you're using? Either the name or a link is enough.

It's called Portable Pre-dreadnought. 

Portable Pre-Dreadnought Rules (http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~warden/BlogFreeDownloads/FreePNavalPreDreadnought.pdf)

It's an amateur written set of rules meant for ships between the US civil war and Workd War-1. 

I felt that pre-dreadnought ships seemed similar to BattleTech warships, so those types of rules were what we looked at.  I'm also into what is called Rules-Lite.  If I want to play, I don't want to read a 300+ page rulebook for what is likely to be a one-time game.  Portable Pre-Dreadnought all fits on one page, and that's good enough.

Starmageddon Rules (https://www.angelfire.com/games2/warpspawn/Star.html)

Starmageddon is another set of simple rules.  It's a bit more complex than Portable Pre-Dreadnought, but still counts as rules-lite.

Thanks, much appreciated.

Shit is getting stirred again. https://scottsgameroom.com/2024/10/09/battletech-texas-and-moderation/

Quote from: Banjo Destructo on October 11, 2024, 11:15:43 AMShit is getting stirred again. https://scottsgameroom.com/2024/10/09/battletech-texas-and-moderation/

And your point is what exactly?

And the left eat their own.

https://fandompulse.substack.com/p/woke-infighting-leads-to-cancelation

So when are we gonna get a new mech game that isn't Battletech? I have some ideas for original mech games and settings. I think it would make the most sense to start with generic rules that can support multiple settings, then make a plethora of settings rather than limiting yourself to just one. E.g. the war of earthly aggression, the bug war, mech sports, mechs vs the cthulhu mythos...

Quote from: Ratman_tf on October 24, 2024, 01:06:28 PMAnd the left eat their own.

https://fandompulse.substack.com/p/woke-infighting-leads-to-cancelation

Didn't the anthology that your link states is being cancelled come out back in June?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 24, 2024, 01:47:48 PMSo when are we gonna get a new mech game that isn't Battletech? I have some ideas for original mech games and settings. I think it would make the most sense to start with generic rules that can support multiple settings, then make a plethora of settings rather than limiting yourself to just one. E.g. the war of earthly aggression, the bug war, mech sports, mechs vs the cthulhu mythos...

There are a bunch out there, they just don't have the mass appeal of the BTech universe. Off the top of my head at random; Lancer, Battle Century G, Beam Sabre/Partizan, Tiny Epic Mechs, and Weasel-Tech.  Mekton Zeta still has fans and Heavy Gear is alive.

Quote from: zircher on October 24, 2024, 06:11:18 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 24, 2024, 01:47:48 PMSo when are we gonna get a new mech game that isn't Battletech? I have some ideas for original mech games and settings. I think it would make the most sense to start with generic rules that can support multiple settings, then make a plethora of settings rather than limiting yourself to just one. E.g. the war of earthly aggression, the bug war, mech sports, mechs vs the cthulhu mythos...

There are a bunch out there, they just don't have the mass appeal of the BTech universe. Off the top of my head at random; Lancer, Battle Century G, Beam Sabre/Partizan, Tiny Epic Mechs, and Weasel-Tech.  Mekton Zeta still has fans and Heavy Gear is alive.

The Twilight Imperium setting (currently supported under the Genesys ruleset) features mechs as primary ground unit. They have two basic types (light and heavy with a few variations of each) in the main book along with one transformable flying mecha design.

Is there a universal and open source mech game that supports a variety of genres?

If you don't like how BattleTech is being run theses days, really all you can do is not buy their stuff.

I did throw out a few alternatives myself.  CORE Mecha Warfare and MachaForce Tactical Combat.

CORE is more about Gundam's, but run in a sort-of BattleTech style game.

MechaForce is a clear copycat game.  It has heat as a gameplay limit, plays on a hex map, and uses 2D6 for the dice rolls.  It is very close.  It's small, fitting into just seven pages, so the tech is limited.  No hit locations is the biggest change.

Or, just buy old stuff marked FASA from used book/toy stores. 

Me, I don't have any animosity towards current day BattleTech.  I'm not going to stop buying things they make.  I'm not boycotting them.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 24, 2024, 01:47:48 PMSo when are we gonna get a new mech game that isn't Battletech? I have some ideas for original mech games and settings. I think it would make the most sense to start with generic rules that can support multiple settings, then make a plethora of settings rather than limiting yourself to just one. E.g. the war of earthly aggression, the bug war, mech sports, mechs vs the cthulhu mythos...

CAV is one. It was around back when I was a kid.  Now it is called CAV Strike Operations.

The original Metalsiege/Earthsiege setting was essentially a Terminator ripoff.  The hook was that the fighting is between giant human piloted mechs vs AI mechs attempting to wipe out humanity.  Also, it morphed into Tribes, which baffles me to this day.  Shazbat!   

Heavy Gear is another mech game, but gears are smaller, agile, and die pretty fast. Also, they're powered by a weird piston gasoline engine.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 25, 2024, 10:26:07 AMIs there a universal and open source mech game that supports a variety of genres?

Not open source, but Mekton Zeta Plus has a design system that can emulate nearly anything.  Back in the day, I used it to model A-10s, YF-23s, and even a couple of BattleTech mechs.

Strangely enough MegaMek,org lists itself as open source even thought it is a BTech system and you can custom build your own units.

Mobile Frame Zero: Rapid Attack is CC non-commercial, so you're free to hack that.

Honestly, if I wanted an open source universal mech system, I'd probably roll my own.  Perhaps something inspired by MZ+ since that is a dead system.  Dead as in not being developed further, it is still being sold in PDF format.  It would be easy enough to clone the Interlock system (CP202/MZ) since it is stat+1d10 vs target number or opposed roll.  The core MZ design system is ala carte; pick a frame and load it with modules.  No spread sheet required (MZ+ is a powerful beast that case build/mod the basic system, but still a beast.)

[edit for typos/clarity]

Quote from: zircher on October 24, 2024, 06:11:18 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 24, 2024, 01:47:48 PMSo when are we gonna get a new mech game that isn't Battletech? I have some ideas for original mech games and settings. I think it would make the most sense to start with generic rules that can support multiple settings, then make a plethora of settings rather than limiting yourself to just one. E.g. the war of earthly aggression, the bug war, mech sports, mechs vs the cthulhu mythos...

There are a bunch out there, they just don't have the mass appeal of the BTech universe. Off the top of my head at random; Lancer, Battle Century G, Beam Sabre/Partizan, Tiny Epic Mechs, and Weasel-Tech.  Mekton Zeta still has fans and Heavy Gear is alive.

Steel Rift, Gamma Wolves, Bot War.

Tiny-D6 Mecha and Monsters is a good rules lite game.

It can do all sorts of things.  Power armored heroes.  Pilots of transformable jet fighters.  Mech jockeys in giant machines the size of skyscrapers. Even combiner teams.

It could be used for commercial copycat games, or even unlicensed games of known IPs. 

The most obvious would be Pacific Rim.

However, running the game as RoboTech/Macross is doable. 

That's the beauty of rules lite.  You can do all sorts of stuff because the rules are universal enough that your setting can be used to explain how it works.  Simply put, do what you want.  Th ?9e game has so little built in numbers and stats specifically so your GM a can use the rules anyway they see fit. 

As a bonus, it is also able to be played by children.  It's a simple game. 

My son and I had our first C.O.R.E. Mech Warfare game this week.

To recap, CORE is a model agnostic tabletop wargame of mech vs mech combat, although it includes stats for a generic infantry squad, a tank, and an attack helicopter.

That being said, it's highly suggested that the mechs they have in mind are Gundams, specifically the 1:144 scale High Grade (cheapest scale) plastic model kits, often called Gunpla.  Gunpla are widely available and do not require glue or paint. They snap together. They're about $10-$18. 

The game plays a lot like Warhammer 40k.  It's just that each Gundam has a bunch of hit points.  A beam rifle attack has you figure out the hit number.  Typically it's a default of 3 or more, and then you roll a handful of d6 dice to see how much damage you did, four D6's in the case of a beam rifle.

One interesting bit is that each Gundam generates energy at the start of their turn, and uses it up as you play.  This is a lot more fiddling around than I thought it would be.  The author suggested using dice like a 1D12 or 1D20 to keep track of each mech's power status, and I agree.

It played fast and easy otherwise.  I recommend it.  Hell, it's got a free demo rulebook you can just "buy" for free and check it out yourself.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on October 24, 2024, 01:06:28 PMAnd the left eat their own.

https://fandompulse.substack.com/p/woke-infighting-leads-to-cancelation

Look what's back. (https://x.com/Detocroix/status/1855729826164072662)

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 24, 2024, 01:47:48 PMSo when are we gonna get a new mech game that isn't Battletech? I have some ideas for original mech games and settings. I think it would make the most sense to start with generic rules that can support multiple settings, then make a plethora of settings rather than limiting yourself to just one. E.g. the war of earthly aggression, the bug war, mech sports, mechs vs the cthulhu mythos...

There's an alt-universe BattleTech product (BattleTech Gothic boxed set) that's being produced with a new setting and it will have kaiju-like monsters to fight with your mechs.

Quote from: HappyDaze on March 28, 2025, 01:33:47 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 24, 2024, 01:47:48 PMSo when are we gonna get a new mech game that isn't Battletech? I have some ideas for original mech games and settings. I think it would make the most sense to start with generic rules that can support multiple settings, then make a plethora of settings rather than limiting yourself to just one. E.g. the war of earthly aggression, the bug war, mech sports, mechs vs the cthulhu mythos...

There's an alt-universe BattleTech product (BattleTech Gothic boxed set) that's being produced with a new setting and it will have kaiju-like monsters to fight with your mechs.

I'm not giving money or exposure to bigots

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on March 28, 2025, 07:43:59 AM

Quote from: HappyDaze on March 28, 2025, 01:33:47 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 24, 2024, 01:47:48 PMSo when are we gonna get a new mech game that isn't Battletech? I have some ideas for original mech games and settings. I think it would make the most sense to start with generic rules that can support multiple settings, then make a plethora of settings rather than limiting yourself to just one. E.g. the war of earthly aggression, the bug war, mech sports, mechs vs the cthulhu mythos...

There's an alt-universe BattleTech product (BattleTech Gothic boxed set) that's being produced with a new setting and it will have kaiju-like monsters to fight with your mechs.

I'm not giving money or exposure to bigots

They're taking a step towards giving you what you asked for but that's not enough for you. Suit yourself. I'll take a look at it and judge it on its own merit (or lack of such).

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on March 28, 2025, 07:43:59 AMI'm not giving money or exposure to bigots

Who would that be?

Quote from: blackstone on March 28, 2025, 01:18:35 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on March 28, 2025, 07:43:59 AMI'm not giving money or exposure to bigots

Who would that be?

Since we were talking about BattleTech, I assumed he was talking about Catalyst/Topps.