Wot I’m Playing (Part 1): Battletech.

There is one thing my gaming group likes better then being your traditional Dungeons and Dragons group filled with strong warriors, crafty rogues (they really dislike being called “thieves” you know), powerful mages, and wise healers. That one thing? BIG STOMPY ROBOTS!.

Battletech is one of the longest running Role Playing Game series out there. It’s been released as a video game in just about every format, from old PC’s to Genesis/Super Nintendo, back to PC’s again, to Xbox,  even arcade/style units, and now, a MMO in MechWarrior Online, and of course the upcoming Battletech game from Harebrained Schemes. But we were focusing tonight on the pen and paper game that started it all back in 1984.

Wait. NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR?????

God, I’m Old.

The game, released by FASA Studios was originally named BattleDroids, but as you can probably guess, they wanted to avoid the wrath of Lucas.. so it got a rename to Battletech.. started in the year 3025. In the game, 30 foot tall “BattleMechs” were the kings of the Battlefield. Each one had the fire power of many units, and being walkers, could get into places that hover or wheeled/tracked vehicles could not. In the game, technology had decayed since the death of the Star League nearly 300 years prior. Most of the advanced technology was not even being made anymore, so a bit of a scavenger economy had taken hold. You never destroyed valuable equipment like factories, or the ships that carried commerce and military units between worlds, because no one could make it in large numbers any more. Instead, you usually ransomed your own equipment back, and promised to take it back at another time. The slogan at the time was “Life is Cheap. BattleMechs are expensive”

Let’s just say that the starting point of the game was the end of the technological decline, as in game events started a technological renaissance, reintroducing new and advanced technologies. The game has gone through 120 years of in-game history, including many major wars (as expected for a war game) between the feudal houses of the Inner Sphere (each part of the old Star League that wanted to conquer the others to make themselves the head of a new Star League). You even had “alien invaders” that weren’t really aliens, some of the Star League’s army that had left 300 years ago to try to avoid being sucked into the endless wars that were coming had formed a militaristic society that was the true embodiment of might makes right. (Any political decision that was made could be challenged to a Trial to negate it)

I could spend hours typing out all the history of BattleTech, but I can imagine folks eyes are glazing over, and besides, there’s a ton of reading material out there if you want to know more about the BattleTech universe (I suggest the Warrior Trilogy by Michael Stackpole as a good starting point to get a feel for the universe).

But when we were looking over our stacks of books last night saying, what do we want to play, my friends eyes lit up and they happily said “Don’t go any further. We want to play Battletech”. Something about this old, in some ways antiquated system (the original rule set was in 1984, and it’s not changed much throughout the years), stirred them, and many others. And there are literally rules for playing anything like a Solaris VII (imagine Las Vegas the world, where the big selling point is BattleMech Arena matches) one on one duel, to most recently, controlling Hundreds of WORLDS at the broadest level (so you could actually do the wars between the Inner Sphere)

So, for the next few weeks at least, we’ll be happily fighting the wars of the Inner Sphere for fun and profit as a mercenary group (no loyalty, except to the contract). It’s kinda great how thirty plus years after it first came out in pen and paper, we’re still happily playing Battletech, and with a new game coming out next year, the kickstarted Battletech game from Harebrained Schemes, we’ll be playing it in 2017 and beyond.

How long can this game series last? Well, here’s hoping that it’ll be at least ANOTHER 32 years. (again. 32 years??? Dayumn)