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I used to see it in the stores, and heard some reference to it from other gamers, but has anyone here tried the Mechwarrior RPG?

If so, what was its defining characteristic and would you recommend it as a RPG experience?

I haven’t gotten to play Mechwarrior — by which I mean the Battletech RPGs preceding A Time Of War (2010).

FYI: Recently, an agreement has been worked out to allow CGL to publish a Battletech RPG under the name Mechwarrior again. This is Mechwarrior Destiny and has nothing to do with the older games, mechanically.

 Easy E wrote:
I used to see it in the stores, and heard some reference to it from other gamers, but has anyone here tried the Mechwarrior RPG?

If so, what was its defining characteristic and would you recommend it as a RPG experience?

Well, I've played all four editions, Destiny, GURPS and some other games adapted for MW play, so... it depends xD

First edition was little more than a (n overly complex) glorified personal scale tactical combat system with a campaign system, and it was not really very good, but the color interior pages are what I most remember of early days Battletech (seriously, they're gorgeous).

Second edition was designed from the ground up to be fully compatible with Battletech, the system was simple enough and it worked, for the most part, particularly if you weren't using clan characters.

Third edition was... ok, kind of overly complicated, and once again non-compatible, but the lifepath character creation system was golden.

Fourth edition (A Time of War) is... a mess. The character creation system is derived from third, but apparently somewhere along the way it got mixed up with someone's taxes documents, and it's very, VERY unneccesarily complicated (in the sense that it makes you do a lot of inane things for no gain at all). The system after that is not too complex.

Destiny is... based on Shadowrun: Anarchy, which in time is based off Cosmic Patrol, and it's barely a game at all. It seems to be similar to FATE at first, but unlike FATE, most of the stuff you put on the character sheet don't have any mechanical weight, and are only prompts to... make you remember how's your character. No, I don't get it either. I'm told that the mech combat system is an actual system, but I hold my opinion .

IMHO, the best Mechwarrior game out there is actually Lancer, and it incorporates what I think are the most important stuff that should be there in the game: light narrative out-of-the-mech rules designed to reinforce the themes of the game and a very interesting tactical mech combat with a lot of customization posibilities and no correct answers.

As to the defining characteristics of a MW game... well, honestly speaking, and unlike, say, Heavy Gear (where IMHO the setting has much wider play possibilities), if you're going to play in the Battletech universe is because you want some hot mech on mech action and all the stuff related to it, so usually the defining experience would be the "mercenary campaign", meaning that the PCs would be the main personalities of a small mercenary unit, maybe with secondary PCs filling other positions and some NPCs, and they'd mostly try to survive in the setting, day to day, contract to contract, much in the same way as a D&D campaign starts, but as "regular mercenaries" instead of murder hobos .

For that I would personally recommend either MW 2nd edition, on account of it being the easiest to get into and the most cross compatible with the boardgame, or Lancer, and just use the main idea of mech pilots.

I agree about ATOW. The first time I cracked open the book, it felt like getting punched in the face.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Eric, taking a page out of your own playbook, what kind of game do you want to run with Mechwarrior?

Thanks guys. I want Political Intrigue with a side helping of Big Robot Action. Therefore, I want in and out of cockpit action, and character driven stories.

I am not sure the RPGs I am hearing about do what I am looking for. The lifepath system does intrigue me though.

 Easy E wrote:
Thanks guys. I want Political Intrigue with a side helping of Big Robot Action. Therefore, I want in and out of cockpit action, and character driven stories.

I am not sure the RPGs I am hearing about do what I am looking for. The lifepath system does intrigue me though.

Well, for that I'd personally go with Heavy Gear/Jovian Chronicles. They basically are meant to do that, with a classic system that works at both levels.

That said, Lancer is designed to allow you to do that, too, although there the weight of the system varies more.

There's always Mekton. It's got a great life path system, giant robots and everything else. It's more anime/gundam focused but that's easy to adjust as there are rules for designing your own robots.

 Monkeysloth wrote:
There's always Mekton. It's got a great life path system, giant robots and everything else. It's more anime/gundam focused but that's easy to adjust as there are rules for designing your own robots.

I kinda agree and disagree at the same time ^^. MW3/AtoW's lifepath system is quite superior to Mekton's in regards to creating characters of the setting (seriously, it's great even if only to get ideas), whereas Mekton's is too geared towards Gundam type character types. As for the system, Battletech already has a perfectly seviceable mech design system, and you can always use the actual Battletech rules for mech battles (For MW2 it's actually the expected).

That said, Mekton is a pretty decent system... which I would be much more inclined to recommend if R.Talsorian wouldn't have fethed up the Kickstarter for a new edition quite so royally.

How do you want to depict mech combat in your game, Eric? How important proportionally will it be to the campaign?

 Albertorius wrote:

 Monkeysloth wrote:
There's always Mekton. It's got a great life path system, giant robots and everything else. It's more anime/gundam focused but that's easy to adjust as there are rules for designing your own robots.

I kinda agree and disagree at the same time ^^. MW3/AtoW's lifepath system is quite superior to Mekton's in regards to creating characters of the setting (seriously, it's great even if only to get ideas), whereas Mekton's is too geared towards Gundam type character types. As for the system, Battletech already has a perfectly seviceable mech design system, and you can always use the actual Battletech rules for mech battles (For MW2 it's actually the expected).

I only suggested it as you wrote up a post saying pretty much every version of mechwarrior was bad so thought an alternate should be offered that's more from a traditional PnP RPG side instead of a wargame expansion.

That said, Mekton is a pretty decent system... which I would be much more inclined to recommend if R.Talsorian wouldn't have fethed up the Kickstarter for a new edition quite so royally.

I'm only aware of that the KSer funded then they realized that with the, then, upcoming Cyberpunk video game was talking all their resources so they refunded everyone and said "sorry, we can't get this out in a reasonable time so we're canceling it". Is there something else that happened? I don't see that has being a big f-up, just being honest and not wanting to sit on people's money for 5 years.

Well, they did sit on people's money for more than 5 years, actually, with no communication whatsoever.
They ended up refunding after that, at CD Project Red's request and with CD Project Red's money, but... well, the well was already tainted by then.

 Albertorius wrote:

 Monkeysloth wrote:
There's always Mekton. It's got a great life path system, giant robots and everything else. It's more anime/gundam focused but that's easy to adjust as there are rules for designing your own robots.

I kinda agree and disagree at the same time ^^. MW3/AtoW's lifepath system is quite superior to Mekton's in regards to creating characters of the setting (seriously, it's great even if only to get ideas), whereas Mekton's is too geared towards Gundam type character types. As for the system, Battletech already has a perfectly seviceable mech design system, and you can always use the actual Battletech rules for mech battles (For MW2 it's actually the expected).

That said, Mekton is a pretty decent system... which I would be much more inclined to recommend if R.Talsorian wouldn't have fethed up the Kickstarter for a new edition quite so royally.

I've experiance with mechwarrior and even helped play test ATOW, and yeah the lifepath system from MW3 is handy for ideas. when ATOW was under development it was originally going to be a pure XP buy system because no one liked the random roll element of the MW3 lifepaths. some of us suggested that it'd be nice to see the old school packages from MW2 brought back as a way to allow us to shape our characters a bit and thus we got the handy dandy life Module system that is the core way of making ATOW characters.

that said char gen for ATOW is admittingly a bit clunky and I do wish it was smoother

Isn't the MW lifepath just basically a setting specific tweak of the sprawling one from the Traveller RPG?

Voss wrote:
Isn't the MW lifepath just basically a setting specific tweak of the sprawling one from the Traveller RPG?

In the sense that any lifepath system harkens back to Traveller, yes...

In any other sense, not at all.

 Albertorius wrote:

Voss wrote:
Isn't the MW lifepath just basically a setting specific tweak of the sprawling one from the Traveller RPG?

In the sense that any lifepath system harkens back to Traveller, yes...

In any other sense, not at all.

So... what is doing differently, mechanically? Its been a while since I've seen a Mechwarrior book.

 Manchu wrote:
How do you want to depict mech combat in your game, Eric? How important proportionally will it be to the campaign?

I expect mech based activities to be only 25% to 35% of actual game play. The focus is on character with the mechs being backdrop. The character’s themselves will also be doing out of mech political, investigative, and social play. Mechs might come in for the big finale or as an occasional combat encounter to achieve an objective.

Voss wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:

Voss wrote:
Isn't the MW lifepath just basically a setting specific tweak of the sprawling one from the Traveller RPG?

In the sense that any lifepath system harkens back to Traveller, yes...

In any other sense, not at all.

So... what is doing differently, mechanically? Its been a while since I've seen a Mechwarrior book.

You mean the lifepath chargen, compared with Traveller, or something else?

If it's the lifepath system, the idea is the same: go through all of the character's stages of life to end up with a person with a place in the gaming universe.

But while Traveler just made you select a homeworld to pick your background skills and then made you choose a career, Mechwarrior's lifepath system maps the life of the character from the ground up: Early childhood, late childhood, higher education and real life, with a lot more stuff happening along the way. It also don't encourage so much the "keep rolling until your character is old and wizened" that's so typical of Traveler.

As a general thing, Traveler's lifepath system is more controlled, even though there are rolls you can fail and in MW's you can use edge, but I always ended up with more "alive" characters using MW's system, even if many times they weren't at all the characters I thought I was rolling at first.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Easy E wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
How do you want to depict mech combat in your game, Eric? How important proportionally will it be to the campaign?

I expect mech based activities to be only 25% to 35% of actual game play. The focus is on character with the mechs being backdrop. The character’s themselves will also be doing out of mech political, investigative, and social play. Mechs might come in for the big finale or as an occasional combat encounter to achieve an objective.

For that I'd say that the official MW systems are not that well suited, except maybe MW: Destiny if you're into narrative games and don't mind the rules being a tad poorly explained/defined.

Lancer can do that pretty well, though, although it's centered around mission/not mission play. The "non-mission" part is light, but well defined: your character has a number of "triggers" than give them bonuses on actions related to them (like apply fists to faces, act without being noticed, blow stuff up or take control of a situation) when you roll to see what happens, along with a series of defined actions to to things in a way very reminiscent of PbtA games. They also introduced clocks in their first campaign, because it's something many people already was using.

Mekton would also work for this, as mechanically is Cyberpunk 2020 with mecha.

If you want something more intrigue/dastarly plans centric, I'd probably take a look at a Forged in the Dark derivative, as those tend to be very centered around a specific kind of game.

Although, now that I think of it, a hack of Urban Shadows would probably be best for a heavily political game...

Other option, as I said, is Heavy Gear/Jovian Chronicles/Silhouette in general. In HG in particular, Gears are a part of the setting in the same way as tanks of IFVs are part of a modern setting: they exist, but they're only relevant in very specific situations, and the system follows suit.

Voss wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:

Voss wrote:
Isn't the MW lifepath just basically a setting specific tweak of the sprawling one from the Traveller RPG?

In the sense that any lifepath system harkens back to Traveller, yes...

In any other sense, not at all.

So... what is doing differently, mechanically? Its been a while since I've seen a Mechwarrior book.

]
the lifepath with random rolls was last seen in Mechwarrior third edition. the next RPG, "Battletech: A time of War" (IIRC due to MWDA existing at the time CGL couldn't use the Mechwarrior name) did away with random rolled lifepaths, instead you have life modules. where you're assigned a certain amoutn of XP to create a character and can buy basicly packages of skills and traits representing your background" these aren't random rolls though.

except maybe MW: Destiny if you're into narrative games and don't mind the rules being a tad poorly explained/defined

This what I was thinking, too.

I think Mekton might be the way to go. However, I will peak at MechWarrior: Destiny as well.... assuming I can track either one down.

I prefer to look local before I go online.