Back around 1991–92, when I was a teenager, my gaming group discovered BattleTech. There were six of us, armed with a few FASA rulebooks, a BattleTech pawn box, and entirely too much free time. We played a campaign for roughly 18 months, often twice a week. To this day, it remains one of my fondest tabletop gaming memories.
Fast-forward about 35 years. My current gaming group has been together for around eight years. There are five of us, most of us take turns GMing, and we've played a lot of D&D, Pathfinder, and Savage Worlds. Good times, but I was getting tired of fantasy settings. I wanted something different.
Our group has a simple philosophy: We play whatever the GM is excited to run. An enthusiastic GM generally means a better game. So I announced that I wanted to run BattleTech.
None of the other four had ever played it. One had at least heard of it. Another didn't even know what BattleTech was. But they trusted me, so off we went.
I decided to use the same rules I remembered from my teenage years: classic BattleTech and MechWarrior 2nd Edition. Why not? Well, things got complicated pretty quickly.
Our campaign is essentially three games rolled into one:
- Classic BattleTech tactical combat.
- MechWarrior 2e for the actual roleplaying.
- A mercenary company simulator covering contracts, finances, salvage, repairs, and all the other headaches of running a small military outfit.
Unfortunately, Roll20 didn't support what I wanted to do, and the alternatives I investigated weren't much better for combining all three. So I ended up writing my own custom BattleTech/MechWarrior character sheet for Roll20. It's still evolving.
I also borrowed some ideas from the HBS BattleTech video game and expanded them into my own mercenary management systems. I particularly liked how HBS handled salvage, so I developed a system where contracts establish a C-bill payment, a number of choice salvage picks, and a percentage of what's left. It's been working pretty well so far, and the players seem to enjoy it.
Needless to say, what started as a nostalgic return to an old favorite has turned into a rather substantial GM project.
Our campaign follows Iron Tale, a small mercenary company operating in the Inner Sphere, beginning in January 3048, just before the Clan Invasion.
Because none of my players know much of anything about the Inner Sphere, I thought this would be a fantastic starting point. They have absolutely no idea what's coming. Getting to experience something as significant as the Clan Invasion through the eyes of characters who are just as clueless as their players should be a hell of a lot of fun.
I thought it might be interesting to document the experience here. Not just campaign recaps, but the challenges of returning to a 35-year-old game, introducing four experienced roleplayers to an unfamiliar universe, figuring out what works, and occasionally making things up because I can't find a rule that does what I need.
I'll share our adventures, the systems I've cobbled together, what works, what doesn't, and whatever lessons I pick up along the way. I'm certainly not claiming to have all the answers. I'm just an old GM dusting off some old games and having a hell of a time doing it.
We've been playing for several sessions over the past few months, and I've developed an overarching storyline that's already taken on a life of its own. Along the way, the players have unknowingly helped me create a major villain, made more than a few rivals, and generally given me plenty of material to work with.
Currently, Iron Tale is working alongside Wolf's Dragoons, investigating a conspiracy that threatens the HPG network.
And that's where things stand. More to come!
