Second pre-game newsletter

This week I thought I'd give you some immersion by giving you a brief bit of stylized history for the Taurian Concordat.

Obviously if you want greater detail you can find it here:

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Taurian_Concordat

and here: http://www.sarna.net/wiki/History_of_the_Taurian_Concordat

Since this is a lengthy 'communication' in our fictional universe, I will do a TL;DR (primarily for <REDACTED> as I know she's not going to read it all).  It is put shortly an encyclopedia britannica style advertisement sent to all of the inner sphere, originating from the Federated Suns (which is one of the Major 5 houses and very antagonistic towards the Taurian Concordat where you will be starting).  It gives a brief history, some information on the region.

History in a nutshell:

Richard Calderon forms out of mutual protection

Davion/FedSuns have clashes often

Taurian Concordat is pretty paranoid (rightfully so)

Comprises 56 planets, has some interesting tech they discovered in 3019, discusses special units/etc.   I recommend you read it to improve your immersion, if nothing else. 

I'm also archiving my newsletters to you guys via http://mikesbtcampaign.blogspot.com so you don't have to hunt down the emails each time.

Till next week!

Mike

Introduction to ATOW and my RPG campaign

This is the first email I sent:

I just wanted to get this out of the way and set some interest up for those who are currently on the invite list.

As you all are aware, I'm looking at running a pen and paper campaign (graciously via REDACTED on Roll20) for battletech.

This is a Sci-Fi themed RPG with which some of you are familiar with in varying degrees.

In a nutshell:

It is the year 3025; there are thousands of human occupied planets.  There are no alien species we know of and humans have been at near constant war for over 500 years.  Most fighting is done via specialized robots known as 'mechs' which range from 5-20 meters in height.  They are often extremely old and prized, worth many millions of 'C-bills' - a common form of currency. 

In our game, I plan on being extremely flexible with Character classes and types.  Really anything short of actual magic (which isn't in BT) and timeline excluded technologies (clans, word of blake, advanced stuff like gauss rifles or cybernetics) will be available.

Classes aren't rigidly defined.  If you want to be a Mech pilot who does his own repairs?  You can.  A former pirate looking with a score to settle?  Go for it.  Close combat expert specializing in bows and arrows?  No problem.  Beast master looking to tame your own pet dragon (in BT, known as 'Branth'), no problem.  You just need to get there.  There's tanks, ships, planes, cars, jets, power armor, robots... whatever you like. 

We'll be starting in a large 'periphery' area called the Taurian Concordat.  More on that later.  It's basically space Texans who give everyone (and I mean everyone) the middle finger.

I have about another few weeks of work to put into this before I'm really ready to go but when I am we'll do a 'Session zero' - where we all sit down on discord and I help walk you through building your characters.  A warning - the Battletech RPG system can be kind of a bitch.  So I will be taking some liberties with it.  On top of that, I haven't DM'd in like... 20 years?  So it's been a while.  Be gentle (at least for a little bit).

See the attachments for your official communications - and yes, there will be more of these.