Sessions 1-3 summary and results.

So because I'm coming from a backlog, here's a little bit of info.

I have 4 players, who are:

• A female DC samurai who successfully tamed a Branth, owns a Branth farm and pilots a HBK-4H.  She has an NPC attendant with her as well.
• A 'Faceman', low level FWL noble who is charismatic but owns little property.  He's essentially the con artist of the group.  Pilots an Orion ON1-K.
•  A hillbilly FWL moonshiner who stole a mech (a customized LCT-1E I made for him called the LCT-1Fp) 
• A FWL Sergeant who pilots an FS9-A but carries a dark secret past.

They have arrived separately (not my choice) with 1 (the samurai) coming separate due to real life constraints.   Anyways, they first arrive at a spaceport and are harrassed by the local customs officer.  This is a free flowing encounter, designed to test their role playing skills and get them assimilated into the game easily.  They can bribe, punch, sneak - there's a lot of choices.  Ironically, two took bribe and one took negotiate... but he only negotiated a smaller bribe.   So it went easy.

From there, they are lead to believe they're going to fight in a coliseum as they are ferried off by armed men on trucks to a dusty arena. 

They get there and are told to put on colored armbands.  This is simple dynamic tension, designed to get their hackles up.  Then I pull the rug out from under them and have them find out they're actually being brought on as an 'off the books, anything goes merc group' for the Taurian Concordat to find out who is authorizing some "letters of marque".  Letters of Marque are essentially authorized piracy.

From here they're given a unit Liason (Alexander Barston) and a mission.  They get three choices from here - go to comstar and find out about some communications irregularities, go to the local militia barracks to track down some black market shenanigans, or visit the 'Pirates Heaven Bar'.  They took the Bar, not realizing of course that they left their gear in the hotel - they were underarmed, under equipped and went into the lion's den.

The first fight was scripted to always happen at the bar. All roads lead here.

It is designed as an intro fight, with simple melee combat NPCs (3500 xp for their builds) using broken bottles or knives, a heavily armed bartender (neo chain mail, 3750 xp, double barrel sawed off) and one 'big bad'  - a 4250 xp heavy armed/armored enemy named "Big Betty".  So far things have gone well and will conclude shortly.

Comedy/combat boiled down to - Bartender was shot, badly hurt but not killed... hillbilly-man kicked the shit out of 2-3 people, sergeant-man beat the pants off 3 of them with one arm and killed 2 with gunshots.  So yeah, combat's concluding nicely.

Betty was done in by 14 points of damage from a dragon falling on her head.

GM Rules & Tools.

So in prep for this campaign I found the following very useful:

1) A mechlab creator.  I am using a custom modified version of remlab which allows primitive armor (my own work).  I run it locally.  If you want a copy, get it here:  https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TJZnEY-K0BVgjOWMlcJF0zaxSsaOf2py

(Note: to use this, download php, edit the start.bat file and put the php path in there), then open it up in your browser @ http://localhost:8000.

2) BTCC Battletech Character Creator - available here: https://github.com/bearchik/Battletech-Character-Creator

3) A copy of the ATOW core rules purchased via drivethrurpg.com

4) A copy of the 'quick start' (free) via drivethrurpg.com

5) A copy of the GM Screen (super useful) via drivethrurpg.com

6) A copy of the ATOW Companion guide - this is only useful for me because I have creatures in my campaign, specifically Branth as a player sidecar.

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Beyond that I did my planning in microsoft project/evernote (depending on what pc I'm on).

GM rules as they stand:

Title/Rank will be treated same as 'vehicle' and can add to it.  

        - What this means is that if you have a vehicle 3 and a title 1 and a rank 1, you add them together and get a 5.  If you have a title 3, but no rank, no vehicle, then it's the same as vehicle 3.  This was to ease my players into all having mechs, which is important for my campaign.

Anyone with property 5 gets 1 personal NPC attendant, non combat only unless under extreme circumstances.  I created the NPC for one player in this case using a 4000 XP custom build.  It says in the rules that players with a property 5 basically own a 10x10km area somewhere and are in charge of it's denizens.  It makes sense to me they'd have NPC's available to them (not just via connection).

Linked attribute value gets added to roll for initiative.  I think the initiative rolling system is kind of stupid.  As it stands the only modifiers are combat sense, combat paralysis, and tactics/your specific combat type you are in.  So ... yeah.  I added the reflex linked attribute value to their rolls because it makes sense when you have a guy pushing 6 RFL that he'd be faster.

Holding action means end of player turns only - so during initiative rolls, players higher up can choose NOT to go.  However the official rule is they can inject themselves wherever.  I feel this allows too much metagaming so I say 'you go after the player with lowest initiative instead.

Only mobs capable of using edge are the Elite or Rare mobs.  No one else can do it.  Base mobs cannot use edge.  I.e. my minions might have 4 edge but they won't use it.  This is because they are minions.

When a player reaches 0 HP, they are incapacitated.  Players then have 4 turns to successfully revive them with a medtech roll.  If they aren't revived, they die.  If they during those 4 turns exceed their BOD score in damage beyond that, they die. If they are revived, they come back with 1 hp.

There are other little ones, but that's the bulk of the big ones.

Character building.

So this is a series of catch up posts for a game in progress.  This is primarily to help me recordkeep and facilitate my writing for more meaningful things (i.e. my book) by keeping my fingers moving and paper flowing with words.

As expected with the 'A Time of War' character build process, we ran into a LOT of snags.  It's a clusterfluffle and there's very little way around it.  We spent probably 5 solid hours or more prepping people's character.  There's absolutely a way this could be streamlined, though I'm not sure what it would be. 

The first problem, is finding a system you want to use for building your character.  In this case, there are numerous spreadsheets which offer to do the math for you.  Unfortunately the contingencies of 'which background did you choose, what school, etc' leaves for such a myriad level of choices it sort of overwhelms most spreadsheets I found.  In the end, we used the BTCC (battletech character creator).  I highly recommend this method.  It is by far the fastest, though not without it's nuance.

So a little background for the uninitiated - A Time of War is the Battletech RPG (pen and paper) system.  We're using roll20 out of convenience to run our games. 

It's a heady system with a lot of moving pieces.  The manual is some 500 pages of info and is packed with table upon table.  One of my players complained about his 'table boner' frequently.  You get used to it and actually as a GM can get pretty fast at it but it's a slog at first.

Character creation

Anyways character creation is a either/or system.  You can either spend your points as a form of currency in a weird, stacking system that will probably require explanation or you can do it as a package purchase system in modules that ... then requires spending currency in the weird stacking system.  So why add the complexity of the modules?  Well, it takes care of initial setup, simplifies backstory for players, and gives you 20% more exp to spend during modules 3/4.  That's no small amount.

So with the BTCC (Found here: https://github.com/bearchik/Battletech-Character-Creator ) you will get MOSTLY through unhitched and it's fairly simple.  Pick your life modules starting with affiliation, per the ATOW core book.  Then spend flexible experience.  Then hit next, choose your early life, choose interests, spend flexible experience.  Rinse/repeat.  Do this until you get to module 3.  Then do it all and hit next and... get told you're not complete and then you will lose all your work.  Huh?

So ... here's what you messed up.  Basically at some point along the process you choose your schooling and if you look to the left of it there's this tiny arrow pointing left.  You have to choose that to 'select' the choice.  Only until that's done does the process work correctly and retain your settings.

Not terribly inaccurate, this picture.

It's a simple error, but relevant.

So yeah.  After you do that, you can continue normally until you reach the part where you undo 90% of your work for the 'optimization' phase.

Now assuming you don't have the quick learner or slow learner trait (traits are sort of set in stone character elements), then you are are aiming for the following:

• Around 4+ points in most of your stats (except edge).  This represents 'average'.  It's important as it determines your raw abilities and a significant portion of your character will be based on these values.
• Skills will be removed if unnecessary (trust me, many are) and traits are paid for or paid off.  This is important because a significant amount of traits cost a specific amount.  For example, a great many characters start with like 215 points in combat sense.  You need 400 to have combat sense, period.  So either pay 185, or refund 215. 
• Certain traits can only be removed in certain fashions - example: illiterate is removed by having a high enough 'language' skill score.  Negative traits, if kept, must be rounded up.  If not kept they must be paid off.  Positive traits can be rounded down if available in a range.  Do not allow players to keep like 185 points in a trait.  Either round it up to  -200 if it's a negative or round it up/down based on player input if it's a positive.
• Skills need pruned, and will need pruned badly.  This follows (for standard, not quick learner/slow learner) the following method:  20 points = skill level zero, but you can list the skill.  30 (or level 1 X 10) = level 1, 50 (previous level + level 2 * 10) = level 2, 80 = level 3, 120 = level 4 and so on.
• Skills follow this bizarre flow:  20 to be 'skilled' - i.e. skill zero.  This means you get the more optimal choice of a lower MoS (margin of success) roll for your skill.  Example:

Let's say you are checking a room for a trap.  You roll perception which has 20 points (making it level 0).  Your MoS is 7.  You roll 2d6, and essentially need a 7 or higher to get it.   If you have 0 points in perception, then you roll raw stats.  Your int is a 4.  So you roll a 2d6+4... against an MoS of 12 (single stat check rolls are a raw MoS of 12).  That means you need an 8 or higher to make your MoS check.  As you can see even having a BASIC understanding of a level 0 skill is superior to having an average stat check against a skill.

So anyways, the objective of 'optimization' - which I as the GM did for literally every single person in my campaign, is to:

1. Not have wasted experience.  There's no point in having 410 points in strength.  10 extra points could be used for skills and since traits are done by the nearest 100 value (rounded down), then even having 499 makes no sense.  You still only have 4 strength until you have 500
2. More efficient use of skills.  There's a TON of bloat.  I mean sure, 'interest/inner sphere' might be useful, but it's probably just unnecessary, from a GM point of view.  You can easily package that up  as something else for the player.
3. More RELEVANT use of skills.  Players at a minimum should be gently persuaded to have:
• A decent (2-4) martial arts score.  Melee combat is highly reliant on this.
• A way to fight (melee, small arms/ranged)
• Relevant skills (3025 era is really hard to find battle armor in, for instance).
• Make sure they have some kind of weapon/vehicle/etc.  I'll get into this more in the next one.
• Some basic pen and paper stuff like perception, negotiation, etc.  Avoid bloat/filler. 
4. Make sure they meet the minimum criteria for their modules.  Example: Title 500, Wealth 500, Property 500 for a noble.

That's about it.  After that, keep the character sheets, get them to spend money on gear, keep track of that separately as it's not stored very well in BTCC.

4th Pre-Game Emails

Third pre-game letter

So now that <REDACTED> is out of the way I can start going after this in full force.  With a few of us playing the actual Battletech game that's recently been released, it gives a lot more 'OOMPH' to the universe as it stands.  What's more the game actually plays out directly adjacent to the space my campaign will be in.  This gives us a lot more 'fluff' to work with and as such will give us significantly more leeway for our game idea/space. 

Please note we're still 1 player short.  Typically these games have a 'lance' of four players.  If one is not available I will provide a DM-PC  (played by me) or a shared PC in which you all decide what they do. 

Also you will all, in some level, be involved in mech-level combat.  You won't all be required to be good at it but it will be helpful if you aren't a mech pilot that you still have some modicum of mech piloting skills on the off chance it's your only mode of travel.  I'm also not excluding any starting choices for the era, so if you want to be a deposed noble or something that's all within reason.  There are, after all, thousands of tiny noble houses all over the inner sphere.  

Also be aware we will probably do a session zero (Character builds) soon.  I'm thinking of dedicating wednesdays for this RPG - how does that work for everyone else?  The style of character building is narrative so you will choose your place of birth, early years, later years, etc - all building up your character's story as you go.

So with that, on with the fluff!  This week is a fake travel advertisement.  It contains information relevant to roleplayers who are interested in actually picking up the local stuff as well as some planet-specific info for your starting planet (Althea's Choice).

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.