Campaign Notes 6: Let's Get Ready To Grumble

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I made one post that wasn't related to BattleTech and broke out in a cold sweat. Shaking like a leaf, I've drifted through the intervening hours with sour resignation. Is this what I've been reduced to? Writing words about things that aren't two stories tall? Cobbling together thoughts that have nothing to do with the rippling staccato of competing autocannons? How do you people live? This is unmanageable.

"What's in here? Oh, it's every single topic that isn't BattleTech"

My partner tried to have a conversation about our relationship, but I couldn't hear him because he didn't mention 'heat sinks', 'LRMs', or hexes. Just some stuff about why my things were in boxes and how whatever passion we'd once shared was wilted beneath the scouring heat of my self-absorbed BattleTech hyperfixations. As if I'm supposed to know what that means, c'mon.

In any case, having not had another campaign session yet is actually an opportunity to subject my session-prep to the same scrutiny I've tried to leverage elsewhere. I tend to think of session-prep as distinctly different from things I might do, write, or prepare for the campaign at large. Coming up with the NPCs and the adventure-scenario's details, for example, doesn't feel like session-prep because those elements are likely to persist through multiple meetings of the group.

When I think about--and do--session prep what I'm focused on is the stuff I expect, or want, to literally happen in the literal time of the literal session.

I say this with some pride, but I've gotten compliments on my ability to pace an RPG session (standing in stark contrast to my sexual and intellectual stamina). Quite possibly, part of my successes are this session-prep.

Point To Point

The first part of my prep is to think about the limits of the session; what is the absolute least I'd like to accomplish, and what is the absolute most?

Last session ended with the PCs having just concluded a skirmish with some hovertanks. Both the PC Mechs were beat up, even in victory. Fictionally, the other two in the lance were untouched. Having concluded mid-patrol, this gave me the absolute least-- I wanted the PCs to return from their patrol with the information they'd gained; namely, that the Directorate Remnant was active near Grossman's Peak and apparently had some kind of logistics chain to sustain themselves.

That feels very doable. Their lance commander, the unimaginative and by-the-book Lieutenant Martin Merles, can serve as a lever if I need to prompt the players. But in truth, with their damage and low ammo, the PCs will almost certainly head back to base themselves.

So what about the absolute most? For me this is often more important than the lower boundary, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it winnows the corpus of shit I need to worry about into something something bite-sized.

"For fuck's sake, Sagan, just say you don't wanna bake an apple pie with me."

Secondly, this upper boundary is much more informed by my educated guess at the session's eventual course. The first step the PCs make is easy to anticipate. The more steps they take, the more fuzzy my guessing will be. So possibly this upper boundary is more about what I don't want to get to than what I do.

I've talked about the importance of framing before. Possibly what I'm discussing here is the guiding principles behind your framing; priorities. The way you frame something should be guided by your priorities. So figure those out or you'll find yourself writing about RPG prep while your partner packs your stuff up into boxes for some reason.

So what's my upper boundary this coming session? Well, I know that I don't want to get to the final confrontation with the Directorate Remnant, nor do I want them to discover the Castle Brian. Stepping backwards from that, do I want them to discover that there is a Castle Brian somewhere on planet? I think so. And while I don't want the final confrontation yet, getting some groundwork for that narrative beat could be useful. With that in mind, I'm going to set those as my upper boundary.

The In-Between

Now that I've framed the session, I can start populating it. If you read my previous post, you'll see exactly how I organize the in-between. I have the non-diagetic ambition ("Stretch Your Legs"), with some details. Here's what I have for the upcoming session:

• They've Always Been Here: One of my players couldn't make last session, so I'd like to devote some time to orienting her (both in and out of character). Helpfully, I think I can frame this with the debrief of the PCs when they return to base.
• Pound the Cobbles: The damage to the PC Mechs was extensive enough that they have a not-insignificant amount of time to kill before they can mount up again to go kill. Narratively, this  gives an opportunity for them to investigate some of their Big Questions; what's "Ensign" Young really up to? Why did Officer Swing meet with "The Works"? Where did the gunrunner get his special ammo?
• Knuckledustin': We had an opportunity to play with the Mech combat, I'd like to also try non-Mech combat. Especially since it uses a different system. And as a scene, this kind of thing is easy enough to drop in while the PCs are investigating.
• The Follow-Ups: Both PCs did some more domestic stuff last session; one attempted to ingratiate herself with her mechanic by buying him some pipe-tobacco. I'd like to dedicate some game time to having the fiction respond to their previous agency.

We play for 3-3.5 hours which is about all my tired bones can handle. More than that and I start to get cranky, turn into a pumpkin, and throw a glass slipper at someone.

"It's 9:47, eat shit I'm going to bed."

We also play at a bar so sobriety* isn't a non-factor...

The Bits & Bobs

Having at this point a pretty decent outline/skeleton of my session, informed by my priorities and comfortably bounded in scope, I can see to what I'll need in order to actualize it all.

To orient the new player, I'll want a succinct and accurate summary of what has happened already. More importantly, I'll need to make sure that summary enshrines the Big Questions that the PCs currently have. What I don't want is for this player to be trying to contribute to an investigation for which they have no context.

As for investigating, I need to devote some meatbrain to thinkthought where the PCs could expect to find answers.

The biggest question I need to answer--because its answer will inform so many others--is how the Castle Brian was discovered. And I think it comes back to "The Works"; this gunrunner got lucky, and has been trying to slowly sell off the ammo cache he got his hands on. He knows this cache implies the existence of a Castle Brian, but is not pursuing it-- it's only valuable if he can sell it, and he has neither the market to sell to nor the resources to sell a whole Castle Brian. And the information itself is dangerous. Anyone who could use a Castle Brian is likely to kill him to secure that information.

Here I'll make a note-- does "The Works" get offed? Not sure, but it's something handy to put in my back pocket. Plenty of narrative reasons, and a good dramatic moment I can use to pace the session.

I'm a serial pacer.

The Magistracy of Canopus got wind by discovering these sales of Star League era munitions. I need an operative from which they got this information, so I create a new NPC: Farad "Abby" Abdel, a "retired" Canopian adjutant. I'll put them in Brightlake Depot, where the PCs have a good chance of ending up.

That surely means they weren't the only ones to connect the dots. So I now have a good reason to litter clues among the Directorate as well; in fact, it serves as an apt reason for them to have come here in the first place. A Castle Brian could well renew their ambitions of overthrowing the Aurigan Coalition. I need some Directorate operatives, much like I needed Canopian ones: Sam Tremble, an ore prospector late of Grossman's Peak.

I'll need some stats if my ambition is to have some combat. Thankfully, I think I can get away with something pretty generic and just look for opportunities for violence; could be "The Works" protecting himself, the Directorate being the Directorate, local knuckledraggers who dislike off-worlders, etc. The MechWarrior: Destiny book has reams of 'em.

Finally, I need to decide where the Directorate Remnant is (but not the Castle Brian, not yet); near Grossman's Peak is a given. I choose a hex that puts them four hours north-east of Grossman's Peak. Somewhat isolated, amid terrain that mucks with magnetic-scans, but near to an outpost of civilization from which they can siphon logistics.

And that's about it! Tune in next post as I try to discover how I can make my partner love me again after having placed BattleTech before them in my home life. I suspect the answer is somewhere in my BattleTech rulebooks.

 *Alcoholism is a serious disease that makes you very good at stock trading and very bad at keeping your family. When companies say 'please drink responsibly', it's only because they haven't yet figured out how to monetize liver failure. Don't worry, they'll get there.