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.

Campaign Notes 5: The Beginning Is The End Is The Smashing Pumpkins Song

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So I had a session and, against all odds, it went well. Then again, this is my blog. Maybe it went terribly, and I'm lying! I can lie! I can lie all I want! How would you know, you rube, you absolute weenus?! That's right. Don't forget who is boss around here.

It's this guy.

Anyway, it made me realize that I never dove much into my PCs. Part of it was a subconscious desire to spare very real people the terrifying ordeal of being on the internet in even the smallest way. This place is hell, except no one is forced to be here and we can leave at any time and we have unanimously decided we aren't going to.

The other part is that they represent very clear and unambiguous levers for me to pull. That lack of ambiguity makes them, to me, pretty uninteresting for a post like this. I write to find out what I'm doing, after I've done it. My defense counsel says I should stop, but what does he know he was stupid enough to take me on as a client. Lmao idiot.

But it probably does deserve some mention. All the players were given--and took--the option to randomly generate their characters. MechWarrior: Destiny doesn't natively have that as an option, even though it lightly adapts the infamous lifepaths of previous BattleTech RPGs. It was dead simple to just assign the possible options for a character's "Life Modules" to die results.

We ended up with:

1. Ramses Chrysomenthes: A former Solaris VII pilot who had conspicuously rejected the ambitions her parents had for her. Also has a mortgage on her Mech that might be held by the mob. From her background, I had a very clear connection to the Magistracy of Canopus which actually ended up becoming relevant immediately in the adventure scenario (as you'll see later).
2. Rhys Gladstone: A Capellan-orphan turned criminal, turned mechanic, turned pilot. This player wanted to play an old goat, and he's definitely one. From his background I have some deep hooks within the Capellan Confederation.
3. Firstname Lastname: This player wouldn't make it to the first session, and hasn't yet updated their character's name. But we did flesh them out. They also ended up being a Solaris VII pilot; unlike Ramses their background was in the internecine Free Worlds League civil wars. Interesting threads there, most especially that her cause lost. Good hook.

Altogether, they answered what I wanted answered: Why are you a MechWarrior pilot for the Ninth Wave? That's all I needed, especially this early in the campaign. Their details are things I keep track of so I can opportunistically snipe them; some facilitators suggest gearing narrative/play more centrally around PC backgrounds. I'm sure that works for them, but I've always had better success using PC background as mortar rather than brick.

Idoú, éna paichnídi!

With only two of my three players present, my ambitions for the session got scaled back slightly. I anticipated hitting the following notes:

• Meet The Family: I wanted to get some scenes in where the PCs had opportunities to meet and form opinions about various NPCs who would recur through the adventure scenario.
• Stretch Your Legs: I wanted to give the players an idea of what future modes of play would entail; what it meant, for example, for their lance to be assigned to go on patrol.
• Slice of Life: I wanted to emphasize that there would be plenty of opportunities for player-directed engagement with the banal and the domestic. Characters were more than pilots, they were people. What does this person do?
• Fisticuffs: I wanted to try out some combat. I've previously mentioned I'm using a bit of a Frankenstein* of different systems (MechWarrior: Destiny for non-combat, BattleTech: Destiny for combat, Classic BattleTech for company management, and more). This session was a good chance to kick the tires.

How successful was I? Well afterwards one of the players dislocated my kneecap with a savage roundhouse kick and, while I was mewling on the ground, spit in my open mouth. Before you start making judgments, that's just how he expresses himself. His grandmother does the same thing, but in her old age it sometimes takes a couple kicks to get it right.

In truth, I think I hit all except "Stretch Your Legs". The players immediately glommed onto the main NPCs I'd been hoping they would (refer to Campaign Notes 3). During play, I ended up adding two more.

Major Bentley Nelson was the Magistracy of Canopus officer assigned to direct the Ninth Wave, per the contract. He was a foppish, pleasant man who was undoubtedly a "social officer". Their interactions revealed his lack of qualifications but, at least, some cognizance of that. He was perfectly willing to step aside and let others pull their weight. This allowed me to introduce Lt. Young as his "Ensign" adjutant. Gladstone immediately scoped that the Ensign was not, in fact, an Ensign, and Ramses' specific background let her identify that the Magistracy often sent soon-to-be-promoted officers back through the ranks. This was meant to reinforce the entire chain-of-command which would underpin the officer's new commission and worked very well as Young's cover story.

"The Works" was a local arms dealer they made contact with (via Gladstone's gutter-running instincts). They allowed me to introduce more details about Gangtok's local cultures; how those of Simon's Valley were insular, how Grossman's Peak was a good place to get lost etc. The players almost immediately started leaning on these characterizations to help winnow in where they thought the Directorate might be operating. Unqualified success, as far as I'm concerned. I even had the chance to seed the implication that, for reasons unknown to them, Officer Swing had already spoken with "The Works".

"Fisticuffs" was probably the sloppiest, but it was nonetheless very helpful. Insofar I got to kick the tires, I had a lot of help. The whole table joined in the kicking. I got a lot of usable data and feedback on my attempt to run BattleTech: Destiny in a theatre-of-the-mind style.

More succinctly, I'm a broken man but the bits of me which remain can still be ground into yet finer dust.

I may try to type up my "theatre of the mind" hack of BattleTech: Destiny, next time if I hate myself**.

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*Some people will say that Dr. Frankenstein was the real monster in that book, while others will say it's his creation. They're all wrong, the real monster is Lord Byron.

**I do.

Campaign Notes 4: Private Props Are Inherently Theft

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There are some game systems which directly address the physical space of RPGing; that space matters, because it girds everything else. We can play Dungeons: The Dragoning online via Zoom, or in a Turkish bathhouse where a swarthy man named Yağmur watches with interest and his penis out. Same game, wildly different vibes.

The indie space is where I often see it. 10 Candles by Stephen Dewey makes ten literal candles the centerpiece for its horror-mood, for example. Other games like Monte Cook Games' Invisible Sun embrace the idea that props can uplift the vibe of a session to a staggeringly expensive degree*.

You're a gamer now, get in.

All of the above to say that I, personally, love what props can bring to an atmosphere. But like choosing which gas station you're going to atomize with a burrito-bowel movement, you have to be discerning. Not any prop will do. You need props with room for you to pitch forward and grab your ankles while you pray to whatever god is listening. You need props with solid doors to stifle what will, to anyone outside, sound like an opera singer being messily murdered mid-Nesusn dorma. You need props that will let you unload your gutful of hellfire, then waddle over to the counter and say "one burrito, please".

I hope showcasing my own (props, not bowel movements), you'll get a look into the rationale for each; what it brings to the atmosphere, what it offers in utility, etc.

Prose & Contracts

Probably one of the more important props I wanted to bring to the game came from one of its central themes; the ways in which material circumstance impede, support, or otherwise impact ideologies. What good is a rebellion with no ammo? A freedom fighter without the literal things needed to fight? So I very much want the players to be invested in the Jungian shadow that is their mercenary company's financials.

What I didn't want was to make it boring, opaque, or ancillary. If I was going to make them do math, it had better be worthwhile. In any case, here's what I made:

You've seen this already, but I'm proud of it so you're seeing it twice.

Behold! In my previous entry I talked about one of the recurring "Starting Contexts" being the rote aspect of their employment as mercenaries. Get contract, do mission. This handout is meant to enshrine that in a tactile way; if no player makes a single note, remembers nothing of the previous session, they can still look at the current contract and see who is employing them, who they're fighting, and for how long.

I've also encoded useful information that will come up-- how much will their employer reimburse them for damage/expenses, and how much of the battlefield loot will they keep? Hopefully, having those terms explicit will help the players think in terms of 'is this fight worthwhile?' which is where I want their heads to be (or at least end up).

It's a single piece of paper, and lemme tell you I worked very hard to make sure it stayed exactly that. I want to give them the feel of complex litigious language; I don't want to burden them with the reality of it.

Just as important is the information I've purposeful omitted. I decided against putting in anything regarding the relative strengths of enemies and allies. Why? That's a big blank space for player agency-- if they want to get involved in deciding what contracts the Ninth Wave Free Company takes, the easiest way to contribute is to research who they're fighting. Maybe that juicy payout on paper is because they're going up against The Hellripper Regiments instead of the Softsad Children's Militia.

Information informs player action, and well-positioned absence can prompt it.

Here Be DRG-1Ns

The other prop I plan to use with relativity is a very simple "you are here" map, showing the planet they're currently on and the region it is in. This isn't something I'd attempt if there were already a truly intense preexisting support for maps of the setting.

Here is the first map for their first adventure scenario/contract.

It's cribbed almost wholesale from Sarna.net because that website is to my BattleTech hyperfixation what spraypaint is to someone who wants to huff spraypaint. But I chose (and modified slightly) for two reasons.

1. The map has two circles; the first is the distance of a single JumpShip, the second the distance of a single hyper-pulse. Together, they respectively indicate how well-connected the planet is physically and informationally to the rest of the region.
2. The map doesn't show the entire Inner Sphere, but implies their current region's position relative to it. Hopefully that emphasizes that this is a big galaxy; to show its totality would be to make it small again. Like in the story about blind men and an elephant, I want them to feel a part so they can wonder about the whole.

It's framing, again. It's always framing. Find the edge, draw a line in the sand, place the chicken wire. It's not a forest until you find the treeline; up until then it's just the wilderness.

Nerd's Eye View

Finally, I've got the planetary regional map of Gangtok. A lot of what I mention above still applies-- I wanted the map to only show a part, to keep the whole a blank space their imaginations can fill. Unlike the stellar cartography, this handout is going to have some more definable utility and implications.

Bless St. Azgaar and their mighty generator

I mucked around quite a bit with stuff like pallets, aesthetics of mountains and coastlines and rivers. But they're aesthetics. I tried to make them look good because looking good is nice. It's why I spend so much time in front of a mirror. I'm incredibly handsome. I'm just so goddamn handsome**.

But that aside, there's some rationale behind exactly how and where I placed stuff.

The main spaceport for the planet Gangtok is "Highbreak". You'll note, however, that it is not centered in the map; instead the city of Brightlake Depot is. The Depot is the cultural center of the planet, where people of Grossman's Peak and Simon's Valley mingle, and I wanted to emphasize that. Highbreak is a place of control and safety for the PCs, it's where the Ninth Wave is bivouacked, and it's where the Directorate Remnant is absolutely not going to be.

The map, then, is meant to show a lot of places they could be. Lots of wilderness which the PCs will have to scout and patrol in order to hound their adversary for a confrontation.

Relatedly, I chose ~20 mile hexes to try and balance between isolation and access. At ~60 miles per hour (reasonable for these Mechs), it's roughly 4-5 hours from Highbreak to Brightlake Depot. That's easy on a kind of strategic level, but tricky on the tactical level. It means that a lance-on-patrol can't expect reinforcements to save them from a tight spot.

Finally, I tried to make sure there was a reasonable diversity of terrain implied by the map. Highbreak sits in rolling hills, Brightlake on the edge of a large lake/quarry, Grossman's Peak is snuggled in the rough terrain leading to the mountains, and Simon's Valley is in a fertile river valley. Confrontations at any location should feel different, and hopefully that's something I can play with when I'm encounter building.

I anticipate next Campaign Notes to talk about actual sessions as they happen, but schedules are the bane of all RPGs so we'll see. Actually, that's not true. The true bane of all RPGs is Goreslaker the Imagimonster, who feeds on dreams and vivisects the unworthy. He dreams of teeth, and nothing else. Those He culls will find no mercy in the eternity which follows.

His maw is an abattoir of all human hope. Also He plays Pathfinder.

*This is the most money I've ever spent on a single RPG item, and frankly my car was probably going to be repossessed anyway.

**My mother is very clear on this.

Campaign Notes 2: Have Mech, Will Travel

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 As promised, I'm continuing my campaign notes/log. Is it helpful for organizing my brainmeat? Will it bear succulent fruit at the table? Will the narrative juice run down my chin in gorgeous Epicurean luxury? We'll see. This has already proven to be something of a retrospective for me, which is weird considering the campaign hasn't really started yet.

So let's get into some nitty and/or gritty about this campaign I'm running.

Not that gritty

Where To Start

It all comes down to framing. In RPGs, there is a back-and-forth between facilitator (DM, GM, Storyteller, etc.) and player-characters; the call-and-response in which the facilitator establishes and the player-characters react (or vice versa). If one is intentional in how one frames these calls, you can help establish a framework for the responses.

In the practice of law, you have "leading the witness". The question 'do you kick your puppy, Mr. Anderson?' is framed very differently than 'for how long have you been kicking puppies, Mr. Anderson?'. This is a nuance that Powered by the Apocalypse games have traditionally brought to the forefront; in those systems the GM has "hard moves" and "soft moves" which can reductively be characterized as 'something happened, what do you do?' and 'something is about to happen, what do you do?'.

It's how you frame it. That's the primary responsibility, as I see it, for most facilitators in most RPG systems and campaigns. Intentional, conscientious framing that clarifies the edges of the sandbox you're playing in.

The importance of framing also comes up at the start of a campaign, where nothing has emerged from play (which hasn't happened), and expectations are often made with a lot of unsubstantiated underlying assumptions. I had to decide where I wanted the campaign to start-- geographically, literally, as well as thematically.

I managed to organize what I wanted out of this framing:

1. The Fringe: I wanted it fairly removed from the high halls of influence, the shining center of galactic politics in the Inner Sphere; not just to thematically connect the PCs with the small guys (rather than the big 'uns), but to keep the players from feeling pressured to grok the turgid throatsac of lore which is BattleTech.
2. Trampled Grass: I wanted it in a place where political interests where high but the direct influence of those interests was low; a proxy conflict, bushwar, someplace caught in the middle. The players would interact with these political interests through their intermediaries-- as well as act as intermediaries themselves. Thematically, I wanted to emphasize the multiplicity of agenda which gird the conflict. Sometimes you support a faction because you agree, sometimes because their methods align with your goals (even if your goals don't align with their goals), sometimes because you were given a lot of money.
3. Fish/Pond Ratio: I wanted it in a place where the players were, paradoxically, not bit-players. Because the centers of power/influence were so remote, their operant arms would have a lot more agency/leeway than otherwise. A small fish in the big pond becomes a big fish if stuffed in a small pond, after all; and here I figure it's best to start with a sense of empowerment for the players. There will undoubtedly be later opportunities for disempowerment.

With all the above in mind, I winnowed in on a sector of the Inner Sphere called The Periphery. In this setting, the smaller political players are quite literally forced to the edges of the galaxy (#1); by that virtue they are similarly denuded of BattleMechs.

I chose the Aurigan Coalition (setting for Harebrained Schemes' video game), specifically, because it's situated between two Periphery powers that have a history of slapfighting each other for the scraps on the fringe. That ticks #2. Happily, Catalyst Game Labs also released a supplement fleshing it out.

That the Aurigan Coalition has just, in the year 3026, finished resolving a civil war means that they aren't exactly apt to projecting political power via three-story mechanical murdermachines.

Behold, the political process at work!

Having the PCs be members of a private mercenary company hired by the Aurigan Coalition--or even better yet, one of its neighbors with a vested interest in propping up a buffer state--ticks #3 nicely.

There it is, the wordy thought process by which I arrive on the first landscape for this RPG Campaign; the PCs are MechWarriors in the Ninth Wave Free Company, contracted by the Magistracy of Canopus to help clean up remnant hardliners from a fascist regime within the Aurigan Coalition.

Next post, I'm going to delve into the opening game scenario/adventure.

If you were disappointed by the relative sterility of this post, the conspicuous lack of my normal rhetorical flair, all I can tell you is that you should suck my weenus. It's exhausting trying to please you-- you don't even look in my eyes anymore when we make love.

Maybe if we have a kid together it'll fix things

Until next time!

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Campaign Notes: Mechs, Warriors, and MechWarriors

 You may be under the impression that I often forget about this blog for long swathes of time, like a soft-brained toddler or a hard-brained concussion victim*. That isn't true! I am keenly aware of this blog at all times. It haunts me like a Victorian ghost in a wealthy-but-decrepit estate out in the Berwickmanshire countryside. It dangles over me like the Sword of Damocles or its less well known cousin, the Dirk of Samocles. It gnaws at my soul like a "we need to talk" text popping up right in the middle of your workday, like a grumbling in the lower intestines forty-seven minutes after a risky bowl of street chowder, like the terrible tension of a locked door if you can't be certain that the keys to that door are inside it.

My long periods of neglect are usually because I have little worth saying, feel like I have little worth saying, or have had my fingers broken by Jimmy "The Nickname" Loanshark.

"It's-a me, Overused Stereotype-a, badda-bing!"

But here we are in the shining sun. I'm loitering nearby with a roguish grin, gently rolling a Thing To Talk About in my palm. You coquettishly pretend you don't notice, but we both know that your Brief Unscheduled Time To Faff About On The Internet is showing, you minx, you absolute tease.

To get to it, I'm starting up a new RPG campaign and it is right at the crossroads of my ADHD hyperfixation and generally untrodden ground. It's not a type of game I've run before--systemically, aesthetically, maybe even thematically--so it's exactly the kind of thing that might be helpful for me to blog about.

Awhile back I talked about BattleTech, a wargame that is venerable in all connotations of the word; laden with baggage from its nascent years, dragged in fits towards the modern age, curiously inelegant in a way that is almost a different kind of elegance. I've decided (having dived deeper down the BattleTech rabbit hole) to run an RPG campaign in that setting.

No One Wants To Hear About Your Campaign

It's a truism I'll generally cleave to. For the most part that's because the activity a campaign represents, more specifically the social space it carves, can often be deeply personal. The mere facts of someone else's campaign are girded by a thousand different nuances of emotion, circumstances, contexts; we are privy to precious few of them. A buddy of mine had a retrospective on The One Ring as an RPG, and their campaign using it; they struck a similar note when they wrote "the experiences we love are not always portable."

So what is portable? Usually the mechanics of it. Look at the popularity of a thousand-thousand OSR blogs about how to run a hexcrawl, GM's advice colums, Twitter threads on how to treat your players, etc. These operative things are often quite easy to port and if, in the offering, you get to gush a little about your recent character or campaign? All the better.

The other thing is why. That's portable. It's nothing to you when I explain the weirdly specific way I eat a pickle**, but if I explain why I suckled that cucumber the way I did***-- that might have meaning to you (even if all it means is "I should avoid bringing pickles up around this wild-eyed homunculus").

Why?

So let's start in on the why of this campaign.

Why BattleTech? I wasn't super critical of the setting in my last blog but neither was I particularly kind. The truth is that I think there's a kind of special sauce in the absurd detail and scope of the setting; far from being a straightjacket, the availability and granularity of these facts allow me to approach my themes with a very material underpinning. And that's important for what I have in mind.

I want to explore, in this campaign, the question of whether and to what degree you can resist structures of hegemony using the tools of those structures. None of the political entities of the setting lack for oppression-- can you resist that oppression with Mechs? Who owns the factories and industrial centers which keep these things running? Who manufactures the munitions? How much does the necessity of the material fact of your BattleMech push you towards a complicity with one oppressive entity or another?

How?

Materiality matters to me, but in many ways only a specific materiality. Consequently, I'm not going to use the older editions of the MechWarrior RPG (1st, 2nd, or 'A Time of War') except possibly as a reference. Instead I'm going to lean on MechWarrior: Destiny for a majority of the task resolution of the system; I've been interested in the Cue System for a little bit, and it's come well recommended, so I'm keen to try out this permutation of it. Keep your eyes peeled for a deeper dive on the topic.

Where I am going to indulge some materiality is a) in the Mech combat system and b) in the 'campaign management' front. 

For the former, I'm adopting Death From Above Wargaming's "BattleTech: Destiny" system (available on their Patreon). It negotiates between two poles of complexity, anchored on one end by Classic: BattleTech (mech combat via tax form) and Alpha Strike (mech combat via abstraction). Having played it a couple of times, I'm happy with how it plays-- quick enough to be done in a reasonable evening, detailed enough to have players worrying about whether they're gonna lose a leg actuator or cook off some ammo in a missile rack.

The real crunch is gonna be the campaign management; largely I'll be drawing from Catalyst Game Labs' "Campaign Operations". The more I interact with the BattleTech ecosystem, the clearer it is that there is almost certainly a chart for whatever minutiae has come to mind. In particular, this sourcebook allows me to:

• Track the personnel within a mercenary company; MechWarriors, mechanics, assistant mechanics, medical and logistical employees, administrative staff, etc.
• Track the logistical expenditures associated with a mercenary company; spare parts, ammunition, maintenance tools and repair times, transportation
• Have a system for creating and negotiating contracts; salvage rights, battle damage compensation, command rights, overhead reimbursement, reputation bonuses (or maluses)

That's right. I don't want them to do Mech combat which sometimes resembles filling out a tax form...

...I want my players to actually do taxes for a fictional mercenary company. I promise you I'm fun at parties.

We'll call this post a part one of two, but hopefully it gives you a peek at how I plan to approach my campaign notes here on the blog.

Next Entry

*I have no idea whether concussions make your brain harder or softer. Neither of them sound good. I engaged in some poetical license, but please don't report me or they'll take the license away.

**You bite the end off the pickle, then use your teeth to pulp the meat without breaking the skin. You keep your mouth vacuum sealed around the end and periodically shlorp.

***This produces a delicious slurry which can be shlorped up easily. It preserves the brine, keeps the whole process tidy, and is a seriously worrying thing to do on a first date. Don't ask me how I know that last bit.

Fortune Squadron 2 - Operation Rapid Mazarin 02 - "The Long Patrol"

Previous Mission: Assault on Riccorluvio

Mission 2

No doubt prickly from Ingvar's criticisms, Captain Levi Keller made sure that Lunar Lance (Nora Davies, Ceredig Clough, and Fatimah al-Hassan) were vested with very accurate information before their mission.

In WeaselTech each Operation comes with its own "complication"; for Rapid Mazarin, I rolled that any pilots involved in Mission 1 would be unavailable for the next two. Which meant that Lunar Lance would have back-to-back missions to run.

 

Lunar Lance was being deployed to the outlying regions of the city of Montorano; their aim was simple and disruptive search-and-destroy. And their first target was an industrial town. Sectors 2 and 4 were designated to be be cleared of any belligerents, while HQ wanted information about possible friendly insurgents in Sector 1.

Thanks to Captain Keller's intel, Fortune Squadron knew ahead of time that Sector 1 and 4 would be protected by two enemy Blips on patrol, while Sector 2 was guarded by a single stationary Blip.

The trio from Fortune Squadron would drop into Sector 3 with cover.

Left to right:

• Honeymoon Phase, a B-1 "Phoenix Hawk" mounted with a PL-a beam, piloted by "Fortune-4" Nora Davies
• Grim Herculean Task, an X-1 "Rifleman" mounted with AC-3 and MG-5 autocannons, piloted by "Fortune-5" Ceredig Clough
• A Mother Knows, a B-1 "Jenner" mounted with RPG-5 missile racks, piloted by "Fortune-6" Fatimah al-Hassan

A Mother Knows and Grim Herculean Task immediately headed north towards the town; Fatimah al-Hassan drew two swarms of "Sparrow"-class mechs towards her, putting them directly in Ceredig Clough's gunline. Grim Herculean Task's autocannons tore through most of the first swarm of Sparrows.

The Sparrows were armed with rocket pods-- a major boon for Fortune Squadron, as each of their mechs mounted ECM Suites to help coordinate missile-intercept fire. Despite the volume of incoming rockets, neither A Mother Knows or Grim Herculean Task took more than nominal damage.

On her own, heading towards Sector 4, Nora Davies found herself in less ideal circumstances; Honeymoon Phase was interdicted by a "Mamba"-class Elite and a trio of Sparrows. Despite her ECM Suite helping shoot down the Sparrows' rockets, Honeymoon Phase took a solid hit from the Elite Mamba's beam battery.

Nora Davies hurled her mech into desperate evasive maneuvers-- though they saved her life, the Elite Mamba's beams still tore into Honeymoon Phase and punched through the last of its armor. Nora found herself without her jump-jets, still in sight of the relatively unscathed Elite Mamba.

Thankfully, Grim Herculean Task had broken off from Sector 1 with admirable speed-- his AC-3 fire slammed into the Mamba, drawing off its attention for the moment.

The desperate circumstances were not abated when Honeymoon Phase's magscan confirmed a sizable host of Sparrows just north of Sector 4's objective.

Unwelcome though the enemies were, they were also closely clustered together; a prime target for a strafing run from Fortune Squadron's air support.

Even as one swarm of Sparrows evaporated under a plume of dropped ordinance, Honeymoon Phase slipped north. Their PL-a beam scythed through a second swarm with the ease of a hot knife through butter.

Grim Herculean Task, having drawn the Elite Mamba's attention, now slugged it out with the enemy. Streams of depleted slugs flew one way, flashes of azure lightening the other. Both took as much as they gave; but while Grim Herculean Task's armor ran like melted wax, it was as quickly repaired by an emergency drop of armor-repair drones. The Elite Mamba began to fall apart under the steady stream of MG-5 fire.

Ceredig's magscans revealed an unwelcome truth, however. Another Elite--an "Adder"-class mech--was quickly approaching.

In what was quickly becoming a pattern, Honeymoon Phase's magscans revealed yet another swarm of enemies-- four squads of battle armor protecting the landing pad in Sector 2. The beleaguered Honeymoon Phase was too focused on avoiding volleys of rockets to snap off more than a nominal shot to the north.

Even after putting the Elite Mamba down, Ceredig Clough was faced with an unenviable choice. The armor-repair drones had kept Grim Herculean Task operational, but only just, and the Elite Adder bearing down on him was at full strength. If he withdrew, he'd cede Sector 4's objective back to the OpFor. If he didn't, he risked being torn apart.

Ceredig Clough decided that his obligations to Fortune Squadron, to the mission and the cause, were more important than his safety.

Grim Herculean Task dumped its entire MG-5 ammo bin into the Elite Adder; the barrel of the weapon warped and locked up, becoming unusable for the remainder of the mission.

The Elite Adder came apart under the furious and Grim Herculean Task stood battered but defiant.

The mission's end was somewhat anti-climactic. A Mother Knows, having secured the town in Sector 1 with commendable ease, swept in to support Honeymoon Phase; between their weaponry and another air strike, Sector 2 was cleared of OpFor.

Lunar Lance formed up for extraction.

Aftermath & Social Scenes

Nora Davies and Fatimah al-Hassan both advanced to Level 1 after the mission, while Ceredig Clough's stellar performance vaunted him to Level 3. Further, his bravery in the face of stern odds saw him receive a commendation in the form of the Distinguished Service Star.

On base, Ingvar's sulking in the mech bay saw a chance encounter with Master Chief Sarah Butler. The eccentric technician chattered at length about her interests and hobbies-- in particular horticulture and how it (apparently) resembled mechanical engineering. t was her intention to submit some of her own cultivations in a local competition in order to prove, among other things, that 'tulips are the tri-catalyzed fusion chambers of the flower world'.

At a local park, Dr. Florian Blucher chanced on Fatimah al-Hassan in the middle of her mid-day prayers. Fatimah felt that the doctors lingering and unwelcome observation--treating her religiosity as a quaint curio--was disrespectful. Dr. Blucher blithely disagreed, and the two parted ways as Rivals.

Eftichios Tolotis met Dr. Adriana Kemp at a restaurant to discuss their upcoming check-up. It was a dry and formal meeting with none of the drama happening elsewhere.

And that's it for Turn 2!

Stay tuned for Mission 3, which will conclude Operation Rapid Mazarin!

Fortune Squadron 1 - Operation Rapid Mazarin 01 - "Assault on Riccorluvio"

 Operation "Rapid Mazarin"

The 13th Havenite Volunteers had been deployed to the embattled Eparchy of Velania, to the "Faithian Corridor". This swath of territory was tenuously in control of local insurgents-- the "Free Faithian Legion" which had been violently resisting the Prime Ascendency for years.

The operation called for the 13th Havenite Volunteers and 23rd Margravite Guard to expand the Faithian corridor; combined operations were aimed at the cities of Campi and Monagosco to the south, and Foialattilet and Jenti to the north.

Additionally, part of the operation's aspirations were to drive a wedge between the 6th and 8th Riofria Regiments.

To that end, Fortune Squadron had been dispatched for special operations.

"Solar Lance" --Ingvar Ragnarsson, Farquhar Ascenso, and Eftichios Tolotis--were to drop on Riccorluvio, aiming to disrupt the mech repair facilities there.

"Lunar Lance"--Nora Davies, Ceredig Clough, and Fatimah al-Hassan--were going to deploy closer to friendly lines, harassing the enemy held city of Montorano.

Mission 1

This mission was being made on "sketchy intel", which in WeaselTech impacts deployment. The better your intel, the better/more forgiving your deployment. I would be facing four initial "Blips", which represent enemy contact. In WeaselTech, you have to reveal enemies which may range from a gaggle of mooks to an ace pilot with a grudge to bear.

Solar Lance would be dropped into Sector 3, with three objectives. To the north-west (Sector 1) was an administrative building and to the south-east (Sector 4) a religious center, both of which were to be cleared/captured. To the north-east (Sector 2), the mech repair facilities which needed to be destroyed.

Left to right:

• Kell of Kells, an X-1 "Archer" mounted with MRL-4 and RPG-5 missile launchers, piloted by "Fortune-2" Farquhar Ascenso
• Hobson's Choice, an X-1 "Nieru-C" mounted with PL-a and PL-b beam cannons, piloted by "Fortune-1" Ingvar Ragnarsson
• The Human Condition, a B-1 "Shadow Hawk" mounted with an AC-3 autocannon, piloted by "Fortune-3" Eftichios Tolotis

Solar Lance dropped right on top of a patrol of four "Macaw"-class mechs, who barely had time to react before a flurry of missiles and an azure beam turned their frames into wreckage.

Kell of Kells provided overwatch as Human Condition made a beeline for Sector 1's objective; a prudent choice, as it turned out to be protected by an Elite pilot in a "Python"-class mech. Though Farquhar's missiles stripped the Elite Python of armor, Eftichios was unable to finish the enemy off with his autocannon.

Hobson's Choice squared off against a second patrol of Macaws, which proved as unwise the second time as during the landing. The brilliant flash of the PL-a beam vaporized myomer-fiber and ablative armor alike.

Eftichios' attempts to kill the Elite Python were further hampered by a new swarm of Macaws-- though the plucky pilot was able to avoid the worst of their incoming fire, his own AC-3 salvoes were also spoiled.

Not to be denied, Eftichios eventually outpaced the Macaws and cornered the Elite Python near Sector 1's objective. A trio of depleted slugs tore through what precious little armor remained on the mech, and a plume of reactor-flames signaled the enemy's end.

In Sector 4, Ingvar had little opposition securing the religious center-- even managing to extract a religious icon for return to the Faithian revolutionaries.

Similarly, Farquhar's advance on Sector 2 and the important mech bay were only nominally contested.

 By the time Farquhar emptied his missile racks into the mech bay, Eftichios had secured Sector 1's objective and skirmished the pursuing Macaws to exhaustion.

With all objectives complete--and little OpFor remaining--Solar Lance was able to exfiltrate without complication.

Aftermath & Social Scenes

In the wake of the mission Ingvar and Farquhar would advance to Level 1, while Eftichios would advance to Level 2.

The first two Social Scenes (the part of the game in which you explore the melodrama of these pilots and command staff) both occurred at a concert; I imagine some celebration being held back in Fortune Squadron's home base of Fonza.

Ingvar Ragnarsson--an impetuous and ill-tempered young man--got into a spat with the Intelligence Officer, Captain Levi Keller. Undoubtedly, Ingvar felt that their job had been made more difficult due to some deficiency in pre-op intelligence analysis. The two would become Rivals.

Farquhar Ascenso, seeing an opportunity to ruin his own rival's reputation, attempted to badmouth Ingvar to Fortune Squadron's commanding officer-- Major Ragnar Magnusson. He might have made a better decision had he recognized the patrynomic surnames, and realized that the Major was in fact Ingvar's father. The two would become Rivals.

Not everything was hot-blooded drama, however. The young and optimistic Ceredig Clough invited both Eftichios Tolotis and Nora Davies to meet up at a bar, with the aim of resolving their differences. Ceredig's relentless desire to find common ground (and at least two bottles of Fanza Reserve) would eventually settle the matter. Eftichios and Nora were persuaded to put their rivalry to an end.

And that's that for Turn 1! I'm already finding this game to have a lot more moving parts than 5 Parsecs; from the movement and revealing of Blips, the impact of staff officers during and after missions, the social system. But it's all a lot of fun and I can't think of any part which is particularly onerous.

Mission 2: The Long Patrol

Fortune Squadron 0 - Setting Up The Campaign

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm going to start up a solo campaign of Nordic Weasel Games' WeaselTech. I'm doing this for two reasons:

1. I have largely replaced my gastrointestinal functions with the purchasing and painting of miniature mechs; they sustain me, body and soul, in a way mere food cannot.
2. Global fucking pandemic. I am so tired.

The first step is contextualizing the campaign. With a lot of Nordic Weasel games, the context is very nearly presumptive; in Gang Warfare you are a gang engaging in warfare, in Salvage Crew you are a crew of salvagers, you get the idea.

But the devil is always in the details.

For this campaign I'm borrowing liberally from a Lancer mini-campaign I ran; that Lancer is also deeply invested in mechs and inspired by some anime means it shouldn't be hard to smush them together.

Welcome to Golgos Prime

(This unnecessary amount of detail to contextualize shoveling resin miniatures at one another is brought to you by Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator)

Some time ago, the Golgos World Administration--a global administrative organization which originally united the planet's various work syndicates and mining collectives--met a slow and unseemly end. A rising tide of anthrochauvinism (take the worst tenets and practices of nationalism, writ large on the galactic scale) would eventually see an internal coup. The GWA was dissolved.

In its place, the Prime Ascendency asserted planetary control. Because all tyranny breeds its own end, the Ascendency's violent push for global hegemony eventually blossomed on one of the continents in the form of the Free Golgos Confederation. Local militias and revolutionaries managed to pool their efforts, along with a sizable defection of Ascendency military.

I'll probably write more about the planet and its history of problems, but that certainly seems enough for now.

WeaselTech helpfully includes some random tables for broad context; I rolled "an uprising against an oppressive power or regime" and "located at a military instillation on the frontiers". That meant to me that this campaign would not take place in the front lines of contested territory (the diagonally-hatched zones on the above map) but in one of the brushfire revolts on the Ascendency's mainland (the red zones).

For the flavor of the squadron, I rolled "volunteers eager to do their part" which actually didn't initially point me anywhere. But I did notice one of the red zones snaking towards the heart of the Prime Ascendency-- towards the planetary capital of Golgos Prime, High Haven.

That led me to the "13th Havenite Volunteers"; a regiment of mech-pilots drawn exclusively from those who had either defected or been driven from High Haven. Young recruits--maybe from High Haven's war college--eager to test their mettle against the anthrochauvinists.

Meet "Fortune Squadron"

Now WeaselTech includes, as I mentioned, a whole sub-system for the soap opera melodrama of young pilots butting heads; I wanted Fortune Squadron to be particularly involved with one another from the outset. The dice were happy to oblige.

Ingvar Ragnarsson and Farquhar Ascenso were Rivals, as were Eftichios Tolotis and Nora Davies. The outliers were Ceredig Clough and Fatimah al-Hassan, who ended up as Friends. I liked the idea that they were the youngest and oldest pilots in the squadron-- not having been in the same war college class, they had very little friction with their fellows.

The pilot tokens were made using RetroGrade Minis, which I've leaned on heavily for my Lancer RPG campaign. I cannot stress enough how useful and thorough the digital support for Lancer is-- from its free rulebook, active Discord, and excellent liveplays to the Comp/Con character generator/character sheet and RetroGrade's Lancer-oriented pixel tokens.

Mission 1: Assault on Riccorluvio

WeaselTech - All Systems Radical, Dude

 Occam's Laser

If you're exceedingly clever and/or can read, you may remember the campaign log I was keeping of a Star Wars Solo Wargame using Nordic Weasel's "Five Parsecs From Home". I do intend to get back to that sometime! But I am a man ("man", really) of varied and sundry tastes. I'm the hedonism-bot of gaming; novelty, inventiveness, new things please! This is, I am certain, entirely unconnected to my ADHD.

I apologize for nothing

Anyway-- continuing the trend of this veering dangerously close to a Nordic Weasel Fanboy Blog, I am going to leap right into Ivan's newest product. WeaselTech!

Apparently the poor man has been hounded for a mech game about as long as Mitch McConnel has been hounded by the Collections Department of Hell. But unlike Lucifer the Prince of Darkness, Ivan's fans look to finally be getting what they wanted!

In any case, I have been somewhat bitten by the mech bug lately and hopefully Ivan has just given me a particularly robust and long-armed scratcher with which to itch.

Glancing At The Weasel

I'll start with a quick run-through of the rules; not a proper review (which may come later, once I've gotten some hands-on experience with the system). This is just to get some context for the later AARs.

The game makes no bones about its influences; Macross, RoboTech, and a host of other Large Big Robot Battle Pow Pow anime with which I'm personally unfamiliar. This has two notable impacts on how the game plays:

1. Rather than the plodding land-battleships of BattleTech, these are the fast-and-furious laser-belching type of mech.

2. There is an entire sub-system for tracking the rivalries and romantic entanglements of your mech pilots.

The broad structure of play is mostly recognizable if you've played a Nordic Weasel game before (most especially the 5 X from the X series); you have a wargaming-scenario which impacts a downtime procedure which itself wraps back into a wargaming-scenario. Where WeaselTech departs from the formula is in the downtime procedure more than the wargaming-scenario.

Each wargaming-scenario is a "Mission" and three Missions constitutes an "Operation". The downtime is then split between stuff you do between Missions (gain XP, roll for commendations, see who has gotten in a love triangle) and stuff you do between Operations (research new equipment, check on the status of the overall conflict, roll for promotions).

That might sound like a lot of homework, but let's not pretend that you've got something better to do. You're playing a solo-wargame! Somewhere my high school bully's hackles are up; they do not know why, but they know in their bones they have to shove someone in a locker. Even most normal wargames marinate in loneliness and math, why would this be any different? Don't act like you're better than me. You're not better than me! I'm not crying you're crying! Loser! You're the loser not me--

I'm okay I'm fine I'm okay

Sorry, lost the thread there a little.

Taken altogether, my impression is very much that WeaselTech is deservedly distinct from the 5 X from the X series-- though it is also solo-oriented and campaign focus, both the scenario-wargaming mechanisms and procedural structure give it a very different texture.

Keep your eyes peeled as I set up for a solo campaign of my own using this system!

I'm out.