Author Topic: AToW QSR 2013 - Plan B Adventure: Good start, key information missing  (Read 2510 times)

bytedruid

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  • A great starter adventure.
I've been reading "Plan B" from the 2013 AToW quick start rules in hopes of running an RP adventure set in the BattleTech universe for an up coming local convention.  Overall the adventure feels like someone had a great idea, but not enough time to finish the job.

The adventure starts out well.  The pre-generated character bios provide enough of a hook to root a role-player in the character without over whelming them with details.  Unfortunately all the characters are mechwarriors, so someone looking to run a tech in a sci-fi game would be out of luck.  I would expect about half the group to be mechwarriors since this seems like a special operations kind of mission.  In fairness Jackson and Katon have high enough stealth and melee weapons skills to act as scouts, and you never know who might want to jump into a mech during the course of the adventure, so all and all I'd say the pregenerated characters are fine.

Moving on to the player hand out page, the Mission Brief is presented as a personal letter that any of the characters could have written, not a bad touch.  I can tell the players that this represents a personal message that any of the characters could have sent, and that one of them probably did.  Having an objectives section in the player handout is a top notch idea,  O0.  I don't care for having the mission success conditions right in the player hand out.  To me that should be on the GM side of the wall.

Going behind the information wall to the GM side of the tracks I see some things are well done, but some are sub-par.  For starters, the opposing mercenary force is detailed, stat wise anyway, and the shift table is a nice touch.  Though the mercs do have names, that's not really sufficient.  A one or two sentence description of each merc would help the GM handle non-combat situations.  For example are any of the mercs holding a grudge against the others that could be exploited.  Do any of them have a super short temper?  Are any of them on good/bad terms with the Dropship crew?  These kinds of details are helpful when dealing with players that attempt to resolve problems with guile as well as guns.  All-in-all the merc NPCs information is passable, though the same can't be said of the crew.

The dropship crew are almost completely undefined.  Other than the fact that there are 21 crew members and they are not trained spec ops I don't know anything about them.  Since the dropship has a single mess hall used by both passengers and crew the players will have an opportunity to convince/bribe/seduce/threaten the crew.   But heck, I don't even know the captian's name!   Also, does the crew go through the passenger areas from time to time?  I don't know, there's no mention of this one way or the other.  I presume you'd at least have the engineering crew going below to do their jobs.  Would this provide an opportunity for interaction and/or a fight?  I don't know, maybe engineering has sealed access from the crew quarters deck.  It's not specified one way or the other.

Like the crew, the dropship itself isn't concrete.  Overview text is provided to define the dropship layout but what is really needed is a floor plan.  Nothing puts a new GM at ease like a map.  It is also a great way to introduce some of the tech in battletech.  Compared to other sci-fi genres Battletech is gritty and down-to-earth.  These spaceships don't fly on dilithium magic juice they have good old fashion tanks of hydrogen that feed massive reaction chambers.  Put these on a map and you convey something about the universe to the new crowd.  Also, we don't have grav plating, if the ship is shutdown things float.  It's important to know the ceiling height of the various decks as combat may take place in 3-D.  Finally, though it is risky, the players may choose to try to escape via small shuttles.  Where are these, and what kind of guards or locks are they under?

Which the glaring exception of maps, when it comes to the details of combat the adventure does a good job.  There are concrete statistics for each combatant and the table of things that "don't respond well to bullets" is very handy.  (I'm going to reuse that in my home campaign.)  I also appreciate that the adventure lists how hard it is to break various tie-downs.  This is important information that I wouldn't have thought to add.  With some elbow grease, in the form of generating a mule floor-plan, I can run this adventure for the con.  But it seems that almost every BattleTech RP adventure that I run across requires a far bit custom content creation.  The only notable exceptions are the big mechwarrior scenario books put out in the '90's.  On balance, if the NPC crew were better defined and dropship interior maps were provided it would be a much better introductory adventure.

I've approached "Plan B" from the point of view of someone who has run around 20 RP modules at conventions for various campaigns over the years, including Living Verge, Living Dragonstar, and the ubiquitous Pathfinder Society.  Those modules were great for a new GM because everything was laid out ready to go.  I want AToW to be successful and attract new players, and I'm happy to have a free AToW adventure.  But before you can get new players for an RPG, you have to get new GM's and I don't think this adventure helps them as much as it should have.

« Last Edit: 23 October 2013, 02:22:16 by bytedruid »
Hat tips to Slightlylyons who fixed aerotech in one post and to Daryk for organized cool stuff.

 

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