Talking about AToW, (Split from the GenCon thread)

[skiltao]

Such campaigns (as seen in earlier editions of the RPG) do not require more detail or record keeping than is already demanded by A Time of War's chargen.

[monbvol]

While potentially true I still stand by my point of maybe put it in a third expansion book because not everyone is going to want that level of detail and the main book just needs to cover the basics.

[bytedruid]

I cannot possibly imagine sitting around the table making ATOW characters....or having any player I ever met make them themselves; it's just too much work. I laid out my qualifications and I couldn't manage CG for ATOW on a pad of paper. There was just WAY too much to copy; after the third hand cramp, I tossed what i had and switched to a spreadsheet.

The plural of anecdote isn't data, but I'll give the experience of my group with character generation.  In general for each person that has made a character in my game, I have a one-on-one session.  We chill out with a beer and talk about what kind of character they are interested in.  If what they are interested in really wouldn't fit in, we kick around changes in a general sense and then character generation begins.  It typically goes like this, they flip through life-paths in AToW, and call out the points for each skill, that way they can focus on who their character is, and not worry so much about the totals.  I keep track of those.  After all the life paths are done, I show them some places where they would need to put extra points to qualify for the roles they've chosen.  After that's done I turn the page over to them to finish up as they like.  Entire process is about 2 hours long and mostly involves chatting about the battletech universe, the unit they are joining, and their character backstory.  About 30 minutes is spent on actual character point manipulations and most of that is weighing tradeoffs, not math.

After I've helped them with one character, most of them have added more characters to be used as NPC's in their merc company, on their own.  I've had 6 players in my campaign so far, here's their char-gen activities by player...

1st Player:  Makes up a Tank Company Captain, we run this together. 
                   Next he makes up a COMSPEC, then a grizzled tank commander with a lot
                   of guerrilla activities in his past,  a power armor marine all on his own.  No
                   complains with the system except that the Vehicle trait makes no sense to
                   him.

2nd Player: Can't get together for chargen, just reads the book and makes a
                   mechwarrior and Lead Tech all on his own using just a pencil and hospital
                   notepad, No serious complaints, but does joke that it takes 850 points to
                   "be born".

3rd Player: We work together to generate a spy, he goes home and generates 19 more
                  covert operatives using a generic spreadsheet and straight point buy, then
                  later an Intelligence Analyst, No complaints.

4th Player: We work together to generate a mechwarrior, he then makes up a 5 man
                  battle armor squad using point buy and gives them all unique hooks, no
                 complaints.

5th Player: We work together to make an Aerospace pilot, he doesn't make any more
                 characters on his own.  He may have problems with chargen, I'll ask next
                 time he's around.

6th Player: Has never played an RPG without pre-generated characters. We work
                 together to make up her mechwarrior.  She has no concept of the battletech
                universe and (or much with RPG's in general) and absolutely falls in love
                with the life-path system.  She though it was a great way to get started
               and liked how it made her think about back-story and "in universe" elements
                that would never have occurred to her.  Six months on she still mentions how
                much fun char-gen was.

The last player is the one who's experience means the most to me, because she was
able to view AToW as an almost complete RPG newbe and wasn't predisposed to
expect anything from other systems.

[bytedruid]

Forgot to add:
Can't win: we've got one post with someone who wants a big pile of d6s, like SR, and another post with someone who thinks 3d6 is 1 too many.

Both are equally valid. Both don't like ATOW.

Yep, seems like the only winning move is to not play/print an RPG.

Sorry to be late to the discussion, life's been happening.  If you, Paul, were part of the AToW team then I want
to say:

  Thank you sir, you've provided many hours of fun for me and my friends.  8)

If not then please pass my appreciation on to the rest of the crew who put together the book.  Maybe I just
have a high tolerance for large rule systems but I've not had too many problems with AToW.  Here's the
some total of the issues I have with the RPG, most of which do *not* involve AToW itself:

  1. Armor is too ineffective, hand to bump up it's usefulness with house rules to avoid lots of
     dead PC's.  That's okay, you addressed this point in AToWc

  2. When to use Surgery rolls was confusing, That's okay, you have a better system in AToWc.

  3. All my players keep asking for a stand-alone arms and equipment guide book.  All of them
      (but one) says they would like to have more descriptive info on many of the sharper
     warrior items.  They feel the descriptions are a bit too terse, so this deserves a "TRO"
     of it's own.

 4. There are many places in other books such as StratOps, and the upcoming Intersteller Ops,
     where references to AToW skills could be made, but these are not included.  Hate to see
     RPG treated as such a red-headed step child, since without it I wouldn't be playing
     battletech at all.

 5. I can't buy full blown scenarios like those published in the '90's.

 6. What few AToW adventures exist are just story ideas, not complete modules as released for
    other game systems such as Pathfinder.  Maps are almost always missing, and NPC
    descriptions are often incredibly terse.

 7. WHERE'S MY UNION OPS MANUAL!  I'd love an old style set of deck plans for the Leopard,
    Union, Mule and Buccaneer for times when an adventure takes place on board.  Alas, I
    guess it's not to be.  I'd pay big money for these, even fan creations.

You know, you only sell the core books to each group once, but as Piazo knows you can keep
publishing adventures for the GM to buy till the cows come home.  Unfortunately I've only seen
one full adventure, Necro-Nightmare.  Which was definitely not formatted for proper printing.

Please don't get so discouraged, happy people are often the quiet ones.  I do agree that there
should be a light-weight RPG system to go with Alpha-Strike, but that's a different issue.

[bytedruid]

Forget the character creation system that's making math majors cry

I have a math degree, and no, I did not cry.  It's not like we're talking Fourier transforms, or Abelian groups here, it's simple arithmetic.  You have many good points to make but the hyperbole isn't helping your case.

If you don't like detailed systems that's cool, no problems.  Lot's of folks love playing Savage Worlds for this very reason.  So why not spend your time agitating for a stripped down RPG companion to Alpha-Strike instead of bashing the system that isn't designed to do what you seem to want in the first place? 

Could the layout and exposition of some topics be improved in AToW, sure they could.  Could the cover art be better.  I guess, hadn't thought about it, but at least it's not another generic mech cover like every other title in battletech ('cept the universe guide). 

[StCptMara]

I have a math degree, and no, I did not cry.  It's not like we're not talking Fourier transforms, or Abelian groups here, it's simple arithmetic.  You have many good points to make but the hyperbole isn't helping your case.

If you don't like detailed systems that's cool, no problems.  Lot's of folks love playing Savage Worlds for this very reason.  So why not spend your time agitating for a stripped down RPG companion to Alpha-Strike instead of bashing the system that isn't designed to do what you seem to want in the first place? 

Could the layout and exposition of some topics be improved in AToW, sure they could.  Could the cover art be better.  I guess, hadn't thought about it, but at least it's not another generic mech cover like every other title in battletech ('cept the universe guide).

You know, I think this is a great point. I have played many RPGs, and I had no problems at all with character creation. However I do find the number crunching part of it tedious. It is, in my opinion, a fine sight better
than Mechwarrior 3rd Edition. However, the system is rather quick and easy for me. At the same time, I
can see the appeal for an simpler rules version. I mean, heck, even Rifts is licensing out to Savage Worlds.

[bytedruid]

... At the same time, I can see the appeal for an simpler rules version. I mean, heck, even Rifts is licensing out to Savage Worlds.

I'm glad you mentioned that.  I wonder why Catalyst doesn't do that for battletech?  There are many more Savage Worlds players that AToW players and would be a great way to get more RP gamers thinking about the universe in general.  And when they want to know more, hey there's a pile of house books just waiting to be sold to those GMs.

To me the BattleTech universe is the game.  Which particular ruleset you use to explore it is definitely a secondary concern.

[Atlas3060]

I'm glad you mentioned that.  I wonder why Catalyst doesn't do that for battletech? 

My personal guess would be any time someone mentions another title and Battletech together TPTB clench up in a fear reflex.
They've gone to very far measures to ensure everything they used is owned by them. No more third party anything*, nuke that from orbit, the only way to be sure.

Old designs from third party popular magazines? Reimagined and placed in some XTRO with our artwork, our stats, our fluff.
The Unseen? Well look at how they're getting a classic renovation all the while looking as close as they can to the older stuff.

Too many bad memories still burn in them, kind of like ticking off the Ghost Bears.
Then again, this is all personal guesses. I could be 100% wrong and there's some logical business thing behind it.


*Software is a Microsoft avenue of rights and headaches.
So anyone thinking of mentioning Heavy Metal Pro, MWO, or the new Mechwarrior game remember that CGL doesn't control that.

[Maelwys]

A somewhat ironic view since the min thing they don't own is the BT IP itself :)

[Atlas3060]

True, Topps owns at least what CGL does.

Yet apparently CGL is a good enough servant to the grand card overlords; us still being here is evidence enough.
Kneel and kiss the baseball card gum ring and be own our way.  :D

[Daryk]

I've been slowly catching up on my reading on the board since returning from overseas, and I have to say I'm also in the group of folks who like AToW character generation, my less than successful attempt at writing a spreadsheet notwithstanding.  The game I ran on these boards before the last crash was fun, and I enjoyed generating the entire unit the PCs were part of with AToW (just over a hundred NPCs total).  Yes, I used a spreadsheet, but I'd argue so would anyone doing that many characters.

Bytedruid: if you're interested, I have deck plans for a Manatee posted in the non-canon units forum, and can e-mail you the manipulable Visio version if you PM me your address (so you can empty out the cargo bays; I stuffed a combined arms company into that lance transport).

EDIT: And here's the link, since my thread is buried on the second to last page of that sub-forum: http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=9210.0

[bytedruid]

Bytedruid: if you're interested, I have deck plans for a Manatee posted in the non-canon units forum, and can e-mail you the manipulable Visio version if you PM me your address (so you can empty out the cargo bays; I stuffed a combined arms company into that lance transport).

EDIT: And here's the link, since my thread is buried on the second to last page of that sub-forum: http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=9210.0

I just checked out your thread,  opinion ... it freakin' rocks!  I'm totally stealing your Vee designs to flesh out our campaign.  Thanks for posting! 

I'll send a PM as soon as I get home for the deck plans.   

[Daryk]

Thanks!  I'll be home myself tomorrow evening.  I see I also need to find new pictures for the 4x4 and 6x6 MTVRs.  I might be able to find those tonight.

[bytedruid]

Thanks!  I'll be home myself tomorrow evening.  I see I also need to find new pictures for the 4x4 and 6x6 MTVRs.  I might be able to find those tonight.

One more thought.  That seriously is a nice thread.  You should put a link to in your signature block with a short description so that others can find it.  As you probably know HikageMaru does that for his faction banner thread and I've found it to be helpful.  I often click the links in peoples sigs.

[Daryk]

I found signature blocks to be too much clutter when running a game, but since I'm not running one at the moment, I'll give it another look.  I've been toying with doing some more clean up of the game with Failure16 and posting it as fan fiction.  The rough is 121 pages in Word right now, and a snippet (about the dust off from Campoleone) was split from a thread in general discussion and moved to fan fiction already.  I'll probably delete that bit if I get my act together.  Thanks again for your interest!