To be perfectly honest, yes and I’ve decided against it. The Agents who reported the event (44 events all told), had the option to include notes and most did. From my own experience with running the games myself I know that I received very different feedback from my own players and most of it was very biased based on which side the person played and which side won. Therefore, I would prefer to stick to as neutral of parties as I can.
I think that approach makes sense. It was one of several reasons why I didn't play on either side in my event (Firesprocket's one of my players. Hi!)
CDAt's talking about a different game though.
It very much should have been. The intention was not to abruptly cutoff games but to instill an urgency in both sides appropriate for the scne. I can see how a four hour game would be horribly abbreviated and, again, that was not how the scenario was designed nor should have been implemented.
Ours ran 6ish hours, as FS said. I felt I hammered the point home on urgency with the Clan side, and they were hussling, I think. Few sub-optimal moves are going to happen.
The time it took them to get to the target building was largely a matter of MP vs map, and lack of JJs.
Correct. That book predates TRO:3055, 3058, and very importantly 3060. Some of those designs were chosen to be inserted to allow for more diversity for GMs to use what they have and to utilize more clan tech. A second-line Wolf cluster with no IICs does not feel right.
I liked what you guys did with the Cluster.
I don't think I overlooked a mobility option, plus the special characters tied my hands just a nudge.
Correct. Again, that is part of why the clan BV was set to be higher than the IS BV.
I prob gave the Clan side a little too much.
The scenario that changed how hovers worked. A hover making a facing change and continuing movement should have had to make a sideslipping check, as per standard Total Warfare rules for hover movement. However, what you might be referring to was one of the special pilot abilities for the IS.
Yep, as you surmised, Kapten Adolphus was running that lance of Condors, the fastest tanks the IS had.
This too was a special pilot ability for the IS. The scenario did note that both sides should received special pilots if they were in play. In other words, if only the IS got their special pilots, then that was an incorrect interpretation of the was the scenario was written.
The Clan got both of theirs, but their abilities just about never came up, nor made a difference. Not sure the GCmd ever got shot at all, and the Lancelot pilot never had any particularly interesting rolls to make.
I’m not going to sit here and say that all three games were designed perfectly, they weren’t. I made mistakes in writing my portions and given the feedback from Agents I know there were mistakes made in other areas. I know there are things we didn’t create that could have helped with consistency. But I would just hate for future events, which will take into account the lessons we learned from this year’s event to be judged based on erroneous implementations of the scenario.
It's a process. It's good to get feedback, and it's good to be cognizant of bias. Course, that does cut both ways: taken at face value, FS' comment on the minefields and Adolphus seems to suggest only the IS got their special pilots, which wasn't the case neither.
Stuff I liked about this year's event:
- The doc was good, and had a lot of detail about setup. I'm confident that made the prep job much easier for many Agents; certainly helped me.
- Using special stuff was great. Special abilities based on personalities, and the weirdness of the maps: all strong items I hope to see again. They helped make it notable, in my view.
- The Wolf TO&E was nice, but I'd prefer to have more generic guidelines, IE, how the IS side was done up. It had rules that'd force unit composition, and create a specific theme.
- I like that you weren't afraid of having high skills in the game.
- I'm overall impressed by how significant and fun you guys made a kind of throw-away moment in BT history. Truly excellent job there, great sign of things to come. Don't be afraid of taking on more pivotal moments, and taking a more what-if style approach. Yeah, in canon, the fight at the NAIS went Hanse' way, but maybe not at your table! Those kinds of moments.
Suggestions I'd make:
- Avoid setups where LOS (and shots) are unlikely for most of the force for the first 3 turns.
- The special map setup was cool, but deployment and objective location left 1 map completely unused, and the other had some hovertanks on it 1 turn, I think.
- Games with tons of players are slow; I got 8 turns in, I might be able to get 10 turns in if I was a bigger jerk. Seemed like the scoring mechanism expected 20 turns: just not plausible. Assuming 10 total turns of play seems like a good guideline for BT games. I can get 20+ in pretty much only in 1 on 1 games.
- The special pilot stuff could likely be balanced better.
- The special weather event was cool, though it was a bit weird to have to say that one side is affected by snow flakes, and the other isn't. Homefield advantage rules are cool though, prob just a matter of balance/tweaking.
- My players didn;t (to their credit) but power gamers might have used the Hidden Rules to plant forces next to the target building in turn 1 (using movement if need be) thus truly unbalancing scoring. As it was, the Clan side wasn't likely to score significant points until they managed to kill off the far more numerous IS side. (17 Mechs + 5 Elementals vs 8 Mechs and 24 tanks, most of the latter was making a parking lot around the building come turn 4 or so...)
Paul
