Author Topic: A Time of War Companion  (Read 15603 times)

five_corparty

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #30 on: 18 January 2013, 14:42:10 »
Actually, now that my brain is in full on wishlist mode, maybe you could look at a 20-25 page booklet on themes as per the XTROs, be it era, faction, or rules options each time?

A Time of War Eras: 3020's
1-2 pages repackaged from the universe introduction material
3-4 pages on adjusted affiliations
8-10 pages on changes to life modules or traits relevant to the era
1-2 pages for revised personal equipment tables, basically just hacking out everything not relevant from the AToW tables
1-2 pages for some particular adventure hooks that tie into the late succession wars?

Heck, just include the occasional blank rectangle and I'll draw my own stick figure artwork in my copy when I print it out.

A Time of War Options: SPAs and Traits
Half a dozen new uses for existing SPAs and Traits, plus two or three new ones... An adventuer hook and a short story? I'll bite.

A Time of War Options: Life Paths
When you really don't mind if your next fifteen characters die during their Stage 2 module choice, just give me an excuse to roll my dice some more!

A Time of War Factions: [any old faction]
Just ten to 15 pages about character and adventure archetypes from the key eras for the given faction.

Seriously, I'll preorder every last one of these.

ditto.  please take my money.   :)  :)

HABeas2

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #31 on: 18 January 2013, 15:26:33 »
Hello,

To answer Garner's (and Five_Corparty's) request, that's kind of what the Era Reports and Era Digests do, covering alternative periods of BattleTech history. So, while the late Succession Wars hasn't been covered (yet), I'm pretty sure we'll get there soon enough. (Indeed, now that we've covered the Age of War, Star League, the Clan Invasion, and will soon get to the Dark Age, we pretty much only HAVE the Succession Wars to cover in Era style, since the core rules themselves and Field Manual: 3085 rather neatly cover the FedCom Civil War-Jihad period. Heck, we've even given folks the Golden Century by now.)

The thing with BattleTech, though, is that we've found there's a threshold for specialization that gets dangerous to cross. Faction-specific sourcebooks, for instance, have proven to be a loss-leader for us, so they're giving way to pan-faction books (outside of PDF-exclusives, that is). The fact that BattleTech remains 'Mech-centric also means there's only so far afield one can get into the universe before it could be "just any old setting", so specialized professions, like corporate intrigue, covert ops, police drama, and so forth, wind up taking a back seat to the front-and-center military conflicts--OR we have to combine multiple aspects in one book (such as with the Solaris setting, where all of the above can apply).

Then there's a personal choice I opted to make when we took on A Time of War: rule bloat. Anyone who recalls the MW3rd system might find this amusing: If you wanted to be sure you could create any character you wanted under the MW3rd Life Path system, how many books did you need?

MW3rd/CBT:RPG - Core book
MW Guide to the Clans
MW Guide to Solaris VII
LosTech
A Guide to Covert Ops
CBT: Companion
7 (I think?) of the Field Manuals (from Lyran Alliance through Mercs Supplemental: Updates)
AeroTech 2
3 of the 5 Handbooks (Specifically, Steiner, Marik, and Davion)

That's 17 sourcebooks that featured Life Paths, many suffering extreme examples of power creep. When we initially considered the rules changes for AToW, we thought of just fixing the Paths, trying to restore a sense of balance to them all, and re-presenting them in the new book. Then it became clear that the Paths alone would have run 400 pages and balance was right out.

So, instead, a conscious decision was made to simplify the Paths to their bare bones, present them as modules, and leave enough XP for players and GMs to do the fine tuning without rolling for stock random events in the character creation process.

This was followed by a stern warning to the other writers: NO MORE MODULES WITHOUT DEVELOPER PERMISSION. The idea now is that a Module needs to be truly unique from the others to be of any use to the players. Most eras, as it happens, can be addressed by simply tweaking the Affiliations of the day and adding in cost and salary mods as appropriate.

PDF-driven expansions might be a good idea, mind you, but I want to make sure the RPG I give you guys is good quality, and not an endless train of "whatever seemed like a good idea at the moment".

I hope that explains things a bit...

Thanks,

- Herbert Beas

Garner

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #32 on: 18 January 2013, 16:30:21 »
Thanks for the explaination, Herb.

Still, a fan can dream, can't he?  :)

Tell you what, my hunger for more RPG rules can happily go on the backburner if you'll step up that Succession Wars era report (my favourite time in the setting).

CanopusIV

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #33 on: 18 January 2013, 16:51:16 »
Having reviewed those systems, I couldn't have said it better, Herb

theothersarah

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #34 on: 18 January 2013, 17:34:17 »
I never really liked MW3 and I felt like A Time of War made some very, very good design choices. Catalyst has done a great job with the line since taking it over.

I wouldn't mind a Solaris VII PDF. It would be cool to have updated AToW rules for things from previous Solaris products, stats for top-rated champions, guidelines for using the tactical combat rules for 'mech duels, and such.

five_corparty

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #35 on: 19 January 2013, 13:40:04 »
Thanks for the explaination, Herb.

Still, a fan can dream, can't he?  :)

Tell you what, my hunger for more RPG rules can happily go on the backburner if you'll step up that Succession Wars era report (my favourite time in the setting).

-sigh- I agree.  i mean, Herb's said it before, in chats and stuff, but then I scooped up the "Samurai" option pack for shadowrun, which is like... SPAs for character types?  and I'm like, "oooh, shiny...'"  ;)  so while I'm VERY, VERY, VERY happy that I'm not gonn need a gazillion books like for MW3ed, I can't help but drool and dare to dream...  :)

HABeas2

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #36 on: 19 January 2013, 17:40:17 »
Hello,

It's the paradox of print-driven game design. You want your game as complete, playable, and user-friendly as possible, so you try to put everything you can in the core book (heck, we crammed all the gear from all the MW3rd products we had into AToW). Only now you need to keep generating more to support the game and maintain some kind of cash flow (because this IS a business, after all).

We actually did a poll over a year ago, asking players here what they wanted to see next, from a few given options: An Explorer Corps themed book, a Covert Ops themed one, or a Solaris themed one. All three were seen as potential RPG addendum books. Explorer Corps won out, and--and you know--Interstellar Players 3: Interstellar Expeditions was the result. Rules-wise, it's game support is more like that of an Era Report, but with some added heavy equipment ('Mechs and support vees) for larger scale play as well.

It's a tightrope, really.

Thank you,

- Herbert Beas

CanopusIV

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #37 on: 19 January 2013, 19:13:14 »
After selling e-reader devices to people, it made me realize that people sometimes don't even know what they want...

If we had a non-backlit screen to prevent eye strain, people said they wanted it backlit.  When we had a backlit screen, people complained of eye strain.

If we didn't cover the page clickers, people complained they got dirty.  If we covered the page clickers, people complained that they were hard to press.

The supplements technically already exist, and there's no RPG police that are going to take away your previous, out-of-date books if you want to use them in Time of War.  I'm more interested in having a system that merges the RPG and wargame together (which Time of War did) and have more explanation about gaps in the story which the Interstellar Report appears to be doing.

My two cents is all.  You can never completely please the fans, but thus far I think Herb and his team are doing a decent job.

Garner

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #38 on: 20 January 2013, 05:17:45 »
It's kind of difficult to acquire the older books when you're late to the party and living with a shoestring budget on the wrong side of the Atlantic, but that point is well understood.

I'd also like to make it clear that my hunger for 'more' AToW related goodness is inherently a show of support and praise for AToW as it exists now.

CanopusIV

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #39 on: 20 January 2013, 16:59:50 »
It's kind of difficult to acquire the older books when you're late to the party and living with a shoestring budget on the wrong side of the Atlantic, but that point is well understood.

I'd also like to make it clear that my hunger for 'more' AToW related goodness is inherently a show of support and praise for AToW as it exists now.

*nods*

I will admit that I also got lucky.  I got a lot of book donations when I said I was interested in the series (pre and post reviews), but I still spend a decent amount of cash picking up used copies of the older books out there.  I got lucky and found an ebay lot of 8 third edition books for 50 dollars which did help.

BirdofPrey

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #40 on: 20 January 2013, 19:14:53 »
How many donations came from MOC fans after you mentioned the Magistry a few hundred times? :P
===
Luckily, the current books contain most of the rules from all the old stuff, so you're mainly just missing fluff from previous eras.
If getting books is an issue, you can always get a cheap e-reader and get the PDFs from the battleshop.  As a bonus, they come out sooner than the print versions.

As for old books, I occasionally look through used bookstores, but eBay is a good place to look as well.

CanopusIV

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #41 on: 20 January 2013, 19:20:54 »
How many donations came from MOC fans after you mentioned the Magistry a few hundred times? :P
===
Luckily, the current books contain most of the rules from all the old stuff, so you're mainly just missing fluff from previous eras.
If getting books is an issue, you can always get a cheap e-reader and get the PDFs from the battleshop.  As a bonus, they come out sooner than the print versions.

As for old books, I occasionally look through used bookstores, but eBay is a good place to look as well.

I did an RPG review show on ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com and interviewed Herb when I got to Time of War.  Fans of my show graciously donated a number of books.  I'm going to start up again soon and have a special episode up by next Friday.

Maybe it's my own bias after selling e-readers, but I still prefer a hard copy.  It's nice to be able to manually turn a page too instead of using clickers, a mouse, or a word search.  While a lot of books are better in pdf form, I'm a dyed in the wool diehard fan of hard copy gaming books.  Even if they are pricier, I still prefer a hard copy to put up on my shelf.

BirdofPrey

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #42 on: 20 January 2013, 19:47:19 »
I actually haven't seen the AToW review yet (just the previous ones).  Someone started a thread about that somewhere around here when you did those.

The e-reader thing was mainly if someone is having trouble getting the paper version, but it can also save you money on a large collection.

I admit, sometimes a hardcopy is nice, my books never lag when I am looking for something, but, for me at least, being able to take my entire library to a game, is too huge of an advantage to overlook, and I often end up having half my collection open when I end up answering questions on the forums. 

It's all up to personal preference. I could just be too new fashioned.

Maelwys

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #43 on: 20 January 2013, 20:26:18 »
I think the only thing I've really noticed as "missing" from the ATOW series that MW3rd has is detailed descriptions of various pieces of equipment. Some people may not care too much, but I still find myself occasionally trying to remember where items showed up in 3rd so I can look up the fluff. Though I can understand why its left out of ATOW, since that's quite a bit of extra fluff.

CanopusIV

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #44 on: 20 January 2013, 23:06:50 »
Personally, I'm far more ok with having a wider variety of equipment than having a description.  The amount of stuff available to you in Time of War is just awesome!  The Battletech series really did need a hardcover book to go into more detail.  Time of War proved it was possible to include information on planets and culture without sacrificing pages for equipment.

The one noticeable thing I missed in Time of War were the Lifepath bonuses or detriments that existed, but they fixed that problem by adding the table in the Companion.  You can choose to add them or not.  It's nice having the option again.

Maelwys

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #45 on: 20 January 2013, 23:52:30 »
I also like that the points "awarded" are generic, letting you work them into the character, instead of suddenly having to figure out where your thirteen children came from, and what you're going to do with them.

CanopusIV

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #46 on: 20 January 2013, 23:54:03 »
I also like that the points "awarded" are generic, letting you work them into the character, instead of suddenly having to figure out where your thirteen children came from, and what you're going to do with them.

I agree....and you can choose to just have a bunch of enemies instead of getting annihilated in some sort of industrial or military accident.

monbvol

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #47 on: 21 January 2013, 15:12:17 »
I kind of miss that sort of stuff though.  The fluffy bits of where your life didn't go exactly as planned often had some great humorous gems in there.  Though I do not miss the power creep and imbalance.  So when I made my house rule version(made it before Companion came out) I stuck with the basic idea in Battletech where rolling higher is better but made everything a zero sum affair XP wise.

As to DTF versus PDF I've gotten a lot better about being able to read large amounts of text on a computer screen and actually remember pertinent details for longer than 5 seconds but DTF is still the way I need to go for retaining anything for a long period of time.

BirdofPrey

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #48 on: 21 January 2013, 17:32:25 »
If you want to reduce the impact of the outrigger rolls a bit, you could require the highest ones to pay for one or two hundred of those extra XP with negative traits (someone's bound to be jealous at your fortune), while letting the lowest couple of rolls lose some of that XP by being forced to pay for a positive trait or slight increase in edge whether they like it or not rather than having it all just removed from skills traits and attributes.

So the effect is similar, but the XP is sunk rather than gone which would buffer the extremes a bit.

CanopusIV

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #49 on: 21 January 2013, 17:36:33 »
The inclusion of lifepath boosts does also make character creation dicey in a gaming sense.  If you created the character independently and rolled very poorly, chances are you'd start over in order to get a few bonuses.  On the flip-side, it also makes the players stand out from the fold by having slightly higher xp to start with which can help explain why they find themselves at the center of stories and plot arcs.

If I were a GM and using the Companion's lifepath xp rules, I'd have everyone put their character together at the same time.  Of course, if you ARE stuck playing a dud character, that's not very fun as it is. 

The rules might be a case of xp inflation, but as long as it doesn't go crazy, I'm more than ok with that.

BirdofPrey

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #50 on: 21 January 2013, 17:51:38 »
Now we come to the only major issue I have with AToW, you are likely to spend an entire gaming session just putting your characters together, and it helps to have a calculator and several pieces of scratch paper (or what I do: spreadsheets).

I love the archetypes they put in AToWC, since they give a nice cheat sheet on making a good character, and similarly, the templates are great at fixing the above problem since you can just pick up and play with them, or you can spend a few minutes on some tweaks.  I wish there were more templates, though (turning the example characters from AToW into basic templates rather than fully fleshed characters would be great, and would cover many of the holes in the templates in the companion).

Bedwyr

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #51 on: 21 January 2013, 20:13:12 »
Now we come to the only major issue I have with AToW, you are likely to spend an entire gaming session just putting your characters together, and it helps to have a calculator and several pieces of scratch paper (or what I do: spreadsheets).

I love the archetypes they put in AToWC, since they give a nice cheat sheet on making a good character, and similarly, the templates are great at fixing the above problem since you can just pick up and play with them, or you can spend a few minutes on some tweaks.  I wish there were more templates, though (turning the example characters from AToW into basic templates rather than fully fleshed characters would be great, and would cover many of the holes in the templates in the companion).

Related to my NPC question earlier, I could see people volunteering their character builds (or NPC stat blocks and balancing suggestions) and eventually there might be enough of a collection that people could just pick up and tweak some characters to save time.
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Siden Pryde

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #52 on: 10 February 2013, 01:13:35 »
I know I am being impatient, but has there been any word on the release of the hard copy version?  A quick look around finds nothing, but I don't exactly spend much time browsing the forums so I could have missed something that never got posted on the main page.  The main site still lists 12/12/2012 as the street date, but Battlecorps still has it under pre-orders and my order is listed as pending.  Same for Interstellar Expeditions.  I ask because Amazon apparently has both ATOW Companion and Interstellar Expeditions available for purchase, not pre-order, and has for some time.  Is something wonky, on either supplier's end?

Tai Dai Cultist

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #53 on: 10 February 2013, 01:18:16 »
Related to my NPC question earlier, I could see people volunteering their character builds (or NPC stat blocks and balancing suggestions) and eventually there might be enough of a collection that people could just pick up and tweak some characters to save time.

I started a thread doing exactly this.  Remains to be seen if it'll be a success as a repository of tweakable characters.

Hammer

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #54 on: 10 February 2013, 11:59:15 »
I know I am being impatient, but has there been any word on the release of the hard copy version?  A quick look around finds nothing, but I don't exactly spend much time browsing the forums so I could have missed something that never got posted on the main page.  The main site still lists 12/12/2012 as the street date, but Battlecorps still has it under pre-orders and my order is listed as pending.  Same for Interstellar Expeditions.  I ask because Amazon apparently has both ATOW Companion and Interstellar Expeditions available for purchase, not pre-order, and has for some time.  Is something wonky, on either supplier's end?

I had the same question and emailed (Dawn @ customerservice.catalyst@gmail.com) about it.  She checked into it and the next day I got a Order Update showing it shipped.  I did get a tracking number and it shows something is coming.

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Bedwyr

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #55 on: 10 February 2013, 13:44:09 »
I started a thread doing exactly this.  Remains to be seen if it'll be a success as a repository of tweakable characters.

Thanks, I'll have a look and promote. I've gone to Pathfinder in the meantime (and that's charged the imagination of some friends more than a scifi setting). But I'll come back to this eventually. I do hope it becomes a resource.
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Siden Pryde

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #56 on: 10 February 2013, 13:53:48 »
I had the same question and emailed (Dawn @ customerservice.catalyst@gmail.com) about it.  She checked into it and the next day I got a Order Update showing it shipped.  I did get a tracking number and it shows something is coming.
Thanks.  Fired off an email, hope things get sorted quickly.

Siden Pryde

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #57 on: 25 February 2013, 17:02:59 »
Well, a thank you to Hammer and a BIG thank you to Dawn.  My copies of AToW Companion and Interstellar Expeditions both arrived today.  Now to start reading.  And plotting.  }:)

Col Toda

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #58 on: 03 April 2013, 04:16:01 »
I Think it is great .  It allows the land grant and economy of a common land grant make sense .
It makes the starting points for A Time of War Character Vary so they are less Cookie cutter
like .  Between 4800 - 6000 Base points . Makes Titles more clear ect .

Terminax

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Re: A Time of War Companion
« Reply #59 on: 04 April 2013, 11:08:28 »
Early on, I was a bit disappointed with the ATOW Companion but I've warmed up to it considerably since. It's a useful book.