If Battletech campaigns were influenced by Pathfinder RPG adventure paths?

[bobthecoward]

I was thinking about the classic, players run mercenaries with a GM. I think this is pretty popular? I think it is fair to say that it has some influence from D&D and other RPGs, where the battles are designed by the GM and bespoke to the players. If the players are now a battalion, the GM won't have a battalion vs lance battle nor a battle where the opponent has 300% BV with no options for the players to retreat. Is that fair?

And I think this idea carries over to the chaos tracks where there are statements like "opponents are 125% of the players forces." Whether the players are a lance or a regiment, it is that 125%.

This never felt perfect for me, and I think I have an idea why. D&D isn't my idea of the best execution of campaigns. I much prefer Pathfinder RPG. And that game is popular for their Adventure Paths. These are traditionally a string of related adventures telling a larger story and often running from low level to high level, with the expectation that it could run a year to a year and a half. There are not many similar D&D products.

I think it resonates for a few reasons. One is that anyone who plays the campaign faces the same opponents as people around the world, creating a shared experience. Sure, scenarios and small campaign books do that in many games, but few commit to doing it over a year. Also, players generally have levels similar at each point in the campaign making the battles relatively competitive regardless of who is running it.

I don't know if something like that could influence battletech, or if it is too binding over people "building" up their mercenary force. Would people like a long campaign where week 1 they are fighting a lance of scorpions and week 40 they are fighting 11k BV of MI6? I would, but then again, Pathfinder is less popular than D&D, so what do I know.

[Prospernia]

Odd, I was thinking of giving Mechwarrior RPG, NPC's alignments like in D&D, but use Paladium's Robotech's.

[epic 2.0]

I suppose the first question to really ask is, how many battletech players are into campaigns that last that long, with the equivalent being from Green to Legendary/Super Elite?

Is the typical battletech player mostly just someone that plays one-off games, or even a small string of games, or are they someone that is willing to play a campaign that lasts years?  Sure, there are a few on this forum (I've run several long term campaigns).  That is probably not the norm, imo. 

The number one reason being lethality; in both D&D and Pathfinder, characters have lots of options to survive and/or be resurrected.  While Edge can help, the fact is, battletech is FAR more lethal than these games.  One good headcap ends the campaign for that player's character, whereas being reduced to negative hp in the other 2 games can be healed with any good healer class quite quickly.  The games are designed for more heroic play, thus favouring not killing the characters, and with magic involved, that's easy enough to make it work. 

An AC20 to the head, on the other hand, is a bit harder to justify survival.  Sure, you can play with skin-of-teeth ejection rules, but even there, the character take... a LOT of damage if memory serves (4? 5? hits?  without looking at TO).  You can also house-rule things, I suppose, and hey, the Manei Domini had to come from somewhere! 

In the end, there are already options otherwise; the narrative campaign out of Campaign Ops is basically a version of Adventure Paths.  It can easily be changed to a format of a long-term campaign rather than a shorter.  Each narrative campaign would be perhaps one long operation on a world (ie chapter of a Path) leading towards the grand conclusion as an example. 

That being said, how I run a battletech campaign is very different from how I run my pathfinder or D&D campaigns.  It has to be, based on not just the rules, but also the flavour of the setting itself.

[Hellraiser]

I suppose the first question to really ask is, how many battletech players are into campaigns that last that long, with the equivalent being from Green to Legendary/Super Elite?
...
That being said, how I run a battletech campaign is very different from how I run my pathfinder or D&D campaigns.  It has to be, based on not just the rules, but also the flavour of the setting itself.

I love a good campaign and enjoy character growth.

THAT SAID, I can say I've made characters over the years for MW1, MW2, & MW3.   (Though I never played the MW3 one)  ..........
 And while my memory may not be great, I'm pretty sure we never once played with the MW1 or MW2 characters as actual characters in a "RPG" IE, Dismounted, IE, NPC Reactions, Etc etc type situation.

We used the RPG characters just to track things like XP & Skill Ups & Special Abilities/Titles etc etc.

All of our "Gaming" in 2 different campaigns over 2 decades was all done as normal BT scale games.

Which is the thing really, the MW-RPG to me, never really came across as a great "RPG" game.

If I was to ever play an actual RPG "character based" game I'd much prefer ShadowRun or D&D.

[SteelRaven]

Battletech and it's related RPs are not a Adventure games like so many other RPGs and that's where the comparisons run diverge dramatically. Battletech and its related content are tactical on the smaller scale and that's something adventure games tend to steer away from. D&D/Pathfinder are built around exploration and stomping a trash mob until you get to a boss monster. Battletech, it will always be a war game at it's core so every battle has the potential to be a boss monster of it's own. Found TW campaign rules to be detailed enough that your half way to a RPG already, it's what you do outside of a mech that trips people up. Is your game going to be about a House Unit? A Merc Group? A Pirate group? Solaris jocks? This will determine the story/narrative/RP aspect of the game. House units will be taking orders so you wont be going on your own adventures like in D&D or Pathfinder. You can always try the political intrigue angel; your players need to find a traitor, stop a assassination, ect. Mercenaries have more freedom so you can go on raids and search for lost tech which will be closer to other adventure theme RPs and they is both allot of supplements for mercs and a couple of good examples with the HBS game and how MW4 allows you to choose missions, inserting yourself into canon story events. As for the RP mechanics; I would also suggest looking at Destiny, it's a more simplistic of the BT RPG systems but it's going to be easier adding rules to a simpler game than jail breaking D&D or Traveller to run a game with mechs.         

[thedancingjoker]

Honestly I'd probably buy a RPG adventure path for Battletech, that sounds like fun, but does run into some of the problems with Battletech as an RPG (how to manage one player who built a mechwarrior and one who built an infantryman so that both have fun in the same session).

[Inxentas]

I have to admit that I might not know enough of ATOW or MWD gameplay, but I do run Pathfinder 2nd Edition regularly. Adventure paths offer context and narrative and aren't designed for a huge amount of sandboxing, which opposes the "old skool" gameplay of fantasy TTRPGs where the focus was more on making fat stacks of gold and levelling up.

I don't see any reason why one couldn't come up with an Adventure path. Perhaps even use Alpha Strike to speed up combat unit granularity isn't the focus. Lethality needs not be an issue if the players all agree that this campaign is about the force, with a kill the meat, save the metal kind of attitude. The PCs should then identify with the mechs or their companies leadership, not with each and every meatbag they hire.

Honestly I'd probably buy a RPG adventure path for Battletech, that sounds like fun, but does run into some of the problems with Battletech as an RPG (how to manage one player who built a mechwarrior and one who built an infantryman so that both have fun in the same session).

The primary problem I see here is that the GM (and the PCs) should be familiar with combined arms if you want to do more then just mech' combat. I would probably decide that the warrior is going to lead a lance of BM's and the infantery player is going to lead the Infantry and possibly some vehicles... but in essence they are just two players at one side taking on the GM's OpFor. In terms of old skool DnD all of the named people could also be regarded as the followers a 2nd edition Dnd Fighter would accrue, not the actual PCs. Think in terms of games like Necromunda: instead of 1 character, you control a bunch and perhaps there's one special dude that represents the players "avatar".

[Karasu]

Honestly I'd probably buy a RPG adventure path for Battletech, that sounds like fun, but does run into some of the problems with Battletech as an RPG (how to manage one player who built a mechwarrior and one who built an infantryman so that both have fun in the same session).

Honestly, that's a session 0 question.  If you want to do an RPG campaign, the first thing is setting the parameters around what the campaign is going to be about, and thus what character concepts are valid.

The most obvious adventure path option would be Solaris VII - start in Division 5, and work your way up to being in the Open.  Along you way you have all sorts of options for shenanigans with organised crime, intelligence agencies, rival stables etc.  Heck, you could even do something like a dungeon crawl by discovering an old Star League facility (they're apparently everywhere).

[bobthecoward]

I have to admit that I might not know enough of ATOW or MWD gameplay, but I do run Pathfinder 2nd Edition regularly. Adventure paths offer context and narrative and aren't designed for a huge amount of sandboxing, which opposes the "old skool" gameplay of fantasy TTRPGs where the focus was more on making fat stacks of gold and levelling up.

I don't see any reason why one couldn't come up with an Adventure path. Perhaps even use Alpha Strike to speed up combat unit granularity isn't the focus. Lethality needs not be an issue if the players all agree that this campaign is about the force, with a kill the meat, save the metal kind of attitude. The PCs should then identify with the mechs or their companies leadership, not with each and every meatbag they hire.

I think the best benefit of an adventure path is the shared experience across multiple tables over a long experience. Pathfinder society also does it for one shots.

But Pathfinder is number 2 in the industry,so there is a reason d&d doesn't do APs.  It doesn't sound like people are doing old school games that much, but whatever new school D&D is, it is working.

How would I address the lethality? I would probably say for every 6 pilot hits (with a cockpit destroyed always counting as 6 additional hits), you roll on a body location table and each time you get that location the condition gets worse. 3 rolls to the head? memory loss 4? slurred speech. I always thought of a MechWarrior career having injuries that are some combination of fighter pilot, NASCAR driver, and MMA fighter.

[thedancingjoker]

I think the best benefit of an adventure path is the shared experience across multiple tables over a long experience. Pathfinder society also does it for one shots.

But Pathfinder is number 2 in the industry,so there is a reason d&d doesn't do APs.  It doesn't sound like people are doing old school games that much, but whatever new school D&D is, it is working.

How would I address the lethality? I would probably say for every 6 pilot hits (with a cockpit destroyed always counting as 6 additional hits), you roll on a body location table and each time you get that location the condition gets worse. 3 rolls to the head? memory loss 4? slurred speech. I always thought of a MechWarrior career having injuries that are some combination of fighter pilot, NASCAR driver, and MMA fighter.

For the record D&D 5e DOES do APs, they just call them something else and don't do as many.

[bobthecoward]

For the record D&D 5e DOES do APs, they just call them something else and don't do as many.

The anthologies, right? I'm not too familiar with them, but they seem like strung together one shots or based around a hub?

[thedancingjoker]

Things Like the Curse of Strahd, which is a short-ish campaign that runs from level 1 to 10 as a single adventure. Or Storm King's Thunder, or Vecna: eye of ruin.  None of these looks to be as long as a full Pathfinder AP, but are longer than previous published one-shots D&D did before.

[DevianID]

So, for non-RPG content, the campaign books are fantastic for this.  You don't level up a character, but instead a merc-type unit via the chaos campaign.  The mercenaries box set includes a 2-5 mission "beginner" campaign, at which point you can pick up the turning point books or a larger volume like total chaos.

I run them weekly for a group, where every player is a pilot in a chaos campaign, managing their slice of WP.  You get skill upgrades, pilot special abilities, lance specializations, ect, so without picking up the RPG book you can build pretty interesting characters to tackle that weeks mission/objective.

The jihad campaign book is pretty long, and you will definately hit 'endgame' level pilots.  But, because battletech is lethal, its more like xcom where if you die you gotta either reset the campaign or train up a rookie.  The 'new player' respawn is more acceptable then in traditional RPGs, as you have more characters to start with and death is more real/expected in the setting.

[Aotrs Commander]

Things Like the Curse of Strahd, which is a short-ish campaign that runs from level 1 to 10 as a single adventure. Or Storm King's Thunder, or Vecna: eye of ruin.  None of these looks to be as long as a full Pathfinder AP, but are longer than previous published one-shots D&D did before.

Depends on how far you got back. Some of these AD&D ones are more-or-less APs in their own right. Night Below was "1st to 10th and beyond" and when converted into 3.5 made for a campaign that ran basically like an AP from 1st to 17th.

AD&D also have numerous modules which were intended to be strung together into a campaign. (E.g Temple of Elemental Evil, Scourge of the Slae Lords, Queen of the Spiders, for a (says-on-the-tin) 1st to 14th, and in terms of AD&D advancement, that's probably as much as a 1st-20th in time involement. The AP was a 3.5 invention, but it wasn't an entirely new idea.

[bobthecoward]

So, for non-RPG content, the campaign books are fantastic for this.  You don't level up a character, but instead a merc-type unit via the chaos campaign.  The mercenaries box set includes a 2-5 mission "beginner" campaign, at which point you can pick up the turning point books or a larger volume like total chaos.

I run them weekly for a group, where every player is a pilot in a chaos campaign, managing their slice of WP.  You get skill upgrades, pilot special abilities, lance specializations, ect, so without picking up the RPG book you can build pretty interesting characters to tackle that weeks mission/objective.

The jihad campaign book is pretty long, and you will definately hit 'endgame' level pilots.  But, because battletech is lethal, its more like xcom where if you die you gotta either reset the campaign or train up a rookie.  The 'new player' respawn is more acceptable then in traditional RPGs, as you have more characters to start with and death is more real/expected in the setting.

My fundamental objection to the chaos campaigns is the completely open ended nature of OpFor construction.  The endgame can be played with a player force of any size or quality.

But in a traditional RPG game, the end boss specifically says dragon with these stats.

[SteelRaven]

My fundamental objection to the chaos campaigns is the completely open ended nature of OpFor construction.  The endgame can be played with a player force of any size or quality.

But in a traditional RPG game, the end boss specifically says dragon with these stats.

There are no boss monsters in Battletech. Being a war game vs a adventure, how you build your forces can lead to very different game play so plopping something like a Omega at the end of a mission might not only not make sense but can end up being a very bad mission overall. D&D tries to make each class different but balanced so buy the time you characters level up, they should all be on the same footing as the boss monster. Battletech, your MechWarrior will gain in skills but a Wolfhound pilot will be having a completely different experience from a Marauder pilot and you need to build your OpFor accordingly.

[bobthecoward]

There are no boss monsters in Battletech. Being a war game vs a adventure, how you build your forces can lead to very different game play so plopping something like a Omega at the end of a mission might not only not make sense but can end up being a very bad mission overall. D&D tries to make each class different but balanced so buy the time you characters level up, they should all be on the same footing as the boss monster. Battletech, your MechWarrior will gain in skills but a Wolfhound pilot will be having a completely different experience from a Marauder pilot and you need to build your OpFor accordingly.

Or you do it differently and have the players progress through skills and forces under their control like a classic rpg

[idea weenie]

You'd also want missions where speed is an issue.

I.e. if the GM's pursuit force is capable of speed 4/6, then taking a 3/5 Mech is a bad idea, unless the 3/5 Mech can damage enough of the pursuers enough to slow them down to 2/3.


For 'boss enemies', how about an enemy pilot with excellent P/G skills plus lots of special abilities and their Mech having extra traits?  You can't really loot the enemy pilot's skills, and the extra traits could be damaged in the battle making them useless.


Of course you'd also want some sort of schmoozing in order for the characters to get a Title so they can try to get their first landhold.  With this Property the players can think of ways to improve the location and for the GM to give them headaches protecting it.  Just give the players what the GM feels would be right, rather than sticking to the Property Trait rules from AToW Corebook, Landhold rules from AToW Companion, or the ISaW Infrastructure rules from the older Interstellar Operations book.