Core Rulebook Splitting

[Colt Ward]

Yeah, one of the differences is if you played it before you can come back to nearly the same play.  You still have that Marauder from the 80s?  It can be plopped down on the table and you are going to mostly know how it operates.  As one of the louder players who objected to AS replacing TW as the focus/meta of the SBs and prefers the crunchy aspects or TW, I am not a fan of a total rules recreation.

[Firesprocket]

New editions every couple of years that invalidate what players had before.  That seems to have been the 40K model for a while.

New editions every couple of years that invalidate what players had before.  That seems to have been the 40K model for a while.

I'm not certain I see the same issues with D&D or 40k.  In D&D's case it has actually been around longer than BT and it was quite surprising that it in its first 25 years there were only 2 rules sets.  Mind you D&D has a long run through different setting and fiction, but outside of combat it had a very static rules set that level progression mattered very little outside of combat.  3rd ed did a decent enough job in consolidating advanced rule books of 2nd ed.  3rd had an 8 year run (counting 3.5) and 4th ran product for 6 years.  Both piled on a ton of resource books simply due to the expanse of various realms.  Neither of those runs seem excessively short.  I've skimmed the rules for 4th ed and 5th ed, but found them to simple for my tastes.  3.5 is far from dead though.  Folks that continue to want that line seem to still play the system or float over to Pathfinder.

40k I can't say much one way or the other.  It looks like they are every 3 to 4 years since 4th ed. which could be a long or short run depending on ones feelings about the product.  My issue with GW, going back to when I quit at the start of 3rd ed, was when a new edition would come out the power curve started with the first new army book out and the armies last out before the new ed simply wouldn't have a good long term experience.

On the whole though both systems streamlined after a time and BT needs to look at doing the same.  I'm fairly confident that the rules can be updated or consolidated.  I'm not certain that cutting books in half is the right course of action if any major revision were to occur to the game it would just be taking resources and tossing them away instead of using the funds more prudently.

[sadlerbw]

New editions every couple of years that invalidate what players had before.  That seems to have been the 40K model for a while.

I doubt that will happen. There is some core stuff that doesn’t ever really change much in BattleTech between the different editions. I imagine we will still have hexes, walk/run/jump will still be +1/+2/+3 to-hit, kicking will still be easy, etc. will infantry and vehicle rules stay the same? Will all the tech as of 3150 still be included? Will walking into water still carry the potential for a PSR that could result in a fall, breach, and instant kill? Those might be more iffy.

Also, most of the revisions haven’t invalidated recordsheets either, which is always helpful. At least, they have remained close enough to be playable. The layout and details on recordsheets have changed a bit over the years as tech was added and construction rules changed, but not so much as to invalidate them completely, generally speaking. I doubt any rules refresh after a time jump would invalidate all the existing recordsheets...but I guess they could.

Anyway, I’m just guessing about all this. I could be way off base and Total Warfare could be around for another decade or more. It just seems that, time-wise we are at least due for a “Total Warfare: Revised” if not a whole a whole new base rulebook, and the end of the Dark Age would be a convenient time to do something like that. I’m just reading tea leaves over here, so don’t worry too much about anything I’m saying just yet!

[monbvol]

Well I for one know no matter what I'll have the books I want on hand barring acts of god so CGL can do whatever they feel they must to make money and it won't bother me none.

[RifleMech]

They weren’t buying them and no they shouldn’t

You can't buy what's not available.

If the portion of people who use non-mechs and will use non-mechs in the future if they haven't yet were as large as you seem to think it is we would be seeing more support for non-mechs.

Also while yes there is enough demand for novels to be viable right now I am unconvinced that is a good indicator for how much of the actual player base actually cares about fluff.  At least when it comes time to put minins on mapsheets.  Again I feel it pretty safe to say if as many players cared about fluff the way you seem to think we'd be seeing a lot more support for certain product types that we aren't seeing right now.

Not including certain unit types in future TROs is not effectively retconning them out of existence.  Until players use certain unit types at all without house rules they still exist.

I grant there's always been more interest in mechs. That's why there's only a couple non mech TROs and those were done a long time ago. Those since have been mechs with other units.

Fluff makes the universe. Without the fluff we might as well be playing chess.

Their not being in a TRO doesn't make them retconned out of existance. Their being not included in the next rule book retcons them out of existance. Being in a TRO didn't make the Snowmobile Combat Mod Legal. Being in a rule book made it legal. It being absent from the next book retconned it out of existence. That's what makes me worry about the future. If TPTB are abandoning, not just unit types but key units for an era, like the Elemental for Clan Invasion, will those other units be in the next rule book?

I think one thing that the grognards like you aren't thinking about is that new players aren't going to be all that interested in 3025 as they're going to want the newest stuff.

As a new player I was interested in the universe as a whole. I wanted the newest stuff as soon as it came out but I also wanted to know what happened in the past. The more that was published the richer the universe became. As a grognard I would like that to continue. I understand that some will only want the newest but there are some who will want to explore the entire universe. Only they can't do that if the older books aren't available. It's like getting someone started on Star Wars Episode VIII and telling them that they can't see the previous seven episodes.

I doubt that will happen. There is some core stuff that doesn’t ever really change much in BattleTech between the different editions. I imagine we will still have hexes, walk/run/jump will still be +1/+2/+3 to-hit, kicking will still be easy, etc. will infantry and vehicle rules stay the same? Will all the tech as of 3150 still be included? Will walking into water still carry the potential for a PSR that could result in a fall, breach, and instant kill? Those might be more iffy.

Also, most of the revisions haven’t invalidated recordsheets either, which is always helpful. At least, they have remained close enough to be playable. The layout and details on recordsheets have changed a bit over the years as tech was added and construction rules changed, but not so much as to invalidate them completely, generally speaking. I doubt any rules refresh after a time jump would invalidate all the existing recordsheets...but I guess they could.

Anyway, I’m just guessing about all this. I could be way off base and Total Warfare could be around for another decade or more. It just seems that, time-wise we are at least due for a “Total Warfare: Revised” if not a whole a whole new base rulebook, and the end of the Dark Age would be a convenient time to do something like that. I’m just reading tea leaves over here, so don’t worry too much about anything I’m saying just yet!

It does feel like a new rule book should have come out a while ago. I hope that the layout is done better though. All the page flipping and being in multiple books gets annoying. I also hope that all the currant units are included.

As for the "bloat"  I can see the setting having a more unified tech level, with the currant level of tech being "retro". Nothing is removed. Nothing invalidated. Just rendered obsolete in the way Primitive Tech gave way to Standard. Like in the Third League PDF. The older equipment/units (Currant tech/units) still work. They're just not as good.  That's what I hope for any way.

[Ursus Maior]

New editions every couple of years that invalidate what players had before.  That seems to have been the 40K model for a while.

That is certainly not foreseeable for the future of BT. The rules hardly changed at all since 1984. Yes, some details and vehicle rules a lot, but if you'd picked up Battledroids in '84 and returned to the game with AGoAC, you'd still be able to recognize today's rules from the advanced rules of BD.

[Sartris]

You can't buy what's not available

Why weren’t they available? Poor sales velocity meant no money for reprints. The small print run fed the next small print run. It was a business death spiral. Or do you think they just arbitrarily decided not to reprint books they knew would sell? Your vision of the line is financial suicide.

[RifleMech]

Why weren’t they available? Poor sales velocity meant no money for reprints. The small print run fed the next small print run. It was a business death spiral. Or do you think they just arbitrarily decided not to reprint books they knew would sell? Your vision of the line is financial suicide.

Is it a death spiral to keep the rule book in the stores?

Is it financial suicide to correct, revise and reprint an existing book or spend countless hours rewriting the information to produce another book covering the same information/units?

[Sartris]

Is it a death spiral to keep the rule book in the stores?

To keep the book in stores means reprinting. That costs money that didn’t exist. Or do you think printers are like “sure pay us in two years when the money comes in!”

Is it financial suicide to correct, revise and reprint an existing book or spend countless hours rewriting the information to produce another book covering the same information/units?

Are you implying BMM was a bad idea? Because it did well enough to warrant a reprint - and one faster than almost any other book in the line.

You want things to be a certain way. They’re not going to be that way any more and we all are better off because of it. The Kickstarter is going to hit around $2m. They’ve made the game easier to get into than it’s been in twenty years. We’re better off.

[Maingunnery]

Is it a death spiral to keep the rule book in the stores?

Is it financial suicide to correct, revise and reprint an existing book or spend countless hours rewriting the information to produce another book covering the same information/units?

Businesses must meet demand as efficiently as possible to be profitable. The vast majority of players are only interested in 'Mechs, a rulebook at meets their requirements with the least amount of excessive pages is cheaper to print (thus reach more customers per equal investment) and will be more accessible.

Also the poor sales velocity of the old rulebooks meant that stores don't want them in their stores.
They invest space and money and they want a return on investment as soon as possible.

[monbvol]

I grant there's always been more interest in mechs. That's why there's only a couple non mech TROs and those were done a long time ago. Those since have been mechs with other units.

Fluff makes the universe. Without the fluff we might as well be playing chess.

Their not being in a TRO doesn't make them retconned out of existance. Their being not included in the next rule book retcons them out of existance. Being in a TRO didn't make the Snowmobile Combat Mod Legal. Being in a rule book made it legal. It being absent from the next book retconned it out of existence. That's what makes me worry about the future. If TPTB are abandoning, not just unit types but key units for an era, like the Elemental for Clan Invasion, will those other units be in the next rule book?

Fluff may make the universe but it does not make the game.

Sure there is overlap and it does annoy me that it is in this strange middle ground it currently is where you can't recreate feats from the lore on the tabletop but many rules outside the RPG only work if you go with the official setting.  I'd love it if the rules would shift toward one extreme or the other, at least a bit more.  But that isn't really important to this discussion.

Ultimately based off what products we're getting and have gotten for a while it is just clear that the majority of fans who are actually spending money only care about mechs, will only ever care about mechs, and don't care about fluff.

Businesses must meet demand as efficiently as possible to be profitable. The vast majority of players are only interested in 'Mechs, a rulebook at meets their requirements with the least amount of excessive pages is cheaper to print (thus reach more customers per equal investment) and will be more accessible.

Also the poor sales velocity of the old rulebooks meant that stores don't want them in their stores.
They invest space and money and they want a return on investment as soon as possible.

Which is another important aspect to this discussion.  It is important how fast product sells, not just how many units.

And yes that is still an important aspect to PDF and PoD products too.

[Colt Ward]

Fluff may make the universe but it does not make the game.

Sure there is overlap and it does annoy me that it is in this strange middle ground it currently is where you can't recreate feats from the lore on the tabletop but many rules outside the RPG only work if you go with the official setting.  I'd love it if the rules would shift toward one extreme or the other, at least a bit more.  But that isn't really important to this discussion.

Ultimately based off what products we're getting and have gotten for a while it is just clear that the majority of fans who are actually spending money only care about mechs, will only ever care about mechs, and don't care about fluff.

I think part of the reason fluff products are hurting is b/c they are better to supplement novels and while we have gotten a few bits over the last two years, the closest we had to 'spine' books were the two novellas regarding Julian Davion & Roderick Steiner.  Both of those, to me, where a bit jarring for the setting b/c Julian was presented differently than he had been during the previous MWDA novels- and he was a POV character in 4 or 5 books so he was pretty established.  For the Lyran book, The Anvil, a key relationship & character changes and we get some off details.

But outside of Bonfire of Worlds, we have not had a novel drive the story along . . . and IMO its better for the novels to drive the story than SB fluff.  The SB fluff is there to expand on details that do not fit into the narrative.

[Sartris]

the spine novel plot-driving of yore pushed out ~3-5 books per year between '91-'02. a concerted effort now could probably get two out per year, which would be ok for our purposes. 

[monbvol]

I think part of the reason fluff products are hurting is b/c they are better to supplement novels and while we have gotten a few bits over the last two years, the closest we had to 'spine' books were the two novellas regarding Julian Davion & Roderick Steiner.  Both of those, to me, where a bit jarring for the setting b/c Julian was presented differently than he had been during the previous MWDA novels- and he was a POV character in 4 or 5 books so he was pretty established.  For the Lyran book, The Anvil, a key relationship & character changes and we get some off details.

But outside of Bonfire of Worlds, we have not had a novel drive the story along . . . and IMO its better for the novels to drive the story than SB fluff.  The SB fluff is there to expand on details that do not fit into the narrative.

I always got more of a sense that it was a golden age that allowed fluff heavy products flourish not that novels were around.  If anything that we didn't have novels for a good chunk of time but Battletech the game survived some pretty dark times just shows how small the overlap of those who read the novels and play the game actually is.

Also I've read enough of the old novels to know inconsistent portrayal of characters and relationships isn't exclusive to the Dark Age novels cited.

[Colt Ward]

True, the DA novels had a huge problem with a single character as is well talked about . . . BUT . . . aside from that one section (best ignored IMO), and the recovery efforts the characters are pretty consistently written.  To be honest Cynthy's plot change is more of a problem than Julian's behavior since we do not really get much of a POV for him since Bonfire in . . . 42?  Lots of miles on his journey since we had that last meeting.

[Sartris]

you can tell there was plotbook fatigue in the late 2000s. sourcebooks started jumping around - 3067 as a setting didn't get fully set up before going to the jihad and then we got that whole star league side story. and the 3145 stalled before barely getting going. all this time the old tros are getting redone, though you can see they had tired of the Upgrades approach and just went with straight reprints of 3060 and 67. a steady feed of novels in the FASA days at least stabilized and standardized plot advancement.

we discovered the limits of both catching people up to the overstretched timeline and trying to keep things in print. it didn't help that the imposition of the dark age made anything after 3067 deeply unpopular. or at least the perception was that - and in an age where someone with a mild interest poking around can get scared off by a handful of negative posts and reviews, perception is reality.

 i've got 3039 as the only tro with a second run - which means no, there was not clamoring among the masses for old tros and zero incentive to keep them in print. that those print runs were tiny, with those books being far more rare than their 90s predecessors - 3050U cost me more on the secondary market than 3050, 3050 rev, 3058, and the fanpro 3058 upgrade combined. hunting for physical copies to fill out my collection is what clued me into how dire things were getting. i used to think that things were ok because the output was similar to what it had been in years past, but its pretty clear that the physical volume of that output was greatly diminished. mid-decade a good portion of the IP was PDF only. they couldn't afford to reprint the intro box nor were the books selling enough/fast enough to justify reprints.

so they shut down the line and refocused. is that giving everyone everything that they want? no. and frankly, tough luck. maybe they'll come back around to the missing stuff and maybe they won't - but i'm pleased that there's at least a plan in place built from the ground up to create a clear pathway in an attractive package for new players. the old guard had their chance to carry the line and didn't. i'm itching for new sourcebooks but the house needs a new foundation and some of the rooms aren't going to be occupied for a few years. maybe that wing they added ten years ago isn't salvageable and just gets torn down. at this point, i'm much more content with business decisions that keep the lights on sustainably more than making sure every single aspect of my feelgood is serviced for my benefit.

stop printing books that don't make money. split the rulebooks. retire them. recast as many mechs as possible in new art. if you haven't noticed, people like the new minis.

[monbvol]

*nod*

I can't deny even in this ever increasingly electronic society we live in that we didn't have print runs of the core book going more consistently has impacted things but that should be a bit telling about how razor thin the margin for error has been for CGL when it comes to Battletech.

[Sartris]

I think PoD can help. But it’s neither and instant fix nor a cure all. Cubby related that getting house Arano up on drivethru was a three month ordeal. It would be nice to get the “base core” out there - TW, TM, TO1&2, and BMM. Additionally ER 3052 and maybd 62 to support the clan box (assuming they sold well enough to justify it). More novels and any future sourcebook releases would also be good. Something to create a readily available base.

[nckestrel]

I believe the hope is that much of that 3 month ordeal isn’t every PoD, but that there was an initial learning curve and possibly new processes need to be in place.
Hopefully?

[Sartris]

That’s good to hear. I also don’t know about up front costs. If drivethru or amazon only take a cut out of the sale and not charge substantial startup fees it could be more broadly applicable

[Colt Ward]

Well . . . nearly 7000 people got a free PDF of ER 3052, so I am not sure that is going to be a seller . . . lol.

[Sartris]

yeah there is that...

Maybe there are enough curmudgeons who like the book but want it in dtf (I have no idea what constitutes enough)

[Ursus Maior]

Well . . . nearly 7000 people got a free PDF of ER 3052, so I am not sure that is going to be a seller . . . lol.

I like my carbon copies.

[beachhead1985]

I'd suggest that a worthwhile endevour would be to amputate and collect all the construction rules in one document and make that a PDF-only.

I am morally certain we have some fans out there still working out their customs and mods on scratch pads, so this isn't perfect as-is. Printing all that off wouldn't be much cheaper.

But this would save page count that is *normally* already only used with the aid of a computer anyways.

[Euphonium]

The split-volume Tac Ops has been added to the Kickstarter addons options at $40 per volume. How does that compare to the cost of the old single volume? I only bought the pdf

[Sartris]

If the partition is indeed the  clean Solomon Chop™️ Ray indicated, the rules book is going to be pretty slim - about 110-115 pages. The advanced units and equipment section will be around 285-300 (slightly smaller than TW)

The set is more. I want to say TO was $50. But unless you really like the full weather and advanced movement rules, or some of the weapon options like rapid fire ACs, the rules volume is probably skippable. Some of those are in BMM now

[Greatclub]

That's kinda a painful price at the same cost as TW or BMM.

I know that they sell less units than either of those, but still a bit eye-raising.

[Sartris]

The second volume I see at $40. It’s the same size as TW. The other one? Not thrilled about the $40 tag

[Daemion]

Honestly, if there were to be a reformat, the biggest thing happens to always be new equipment.  I wonder if equipment guides, by era, wouldn't work as the format for rules expansions.

[Sartris]

All in one place with dates. No one wants to have to remember whether the iHGR is sorted by intro or common date