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