Battletech-slash-Magic

[Terminax]

I've tinkered around with making an adhoc homebrew fantasy conversion of Battletech in the past, but now I've decided to go ahead and make it into a full-fledged game with rules and setting.

The setting basically takes all five of the Great Houses we know and recasts them as fantasy human empires. Each empire is also attuned to certain elemental magics: Wind/Water (in the form of ice) for the House Steiner/Lyran Commonwealth stand-in, fire/life for the House Kurita/Draconis Combine stand-in, life/earth for the House Davion/Federated Suns stand-in, earth/death for the House Liao/Capellan Confederation stand-in and wind/fire for the House Marik/Free Worlds League stand-in. Not that any elemental magics are forbidden outright to anybody, just that each faction favors a certain style.

The lesser Inner Sphere powers: Comstar, the Free Rasalhague Republic and St. Ives Compact and the Major Periphery States also will have their counterparts. Comstar gets represented by a reclusive religious order which serves as arbiters between the empires and controls the fantasy equivalent to the HPG network. The Taurian Concordat will be a Dwarven nation and the Magistracy of Canopus will be a Wood Elf nation. Pirates will be cast as Orcs and Goblins.

As for the Battlemechs, they will be magical engines of war - the ultimate expression of magical might and artificers craft. Attuned to the few mortals that can control them, they are crafted in the shape of giants (biped) or beasts (quads). Battletech lasers become force bolts, ACs become fireball launchers and PPCs become lightling bolt throwers and so on. Instead of measuring heat as a limitator, the fantasy version tracks reality - the more magic you perform, the more you affect local reality - instead of ammo explosions, you get reality snapping back, instead of shut downs, you get spell locked and so forth. Jump Jets become teleportation, stealth - invisibility and so forth. Beasts will generally be designed around vehicles for large ones, Battle Armor for small ones. Infantry stays about the same. Aerospace Fighters will be Dragons.

Any interest?

[Nargrakhan]

Aren't magic in BattleTech mechanics already done in the non-canon Welcome to the Nebula California sourcebook?

[Terminax]

Not really. Aren't I allowed to do my own thing?

[Sharpnel]

What about the Disney Princess Holiday TRO

[Terminax]

Do I come over to your threads Shrapnel, and denigrate your ideas?

[Nahuris]

It's got some interesting feel to it -- and I kind of like the idea of mechs being giant piloted golems.....
Not sure, overall, though.. but only because I tend to keep my genres separate. My only other part I might dislike is scale -- one of my minor complaints with battletech is that the universe is mech-dimensional, rather than human-dimensional ---- everything is always figured in mech scale, rather than human scale --- so rather than factor large war machines in human terms, we tend to think of humans as the small unit.

Nahuris

[Sharpnel]

Do I come over to your threads Shrapnel, and denigrate your ideas?

I see no hint of denigration in a simple question.

[Legion]

So Terminax, do you envision modified game mechanics in your universe, or is it just a style change?  Either way, sounds nifty.

[Terminax]

A bit of both. Some mechanics just BEG to be changed, because hey, it's MAGIC! But I'm trying to preserve the core of things as much as possible.



Okay, I'm going to hell for that one.

I've been fiddling around exactly how I want to present things so I haven't tossed out anything yet but I hope to have an update soon.

[Daemion]

I'm curious. Are you going to be coming up with a whole slew of new units? For that matter, as constructs of artifice, will each Mech practically be unique? Or, will one faction have a monopoly on manufacturing processes for a single design that can be modded by the 'wearer'?

Suddenly, I have visions of Visionaries.