Serious Interest Check: BattleTech/Mechwarrior?

[slug]

honestly? doesn't matter as long as the gameplay loop is good

what i'd like to see is a quasi-cityRP with mechwarrior characteristics. a small town colony out in bumfuck wherever, with players representing mercenaries of all walks of life trying to make it in the backdrop of an interstellar war, hiring themselves out to monolithic opposing factions that are mostly portrayed off-screen/through event characters. give everyone the freedom to define themselves - to choose their benefactor based on ideology or pay (or both and then some) & end up on opposing sides of future conflicts by pure force of capital. blow each other up by day, meet each other in bars by night. make wagers on which side's winning the next skirmish and talk trash to the guy next to you about how you turned his Locust into a tincan last week. have him rob you outside to pay for repairs. start a feud. live by the mecha and die by the mecha


lore wise clanners v inner sphere is the most accessible to me just cuz i used to play MWO a lot. the other games i'm not familiar with

taco n banana battletech rp server 2029

seriously though that’s exactly the kind of premise i was thinking of. less membership of a particular clan or house but mercenaries that exchangeably represent one of these cosmically represented forces in the system

 

[Aesop]

@Appetite Ruining Kebab @RegnossToii Aesop

When would you guys have this set/who would we as players represent, do you think? The MechAssault titles, albeit somewhat removed from the main Battletech canon, places the player in the ranks of Clan Wolf during the Word of Blake’s dominion over Terra.

I’m wondering if instead it might be interesting to set this during the Clan Invasion, and have one side represent the clanners and the other side represent the houses of the Inner Sphere.

word of blake era feels like peak desperation.. great for grim tone, but it does narrow the player identities to 'blakist vs literally everyone else.' that's not a bad thing at all, esp for an RR. Clan invasion on the other hand is instantly recognizable and easier to introduce to players unfamiliar with the universe. inner sphere holding the line against impossible odds is epic story telling and good opportunities for large scale events.

building on kebab's proposal too, maybe Solaris would fit into the picture? you get the everyday drama of mercs, crews, and politicking in the streets, but with the looming draw of the gladiatorial arena as a setpiece for conflict entanglements to be settled. it also lays neatly over whatever macro conflict might be going on in the background depending on the era. gives a ton of flexibility to tell those smaller character driven stories while still tapping into the larger backdrop. offers a sizeable amount of backstory choices since the arena is backed by the Houses/corps... also.. gambling?!

 

[slug]

I think Solaris or the Clan Invasion would both be good for an RR, I don’t know how long I’d want for it to go but it could reasonably last a while if it’s something people like enough.

If we’re really musing about the idea of a longform setting in this universe, though, I’d probably want it to take after TRP2 where the setting was able to be moved depending on the week/month, with different maps representing different planets.

Perhaps one map features a conflict between the Draconis Combine of House Kurita and the Lyran Commonwealth of House Steiner, and players can take up contracts with either side or somewhere in-between. Whereas the next map could be an entire different set of foes waging war against one another and that’s just the hotspot for contracts drawing mercenaries in from all over the system.

 

[slug]

I think something that really appeals to me about the potential mechanics of this as a setting is that your mech getting scrapped in a battle doesn’t necessitate that your character dies as a result, and NLR as a concept almost entirely disappears. Battles lost can be recollected in roleplay and used to fuel future engagements with your old nemesis.

Yes, your Thor getting turned into cinders and smoke renders your mech temporarily inoperable, but the standing etiquette between mechwarriors and the scarcity of lostech lets you get back into the fight another day. Either you eject and withdraw or you get ransomed as a prisoner to the highest bidder that entraps you in a new contract. I think that’d be a revolutionary shake-up in how combat and roleplay intermix in contrast with settings we’ve done before.

 

[slug]

Some off the dome thoughts/ideas while on lunch:

• Mechs would pretty much exclusively pull from the roster of mechs featured in Mechwarrior 4 (2000) as these mechs are relatively low on performance impact and its also what TankNut is working on for his little sideproject.
• Secondary inventory to represent what mech parts your character owns; these aren’t something you have physically that can be dropped in person but rather represent what you have in storage or something.
• Each mech has its own equipment slots kind of like what we see in eternity for characters maybe? Weapons, jumpjets, heat sinks, gyros/actuators, weapons (lasers, missiles, ballistics, flamers, plasma PPCs, the works)
• Upon taking critical damage your mech becomes disabled/incapacitated, and will require you to exit or eject.
• (Longform) Donation option for custom paintjobs on mechs?
• Props could be very similar to what we usually expect from Terminator or Halo but with a few Battletech specific things sprinkled here and there. Likely some amount of outpost/building stuff to allow for setting up settlements on maps that typically don’t have any.
• Combat is typically a one “life” deal but the health/armor/damage numbers would facilitate longer slug-it-out fights