Taharqa’s Corner

Over the past few days I have been testing out a wonderful little PHP/MySQL program developed by Juho Savela (BitterOne on the BT boards). The best way to describe it is as a content management system/blog for organizing a mercenary campaign. You can see his campaign here. After much begging and pleading, he agreed to send me a copy of his files, so I could use them on my own campaign.  I am still fiddling around with it, but you can check out the new look for the Flaming Devil Monkeys here. I will be posting all campaign related stuff there rather than on this blog in the future.

We have also started up a sourceforge project for this little tool and we will be working to make the thing a bit more flexible and generalizable. I also want to add several features myself.  Enjoy.

Taharqa Flaming Devil Monkeys, My Campaigns, Projects

As I write this, the hearing in Seattle today on Catalyst Game Labs’ future is about to begin. For those who have not been keeping score, three parties are seeking for force CGL into bankruptcy in order to recover money they feel is owed to them. In dollar terms, the primary claimant is Wildfire Press, the creators of the CthulhuTech game, who claim that CGL has not paid them royalties which they claim amount to $37K. The second claimant is Paul Stansel, the father of David Stansel-Garner (a former CGL employee), who gave CGL a $20K loan. The third claimant is some guy named Sugarboard who claims that CGL owes him money for work (not freelancing). The underlying action (catalyst?) that set all of this in motion was that Loren L. Coleman, one of the co-owners of CGL, took out a rather massive amount of money (no one knows exactly, but most guess somewhere upward of $600K) from CGL’s warchest through unauthorized withdrawals, and that has left the company capital-depleted and unable to pay all of its debts in a timely manner.

CGL has a response to all of these claims, but at this point its basically “he said, she said” and only the production of documents and testimony at the hearing is going to sort out who is right and who is wrong. So, at the very least, there is a non-trivial probability that CGL will go under, making the debate over the license renewal a moot point. Of course, it will probably take some time for the court case to sort itself out, so the waiting game begins.

I have been silent on this blog about the CGL situation. Some people might have seen a few of my posts on the various forum threads where this crisis is being discussed, and likely have tagged me as “pro-CGL.” That is probably truer than the alternative, but the honest reason why I have remained (mostly) silent is that I am (1) very ambivalent about the whole mess, and (2) I think it is best to withhold judgement in the absence of facts. The rush to judgement by many in the community (particularly the Shadowrun community) has really bothered me, and I can’t help feeling that some level of schadenfreude is involved.

What I find particularly irksome is the tendency of some to declare anyone currently affiliated with Catalyst Game Labs a “bad guy.” It is worth noting two things here. First, the only inappropriate (that’s right, I will not call it “embezzlement”) action here was on the part of Loren Coleman. Second, the people most negatively affected by this action are the other people still at CGL (owners and employees). The only real negative outcomes for fans are publishing delays and the uncertainty associated with the transfer of the license to a new company. The single person most negatively affected by all of this is Randall Bills (because it was his share of the money as a co-owner that Coleman dipped into), and yet he has probably taken more flak on the boards than Coleman himself.

A lot of the hostility is directed at Randall because he is letting Coleman remain with the company rather than canning him. This critique, of course, ignores the fact that Randall can’t get rid of Coleman, because they are co-owners of the company. As I see it, his only real alternative would be to reform a new company without Coleman and compete for the license. But he doesn’t actually have the capital for that does he now? If people would read between the lines here, they would see that Randall is doing his best to save his company in a strategically sensible fashion, moral issues of right and wrong aside.

The bottom line is that, whatever we may think of Coleman’s actions, it is in our best interest (as fans) that CGL survive. I will admit that I have my concerns about the future of CGL with Coleman still at the helm. Even if he has reformed, as Randall claims, CGL’s reputation is sullied as a result of his actions. At the very least, CGL is going to have difficulty acquiring licenses to publish other people’s games after their experience with Wildfire.  And the loss of capital is going to create more delays in getting books published (although if that applies to A Time of War, I can’t say I will be disappointed). On a pragmatic level, however, I am 100% hoping for CGL to recover and prosper in the future, rather than rooting for their demise out of some misplaced sense of honor and justice. I am not an aggrieved party, and neither are any of the fans bitching and moaning on the boards. I don’t know what exactly transpired, I don’t know exactly how it is being resolved, I don’t know whether the Bills family will still send the Coleman family a Christmas card, and frankly its none of my business. What does matter is that (1) CGL has been producing great material for Battletech, (2) they have reinvigorated the brand, (3) they have been supportive of MegaMek, and (4) they will never mistreat the universe because they are its biggest fans. Why would I want to risk all of that on a new company that might give us a new version of clickytech, or worse yet, let the license lie fallow, or even worse yet, send MegaMek a Cease & Desist letter? The answer is that I shouldn’t and you shouldn’t either. Let the parties that were actually affected by this fiasco sort it out themselves, and keep your fingers crossed that CGL comes out of it alright in the end.

Taharqa Battletech

Ok, I have been thinking a little bit more about autofire. In my previous post on damage, I decided to stick with the “MoS multiplier” that aToW and MW3e used to deal with burst fire. However, after thinking about this some more and looking at how a variety of systems handle automatic fire, I have decided to develop some more specific rules about autofire.

It seems that every system handles autofire a little differently and gun nuts tend to complain bitterly about the way it is handled in most systems.  A lot of early systems just made to-hit rolls easier when using burst fire, which isn’t quite right because burst fire actually tends to be quite inaccurate.  Concentrated burst-fire is more about stopping power (i.e. putting a bunch of bullets in the other guy rather than one) and “bullet spraying” is more about suppression than an honest attempt to hit anything. The most common technique in most existing systems is to add some kind of damage bonus for burst fire to simulate the stopping power and then to add on some option for suppressive fire.  The problem with the first approach is that increasing damage artificially improves armor penetration in most systems because you do more damage on a single attack. Now I am by no means a gun nut. I have never even held a real gun, much less fired one. So most of my knowledge here is about what others have said. That having been said, here are my goals for autofire in MW2.MINE:

1. A system that provides players with several tactical options that allow for more interesting gameplay, without adding needless complication.
2. A system with a sense of versimiltude without getting into the nitty-gritty details of real-life modern warfare.
3. Distinguish a full burst that might be fired at multiple targets or a single target, from a short concentrated (typically three-round) burst mode.
4. Integrate double-tap rules into autofire rules.
5. Allow for a suppressive fire option.
6. Make burst fire powerful, but not an auto-kill in most situations.

Taharqa MW2.Mine

One of the most difficult things for any RPG translation of Battletech to manage is the translation of the one unit difference in piloting and gunnery skills to a generic skill system.  For example, a mechwarrior of “regular” skill level has a gunnery TN of 4, but a piloting TN of 5.  How do you re-create those two different target numbers when the underlying skill levels are supposed to be the same?  Both MW2 and aToW implicitly assume that a regular pilot actually has a higher skill level in Gunnery than in Piloting, which is fairly unsatisfying, and also makes it difficult to “benchmark” an average skill.  MW3 just translated the 0-10 rpg skill levels to battletech skill levels more slowly for Piloting than for Gunnery which was a total hack.

I ran into the same problem in my initial post about MW2.MINE.  But I think I may have a solution to the problem. The solution is to change the two linked attributes for Piloting from DEX/RFL (agility) to RFL/ITU (reaction time). I think its reasonable to argue that reaction time is a better measure of natural ability in regards to piloting and driving than is agility.  After making this change, let me present once again a template for the average mechwarrior character: Read more…

Taharqa MW2.Mine

Ok, its been awhile since I posted on my emerging MW2.Mine system. I said at the end of my last post that I was going to focus on traits next, but I lied. Since this is all work in progress, why go in order? I have been thinking a lot about the damage system used in combat.  At first, I thought the aToW system seemed pretty good and figured that I would just leave it as is, but the more I got to thinking about it, the more I realized I wanted something that meshed with pilot damage in battletech even more closely.

Damage systems are a pretty important component of RPG systems to me. In fact they rank right below the main dice mechanic in terms of importance, because they convey to me the realism of the system. I want the damage rules to convey a sense of danger to the PCs but at the same time still allow them to be the heroes of the story.  That means that there has to be the potential that a single shot or sword thrust can incapacitate and a really good strike might even outright drop somebody dead. Read more…

Taharqa MW2.Mine, RPG Design

As a direct result of Catalyst Game Lab’s decision to drop all the prices on their PDF’s, I decided to go ahead and pick up the Cthulhutech core rulebook for a fairly cheap $15. I have been curious about this game for some time now, mostly because it manages to combine two of my favorite things: Lovecraftian cosmic horror and giant fighting robots.  Now, many of the self-proclaimed Lovecraftian purists out there on the interwebs have decried the game universe as a disgusting perversion of all that is the Cthulhu mythos.  To be fair, the game is a far cry from the antiquarian investigations of the 1920’s that are more typically of the genre, but after giving the core book a good read, I would say that the authors have actually maintained a strong sense of the cosmic horror that is at the core to the Cthulhu mythos. The universe itself is basically a thought experiment along the lines of “What if the stars WERE right?”

But that is for another post and another time.  In this post, I want to share my analysis of the Framewerk system that is the basis for the Cthulhutech RPG.  I have always had a strong interest in RPG design, particularly in the statistics that underlie dice mechanics.  So I present here a statistical analysis of how the Framewerk RPG actually plays out by the numbers. This may be the first in a series of analyses of some of my favorite (and most hated) game systems. Read more…

Taharqa RPG Design

My continuing frustration with Battletech RPG systems led me to a little thought experiment. The way I see it, the big problem with MW3 is that it threw the baby out with the bath water in transitioning from MW2.  MW2 was an interesting system with nice Battletech integration. It had some serious faults, but MW3 should have tried to improve on it rather than making such a radical break (both from MW2 and the board game).

So, as a thought experiment, I decided to hack together my own improvement to the MW2 system. In doing so I incorporated a lot of elements from MW3 and aToW, but the core structure is still recognizable as MW2. I was actually quite pleased with the initial results and thought I would share them. I might even try using this system. I am going to start with the basic mechanics, attributes and skills. Read more…

Taharqa MW2.Mine

Well, a beta release of the new Battletech RPG titled A Time Of War (aToW) is out and after having given it a good look, I can confidently say that I am …. frustrated. I have been waiting for a long time for a Battletech RPG that would work, in particular one that would mesh well with the Battletech boardgame (sort of like MW2) and yet provide an interesting game in its own right (more like MW3). I thought that with the relaunch of the entire Battletech game line this would be a wonderful opportunity to provide that integration. And I really, really wanted to like this system. But I just have to say that it doesn’t quite hit the mark, although I think in general it is an improvement over prior systems.

I was hoping for something more like the Savage Worlds system, where you could quickly generate an interesting character and gameplay (particularly combat) would play quick while at the same time having decent tactical complexity. That would allow the RPG to better fit the bill of being the new version of Battletroops. It would also make it easier to use RPG stats for pilots and support staff for those running units in a more Battletech-centric game. In essence, I felt that the previous system (MW3) needed a lot of the fat trimmed out. Read more…

Taharqa Battletech, RPG Design

So, I was looking through Total Warfare the other day and I noticed that they did have information in there on pilot advancement, which I thought had been left out. Basically 8XP increases gunnery and 4XP increases piloting. It got me thinking about the XP costs I use in my own system. The meaning of XP is roughly equivalent where you get 1XP for each battle, although I also give 1XP for every two kills. My XP cost system is scaled so that it costs more to raise an elite skill than a green one. Nonetheless, if you look at averages, my XP system moves faster. It takes 36XP to move a pilot from Green (5/6) to Elite (2/3) in TW and only 24XP under my system. I also noticed that my pilots seemed to be advancing too quickly. In six games so far my pilots have mostly advanced from regular to vetean and above. So I decided to tweak my system a little bit. Basically, I changed two things. First, I changed the “levels” to reflect the actual numeric skill rating, regardless of whether it is piloting or gunnery. So it costs the same to move gunnery from 4 to 3 as it does to move piloting from 4 to 3. Second, I just added 2 XP to all the costs. Doing so made the XP costs from Green to Elite equivalent, although my pilots probably still advance faster due to the XP from kills. I also bumped up the XP costs of all advantages by 2.

Here are the new tables:

Luckily, as a result of careful record-keeping, I was able to retcon my team without too much difficulty.

Taharqa Track System

I always like to have names for all my pilots in a battletech campaign. Optimally I would also like to be able to give names to the OpFor pilots. Yeah, its just fluff, but I like that kind of stuff. I have used other name generators around the web in the past to come up with names, but I often find that those generators are somewhat lacking particularly when it comes to producing names that reflect both the ethnic melting pot that is the inner sphere, but also the unique cultural elements of each faction. For example, in the Draconis Combine you should find a higher frequency of people with Scandanavian last names and Japanese first names (e.g. Sukoji Olafsen) than elsewhere.

So I got a hold of some data awhile back that has extensive first and last name lists for 32 “ethnic” groups. Since then I have had this little idea in the back of my head to figure out a way to combine these namesets together in a way that makes sense for the battletech universe. Today, I finally decided to give it a go and banged out a very rough perl program that will produce a set of random names. Currently, there are only two factions, (General and Draconis Combine) but adding more shouldn’t be too difficult now that I have the logic down. These two factions also probably need some tweaking. You can access the name generator here.

Read more…

Taharqa Battletech, Name Generator