A Time of War: What I would have done differently
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.
To Herb’s credit, he did trim a lot of fat. The skill list has been reduced considerably with a lot of silly redundancies taken out, one of the attributes has been taken out, and the damage system in combat has been simplified considerably. I haven’t tried the new damage system, but based on my reading of it, I think it will play very nice. All of this fat-trimming aside, however, I think the designers were still a little too wedded to some of the concepts and scaling from MW3 and weren’t radical enough in their revision. Here are my big gripes:
- Attributes still don’t matter. In fact, I think attributes matter less. It is nice that you get a bonus to skill rolls for very high linked attributes (7+) or a penalty for low linked attributes (<4), but based on the chargen rules, that is going to have a minimal effect on most PCs, unless you get a min-max munchkin who puts everything in RFL and DEX. In MW3, at least your attributes determined your skill progression, but in aToW, attributes have no affect on how easy it is to acquire skills. This seems like a missed opportunity given that skills and attributes are on the same scale. I kind of feel like I am playing 1st/2nd edition D&D where it really didn’t matter if your character had 14 strength or 9 strength, it was basically just “fluff.”
- -3/-3 G/P? One of the strangest decisions seems to have been that despite changing the dice roll mechanic from 2d10 to 2d6, the skill levels remained on a scale from +0 to +10. And with the now simpler method of converting from the RPG to the boardgame, you just subtract your skill from 7 to get your battletech skill level. Its like a munchkin’s wet dream and we all know that it really is no fun to play the boardgame anymore when you even get to 0/0 much less -3/-3. Of course, we are also told that negative skills are “optional” in the translation, which means that under standard rules, putting more into your gunnery and piloting skills beyond +7 is just for fluff. Nice. Herb’s defense of this decision on the forums has been “we decided not to try to stop munchkins” which is a total red herring. Why design a system with skill levels that you clearly don’t want people to reach?
- Induced negative correlation in chargen. Try making a noble-born character who owns his own mech with the given chargen rules. He will be a complete weakling with a glass jaw, no titles or properties and a light mech at best. This is in some ways a problem of any point-based chargen system: you induce strange negative correlations by trying to “balance” the character. So you want to be a kick-ass mechwarrior ace? Fine, but all you get is this lousy mech? You want to be the noble-born first son of a FedSuns count? Ok, but you have to make consciousness checks against spitballs. The problem is that this system (and really all the previous systems) create way too many opportunities for this sort of thing with out-of-whack and unnecessary costs. Most of the traits should be seriously reduced in their costs and the TP should be reduced. There really shouldn’t need to be wealth scaling of 1 to 10. Three levels would suffice (well-off, wealthy, and ludicrously wealthy). You shouldn’t have to take 10TP of disadvantages and turn your character into a delusional, madman with split-personality disorder just to get a fraking assault mech.
- Edge is not an attribute. Leave edge out of the attribute formulation, especially since it is basically useless to most NPCs. Edge should just be a special stat that all PCs and important NPCs get a set amount of, I would say somewhere between 2 and 4. Furthermore, edge should also be able to be used in the boardgame the same way it could in MaxTech (reroll head shots, ammo explosions, TACs, etc).
- Skill progression depends on linked attributes. A very simple rule would be that raising any skill to a level above the lowest linked attribute would cost double the normal cost. This would also help mitigate the effects of those really high skill levels because they become much more difficult to attain. Since the average mechwarrior is probably going to have a min(RFL,DEX) of 5 or so, it also “fits” very nicely with the idea that very few rank-and-file folks make it past Elite skill levels.
- Keep Attribute XP separate from Skill and Trait XP during chargen. I would use separate pools of XP for attributes and everything else. The problem with chargen now is that the more modules you take, the better your character’s skills will be and the worse the attributes because you are implicitly just taking attributes points and reassigning them to skills and traits. This is the problem people were having with Officer Candidate School for example. So, I would just establish a set number of points for attributes and not include attribute bonuses or penalties into any of the modules. I might also allow character to add points to their attribute XP pool by taking them from the skill and trait field, but not vice versa.
- Reduce the costs of many traits. Lets take the noble as an example. Lets say I want to noble-born character who is the heir to a County, including property and moderate wealth, and pilots the family heirloom Heavy mech. Currently, I would have to pay about 30TP in traits (+8 for title, +8 for an owned heavy mech, +5 for wealth, +7 for property, and +2 for custom vehicle). And that is for a moderate amount of wealth, no well-equipped trait and no extra income stream, which you would expect any noble to have. This is ridiculous. Both the scale for these traits and the number of traits required just to make a consistent character are too much.
Taharqa,
I’m not much of a RPG fan. I bought the Beta PDF to get an advance look at the tactical rules and the potential for a replacement to BattleTroops.
Without a doubt, the RPG combat rules are BattleTroops 2 personified. There is dialable detail, expansive equipment lists, and fluid combat.
For what it’s worth, I’m excited to have the new rules available. Then again, I’m not in it for the pure RPG.
Brian
Awesome – you’re the second blogger talking about ToW. As I was just saying elsewhere, the last time I played MW, it was a Rifleman as the target on the cover.
I never played MW2 or later – I still have an MW1 book. If you were going to use a ruleset for the “easiest” transition from fighting in Mechs to fighting and playing outside the machine, would you use 1, 2 or ToW? I’m thinking about small campaign arcs where the RPG is about 40% and the boardgame is about 60%?
You know I have been thinking about this a lot. So much so that I have been tinkering with my own system which is basically what MW3 should have been: an improvement rather than radical departure from MW2. Without a doubt MW2 had the best integration with the board game. IMHO, its major failure was in the lack of variety in its character (too few attributes, and Intuition ruled all) and its silly damage system (It took something like 6 pistol shots on average to take down an average Joe with 3 BOD).
My upgrade basically expands the number of attributes to eight and instead of only four secondary attributes (athletic, physical, mental, social) you can now combine any two of these for a particular skill. So protocol uses Intelligence and Charisma, while streetwise uses Intuition and Charisma, for example. I will put up a post later with some of the details. I mostly did this as a thought experiment but I like how it is turning out.