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SaberDance
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PostPosted: 12-Aug-2004 23:16    Post subject: If Someone would be so kind... Reply to topic Reply with quote

Mechwarrior Dark Ages.

From the press material it looks like Battle Tech redone using the original GDW Twilight rules. It would be labor intensive, and obviously the rules would have to be overhauled to accomadate the miniature mechs, but I've been improvising such a system using "Imortals of Change" pieces for years.

Why, without massively breaking Mordel's "no bad-mouthing Dark Ages" rule is it so disliked?

M"SD"H
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Pinhead
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PostPosted: 12-Aug-2004 23:38    Post subject: RE: If Someone would be so kind... Reply to topic Reply with quote

Because the battlesystem has pretty much Nothing to do with B-Tech, it is more closely aligned with warhammer 40K.

It is a completely different game, and a collectable game at that which many people including myself have no interest in spending lots of mony to gain the pieces to play the way I want to play.

Having said that, I tried to run a scenario at Total Con two years ago, and it was incredibly poorly received by the 'normal' B-Tech players there. The one guy that was interested in playing actually enjoyed himself quite a bit, but the system is so very different it is actually a completely seperate universe.

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StarRaven
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PostPosted: 13-Aug-2004 00:06    Post subject: RE: If Someone would be so kind... Reply to topic Reply with quote

I'll admit that I haven't played Dark Age, and I'm not going to. The lack of customizability and the over-simplicity are simply not appealing. I got into BTech (not very long ago, actually) because it was complex, but not incomprehensible, and because you could do most anything with it. You can do whatever you want to a 'Mech, which (to my knowledge) you can't do in MWDA. I want to make my own 'Mechs and other things, not have them dictated to me from on high.
I find heat management to be a fun and interesting part of the game - but 'clicks' of heat? I don't think so. "This unit takes its ballistic damage -1 in damage when its ammo explodes." That's 1 damage for Alice Vander's Vulture. Huh? No.
Ammo explosion = 'BOOM!' Not 'click.'

And the storyline. The Dork Age storyline is a crime against the game universe, and for me to say any more would become a wild, raving rant.

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SaberDance
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PostPosted: 13-Aug-2004 14:07    Post subject: RE: If Someone would be so kind... Reply to topic Reply with quote

Well, as I said, I've been improvising such a system using an old robot game, legos, little green men, these 1/32 scale miniature armies of which I have millions... and we even build cities out of stacks of encyclopedias. I could see some resentment at the rule changes if they weren't very good, but people have been writing their own Battletech rules for a while, why not just do the same with the collectibles.

Granted, I could see the effect of price gouging by MWDA's reputation.

And what is the story? My knowledge of BT lore goes up to the end of the cartoon series. After that it's all third or fourth hand (well, Joe read in this one book that Natasha Kerensky leads an assault on... you get the idea).
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Ruger
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PostPosted: 13-Aug-2004 22:46    Post subject: RE: If Someone would be so kind... Reply to topic Reply with quote

Quote:

On 2004-08-13 14:07, SaberDance wrote:
And what is the story? My knowledge of BT lore goes up to the end of the cartoon series. After that it's all third or fourth hand (well, Joe read in this one book that Natasha Kerensky leads an assault on... you get the idea).



The setting for MechWarrior Dark Age is that of the BattleTech universe, but over 60 years after the "present day" Classic BattleTech incarnation (IOW's, the 3130's)...the Inner Sphere has had several decades of relative peace after the Word of Blake launched a massive Jihad in late 3067 (after the announcement of the dissolution of the Second Star League), annexing many of the worlds around Terra, destroying others through nuclear, biological and chemical warfare attacks, as well as orbital bombardments and assaults by their own armies, as well as hired mercs...the assaults begin with the annihilation of much of the Wolf's Dragoons (one continent of Outreach is annihilated by nuclear bombardment after the Wolf's Dragoons' WarShips are taken out by the WoB fleet...the other is assaulted by multiple Blakist units and Blakist allied merc units...Jaime Wolf is killed defending his evacuating people who later regroup on Arc Royal with the aid of the Wolves in Exile and the Kell Hounds)...the Blakists also assault the Successor State capitals on Luthien, New Avalon and Tharkad, and later Atreus and Sian...

Things look bleak until Devlin Stone manages to escape from a Word of Blake prison/brainwashing camp with the aid of Kai Allard-Liao's son, and begin organizing forces to take the battles back to the Blakists...eventually, Stone's forces win through, and Stone acquires, through gifts or force, virtually all worlds within 120 light years of Terra to form what he calls the Republic of the Sphere...not all nations go along with this at first, and wars are fought with the Capellan Confederation and force is also brought against the Free Worlds League factions (the FWL fractured into its component duchies and whatnot due to the fallout of the Jihad)...people from all factions, including the invading Clans (which by this time also include the Hell's Horses, who invade and take many worlds from the "northern" borders of the Wolf Clan and Jade Falcon occupation zones, as well as potentially Sea Fox (former Diamond Shark) and Snow Raven (who have allied with the Outworlds Alliance to form the Raven Alliance) clans) also join the Republic...

Stone issues out reforms which include acquiring citizenship for trading in weapons of war, especially 'Mechs, which are then supposedly scrapped and turned into war medals...the people are mostly willing to do this because the devastation of the Jihad is so great (some reports state it is worse than the First and Second Succession Wars combined) that the Inner Sphere is tired of war...the Clans go along with it because Stone appeals to their egos saying they were basically right in their methods, but that they need to take it farther, encouraging them to reave blood names and make the sibko training even more difficult so that only the best of the best survive to become warriors...

This quasi-peace lasts for some time, although there are numerous border raids (in fact, there are two "no-man's lands" on the 3130 map...one between the Lyran Commonwealth and the Jade Falcon Occupation Zone and one between the Draconis Combine and the Federated Commonwealth (the Sandovals started another war with the Combine, and many worlds are still being contested)) and several additional wars (a second Combine-Ghost Bear War, the Victoria War between the FedSuns and the Confederation, etc.) have also been fought...

Then in 3132 (IIRC), some unknown group assaults most of the HPG grid (said to be throughout the Inner Sphere) through multiple methods, resulting in 80% of the grid failing...due to the instability that results, many splinter factions appear within the Republic to try and take worlds and resources from the state, and possibly ally with those states to which they most relate...

This is the world of MechWarrior Dark Age...

You can find some additional information (especially briefings on the history and 3130 status of most of the Inner Sphere states, as well as a detailed map of most Republic planets) at the following link...

http://www.wizkidsgames.com/mwdarkage/comstar/

Ruger
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SaberDance
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PostPosted: 13-Aug-2004 23:21    Post subject: RE: If Someone would be so kind... Reply to topic Reply with quote

Alright.

Thanks everyone. At least now I know what the controversy is over, though I confess I'm not terribly surprised this happened. The BT storyline had apparently been going there since 3055. Actually, if you read enough into the TROs, its been going there since at least 3028, but I had hoped that certain story writers would have gotten a grip.

Anyway, thanks again. If I ever decide to take up MWDA, I'll be sure to use my ever judicious house rules to haul the whole thing back to the good old days of CBT in the third and fourth succession war (and maybe the clans too).
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