First Edition

Pages: 1
Ironnerd
01/28/12 08:43 AM
66.190.90.236

Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply
Does anyone still play 1st edition? I own, and have played 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, but enjoy 1st the most. i have not yet taken a good look at the new version from Catalyst.
CrayModerator
01/28/12 11:29 AM
97.101.96.171

Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply
MW 1st edition is the very first BattleTech book I bought. It was an accident; it was the cheapest item on the catalog sheet and fit my allowance, but I really wanted the boxed set.

Of the first 3 MechWarrior editions, I liked 2nd the most. It incorporated a lot of advances in game design with a simpler damage system and simpler advancement system compared to MW1. It also had a skill/attribute system rather similar to Shadowrun 2nd edition (which I played frequently).

I disliked MW3 enough (which seemed only to exist to patch a few points of abuse in MW2 with unnecessarily hindering rules) that I used Shadowrun 3rd edition rules adapted to the BT setting during MW3's reign.

MW4 is a considerable improvement over MW3. I'm not going to claim it's the game for you, but it's a modern game system. It has a point-based character generation system, a steamlined combat system, a straightforward skill system, and other features that wouldn't be out of place in SR4, d20, etc. I've switched to this for BT games. (Disclosure: I wrote about 30 pages of fluff in the back of MW4).
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
Karagin
01/28/12 11:43 AM
178.76.141.124

Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply
The whole life path idea thing is what I disliked about MW3 the most. I liked MW1 mainly because it tried to give background to the game's main focus and allow you the player to step into the world. Some of it was a bit hard to follow and if there was an issue we just played through with a does of common sense.

Overall I think MW1 was good book, and it did launch the others...
Karagin

Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
CrayModerator
01/28/12 05:23 PM
97.101.96.171

Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply
Quote:

The whole life path idea thing is what I disliked about MW3 the most.




Until the MW3's CBT:Companion provided point-based character creation, the life path system was THE most annoying part of MW3 for me. It slowed character creation to an agonizing crawl and stole the character's background from me, handing it over to some dice and pre-generated tables.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
Karagin
01/28/12 09:12 PM
178.76.141.124

Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply
You hit it Cray! You hit it on the head, I could not see the point of writing a background for someone who's history was already done via the rolls and charts. Never made any sense, it did not speed it up and in fact killed the role playing part of my groups fun with BT, we went back MW2 style or used a mix of styles for rules and such. Glad to see we were not alone with this...
Karagin

Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
Brian_Paxt
02/29/12 02:56 PM
76.17.141.164

Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply
I feel the exact same here. MW3 was not a good system for characters. For one as mentioned previously, it takes the RP aspect out of the players hands and leaves it to fate. 2. There is a high chance that though you may want to make a Mechwarrior, something bad happens in one of the many life paths that screw it up. or 3. you and/or the players managed to get a metric butt ton of skills and such that 1 player can do everything.

then to round it all out, it can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours to make a character.

Now the new one, A Time of War... you need a spread sheet to even attempt to try and make a character. I use 2nd edition Mechwarrior since it's what I really started RPing with and it's a nice system all around. Though I do have every edition of Mechwarrior..
His_Most_Royal_Highass_Donkey
03/01/12 02:47 PM
173.96.209.121

Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply
I have just started to read the MW3 rules to make a character and I am starting to think WTH where they thinking!?! You would have to right up maybe a dozen characters just to come up with one that was something close to what the player wants to play.

Heck its almost impossible to get a character that is not deformed mentally or physically in some way. When was the last time that you saw a trooper from your countries military that was all screwed up let alone the average civilian. Lets look at an example character, there is a 17% that an average the next door neighbor run of the mill child at the age of 10 is screwed up already. (Blue/white collar early childhood) Now lets take that same kid into high school. Now there is a 28% chance that same child gets screwed up in high school. Combined there is a 4.75% chance that kid is really F***ed up every which way or there is a 44% chance that something happened and he is only 16. OK now lets put that kid into technical collage. Skipping result 5 "switch majors" (Today that happens a lot) he has a 30% chance of something bad happening during his 2 years in collage. OK now our kid is 18 and he has a 70% chance of something really bad happening to him and a combined 1.5% chance of everything happening to him. And this is just the kid next door where there is very little risk in his life.
Why argue if the glass is half full or half empty, when you know someone is going to knock it over and spill it anyways.

I was a Major *pain* before
But I got a promotion.
I am now a General *pain*
Yay for promotions!!!
CrayModerator
03/01/12 09:51 PM
173.168.112.109

Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply
Hence the benefit of MW4/ATOW: you're not beholden to life paths/modules. You can just take your points and spend them however it makes you happy.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
Brian_Paxt
03/05/12 11:11 AM
76.17.141.164

Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply
That part is nice, but the whole XP spending system is strange to me... Plus in some instances if you are running a pre-clan game, some of the stuff can be a pain to tell the players to ignore. Or maybe that's just some of the people I have gamed with..
CrayModerator
03/05/12 11:06 PM
173.168.112.109

Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply
Quote:

That part is nice, but the whole XP spending system is strange to me...




Have you played a point-based game before, like World of Darkness, Shadowrun, or Mutants & Masterminds? The number of points in play is high, but the concept is similar.

Quote:

Plus in some instances if you are running a pre-clan game, some of the stuff can be a pain to tell the players to ignore. Or maybe that's just some of the people I have gamed with..




Yep. I had to do that recently. A couple of my gamers were BT vets, but one was new to BT and didn't recognize that some traits were inappropriate to 3025-era gaming. It was kind of like kicking a puppy to tell him that, no, he couldn't have a genetically engineered super-soldier in a 3025-era Solaris game and thus would have to greatly overhaul his character.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
Pages: 1
Extra information
0 registered and 6 anonymous users are browsing this forum.

Moderator:  Nic Jansma, Cray, Frabby, BobTheZombie 

Print Topic

Forum Permissions
      You cannot start new topics
      You cannot reply to topics
      HTML is disabled
      UBBCode is enabled

Topic views: 6597


Contact Admins Sarna.net