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Nope, no in game rules that I am aware of, although my brother and I did bid to see who got to be the clans and who played the IS. Since my brother was basically the only person I ever played BT with it was never an issue. The few tournaments that I played in at our FLGS used tonnage limits for your units (generally 450 tons) and clan mech counted for 50% more than IS mech. But as far as official rules, I am not aware of any.
20 to 1 no, Clans are not stupid. The biding system is set up in a way that the defender almost always has a better chance of winning.
If you bid a heavy company, A clan would expect you to send them a list of your pilots skills and what mechs they used. The invasion the IS kept going "every thing I have and F+#$ you!"
Which was a way to say unless the hammer. However the peace the IS knew how to manipulate the clans. They knew that if you broke zell, all hell would rain upon you, they KNEW they could bid 4 heavy and more and likely would face 4 mechs with less armor or smaller size one on one. But no they try and go total war with someone better then you.
Sure the tech is better, the pilots are better but you know how to play them. You have more people. Do not be stupid, that was how the IS always beat the clan, every time. You can't beat them with force, but you can use the system they believe aginest them.
Total war does not win with the clans. Which is another issue I have with later canon, any force like that would have united the clans, not torn them apart.
Nope, no in game rules that I am aware of, although my brother and I did bid to see who got to be the clans and who played the IS. Since my brother was basically the only person I ever played BT with it was never an issue. The few tournaments that I played in at our FLGS used tonnage limits for your units (generally 450 tons) and clan mech counted for 50% more than IS mech. But as far as official rules, I am not aware of any.
By BV ya the clan was always smaller, meds vs assaults normally. Officially you use BV for force size, in which case the IS side always gets more units and always heavy units.
It was VERY one side and BV didn't work that well..8 IS 3050 assaults vs 5 clan meds for instance.
]I loves me some life paths! It really struck me as interesting, I'd like to see more of them overall, so long as you aren't forced to use them to create a character. I'm not sure if I love MW3 or MW2, I'll have to check...
MW 3 used em, so you could say start trying to make a clan warrior but roll bad and end up in the merchent cast with one leg gone and missing an eye or some such.
You had to use them, and had little control other then praying to the dice gods over what happened in that part of the path, roll poorly in one of the 5 or 6 parts and bye,bye what you wanted to play, hello random ride.
20 to 1 no, Clans are not stupid. The biding system is set up in a way that the defender almost always has a better chance of winning.
If you bid a heavy company, A clan would expect you to send them a list of your pilots skills and what mechs they used. The invasion the IS kept going "every thing I have and f~&@ you!"
Which was a way to say unless the hammer. However the peace the IS knew how to manipulate the clans. They knew that if you broke zell, all hell would rain upon you, they KNEW they could bid 4 heavy and more and likely would face 4 mechs with less armor or smaller size one on one. But no they try and go total war with someone better then you.
Sure the tech is better, the pilots are better but you know how to play them. You have more people. Do not be stupid, that was how the IS always beat the clan, every time. You can't beat them with force, but you can use the system they believe aginest them.
Total war does not win with the clans. Which is another issue I have with later canon, any force like that would have united the clans, not torn them apart.
That's just the thing- maybe the devs realized that realistically speaking the Clans would have conquered the IS in what...a few years or so, and made some retroactive changes? Especially considering the Crusader way of doing business(no offense- I'm thinking more Jade Falcon than Hell's Horses- remember, I love them too). Maybe the Periphery should have more of a clan presence than it currently does, even by the DA time period?
]I loves me some life paths! It really struck me as interesting, I'd like to see more of them overall, so long as you aren't forced to use them to create a character. I'm not sure if I love MW3 or MW2, I'll have to check...
MW 3 used em, so you could say start trying to make a clan warrior but roll bad and end up in the merchent cast with one leg gone and missing an eye or some such.
You had to use them, and had little control other then praying to the dice gods over what happened in that part of the path, roll poorly in one of the 5 or 6 parts and bye,bye what you wanted to play, hello random ride.
Again, you should not be FORCED to use them to make a character. I had a few bad rolls on it when I did it a few times as an exercise, I can see why someone wouldn't like them if they were made to use them. I've been kicking around a few ideas with respect to life path type character creation and thought it would work better as something of a gamble- you enter a life path at a certain point and take your chances- see if you get a better character or a worse one. But it would be a gamble, and you could pull out when you wished. Maybe I'll work on it a bit more over the weekend, but I have a Darklight Sisterhood game to plan.
Nope, no in game rules that I am aware of, although my brother and I did bid to see who got to be the clans and who played the IS. Since my brother was basically the only person I ever played BT with it was never an issue. The few tournaments that I played in at our FLGS used tonnage limits for your units (generally 450 tons) and clan mech counted for 50% more than IS mech. But as far as official rules, I am not aware of any.By BV ya the clan was always smaller, meds vs assaults normally. Officially you use BV for force size, in which case the IS side always gets more units and always heavy units.
It was VERY one side and BV didn't work that well..8 IS 3050 assaults vs 5 clan meds for instance.
They really needed to come up with a way to reflect clan superiority and self limiting in-game. BV really doesn't seem to work well, as you said. How would you do it?
Case in point about BV battles. Let us say a 6000 BV fight
IS
Osr-3c Ostroc 60 tons
WHM-6K warhammer 70tons
MAD-3D marauder 75 tons
PLG-1N pillager 100 tons
all 3025 tech all pilots 4/5
Total BV 5875
Clan
Fire moth f 20 tons
Fire moth F 20 tons
Battle cobra Prime 40 tons
Griffin IIC 2 40 tons
All pilots 3/4
BV Total 8'107
yeah that seems to be a even and fair fight..we need to nearf clan more to make it more even.
They really needed to come up with a way to reflect clan superiority and self limiting in-game. BV really doesn't seem to work well, as you said. How would you do it?
BV 2 is suppose to be better but eh.
We bid, that is what we did. Your a clan player act like one.
But what does it matter IS get all the clan toys with none of the limits, so what does it matter?
They really needed to come up with a way to reflect clan superiority and self limiting in-game. BV really doesn't seem to work well, as you said. How would you do it?BV 2 is suppose to be better but eh.
We bid, that is what we did. Your a clan player act like one.
But what does it matter IS get all the clan toys with none of the limits, so what does it matter?
Again, this may be my DA bias speaking, but I see no problem with IS having a few Clan mechs here and there, by now they have lived side by side for years and probably have a few lucrative trade agreements. I don't think access should be unfettered, however, with the IS recieving primarily second line stuff(which is still better than their first line stuff). It's interesting that you brought bidding to the table and played it out, but most of the BT people I know and know of wouldn't want to spend time doing that. I think I actually understand where the devs may have been coming from when they nerfed the clans now, but I don't think I agree with said decision.
well the issue is it is not 2nd line stuff and not the darkage. By the mid 3060's you had merc units fielding whole company of omni mechs, house units doing the same thing.
I can see where the DC GOT EM, But really, how do you maintain them? They use a tech base you can't match and do not really understand.
I think BV balance is good way if the BV system worked as it does represent clan bidding, which is why they showed up with those units. Also you need to look at clan mech design, which has always been weapon heavy, light armor with speed.
But the retcons would be ok, like the making clans smaller if they made sens and did not change history, which this does. The invasion should have not played out as it did if the current changes are true.
The thing that I liked was starting in TRO 3055, they introduced IS omnis that used IS tech. That made the situation a whole lot more believable.
Agreed, I liked the IS omnis alot. Wish we would have seen more, I think much like the clan you should have seen them becoming the primary mech with battlemechs being sent to backwaters and mecs.
Humm what does anyone think about the age of war or the star league era then? Maybe some good ol 3025 era?
The thing that I liked was starting in TRO 3055, they introduced IS omnis that used IS tech. That made the situation a whole lot more believable.
+1
The IS omnis were 3058, not 3055 BTW
If I recall 3055 had some color pages as well, but had the IS elemental killers and the clan 2nd line mechs in it. Mostly IIC mechs.
If I recall 3055 had some color pages as well, but had the IS elemental killers and the clan 2nd line mechs in it. Mostly IIC mechs.
Elemental killers.. Hm.
A whole bunch of em, trying to recall but the kamodo was among them, mostly fast meds with ML's. The snake was in that one as well, as was the nightsky and the stealth.
I recall 3058 as not only did it have the IS omnis but also the cauldron born "Ebon jaguar" and the kingfisher.
I would love to see a campaign set in either the Third or Fourth Succession War.
That could be alot of fun. I have not been in a game like that in a long time. Last non clan game was a periphery game, which was loads of fun.
I would love to see a campaign set in either the Third or Fourth Succession War.That could be alot of fun. I have not been in a game like that in a long time. Last non clan game was a periphery game, which was loads of fun.
Now the Periphery...That's one area I could get into, in a Succession Campaign.
heh, that is a start..now we need to find a system everyone like :)
I find it odd that BattleTech fans (myself included) are so utterly polarized over their favorite era.
Cranky Succession Wars era players rant about the Clans spoiling everything (RetroTech). Cranky Clan War era player rant about how unrealistic it was for the Inner Sphere to beat back the Clans (ClanTech). Cranky Crusade era players rant about how the Inner Sphere retreaded the Davionist agenda and 'politics as usual' storyline (TwilightTech). Cranky Civil War era players rant about the stupidity of the Word of Blake Jihad (FedComTech). Cranky Jihad era players rant about the intolerance of everyone else (JihadTech).
Everyone believes everyone else should get off their Battletech. (I fall into multiple of the above categories, btw: RetroTech/TwilightTech/JihadTech)
Honestly, I'm actually curious what annoys the Battletech community. Is it the art? The continuity? The writing? The Technology?
Oh I'll play any era per 3055. Age of war, star league, golden century, secessions wars[any of em} , 3025, war of 39, Invasion and the like. But I do not play canon timeline past 3055
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Now your question.
The writing. I don't mind the clan loosing, hell we knew from day 1 they had to loose. What ticks me off is
1: bad writing
2: Letting authors who write crappy books have such control over the setting
3: Mary sue, super friends..see 1 and 2
4; Retcons, gods I hate massive retcons
5: Foolish, badly thought out story lines..see 1,2 and 3
My hate of bulldog and serpent is vast, what utter trash that was. Not the idea behind it, how it was done, how everyone acted, the swift time of it screamed mary sue and the super friends. Just bad
Same with the jihad..WOD was everywhere, and in everything and way better then you and able to attack and humbles everyone at once...yeah..no..just no.
The ya get this no body from a reeducation camp leading the whole of the IS and everyone is cool with that and then gives him any damned thing he asks..like world and dismantling most f the military just because he asks?
Bad writing.
Honestly, I'm actually curious what annoys the Battletech community. Is it the art? The continuity? The writing? The Technology?
The same thing we do every night...oh, wait. Wrong milieux.
The reason for the cranky is that anything that changes a background someone has become emotionally invested in is going to alienate some people. They want to remember their stories where their characters were the cool ones who did the unnoticed things that allowed the events to transpire.
Compare the cranky to Star Wars fans, who draw the line at "There are only three movies, and they start with #IV)" to "There are 6 movies and all novels are wrong" and assorted permutations.
In particular, part of a background's appeal is that there need to be wide margins that allow fans to 'interpret their own canon'. Every time one of those margins gets touched, you've just upset a lot of fans who wrote their stories into it.
I played BattleTech in the '80s and '90s, moved on to SFB, and eventually started designing my own games. I got out shortly after the Clams invaded, mostly because it was clear that the ClamTech was designed to render everyone's IS tech mech obsolete. (This was before a balanced point value system came about). I loved the novels and enjoyed the novels of the Clam Invasion as popcorn reads. Their sociology is horrible.
Mostly, though, I hated the game implementation of the Clams.
(I also had two rabid roommates who could nitpick the combat scenes 17 ways to Sunday in every novel, even down to telling you which critical slot was hit in which paragraph...)
In touching on my earlier topic, here's what I think a BattleTech driven RPG needs:
1) It needs a combat system that, while not precisely 'realistic', doesn't allow someone to know he's got 137 hit points, and a machine gun only does 2d8+6 damage. The effects of combat have to be more graduated than "I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine...I'm down...CLERIC!"
2) It needs to focus on things other than combat. Combat should be dangerous enough that people will look to it as the last resort...which means that you need to make sure that the other options are at least appealing.
3) Where you come from needs to matter, in terms of what you can do, and what equipment or starting gear you have.
Honestly, I'd start looking at Mongoose's reimplimentation of the Classic Traveller rules to start out.
I think I am gonna pull out MW2E and take a look. I have not read the book in over 10 years but from what I recall it had more good then bad. The system was simple and could be "gamed" if I recall.
But it worked well with the board game, matching up numbers and all that.It also used a damge track much like shadowruns where you had thresh holds and conditon track based off your build{toughness more or less}
If a rile did 3d6{common damage if I recall} and you had a build of 3 that only gave you 6 boxes per track. A couple of good hits and ..well your done. It also had hit locations so you could loose limbs and take permanent damage.
[if I recall els had a build about 7 or 8 so yeah they did not go down easy}
I really do need to reread it.
Honestly, I'm actually curious what annoys the Battletech community. Is it the art? The continuity? The writing? The Technology?
The same thing we do every night...oh, wait. Wrong milieux.
The reason for the cranky is that anything that changes a background someone has become emotionally invested in is going to alienate some people. They want to remember their stories where their characters were the cool ones who did the unnoticed things that allowed the events to transpire.
Compare the cranky to Star Wars fans, who draw the line at "There are only three movies, and they start with #IV)" to "There are 6 movies and all novels are wrong" and assorted permutations.
In particular, part of a background's appeal is that there need to be wide margins that allow fans to 'interpret their own canon'. Every time one of those margins gets touched, you've just upset a lot of fans who wrote their stories into it.
I played BattleTech in the '80s and '90s, moved on to SFB, and eventually started designing my own games. I got out shortly after the Clams invaded, mostly because it was clear that the ClamTech was designed to render everyone's IS tech mech obsolete. (This was before a balanced point value system came about). I loved the novels and enjoyed the novels of the Clam Invasion as popcorn reads. Their sociology is horrible.
Mostly, though, I hated the game implementation of the Clams.
(I also had two rabid roommates who could nitpick the combat scenes 17 ways to Sunday in every novel, even down to telling you which critical slot was hit in which paragraph...)
Huh. Now that you mention it, that's a good way of looking at it... actually.
I never understood the appeal of the Clan "Way of Life", but then again, to me, they were always the "barbarians at the gate" to whom you weren't ever going to stop to ask about the wife and kids in the same way you didn't negotiate with a run-away bulldozer.
As a GM tool, the Clans were excellent bogeymen, but every munchkin across the block wanted to be a 'Clanner because they were just 'bigger' and 'badder' than anything the Inner Sphere could put out.
Which is probably why I loved the Crusade Era. As much as this will likely anger many people, Task Force Serpent and Bulldog were in my opinion, the best thing to happen to the Clans. Got them out of the way so that we could get back to good ol' backstabbing fratricidal politics.
Task Force Serpent and Bulldog, good idea..most horrible , worst written thing in pretty much the whole of BT.
It'll take 5 or 6 years!..back in less then 2..with a dead clan,war over and minor loses.
It should have been an epic story that defined an era..not a 5 min intermission when everyone got stupid, got saved by the super friends acted unclan like and was over so we could get to the civil war.
Could have been great, should have been epic..was written like a 15 year old was writing about this cool character he had and all the cool stuff he did.
As I said I don't dislike the clans lost, just how it was done, which was cartoonishly silly.
Task Force Serpent and Bulldog, good idea..most horrible , worst written thing in pretty much the whole of BT.
It'll take 5 or 6 years!..back in less then 2..with a dead clan,war over and minor loses.
It should have been an epic story that defined an era..not a 5 min intermission when everyone got stupid, got saved by the super friends acted unclan like and was over so we could get to the civil war.
Could have been great, should have been epic..was written like a 15 year old was writing about this cool character he had and all the cool stuff he did.
As I said I don't dislike the clans lost, just how it was done, which was cartoonishly silly.
Given I find the Clans "cartoonishly silly" to begin with, we'd best agree to disagree on this subject then.
I'm a Marik. I get over things. It comes with practice.
*SNIFF*
Anyone smell gas?
*COUGH COUGH*
I'm a Marik. I get over things. It comes with practice.
Well you guys did get screwed over pretty much anyhow..tossed out the best leader ya ever had, broke apart into small itty bitty empires..got conquered by clan wolf to form a new wolf empire..yeah bad all round for you guys.
Only way it could get worse was if ya was a jag,hellion,mandril or one of the homeworld players..but your faction is dead to. Yet another bad idea.
I'm a Marik. I get over things. It comes with practice.
Well you guys did get screwed over pretty much anyhow..tossed out the best leader ya ever had, broke apart into small itty bitty empires..got conquered by clan wolf to form a new wolf empire..yeah bad all round for you guys.
Only way it could get worse was if ya was a jag,hellion,mandril or one of the homeworld players..but your faction is dead to. Yet another bad idea.
Given that my last RPG character was canonically either killed in the surprise attack on Atreus or run to the ground and executed by the 8th Free Worlds Legionnaires...
Well. What can you do? We all knew the risks when we stated up a character in an official unit. We can't change cannon. All we can do is rebuild and move on or don't. I just imagine he died well, roll up another character and carry on playing...
No reason to let that get me down.
PC's die, I play elemental pc's alot..ya want to guess how most of them go out?
I may not can change canon, but I will not use it, agree with it, support it or play in it. Alt time line, a different era or nothing at all.
I will not play in a setting I do not like and the new timeline is not the setting I played and I have books for.
I find it odd that BattleTech fans (myself included) are so utterly polarized over their favorite era.
Cranky Succession Wars era players rant about the Clans spoiling everything (RetroTech). Cranky Clan War era player rant about how unrealistic it was for the Inner Sphere to beat back the Clans (ClanTech). Cranky Crusade era players rant about how the Inner Sphere retreaded the Davionist agenda and 'politics as usual' storyline (TwilightTech). Cranky Civil War era players rant about the stupidity of the Word of Blake Jihad (FedComTech). Cranky Jihad era players rant about the intolerance of everyone else (JihadTech).
Everyone believes everyone else should get off their Battletech. (I fall into multiple of the above categories, btw: RetroTech/TwilightTech/JihadTech)
Honestly, I'm actually curious what annoys the Battletech community. Is it the art? The continuity? The writing? The Technology?
I guess I fall into the latter part of the JihadTech part with Dark Ages in terms of intolerance. I know that was the biggest factor in finding a game around where I live, at least.
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My problem with latter eras is mostly the art and the fact that they just kept piling new tech on top of old tech until nothing was recognizable when I decided to try and get back into the game. I actually enjoyed the Dark Age fiction, but I felt that the Jihad was unrealistic because any army that was big enough to conquer a big chunk of the Inner Sphere would have been impossible to assemble in secret.
To be honest they had help with the FWL and most folks knew they had the gear or some of it. It was moving into place with zero problems on such a massive scale and then having what looked to be a vast army capable of hitting every faction at once, that was unbelievable.
Hell they seem bigger then some or any IS house.
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That's the thing. When I stopped reading, around the time the Knights of the Inner Sphere was formed, the Blakeists had one planet. That planet, Gibson, had no mech production facilities because while Thomas gave them sanctuary but did not trust them entirely. Their entire army at that time consisted of rogue ComGuard elements and mech that they were buying from the Free Worlds League. Then, a few years later, I go back to the universe and the have facilities to develop and build new mech designs, new power armor designs, create their own cyborg inquisition, and do it on a scale that gave them a realistic but slim chance of conquering the whole IS. I have still never figured out where they got this all from since my guess is that after Thomas was exposed as a Com Star double that the new Marik leadership would have had less reason to trust them then Thomas did. If someone can explain it all to me I am willing to listen, but my main problem is the fact that none of it makes any sense to me. Well that and the the art in the TROs really went down hill. Plus quad power armor never made sense, even if there are some pretty sweet designs.
They took Terra for one..and camstar didnt take it back which was kinda silly and they seem to have knew about all this hidden gear that comstor did not know about {warships}
And thomas had been a double for some time, a long while really since his father died with the real Thomas ruling wob. So I can see them getting all kinds of stuff from the fwl
I do think it was out of scale big time, though. Another 20 year or something of planning , maybe not. Terra seems to outproduce any 12 planets..go fig. Not hat I agree with that either.
Well, going by Hot Spots: Terra, the Blakist threat was a hollow one. They literally threw everything at the Houses and the Clans to draw their ire, and the army they had was geared towards first strike capacity.
It's not unrealistic when you consider a task force designed for breakthrough rather than the usual military 'take and hold' strategy. Spearhead troops are geared significantly differently from the dogfeet which follow up and hold the ground (and which WoB had next to none of). They barely had enough second line WoB Militia to act as a speed-bump during the "March on Terra".
Everything they had was concentrated in the "Shadow Divisions" which are primarily geared towards decapitation strikes. The Turning Point supplementals clearly point out that whenever a Shadow Division, Manei Domini or not, gets dragged into a knock-down-drag-out fight favored by any of the major factions, they get annihilated because they can't sustain their losses.
The 52 Shadow Divisions are less than half the size of the AFFS in 3067.
Word of Blake was designed from the ground as a 'spearhead'. Their decapitation technique was designed to be flashy and visible (nukes, orbital bombardment, chemical warfare). Kill the leader, silence the capital, seize and sack major production facilities. You don't see piddly little worlds like Dustball get attacked, even in the news reports. They simply reconquered the old Terran Hegemony worlds. Everything else is mostly hyperbole and panic spreading across the INN Networks because although the Houses know they're under attack and that horrific weapons are being used, nobody understands the larger picture because the Word is actively targeting the Jumpship "Pony-Express".
When the Houses and Clans respond and get their ponderous but massive military forces in gear, Word of Blake forces lose, and continue losing spectacularly. They're not a 'conquer the Inner Sphere' sized force. More a 'terrify the Inner Sphere back to the negotiating table' sized force.
I've read all the Jihad era sourcebooks published so far and I find the engagements realistic. I find the Jihad logical. I find the end of the Jihad believable.
And I find the Republic of the Sphere incredibly disturbing in a creepy Fascist "We Love Our Tyrant" way (which leads me subscribe to the RotS IS WoB conspiracy). I like this aspect a lot.
Much of the flak the Dark Age timeline received is for the ham-fisted way the (now deceased) WizKids first introduced it. I suspect that much of the general internet Jihad hate comes from people who latched onto the original WizKids ideas, hated them and refused to ever read anything from the current line of sourcebooks.
Your mileage may vary.
As for me, though the technology was bewildering at first, despite my RetroTech sensibilities, I've developed a severe addiction to Silver Bullet Gauss Rifles and Snub-Nose and Heavy PPCs. They're no Clan ERPP, LPL or Heavy Laser, but they give me the ability to 'damage race' the Clan munchkins using a purely IS force rather than just roll over and take it.
I welcome anything that lets me do that.
And I find the Republic of the Sphere incredibly disturbing in a creepy Fascist "We Love Our Tyrant" way (which leads me subscribe to the RotS IS WoB conspiracy). I like this aspect a lot.
I don't buy into that conspiracy, but I have no problem with those that do and would me more amused than saddened if I was proven wrong. Still, the Republic really wasn't run under WoB-ish dogma, even if it could arguably be considered somewhat fascist. After all,if you're going with a "We Love Our Tyrant" paradigm, there are other factions that are MUCH better suited to such philosophy(read: Anywhere where the Jade Falcons rule, the Capellan Confederation, and the Draconis Combine).
And I find the Republic of the Sphere incredibly disturbing in a creepy Fascist "We Love Our Tyrant" way (which leads me subscribe to the RotS IS WoB conspiracy). I like this aspect a lot.I don't buy into that conspiracy, but I have no problem with those that do and would me more amused than saddened if I was proven wrong. Still, the Republic really wasn't run under WoB-ish dogma, even if it could arguably be considered somewhat fascist. After all,if you're going with a "We Love Our Tyrant" paradigm, there are other factions that are MUCH better suited to such philosophy(read: Anywhere where the Jade Falcons rule, the Capellan Confederation, and the Draconis Combine).
The CapCon and DracCom just treat you as a second class citizen. They don't forcibly relocate huge chunks of the population on a whim that this will reduce cultural tension.
My stand on the issue remains as before.
But I don't begrudge your belief that the Republic represents a new start.
It isn't like just about every act, faction and character in the series hasn't had multiple interpretations, and it is definitely not a crime to like any of them.
Except the Clans. You're not allowed to like the Clans. :-P
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Honestly, from what I know of the WoB they don't strike me as the relocate to reduce tension type either. They strike me as more the round everyone up and stick them in camps for "reeducation" type to me. Besides, didn't Devlin Stone start out rebelling against the WoB. To say that he was also secretly working for them would be like finding out that Darth Vader was the secret leader of the Rebellion.
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Lots of stuff
See, from that perspective it makes sense. I have never really had it explained to me so I have had to put the situation together based on what I could glean from the internet and the Dark Age fiction. The problem is that the fiction seemed like it was meant to be read in a specific order and the only place I could get the books was at Walmart, which was hit or miss on what they carried so I kept feeling like big chunks were missing.
And I find the Republic of the Sphere incredibly disturbing in a creepy Fascist "We Love Our Tyrant" way (which leads me subscribe to the RotS IS WoB conspiracy). I like this aspect a lot.I don't buy into that conspiracy, but I have no problem with those that do and would me more amused than saddened if I was proven wrong. Still, the Republic really wasn't run under WoB-ish dogma, even if it could arguably be considered somewhat fascist. After all,if you're going with a "We Love Our Tyrant" paradigm, there are other factions that are MUCH better suited to such philosophy(read: Anywhere where the Jade Falcons rule, the Capellan Confederation, and the Draconis Combine).
The CapCon and DracCom just treat you as a second class citizen. They don't forcibly relocate huge chunks of the population on a whim that this will reduce cultural tension.
My stand on the issue remains as before.
But I don't begrudge your belief that the Republic represents a new start.
It isn't like just about every act, faction and character in the series hasn't had multiple interpretations, and it is definitely not a crime to like any of them.
Except the Clans. You're not allowed to like the Clans. :-P
Strange, I never saw it like that- I thought that the relocation programs were done at people's behest. I'm not all that up on the history, but I know that there were a LOT of people who were forced to leave planets because they lost wars or wanted to stay just two steps head of genocide or what have you, and would have enjoyed returning home, as well as a lot of people who just wanted off whatever rock they were stuck on. Where was it mentioned that people were forced to leave?
We will have too agree to disagree on the jihad and all that came after it {Well serpent and bulldog really} as the more I learn the gladder I am I got off the train at 3055.
On another note who here owns any of the BT RPG's and if so which ones? I have 2e used to have 3e but hated it and no longer do.
Strange, I never saw it like that- I thought that the relocation programs were done at people's behest. I'm not all that up on the history, but I know that there were a LOT of people who were forced to leave planets because they lost wars or wanted to stay just two steps head of genocide or what have you, and would have enjoyed returning home, as well as a lot of people who just wanted off whatever rock they were stuck on. Where was it mentioned that people were forced to leave?
I think they got a paragraph or two on the old INN site where the talking head pundits were debating the morality of the whole thing.
Could be wrong though, but I arrived at a very different consideration.
See, from that perspective it makes sense. I have never really had it explained to me so I have had to put the situation together based on what I could glean from the internet and the Dark Age fiction. The problem is that the fiction seemed like it was meant to be read in a specific order and the only place I could get the books was at Walmart, which was hit or miss on what they carried so I kept feeling like big chunks were missing.
There are things still missing. I still don't get how the Wolverines fit into the picture, but since Catalysts plans to do an "Era Report: Word of Blak Jihad" at a later point, I figured that there's really no sense milking the jumbled news feeds in the Jihad Hot Spots for more news when I can wait for a more lucidly structured document.
On another note who here owns any of the BT RPG's and if so which ones? I have 2e used to have 3e but hated it and no longer do.
A Time of War is painful to read. The fiction is good, but the 'Wall of Text' rules remind me that I've got better things to do... like work.