Playing BattleTech – An Overview
I made this introductory overview of the steps in a BattleTech turn to give friends some idea of how it’s played. This isn’t the rulebook, just an idea of the game:
- Choose a Mech to move. Choose a movement mode: standing, walking, running, or jumping (if available). Make a note, you’ll need that when you attack.
- Walking or running will give you somewhere between 2 and 12 movement points. Moving forward one space costs 1 point. Turning left or right one hexside costs one point. Moving into trees or water or up a hill one space costs a little extra.
- Jumping costs 1 point per space, and you can ignore turns and terrain features.
- Make a note of how many actual spaces you moved. You’ll need that when someone attacks you.
- Taking turns, everyone moves their Mechs.
- Now if you wish, almost all Mechs can temporarily twist their upper body one hexside left or right. If you do this, make a note.
- Now we do ranged attacks. Pick one of your Mechs, and choose which weapons it will fire. Sometimes the target will be out of range. Sometimes it will be behind a hill or something. Sometimes it will be standing somewhere your weapons don’t point (thus the torso twist which might help). Otherwise, we shoot!
- We use a base target number of 2. If the target is at medium range for the weapon you picked, it becomes 4. If at long, it becomes 6.
- If you walked your Mech, add +1. Running gets +2. Jumping gets +3; expected since you flung yourself through the air while trying to shoot.
- If the target moved 3-4 spaces: +1. 5-6 spaces: +2; and so on. Hard to hit the speedy ones.
- There are more adjustments for standing in water, a target in the trees, and other miscellany. We’ll figure them out. It goes quicker than it sounds, trust me.
- Roll two six-sided dice. If you roll your target number or higher, you hit! Obviously lower target numbers are good for you, bad for the enemy.
- We roll some dice to see what part of the enemy you hit, and apply damage to that part based on the weapon you used. If you’ve peeled away all the armor on that part, we check to see if important parts (weapons, motors, pilots) get broken.
- The next Mech fires until everyone gets a turn. Damage doesn’t apply until everyone has fired, so blowing up your target doesn’t mean he can’t shoot one last time.
- If two Mechs are right next to each other, they may now get to punch or kick each other. Range is not an issue, but movement and possible damaged limbs are. If you hit, we do similar damage rolls to before.
- All Mech equipment is powered by a fusion reactor and gets very hot in use. If you walked, you generated a heat point. If you ran, you generated two. If you jumped, at least three depending on how far you moved.
- Lasers get very hot if you fire them. Missiles less so, and cannons relatively little. We add all that up. Luckily, your Mech comes with giant radiators called heat sinks to get rid of it.
- Subtract the number of heat sinks from your heat points. If the result is negative, you can reduce your heat scale by that many points (minimum result of zero). Otherwise, add that many points to your heat scale.
- You might have heat penalties to movement or shooting next turn. With bad enough luck, you might cook off some ammunition in your Mech – which is as bad as it sounds. You might need to consider shooting fewer guns next turn… but the extra shot might make the difference… decisions!
- Turn’s done! Crank up the A/C in your cockpit and plan your next move!
That’s an overview of a BattleTech turn. As I mentioned, it goes faster than it might sound. I love this game and I hope you are interested in trying it out!
BS&W: Using Your Karma Points
Good Karma
Good Karma is used between adventures to improve character ratings or gain benefits. A character can increase Physical and Mental Attributes 1 point by paying a number of Good Karma Points equal to the rating to which the Attribute is being raised. Raising a Strength of 5 to 6 would cost 6 Good Karma Points. Attribute Ratings cannot normally exceed the character’s racial maximum. However, if the gamemaster agrees, paying double the Good Karma Points can raise the Attribute above the racial maximum. For example, a human character who wanted to raise her Strength from 6 to 7 would have to spend 14 Good Karma Points to do so. The gamemaster should probably discourage players from raising a character’s Attributes to beyond 1.5 x the racial maximum. Good Karma can also raise Attributes that have been reduced for some reason. Though it is NEVER possible to use Karma to directly raise Reaction, Essence, and Magic, Reaction may change if Quickness or Intelligence is improved.
Skills
Skill Ratings can also be raised using Good Karma. Once the Karma has been paid, the Skill Rating goes up 1 point. Once the character has begun the game, improvements in general skills, Concentrations, and Specializations al happen sepa- rately. Increasing a general skill does not automatically change the Concentration, and so on.
Good Karma Cost For Skills
- General skills – 2 x New Rating
- Concentrations – 1.5 x New Rating
- Specializations – 1 x New Rating
- Languages – 1 x New Rating
Iris has specialized in Firearms Skill. Her current ratings are Firearms 1, Pistols 3, and Beretta 101T, her chosen weapon, of 5.
Raising her general Firearms Skill from 1 to 2 costs 4 Karma Points.
Raising her Pistols skill from 3 to 4 costs 6 Karma Points.
Raising her Beretta 101T skill from 5 to a Specialization 6 costs 6 Karma Points.
New Concentrations are based on the existing general skill score. If the character has Firearms 4 and wants to concentrate with Pistols at 5, the Concentration would cost 5 x 1.5, or 8 Karma Points.
New Specializations are based on the existing Concentration score. If the character does not have an appropriate Concentration, use the general skill. Thus, if the character only wants to improve with the Remington Roomsweeper, the Specialization would cost 5 x 1, or 5 Karma Points, to reach Rating 5 in that specialized skill.
New skills cost 1 point of Good Karma for the first rating point. A Hermetic magician must have unrestricted access to a sorcery library with a rating equal to, or greater than, the Sorcery Skill rating he wishes to acquire.
Karma Pool
One-tenth (round up) of all Karma earned goes into the character’s Karma Pool. The character can draw from it as needed during an encounter, but once the Karma Pool is emptied, it is no longer available for that encounter. The full value of the Karma Pool returns with the next encounter. (What constitutes an encounter? A single scene or event in the story. It might be a single location or several closely related areas. A running gun-battle might be a single encounter, or it might be a series of them. If the runners have time to catch their breath, it usually means a new scene, or encounter, has begun.)
Points from the Karma Pool can be used a number of ways.
Re-rolling Failure
A character can use 1 point from the Karma Pool to re-roll any test dice that failed. For example, the player rolls 4 dice and scores 2 successes. For 1 point of Karma, he can roll those 2 failed dice again. This process can be repeated, but each time it is done on a single test the Karma cost goes up by 1, until all the dice are successes or the character runs out of Karma.
Avoid an “Oops”
The Rule of One can be partially avoided. If all the character’s dice come up 1, it usually means a disastrous failure. Paying 1 point of Karma does not allow a re-roll, but does turn the disaster into a simple failure. Additional Karma cannot be spent on the failure.
Buy Additional Dice
A character may spend 1 point of Karma to buy an additional die for use in a test, up to a maximum of however many skill, Attribute, or rating dice are in use, not including other Pool dice. These karmic dice score, and are used, normally.
Buying Successes
It is also possible to purchase raw success at a cost of 1 Karma Point per success, but on two hefty conditions. First, the character has to generate at least 1 success normally through the test. No natural, regular successes, no karmic successes. Second, Karma Pool dice spent to buy a success are gone (pffft!) forever, expended permanently. They do not refresh with the pool in the next scene. Replacement Karma must be earned.
Catgirl of Battle Gaming Mini!
I have finally painted one of my custom-designed and 3D-printed Catgirl of Battle parody Warhammer 40K figures. Maybe I’ll actually manage a five-woman squad before Christmas LOL. I’m actually super-pleased with how she turned out, she exceeded my expectations!
The figure is based on a HeroForge body, is wearing shoulder armor scaled down from a full-size pattern, a modded power unit based on Games Workshop designs, and carries a singularity (power) sword modeled by me in Blender after a full-size prop. Can’t wait to work on the next one!
In the latest edition of Warhammer 40K, the depicted Catgirl of Battle counts as a Battle Sisters Sister Superior with a Boltgun and a Power Weapon. In Grimdark Future, the depicted Catgirl of Battle counts as a Battle Sister with an Assault Rifle and an Energy Sword.
RPG systems Michael owns
This is a “top of my head” list, and I may have forgotten a few. Starred titles are systems I personally like.
- * Bunkers & Badasses (Tiny Tina of Borderlands runs an RPG)
- * Deadlands (alternate Wild West with Cosmic Horror)
- * Glitter Hearts (magical girls, also heavy on role-play)
- * PARANOIA XP Edition
- * Shadowrun Eds. 1-6
- * Space: 1889
- * Star Wars (the 90s D6 version)
- * Teenagers From Outer Space (wacky anime school comedy)
- * The Excellents (She-Ra for kids and kids-at-heart)
- * Thirsty Sword Lesbians (more role-playing, less combat dice)
PARANOIA Miniatures
I may never run another game – I’m not sure the humor holds up in 2024 – but if I do, I’m pleased with these PARANOIA Troubleshooter minis I created in HeroForge. Might just order the STLs and print them in case.
Classic Game “Marathon” Free on Steam
Released in 1994, this game could be called a Doom clone. It used a game engine that couldn’t handle ramps, curves, or solid enemy models. You can’t even jump! But it still had great graphics and an entire short sci-fi novel hidden in terminals that gave you objectives and the plot. I played this *so* much and even helped with creating a makeover mod for it!
Available free on Steam.
About Damn Time For Dancing
I have commissioned a custom avatar twice, each time for a considerable (for me) amount of money. Now that I’ve used VRoid Studio, I understand that each time that’s what the artist was using, and it was time for me to buckle down and learn it well enough to get the results I wanted. The artists I commissioned weren’t sure about simulating facial hair, adding the hair bow, or adapting the VRoid for Beat Saber among other things.
But now I have had a little practice. (Though it looks like I may somehow have deleted the save file, so the next incarnation may look a little different once again.) This time, the MeidoRanger looks even more like me and has a fun hairstyle that swings around while I move. And I figured out how to make the outfit glossy in Unity while I was adapting the VRoid for VR gaming use. I swear, I’m learning more about 3D modeling than I ever intended to!
I literally had to downgrade my Unity install: the feature that animates the hair and skirt doesn’t yet work with the newest. (Thankfully, one can have multiple installs.) The only way to get a bow on the back of my head was to lie to VRoid and claim it was oddly-styled hair. Of course, I had to fix the neckline since I have no maid dresses which show it, and I had to put on a second invisible skirt so that the apron tails would move separately. So many little things to do! Next, I plan to curl the fingers so I’m holding the sabers better. But of now, I’m really happy with this avatar, and plan to make videos with far greater frequency. I think we can agree, it’s about damn time.
The Old Dungeon
The past blasted me a couple of times this weekend. The charity site Bundle of Holding offered the old Traveller RPG books from 1981 as PDF for a giveaway price (through July 9th), and I discovered that D&D Classics will sell me the First Edition Dungeons and Dragons books in a similar downloadable form, cheaper than they’ve ever been. With the PDF reader on my iPad, I could browse them easily, even use them to run a game or two were I so inclined; I’ve done this with Shadowrun and Paranoia PDFs.
Both offers are incredibly tempting. I spent uncounted hours of my puberty reading these game books, immersing myself in their world, and running adventures in my head when I couldn’t play with my friends. Did a lot of the latter, to be honest: I went a long stretch without friends who were interested in a regular game, and frankly most of us were abysmal gamesters. We followed rules slavishly or bent them nine ways from Sunday without thinking for a second about game balance, or storytelling. We didn’t spend any time building a game world to inhabit, either. Adventures were disconnected episodes which occurred in a void. Despite all that, I had a lot of fun and kept many golden memories.
So, these old books tempt me to come back and relive those happy novice days. Unfortunately, I’m not 13 any more. I’ve spent a lot of experience points, bought off some disadvantages, and picked up some new ones. The dungeons of my youth are now familiar places, stripped of their wonder and danger in favor of familiarity. I find my modern players less interested in poring over carefully-constructed maps of hyperspace jump routes in favor of simply asking, “According to the ship’s computer, where’s the closest system with a fuel depot we can safely use?” and I can’t blame them. Hell, I don’t even know anyone who cares about D&D these days, with Pathfinder still going strong.
So I’ll be saving money on this nostalgic offer for now. I have to admit, though: “Expedition to the Barrier Peaks” would still make a great Deadlands or Shadowrun adventure with some adjustments to fit the new setting.
Installing Skyrim Using Wine on Mac OS X
Computer used: 2009 Mac Pro with 8 GB memory, a 1 GB Apple graphics card, and OS X 10.9 Mavericks
- Purchase Skyrim on Steam. (By waiting for the right sale, I got it for $5.)
- Download ThePortingTeam’s Wine wrapper for Skyrim.
- Follow the installation instructions under “Installation”. Run Skyrim at least once. At this point Skyrim worked excellently except for a horrible display bug. So, after a lot of websites and some guessing…
- Right-click on the wrapper (the Skyrim icon), choose “Open Package Contents”, and open wineskin.app just as you did during Step 3.
- Click “Set Screen Options”. Uncheck “Use Mac Driver instead of X11”.
- Under “Override Wine control of Screen Settings?” click “Override”.
- Under “Override Settings” make sure that “Fullscreen” is checked. Under “Installer Options” make sure that “Force Normal Windows” is checked.
- Click “Done”. Click “Quit”. Double-click the wrapper icon, and enjoy your game!
I also installed the Unofficial Skyrim Patches, SKSE, and SkyUI, but that’s for another time. Further, I updated the wrapper engine to WS9Wine1.7.21, but I’m not sure I needed to do that. If you do, the instructions are on the Wineskin Winery website.
Have fun hunting dragons!
Instant Death, No Saving Throw
In 1974, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson created Dungeons and Dragons. Sometime around 1978, I acquired a copy, and my leisure time pursuits were changed forever. I owe the both of them a debt of gratitude I can never repay (and a debt of finance as well).
They made one mistake, though, and my gamer friends and I have been dealing with that mistake since then. I don’t know how it got into the game originally; in fact, sometimes I wonder what it was like gaming with them under this philosophy. The attitude is never openly stated in the books, but the early game materials make it clear: the Game Master is the other players’ enemy.
