Re-Purposing

This account has been lying languid for years now.  Quite frankly, I quickly burned out on the art-based mysteries I was going to do.  After I read the third book promising to be an art history-conspiracy novel and turned out be nothing more than another woman-discovering-her-inner-beauty-and-finding-love story, I gave up on the whole genre.  Also, I haven't really had anything worth blogging about for a while now, and I'm not so egotistical to believe that anyone wants to read about my day to day life.

HOWEVER, a couple of years ago I rediscovered Battletech and found my friend Bruce is also a fan.  We corrupted our friend and fellow gamer, Joel, into joining us and introduced him to the glory that is giant, stompy robots wandering around the battlefield blowing the hell out of each other.  We played a campaign from the Sword and Dragon starterbook, and I have several of those after-action reports, which we chose to write up as fictional first person accounts, on file.  I may share those over time as well.  They make for interesting little stories.  About a year ago we decided we needed a new campaign, so we all picked up copies of Operation: Klondike and settled on an Arcadia campaign.  In order to fully enjoy it, we needed to expand our knowledge of the rules and move into other areas of combat.  We taught ourselves how to use vehicles, VTOL's, infantry, and artillery.  Finally, we dove into the aerospace rules, which was a fiasco all its own and we still haven't fully wrapped our heads around those, but we're getting there.

A month ago we launched the campaign with a 6-hour session using both 'Mechs and aerospace units.  This blog will be the story of that campaign, the rules we develop for it, a couple of discussions about force design, and pictures of the units we acquire and paint for it.

The players are:
Neil: I was introduced to Battletech in 1990 while I was in college and expirementing with new gaming systems.  I brought it home and introduced it to my brother and some other friends that made up my D&D group at that time.  We played an ongoing campaign in the heady days when FASA was at its height, churning out novels and the clan invasion.  Traditionally, I have always preferred playing the spheroids because I always thought the clans were a little too munchkinny, but they make for good foils and I have come to appreciate the work that goes into their plot lines.  I am playing the Star Adders in the current campaign.

Bruce: The friend that I played the Sword and Dragon campaign with.  Bruce and I have been gaming together in various D&D, Pathfinder, Arcanis, and Role Master campaigns for over 10 years now.  His luck with dice is phenomenal and he frequently destroys whole strategic models with a turn 2 or 3 head shot with a gauss rifle or PPC from long range.  Bruce is playing the Ghost Bears.

Joel: The friend we corrupted.  Joel was introduced to our D&D group by Bruce, they used to work together.  Joel and his wife are very much involved with Rocky Mountain Great Dane Rescue, and usually have between 2 and 4 Great Danes living in their house at any given time.  Sadly, Joel moved to Wisconsin a few months ago and doesn't get to join us for bi-weekly games very much anymore. He still skypes in for D&D and the occasional BT game. Originally he was going to play the Blood Spirits.

Next posting: The planetary and force composition decisions: