Postby zayven » Mon Dec 09, 2013 12:24 pm
Lee,
Oh, I can certainly see in retrospect how the Clans totally altered the landscape of the setting. Quite simply, the Clan mechs were broken. A 75 ton Clan mech could outrun and outgun a 100 ton IS mech, which led to the development of similarly turbocharged (though less efficient) IS mech upgrades. Once that ball started rolling, there was just no way to stop it. When I was a teenager, the Clans seemed really cool, but that was because my introduction to Battletech was the Mechwarrior 2 computer game. By the time I learned more about the setting, though (and played the FAR superior Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries, which was much more IS focused), I started to see how the introduction of the Clans had forever altered something that was pretty special. I have a similar thought whenever I have to read about technomancers or accept the existence of new corporations in recent Shadowrun editions (ugh...Horizon).
It does seem like the older material was much more invested in the idea of mechs as a cherished resource. While there were still factories, they weren't churning mechs out by the thousands like they would during the IS/Clan war. Everything in the IS got so organized once the Clans showed up. The original setting is very much Dune with giant robots. I do like the idea of mechs being scarce and that mechs are actually passed down through generations from one mechwarrior to the next. It helps to highlight the feudal nature of the setting.
Later supplements really seemed to focus on the "macro" level, always providing rules for larger engagements and orchestrating large scale conflicts that organized house armies participated in. The character level focus of the older materials does seem like something that fell to the wayside. There was always a weird disconnect with the game in that it could never decide if it was an RPG with mechs or if it was a miniatures wargame with an optional rpg element that you could throw in if you wanted to get all touchy-feely about it.
It's definitely a franchise that could use a "hard" reset much like Wizards did when they released Dark Sun for 4th edition D&D. They pretty much went back to the original box set as their primary frame of reference and ignored all of the metaplot changes that followed. Catalyst tried to do this with the Shadowrun 2050 book. I've only looked at that book briefly, though, so I don't know if it's any good or not. Someone somewhere suggested that Catalyst should do a setting sourcebook for each "era" of the game (so a 1e 2050 book, a 2e 2055 book, a 3e 2060 book, and a 4e 2070 book). That might be a good solution for Battletech if they haven't done it already. You could probably give people everything they need to play in classic 3025 era (I think that's still pre-4th Succession War) Battletech with three books (one describing the setting, one for era-specific mechs, and one for roleplaying as individuals or running mercenary company campaigns).
Then again, if the primary complaint against Catalyst is the writing style, that might not solve problems. What, exactly, is so bad about the writing in new Battletech products?
