Fringe War Battletech Campaign

March, 2788

The old man stood quietly, an ache in his spine, and looked out over a thousand acres.  His memory conjured up an image of riotous fields, golden and heavy with ripe grain.  Now it was a land that would bloom no more.  The landscape was sowed with jagged hunks of iron, melted hunks of steel.  When it rained, a slightly radioactive thorium cloud choked off any remaining weeds that tried to sprout between the corpses of twisted metal monsters.  For thousands of years humanity had kept the barbarians from the gates.  First with wood, then stone, then iron and plasteel.  But not anymore.  The Fall of the Star League in the 27th and this centuries Succession War had seen many of the Periphery planets abandoned to pirates and warlords, mercenaries and governments that were no better than the bandits themselves.  They were taxed, supposedly for protection, but the destruction furrowed before him betrayed the lie.  His land planted with misery, watered with blood.  But I, he thought.  I will bring the harvest.

Arthur Lendon turned back to his own machine, the one he knew he would die in.  A three story, 65 ton death machine.  When she first left the gantry he heard the hoots, endured the mockery of the other mechwarriors who thought the golden grain pattern would get him killed.  On that first day, it was impossible to look directly at his unwanted partner, she shone so bright in the brilliant yellow sun.  Not stealthy enough, they told him, standing out will make you a target.  They simply didn’t understand.  He didn’t want to hide, didn’t care if a bolt of blue lightning destroyed his cockpit in the first engagement.  The only thing he cared about was that the pirates who salted his land saw him coming.  Saw the rain of missiles like seeds on the wind, ripping their metal skins like they did his wheat.

In the end, it was they who feared his beloved, his despised.  His lady, Lendon Fields, her namesake only a memory.  I will never walk this land again, the tired old man knew.  But my sons?  I will make sure they do.

Some common questions on the skills.

1)  Logistics and Weight Management are ‘Command Skills’, and can only be taken by one member of the team.  They would become unbalanced if every lance member took them.

2)  Officer Duties – This skill allows a player, on any turn where they are not in combat, to perform in the role of their chosen officer specialty.  For example, if a player chooses ‘Personnel’, the team could requisition 2 Personnel per turn (one for the Personnel Officer, and one for the player with ‘Personnel’ skill.)  If the player takes this skill, and chooses any of the Mechanic skills, the team will need to hire 6 technicians, as a full Mechanic team consists of a lead tech and 6 technicians.  They can be hired through a Personnel office at a +1 Bonus.

3)  Intelligence Officer – The Intelligence officer is the one area of the game where the GM has more leeway, and because of it’s high costs, it has significant potential long-term value to a team.  The Intelligence Officer has 3 main functions, one on the battlefield, and 2 off.  Their battlefield functions comes from acquiring and using Intelligence equipment, mainly Satellites.  Their are several tiers and software satellites can run, and they can provide several benefits such as Initiative Bonuses, knowing exactly when enemy reinforcements will arrive on-site, revealing mine-fields, estimating enemy force composition, and approximate enemy positions if they are attempting to ambush.

Second, Intelligence officers can seek out special missions, including character background missions.  For example, one member of our current team is seeking the people who killed his parents.  The Intelligence officer can help complete those kinds of tasks.  Additionally, the Intelligence Officer can seek out missions the players can take regardless of having a contract in place.  For example, they could attempt to find hidden pirate bases, lightly defending mining or less lightly defended production facilities.

Finally, the IO can attempt to locate Lostech caches of weapons and equipment.  The players would need to organize missions and logistics to attempt recovery, which can be costly, but the rewards could potentially be huge. (or not so huge, depending on the size of the cache)

4)  Contract Law – These bonuses apply during contract negotiation.  There are several contract clauses that need to be hammered out as a contract is offered, such as Salvage Terms, how much in support costs the employer will pay, and what type of Command structure the players will be subject to.  A category reroll allows a player to reroll the result of any contract roll, and choose which of the 2 results to take.  A bonus to a contract roll provides a bonus modifier to be added to the contract roll.

5)  Shiny and New! (Light and Medium)  If a player’s mech is destroyed in combat, a player may choose an appropriate light or medium mech to replace it instead of rolling randomly.  Heavy and Assault mechs will always be random.

Character creation for the campaign is pretty basic.  Folks are starting with individual mechs and not lances, to keep mission times down and move the game along.  We had our first full blown lance on lance mission and it took nearly 3 hours.  We previously completed 4 objective missions in less than an hour each.

I don’t have any opposition to folks using A Time of War to create characters, but this will definitely remain a mech-based campaign, and not an RPG campaign.

Step 1 – Each player begins with the option to take a 45 ton mech with a (Green) 6/5 Pilot/Gunner rating.  Alternately, they can trade 10 tons and take a 35 ton mech with a (Still Green) 5/5 Piloting/Gunnery, or a 25 ton mech with a 5/4 Pilot Gunner rating.  As an FYI, the first group running through this campaign has a 6/5 in a Phoenix Hawk (45 ton) and a 5/4 in a Mongoose (25 ton), and the Mongoose has definitely held its own.

Starting mechs need to have been in production in 2791.  You can find all sorts of mech resources at Solaris7, and I checked most of the mechs in the Battletech Introductory Boxed Set and their first production is all before 2800 (if I’m wrong someone please let me know).  The game is low-tech to start, so be prepared to use just the basic weapons and equipment until you move out of the Periphery (if you ever choose to), the year advances to where new tech is available, or you get access to a good Intelligence/Procurement officer.

Each player starts with 1,000,000 C-Bills, and the lance as a whole starts with 5,000,000 C-Bills.  That’s not really a lot of cash, so money will be very tight for at least the first 20-30 turns or unless you score some good salvage terms in your first contract.

Step 2 – Each player starts with 10 Experience Points to spend on skills.  Experience is gained by surviving missions (+1) and per kill (+1).  Experience can be used to improve Piloting/Gunnery or add perks to a character.  I will continue to add new skills or balance the current skills with Exp cost as we use them.  For example, the first change (the one player who already took the skill at cost 1 can keep it) was to change Tracker from 1 to 2 Exp.  There were MANY times when the player was getting essentially a +1 gunnery, for a mere 1 exp.

Jet “Jet” Spiegel looked wearily up from his parts requisition as his two senior technicians burst into the room.  He could smell the rank combination of old lubricant and sweat that lack of decent sanitation facilities caused.  Dammit, he thought, I never remember to bring up showers when I’m with the group, where all we talk about are contracts, and tonnage, and drop costs.  These people are going to bolt if we don’t improve the situation here. 

This damn planet.  Most of it is so beautiful.  Excepting the 50 acres they had carved out of the Lendon battlefield, re-tasking as much of the non-radioactive metal as they could.  Still, sometimes Jet felt Last Chance was more backward than the lawless frontier where he grew up.

“Things in the bay are getting dire, sir,” the lead mechanic of team 1 said.  “We’re working 80 hours a week, but with the missions you’ve been going on, it’s still not enough.”  Bill Ramsbottom was a good base tech, fresh out of school, but Jet often wished he had some veteran staff.  Everything took twice as long as it should due to patching and repatching work that occurred regularly.

“You know we should have at least one maintenance team per mech, and that’s not counting battle damage.” Arline interjected.  Short hanks of greasy hair fell from her tec-helm.  Waifish, barely 1.5 meters, and probably cute under the layer of grime on her face.  At least he thought so when he hired her, but it had been so long since any of them had been really clean.  “And now you brought in that prima donna Salvatore, who won’t leave us alone.  It’s like we’ve never patched a piece of armor before, him always looking over our shoulders.”

Ramsbottom hated letting the little tech get a word in, and started talking over her.  “Look, somethings gonna happen out there if we don’t get the maintenance schedule back on track.  An actuator could freeze up in the middle of a gunfight, or a misdirected jump jet could spew plasma and melt a layer of armor straight off.”

The Karolo’s don’t get walked on, Arline thought before whacking Bill in the gut with her mag-wrench, leaving him wheezing.  “And that damn Liam wants to take up half the bay to work on that stupid Skulker.  Heck, that hunk of junk hasn’t been off the yard in 2 months, he doesn’t need the space.  We’d be better off selling it and transferring his team to Mech-maint.  Plus, the bay can barely accommodate the 4 robots we’ve got, let alone a vehicle.  You’re going to need a bigger facility and soon if you bring any more on.”

Ramsbottom raised his hands in peace as Arline prepared to give him another slug.  “Look sir, Arl’s right and we’re in real trouble here.  I’ll never leave you, and I think she feels the same, but our secondaries are all exhausted and at the breaking point.  I’d be surprised if several don’t bolt to the drop pad in town when we get our supplies next week.  At least at the mining colonies they can get some sleep, buy a beer, and carouse a little.  The fragging mayor shut down the saloon again last week, claiming we were a bad influence on the local pop.”

Jet nodded at the two techs, letting them know he understood, before holding up the requisition for parts they had requested.  It was only half finished and needed to get transmitted today if the supplies were to get on that drop ship next week.  Ten things at a time, Jet thought, as the techs let themselves out.

Looks like a good world to hold the campaign on.  I haven’t checked all the books yet, but I can’t find much about it on Sarna.  It also sounds good considering the challenging, but hopeful nature of the campaign.

The Battletech rules discuss and allow for ‘officers’ of various types.  These include officers such as Personnel, Administrative, Supply and the like.  Combining some ideas our gaming group has had with Battletech, using these officers provides much of the ‘campaign’ flavor to the Fringe War campaign system.  Every turn (barring travel turns), each officer can perform a task in his core function to assist the unit.  For example, the Supply officer can requisition armor and spare weapons in advance of an assault mission, or the Personnel Officer can attempt to hire a mechwarrior, another officer, or a squad of infantry.  High margins of success (MoS) will give bonuses to future rolls or reduce the cost of acquired goods.

For example, the Personnel Officer action consists of:

1)  Start Task

2)  Pay costs – some of the tasks officers can perform require a payment in credits.  For example, to recruit a mechwarrior without a personal mech costs 30,000 credits to cover the expenses of HPG transmissions, advertising, interviews, etc.

3)  Determine Target Roll – More challenging tasks require higher rolls.

4)  Roll and determine result.

5)  On a success, roll on the quality table to determine the rank of the hire.

6)  On a success, add one experience point to the Officer.  On a natural 12, add 2 experience points and at the GM’s discretion, another bonus is applied (such as an additional recruit available).

7)  Promote if enough experience.  Officers gain a rank (Green, Regular, Veteran, Elite) and decrease their target rolls similar to technicians.

An example:  Silver Spear, a light mechwarrior company is looking to hire an additional pilot for a Jenner it took as salvage in the last mission.  They have a Veteran recruitment officer (Target roll of 5), mostly due to the high number of replacement pilots they go through.  They are offering a 100,000 credit signing bonus (-1), they have an empty mech for the pilot to use (-1), and their Dragoon rating is C. (0 effect)  However, the unit is on the Periphery (+1), and they are doing Garrison duty on an essentially uninhabited mining planet (population under 100,000), which is another +1.  Their total roll would need to be a 5 or greater to succeed in locating an appropriate mechwarrior for hire.

Once a candidate is found, a roll is made on the quality table to determine the rank of the unit.  The Silver Spear Personnel Officer rolls a 9.  With his bonus to Quality roll of +2, he has found a Regular rank mechwarrior.

Each officer has a particular set of modifiers to their rolls, though they all have the same target numbers based on the rank of the officer.  Recruiters may also spend 1 experience to add a +1 modifier to any roll, up to a maximum of +5.

Green – 6

Regular – 5

Veteran – 4

Elite – 3

Questions, comments and suggestions welcome.  Future posts will cover each officers’ potential actions and modifiers.

Fringe War is an ongoing, multi-generational Battletech campaign, taking place from approximately 2790 to whenever folks want to quit.  Turns are 2 weeks, so there will be 26 turns a year.  Due to being new at GM’ing Battletech, plus having a million sourcebooks to go through, this will be a lance-sized campaign to start, though people can certainly build beyond that.  On the Periphery where the campaign takes place, money is tight, parts are hard to come by, and a brand new mech hasn’t been seen in 200 years (with one exception!).  To start, forces will be of mechs, vehicles, turrets, artillery and infantry.  Aerotech will be introduced as we learn it, though there will be some limited Aerotech assets available for hire (Airstrikes).  Dropships are purchasable, though I’d guess the campaign would go 20-30 years before enough capital is raised to do so (so it might be used by a new generation of pilots, and not the ones starting the unit).  Through the twisted hand of fate, it would probably be easier to capture one.

Players begin the campaign owning a small Mercenary command based out of Lendon Fields, a battleground from the locally called ‘Cross-bone War’.  It is located several miles from a small town (pop 5000), where folks have very mixed feelings about the Mercs.  Some think having them there can only cause trouble, while others pray they might be some help if the pirates return.  The town council generally looks the other way of the Mercs, but no one knows why, as they are very intrusive into the lives of the citizenry.

The planet (TBD) is Agrarian, with very little in the way of ores, fuels or radioactives.  However, there is quite a bit of mining activity in the solar system, including several asteroid mining stations and a much larger population of miners and pirates on the local moon.  There are several major trade cities on the planet, with 2 major starports and some smaller dropship platforms scattered around some larger estates.

The military presence is very light, due to a combination of low population, small tax revenue, and its near total destruction in the conflict with a pirate faction known as The Kin.  Remaining forces are several brigades of infantry, a company of armored vehicles, one light Aerotech wing, and the pride of the planet, a 3/4 lance of Heavy battlemechs.  The command unit of the lance, the Lendon Fields (a Crusader-3R), has been missing and presumed destroyed for nearly 3 years.  No one knows how the mechs came to be in possession of the planetary government.  They aren’t fielded often due to a lack of maintenance personnel and spare armaments, but when they are, they outmatch almost anything in the solar system.

Each turn of Fringe War will have certain elements.  Currently, that looks something like:

1.  Repair and refit.

2.  Pay all fixed costs and personnel.

3.  Acquisition of equipment and personnel (using ‘officers’, which are part of your command).

4.  Contract offers, bids and negotiations.

5.  Deploy to contract location (this could take several turns by itself, depending on the distance, jump routes, etc)

6.  Encamp at contract location (1-2 turns, depending on whether only the lance/techs are moving or whether the whole Lendon Fields contingent is).

7.  Begin operations (for active duties) or deployment checks (for defensive type duties such as garrison/cadre)

By the Book and Not By the Book

Unlike my once upon a time D&D games, most of the campaign will be ‘by the book’, except where the book makes things too complicated.  So the combat will be 100% BTB, while we will be using an only slightly modified version of the Contract Negotiation system found in the Revised Mercenaries Handbook.  Battletech is a huge game, so if something is pointed out to me that I’m doing wrong or doesn’t make sense, we’ll fix it.  Repair and refit rules (quality ratings) will be modified, as the ‘full’ version could take 4 hours per repair cycle.  If we ever find a way to automate something like the ‘full’ repair cycle and determination of unit and item-level quality/maintenance, I’d be glad to implement it.  One reason for a very strict record-keeping system is so I can play the game as well as GM it.  Each player will have just as much visibility into the nuts and bolts of the game as I do.

As part of the joy of a campaign is character-building (though I hope folks don’t get too attached to any individual, as any battle can be their last), characters will be able to improve and earn skills (both combat and campaign oriented) based on experience earned on the battlefield.

Player Responsibilities:

1)  Once players learn the system, the upkeep of their assets will be entirely in their hands.  So while repair/acquisition rolls will be made in GM (or other player) presence, each session the player is responsible for submitting a hard-copy record sheet of their mech and assets (for PnP players) or an Excel file (for assets) and .Mul/.MTF file (for mechs, so I can load them into Megamek).

2)  Each engagement (excluding Intel/Lostech) will be run by the GM and players in turn.  This allows me to enjoy the game as well, but it also balances the field.  Battles will be BV2 based, modified by skills (piloting/gunnery); however, that doesn’t mean battles will always (or even often) be 1:1.  Assaults could be challenging as players go up against 150% of their BV, or easy as they run down convoys of enemy vehicles (50%).  Missions can be overt or covert.  They can take place on desert planets where there could be heat dissipation -3 or ice planets that require additional piloting checks, but heat dissipation is +3.  And so on!  Each player is expected to play the ‘opposition’ to the best of their ability, even when (especially when) fighting their own mechs.  Mechs will be lost, but part of the fun is finding and hiring new ones as well.

3)  There will be no time wasted arguing.  Other than rules specified ahead of time, the books take precedence in any disagreement.  I may modify a rule after the fact, but during play if I haven’t specified ahead of time, we’ll go with what the book says.  For example, the current campaign rule says the current lance’s airstrikes are Target 5 (9 against moving targets), with 3 batteries of LRM 15’s per fighter.  Now, I know that’s not how actual Aerotech works, but for the time being, that’s what we’re going with.  If I hadn’t specified ahead of time, we would figure out how to call in an airstrike by the Aerotech rules, or not do it until a following session.

4)  Check the blog at least twice a week for news and info.

5)  Attempt to get all software I am using to run the game up and running on your own computers.  (MegaMek and MegaMekLab are the two that should be gotten first)

GM Responsibilities:

1)  All rule changes that aren’t exactly by the book will be posted here on the ‘campaign rules’ page, with at least some explanation of why the rule change exists.  And to be honest, that will usually have to do with record-keeping time.  Any player wanting a particular rule to remain in force will have to volunteer to take up any record keeping responsibility associated with the rule.

2)  Contract offers, while allowing some ‘storytelling’ room, will be generated via a consistent set of campaign rules.  The contracts themselves will be generated using the Revised Merc Handbook  system, while the operational forces of the opposition will be generated randomly once a system is in place.  Before the system is in place, I will match a set BV as closely as possible, weighted by the mission type and OpFor rolls.

3)  As long as the players show up consistently and with a good attitude, I will post at least 2-3 times a week on the blog.

4)  Barring real life stuff (work, trips, etc), I will be available at least every other week for IRL/Megamek sessions.  And most likely, once a week if the players are interested in playing that often.

Remember, this is supposed to be fun!  I’ve wanted to do this for going on 25 years, so as long as we’re all having fun, I’ll be adding things to make the actual play experience nicer, such as new models, more maps, and maybe even some 3d terrain we can set up at the warehouse.  Players who are willing to take on any of the upkeep of a huge game like this will free up my time to add other cool stuff rather than handling infinite record-keeping.  This could include making some web pages we could use to generate contracts (the ones I’ve found so far online aren’t very good), random mechs, etc.

Thanks y’all, this post is long enough so I’ll leave it at that!