Having Friends and Buying Toys

One element that a few of my players have brought up is the accessibility (or lack thereof) of various weapons and ammunition. Rightly so, the ComStar party players are under the belief that their connections will do them little good stranded on a planet held by the enemy. Terra is also decribed in Jihad Hotspots:Terra as being a fairly restrictive world from a regulatory perspective. The practical upshot is that the players may have some trouble acquiring advanced weapons and ordnance on the open market. Fortunately, Clark and Simon have sufficient connections to get them most standard equipment. The balance of what they could get probably wouldn't be sold to consumers -- they'll need to make special arrangements for those devices.

The specific logistics of handling party-level equipment -- that is, anything large enough that a character can't keep it on their person -- has been an interesting adventure for me recently. BattleTech is exceptionally good at handling 'Mech-scale unit operations, but it seems to come up a bit short on the level of an individual guerrilla group. There are very limited resources for building things like bases that aren't Castle Brians. I'm rather having to come up with the management by hand, but that's exciting in itself. I'll continue posting as I come up with a better plan for how to assemble these sorts of things.

What The Word Knows

One of the issues I'm wrestling with as this campaign progresses is how aggressive to make TerraSec and the Word of Blake Militia in hunting down the ComStar survivors. The ComStar party broke contact with the Word in a very obvious way, and because they were the only units in the area, the Word of Blake knows that there was at least a Firestarter at large. The party is currently taking steps to conceal that 'Mech, but Terra is a very advanced planet, and the Word and TerraSec have access to considerable resources in their hunt.

I think TerraSec's search for the missing elements of the 394th is going to be my passive plot hook; the scenario I run when the party is at a loss as to what to do. Rather than have an entire session of waiting around, either TerraSec or the 9th Division show up looking for Alex, Shin, and David. To that end, I need to plot out the ranch for tactical engagements. I expect any such encounter would be more a game of hide-and-seek than an actual fight, since the party obviously would have a hard time explaining the disappearance of one or more officers sent to investigate Clark's ranch. Creating the layout of the ranch will also allow me to instill a greater sense of propriety on the players, and make then feel more enfranchised in the world.

At least, that's my theory. We'll see how it holds up.

Things I Wish I Had In Front Of Me, Part 1

I'm starting to develop a list of things I want in front of me as I GM; places I keep referring back to in the books. I expect these desires to evolve over the course of the campaign, so I'm going to keep a list of them, and there will likely be subsequent entries over the lifetime of this game. For now, I'll start with the ones I've experienced so far.

First and foremost, the Master Skills List on page 142. Last session, I just left a copy of A Time of War open on the table in front of me turned to that page. The thing I keep needing to check is target numbers (TNs); my players are still used to telling me what they rolled, and the result after adding their bonus, but they're slow to remember that the TN is fixed in A Time of War. I am constantly having to look it up, at least until they all have upgraded record sheets with the TNs listed on them.

Second, the Basic Action Check Table on page 40, although with the aforementioned Master Skills List table above, I really only need this is remember 12 and 18, the single-and-double attribute check numbers, which I'm sure I'll remember someday. They just come up so infrequently now.

The last thing that I want doesn't exist as far as I can tell -- the damage cheatsheet. The damage rules are quite poorly laid out for quick reference in A Time of War, and a simple, intuitive chart of what gets applied and how and which modifiers are applied for which types of wounds would be amazing. On its face damage is easy -- roll the hit location, apply the modifier, subtract that number from Standard Damage. Problems inevitable result, though, from tracking what affects are on a character with, say, a 4-point head wound (page 182, if you were wondering.)

This is all before we've gotten to proper individual-level combat. As I said, I expect this is to evolve over time.

Meet and Greet

This week the ComStar Party and the Ground Crew finally met up at Clark's ranch. This was a short session, but it provided a very roleplay-heavy opportunity for the players, and set a lot of the groundwork for the stories to come.

The ComStar Party stashed their vehicles nearby, and used some branches and other natural materials to disguise them from aerial surveillance. They approached the ranch house each according to their mood: Alexander, suffering from a 4-point headwound, tried to be stealthy and failed miserably. Shin just strod up to the front door, and David hung back at the wood line with his sniper rifle, in case it was a trap.

Coming inside, there were a few tense moments as the ComStar Party explained who they were and why they were here, but the party cleared that easily enough. After Alexander and Shin received medical treatment, the two parties started comparing notes. The ComStar Party explained the opening moves of the Jihad to the information-starved Terrans, and the Ground Crew explained the adventures they had during the HPG blackout and shared the intelligence they had acquired.

The session then devolved into Alexander trying to mobilize the party again for another strike on the elements of the 9th Division advancing toward the 394th's remaining landed elements. It took most of the balance of the session for the other to convince him there was nothing they could do, and that he would be laid up for at least two weeks with his injuries. The party was unable to come up with a course of action beyond by the time the session ended, so the debate will go on over email until our next session.

Making Rent

Yesterday I talked about how much each character earns from their respective jobs. For review, the gross monthly paychecks are:

Shin: 1,280

David: 1,260

Alex: 2,500

Clark: 2,500

Simon: 640

First off, taxes. We'll use the game's base estimate that 30% of income goes to taxes of one form or another. After those costs, our characters have:

Shin: 896

David: 882

Alex: 1,750

Clark: 1,750

Simon: 448

Next, living expenses. The ComGuard live in ComStar facilities, which have a nominal cost -- 240 C-Bills a month. Assuming basic utilities and good, each of them is spending 384 C-Bills a month on food:

Shin: 512

David: 498

Alex: 1,366

Clark lives on a ranch outside of Denver. We'll count that a large house, with good utilities and quality food. (600 for the house, 120 for the utilities, 240 for the food is 960/month.)

Clark: 790

Simon lives in the city, in a one-bedroom apartment. He also has good utilities but can't quite afford quality food, for monthly expenses of 330 C-Bills.

Simon: 118 C-Bills.

Poor Simon is almost broke. Fortunately, he started the game with an enormous reserve of cash -- Wealth(3). I think he'll be just fine. Also, he is still drawing his paycheck, whereas the ComStar people can't anymore. Effectively, the party income is only 908 C-Bills per Month now.

Starting Sunday I'll be issuing statements keeping the players up to date on their finances. As money becomes more and more of an issue, they may be inspired to undertake operations just to shore up their finances, driving even more adventure. We'll see how it plays out.

Taking Care of Business and Working Overtime

One thing I glossed over in the early parts of this campaign, but now have to deal with, is supporting my characters, or more specifically, getting them to support themselves. The economics of the BattleTech universe have always been a bit wonky, so its not worth deep-diving into, but for the moment a few things are helpful:

Page 335 of A Time of War has a table for a few common professions in the BattleTech Universe. Conveniently, these directly cover four of the five part members. Three of those four are serving ComGuard. They are the easy ones.

Shin is piloting a 'Mech, but I'm considering him to still be considered Battle Armor Infantry by ComStar. That makes his base pay 960 C-Bills per month. He's 4/4, a regular pilot. That gives him a 1x multipler. He also holds two TP worth of the Rank Trait, giving him another 0.3x (four thirds all told, which I'll grant him.) His total salary from the ComGuard comes to 1,280 C-Bills per month.

David Cho is a helicopter pilot, also a regular. He, however, has four points of rank, doubling the multiplier contribution versus Shin. This combined 1.4x multiplier is applied to the base salary of 900 to yield a comparable 1,260 C-Bills.

Alexander Black is the only Officer in the group, which will get him better pay. He is also quite skilled as a MechWarrior, which would increase his pay if he were a Mercenary. Alas, as a member of a regular military his multiplier is locked at 1. Let's see how much he's losing by working for ComStar:

There are give skills in the MechWarrior Field: Gunnery/'Mech, Piloting/'Mech, Sensor Operations, Tactics/Land, and Technician/Any (in Alexander's case, Mechanics.) His levels for those skills are, respectively, 7, 7, 3, 3, 4. The average of those is 4.8, but Alexander is also the commanding officer of the Level II. We must also find his Officer skills (Administration, Leadership, Melee Weapons, Protocol/ComStar, and Training at 4, 4, 2, 6, and 2). The average for those is only 3.6, for a total average of 4.2, which makes him merely Veteran for the purposes of salary, despite being a 1/1 'Mech Pilot. Still, the Veteran multiplier is 1.5, and to that he adds 5/3's for having Rank 5 and being an officer, or thirteen-sixths of his base pay. Alexander's base salary is 1,500 for being a MechWarrior, plus the modifier puts him up to a hefty 3,250 C-Bills a month in pay.

Alexander, though, as noted above, is ComGuard, which means he's only drawing ten-sixths of his base pay, or 2,500 a month. Alexander is arguably 750 C-Bills a month underpaid, but that's what you pay for the safe umbrella of a huge bureaucracy.

Clark's profession is covered, too. He's a Doctor. A veterinarian to be specific, but I have no qualms calling that a doctor for these purposes. I calculate Clark's rating the same way I did Alex's. The Doctor Field covers Administration, Career/Doctor, MedTech, Protocol/Terran, and Surgery. Clark's ratings are 4, 1, 5, 3, and 5, giving him an average of 3.6. The rules are strangely silent on which way to round this number, but Clark's a Doctor on Terra, one of the richest planets known to man, so we'll round up to Veteran, and a 1.5 base multiplier. Of course, Clark isn't military -- he has no rank. He's fairly new to the profession, too, so I'll ignore that modifier for now, giving Clark a monthly salary of 2,250 C-Bills. Clark also has an Extra Income trait at 1, giving him another 250/month, bringing him up to 2,500 C-Bills a month.

Finally, Simon has a job as well. His doesn't appear directly on the table, so I'll give him an Administrator's base salary. His day job is Communications, so we'll use that field for calculating his rating. Acting: 1, Career/Communications:1 , Communications/Conventional:5, Computers:5, Protocol/Terran:3, and Sensor Operations:1. Average: 2.66. Again, I'll round this up, getting him to Regular, and a measly 640 C-Bills per month.

So that's how the money comes in (although how they ComStar folks are going to get their money now that they're stuck on Terra is unclear.) Tune in tomorrow when we discuss how the money goes out!

The Edge Check

(Ed: I've been posted to New York City for the week and am working ludicrous long hours, so the next few entries might be a bit short.)

Edge is a funny attribute. Edge points are a critical element of a game as lethal as A Time of War, but the Edge Attribute itself is often overlooked. It is the Luck stat, and on occasion I have found the opportunity to use it.

Making a player do an Attribute Check against Edge is something I do when the character is doing some greatly ill-advised, largely do to the player having no idea what's happening. For example, a game I ran a few years ago started with the party waking up on a dead JumpShip. One character started in the engine room, and could feel a control panel. He started pushing buttons. At this point, the character had no idea where he was (except for the lack of gravity implying he was in space) and a limited knowledge of how to use the console even if he could see. I had him roll Edge to determine, generally speaking, if his actions had an effect towards or against what he was hoping for.

Similarly, Edge makes a good Gambling check (unless the players are trying to use prestidigitation to alter the odds.) This is especially true if the player is new to the game and doesn't have a sufficient grasp of the strategy to affect their results.

Edge is also handy when the player is doing something exceedingly random and hoping for a good result -- blind hyperspace Jumps, for example. Grabbing a passerby off the street. Sometimes, I'll even make a GM Edge check for enemy force composition -- it tends to skew the luck of the party according to their Edge, but is invisible to them. I'm not convinced that doing it that way buys me anything, especially since these games are one-off runs, but when I'm starting at Random Allocation Tables and the Master Unit List, rolling 2D6's can make me feel like I'm at least getting something done.

Case White

On Sunday I ran the actual Case White landing with the ComStar Party. To begin the session, we computed their downtime XP from December 3067 to March 3068, and handled Training and other intersession issues. Interestingly, we discovered a bit of an issue with the Training rules, but I'll come back to those later. After the paperwork, we started session.

The party started in a small DropShip tied to the Narbonne. They experienced the Case White naval battle strapped into their 'Mechs, with their ability to monitor the fleet chatter interrupted an hour after arrival by damage to the DropShip. They made atmo, but damage to the DropShip necessitated a hot drop, which miraculously they all accomplished without damaging their 'Mechs (which fortunately we all jump-equipped.) On the ground, they proceeded to the objective without further interruption.

The scenario began with a light rain falling at dusk on the evening on March 9th, 3068. The party engaged the Word of Blake Level II, which consisted of medium 'Mechs, mostly Cicada's, with the target (Bruce Lecna) piloting a Siroco quad assault 'Mech. The engagement had a promising start, with David Cho's Hawk Moth scoring a hit on one Cicada and knocking it down. The party soon found the target's Siroco, which had been shadowing the opening engagement using a line of trees as cover, and on Round 5, Alexander's Black Hawk-A swung into position with its dual Clan ER PPC's (and its 1/1 pilot) to attack. On Round 5, the Black Hawk fired all guns on a Buccaneer to try to dissuade it from harrassing the helicopter, and on Round 6, again made an Alpha Strike, this time on the Siroco. Unfortunately, the back-to-back full barrages, combined with the jumping he had been doing to maneuver through the trees, generated far more heat than the 'Mech could handle and on Round 6 he failed his Shutdown (+8) roll. The medium WoB 'Mechs gave up their pursuit of the helicopter and came after the crippled 'Mech, and destroyed it during Round 7 with concentrated fire and physical attacks.

Alexander punched out successfully, and was able to evade the initial group of 'Mechs that had destroyed him, as they turned on Shin's Firestarter, the last party 'Mech on the field. Cho circled wide and landed to recover Alexander in a clearing, while Shin made three high-risk jumps (requiring a 7+ piloting check each time due to actuator damage) to clear the forest ahead of the faster but jump-incapable Wobbies. The Firestarter and Hawk Moth broke contact and scrubbed the engagement, disappearing into the forests of Colorado.

After the fight, we resolved pilot hits, as both Alexander and Shin had taken one. Shin took two standard damage to his chest, and Alexander took the hit to the head, doubling the damage to four BOD. Both required medical attention. With the bulk of the 394th over a thousand miles away and the 9th Division nearly upon them, the ComStar party was ordered to their emergency retreat point, a resistance element based on a nearby ranch. The session closed that night as the Firestarter and the Hawk Moth arrive at Clark's ranch.

The next session I expect to be more roleplaying-oriented before the mission cycle that forms the heart of this campaign starts. Integrating the party should be an interesting experience, especially to see how the leadership falls out in the absence of a comprehensive rank structure. The ComStar party will be getting the plot-dump update, and I need to figure out how to encourage them together with the Ground Crew. I've been thinking about bringing the Harry Simpson issue to a head, requiring the intervention of the soldiers to help resolve the issue.

Also, the promised comment on Training. It seems that on p. 159 of A Time of War, Training is described as simply granting bonus XP in the trained skill to the student. In the description of training skills on p. 334, however, the Training check merely reduces the cost of the new skill by the Margin of Success of the Training check if the skill is bought right then. I am choosing to interpret both of these rules as being in effect, despite the possible interpretation that one or the other is the way that Training works. The practical upshot of this is that it creates something of a class/keystone system, in which the bulk of the skill can be trained up one point a week, but at the point of upgrading, it is more efficient for the instructor (given sufficient skill and thereby MoS), to spend the last week in the alternate training mode.

Alexei's Run

On Friday I ran the second Ground Crew session. This, again, was a low-key affair. It started minutes after the previous session (in game-time, of course), in which TerraSec came into the HPG station Simon was working in and intercepted Alex on his way into work. He was placed under arrest, and Simon could not extract any significant information from the police, but Alex was able to tell him he was being arrested for breaking and entering just before he was hauled out the door.

Simon finished out his workday and headed back to the ranch that Clark owns. The two discussed Alex's situation, and Simon called the precinct where Alex was being held to ask if he could have visitors and inquire as to his bail. He was told visitors were allowed, and bail was set at 10,000 C-Bills. The following day Simon and Clark went down to the station to visit Alex, who they learn a few things. First off, Alex's full name is Alexei Romanov. Alexei apparently uses the shortened form professionally. Second, he seems to be under arrest for stealing the contents of the locked room in the HPG station. The incarcerated fellow seems genuinely convinced of his innocence, but he is very thankful that Simon came for him -- his family is from the Free Rasalhague Republic, and with the HPG closed to civilian traffic, he can't contact them. In the waiting area of the precinct, Simon and Clark are approached by Harry Simpson, a local bondsman, who offers to cover Alexei's bond for 5%.

They bail him out, and take him to a self-storage facility near by where he's supposed to be helping a friend move. When they get him there, they sit in uncomfortable observance as Alexei helps his friend load about 25 file boxes into a rented van, and then drives away. They then take Alexei back to his home, but on the way he mentions he left a letter in the outbound mail at the HPG Station with some stolen documents in them addressed to Simon, in order to implicate him in the theft. Since Simon was kind enough to bail Alexei out, he thought he should at least tell Simon about it so Simon can do something. Simon and Clark put Alexei out of the car, and speed off toward the HPG station. They arrive to find the station closed down, and no vehicles parked out from. Simon goes in, but with a well-rolled perception check, realizes there is an officer going through the mail right now. As this happens, the officer's partner rolls up outside with some doughnuts for the them, and Clark texts Simon. Simon sneaks out the back of the HPG station, climbs the fence, and returns to Clark's car.

They wait for four hours before going across the street to a fast food restaurant and getting a window seat to monitor the police action. After an hour or so, the two officers come out, one with a filing box, and Simon fears he has been caught. The two decide the best thing to do is for Simon to go to the station and explain the entire situation, and tell the police the complete and utter truth, realizing this might end up with Simon in jail anyways. Before they do that, though, they re-enter the HPG facility to see if they can find the envelope. To their considerable relief, they do -- the police either didn't get to it or it didn't draw their attention.

Simon and Clark take the envelope back to the ranch before opening it. Inside are a number of communications within the Word of Blake, some of which seem quite worrisome. Simon deposes of the envelope with his name on it, but the two retain the papers themselves. The rest of the session is spent discussing their next move, if any.

At the end of this session is the first major time leap in the game -- this session concluded on 21 December 3067, and the next starts on 12 March 3068, so we did our first downtime XP rolls. Each of the got 2 full months of XP (January and February), and 50% of March. The practical result was 30 XP for Simon and 37 for Clark, a considerable amount, but not wildly so.

Tomorrow I'll talk about how the actual Case White landings went with the ComStar Party.

Creating an Adventure

I'm writing this Thursday morning, and I still have no idea what I'm going to run for the Ground Crew's second session tomorrow (this evening as you read this.) My overriding goal for the session is to put the plot hooks for the quest hubs in their hands. Exactly how I'm going to do that eludes me even as I'm writing this, but I'm going to go to Plan B: When Inspiration Misses. Come with me for the ride -- this is sure to be amusing, or, at the very least, painful.

By now I have a considerable library of Roleplaying manuals of all descriptions, but I try to start as close to home as I can. In this case, page 342 of A Time of War, Gamemastering Tips and Suggestions. The general statements aren't terribly helpful in my circumstance, but on pages 347 and 348, Catalyst was kind enough to provide Adventure Seeds, basically write-ups on general plot concepts you might want to run. These are extremely generic, and there are only four, but I like to use them as something of a "Stupid Check" when I'm stuck -- are any of the base, standard, generic plots going to fly here. Personally, I would love a supplement that contained more of these blocks, either from Catalyst or from a fan who wants to put one together. I have other sources if this fails, but perhaps we'll get to that later. One immediate problem is that the seeds all relate to Military, Mercenary, Police, or Special Forces elements, no dedicated Civilian or Resistance seeds. For my purposes, though, I'll consider my group Special Forces. That keeps two on the table. Let's evaluate these two:

The Chase ("A Killer is on the Loose!") -- This adventure seed is pretty standard fare -- a friend gets whacked, now the party must track down the killer. The RPG application of Chandler's Law, a murder might be a bit over the top -- especially as I haven't established any NPC's yet, except for Alex, the Word of Blake teller, Barbra, his obnoxious boss, and Farmer MacDonald, whom Clark delivered a foal for last session. Oh, and, I suppose, Roger, the guard who had no lines and just stood there the entire last session.

Hmm. Thinking about that, the party did come back the night after their little raid to find the locked room had been cleared out. They presumed that the room had been emptied for the same reason that the HPG network had been shut down, but there was no evidence of that other than the lack of a cloud of investigators. The presumption that those files were removed by the owners might well be wrong, and I could leverage that to an arrest. Possibly not the PC's, but they have developed some sympathy toward Alex. Perhaps if he was threatened they would feel compelled to act.

That's a kernel of an idea, but let's look at the other adventure seed.

The Package ("The... Objective... is quite valuable to me...") -- The Package adventure seed is pretty standard as well -- go get the MacGuffin. The prototypical fetch quest. The issue here is that there's no greater authority to tell the ground crew to go out there and get the thing. I may, however, want to adjust that. I've already established Pleatus as Clark's line to ComStar ROM (or at least, what he thinks is ComStar ROM,) so I can form that connection into a better defined handling officer for his group. Indeed, I could build the entire session out of finding a new way for Clark to communicate with his handler now that the HPG is closed to civilian traffic. I have no idea how that would work, though. Perhaps a local ROM agent embedded on Terra, leaving dead-drops. That's an element I would want to integrate at some point -- unidirectional information flow, to prevent the party from simply getting information, then handing it up the ladder to be acted on by others.

That's an idea, but one I might want to implement during or after the landings.

I could move on to other ideas from here, but I'm starting to like the earlier idea of Alex being arrested for breaking and entering the compound at night and stealing the documents from the the locked room. It allows me to apply some pressure to the PC's to take some action, especially if they think he's being tried for their crime, and allow me to build Alex into an ally and a means of delivering the plot hooks I need to get in their hands.

Now I only need to flesh out the exact details of what happens -- Simon is on duty when the Word of Blake storms in and arrests Alex, who of course denies it. Hmm... having a PC and a major NPC with the same name is bad planning on my part. I could have Alex be a cover identity for a ComStar sleeper, but that's a bit too much for this early in the campaign. Perhaps I'll give him a nickname ("My business name is Alex, but my friends call me Ted -- it's my middle name.") Or let Alex stand -- such confusions happen in real life, and provides and opportunity for a case of mistaken identity later in the campaign.

Perhaps the PC's spring Alex from lock-up, or bail him out, or whatnot, but when he gets out, he immediately goes to a self-storage unit in town, and begins loading crates of papers to be taken off-site. It doesn't matter where, they just have to go. They are of key use to the Resistance network. Until now the PC's have no idea that Alex is resistance, but they may be inclined to help him. The real trick is Alex needs to provide some act of good will, one that will materially benefit the PC's, but not guarantee he's not a double-agent -- I want to leave that avenue open in case I decide to use it later. He could send the PC's back into the HPG compound yet again in order to retrieve the plot hooks. He has to disappear and can't go back for them, but they were left in a place to incriminate Simon -- it the Word of Blake finds them before the PC's do, Simon could be going to jail as well.

Exactly how Alex manages to accomplish this is still something of a question mark -- perhaps he dropped the plot hooks into an envelope and mailed them to Simon's house -- they're still sitting in the Outbox at the HPG station, but since the mail has been suspended while they're investigating, it hasn't gone out yet. The party needs to break back in, find the letter, and take it.

OK, now I have a plan.

I just want to take a moment to draw attention to how, despite not using any of the idea presented in the book wholesale, reading through them gave me the inspiration to come up with an adventure for my PC's. I don't pretend I'm anything other than a hack game writer, but often times the most obvious adventures are fun, and the larger your adventure grows, the more hooks you'll have to reach back to. I'm sure this isn't the last time I'll be stuck for an idea, and in the future, I'll go through how I go through my GM Notes to provide inspiration.

Character Sheets

One issue I hear time and again when reading about A Time of War is the character sheets. For a character built by the Life Path system, there often simply aren't enough lines for everything they need. For example, let's look at Skills. Our characters have the following skills:

Clark: 34

Simon: 37

Shin: 41

Alex: 36

David: 67

There are only 30 skill lines, so not even the smallest skill list on our roster could fit on the standard character sheet. This required a bit of exploring on my part. Fortunately, I was able to find a new character sheet on the forums, designed by dieffenbachj. I'd like to take a moment to point out the strengths of this sheet, and its weaknesses, to relate why I decide that I wanted to go with this sheet over the in-book sheet Catalyst produced.

First, and to stay on-topic, this sheet has no less than 78 skill lines. That's more than enough to handle even Henry's jack-of-all-trades character. More over, the sheet has pre-printed every skill in the game, with their linked attributes and TN's right there on the sheet. While skills that get instantiated multiple times like Interest and Technician are forced to be written down long-hand for the secondary skill, for the majority of skills, the information you need to fill them in is right there -- only the Skill Points table in the book is missing to let you know the XP-to-Level conversion for your set of traits.

The price, of course, is that the skills are on the back. This requires a player to flip their sheet over to check their skills listing. Personally, I find the skills section to be the most commonly referenced element of the character sheet, so I find this a bit of a let-down, let us move on.

The Traits, Weapons, and Armor sections have all been expanded as well, and the former skills section has been replaced with a quite exhaustive combat modifiers table. This was obviously a sheet written for characters who expected to see a lot of battle. Attributes haven't been expanded, obviously, and personal data has been rearranged but is largely the same.

Also on the back, biography and vehicle data have been removed entirely, and replaced with the more generic "Notes" section although Inventory has been retained. Conversion of the earlier two into a more general and free-style section may well have been advisable.

One relevant fact that this character sheet demonstrated for me was that different campaigns, different players, even different missions look for differently optimized character sheets. For instance, were I designing my own sheets, I would have the condition monitor and expanded skills list on the front. Everything else -- Attributes, Traits, Inventory, the works, can go on the back, except for one.

Edge. Edge is special, and something my players have always kept in their minds. The get-out-of-jail-free card of MechWarrior is one of the most often changed values on a character's sheet, I find, and deserves a place right on the front page.

I've learned that my players shun combat unless they have an overwhelming advantage (they hate rerolling characters), and spend the vast majority of their time running around using skills. I understand the layout of dieffenbachj's sheet -- it is much more combat-oriented, and has everything you need to run character-level combat right on the front.

Unfortunately, this post doesn't have a strict this-is-the-way-to-do-it theme. The point is that the character sheet provided in A Time of War is a great starter that lets you know the kind of information you'll need on a character sheet, but if you're serious about running this game, you'll likely want something a bit more customized to your campaign style to avoid sheet-flipping and number-hunting from bogging down your game. If you come up with a specialized sheet, be sure to post a link here so we can peruse and consider what features your creation offers and how they might be useful.

Suspicions on Sarna

In last Wednesday's entry, I was starting to get into creating a plotline that would tie the events of Ten Years on Terra to the Fourth Succession War, specifically, the Sarna HPG Attack. After some consideration, I decided to go with the Sarna Attack Hoax (Word of Blake's version) as being the real version of the attack -- ComStar filmed the Sarna HPG attack on Terra at a mock-up station, and then released the video to the public as if the attack had really happened. Incidentally, Alexander Black's parents happened to work at the Sarna HPG. In the aftermath of the attack, ROM had to eliminate all the people who would've been working there, but Alexander's parent figured that out first, and fled. Alexander spent his whole life thinking he was on the run from the Capellans, never knowing that his parents knew to hide in a place right under ComStar's nose, but one place they would never think to look: the Belters' habitats.

How to draw David Cho into this line is a bit more difficult -- by the time he's out of school, Alexander's parents are ten years dead. He was, however, on Sarna at the time of the attack, albeit as an infant. It is entirely possible that when Alexander's parents snuck off-world, they do so aboard the MAC DropShips that also carrier away Wei Zhang's family. That might give their parents some connection. It is relatively simple, though, to take advantage of the considerable redacted sections of David Cho's record to place him eliminating "Enemies of ComStar", who are actually surviving personnel of the Sarna HPG purge. Although he wouldn't have gone after Alexander's parent specifically, he might have a better understanding of why they were targeted.

Finally, I need to draw the HPG station into the main plot; resisting the Word of Blake. For that, inspiration came from Null Set (FASA 1672), which describes the use of an HPG as a weapon, specifically, a ranged EMP weapon. The Sarna HPG arc will culminate with the Word of Blake retrofitting the HPG station they built to replicate the Sarna HPG in 3029 into a weaponized HPG station capable of disabling on-orbit WarShips and DropShips. As a potentially decisive advantage, the players would be able to explore the station, discover their backstory, and advance the main plot at the same time. The issue, of course, is that I need them to take a plot hook. More on that in future entries.

Second Drill

On Sunday I ran the second landing simulation with the ComStar party. This time they were fighting a Level II of WoB Heavy 'Mechs. Again, they accomplished the mission, but this time they lost the all three vehicles, and Shin was killed in action, while the other two were captured. Morgan declared Shin's intention to commit suicide before he was captured, which might make the situation a bit awkward if the actual landing goes similarly. I'll need to find a way to convince the PC's that they can make good their escape even if their vehicles are lost.

I'm not overconcerning myself with the possibility, as that's more a "cross-that-bridge-when-we-come-to-it" kind of deal, but I am considering either downgrading the Level II to Medium 'Mechs or providing the party with an NPC 'Mech to aid them. I'm aiming for a very specific level of damage here, specifically the destruction of the hardware without killing off the MechWarriors themselves. Allowing one of the vehicles to escape is an acceptable outcome. Statistical analysis can only carry me so far here.

I've also learned that with Edge available to avoid the possibility of a headshot, I can allocate more heavy weapons to the OpForce. In particular, allowing the Heavy PPC opens up a lot of new 'Mechs to my options, although that weapon and ones like it can drop the Hawk Moth in a single round. I am re-evaluating my force construction using this most recent addition to doctrine. I look forward to building the actual force.

Sneaking Around the HPG

I ran the session with the Ground Crew on Friday night. The primary objective for them was to send a letter "to Clark's cousin Pleatus, on New Earth," their drop for their collected information on the strength and position of the 9th Division. The complication they ran into was that the HPG network on Terra was closed to civilian traffic. Simon used his access as a contractor at the site to attempt sending the message directly from the utility box in the station, but was unsuccessful while he was there, requiring the party to return that night and try again. Eventually they patched their communication through the Mars HPG network and was able to get the message out that way, providing the intelligence for the ComStar Party to be properly briefed for their second training exercise.

The party was able to use their abilities in a couple different ways. Let's review the challenges I put before them, and how they coped.

Alex - The teller on duty when they arrive. Alex is a fresh-out-of-school acolyte who had to tell Simon that he couldn't send his letter because the HPG net was closed. Alex was more or less bypassed -- after Clark was unable to talk past him, he handed the letter to Simon, who went into the employees-only area with his badge. (Clark overcame with Acting.)

The Network - The first time Simon tries to send the message, it bounces back, as it is not military traffic. Because this event notified his supervisor (Barbra), he decides to discretely leave work for the day before she can link it to him. (Simon overcame (or at least detected) with Communications/Conventional.)

The Locked Doors - When the two returned that night to find another to send the message, they find the building locked up. They infiltrate by climbing the chain-link fence around the tower (note, that despite begin called an HPG station, this station was simply a radio-forwarding station to the main HPG at Hilton Head -- there wasn't actually a generator on-site.) (Both overcame with Climbing checks, Clark untrained.)

The Locked Box - The utility box has a padlock on it that was not there when the party left. As neither had Security Systems, they pry the hinges off both doors, and remove them, still padlocked together. (Clark used Interest/Do-It-Yourself, his handyman skill.)

The Encrypted Network - The message is rejected again for not being encrypted -- all traffic must be by the new protocol. Simon encrypts the message. (Simon used Cryptography.)

The Interplanetary Network - Simon realigns the radio network to send a signal to a Mars HPG station for re-broadcast. (Simon made a Difficult Communications/Conventional check.)

Covering Their Tracks - The utility box is quite difficult to reassemble, but after several checks (and nearly an hour of time), they get the doors back on. (Clark used Interest/Do-It-Yourself.)

One major problem I encountered with this session was that there was a locked room in the HPG station that had all the plot hooks in it. There was a rather dim guard (Roger) on the door, but neither Simon nor Clark had any interest in penetrating that room. When Simon returned the day after the break-in, the room had been emptied out, but there were still some papers left about. Also, there were a few plaintext messages left in the sending queue for the station, which Simon was ordered to check on by his employer. Simon very diligently confirmed they were present, then deleted them, sight-unseen, to comply with his instructions. Well securing Simon's job and loyalty to his employer, it effectively scuttled my chances to get the plot hooks to the players for their next session. I'll need to come up with some clever way to get them to intercept Blakist communications.

Facility Design

Tonight I'm running the Ground Crew through their first mission. This will be my first time running a live-fire individual-level mission in A Time of War, so I'm looking forward to it. Before I can run the mission, though, I need to design it. So today I'm going to talk a bit about the tactical rules of A Time of War and how to build a mission in them.

The tactical rules suggest using a hex grid as one possible way of handling the individual scale, but frankly, I've always found indoors areas split into hexes to be clunky at best. You encounter the same problem in cities -- a gridwork of streets inevitably involves at least one street that zig-zags from hex to hex as it cuts east-west or north-south, against the nice clear lines going the other direction. Anybody who's ever fought a BattleTech battle in a city grid knows exactly what I'm talking about -- it costs double movement to go in one particular direction because you're constantly changing facing.

Buildings are largely the same way -- the inside of a building is composed of rectangles. Particularly stylish architecture may have more complex shapes, but they almost never fit well into a hex grid. Lest you think I'm anti-hex grid, let's look at the other obvious option.

A square grid works better in representing conventional architecture, but leads to a problem with diagonal movement -- do you allow it or not? If you do, how much does it cost? Unless you're willing to do the ludicrous amount of math required to properly calculate the MP (there's a reason you rarely see radical symbols in RPG rules books), you end up either not allowing it (overcharging your player's movement) or not allowing it (massively undercharging your payer's movement). Its not an insignificant different, either -- allowing a player to move into a diagonal square is a 41% boost in movement speed. This problem of diagonals is largely why Hex Grids are so darn popular.

So square grids lead to problems, hex grids also lead to problems. That leaves one major category: going off the grid entirely. If you've lived in the BattleTech table-top world long enough, or gone to many conventions, you've probably seen BattleTech miniatures rules being played. These are the gorgeous tables set up with neatly delineated hills and trees, tiny painted 'Mechs marching through the woods. The intersection of Inner Sphere Avenue and Warhammer Boulevard. Miniatures handle distances beautifully, and provide obvious and intuitive views of the battlefield that symbols on a battlemat simply can't match. So why aren't we using them all the time?

Production is hard. With a battlemat, I draw a line and magically, there's a wall there. I draw a dotted line, and there's a chest-high wall, in case we need to play Gears of War: Tharkad. I can create entirely new buildings in seconds, and fill them in easily. With miniatures, I need a base, some cardboard or foamboard to represent that wall, which needs to be cut and stood up. If I'm lucky, I have some kind of kit for quickly assembling a building from interlocking pieces, but that's expensive and limits me to the bits I have. I've even run using Lego pieces for terrain, but frankly, it breaks the mood.

I'm going to experiment a bit with the first few sessions, but I feel that some variant of the terrain rules are best version for the game. The rules define a human as occupying a space 1 meter by 1 meter by 2 meters for the purposes of stacking and arrangement. In the past, I have often had a great deal of luck simply mounting plastic army men of the kind they sell by the bag at the toy store for a dime a unit onto standard US pennies (which are conveniently about 0.75" in diameter.) These pieces give me a scale of three quarters of an inch to 1 meter, or about 52.5:1, giving my 5-foot by 5-foot gaming table about 80 meters to a side of virtual surface -- more than enough to fit most complexes I'd have my players running around.

Unfortunately for me, it seems those plastic army men have gone out of style, so I don't expect to have them mounted for the first session, but I have no doubt I'll find some equivalent.

In terms of actually building the facility, I have a few options. In Null Set (FASA 1672, p. 44) there is a layout of a Class-B HPG facility. The layout is very simple, not intended to be a terrific challenge. It may be the correct size for a small engagement. I am unsure how long an average turn of A Time of War will take at this stage, so I'm inclined to err low until I know for certain. Also, I don't expect the Denver station to be a particularly complicated facility -- unlike on other worlds, the Adepts and Acolytes can likely simply commute in -- the building doesn't have to be self-contained, which means that it just need to be more or less a bank.

At least this first mission should be a stealth operation, so direct combat should be pretty minimal, and I can use averages for Attributes and Skills. I'm a little bit under prepared, but I think with the proper plot hooks in place. Oh, right. Plot hooks... I should go write those.

Now.

Quest Hubs and Player Agency

I'm going to get a bit more general on campaign creation for a bit. One element I've been seeing a lot more in RPG's, both on the table and in cyberspace, is the concept of a Quest Hub. If you've played World of Warcraft or any other major MMORPG, or even more recent CRPG's, you're likely already familiar with this technique. The basic concept is that there's a mix of player agency and narrative storytelling to be had by providing the players with a variety of mission options all at once, and allowing them to pursue the one that most interests them.

The trade-off is considerable work. Whereas in a free-form game where the players can do as they like, production quality is generally limited to the abstract -- whatever miniatures are available standing in for what the plot calls for, draw-on-site maps, and seat-of-the-pants adjudication. In a more straight-line campaign, such as the published modules for MechWarrior, you can get away with much higher production value, such as purchasing and painting specific miniatures for units you know will be deployed, plotting maps ahead of time, and generally creating a more immersive experience. In a Quest Hub system, you need to have all available missions ready to go each session, although you can mitigate that by making players choose the next session ahead of time, giving you the inter-session time to build the new session.

I am anticipating four hubs of three missions each for Ten Years on Terra. I'm planning on having the Ground Crew (Clark and Simon), reach the first of these hubs for their first mission, which will contain the information they need to access the next three hubs. Each hub will represent one of the major plot arcs. One will be the one that uncovers the Sarna HPG conspiracy and the role the characters' backstories played in it. Another will be conducting operations directly against the 9th Division in preparation for the next invasion of Terra. The final hub will be connected to the biological weapons research the Word of Blake is doing, and tie in with the development of the Alarion plague.

The real question for me, and one I need to answer soon is what mission might a Terran resistance cell go on that would reveal all of these sites? Simon happens to be an HPG contractor, so I'm planning on having them infiltrate the Denver HPG compound to transmit the latest updates on the movements of the 9th Division to ComStar, with whom they are communicating. While there, they will have the opportunity to find documents leading them to the new locations.

Ultimately, all nine components missions will need to be accomplished to fully explore the story; whether or not the players do so is something of an open question to be discovered at run time. Also, the mechanical awards for each player is also something of a question; I expect each of the 9th Division missions to restore a lost vehicle to one of the ComStar players. The Bioweapons missions more or less is entirely set to drive Clark's story, culminating in his shiny new familiar. The Sarna missions are going to be more or less exclusively plot, which means I still need to find a toy for Simon. I'll have to think on that one.

Meet the Ground Crew

Here's the second part of the Meet the Team write-up: Cameron and Anthony's characters.

Clark Cameron (Cameron) - First off, Cameron, as previously mentioned, is a psuedonym, and the player has no idea that this blog exists, so I find it hysterical that he happened to choose Cameron as his character's surname.

Clark was born in Montana in 3036. His parents worded on a farm, and Clark quickly gained an affinity for animals. He attended high school, then went to one of Terra's many universities to become a veterinarian. While in school, he developed a fascination with the Branth, a dragon-like creature native to Lopez, a world in Marik Space. For his post-doc work, he traveled to Lopez, and en route discovered he suffered from Transit Disorientation Syndrome, or TDS. He suffered the effects for four months on his way out, studied there for four years, then suffered another four months of agony to get home. Clark has not been out-system since.

Clark moved to Colorado when he returned to Earth in 3061, opening a veterinary practice that looks after the animals of local ranchers who raise animal stock. When he returned to Terra, he found the planet under Word of Blake control, which greatly complicated his homecoming. He managed to land, but learned that life on Terra had taken a turn for the totalitarian, and soon found himself listening more intently to, and eventually gently aiding those who were trying to make it clear to the Word of Blake that the Old ComStar they believed they represented was no longer welcome here. This all took a turn for the more necessary when the Word of Blake assaulted Tharkad in December of 3067 -- the Word was blatantly evil, and any qualms Clark had with more direct action disappeared.

Simon Temple (Anthony) - Simon was born in 3033 in Colorado. His father worked in insurance and his mother was a skilled administrator until she elected to stay home full time after Simon was born. Simon grew up to the standards of academic excellence his parents had always envisioned for him, going to the finest preparatory schools and studying Communications at Colorado University. Simon found the womb of academia a comfortable fit, and remained at the school through the 3050's, eventually earning a Ph.D. in Hyperspace Physics, with a focus on HPG communications. He seemed a shoe-in to work at ComStar, and was offered a prestigious post by ComStar, but he rather decided to join the Singularity Foundation, a theoretical physics Think Tank with an office in Denver. There he excelled at HPG/Conventional Communications integration, and made considerable strides in traffic management between HPG stations to increase effective bandwidth significantly. The work he did for SF is now implemented on almost all Terran HPG stations, and is being distributed throughout the Word of Blake Protectorate.

In 3064, the Word of Blake administrators on Terra used their efforts to coerce Simon into making a tour of the Chaos March HPG stations that his discoveries were being implemented on. Simon was unhappy with the arrangement, and the change utterly ruined his personal life, by removing him from his friends and family for nearly three years. In 3066, Simon's father passed away while Simon was on Terra Firma. Simon did his job, but harbored increasing resentment of the Word. He returned to Terra in January of 3067, and immediately resigned from the Singularity Foundation, forming Temple Communications, a consulting firm in which he offered his services in maintaining HPG networks. Although he only is brought in once or twice a year to various HPG stations on Terra, his bill rate is sufficient that he can live off the income such sparse work provides.

In December of 3067, the news of the Word of Blake assault on Tharkad and New Avalon was enough to convince that his resentment of the Word of Blake wasn't merely a personal slight, but that the Word was, in fact, an evil organization that needed to be stopped. It was then that he became involved in the Coloradan resistance cell.

Plotting Arcs

When I'm constructing stories as a GM, I try to make sure that I have at least one central arc that holds the narrative of the campaign together, as well as sub arcs linked to each individual character. In this way, each player sees the events unfolding around them as advancing the overall campaign goal, and each session one or two players get a bit more focus as they uncover more about the plotline that really interests them. In this way, players not only keep coming back for rolling dice and solving clever tactical problems, but also because each week might be the week their particular plotline will advance. Handling player absences for their own focus events is a danger, of course, but one I'll get into when it happens.

The overarching plot line for Ten Years on Terra is pretty straight-forward: the party is holding out and disrupting the Word of Blake on Terra while they wait for rescue. Given the nature of Case White, they'll be expecting the attempt to retake Terra to be sudden and without warning, so they want to make sure the Word of Blake Militia and TerraSec are focused on problems at home when the next fleet shows up in orbit. They also want to be able to help the next wave of liberators when they arrive.

Each character also has an arc that they need to learn about the elements that affect their character, and each of these arc need to be uncovered over the course of the main campaign missions, ideally capstoning in a special session specifically tailored to close out that character's subplot. I also like to try to tie them together, preferably culminating in an event that shows up in the history books. Let's review what I have to work with. The goal is to give everybody a personal reason to hate the Word of Blake by the end of this, even though a lot of the following events would be happening pre-Schism.

Alexander Black is Bert's character. He has a bit of a mystery in his background in that his parents were on the run from the Capellan Confederation, but he doesn't know why. The timeline suggests they might have been in some way involved in the St. Ives succession in 3029, but there was a great deal happening in the Capellan Confederation during that period, as they were being ripped in half by the then-huge Federated Commonwealth.

David Cho is Henry's character. David was a double agent for a while, coincidentally also Capellan. He's about the same age as Alexander, so he couldn't be involved with whatever put Bert's parents on the run, but he could've followed up. if they were actually being hounded by House Liao.

Shin Magnusson, Morgan's character, lost his parents to Smoke Jaguar on Hannover after they reacted poorly to Operation Scorpion. His character is very complicated, but really know everything that happened in his childhood. He does, however, have a Dark Secret (2), that he was personally responsible for a first at a children's hospital during one of his operations in the Chaos March in the mid-3060's. In addition, he has a Bloodmark (1), which can be whatever I choose it to be -- Shin is unaware there's a contract on his life.

All of these characters have one thing in common -- they've all spent a great deal of time in Coreward Capellan space, and the Chaos March. My instincts tell me that whatever these three have in common, it has to do with Sarna.

Sarna is a major world in the backstory of the BattleTech Universe. In 3025, it was a commonality capital of the Capellan Confederation, and an engine of industry. In early 3030, McCarron's Armored Cavalry was forced to withdraw from the world after a seven-month campaign against FedCom forces, leaving Sarna as the new capital of the Federated Commonwealth's Sarna March. In 3057, when Operation Guerrero initiated the chain of events that split the FedCom and caused traditionally Lyran units to return to their pre-4th Succession War borders, the Sarna March found itself without any single House's military protection and so became the Chaos March. During this collapse, the Capellan Confederation attempted to retake Sarna, but they were repelled by mercenaries and the Academy Cadre the planetary government was able to bring together. For two years, the Sarna Supremacy was a three-world empire, until Sun-Tzu Liao used a combination of the CCAF's new WarShip fleet and Warrior House Hiritsu to bring those worlds back into the fold before 3066.

As I write this, I realize that Henry's Character was listed as attending the Sarna Martial Academy in 3047, which would have been impossible as it was a FedCom world at that point. I'll need to revise that.

A number of other interesting things have happened on Sarna over the years. In May 3029, ComStar release video of Davion 'Mechs destroying the Sarna HPG station. This incident was the direct cause of the the Interdiction of the Federated Suns during the Fourth Succession War, and eventually the permission granted to allow ComStar to guard their own facilities, which would set the stage for Operation Scorpion, and eventually, the Schism.

Except that the Davions never attacked the Sarna HPG. In fact, it is unclear that anybody attacked the Sarna HPG. According to Comstar (FASA 1655, p. 57), there are two versions of that attack, one in the official ComStar history, on supported by the Word of Blake. In ComStar's version, ComStar 'Mechs assaulted the HPG and destroyed it while painted to look like elements of the Fifth Syrtis Fusiliers. According to the Word of Blake, the video was made out of whole cloth using a mock-up of the Sarna HPG built and filmed on Terra. Entries in other books suggest the Sarna HPG was, in fact, destroyed, lending credence to ComStar's side, but I can play with that if I need to.

Slowly, a key event in the history of the BattleTech universe is coming into focus. The characters aren't old enough to have been involved, but their parents were. The destruction of the Sarna HPG is an excellent point for a number of plots to revolve around. More on how to weave these events into my campaign in a subsequent entry!

First Session

The first session of Ten Years on Terra has come and gone, so I'm going to take an opportunity to go over what worked and what didn't. The session began with a quick run-through of the events leading up to and during the Fourth Whitting Conference, along with the WoB assault on Tharkad. After that, I distributed handouts with communiques from the Precentor Martial, Commander 394th, and Commander of the Many Paths, the party's Level-III. They all alluded to a major operation in the Terran Corridor, which out of game, we all know to be Case White.

The game started with the players going into simulation against the Word of Blake Ninth Division, which their intelligence indicates is much in the same condition it was in in Field Manual: ComStar, which is to say, one under-strength Level-III, as opposed to the much closer-to-the-day Field Manual: Updates, which shows it to be four full-strength Level-III's. They'll figure that out when they get planet-side.

The simulation went much as expected, with the players' two 'Mechs and a VTOL chasing the Mobile Headquarters that was their target as a Level-II of Light 'Mechs tried ineffectually to stop them. They completed the exercise in about 9 rounds, and we called the session.

Setting this up was as much an exercise for me as it was for them. I tried to set the mission up as a MegaMek scenario, which provided me with a number of advantages in quickly setting up the mission, but also limited my options, especially with the big wins I was expecting from Edge and A Time of War Special Piloting Abilities (SPA's). Fortunately, with only four hours of effort, I was able to download a Java IDE, connect to the MegaMek repository, download the MegaMek source, and modify the scenario scripting language to permit using Edge and discover how I was using the SPA's incorrectly. So now I believe I am in possession of the only version of MegaMek to that allows Edge in scenarios, but I've submitted the patch to the project. We'll see if it gets included.

I also gave my players the opportunity to write up their After Action Reports and submit them by next session for 10 extra XP (given this was a 3XP session, that's quite a bit), and I've tabled dealing with the question of tracking the XP for a bit while they do that; XP should be spent immediately, but I see no reason to harp on that fact while we're still learning the system. After all, I still need to find a reasonable way to track it all. I've already gotten Shin Magnusson's report back, a charmingly Old ComStar analysis of their engagement through the eyes of a True Believer. I look forward to seeing what else he puts out. When the site's website is up and running, I'll be sure to post the link here so you can all share my players' creativity.

Meet the Team

I finally have names for all characters on the team, so let's take a post to introduce the characters we'll be running with. This entry is a bit longer than usual, so I'll stick to the ComStar team for this and write up the Terran team next in a different entry. I wrote the first two entries, but Morgan's character is described in his own words, which is likely why it is so much better written.

Alexander Black (Bert): Alexander Black was born a Belter on Metis in 3028. His parents were fugitives from the Capellan Confederation, but Alexander never knew why -- both his parents died before they told him why they left House Liao to come live in Sol, or why sometimes they would decide to move to a new asteroid, or even a new cluster, in the middle of the night. At 18, Alexander was discharged from the foster system he had spent the last two years in, and signed on with ComStar in 3046. He placed well enough in small arms combat to secure him a berth at the prestigious Sandhurst Military Academy on Terra, but once there proved himself even more adept as a MechWarrior. He graduate in 3050, and was attached to the 283rd Division of the 10th Army.

In 3052, the 283rd was pressed into service defending the cities of Brzo and Skupo against Clan Wolf at the Battle of Tukayyid. Alexander acquitted himself extremely well, managing to bring down a Clan Puma, earning him a Black Star on his campaign ribbon. Unfortunately, he was severely injured during his time there, and though a year in the hospital cured his most serious wounds, they left him badly scared where his face was pressed against the flash-heated control panel of his Crab as it came apart around him in the last minutes of the fight to keep the 10th Army from being encircled. He remained on medical leave until 3053. It was during the fighting on Tukayyid that Alexander first met David Cho.

In 3058, the commander of Alexander's Level II approached him to inform him that his unit was going over to the Word of Blake, and that he would like Alexander to come with him. Black refused, and a scuffle ensued, resulting in him being left alone in his house, as the last remaining element of his Level II. At the time, the ComGuard had serious reservations about the 283rd Division in general, and so wanted to make an example of Black as a particularly outstanding example of loyalty in the face of mass defection. He was transferred to he newly-created 472nd Division, the so-called Invader Galaxy, and issued a Black Hawk.

Invader Galaxy served primarily as the foil for ComGuard and Star League units training for combat against the Clans. As a result, Alexander spent almost his entire tour with Invader Galaxy fighting wargames, and the extreme amounts of experience he accumulated fighting some of the best units in the Inner Sphere over and over again forged him into an even better MechWarrior than he thought possible. In 3059, Invader Galaxy left the world of Defiance, and traveled to the Clan Homeworlds to participate in the Great Refusal. Although Alexander did not participate, he witnessed the breaking of the Clan threat against the Inner Sphere by Victor Steiner-Davion and the SLDF.

Invader Galaxy returned to Tukayyid and began formal training programs at the Focht War College. After a year and a half, Alexander found training's allure had waned, and wanted to be back on the front lines, so he put in for a transfer to a combat unit. He was attached to the 394th, at the time conducting peacekeeping operations in the Chaos March. The various meddlings of the Word of Blake and the Capellan Confederation in the Chaos March kept him busy, and word began to circulate of "The ComStar Clanner" piloting a ComStar-white Black Hawk, with two ER PPC's and uncanny aim. The 394th is operating on Hall at the start of the campaign.

David Cho (Henry) - David Cho was born Wei Zhang in 3029. His parents for worked for the logistics train the supported McCarron's Armored Calvary, and as such young Wei was moved from world to world with some regularity, and spent most of his childhood in fairly rough environments. He learned to blend and to adopt a certain combination of anonymous discretion and lightning-fast action when dealing with problems, undoubtedly picked up from the way the mercenaries around him dealt with issues. In 3047, he was granted admission to the Sarna Martial Academy, thanks largely to a letter of recommendation from a certain highly-placed member of MAC.

Wei Zhang proved himself extremely cagey and capable during his time at SMA, and found himself quickly shunted into the special forces end of the curriculum, where he excelled at infiltration and hand-to-hand combat. He graduated in four years, and stepped directly into the Maskirovka agent position everybody knew he was destined for.

He was immediately issued the identity of David Cho, and sent to Sian join ComStar, where he was to enlist in the new-created ComGuard. In-place Capellan agents paved his way, and soon he found himself in a berth as a combat pilot with the 283rd Division. Less than six months after he joined, he found himself fighting Clan Wolf at Tukayyid, where, among other people, he met Alexander Black for the first time.

After Tukayyid, Cho lead a very under-the-radar career with the 283rd. Over the remainder of his first tour with ComStar, the 283rd suffered from increased attrition from defections to the Word of Blake -- by 3057, the Division had one of the highest defection rates in ComStar. It was during this relative downtime that certain elements of both ComStar ROM and Word of Blake ROM recognized the skills in Cho that Maskirovka had originally bred into him, and saw him as an asset. He was quietly moved to more and more sensitive positions within ComStar, eventually becoming a personal bodyguard to Precentor Lisa Koenig-Cober shortly after the Word of Blake seized Terra in 3058. In 3059, he was assigned to a Special Forces unit and operated in the Chaos March for several years, effectively acting as a saboteur against Word of Blake assets trying to cement a hold there. In 3064, we was formally inducted into ComStar ROM as a agent.

Cho spent the next two years specializing in insertion and extraction operations for other ROM agents, and proved exceptionally good at his job. He was a competent pilot of most air vehicles, as well as a proficient driver. Sometime during this period, he was delisted from Maskirovka, although the fact that no team has been sent to terminate him indicates it was not under entirely unfavorable conditions. The exact nature of his departure from that organization is not known at this point.

Equally unknown is the reason for his sudden reassignment as a Black Moth pilot to the 394th Division in 3067. This very abrupt career change suggests a falling out with ROM, but while a capable helicopter pilot, Cho seems ill-suited to his current position. Even he doesn't know exactly why he was placed where he is, but he has faith that it will become clear why he was placed where he is soon.

Shin Magnusson (Morgan) - Other members of ComStar charitably describe Shin as being "something of a reactionary." Less charitably, he's so far into Sixth of June Land he came out the other side. Growing up on Hanover under the parentage of a career ComGuard pilot and an HPG technician indoctrinated Shin into the Blessed Order's mysteries at a young age, combining old-fashioned Combine discipline with the religious trappings ComStar had yet to lose.

Shin's parents envisioned for him a childhood full of learning the basics of Blake's teachings, followed by introduction into the Order the moment he hit the minimum age. The 5th Jaguar Regulars rudely interrupted this by conquering the planet in the middle of 3051, with Shin's mother's unit being pulled off the planet soon afterward to participate in the build-up for Tukkayid. His father attempted to continue Shin's schooling, although the Jaguar occupation badly disrupted life on the world and the ComStar detachment often found themselves in the midst of the chaos due to Jaguar resentment at their continued control over the HPG station.

3052 proved to be equally as poor a year for the boy. During Operation Scorpion the Clanner garrison chose to vent their grievances by flooding the compound with anaesthetic gas, going so far as to punch holes in the building walls with light weaponry to ensure the entire ComStar detachment would be disabled without risking damage to the valuable HPG equipment. Uncontrolled exposure to the anaesthetic resulted in mass casualties among ComStar personnel, with Shin's father among the dead. At his father's orders, Shin managed to seal himself and a number of other personnel away in one of the station's underground shelters, along with a large collection of ComStar historical documents and journals. When the vault opened in the aftermath of the Clan operation Jaguar forces, finding it was full of noncombatants, allowed them to leave after screening Shin's trove of documents for any information of value. Finding nothing, the boy was cast out on the streets with the other ComStar survivors.

News of his mother's death on Tukkayid as well as that of innumerable of ComGuard personnel, combined with the callous Jaguar treatment of the local populace, enraged Shin and his fellows, and after some minor difficulties escaping Hanover's capital without notice they linked up with other disgruntled planetary residents and began a half-decade guerilla campaign that only ended when Operation Bulldog came crashing down on top of the Jaguars. During this time Shin continued his study of ComStar doctrine, unaware of the schisms that had occurred in the wake of Operation Scorpion's failure and Myndo Waterly's execution. When the second Star League's forces freed Hanover, Shin gleefully contacted ComStar and joined the ComGuard, with his parents' sterling records and death in the line of duty greatly easing his passage into the ranks.

He initially attempted to become a Mechwarrior, like his mother had been, but training went... poorly. Shin's large frame combined with some odd neurological traits made it exceptionally difficult for him to pilot or aim a vehicle. While he eventually gained some minor skill, no sane officer would consider him capable of piloting a multi-million C-bill war machine. Crestfallen, Shin prepared himself for being shunted into a desk job when one of the trainers, on a hunch, put him through some battle armor simulation work. Having never considered the option prior to that point, Shin gave it his best go. The bulk that gave him so much trouble inside a 'Mech abruptly became a virtue, and Shin passed the entry requirements easily. The remainder of his training went smoothly, and at the age of 20 Shin entered the ComGuard battle armor ranks.

Unfortunately, his attitudes had begun to create some friction with his comrades. Shin still held to the oldest and most hard-line attitudes in ComStar, particularly the idea that ComStar should be the sole protector and holder of technological knowledge, and he was appalled at the state of the universe, especially the loss of Terra. Most of his comrades quietly expected him to disappear into the Blakist ranks any day, and he probably would have but for a quirk of upbringing. In a twist of Combine and ComStar ideology, his parents taught that loyalty to ComStar must be absolute, for to leave the ranks represented a rejection of one's faith in Blake's vision of the future. Such apostasy could never be the proper answer, even to apparent heresy from the uppermost ranks of the organization. It was instead the duty of any true acolyte to hold even tighter to the true ways, and by shining example show those who faltered the true path. The apostate, of course, could only be answered with death.

Despite Shin's fervency, skepticism abounded anyway, and upper ranks looked for places where he could do meaningful damage to the enemy without creating a huge security risk.

As a solution, Shin was placed in a small, experimental unit employing prototype mimetic armor suits. These troopers were inserted into worlds in the Chaos March where WoB interests dominated and ordered to perform acts of sabotage and mass-havoc. As ComStar saw it, if Shin did his job, then great. If he went over to them, then at most he was compromising a small team of soldiers wearing armor which was actually less advanced, in some ways, than the Word's own Purifier suits. Shin, for his part, threw himself into the work with wild abandon, seeing the Blakists as a band of cowards and faithless dogs whose failure to stay the course had lead ComStar to its present weakened, shattered state. He spent the majority of the 3060s on various assignments with his little, officially nonexistent unit of infiltrators, sowing havoc across WoB-dominated worlds near Terra and developing a wide array of skills helpful for guerrilla warfare.

In late 3067, to his confusion, he found himself detached from his unit and assigned to pilot a Firestarter FS9-S1 under the 394th Division's command. Why anyone could possibly want him to get back into a 'Mech is beyond him, but he has been called to duty and he will execute it to the best of his ability.

Days Away

First session is now scheduled for 5 June. The purpose of the session is to introduce the Jihad and the impetus for Case White, and to familiarize the players with the in-Mech combat system. I expect this to be the session of "What does that do?" and "What do I roll again?" Of course, that's going to last past this session, but hopefully we'll cover the fundamentals sufficiently that people will get the checks. I'm going to be evolving a cheatsheet for my players with key tables and other details on it, but I've found that such things are never what the GM thinks they will be, so I'll hold off on sharing it until its gotten some field testing.

One anomalous thing about this game, as with many of the games before it, is that it runs at 0900 on Sunday morning. Originally I chose this timeslot because in a post-college world, all my friends and I had extremely busy weekday lives, working late at our respective jobs, or being caught in traffic, or just being exhausted, and Saturdays were reserved for cleaning, chores, and often parties on Saturday night. Sunday morning, however, we were all up by 0700, because that's when our bodies naturally wake us up now regardless of when we went to sleep, and we had nothing to do. So I decided to fill the slot with a game.

So each Sunday I get up at 0700 or 0730 if I sleep in, set out my gaming material, and go make pancakes before my players arrive. I've actually found this time rather helpful as a GM -- once you've made the batter, making pancakes is a fairly mindless job, and it lets me think about the session and get myself in mindset without pouring over my notes. People usually start arriving about 0850, and we eat breakfast, get the social time out of the way that every gaming group of friends I've ever seen or heard of has at the beginning of session, and at 0930 we start running with what players we have -- there's always somebody chronically late who gets in right at the buzzer. We clear away breakfast, put down books and character sheets and maps and the other minutiae of gameplay, I hand out dice to people who forgot theirs, and we start.

I'm telling you all this so that you understand the context that this game is taking place in. We miss some weeks due to travel or other things that take players or me away, or if we all have some social function we're attending (there are only two major social circles represented across my five players, so anything that steals away one is likely to steal away two or three.) Sessions only run to about noon, so really there's only 2.5 hours of real solid playtime to work with -- each encounter needs to be lean and fast. Fluff is something that you take home with you and read between sessions. Because sessions are so short I am hoping to have most of the session planning done between sessions, so that when people arrive at the table, they know what they're going to be doing, why they're going to be doing it, and how the plan to make it happen. The session is execution and surprises.

Of course, all this means I need to be ready to go myself, hence all the pre-planning. I'm a little apprehensive about getting the systems in place to maintain proper records of the status of all the player's training and XP generation. The paperwork for XP in A Time of War seems to get messy fast, largely because characters need to work together to train each other. I like the mechanic conceptually, but its execution is a bit awkward. I'm sure I'll come up with a better system after playing around with it a bit, but it is complicated. I know I wrote about it last week, but I think there's another full article at least just on maintaining XP records. Back to the rulebook...

Backstories

We're starting to nail down the last bits of pre-game backstory and plot with my players, but a sudden moment of inspiration came to me to help justify one of my players' selection of 'Mech and background.

Bert's character is a 40-year-old ComGuard who fought at Tukayyid. He obviously survived the battle and went on to participate in Operation Bulldog and the drive to the Clan Homeworlds, before returning to the Inner Sphere. He then does another tour with ComStar through the FedCom Civil War, before participating in the Case White landings of 3068. Also, he drives a Black Hawk.

Huh. How to weave all this into the greater BattleTech storyline? Well, let's start with Tukayyid. Most of the ComGuard was there, but this character (as of this writing he still doesn't have a name I have been notified of) would've been about 24 at Tukayyid, only a few years out of Sandhurst. After reviewing the history of the battle in the ComStar sourcebook (FASA 1655), I thought the 283rd Division would make the most sense for him -- a largely inexperienced unit, but one that held Clan Wolf at bay by preventing an encirclement of the Tenth Army at Brzo. That seemed a good position to launch a career from.

The tricky part about the 283rd is that by 3062, ten years later, the 283rd is viewed with suspicion as a potential bastion of Blakists in ComStar (Field Manual:ComStar, p. 39), so we need to move him out of that unit. After Tukayyid, Precentor Martial Focht assembles the 472nd Division, better known as Invader Galaxy, a Clan-styled ComStar unit under Precentor Lisa Koenig-Cober, and an element of the 12th Army. I was just reminded of the 472nd while reading the new Era Report:3060 PDF that came out a few days ago. Koenig-Cober's entry in the ComStar Personas section was enough to jog my memory about the full-Clan-equipped ComStar Division. That would be an ideal unit for him to gain his Black Hawk in, and a confrontation with a superior defecting to the Word provides an opportunity for his transfer as the rest of his Level II goes over and he alone remains loyal to the ComGuard. We'll say he's with the unit when it forms in 3058. He stays with the 472nd, conducting wargames and eventually following Taskforce Serpent up the Exodus Road with the rest of the Bulldog elements.

Now I need to get him into the 394th Division sometime during the FedCom Civil War. After serving the 472nd with distinction, Bert's character found that being assigned full-time to wargames at the Focht War College was not to his taste, so he petitioned for transfer to a combat unit. At the time, the 394th was conducting operations in the Chaos March under Precentor Reine. With his transfer he was permitted to keep his 'Mech, and is still serving with the 394th as of gamestart.

With just a couple of source books, I was able to flesh out this character's backstory and provide real touch-points in the history of BattleTech, as well as leverage a number of pre-written personalities in the canon to help fill his presence in the universe. Now Bert can look up the histories of the units he was in to get a sense of his history, or I can easily digest the relevant entries to provide him with a one-page service record of his character, and provide the kind of continuity that you can only get from a universe as fully-developed and well-documented as the BattleTech universe.