Virtual Worlds

One decision made early in the planning for this campaign, and one that I have never tried before, was that we will be running the 'Mech-scale combat in Ten Years on Terra entirely in MegaMek, the open-source BattleTech engine. I am of two minds about MegaMek. It frequently has glitches in seldom-used mechanics that are confusing and affect and slow-down gameplay. It also prevents me from house-ruling on the spot to handle bizarre circumstances. It does, however, offer some advantages.

First, it makes sure that players always get their bonuses, and in its most recent incarnation, it supports most of the RPG elements that A Time of War introduces. Bert is taking two SPA's from the Tactical Addendum, both being supported by MegaMek. MegaMek also makes it abundantly clear to my players that I'm not pulling my punches with the dice -- it reports faithfully what happened to all players simultaneously, eliminating the somewhat meta-game presumption many parties are prone to falling into that the GM won't let anything too bad happen to them.

One of the features I was most impressed with in the most recent revision of MegaMek was support for Edge. Edge, of course, is the "luck" attribute in A Time of War, and characters may spend a point of Edge to reroll a die. This is critical in enhancing PC survivability in the extremely deadly BattleTech universe. MegaMek now allows characters to have an Edge pool, which it will automatically expend on key rolls, such as head shots, through-armor criticals, and ammunition explosions. This feature probably sold me more than anything else on the MegaMek-as-a-mapsheet-replacement for this game.

The decision to go with the virtual environment has yielded other dividends. I can now pre-program scenarios and have them standing by on a moment's notice, so the party can tell me at the start of the session which mission they're going to run and I don't need to spend half an hour setting up the maps and enemy force locations. I also am grateful for something that will help my newer players see the calculations that are happening without having to wade through the tables themselves. I expect to see a radical increase in combat resolution speed with the computerized system.

Finally, with the ability to generate and save maps not only for play but also as images, I can give the players detailed charts of the areas they have intelligence on, so that they can plan their operations. There are still a few issues that recent testing has brought up, especially as relates to the party spawning all together despite being controlled by different players. Still, despite it means my maps and my minis will be sitting idle, I think its the right choice for game immersion and timeliness. I'll be sure to keep commentary on how well it works as a replacement.