Loading...
Loading...

The Mechbay talks about how they run their personal campaigns and offer advice to anyone else wanting to start their own.
Talk with the Mechbay and other BattleTech fans on their Discord
Denham's Campaign Documents
Archons
Mechwarriors
Cadets
Hello, mech warriors and welcome to the mech bay where we fix your mech and fix your game
What's going on mech warriors? I'm your host Steve. I've got my co-host lore master denim
Howdy, howdy and we are the mech bay podcast your number one source for all things casual to competitive battle tech and today's episode is sponsored by
mech warrior Ned McDermant and cadets Brock and Mac Ronan call sign seawiz in his black Python along with chad holes and subtle calm
We thank you guys for your continued support and really appreciate you
help it us out
You may have noticed that Josh is not here today and this is because Josh has locked himself in the supply closet taking refuge from all those
Adoring fans pounding on the doors asking for blue chips the rare blue chip
So elusive so secretive
I must have for any true mech bay podcast fan
Today
We're talking about campaigns
Welcome class to campaign running 101. That's right. It is episode 101
It oh my goodness. It is yeah, I was gonna make some other joke. I like that one way better. This is episode 101
How to run a campaign. It's a correct campaign. It's rudimentary. How we run our campaigns. I think this is gonna be a great episode
denim you've done a lot of this I've done quite a bit myself
But before we dive into it
Let's get started with news hobby progress games played and even a little bit of fan mail
ooh
For news today we have silent assets a new book released by Daniel Eisenburner
And it should be out extremely soon if it's not out by the time this happens. It's been announced a little while ago
We have seen the release of both the carita ranger and carita command lance
Which is pretty exciting denim. I know you play a lot of carita
Oh, I'm super excited about both of these the avatar alone
Is is amazing
We've got multiple mechs with swords
um
It's it's I'm super super happy and we'll get into that in hobby progress
But uh, but we've got some problems in my office because of that
But um I like both lances. I like the iconic mechs. They picked out
Um, I'm not too sure about the panther because it looks so similar to the other panther
They've done that a couple of times with some of the reposes like the morgan kel archer is just like a torso twist with an arm raised
We got a couple different black checks that are minimally reposed
But I am glad they included the panther in this box because if you didn't it would feel wrong
Well, yeah, yeah, I'm a little surprised they didn't have a gender
Um, the grand dragon needed to be like you needed to have a model for the grand dragon
But it does look really similar to the regular dragon like super similar
It's just like the weapon ports that are different sure sure
Well, we'll talk a little bit about that uh more in
hobby progress for sure
Other news we have force manual mercenary is now available through cgl
I believe fortress miniatures and games has them as well
Uh, I'm not sure if he has a pre-order setup. I have to look into it. I
Don't know if I'm going to get a copy of this um, I know it's been looked at for a while people
I'm kind of excited for it, but from what I've seen
Uh, it looks very similar to the previous mercenary handbook
Yeah, it's super similar to the combat manual series uh, because they did a mercenary one of those um and a credo one
and
To be honest a lot of it is it feels like it's copypaced like word-for-word exactly what what it was before there are some new things
They have a push the era forward a little bit. So if you don't have the combat manuals. Yeah, you should pick it up if you do
Um
I mean you know me Steve. I'm going to have it on my bookshelf next to all of my other ones
So I am I'm definitely buying a hard copy um
But that's because I got a catch it all yeah personally. I
I'm kind of the opposite. I do not have a lot of the books. I don't have any of the arrow books
I don't know of any of that stuff. I've got the rule books
The couple of fiction novels that I have been interested in but a lot of the other stuff I pass on mostly because
Lore's not my jam. Do you have the the Spine Art uh books? I think I'm only missing total or not total war. I have that one um
A time of war time of war. Yes that one. I think that's the only one I'm missing that one doesn't have any timber wolf on it
So if you're gonna miss any of them, that's the one to miss but but I definitely have all of those. I like the Spine Art books
Yeah, it's pretty cool. You just gotta make sure you put them back in the right order. Otherwise, they'll just be annoyed
Yep
Do that on purpose to throw people off their game
It works
Things to note about the first manual mercenary there was a slight hiccup with a digital release
I believe that has been repaired and they should be available on CGL's website
So yes, if you're interested go check it out
It's always nice to see new
Books coming out at least you know it means that the printers are still working
Sorry CGL's website and drive-through RPG both of those places if you purchase it from them
If you if they ever put out an update they will automatically allow you to download the updated PDF for free
Are they updating drive-through RPG now? I think originally they weren't oh they have been for for it almost a decade now. Yeah, I've I've done that
before
When I first started getting back into battle tech about seven or eight years ago
I got a lot of stuff off of drive-through RPG and I have routinely updated you know downloaded updated versions of my PDFs through that
No great great
Any of the news that I missed
I'm sure there's news out there, but I don't I don't know it's been a busy week you know tournaments and stuff
sure has been
Hobby progress
denim
What have you done up to oh?
My
Hobby desk looks like a crime scene. It definitely looks like I have murdered multiple people on there
um, I have both of the new
Corridor Lance packet actually I have two of each of both of the new Corridor Lance packs
And because of the avatar I grabbed some inner-sphere elementals and everything is being painted red
Um, there are splatters spills
Uh speckles from from dry brushing. It is a red mess on my desk
It would be wouldn't it? Yeah
Gross actually I painted them all blue and they all turned red due to the blood of my enemies. I have defeated
I think that's the wrong IP denim
Something something blood god
Corridor mechs swords equals blood spray everywhere
Does my armor bleed? Um, my armor bleeds red
steed
I must have missed that part of the lore. Would you gotta kill a mech first?
I am with the way I've been rolling that's hard to come by man
I too have acquired both the Corridor Ranger and the Corridor Command Lash thanks to Bobby at Fortress Minatures and Games
Thank you Bobby
Yeah, Bobby's great man. He's a great supporter and
Bobby is just about everything that you could imagine regarding battle tech and other related games
He even helps feed Josh's halo addiction, which I don't think is healthy
But uh, I've also started painting my Corridor models um, which is
I guess really a surprise to no one if there were one inner-sphere faction that was not a bird and talked about honor all the time
They're about as close to clanders as you can get in the inner-sphere real there. It's so honorable
But not too honorable and there's certainly not humble
But just the right amount of humble
Absolutely not
But no, I started painting mine. I did not paint my red
I'm going for ganyoshia, so I'm gonna be doing that ash gray
um
Which
I'm kind of excited for I got a I got a recipe that I'm going to try to follow and it's looking good so far
Nice the problem is
I didn't
Really do the part where you like do a test model with like one or two or even four or eight
Nope, nope. I built out two full companies that I'm paying 25 models already because I hate myself apparently
This is the way I just dive in face first into the shallow end and you know go from there
But it's slow going more than half of her
Kind of a mess, but um, I don't have anything to show for him yet
But it's been kind of fun experimenting with colors that are not yellow or white
So getting back to normal paint colors has been a breath of fresh air. Hey koreeda is a fun faction to play
It is look. We've got all these things with swords now. I I cannot pronounce it, but the row
Row could be
Sure, I just keep calling them bryobies like my tools in the shed, but
My bryobie gang no, but they the models are nice man. They got like swords going every which way you get an extra arm
Yeah, in case you want the four the sword going forward or the or the proper
The proper hand yep, yeah, yeah, you know what I'm gonna do. I put the reverse hold on mine
So he's got it like sword down, but it is with a very specific reason
I want to take the regular arm with the sword upright
And I want to use it as a terrain piece
And I want to paint the arm
Because that arm looks extremely similar to a certain faction's logo
So I want to paint it in the liao arm color right with the sword
That's amazing and I'm gonna stick it underneath the next foot
Because it's gonna be gross and rad all at the same time the kids don't say rad anymore. Do they done?
Well, you know what we're bringing it back bringing it back rad right here. I'm gonna back rad sick
That's that's kind of better than what I'm doing with that extra arm
All I'm doing is taking one of the um the chimeras and and one of those the jumps seven
Um has a c3 and a sword
So I'm going to just pop that on to the right arm and and give it a sword on my model as well
Oh nice doing a little bit of wizzy wig. All right. Yeah
Um
Trying to think of this any other progress
I am helping my son build his very first pinewood Derby car
Nice. So that's a gas land style
No, I let him pick he wants like a
Like an old school racing kind of car with a big you know nose and like the little
Welled out seat with the dude in the goggles and like a little windscreen the old school. Let's go a little scarf
Yeah, exactly. That's that's the that's the look he's going for he showed me a picture
What he wanted to be and I've butchered it horribly because my skill saw skills are
Not great
But I am using your brush. He's supposed to be doing that. You're just supposed to be helping
He is five if you think I'm letting a five-year-old anywhere near a skill saw you sir are insane
I bet he still all has all of his original fingers still to he he does and I have most of mine. So we're we're okay
Um
No, so it's been it's been good man. We've been
Doing some hobby stuff. It's been low pressure for brawl in the bluegrass. I did not paint a single model
I just used out anything I had laying around so it's been pretty stress-free. I'm not
You know racing to get anything done. It's been
Kind of nice. I'm trying to
Get over a little bit of hobby burn out and I'm trying to ease my way back into it by
painting two full
Companies of getting you know sure, but that that aside we're we're easing our way into it. We're getting we're getting
But next up
denim
Steve games played
Have you played a game? I
Can't have these two new
Forcebacks out without
Feeling some serious Karita and my friend Thiel local guy awesome guy love Thiel
Yes
He he did the same thing, but with the the Davian forcebacks
So he challenged me publicly
Uh, with his fanatose forest falconer 8R Hellspawn 9F and the enforcer 5R very Davian force however
That force has a lot of MRM's and a lot of
Heavy lasers of all sorts
Also more than one Gauss rifle. I think there's two Gauss rifles in that list
Oach
Yeah, yeah, it was scary
So I wanting to have some fun
Took the the Akuma 1x the Shiro
SH1v the grand dragon dr g7k and your favorite Roku Roku b rk 4t
Yeah, the royal favorite because you don't know how to pronounce it. Yeah, right precisely
The drill the rio b the skill saw he's got blades and
Vibrates hang on
So all of his have jump jets none of mine have jump jets. That's a problem. It it
We played on the badlands map. So there's a lot of terrain
But I lost initiative
A lot but that gave me the opportunity to control the battlefield
Um
So I made it so he had to follow me over to where I wanted if he wanted to get any kills
So I was able to set up like
ambushes stuff like that
Uh
I will tell you those Karita max especially the ones with the swords like the Shiro and the Roku Roku b
They don't have a lot of firepower especially four max of their size Roku Roku b has a single light
Auto cannon five
I did put the proper ammo in there because it has two tons of ammo. So I have one ton of precision one ton of armor piercing
Groose yeah, yeah precision
We'll pack at anybody moving too fast and the armor piercing will uh
Will make people hesitant to stand still
But maximum damage is five points in the shooting phase
Maximum damage is five points with that sword in the in the melee phase
Uh surprisingly weak
Yeah, yeah, uh the Shiro's got four LRM tens and an LB2X
But they're playing LRM's so no no uh
No minimum range that's something
Um
Those two though the Shiro and the Roku Roku b may not have a lot of firepower, but they both have hardened armor
And they're pretty fast for their size
Um then the other one of the akuma is just a tank. It's just there to to absorb hits
And the grand dragon is just to get into position
I don't think I've ever had a grand dragon last more than four or five turns ever really
But
But he serves a purpose he's out there to to get in front have everybody shoot at him while everyone else gets into position for the kill
Um
Yes, Thiel's Davians put out an incredible amount of firepower gals rifles heavy improved lasers
MRM's uh
But the hardened armor and just the massive amount of armor in the akuma at weighed one the day
The grand dragon did go down. I think he fell unconscious turned three
um
So he was unconscious all of turn four turned five. He went to stand up failed his piloting role
Um impaled himself on a tree
Uh with the embarrassment he had from that he committed sepecu on turn five
So he was technically out by turn three, but he finished himself off on turn five
brutal
Yes
Yes, absolutely brutal. I will say I love the akuma's model
Oh, yeah, it's got like the mask thing going on. It's got like a little only face
I think that's that's great. I'm really excited to paint mine. It was modeled after the atlas. So it's a it's creed as budget atlas
And it does its job. It has it has a lot of firepower just like the atlas. It's got max armor just like the atlas
It's slow
But it doesn't need to be fast
um
So with the with the other three this year or the rokuro kubi and the akuma
Yes, they were undergunned
But they could absorb so many hits that you know gals rifles in the head
Oh, look, I still have internal structure left things like that. Wow
Yeah, the Davian's just couldn't couldn't
Put out enough damage before I got in there and uh and got a few kills this hero did run over because the
Show's got the four LRM's and the LV2X, but it also has a sword and
um
It ran over and uh and decapitated the Thanos when it fell to the ground
Uh, it attacked it while it was on the ground sliced the head clean off
So and Thanatos or the prototype from Marvel both
Both excellent. Okay. Both. Yes, the Thanatos
Who is being piloted by Thanos? Don't confuse me. Well, I don't know
Okay
Denim next time you paying a Thanatos. Can you please paint one arm gold with a couple of different colored knuckles for you?
I will yes, I'd be great. I want a Thanatos with a infinity gauntlet. Thank you denim. Yes done consider done
um
Right
All that was left on his side was the health spawn
Uh, who tried to DFA my akuma and was just obliterated by by everything
That's a bold move. It was it was
Fantastic game
Carito won feel did admit to be later because he is also a huge Carita fan
He tried his hardest. He wanted it to be a big fight. He was secretly happy that Carito won
I mean feels a very good player
So he may have lost on purpose and you didn't realize he absolutely did not we had that discussion, but he may have lied to you denim
He earned a chip. So good. That's good. He has he has a red Carita colored chip
Excellent
Yes, excellent
But you and he games
Got a couple got a couple uh, we played a campaign day in a local shop which went relatively well
I can talk about that little more later when we talk about our um
You know our campaign stuff, right? Uh, but I did have
Possibly one of the best Fridays. I've had in a very long time
Work has been kind of keep me down and uh been really stressed out recently, but
My son had a
My son had his first
Field trip for school, which was very exciting
So I went as a shaperone to the zoo
And I have not been to the zoo
In a surprisingly long time and it was very exciting
Steve how does this relate to battle tech well after the zoo
We came home because I was a shaperone so we didn't have to get on the bus
I could just take him back to the house and we have all afternoon to hang out and do whatever we want
And he's like dead can we play battle tech and I'm like absolutely
What is he want brownie points probably he got an extra helping words. Yeah, absolutely
um
But you know, I know a while ago
I'd mentioned that I picked up the clan command star with him because he'd come with me in the the shop
So he had his you know, dire wolf and his um, you know summoner and
Shadowcat and all that stuff that was in that box and we'd we'd put base coats on them
And he was happy and often didn't want to meet a fuss with him anymore. So they're just bright colors
um
So I made an equivalent force of Jade Falcons, right?
And so I took like a Turkina a summoner
Fire Falcon Helbringer and
And
Might have been a black laner was my other one. Mm-hmm. So I just tried to bring like very Jade falcony falcon max just something fun to do
And easy on the kid I see. Yeah, well
For the first several turns I was kind of concerned my dice luck were not very good and he was smoke
And we played with single attack role so he could just do you know, seven damage with his dire wolf at a turn
You know deleting things always a kid fox is what it was
I took a kid fox not a black laner. I apologize very very different. Yes. Well, no, no
I I couldn't remember the other one was but I remember now because the
Dire wolf just consumed it whole
But what ended up happening is he started to miss and I started to get you know behind him and start to take some shots
Um, and it really came down to his summoner and needing to roll a five plus to kill my fire falcon and he would have tabled me
He rolled a three
Now dear listener
You may be asking
Steve
You didn't table your five-year-old did you?
Wait, wait, wait, you were playing Jade falcon weren't you? Oh yes
Lessons must be taught
Jade the Jade falcon tomon has no place for weak-willed warriors friends
Say what? We use this as an object lesson
and
Really trying to teach him that you can still have fun
Even if we lose
That's right and as I say it not as I do right
Absolutely. I need to learn that lesson 100%
um
But oh he he kind of I think he understood man. It's good. You know we're we're trying, you know
And we're doing our best here. So uh, I think he he he was bummed
But he said he had fun and he wanted to play later
And I said do you want to play again now? We got enough time before you know mom and your brother come home
And he goes no that's okay
Can we play gas lands instead?
And I'm like absolutely buddy. We're playing gas lands and I once again learn the lesson the yellow cars can jump when confronted with you know cars trying to block their path. So
Um again news to me, but I got to play gas land so I didn't complain too hard
That's right. I see why he wanted a pallet cleanser after that and gas land seems to be more uh
More friendly to him winning
Well, when your yellow cars can jump over obstacles. Yes. That's a
Yeah, we tell you learn to about the yellow mechs
But no, um, that was a great Friday. I got to go to the zoo. I got to play battle tag
I got to teach my child lesson and we got to play gas lands. Oh, that was a
Did you get to pet the rhinoceros at the zoo?
I highly recommend it. Do you know how hard it is to chase
Three children two of which are not yours around the zoo and make sure that everybody comes home with other fingers
Yeah, I used to I used to do that for school kids
For my kids all the time at school. I was the I was
I was the chaperone all the kids wanted because I would you pay the little extra money to let them go into the
To the petting parts or whatever whatever was it took extra money and the other parents would be like no
We're not doing that. I'd be like everyone go
So they almost me. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. No, I was the um
I was a slave driver on that trip
I'm the one who's like you get off the railing you come over here everyone's standing together
These are the rules no running sit out and I was
The children I was in control of were well-behaved
Watch what happens when Jacob falls in the lion pit go Jacob
Oh, I had to ask all the kids, you know
What's the one animal you want to see so we could make sure all the kids got to see what they wanted
Of course the kids picked the three animals that were furthest apart in the freaking zoo
Uh-huh. We spent a lot of time walking but the kids were tired, which is good. So
Any tales from the hiring hall
Uh, none that I am prepared to talk about right now. I did start a new a new mercenary unit
Um, and uh spoiler alert. I have to start another new mercenary unit. So
Oh, you're gonna make us wait until next time. Yeah. Yeah, it's a story
I'm I'm excited to hear it
I have one track left in the wicked hogs
And I may wrap that up
Thursday this week. We'll see
Um, I'm hoping to
We've been installed for a week or two. We haven't had a chance to play our contract
So uh when I finish that up, we'll we'll have a report
Nice
We do have some upcoming events coming um
Several over the next several months and these are just the ones that I was able to think of off the top
My head and sticking this list if I miss something
Food free to email us at the mechbay podcast at gmail.com
And we can make sure the your event ends up on the calendar or at least in the announcement section of the discord
Upcoming march 25th through the 29th in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We have a depth to come
Should be a good time. It's a big deal. It's still a new place
So it works out uh the trash panda open is April 12th
Um, sorry, April 11th and 12th in new port news, Virginia
That's close to me
Are you going? No
Well, okay
We have the Richmond opened that is May 1st through May 3rd in
Wait for it
Richmond, Virginia
Okay, I I want to just be clear that that I'm not not going because I don't want to
It's because my April is already full. I realize that my nose sounded like no
No, I would love to go, Steve. I absolutely would
Um
Just people keep uh
Scheduling these tournaments for for days that I already have stuff. So it's not very nice
I never doubted you for a second denim. Yeah, but they might they don't know me like you do
It's fair
Uh next event as one I'm particularly partial to motor city mayhem is May 16th in Farmington Hills, Michigan
Which is just north of Detroit for those of you that don't know the area
uh motor city mayhem is
Filling up we got 42 people signed up already down. That's pretty exciting. Wow. That is that is fantastic
Yeah, we're not even all the way through March yet
So I've got lots of space if you're interested in coming to the new venue
It's in a hotel you can walk from your room to the venue very nice
Um, I'm excited. We got some new missions that we're working on for this year uh, we're print and swag already
So should be a very good time
We also have wars on Atlanta, which is May
I think 20 second to the 24th
Um, and that's in Atlanta, Georgia
We also have strategic comm which is May 22nd to the 25th in Los Angeles, California
And we have
ACO the Atlantic City open, which is a battle tech and alpha strike event from June 12th to June 14th in Atlantic city
New Jersey
That one is run by Brad Nichols who is a wonderful guy and if you have the opportunity to go hang out and play a battle tech with Brad
You should absolutely do it. I've played him twice now and I have learned something new every time
So if you're in that area or have the ability to travel and your calendar is open check out any of these great events
I'm sure you will have fun
For the first time in a long time denim
We have some fan mail
Mail man got some mail here
It's exciting stuff
We did get a listener from the ua e uh, his name was john
john want to appreciate all the kind words you sent us and we will address her question
But we need some additional time because we want to make sure that we put it in an episode that it is well suited for
But we will tackle the subject of your email soon
TM
Yep
Yep, yep, yep
We also got an email from Jacob s
Jacob writes
Hello there
General canobi
Just getting hidden put that part in there
No, but I was about to until you said it
It's just a reflex. It's just a reflex can't help it
He says figured I'd make this an email instead of a discord message since you guys need more emails
I'm hosting a game night for my work next week
I've heard rumors that some co-workers do tabletop and RPG
And it's a pretty nerdy group there are much a satellite engineers apparently
So I'm gonna try and get a few games of battle tech again
I don't play very much and I haven't done an intro game with more than one person before
You guys have much more experience introducing players
And I'd love some advice on how to set up and run an intro game for a few people
I've got the 2014 introductory box the alpha strike box and the merc box plus the battle mic manual
I have 3d printed maps in terrain
And the game should probably run less than two hours
What is the best way to hook a few new players? Thanks Jacob
I have a go-to mission. I noticed that you don't have the game of armored combat box
But inside there is a mission and
I'll list the becks that it it recommends, but you can use anything that's similar
But it checks all your boxes
It can be played in less than two hours. It looks great if you've got maps with 3d terrain
Um, and it works with several people. I tend to play it with up to four players
So on one side you have an assault class mech in the box said it's a it's a battle master
Um
That battle master is trying to make it back to his unit. He got cut off
So you put the two maps short edge together. So it makes one long map
So that guy starts at one end of the map and his objective is just to walk all the way over
It doesn't have to walk you can run a few ones and get off of the other edge
Um, the other mechs in the box that are coming after you
Uh, those would be the locust the wolverine and the commando
So
You can have up to four players in this one
It's really good about teaching the differences between likes mediums and assaults
Um
It's really important to show off the uh, how how melee works and how zoning works
So it's it's not a kill mission because the battle master is just trying to get off
And the other three are trying to stop the battle master
so
I would put the most experienced person on the battle master
and uh
And use it as an intro to teach the other people to play which means that if it's intro came and they've never played
It's a great game to just pause and say okay
Let's go over this here your options. What do you want to do or I see you moved over there?
Um, your locust only moved one the locust's armor is speed not armor
So even if you want to go one you should run the long way around and have that one hex move take seven hexes to do
And get your modifier up there. It's great for learning stuff like that
Um, I've always had a lot of fun. It is my go-to
Intro game at hangry team. So that's my advice
You know one of these days. I'm gonna read the actual stuff that's in those boxes
Some of them are really good. Yeah, I just pull the plastic out and
I should probably start reading that stuff
But no, that's a great option denim and you know Jacob if you were to ask me
I normally recommend
Like a two on two style game. I'd recommend using mostly mediums if you don't want to do denim's game idea
I'm sure by the time this gets out there your event will have come and gone and I hope
that the email response we said earlier helps you
um
But this is you know
Another option for the next time you and your co-workers get together, but normally when I do intro games I do maybe
You know
Two on two maybe both mediums
Try to give them no case try to make them explosive right have something exciting happen
Get those ammo crits and and watch things explode
Rather than giving everything case and pulse lasers and watching them all do it out for 10 hours
So that's always another option recommended minion backs would be stuff like like hunchbacks things that
Have big guns. So when they hit you know it
And so it makes for an exciting and short game
Which is good because if they like it then they can take the other max that can take more punishment
Uh later on, but yeah, yeah, nothing gets a person hooked faster than getting kills
I I agree um
Jacob I hope that information is helpful to you and I'd love for you to write in and tell us how it went
With that said
We're gonna take a short break here and we'll come back with our main subject
How to run campaigns
Good evening. I'm chipdarrington
It is well known that plan jade falcon has been reduced in both size and number after their catastrophic bid for terror led by the notorious
Melvina hazen
Since then jade falcon holdings have been rapidly dwindling and the need for fresh mac warriors has been marked by an increase in jade falcon claimed
Tonight we focus on one such group of said bonsman they call themselves the desgro luchadors
The former DCMS mac warriors were involved in what is now known as the battle for the bay
The group was reportedly defeated and claimed by a star captain only identified as Steve
former chute of the group chris tebow stated that initially the luchadors were not well received by the falcons
Not only due to their free-birth status, but were labeled sohama given their age
They are named for their fondness of the old terran lucheliebrae style of wrestling and have internalized those lessons and flare
When in the cockpit these mac warriors don their colorful leather masks and have a penchant for physical attacks
seen as desgro by the falcons their tactics prove strangely successful
And thus they are permitted to continue operating within the clan
As the jade falcons continue to consolidate their power in the hinterlands
It can be expected that more mac warriors will be claimed as bonsman in the near future
This has been chipdarrington, signing off
Welcome back class to campaign day 101
We're going to cover what to do when you want to run your own campaign
Now we did already cover campaign operations in episode 21
And again cast campaigns in episode 61
So we are back after another 40 episodes to take another look about how we run our campaigns
denim
You've had a very long running very successful campaign you run out of hangar 18
And I've had not to do it my own horn some success the my own local game shop
Yeah, but it's going to get better because as we'll touch on
I've been doing my campaign. I think I'm on year seven now
Um, and what we'll explain why that matters later, but uh yours is doing fantastic for how long you've been doing it
Yeah, I'm I'm very pleased um
Technically running about three-ish years
I had a kid somewhere in the middle of that so things got slowed down a little bit
It does close things down
Yeah, it's amazing how busy your life gets when you've got two children running around
um
But
We did this episode a because it was funny to do one every 40 episodes and we felt like we had two
The 101 the 101 is just it's just perfect just icing on the cake. I thought so I thought so I thought it was fitting
So um not to mention that people have also been asking for quite a while we get quite a few questions on
denim how do you do your campaign or Steve you were running an alpha strike one? What do you do?
What's your rules set? How do we how do we emulate what you guys do that you talk about on the podcast so much?
And we thought we finally had enough stuff
To really do a decent episode about you know, what are the five top things you're gonna need for running your own campaign
And how to go about doing that to hopefully
Have the most success possible
um
We should start off by saying that there are many many different ways to do campaigns
You can do you know
campaign operations you can do cast campaigns like we talked about those other episodes
You know you can do whatever you like and whatever your players enjoy just because we talk about what we think works
Well for us and our local groups does not mean that it will be a perfect fit for you
So don't feel obligated to copy everything we do you are welcome to take bits and pieces of whatever works for
us and
form it and mold it into something that your group will enjoy
exactly because
You could absolutely do a whole different direction like a like RPG campaigns stuff with destiny and a time of war
And these are not the campaigns we're going to be talking about today. We are specifically going to be going over
Just tabletop based mech action
In type of campaigns there will be some persistence in them, but it's not like
It's not like the indie roll the dice type of type of campaign
Right
And I guess we should probably double back to the very beginning and how did we get started
In our campaign settings and and and what worked for us. So dental. How did you I just started this seven years ago
Right, I didn't have anyone to play battle tech with but I really really enjoyed it
This was even before the new game of armored combat box that came out
But I had gone to dragon con and they I still saw they had battle tech there. They had this group called the CDT
The catalyst demo team and I was intrigued by by what they did
And then I'd gone to a store and
And
They had some interest in battle tech like I found a store hangar 18 actually had battle tech on the shelves
So I wanted to make it
Something more legitimate something more more permanent. So I asked if as the owner of he minded if I ran some games
Um, I wanted to lend some legitimacy to it. So I became a CDT agent
You do not have to that is not a step that you have to do for this
But but I did that so that he could say that he had a CDT agent
At his store and then
I started looking for inspiration to do more than just pick up games because we played some pickup games
And people wanted wanted more they wanted to talk about the stories of their pilots
But since her pilots changed every game
They they didn't have that persistence
And since there wasn't really anything out there that that took you
There were books out there that gave you tools like the campaign operations book
But none of them walked through and said okay. Here is step one. Here is step two. Here is step three
It's more like here's the toolbox. Just go figure it out. You'll you'll be fine
So um, I started
Figuring it out
That old added fake it till you make it. So I just did things that were interesting to me
And in the end it worked out and we'll go through a little bit more in detail
How that how that happened. How about you what what got you started into that
So
Similarly, right
We had been doing quite a few pickup games locally. I had a decent group of people that had started
Right, I mean we were getting people for games pretty much every other Friday
is when we like to play and
You know, we had wanted something that was a little
Like you said a little more, right? I mean, it's fun to smash robots together and blow things up
But at the end of the day, you know a lot of us at our local shop
We did play a lot of engines and dragons. We did play a lot of other role-playing games
and we wanted
Something to tie these
Episodes together, right? We could have the same pilots fight week to week to week
um, and I looked into cast campaigns and I didn't
Like the feel of it at all
So I I'd want to do something in alpha strike because that's how it was more comfortable with at the time
And I reached out to Ed Stephens or metal ed right he's been doing a lot of play testing and work on everything
That's a great guy. He is a fantastic guy very knowledgeable love ed
So ed thank you for kind of giving me some basic framework
To work off if and I made quite a few changes to ed's, you know
Structured what he had been running locally
Because I wanted to simplify it a little bit and make a little bit more digestible for the local group
So we ran several missions for alpha strike
um
And I discovered very quickly how much work it was
Get things ready for month to month
Uh, and eventually, you know, I had a had a second kid and that kind of put a slow on that for a while
Um, and then when the kids got older, I
Decided we were going to pick it back up and I asked everybody hey, would you rather play alpha strike or would you rather shift over to classic and
While there were some holdouts most people voted to move over to classic because I feel like you get a little bit more of a
Simulation feel you get a little bit more granular play with classic which
Lends itself better to more narrative storytelling rather than well you lost four pips of armor and now you're crippled
It's you've lost a large laser you've lost you know a leg actuator and now you're hobbling off the battlefield right you don't quite have the same
granularity and alpha strike right so so for that I would say that uh
Classic battle tech is you tell stories about the pilots
Alpha strike you tell stories about the unit. So it's more it's more about the collection
It's it's a group of mac warriors
You're focusing on the larger picture and not necessarily the individual pilots with their individual machines
precisely
So that's how I got started that was really there was really the majority of it um when you were putting your
Kind of packet together. I guess if you have a packet or at least your rule set that you were going to use
What inspiration did you pull from you know? I like I mentioned earlier. I did not care much for cast campaigns um
They were okay, but there was a lot of
Paperwork and a lot of conversions between war chest points and other stuff that I said you know what I'm not dealing with this no. Thank you
Um, what did you end up pulling from what what did you really lean into so
To begin with since I've really had no idea what I was doing
I went looking for other people who had done that and uh this CDT agent named James curtley
Had a campaign system that he was running and was willing to to share and allow people to run
Which was fantastic
Um, it was a great starting point
however
His campaign didn't progress past uh introtek like it's just by design and
He did not allow for custom mechs and as a as a player who played in the in the 80s
You know when we started we only had 16 mechs
So you had to custom make mechs to have any sort of variety
And uh and I had a lot of fun with that
And I wanted to make a campaign system that allowed the people who wanted to make uh custom mechs to really just go wild and crazy with it
So
James curtley's missions did a great job of getting people into the store and then one they wanted more
I
Took a lot of inspiration from campaign operations like a lot and uh less or so the the uh
chaos campaign
hinterlancid didn't didn't exist yet
Uh the mercenaries box set was now it wouldn't be out for years
But I took those rules and like is the war chest points are weird
And doing the conversions from sea bills to war chest points to supply points and back
Was a lot of paperwork
So I had done things like I just
I just used supply points. I didn't use war chest points at all. I just had the one system. There's no conversions
And it's just the abstraction of money
And this was before hinterlands you said this was before hinterlands. Yes. Oh look at you first mover advantage
That's right
It it it worked out surprisingly well
I love the idea of supply points where it's an abstraction where it uh
It encompasses everything like sea bills um
bribes opportunity
luck
So it's just a general pool of resources that are ambiguous
So so you don't have to worry about exactly
What you're paying
And to whom you just know that that you're using these supply points to get what you want
You're in lear in space, but don't have enough wooden nickels to buy this large laser you will only have merit dollars
And yeah, so it supply point is a good
Catch all for yes
Yes
So yeah, I took I took campaign operations
Chaos campaign and and a few things that were just in my brain from from playing for 40 years
And I created a packet out of that and it's gone through several revisions
I think we're at version 2.2 right now and I admittedly
Put more in there than I ex
Then I needed really
But I'm okay with that because
I guess
I guess what I started to do is I was excited about campaigns
And I knew that other people were excited about playing more
And I knew that there wasn't a product out there that took you step by step
But I wanted to show people how to play the campaign
So I started this with the intent
That um as people came into the shop and played it they would get excited about it
And there would be so much stuff in there that they could say well
I like this, but I don't like that or this part is cool
But I want more granularity there
And they would find like-minded people at the at the tables who agree with them
And then they would break off into permanent groups where they would just run their own campaigns
Whether it be at the store or at their houses
Where they would just come to my campaign day to learn about campaigns
And then break off and and go do their own thing
Now denim that is not what happened
Of course not you have to know
That the vast majority of people are lazy
They are
And they would simply show up and play
With your hard work to design the mission
With your hard work to come up with the story
And your hard work to do all the running
And the providing of mechs and maps and tables and terrain
And they'll just play
Why would they have to do all that work when you're willing to do it for them
You are not wrong
You're not wrong at all
Because we did we started with three players
And seven years later we have
Three time slots with four tables for each time slot
And approximately 60 people who come every month for this campaign
We even have makeup games at a different store for people who can't make
That date or that location
And we have
Other people in three different states who are using my my rule set to run their own campaigns at their own stores
So they're using my rules and my missions and just just running them
And I'm happy to say that all of the supply points are
It all works together. So if somebody from from Tennessee brings their character over to my game
They can pop in seamlessly
See denim
Working is intended other people are taking your system
But you still have 60 players because no one locally wants to do that
So that is that is true. That is working mostly as intended. We'll say
Do we just want to dive straight into
The things that players need to know to run their own campaign or is there anything else we should cover before we get into it
No, I think I think a lot of this stuff will definitely fall under those categories and we'll
We'll have our little blurbs and stories about about how we handle certain problems or or opportunities
All right
Well class get your notebooks take good notes and if you need to this lecture will be recorded and you can listen to it as many times as you need
We're going to address now
I'm gonna say that the test at the end will comprise 40% of your grade. That's true. That's true
Now
What are the five things that you need for running your own battle tech campaign
Number one you need a rule set
Two you need players
That's kind of important
Three you need to design missions for a campaign
For you need to be prepared to resolve issues that occur at your table and five and possibly the most difficult one
Scheduling yes, so we want to go through these five topics in some detail
And hopefully give you guys a little bit of a flavor as to what we do and other options that you may decide to use or come up with your own
And then um, we'll just kind of see where the episode takes us. How's that sound? I sounds fantastic
Number one rules
So you want to run your own campaign?
First thing you're going to need to do is figure out
What bounds and what boundaries are you going to put for your players?
Uh things you need to consider are
Game feeling right what is your goal of the campaign?
Uh, so for me
I like a game that is
I guess if you were to put it on a scale it would be more on the realistic and or gritty end of that scale
I want my players to sweat. I want my players to bleed and I want my players to struggle and suffer in order to achieve success
Because I am a firm believer
That victory is sweetest
When you have to work the hardest to achieve it
right
Does that frustrate my players? Sometimes
But by the same token
A work exceeding the hard to make sure my missions are more or less fair
And that the players are duly compensated for the problems I put in their path, right?
Um
Then I know you have a different
Kind of philosophy when it comes to game feel I do um and part of that is because of how many people are there and the fact that my campaigns
Um are have multiple tables and so it's a drop-in drop-out campaign
You may not be playing with the same people you played with last month
So it's very hard to coordinate you know who's bringing which mech all the time
And to counter that I make the feeling of my game more like like my players are the heroes of their own story
So uh, I I want them to be challenged
But in the end like they are the heroes even
Even getting a cockpit crit like having your cockpit shut out like they always make their their ejection rule
They might be in the hospital for a while, but they're they're never completely dead
And they're allowed to have multiple mechs and multiple pilots
But they're only allowed to bring one of each per game
So they do get to pick and choose like well once in the hospital they can bring in their their uh their second string mech warrior
So there's no fear of death in denim land
and
That's true the early on when I started doing it
We had quite a few people who would die to headshots in the first turn or two
And then they'd just sat there for three hours and watched everyone else play
I don't want that to happen until at least turn five or six
So I make sure that everybody starts the game with an edge and I warn them that that is there to
Protect their pilots not necessarily to get those early hits in on the op 4
I do I do challenge them like I said and I do uh scare them and I am not afraid to take out mechs or or mech warriors
I just don't make it permanent for these drop-in drop-out campaigns. It's very hard to do that level of persistence
Went when I don't know who's going to be at which table every month so
Well, maybe we'll dive in a little bit more into that um in a few minutes
But let's cover what kind of options exist out there for rules for people who may want to be
Running their own
So we mentioned previously that there is campaign ops there is also the chaos campaign
Nowadays you have the hinterlands rule set which is what my campaign is based on right
And that goes with the mercenaries box set like that's the that's the core box for that correct
Now I have heavily modified the hinterlands rulebook slash mercenaries box set for my own tables use just for simplicity and ease
um
I use that mainly because I'm trying to tell a consistent story
With my players and in my local group
I have an announcement channel that I simply just post updates for you know in universe updates for what's
Going on with them
They're all part of a group called the motor city mech warriors. They all run their own little companies. It's almost like
Like lone wolves type thing right? There's like one group
But they're all consisting of smaller units within the larger hole right
And they all keep track of their own sp
And I picked the contracts. I tell them what they're gonna get paid permission. I tell them how many bsp's they get
I tell them what you know salvage rules are and you know what repair costs are covered
And then I give them a mission and then they get to decide what next they want to bring
I give them a point value for the mission per table
And they have to decide amongst themselves. We're getting about 18 to 20 people
So I'm running between three and four tables. You know when I do my campaign nights
And you know we we let people kind of like you know you have 8,000 bv for this table
You get 32 bsp's figure it out between you
So if you want to bring an atlas somebody else has to bring something way smaller
So they got to work it out between themselves
Hindsight. I really wish I had done that
You can always start over denim pull the plug
That's right. Okay, man. I could
But what that does is that allows people to get a small stable of max
We have I have a maximum of one edge per player
They can buy more edge using their sp in between missions
And if it is extremely important
If it is extremely important that they have an edge and they need it right then and there
We play in a bar
They can go buy me a gin and tonic and they can get an edge
And this is how I have a great Friday evening
Yeah, yeah, I like that a lot
I'm not about bribery sometimes
but um
No, so I think the hinterlands
Unadapted hinterlands campaign works very well for
That type of that type of campaign and then the players just show up all they have to do is bring their max
I have the mission set out. I have the op force laid out. I have the terrain setup
And they just play the mission and then they earn sp based on what they accomplished during the mission
Now we can talk about this a little later when we talk about missions
But something that I've started doing that has been very fun denim
Is I have one overall operation that the players are playing
But sometimes different maps have different objectives that will affect other players maps
So if there is a base that they're charging into
They have turrets on the outside of the base
If table one can blow up the generator that's on that table it will shut off the turrets on table two
Right
That's amazing. I like that a lot
So all the players are working towards the same objective
But
You know table one's goal is not blow up the generator tables one mission is escort some trucks somewhere
But if they do the secondary objective and blow up the thing it's gonna make table twos job way easier
So I like to do that kind of intermixed mission stuff where every table is a little bit different
And this also allows players
to
Look at their stable and say I'm really well suited for x job
I'm gonna go on that table because that's the mission for that table right versus
You know, I'm an analyst. I should not be doing the escrow mission
I'm not fast enough to keep up with the transport or whatever you know what I mean
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense
Because I I also have like with the multiple tables
I give them all the exact same mission
But we do have because I don't have bv limits
Which is another thing that you know hindsight. I absolutely probably should have done
So you have uh
My table is the beginners table that's for people who've got a back that's like less than 3000 bv
Including their their pilot gunnery skills and and no crazy tech
So or who have not played ever or have played very little or it's like their first three campaign games
So they will sit at my table very friendly table
much more relaxed
Um, and I I allow things like oh
I didn't know that's how that rule worked. Can I take that back and I'm like absolutely let's let's go back
Let's uh, let me erase that and then let's just go
And start again and this is how that works the race you're not playing a pen
No, no, no, not at that table and then we've got like the medium tables and then we've got the advanced table
And that's the people who've got like mechs whose whose individual mechs are are in the 8000 plus bv range
And the the game master on that table
They're allowed to go like wild at crazy and and uh and just have all sorts of fun
Um, so we yeah, we have different tables and you go to whichever table
Uh, it's it's basically what kind of challenge you want
Sure, that sounds nice gives players a choice right how hard did they want to work that day
It's interesting to hear that you say that you don't
do um
Or rather they they pay for pilot upgrades
Uh, I just do hinterland stuff where every mechs bv is valued at four or five and then their pilots
You know, they can upgrade over time and spend SP on but I also don't I mean if they blow an edge and they take a headshot
They're cooked there's no
Magical fairy from the sky that'll pluck you out of your cockpit and set you down nicely on the ground
No, you
You're done right and yeah, we have a wall of heroes that people can post
The poster mech warriors on and what mech they were riding in and how they died and they can you know
Write a little epitaph for them in the in the discord and people can look at that and
You'll remember all the folks that have died along the way
Um, that is again super cool and I love that what one of the issues with with me
Not doing that way is because again hinterlands didn't exist yet
I also unlike James curtley which again his missions are fantastic
And if anyone's looking for just a quick easy thing they should absolutely check him out but
I wanted to have a system that if people went off and did their own campaign game
They could say oh hey
What books do you use and my answer isn't well? I made this part up and then I made that part up
And then we changed all these rules over here and then we modified this so it's really difficult to tell you
I wanted to make a system that worked well that I could say here are the three books you need
Done like everything that I do
Are in these books and and you just have to like read this chapter that chapter in those two chapters and you're and you're good to go
So that did put some limitations on
On some of the things I was willing to to do for it
Okay, so
Just to do a quick recap here, right? But I don't want to move on yet
But I just want to make sure we're summarizing because I feel like
We've covered quite a bit of ground. We've talked about what you've done. I've done
But we really haven't talked about like rule
Sats so we we mentioned right campaign ops
Yes campaigns hint or lands. I think mercenary's handbook has some stuff as well
Pick if I if I were to tell new people who wanted to do this
pick your
Basis right pick you pick your your your seed
And then tack on whatever auxiliary things you'd like
For me
We do not use
SPAs
All right, this is something that you need to decide whether you want SPAs in your game
Do you want edge in your game? Do you want permadeath in your game? These are all plug and play options
You can kind of flick on and off what optional rules do you want it right? We have a short list of optional rules
We always use we use
You know walk backwards up and down hills
We do tax
We do it enhance flamers yep enhance flamers is key we do
Sometimes I think we do careful stand, but not always right the one rule that I insist that everybody play with
They're not always happy about it, but I insist we play with stack poles
Or whatever advanced to engine explosions or something like whatever the technical rule is they're called stack poles and we use those two
The house rule
Is it if a table has a stack pole happen at their table
They'll have to go to the bar and get a shot of fireball
Oh, man, I have to I have to get Brian to open up a bar at a hangar 18. Yes. Yes, you do that
Yes, you do because there's nothing quite as exciting as watching an enemy mech explode
Take out the orphanages standing next to having everybody cheer
And then everybody leave to go get a shot at the bar
That is great because we have had several stack poles over the years. They're exciting, aren't they?
And it is always it is always the whole table cheers no matter who it happens to bad guys or good guys
It doesn't matter everybody cheers
Yeah, so now you have to pick what optional rules you want to use
Just make a short list of ones you like don't get into some of the crazy ones unless you really want to do them
Yeah, and just to
Just read it. I know we have something else to talk about here. And that is
special pilot abilities
I don't like them. I don't think that they're balanced and
It's funny because you would say Steve
SPAs are great for narrative campaigns. You're
Playing in a narrative campaign. You're running an narrative campaign. Oh, why wouldn't you want to use these things
In the exact scenario you know, it's the exact scenario they're designed for why aren't you using these things?
And I I think they're just not balanced well enough and I think that they turn the game into a little bit of
Almost a circus, right? You've got everyone's gonna take jumping jack everyone's gonna take a bleak attacker
Then the next mission everyone hides behind a hill and no one wants to go poke their nose out to spot to fire all this stuff
Because they're the only ones who even get shot and killed and no one wants to have their pilots die
So you get a little either a lot of same choices or people kind of fighting who's gonna be the star of the show
And then someone takes fist fire and then they kill two max and everybody wants to fist fire because they wanted to do the same thing
I don't like SPAs so I elected not to use them. I know denim that you do and I like to hear about
Why why you allowed them and be how it's worked out
All right, so first of all you have no secret. What's that
First of all, they were not made for narrative campaigns
We actually know the person who wrote those SPAs were written by a Jason Hansa
Specifically for the RPG games. They are there for
D&D style role-playing where you do play the heroes and it's not even like for narrative campaign
Specifically for role-playing games
Which is kind of a narrative campaign. I wasn't totally wrong. Yeah, no
But but they weren't they weren't designed to be balanced by on purpose like they weren't supposed to be balanced
So this is just something else we can blame Hansa for right? Well, no because he's not the one that grabbed them and put them into the campaign
Operations book
I'm gonna blame whoever did that because that's where I pulled them from because originally they were in
One of the like a time of war or something like that
But somebody put them in campaign operations as if they should be part of these campaign games
Because I was picking and choosing and stuff. I made the mistake of both picking SPAs and allowing quirks
Mm
Because I wanted my players to have a lot of choices. I wanted them to see what what they could do again
Assuming that they would take the stuff they like they would cherry pick the bits
They liked and didn't like with other like-minded people and split off into into their own permanent group
So mine was supposed to be more like a showcase like a buffet and then people were supposed to
To find
People who thought like them and go off and have their own adventures
Very with you know much more granularity much more specificity and they didn't and you're exactly correct like
Everybody picks any mech that has that has a narrow low profile
Because they want that quirk they they pick any mechs that have like like medium range master or whatever
They pick mechs with stabilized weapons because all of these give give
Minus ones to hit they all take the jumping jack and the the melee master or melee master with fistfire or
Obliq attacker with with like different range abilities type stuff
So you do have those people groups of people entire tables of people who have almost nearly identical builds
We have talked about that with the players
And through conversation I'm like I'm not taking these out yet
But I might I would like some more diversity and and people did start listening and they did start picking uh
Different ones just to try them out and that that has added some diversity in there
But I would say jump jumping jack uh with targeting pewter and puls lasers is still the worst offender
So in the immortal words of Michael Keegan key
You done messed up a run
Yeah, uh
Yeah, if there was one thing that I could go back and not allow from the beginning
It would be quirks and SBAs. That's what I would just say. Don't we're not doing that and and quirks are an interesting one mostly because
I feel like quirks are less
Broken than SBAs
But still I mean they're still very clearly winners and losers, right? Yeah, well they took out um
The no torso twist so any mech that has a no torso twist quirk that does not exist anymore
So they officially eroded that one
But there are a few that are just more powerful than others and therefore that's the chassis that everybody gets and since I allow
Mech customization
Um, which I stand by completely. I love that rule and yes, there are some broken builds
But that's easier to compensate for on the back end with the op 4
Then some of these quirk slash SBA combinations
Yeah, customs is something that I am working on broaching with my local group
I've been asked several times
Can I modify this can I change a variant can I do this and I said look
I got to figure out a way to balance this cost-wise at our tables based on how much you're earning first done
You know how what the coffers look like
Because I don't want everybody running out and slapping pulse this is all over everything, right? Yeah
It's gonna happen. I'm sure a will but it just means that I'm gonna have to get a little bit nastier in my
In my mission balancing then if that's what they're gonna do so
We will see when I get a good solution to that problem
Anything else under rule set decisions the new game runners may need to consider before we move on
I like to like rule spec set specifically
Uh, especially since I allow custom mechs
My first rule is it has to be in the battle mech manual
Um, it just makes it easier. I only need to have a one
Equipment book on the table when I need to look anything up
I know that there's a lot of really cool stuff and you're like like shields and so I mean
I know that shields will eventually be in the battle mech manual and that's fine when it is because then it will be in the one book that I need at the table
So when they're designing mechs when they're buying mechs when they're taking mechs it all has to be
Battle mech manual type stuff and I do allow any optional rule that is in the battle mech manual
so
We tend to run with all of those
But that's that's my big thing is it uh just just one book, please
Yeah, it really simplifies things at the table, so
I think that's a good idea
So I guess in short
Find a set of rules that you like to use
Customize those to fit your game play style
pick a feeling for your campaign and uh
You know don't allow quirks for SBAs
Yeah, yeah, I mean they make sound cool and they they might come out with some balanced like some balancing later
They've been talking about that there's rumors, but until then I would I would just avoid them. They're they seem fun
They're going to be more trouble than it's worth down through it
Hopefully we can talk about the new balanced SBAs in episode 141 when we come back the campaign. That's right. That's right
So the second topic in our five things you need for a campaign is
players
Yeah, literally the reason why I started doing it is because I like battle tech and I couldn't find anyone to play with
That's it. I said you need to find these players you need to dig up the rocks in the garden and get them out from underneath their hidey holes
And then we need to talk about
How many work for you right how many is too many so
You know, I think
Big thing is gonna be
Putting word out there, right?
Put up a sign in your local game shop. Yes, be present
Talk to the people that you normally play with and just float the idea see if you can sell them on it
Ask them if they want a little bit more out of their battle tech experience, right?
And obviously when you finally get your players
You're gonna have to have an open discussion with them say this is the rule set that I had selected
And this is what I was thinking of doing. This is the vibe I want to go for either a gritty or heroic type game mode
Would they be interested and you may want to run a very bright and happy
Look at us. We're all the big heroes. We can never do anything wrong
Nothing bad can ever happen to us type of game and your players may say look
This isn't my this isn't my speed. I want something more realistic
I want something more dark. I want something that's gonna make me struggle to win
And that may make you either change some of the rule sets that you have selected or
You're gonna lose some players and you need to decide which of those options you're happier with
Yeah
Again, that was a big thing of mine where I just wanted to present them with options assuming that they would decide what they like and break off
I didn't ask them a lot of questions. I more just said here is the campaign we're running
Feel free to take what you like and go play somewhere else whenever you want and their response to that was no we're fine
So you know don't don't
Don't tweak and modify your rule system trying to make everybody happy
You're not gonna make especially as you get more players. You're not gonna be able to make everybody happy
A lot of people come over and say hey, I've got a great idea
What if we do this or can we allow this and I'm not gonna say tell them no, but I'm not gonna say
agree to everything either
You should say let me think about that and and you give it a week or two and you actually think about how that would
How that would react in your campaign before just adding it in because some of those things seem like a good idea to begin with
But then you have to think how can this be abused? How can people take advantage of this if I wanted to be very disruptive
How would I use this to do so and sometimes you're just like it's not worth it's not worth the trouble
Yeah, so one of the things that we had in our local campaign is there was a mission and I admittedly botched the balance
I gave the enemies like
maybe
for
Six too many turrets on their side of the map
But we're not counting those
But at the end of the day they were the BSP turrets right and the players were having a really hard time taking these down
They just kept failing you know destruction rolls and everything else and one of the things in the packet or the rulebook states that
You know when you do enough damage and they fail a check they get a permanent minus one of the role
it had been proposed
that
If they had gotten the damage very high
Right on a turrets say they did enough damage to invoke a negative four modifier on the BSP destruction roll
They had suggested well if it survives that should receive a minus four
So their next check and not just a minus one because there's a ton of damage. It's going to waste
And they were having a tough time destroying them now
I think a lot of this was born out of the fact that I had botched the balance of the mission. That's on me alone that one
um
But I had to think about it and I kind of said no, we're not going to change our BSP's work
Despite that being an incredibly interesting idea
Right that if you get the negative modifier two to three four high
I mean all that armor's been stripped from the tank from the tower from something you're shooting at
Why would it revert only to a negative one?
Right why wouldn't it maintain that minus four for the next time you shoot at it
Maybe it makes them too weak. I don't know if that was play tested or worked on or what made it a permanent minus one
But it was something to consider and at the time
I didn't want to modify the rules for simplicity. I didn't want to start making more and more exceptions to my rule set
Right right take you mentioned before I want to say here's one book. Here's the packet. Let's play
But you know, I thought about it and it's not
Totally out of left field so don't be afraid to say no to your player sometimes
But sometimes they do have a good idea or two
Yeah, I agree with your decision there
The way that I get around that is that I do allow airstrike BSPs for purchase
So I have a list of how much these all cost and each player is allowed to call in one per turn
So with like six players at the table we get have six airstrikes going
And then so if they're really close on a turret or a tank
They can hit it a bunch of times to make sure that that number gets to to you are going to to blow up
Like there is no role because it is too high. I'm going to adopt that. That's a great idea
Let them spend SP to get stuff on the table exactly
So so at the end of the campaign at the end of the game when they're tallying up all their points
Then I'm like, okay, here's the bill and this is how much support points you use bringing in these airstrikes
So let's subtract them from your total and they go home with less
But it's a it's a cost offset like am I am I going to get enough points in salvage to to justify me
Calling in a few more airstrikes or artillery rounds
Now you did mention salvage and actually this is something this is a mechanic that I put into my game
That I really enjoy and I guess I should have mentioned this
Earlier in the rule set section, but I'll bring it up now because you mentioned it. I have
The concept of a salvage tag
Because people drop in and drop out they play some some play more missions some play less
But every time you come you get a plus one to your salvage tag count
When they manage to salvage max right either they drag them off the table or they get them as a reward
They you know do whatever they do to get them
There are maybe 12 players that participated in that mission
Who gets first crack and buying that destroyed mech
So that could be a fist fight. I'm not going to allow them to fight over it
The first rule is that you had to attend the mission
In order to be eligible to get that mac
Secondly
If more than one person would like it
They can bid any number of their salvage tags for first claim
And then they spend them right so if you go on four or five missions
And I've got five salvage tags and you've only been on three denim and that timber wolf shows up
I really want that thing
I'm going to use four of my salvage tags to guarantee
That I get first dibs on that versus your three right and it encourages people to attend
It encourages people to continue to show up and that way the players that show up more often are more likely to reap the benefit of their hard work for salvage
Now do they self to pay for it?
Absolutely have to buy it and then they have to repair it so they don't get it for free
But it does incentive by showing up to play more often so that we if something good does show up you can you can get it
So I think that's any idea that is um I of course want to very
Much more abstract way because especially because they can they can design their own mechs or purchase their own chassis
I just took salvage and I converted it all down to supply points
So they don't get any specific mechs
They just get X number of supply points for the mechs that they
Crippled or destroyed but not totally destroyed because again zero points for that
And then I split that up amongst the players who are at that table
That's a good way to do it too. Yeah. Now how do you allow your players to buy new mechs?
You just let them buy whatever they want or do you have rotating
Um, because what I do is I do a random assignment table
I roll three or four times for every player and I say here the 20 mechs are available
This is what you can buy them for and we have a we have a traveling merchant that we call cousin miloche
That cousin miloche, you know, he
He finds these mechs that fall off the dropship. They're a little dinged up
But they're perfectly good. It's cousin milo. She has good deals. I like it. I like it a lot
No, mine is is they they start when you start the the campaign
You get either a light or medium intro tech mech like you get that for free
Everything else you have to buy you can start modifying those mechs
The most expensive things of course being excel engines clan excel engines being the most most expensive
But yeah, they they just save up their their supply points
But but mechs are expensive so it does take quite a few sessions
Especially if you want that timber wolf like I know people took about six to eight months to be able to to afford that timber wolf
Now to make it easy if they have a favorite mech, you know people who like the shadow hawk
But want to make it a good mech. They're gonna modify it every year
Or so I tend to do it in April that campaign mission is just like a salaris style
Like a grinder or a salaris match
Some place where they can earn prizes and like the grand prize would be you get a free clan excel engine upgrade to one of your mechs
Oh, wow sure we'll fight to the death for that
Yeah
Now we did not cover
Back to the player section this is supposed to be an order and we're we're doing a poor job with this denim
We're being confusing for our listeners. We talked about how to find your players how to get them to the table
How many's too many when do you cut it off do you cut it off?
Yep, I start when I started but we had three players that was okay a little bit light
Once we got up to seven
The turns were starting to get very very long
I do I don't know how you do it, but how I do it is we have a table
All of the players are on one team and then I control all of the op 4
So whoever is the game master of the table controls the entire op 4
Everyone else controls one mech what once you get to seven and above it just takes so long
We weren't hitting our our three hour time limit that I had put out
Some of the games were running very very long
So I started saying look if we get up to two to seven
We're going to split it up into two tables one of three and one of four four to six players is my ideal number
My missions are balanced for four to six players
I don't like less than four and anything above six is just
Just too many so we do something similar we do
one GM per table
And then four players per table right so they're all in the same team and the GM runs the other side
So when we have 15 people show up we have four players at each table and one GM at each table
And we'll run three tables at a night you know
Occasionally we will allow five players at a table in order to you know if I've got three tables going
I can have five players at each table
But as soon as one more person shows up we'll put them all at a new table
You know what I mean? We'll try to try to keep those numbers down for faster turns and everything else. It does it helps a lot
now
We've got our rules
We've got our players
What are we going to make these players do right? Let's talk about mission design specifically for campaign play because this is different than a tournament
setting which we
Are going to talk about at some point. I do want to do a a
game theory
episode about
Mission design and we can do a little bit about what we did for Southern assault and everything else there
That would be a good topic. Yep very different mindset those right this this and that very different
I think the first thing you need to keep in mind when you're doing a mission for a campaign game is
You are hoping to lose at the end of the day you are not trying to grind your players into the dirt because they won't come back and that is
Counterproductive for what you're attempting to do by growing your battle to community locally
So but also on the flip side of that coin you want them to think that they're going to lose yes
Yes, make it as close as you can
The last mission that Iran I put the absolute hurt on a rhyme otter
And that rhyme otter had taken two engine hits
Center torso was open right torso was open and it has reinforced structure
right
And if I had done two more damage
Anywhere on that Mac it would have floated into one of the torsos that was open
And it would have destroyed that permanently
That player was sweating
And I like to pick on Howard Howard's a nice guy
but
You know he was he was sweating and I'm like good. This is this is what I want
I want you scared that you are about to lose your Mac
Not all the time, but occasionally
And that is what makes
That's what makes it exciting. That's to get your adrenaline up right yes
How do you balance your games denim and what do you think are the important things to do?
This and this is from years of experience that I've that I've
Cultivated
These ideas that I do first of all I like to make the opt for about 80 percent
Um 75 to 80 percent of what the players bring
I don't tell them that but that's just what I do therefore be as the opt for I'm already fighting an uphill battle
But then again, I play way more than they do
So if they were even bvs the games would go poorly
A lot more often I
Similarly do I think I'm about a 70 percent is what I do for mine
But I often have extra reinforcements waiting in the wings a lot of my missions are timed
So if they start to dilly-dally or they start to try to like
Get cute and salvage stuff or intentionally like shoot off legs to drag max off the field
That's when an extra guillotine will walk in off the field. There's you know something
Oh, there's another heavy that we now have to it's time to go yeah
I try to incentivize my players to play smart and play quickly
Turn wise right so they're not making this a 20 turn game
Yep, another thing I do is I've had a lot of experience playing dnd
I was at gm for for many many years
I will make changes to my mission on the fly if their
Dice rolls are going super poorly. I will change my tactics based on that
If they're doing super super well
I will have reinforcements come out of buildings that were always there of course. They just didn't know that
Or I will have landmines. I will have like artillery come in like I can change that and I can I can modify it
So that it always keeps them challenged
Whether they're doing super well or super poorly. I like to make sure especially since I run the beginner table
That everybody gets shot at I don't want anyone feeling like they're being ignored
So I will take shots at certain people even though they're not they're not ideal
I'm certainly not trying to min max any games. I'm not being super efficient
But I'm there to have fun and I'm there to make them feel like I am paying attention to them
Which makes them feel that I think they're a threat which makes them feel good
So a lot of my decisions are there to drive the story and the player interactions
That's a good way to do it. I do something similar but not quite the same
Depending on what they're doing
Right if they're trying to blow up buildings
The enemy units will try to block those shots stand in front of those buildings and
Normally they will attack the person doing the most damage to the target
Right and that tries to force that person to fall off that also has the desired effect of letting the other players step up and become
More threatening or they get if I'm punishing the marauder to that hanging out on a hill
You know the the poor guy in the blackjack can run up and actually do something like oh
I'm not getting shot at great blah blah blah look at me go dad
You know it's it's that type of equal participation that you're really looking for
When it comes to mission types
I think there are a couple
Go-tos right
Obviously there's the fight right just destroy the enemy force
Go nuts right that one that one can actually take longer to play than most other ones
Whenever we have games that run long it's oftentimes because I have some sort of a brawl or stand-up fight
Mission and I did not
Calculate something correct and those are the ones that just drag on
Yep, so keep in mind if you're gonna run those games a lot for a little bit of extra time
Scouting missions are always fun run out scan an objective get off the board those are great
I try to put secondary conditions in there such as
You know
Try to stay three hexes away from any enemy max so they can't identify you or they don't know who you are
Right
And they get a couple extra supply points if they manage to do some of these secondary things right
Destroy all enemies on the map or rather don't destroy any enemies on the map right just trying to like leave no trace type
Secondary objectives. Those are always kind of fun to do
Other missions can include escorts
Hold the fortress hold the line type things right don't let the enemy get through
Escape is always an excellent game mode their goal is just to get to the other side of the map and
The op-force waiting for them to catch them in a net, you know
So all sorts of mission types that you can really use as a
Basic framework to kind of tell your story
Denim did I miss any or do you have any that you like the one the one that I use a lot as well that you didn't specifically mention is the
Like like go to a building pick up a person of interest
Or something of interest and bring it off the map so a fetch a fetch quest basically
Sure, like capture the flag almost
But yeah, but you know, you never want to say capture the flag in a in a campaign mission like that's fine for a tournament
But but you want to have a story behind it or whenever but yes, absolutely capture the flag
Well, right right the go out and grab a thing and then come back to it. So here here's a secret
There are only like five missions
That's it everything else is flavoring
It's it's what flavor is this is this recon mission, you know, what flavor is this capture the flag
But but yeah looking through all the missions that I've written
There are just
Maybe maybe there's six five or six distinct types of missions and everything else is just variations from those
And you can get really creative because this is not a tournament setting
It doesn't have to be fair. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was gonna be another one my points
We're not looking like yes balanced fair no
We don't have to make it fair for either direction
But you have to be willing to make those changes on the fly as well
But yeah, you can just do something that's totally like like that's not how the rules work
And you're like yeah, but I don't have to follow the rules. I'm the GM
I'm here to make it interesting and fun and exciting
Not fair
Yep, yep, like you said either hidden units surprise units my favorite is
You know if they if it's after turn four or five
They all of a sudden pick up a whistling over their comms and a hex explodes right like oops
You took too long time to leave
And they go hey wait a minute. That's not fair and maybe
Maybe they get hit really hard for a couple of turns and then
Maybe they ran out of artillery shells
Yeah, they only had a couple solos. They only had a couple. That was it
You know, you can kind of balance it that way
Sometimes the players see through it
But I think as long as they're in it for the story and they're in it for the ride
They won't mind too much. Yeah, I know
So you got to consider balance you got to pick your mission type you got to think about what kind of mechanics
You can throw in there to make it different fun interesting
You got to be flexible to adjust it on the fly
I think the last point with mission design here is really like
One of the major cruxes and then I might be curious to get your take on this
How do you as a GM play to ensure that all your players have a good time?
I know you mentioned a little bit about how you engage with everybody you shoot everybody
But what do you do if someone at your table is just not having fun?
Well, obviously you can't
Make everybody happy all the time. There are gonna be some people who just aren't gonna have fun no matter what you do
and engaging story is is
Like like on the table not in engaging not so much like the overall story about what the mercenary unit is doing
But on the table itself my pilots like I said I'm not playing for efficiency
I'm not playing like like my tournament brain is not on so all of my pilots out there have their own little goals
And they'll do things even if it means it's like a slightly inefficient play or it allows like a fast mech to to flank me
Stuff like that. I want to make sure that everybody has something to do
The light fast mechs get a chance to do flanking maneuvers or get into that scouting position
Even though I could probably stop them if that was like my goal
The big heavy hitters want to have a chance to hit something
hard
The medium mechs want to have a chance to to get in there and grab the objective
I try to give little openings to let people shine. I want everybody to shine just a little bit
Again, not making it not making it super easy for them
Uh, so it's got to be challenging
So you've got to do a little bit of yes and you've got to do a lot of adjustments on the fly
But basically it's the engagement. I want everybody to feel like they're doing something
Yeah, everybody has that like like five minutes to shine at the table
I find that yeah, you call it shine. I you know
For me, it's everybody gets their turn on the spotlight. I want everybody to do one cool thing during the mission
That's my goal. Yes, if everybody gets to blow up like hey
I took all the armor off with a couple of really good PPC hits and then my buddy shot an SRM cell phone hit that engine, right
The PPC player gets to go yes, I ripped off all that armor to help my teammate
And then the SRM trebuchet gets to go yeah, and I got the kill. How cool is that high five, right?
Yeah, you want people to kind of feel like they're participating and doing something now
We have balanced our missions. We have chosen our mission type
We've figured out how to be flexible. We figured out what mechanics we want to utilize and we're trying to make sure everybody's having a good time
This is the next step for running your own campaign. You have to be able to resolve
Issues at the table because like you said denim
Not everyone's going to be happy all the time. Can't do it
I want to talk real briefly about
Some of our top issues that we run into
And how do we kind of resolve those what do we do at our tables to try to keep things moving smoothly
And we'll just kind of see where we go
It is the hardest topic I think like we're going to have some ideas
We're not going to have all the answers and you and I both still have problem players
So it's not like we it's not like we know everything here. So and I think you have to anticipate having problem players, right
Sometimes these problem players take different forms and we'll talk about some of them as we go through this
But these problem players
They're not necessarily bad folk
They're not bad people they just
Maybe don't understand what they're doing at the table or how it's affecting other players
So don't come down on like a sack of bricks instead maybe
You know either work with them or do things in your game to try to just sway that type of behavior
So I think the first type of person that we run into most often
Are your power gamers. Yes. You're going to get people that I want that use the LAS
I want you know those you know
You know, give me those four heavy PPCs give me all those headcappers
You know
Give me the jump nine max that just are untouchable. What do you do to try to curb the power gamers, you know
Yeah, because this is what I messed I messed up on early on with some of the these power gamers
Because I'm like, okay, I can I can adapt I can adjust I will just make sure that I focus them down because they're just so powerful
They've got their jumping jack they've got their they're seriously 14 medium pulse lasers and the target and computer
And and all of this stuff like they need zeros to hit and so I would do things like
Use reflective armor
Use pulse targeting myself target them now and even if I have better
Other targets all that does is make them very very angry
Yeah, because then they think that you're picking on them or you're targeting them which I am and it's it's a lot of well
This isn't fair and what's that's happening is
Those people are now not having fun and they're causing other people to have to not have fun and and it's it's
It spreads like somebody not having fun can really contaminate an entire table
Yeah, I do find
That the best way to handle them
Is to give them something to do which comes into the whole being adaptive and being creative
So now I have a like I've got the mechs that I tend to choose from
For for the up for but when I see some people like that I do have a separate stable of of mechs or objectives that I can throw out there
To make them
Really feel like they're doing something, but it also distracts them from the actual mission
So that other people have fun doing the mission and this person has fun taking out these these incredibly hard targets
For you know, but it benefits the whole table because everybody gets extra sp
Right, yeah, it's like it's like throwing a shiny ball to distract that the overly excited dog
Sure, and that's a good way to handle it right you can you can give these people certain tasks
But I think the other thing that DMs or GMs or whatever we want to call the
The person running the table right the campaign runner you need to not be afraid of
Confrontation and I don't mean go, you know meet them in the parking lot with a tie iron type of confrontation
What I mean is you need to just have a direct and open conversation with them say hey
I appreciate that you've got a modified hardened armor
Oozio lat s with you know
Three targeting computers and extra coupons pods right you're having a negative effect on the table
And what we'll say is your pilot
Get selected for some crack commando unit within the lear and Commonwealth
Great congratulations. You're no longer a mercenary now. You're some you know guard, right? You're you're a hero among among the
Your countrymen or something you've made it as a legend on Solaris good job. You know, you can you can move on now
let's
Roll it back a little bit and see
How we can kind of work a little bit more together with the rest of the tables
And this kind of brings me to my next type of player which is similar to the power gamer, but not the same
Who I was going to say that that all all of these examples like yes Steve communication is the best answer like
Like if we can all communicate better that's going to solve a lot of these things. So yeah, sure
But some people are definitely afraid of telling somebody hey
You're negatively impacting the table and you got to be prepared to do that
And I'm not saying got to be mean about it. You can find all sorts of ways to talk to people
But you really got to be it's your campaign
You're running it at the end of the day the onus is on you to deal with problems, right?
And sometimes that's also responsible for making sure that your tables are not disrupted
Or that they're having fun, right? It's on you, but very similar to the power gamer
You have the selfish player these the type of people who are this is my fantasy versus our fantasy they focus on
Them having fun them doing the objectives them getting the kills and they don't necessarily want to
Share the excitement with their fellow players, right? This is anybody who yells at someone else for saying you stole my kill
Not knowing that the whole table benefits from the kill nobody counts who got that last shot
But it's very very important to them
And this one I think is a little bit harder to deal with than the power gamer right the power gamer
You can either set caps or limits or you know, maybe target them a little bit more or you have a conversation with them to do it
The selfish player it feels silly to say this but
Sometimes they don't recognize what they're doing at the table
You know, maybe they've always been the center of attention
Maybe they've always had a little bit of a blind spot for for other people
They may not know
Right and and then I'm how do you deal with someone who is more focused on their own good time than making sure that everyone around them is having fun
Yeah, like say it's super hard
Step one of course is to explain to them that I am here to make sure everybody has fun
And I would like everybody to have those moments and have their time in the spotlight
It would be very nice if they would also allow that to happen
Otherwise they are being very disruptive. So you're right. Yeah, maybe they don't understand that
First step is to explain to them
What your plan is and why you're doing what you're doing the problem is is when that has no effect on them
Because then then what do you do because then it's about all wheels and I don't have time for that and by table
And you know this
Was gonna talk about this little later when we wrap up the section, but I guess we'll cover it now because
To answer your question and what do you do with that situation sometimes you have to
politely yet firmly
Ask them not to come back. Mm-hmm. If they really are
super problematic
Sometimes
They come up with the idea themselves sometimes you got to explain it to them say hey
You know, I've noticed this for last couple of months you have actively
Been detracting from other people's good time
Um, I'm glad you like playing battle tech. I'm happy to play pickup games with you where we can be as as sweaty as we like
But I can't have you at my tables anymore
Right you explain to them that maybe this is not the outlet that they're looking for just yeah
Like luckily for battle tech there are many ways of expressing yourself and and picking and choosing what game modes that you prefer to play
So yes, you are no longer invited at my table please partake in one of these other many options and and
And maybe though one of them will will fit your your persona better
Yeah, and that's an extremely difficult conversation to have because you never want to be the bad guy no one likes being the jerk
But sometimes you have to excise the cancer right you have to remove what's harming your players so keep that in mind as well
This next problem
Is always a tough one. I mean we're talking about like resolving issues at your table. This one's kind of fun
You don't have this problem denim based on your rule set, but I call it the
Oops, you died problem
Sometimes headshots happen sometimes your pilot manages the skin of the teeth ejection and you're sitting in the hex behind your mac
And then your engine goes critical and while you get a shot of fireball you're still dead
You know denim obviously you use edge and you also have the automatic ejection rule, but
Right, but you still have the problem of of again your dead
What are you going to do for the next two and a half three hours?
First of all
Permadeath
Is absolutely something that should be talked about before the campaign starts and he new players need to be told here is how we handle death
So it's not like they're going into that blind. They can't say I didn't know or well, I didn't understand
Anything like that they know what they're getting into so if they have a problem with that
That's something they need to talk about
With the game master beforehand my frustrations or the frustrations I encountered are
Like I said people who whose mech goes critical for one reason or another in the first two turns of the game. I don't like that
The things that I do to prevent that of course everybody gets an edge
If you want to use it for for an aim shot location or anything like that wait till after turn four is what my advice is
Also, and this is something not all of my game masters do but as the beginner table I specifically do this
None of my mechs have headcappers not a single gouse
Single Clanny or ppc not a single ac 20 is on my side at all none of my mechs will take out another mech with a single shot to the head except for a tack
Even the tax that's what the edges for well, no I get I understand that but my point is
Headcappers won't one shot ahead
But if there is a tack and they're out of an edge say you get lucky so you get two headshots in a game and the first three turns well
Bad news right you've used your edge and now something bad might happen right so tax are still a constant threat
Even if you don't have headcappers on the field yes
The point stands right you can do some those are so rare that sometimes it's a laughing point where we'll be like look
Here are the odds because we can calculate the odds of that happening and we're like you know
This is like a one in in in 10,000 chance literally
Welcome to battle tech like this is how that works and sometimes they get a big laugh at that and if it's super early
Like I'm running a field of six mechs on my side
Come on over to this side of the table you are now in charge of these two guys while I'm playing these four guys
Let's have it absolutely keep those players engaged if something tragic does happen to them right
Yeah, get revenge on your fellow players
Now this is something interesting that I wanted to bring up because you you mentioned it again
And we I realized we didn't talk about this earlier
Everybody says we use edge at our table
Hmm, I said we also use an edge and I've called it edge, but in reality it isn't
Truly edge as written in the book
Because edge can be used to make the opponent reroll a die
Right yes
I dislike that immensely
I have a personal aversion to
forcing the other person to reroll something because
And this is a little bit broader in scope. This is not just for campaign games, right?
If I'm the GM and you want to make me reroll something
I still don't like it because I'm trying to make a thematic and exciting game
But especially in a tournament setting
If I roll a 12 and you say yeah, yeah, no, you don't do it again. I get real mad because you've taken away
You know a statistical unlikelihood that I was about to benefit from right
I agree with that so much. I do not think edge should be like that in a tournament game at all
I have very different from you in my
Campaign games if they want to make me as the GM reroll a headshot or or something else cool
I am a hundred percent okay with that. I will even make up something like like oh
I had you dead to rights and then right as I pulled the trigger. Oh looks like I happen to sneeze
You know, I've got stock all over my screen and I will make something up. I have no problems
Separating myself from from from the op 4 and and having them miss those shots
I would rather the players cheer and have fun or laugh than
Maybe inconvenienced by a shot that that would have been really really cool
On the other hand with the tournament
I never want to make my opponent have to reroll a headshot or something like that
They would have insta killed me. I that's that's such a bad feeling on both on both sides
Do not like that. So instead what we use is a little bit of a blend between lucky
And edge right it does a little bit more than lucky so lucky you can reroll miss shots
You can reroll critical hits you can like you can reroll certain things from you right
I need this to to benefit my shooting. That's all perfectly allowed in our tables
What we use edge for I say edge and air quotes you can't see this in this audio only format
But what we use edge for here is you can reroll a miss shot
You can
Relocate you can shift a critical hit so if I roll a critical hit and I hit head
You can spend your edge and it will float down through the damage float chart
Into the center torso
Right or if you've got ammo in your arm and you still have armor in your left torso you can float it
More central right you can readjust where I am hitting you to somewhere that you have armor
Yeah, so you can like change the direction a little bit
But a hit is a hit you're gonna take damage
But you can kind of mitigate where it's going. Yeah, that's that's how we use edge in our in our campaigns
So it's like a yeah, it is a mitigating factor, but not a get a jail free card
Yeah, so and mine again because I wanted it to be
Accessible to everyone and easily look up a bowl. I just took it straight out of the book at the time
Yep, and that's that's fine
You know and again a different different solutions for different players, right?
And I wanted something's a little bit more gritty than heroic
So we said you're getting hit sometimes bad things happen
Yep as long as you know that to begin with I'm totally fine with that
Yep, I mean it's it's right there in the packet
So the oops you died problem is a big one for us, you know, we're doing a hinterland style game
So you can just get another pilot obviously the loss is sad, but you put them up on the wall of heroes
And keep going because sometimes people die in combat. I love the wall of heroes
I want to introduce permanent just so I can have a wall of heroes. You should I think you should do that
Maybe a little poster board and everything people can put little pictures up
Then and we've been at this for almost two hours at this point
We need to talk about another type of problem player
The socializer versus the player
How do you deal with chatty kathies who are there to talk to friends rather than play
man
It's rough. It's rough. I try not to yell at them because again, they don't know what they're doing
The 99% of the chatty kathies as you call them that I've encountered have no idea what they're doing
They're excited. They want to talk they sometimes are talking about battle tech sometimes they're not but when you have
Four tables of people running games it gets loud in there and when other people are trying to hear what's going on
It's it's very difficult and and you have to be
You have to communicate and you can't do it mean
And you have to just be aware that you're going to have to remind them several times during the game
I don't have a permanent solution
So I'm curious to see what you come up with because I'm looking for ideas
So it's not super common at my at my tables
But I I could point out one or two that I'm like those people you have to make sure that they don't get out of control
Yeah, so we have some of that we have a lot of regulars that are showing up to the game tables and
Shock collars are not the answer
And no comment
No, but I mean for real we we've got a lot of regulars and we're all becoming you know the more we hang out the more we get together the more we play
Everyone's genuine to be coming friends with one another which is great to see you're building a community which is amazing
Uh, we have one guy name is Jesse
Jesse is
He's our lore master. I mean he's read almost every book he's read in this guy's got a mind that's a steel trap
He can pull up whatever lore book he read and he can tell you the exact passage and get the words most of the way right
It's scary impressive
unfortunately
Jesse will oftentimes get on tangents and talk
Jesse also has a self-awareness to know this and he has told us multiple times to our faces he goes if I won't shut up
Just walk away from me
Just walk away and I'll get the message and it won't be offended
I just he loves battle text so much and I hate to do that to him
It's good to have that self-awareness though that is that that's the best case scenario I think
So occasionally what we'll do with Jesse is we'll be like hey, you know clap clap like
Let's focus up chance. Let's uh, you know keep our games moving smoothly and you get Jesse a lollipop
No, he's a super nice guy. I love hanging out with him
But it's like, you know, what do we do about Jesse and
It's the gentle reminder and when it gets later and
Some people have needed to purchase a couple of edges throughout, you know the evening my patients wears a little thin
Sometimes and maybe I'm not as gentle as I ought to be but the occasion like hey you let's go
You know kind of keeps people on track, but
This is one of I think the least offensive
Problems that you're gonna have on a table because it means that people are having a good time. Yeah
so
you deal with it
gently remind them
Maybe give them something to chew on so they can't talk but overall, you know, it's it's just something you got to deal with but
Annoying nonetheless
But again as long as you're aware that things like this could happen
It's less likely to disrupt your game than if you just had no idea that uh because this will happen at your table
It just will the longer you play the more the more likely all of these will happen. Yep. Yeah
Now
How frequently these issues occur?
I think is the last of the five things that you need to worry about when running your campaign and possibly the hardest
Yes, scheduling
Yep, how and when do you run your games?
Denim you do
Once a month. Yep on a Saturday the second Saturday of every month and
The hard part was that that's not the day that we started
But because of scheduling with other games we had to move it at some point like a year and a half two years in
That was one of the worst things to ever happen
If you can talk to the talk to the place where you're where you're running it like if it's a games shop
It or whatever find out what works for them and do your best to make sure that that never changes because people are
Are habitual and if you change one thing
You're you're going to we lost players because of that we game some for some who couldn't make it to the other one
But but I think that was the biggest loss of like one one time loss of players was because we changed it to the second Saturday of every month
Instead of whatever it was before
Yeah
Like I mentioned we normally play on Friday nights for our pickup games
My general schedule allows me to go to the game shop twice a month
One Friday I hang out just play whatever I want and one Friday I run the campaign
Which Friday is which changes month to month to month because my schedule is ever changing
But it will always fall on a Friday game night
So the players know I announce it in our discord
They get a mission update
They get a couple of days to plan what they're going to bring and who can make it I get kind of an idea is to how many players
We're going to have and then we go from there like I said is drop in drop out all the players get you know mission updates
They get you know mission recaps I lay everything out for all the other players who couldn't make it
So they're keeping up with the story and they kind of learn what happened
So yeah, I think the first thing you got to do is consistency right
Yes
You got to keep it the same try not to change it if you can but that's that's the best way to grow your player base too
Because like I said, I started off small it it only got up to like seven players probably the first
six to eight months but the longer it went even if even on the days where you look
It's campaign day and I've got everything set up and like nobody's there or one person shows up
But they're not there for campaign
So you play something else, but you leave everything set up and people will get used to seeing it
And people will start making time and people will be like well, I want to try that out
And it will start to grow and that's how you go from three people to begin with to
60 people seven years later
That's its consistency you have to pick a day or you know a Friday or whatever
You have to just keep doing it every single time
Yeah 100% if you can't be there get someone who can cover for you
Yeah, yeah, just having bodies that sit there with battle tech out right have the little poster saying hey learn how to play
Battle tech or come join us right yeah
And you got to have someone who's friendly and open you really got to put on you know
Your your friendly cap in order to kind of entice people over now you also
Want your games to be exciting right because
We have a thing where if somebody's using an LBX or they get a lot of cluster hits
Literally will have 15 people chanting box of death
As we rummage around to find who's got their their box of death handy right yeah
And all the match of the gathering players and I just out of the store look over us going what the heck is going on over there
And you know we've had people literally walk up to something like
What game you guys playing play battle tech they're like
Why is everyone chanting like oh we're just having a good time and someone's about doing a lot of damage to somebody else
It's really exciting. Yeah, you say hey, do you want to roll some dice? Do you want to see us from robots move and like uh okay
And then you slowly just kidnap people from magic the gathering and you bring them over to check step one for that is
Well, I don't have time to play that's fine. You don't need to play. Let's see. I've got six guys
Just just roll the dice for this guy. Please don't you don't have to move them or anything
I just need to make these attacks you get to roll those dice and that gets more people addicted than anything else
Just the simple rolling of those dice the first roll is free. It's that it's that dopamine rush. It's that yeah
It's it's it's like crack it is
Couple of things about scheduling real quickly
You got to have a conversation with your group as well first things first pick a day that works for you
Don't think it's inconvenient for you, but then you really want to say hey
I can do the second Saturday the third Saturday or the first Saturday
What works best for people?
And try to accommodate you know, you're gonna lose some sheep along the way
You're never gonna get 100% attendance and you can't lose sleep over that right
I mean people are blowing the flock are gonna fall off for something's gonna be inconvenient
And it's gonna be okay, right? You'll find other players, but
Do try to be again like we talked about for mission design
Influxable right try to our solution for that was was steel again
Field steel stepped up he runs my campaigns on a different day during the month at a different shop
So it's anybody who can't make it to mine for any reason
They can make it over there to his and it's just fantastic
Same missions same packet same everything
Just a different day with a different person and it makes a lot of people happy
And that's something I didn't do that that branched off naturally
So that was not something that I set up
I'm just super happy that it did
Perfect. Well, that's great. It's great to have dedicated, you know
Effectively co-toes or yeah, I mean, you know officers or whatever you want to call them to to really help kind of
Keep things moving right especially if you can't be there. So um, I think
That's the majority of what is important to get your own campaign off the ground
I mean pick a rule set find some players
Design your missions for campaigns to be fun balanced and you know, pick some fun mechanics to make them different and unique
Have a plan to resolve your issues with players that are gonna come up even if they don't come up all the time
And find today they works find some scheduling works for your players and then
I mean really step six the secret step six is just get out there and roll dice right and a big thing is make it your own
Like yeah, I have my packet you have your packet. I took it from certain things find find what you like
Not even your players find what you like
And then you will attract players who who think like you and you're gonna have a lot of fun that way
But if anybody is interested in our packets
I'm gonna post mine on the discord so you can get to it
You can get the the the whole packet that I wrote and any of the missions that I've done
I've got I've got years worth of missions that I've written in a google doc folder
I'm not gonna say that all of them are like super pretty or well edited
But they're they've all been played
So um, you know, I have my favorites, but feel free to draw for my things and modify it
As much as you want you will not hurt my feelings if you're like well
This was a fun place to start, but I you know, I didn't like this and I wanted to change that I encourage that super awesome
Yeah, I mean, I'll see if we can figure out a way to put those in the show notes so people don't have to go digging the discord if they don't want to
Um, but I can post my alpha strike packet as well if you want to run a campaign an alpha strike
And I'll dig up my classic one so people can kind of see what I'm doing with the hit line style campaign
Um, we can certainly put those out there and if you guys have any questions please
Campaigns are something that we hear a lot about. How are you doing yours? What's your rules?
What do we do? How do we do this? This is why this episode came into being
Yes, send us
emails
And we'll either answer them in other episodes or we'll try to squeeze them into episode 141 when that comes around
Or if it's a very specific question, we'll just we'll just reply to you. Yeah, we can just do that too
Because yeah, we we covered a lot of of the generalizations
But I'm sure that some of you trying to start it up will have very specific questions like what would you recommend for this specific situation
Just just send us a message and you know, we will do our best to answer that in a timely fashion
Yeah, you can shoot us emails at the macbaid podcast gmail.com
You can find us on discord, you know, and and encourage your fellow players
To give campaigns a chance. They're a great way to have laid back fun
Storytelling experiences
That you can make a lot of memories doing it's a totally different way to play if your traditional method is a regular pickup game or even
You know, mainly campaign play so I think I think campaigns are great
They will take a lot of your time
There's no doubt about it. I mean between building up for building missions trying to balance things trying even trying to figure out
Where the story's gonna go or like what do you like what are you gonna bring you have to decide that
What are you providing other players like for me? I provide everything somebody could come in off the street
Not have anything and I will provide everything for them
But that's not viable for everyone because not everybody has three or four of every single mech put out
They just don't have the resources
So figure out what
What you have what you can provide what they have to provide and make sure that they know that before before showing up
Yeah, and you have to anticipate the unanticipated right
For example, I had a I had a mission where the bad guys were trying to break their leader out of prison
This is the base defense mission and we had some
Carnob's coming in that we're gonna land inside the prison walls and they were going to
snatch their leaders off the roof of the prison and take off well
One of my players said hey, that's weird. They're these like helicopters or v-tools kind of hanging out over here on the side of the map
We should prioritize those and shoot those down
Well the next three missions that I had written revolved around that bad guy boss being out of the prison
And it totally messed up my narrative because they shot all the planes down. I I can't I can't unshoot those plans down for them
I'm not gonna rob my players for a job well done
So you just have to be able to adapt and maybe your maybe your plot art gets cut short
And then they move on in the next contract or they have something else happen, right? So be flexible
I mean being flexible. I could not agree more with that that I think that is a
Overall strategy that I've mentioned several times
Anything else done before we wrap up this episode
I mean we could probably talk about it for another hour or so just giving little stories or or
Anything like that, but I think I think we've done some good work here today
And again folks if you have any questions reach out to us send us an email
We're more than happy to
To try to help you guys out and get your campaigns off the ground because if there's one thing I want to see
It's more people playing battle tech
Well, come on back next time where Josh and I are gonna cover our experience at brawl in the blue grass
You hear about that tournament and all the fun things that happened when we were down there
Want to thank you for listening and thanks to all of our patrons who helped keep the lights on
And I certainly want to thank Bobby from Forch's Minatures and Games for being an absolutely fantastic support network for the hobby and helping the community at large and of course helping
Adam and I and Josh getting our hands on the latest and greatest plastic that our hearts desire
Feel free to join in the conversations. We have every day on our discord and send us your questions at the mechbay podcast at gmail.com
Also
Get out there and tell your friends about us. I keep writing into people who don't know who we are or what we do
So go ahead and spread the good word
Don't forget to support your local game stores and get out there and roll those dice
Thanks for listening and remember through salvage all things are possible
You
You
You
You
You
