A Brief Overview of The Various BattleTech RPGs Through the Years and My Thoughts on Them
System-wise, all three editions of Mechwarrior are known for having complex, Traveller-inspired lifepath-base character creation rules paired with a relativelly simple task resolution during play (2d10 vs TN). They are all generally about as compatible with each other as TSR editions of D&D, and smooth integration with the wargame remains a focal point for all of them. Overall, I'd recommend Mechwarrior 2nd edition as the best of the bunch, especially if paired with the second edition Mercenary Handbook, which goes into great detail as to the practical process of forming and operating a Mercenary Lance, including navigating the interplanetary economics of the BT setting.
OK, OK...that's just me being flippant and sarcastic... it's no Phoenix Command, but it is way beyond my personal crunch threshold. But if you regularly play an enjoy games like Pathfinder, that may not be the obstacle for you that it is for me. In which case, you' probably be better than I to judge the quality of the system in all honesty.
That cover sure is an eyesore, though...
OK, so that's my overview of the various versions , now let me say why I think all of them completely miss the mark for a truly great BattleTech RPG. And I am also going to completely contradict myself, because I'm of two minds here.
So let me start with the contradiction and say that, for what the Mechwarrior RPGs are, they'd have been better hyper-focusing on the approach of the first edition - especially, as I mentioned earlier, directly paired with the Mercenary Handbook. Hmm...let me share a picture...
And that, I think, is a great premise for an RPG in the BT setting - a mercenary contingent of Mechwarrior pilots, making their way in the universe, with their individual Mechs as a stand-in for say, The Millennium Falcon.
But the more that the games moved away from that (admittedly very myopic) singular premise, the more it threw into stark contrast how - how do I put this? I guess, how little the player characters mattered to the setting.
I love BattleTech's setting (well maybe not every era, but overall). In fact , I think it is one of the greatest science fiction settings of all time. It's as detailed and expansive as Warhammer 40K, without the grimdark and over the top satire. It's as rich and morally complex as Dune, without the anti-Messiah narrative. And it's a holdover of a view of the future from the lens of the 1980s that is both optimistic and practical in a way I find endlessly endearing.
But it's not Robotech or Gundam Wing - where a team of plucky ace mech pilots decide the future. It's not Star Wars where the course of the Galaxy revolves around family issues and friendgroups. It's not Exo-Squad, where even though the antagonists are understandable and empathetic in their motivations, there is still clearly a good guys vs bad guys overarching narrative.
Instead BattleTech is...well, it's Legend of the Galactic Heroes...
I feel like the RPGs don't ever even touch on or come close to involving the PCs in 80% of what makes the setting so engaging and unique. There seems to me a vast unexplored potential for role-playing in the BattleTech setting that doesn't need to shackle itself to what is essentially the role of dogfighters in WWII and their engineers.
Back at the beginning of this post, I made an unfavourable comparison between Mechwarrior 1st edition and WFRP. Let me unpack that a bit. In the Warhammer Fantasy wargame, you take on the role of the movers and shakers of the world - princes and kings of various races commanding vast armies of myriads of fantastical troops, encountering numerous inhuman creatures and weapons, all vying for a slice of the Old World. WFRP's basic premise was to flip that on it's head, casting players as the dregs of society within the Empire, completely insulated from the over the top fantasy of the wargame, and in doing so, illustrated and opened up for gaming a whole side of the world as-yet unexplored by players. This is, in a way, the opposite of BattleTech's set-up, where in the wargame you play the grunts of the military....and in the RPG (in all iterations) you play the same; you are stuck in this same small slice and perspective of the setting.
Imagine if you did, like WFRP, flip that notion on it's head, and instead of members of the military, the RPG was set up to play interstellar diplomats, deeply-entrenched spies, Royal courtesans, petitioners for a Periphery coalition, electors of a fallen noble house trying to regain status, Comstar powerbrokers, etc. There are endless possibilities to be explored in the vast setting.
And to me it just seems like a missed opportunity.
But then , maybe that wouldn't capture an audience. It's likely that most people, when they turn to a BattleTech RPG, do so because they want to play Mechwarriors. Which is why I say that perhaps first edition had the right idea, with it's hyper-focus on Mechwarriors alone, it just needed more to it (like the aforementioned Mercenary Handbook providing a framework). But I'm not writing this to appeal to popularity, or maximize profits by trying to anticipate the LCD of any gaming population. I just can't help but think that one could, OTOH, open up this vast universe to a new audience who haven't read 30+ game novels, many of which are OOP, and expose to the gaming world the vast, sweeping space opera underpinning the BattleTech universe that I can assume most casual viewers remain completely unaware of.
I dunno, that's my thoughts anyways