Kicking off a Battletech Campaign

Hi everyone,

After enjoying a fun Starfinder campaign with several friends, we've decided to kick off a Battletech RPG Campaign.

But, after having played Battletech RPG for a while here and there (mostly trying the tabletop rules along with the Mechwarrior 2.0 RPG rules), we've decided to roll some innovations into our RPG sessions:

1) Make the RPG like the new computer game

We have been wondering if we can make our RPG sessions more like the computer game by Harebrained Schemes ??  Seems a worth goal!

• Several of us in the campaign are *really* enjoying the new turn-based Battletech game created by Harebrained Schemes http://battletechgame.com/  And, there are several rules and order-of-play mechanisms in the HBS version which we would like to try to emulate in our table-top RPG sessions.

2) Use 3039 - border of House Kurita and House Davion

• It sort of came about somewhat through discussion.  We didn't want the classic Clans vs. Inner Sphere battles -- but we did want the chance of some 3050 technology entering into our sessions.

• Our thinking is that we can always have 3050 type things showing up here and there (as highly prized items or mechs) as prototypes which are under test.

3) Have fun with terrain

• We've learned over time that this makes RPG sessions much more fun.  Easier to visualize the crazy things which could happen if there are fun terrain models.

• In the past we've used made pink foam pieces to match our terrain maps.  Going forward going to try to do better than even that.

4) Use Obsidian Portal for game tracking and forums and such

Here's a quick example of our Obsidian Portal page - with one of our characters - Bob Bobson - call-sign "Buckaroo".

• Heard about this from our friend Mr. J -- who uses it for his D&D sessions.  After a little bit of practice, it is extremely handy!  https://www.obsidianportal.com/

• It's already been lots of fun to include character back-stories there - along with NPCs.  Going to take a little bit of practice, but feel this will help all of us to keep track better.

• Had previously been using Google Docs or Google Slides for this in Starfinder.  This seems like an easier method :)

5) Create mechanisms to make the table top turn-based experience faster and more aligned with story telling.  Have some ideas on this already :)

• We had seen how some people have used a d6 to mark walking, running or jumping of 'Mechs.  Not sure whether this is a new idea or an old idea - but we are thinking to mark the points of "evasion" with the d6's.

• Also, one of our players proposed that we figure out a way to make all dice rolling simultaneous.  We think we may have this sorted out!!

We'll post more soon on how it is going!