Enthusiastic Amateur

SPIRE, the impossible city from the frozen crown of Amaranth down to the warrens of Derelictus. A structure so massive that the impossibility of it has curdled reality at its core in the seething heart. Tonight the barrier between the Heart and the rest of SPIRE grows weak. Through the cracks come spectres and old ghosts to haunt the living. It is Heartsnight The denizens of SPIRE meet this event the only way they know how. They’re throwing a party. In masks and costumes ostensibly to ward away the more dangerous of the phantoms they walk the streets, sharing sweet treats and drinking copiously. Up in the Silver Quarter the Aelfir have imported perfumed mists from far Nujab and the wealthiest and most important don costumes extravagant and terrible to prepare for the only Heartsnight party worth going to: That of Lisivia Weeps-Drowned-Wishes where it is said she will be visited by the ghost of her mother on the eve of her taking up her position as a Captain of the Paladins....

“The hollow within him was quiet, snarled with brambles. Impossible to see himself and too private to show to anyone else. Garvel shivered in the quiet of the Edgerunner ’s hold and curled his mismatched arms around his knees; thought on the white light he had been told was his breath. He watched it expand and contract until he considered the act of breathing and found himself gasping for air.”   It has been twenty-six weeks since I started writing The Orphan Garvel and I feel the need to write something about the experience, though coming to talk about it I find myself at a loss of what to say.   It’s work.   There should be something more profound in this, maybe something about dedication, inspiration, the power of words on a page. There isn't though. It’s just 500 words every weekday, 2,500 every week, and being diligent about not trying to do more. I often hit 2,500 early and give myself days off. On those days I don’t write stories, I don’t even think a...

Previously on Classic Battletech: The Itano Circus came to town, we talked missiles, cluster hits and shooting in general. Today we take on a request from one of my players; movement. Their brief was simple: Make it simpler, get rid of hexes. Can do boss. Not that I have any massive problem with hexes. They are a very Battletech component of the game, but not so much that I think replacing them would be removing a central pillar of the game. Plus taking it off the maps (as lovely as they are) does give me license to do something of a deeper cut into how the movement system works. So, how does movement work in Battletech? Every mech (and vehicle and drop ship etc etc) in Battletech is built around an engine and every engine has a rating. The more powerful the engine the heavier it is and the bigger and heavier the mech the bigger an engine it needs to move it. Small mechs throw out everything including the kitchen sink to get as light as possible so they can go li...

I wanted to expand on a point after the other night’s Battletech rant and that is the idea of Battletech as a slow game; one of the primary reasons that my friends stopped playing it for a while and one of the focuses of my current attempt to fix what I see as some of the problems with the game. See Battletech requires a great deal of book keeping. This is integral to the game, more so than something like Warhammer 40,000 or even Necromunda, where much of the actual book keeping is backgrounded in favour of focusing on the battles. In Battletech two parts of that book keeping and particularly the way they interact create moments of some of the least satisfying gameplay in the game. Let’s start with Hit Location, and to talk about that we need to discuss how to resolve a damage roll in Battletech. I promise I will try and make it quick. When you hit a mech with an attack in Battletech (itself an intensive process I will catalogue at a different time) you then need to de...

Critical Hit SRM-4 Destroyed Eject Eject Eject The voice was a ringing in the ears as the Mechwarrior raised himself just enough to see the humanoid shape on the ridge wither beneath the missiles of the advancing mechs. The hit punched through the armour a great crash echoed by a drumroll as the SRM magazine erupted, tearing the torso of the mech open. It’s head, the cockpit where he’d been sat moments before, was shorn away and thrown into the distant treeline. He slumped down into the mud, his hand coming up to his face to wipe away the blood and rain that slicked his eyes and something standing to the side of his shock told him that he was lucky to be alive. The year is 3025, the end of the Third Succession War. Gone is the Star League and those long centuries of stability that came with Humanity unified beneath a single banner. In its wake great noble houses vie for control of the civilised worlds of the Inner Sphere, waging war with the aging war machines known as...