I Miss Battletech

I was introduced to Battletech back in the 80's when the resemblance of certain battlemechs to Robotech mecha was neat (and while I wondered at what circumstances allowed the similarities, I didn't imagine legal issues would force those mechs to be disavowed and later redesigned). I only really played a handful of times, but I would find myself designing mechs in my spare time, fiddling with tonnages and internal structure spaces. Naturally, at first I tried to make the best/most destructive mechs I could at a certain weight class. At some point, I started designing them for specific roles. And, partly due to the Robotech connection, I was quite taken with Land Air Mechs. Even though they weren't "the best," the thought of being able to airlift the setting-equivalent of a tank unit from one air to another at whim was dazzling from a strategic point of view. What does it matter if your LAM lance can't take out equal-tonnage battlemechs in a straight fight when you can outmaneuver them and never have to slug it out directly?

As I said, I played infrequently. Heck, I spent more time playing Battletech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception on my Commodore 64 than playing the "board" game. I even managed to get in on a Battletech-based MUSH/MUCK back in... probably 1994, scoring a slot as an elite military intelligence/special operations character for the Federated Suns/Commonwealth (alas, this was short-lived and the weakness of the system was displayed when I lagged in a training mission and only caught up when my mech was on the other end of the field, having walked past everything). I like the design, but what I have played (more computer games mostly) I also like the eb and flow of tactics/strategy. The setting was moderately interesting and the mech design aspect appealed to a part of me - the part of me that likes to crunch numbers and figure out how things work, the part of me that can powergame/munchinize a system.

And, I think, that may be the same part of me that helps in diagnosing problems. It's much the same critical thinking I pull out when I have a computer that doesn't work. The details are far removed, but there's a similar logic to calling up a mental image of how things work and tracing through to determine where the problem most likely is. I've found that some people don't/can't think that way. And I will quickly point out there are people better than I, too. Programming computer code, for example, is a little too ephemeral for me to grasp without a whole lot of effort and good examples/documentation. I could also probably troubleshoot hardware issues better if I had some actual detailed training. I sometimes regret trying programming classes instead of something a bit more physical like electrical engineering.

So, yeah, there's a part of me that loves to look at how things work. Recreationally, I used to work that out with mech design. I shifted that to RPG system, experimenting with my own, and Magic. With Magic, I even got to thinking beyond card interactions and in a more strategic, metagame sense because I got into primarily multiplayer games where there's a certain level of psychology involved. Anyone who thinks multiplayer Magic is just about the cards is probably playing a combo deck and is destined to be ganged up on after showing it off once or twice...

That may also be the same part of me that, while playing Shadowrun, sees a building with double main doors, a loading door in back, and a normal-sized side entrance and says, "Well, the side entrance probably opens into a little hallway with staff offices or similar with plenty of cover, making being attacked en masse right there unlikely." My mind tries to rationalize layouts, taking what's known and fitting what seems most likely to it. Oftentimes I think the GM hasn't even thought such things out when I make a statement like that. Of course, sometimes such assumptions are wrong, but so it goes.

Now, I suppose I'm channelling some of that into World of Warcraft. There's not quite as much to crunch there without getting into formulae, but I do study up on some of those and certain mechanics involved. Every now and then, that mechanically-oriented side will crave more and I'll end up doing something like figuring out how to make "programmed" objects in MPI even though there's really no point to doing so.