Battletech Rambling

 I've gotten into mostly-listening to some streams and videos about Battletech in recent times, including getting caught up in hype over the Mercenaries kickstarter project. One discussion had me thinking about the suspension of disbelief involved in the setting, how things don't fit, and in some cases why.

In fairness, most science fiction settings require certain leaps - perhaps more so for settings that are built around games, as games require certain things. 

One of the most commonly-fudge aspects in scifi is that of scale. Frequently planets are distilled down to a single dominant terrain and can be flipped by a single battle - not very realistic if you take even a passing glance at modern Earth. But when your setting is constructed around the conceits of a tactical wargame, that's what you get. Managing more than lance-, or maybe company-, sized battles gets unwieldy fast, so smaller scale battles have to matter somehow.

What brought this up was more discussion of society and culture, though. Most of the factions in the game are a bit messy in some fashion - I'm sure by design. When the Houses of the Inner Sphere were introduced, they all had some vague connection to real world analogues, sure. It doesn't take a genius to draw a line from Japanese culture to House Kurita/The Draconic Combine and the Lyran Commonwealth/House Steiner has obvious connections as well. But they're all flaws in some way and inter-faction rivalries are a big deal. Still, you can see how a normal person might live a reasonably normal life away from battle lines and never even see a mech outside a news broadcast.

Then FASA introduced the Clans in what may well be the most popular era for the setting. They functioned largely as the 'alien enemy' in other settings, though decended from a military force that left the Inner Sphere hundreds of years prior. They were given technological superiority at the cost of being restricted by an honor system - that's questionable, at best, in a wargame though you could argue the Clans also are hindered by higher value/point cost of units. The society the fiction painted behind them, however, is particularly messed up. Clans are caste-based, highly structured, and very centered on supporting the military. Genetics are important, but family ties are absolutely not. Roles are assigned. Merit can potentially lead to advancement, but people are more cogs in the machine than any real Earth society. Freedom and importance is really only held by those with a bloodname, and there are only around a thousand slots for such in each clan. Everyone else? Fill your role, do your duty, breed only as instructed, any children will be taken by the clan and assigned similarly, and as you age and your health wanes don't expect any support. That is a setup ripe for revolution, even if the upper tier has the firepower advantage. 

I can almost see that as plausible, developed through hardship and isolation. The moment the Clans carved into the Inner Sphere and clanners saw that life could exist without that same structure, however, I don't think Clan society would realistically be stable. When Wizkids took over the IP, they engineered a sort of setting reset with the Dark Age. My awareness of the game at the time is somewhat limited, but I think that's when we got the first Clan/Inner Sphere hybrid state(s), which is even more ludicrous if you think about it. 

But... y'know... suspension of disbelief. That societal structure definitely makes it easy to paint the Clans as bad guys (even if other factions aren't exactly good).

You also get a wide variety of "how things work" depending on the game. Battletech is, at its heart, a multiplayer, competitive game. Based on that, there needs to be some parity between forces. But there are also a number of single-player games, that will tend to pit a player (with some advantages) against a larger number of opponents in ways that would be laughable on the tabletop. 

Which is "real" as far as the setting? Well, it's a game, so it's better not to think about it too much.

I have considered what it might be like to roleplay some in the universe (there were/are still RPG rules, but freeform is always an option), but my brain tends to hitch up on setting inconsistencies before I can really get anywhere. I know there's plenty of room in the setting for things other than grand politics and tactical combat, but finding such a story is not without challenges.