As a added bonus I can add (in case Failure16 wasn't clear) that conventional armor and troops were used as second line troops or worse. Some random thought's if you guys don't mind.įailure16 made the best reply I ever could about the conventional armor and grav tanks (not much patience to get into minutiae of it).
A company cannot control if a customer has enough money to buy two sets or lines of products (though gamers find a way to get what they want, not so?), but that isn't the choice they are asking when it comes down to having Shadowrun and BattleTech share shelf-space in a store (Hastings, how I miss thee I got most of the initial Clan Invasion through one of those bookstores in the beginning of the '90s).īut it is the choice you are asking when Centurion: Blood & Steel and BattleTech, 3rd Edition are next to each other. But it wasn't a binary proposition because they were different games and required or fed off of different moods and/or proclivities.
I did myself back in the days of yore, when Shadowrun was new, and a Regulan Warhammer still graced the BattleTech box. To put that in perspective, many here play Shadowrun and BattleTech. But BattleTech and Renegade Legion are focused on the same market and audience: gamers who want a crunchy future-war simulation with a lot of background, and are likely to roleplay, table-top wargame (with a side of miniature goodness), and read fiction. But it is one thing to develop Shadowrun and BattleTech (and even Earthdawn and Vor) they generally have different markets and audiences, regardless of how much cross-pollination there was/is/will be within the fan-bases. If one were so inclined, one could ask Blaine Pardoe to shed any additional light on this subject he has unearthed a lot of interesting early tidbits of early BattleTech lore and did no small amount of writing for Renegade Legion.ĮDIT-Of course, FASA's resources were not limitless. Loose had the chops (I point to his masterful TRO 3026 cover, for one), and Reneverse grav-tanks in particular still stand as a touchpoint for similar vehicles even today.Īnd, fun fact: Centurion in particular, from its 2nd Edition resurgence, benefitted from having a captain from the Royal Military College of Canada as a designer (and its Technical Update, the Tac Handbook analogue being developed in part with the assistance of that facility's simulation group). If TRO 3025 had been touted as something other than a"BattleTech sketch-book" (check out some of the contemporaneous sales material) and had finished art similar to the Centurion Vehicle Briefing, people wouldn't be so dismissive of it today, I think. That, and their bland color scheme has a certain realistic charm, but does nothing to make me want to pull them out today and throw Wolverines against Aeneases.īut the Reneverse's art was spectacular, in general terms. That seems minor, but from a synergistic and cross-promotional business stance, it still doesnt make any sense, even to this day. So, one could absolutely use River Valley, say for a throwdown between two grav centuries, but one couldn't expand the maps from the boxset with it. The actual sizes of the hexes were different. Sure, they can be used together (the BT mapsets were marketed for both if one looked at the back), but they couldn't be used together. One thing that irritated me in regards to Centurion in particular: the maps, when viewed paradigmatically against those for BattleTech. If only Peter Rice had been able to write one more book, this time about a TOG outfit. But the sourcebooks dealing with them as individuals gave them more nuance and they certainly had some unique characters (like Texas cowboys flying rocketships).
You know: they were xenophobic (but had many willing alien supporters and were even courting the Naram, everyone's choice for the benevolent elves-in-spaaace), they had that whole patria potestas fiasco, it was hinted about that they went around wiping out villages that resisted their rule, and they went in for the whole Soviet penal battalion schtick. I thought about that a day or two ago: TOG was certainly and unequivocally portrayed as The Evil Empire. But, you know, the WWII and Napoleonic gamers have been doing alright with a binary milieu.as has Star Wars. They certainly would have needed to expand their effective array of factions to make a go at it. In the late 80s and into the 90s, mecha was were it's was. The Reneverse is a subject that is very near and dear to my heart.