I announced this on my blog, but also wanted to share this here in case any Mechwarrior RPG fans hang out here...
microMechWarrior is an adaptation of 1st edition Mechwarrior™ RPG, microlite20 and microlite20 modern. In 6 pages, it covers chargen, task resolution, combat, healing, equipment, advancement and conversions to use your characters within the Battletech™ boardgame. You can get the
digest/booklet sized mMW.pdf here.
From the designer notes:
These rules are best used for quickly adding an RPG “rules-light” component to a Battletech game, for playing a convention game that combines RPG and the Battletech boardgame, or if you simply wish to have a quick alternative to the current Mechwarrior role-playing games. The idea is that these rules are simple and that the Game Referee will usually say “Yes” or “Roll dice” to most situations. Not all situations are covered by these rules; a certain amount of flexibility and Game Referee creativity needs to be employed.
To have the best “rules light” RPG/board game experience, my recommendation that you combine these “micro” rules with the Classic Battletech Introductory Rulebook and the Vehicle and Infantry Combat rules from the Classic Battletech Quick Start. No attempt has been made to include any of the other vehicle types, such as conventional aircraft, Aerotech or Starships. The GM should employ their best judgement and houserule as they see fit to make the characters work within the boardgame in a straightforward fashion. I’ve also left out a lot of things that are going to be campaign dependent, such as creating a unit, figuring out Battlemech assignments, dealing with salvage and a 101 more things – but these are all things that you as a GM would want to figure out either on your own or from existing source materials.
Now, having said all that, let me say that these rules ARE NOT FULLY PLAYTESTED! I've rolled up a few characters and run a couple of simulated combats, but I will be shaking these out over the next couple of months to prep for WinterWar. Your comments, suggestion and feedback will be immensely helpful and earn you some credits in the book. After looking at the size explosion of Mechwarrior RPG rulebooks (65 "mechanics" related pages in MW1 to 402 pages in Time of War beta), I wanted to go back to something simple and microlite-ish. So here you go. 6 pages of rules, 1 page of fluff/notes and one page with a paragraph of legalese.
Further legalese - Battletech and Mechwarrior are trademarks and copyrighted IP of Whizkids, FASA and Microsoft. This is a fan-derived set of houserules that I'm sharing for the general interest of others and to bring value to the Battletech game universe. In other words, I ain't makin' a dime on this and please don't sue the crap out of me.(Edited to point to the "permanent home" of the PDF - it's been updated and modified with playtesting and review.)
