The Oddballs of Game Design

When you publish a game–just as with any medium of art–you know from the get-go players will do things in the game you never conceived. Doesn’t matter how many play testing sessions you go through or how wide a net you cast, as soon as your game is in the wild, the crazy (and awesome) will start arriving.

That’s all the more true when the game is complex and/or when it’s been around for a while and been added to through a lot of expansions.

For BattleTech, I’m not sure you can find a more odd-ball design element than the Land-Air BattleMech (or LAMs). These are units with the unique capability of transforming between a BattleMech and an aerospace fighter, as well as having a unique in-between mode called AirMech.

Now don’t get me wrong, in the advanced rules of BattleTech you’ve got three-legged BattleMechs, and space drones, and guys riding small flying dragons. But nothing has been so loved and so hated and so…problematic as LAMs.

They were first introduced in AeroTech, which was published in 1986. They were included in the BattleTech Manual which published in 1987. The publication of the BattleTech Compendium in 1990 still kept them and attempted to address some of the rules issues (though rather poorly, IMO). 

In 1994 the BattleTech Compendium: The Rules of Warfare was published, as well as the Tactical Handbook; the first time that Level 3 (i.e. advanced) rules were published that went beyond the standard ‘core’ rules of the game. It was here that LAMs were moved from the core rulebook to that Level 3 book (and the rules still were rather poorly done, IMO). After a few more years the Tactical Handbook went out of print and LAMs remained off the table for a decade-and-half. 

With the coming publication of the long-awaited Interstellar Operations, LAMs will finally see a return to print. While LAMs remain an oddity for most BattleTech’s Eras, you can’t discuss the Star League, really, without the LAMs. Since the largest (and coolest, IMO) section of IO is the Alternate Eras–a pile of units and rules that only fit within a few Eras of BattleTech–LAMs fit perfectly there.

And we play tested them and play tested them…and did it again. Across years. Because they are such an odd-ball, they really break the game because they converge across multiple unit types and rules sets.

In fact, we recently ran a Beta. We released the PDF for a very cheap $10 and for several months the players could bash their heads against the rules. And the rulebook is 400 pages, with two brand new rules sets for large-scale play. 

We then compiled every last comment posted to the BattleTech forums, and in a 400 page book, over half of all comments were on LAMs. And the LAMs only take up 10.5 pages!!! Hence, this ‘oddball’ post. 

So Ray takes all of those endless comments and spends days trying to parse them and figure what we need to tweak and don’t need to tweak; and that included reading back through every previous iteration of the LAM rules.

He then sent them to Herb and I and we carefully reviewed them; below is a screen capture of all my notes on just two pages! 

Now, to be fare, 90% of that is formatting tweaks. i.e. making sure “BattleMech mode” is “BattleMech Mode”, delete “level” anytime it was used with “elevation” and so on. Just good formatting/development work. Some of it, though, was some actual discussion going back and forth between Herb, Ray and I this morning (and still going). 

For example, if we’re changing the rules from the Beta so that AirMechs have BattleMech movement restrictions (i.e. they can land in light woods, for example), and we’re basing that premise off of the Partial Wing rules in Tactical Operations, then shouldn’t the rules flow the other way as well, that LAMs should get the heat benefits of the Partial Wing? (Remember what I said about these rules being so difficult because they bridge unit types and rules sets?)

And so on.

Why all the fuss for 10.5 pages? Well, if this were a new game, there wouldn’t be a fuss. You’d run into this many problems and you’d simply cut them and be done with it. But when you’ve got this much history and this much passion and love–not to mention the first (and last time) LAMs will likely ever see print in almost two decades–well, ya gotta push on through and try and strike a rules balance of play, while still ensuring that those who love playing them will enjoy the new rules as well.

This books is just about off to print and the revised PDF will flow out to all of those that previously participated in the Beta soon afterwards…you’ll have to let us know how we did!

Randall