BattleTech as cotton candy

 I bought a bundle of BattleTech fiction on the strength of Michael Stackpole having written a bunch of them. And I have definitely enjoyed Stackpole’s work. But I’ve decided to look at some of the other stuff.

Decision at Thunder Rift seemed like the natural place to start since it was the very first BattleTech fiction ever published. Pretty sure it was also William H. Keith Jr’s first book too. 

I went into Decision with low expectations and, honestly, the book lived down to some of them. Stackpole approached turning a tactical war game into a book by exploring the political backdrop of the setting. Decision turns BattleTech into fiction by being an action thriller, leaning in to the actual gameplay that takes place on the table.

After a savage betrayal wipes out the mercenary group that he was a member of, including his father, Grayson Death Carlyle must scrape together a new group of warriors with backwater locals and whatever giant robots he can find.

That’s the book in one sentence. You have to admit, it sounds like something that would have come out in any given summer of the 90s with giant robots added in.

That said, even though you can see every twist, every plot beat coming, the actual writing is good. I knew what the ride was going to be like when I bought the ticket so I don’t have any complaints. I wasn’t expecting Shakespeare and Shakespeare wouldn’t have worked if Keith had tried.

The actual weakest points are when the book goes hard science, describing the weather and ecology of the world Grayson is stuck on. That’s really because it doesn’t really affect the story. Let’s take a famous example of hard science physics: A Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement. The planet of Mesklin’s distinct environment drives the story. It’s absolutely key. The physics of Decision’s Trellwen is incidental at best.

Stackpole’s political thrillers in the BattleTech universe are a greasy cheeseburger of fiction. Not good for you but fun. Decision is cotton candy. Nothing really there but sometimes it’s nice to eat a little cotton candy.

Battletech + Stackpole = beach read with giant mech

Michael Stackpole is the only reason I have any interest in Battletech’s fiction. Heck, he’s practically the only reason I know the fiction even exists. And having finished his first Battletech work, the Warrior trilogy (En Garde, Riposte, Coupe), I can say that Mr. Stackpole has not failed me.

Intellectual Properties are always this weird potluck of quality, even though I am pretty sure most of the media in the world falls into that category. And gaming fiction in particular can really be all over the place, even different works from the same company.

And while I am aware there have been successful cartoons about Battletech, I still wouldn’t think it lends itself to novels. As a tactical level war game, the focus is on fighting, not storytelling. (Yes. I know I love WH40K fiction and the original game is just about beating each other up too)

Stackpole makes the Warrior trilogy work by not writing about a game with giant robots. Instead, he wrote a political thriller that just happens to have giant robots in it.

Honestly, for all intents and purposes, the series is a summer beach read. It’s not driven by character or theme but by plot. The books aren’t deep and nor are they trying to be. They focus on being entertaining and telling an engaging story. And that is something Stackpole pulls off.

The  books aren’t without their flaws. By virtue of having to work with the setting lore, there are some plot elements that don’t contribute to the larger narrative and really go nowhere. And you can figure out some of the major plot twists just by who Stackpole concentrates on as major characters.

But those are flaws that come as part of the package, particularly the second one. Stackpole made telling a good story his priority and it shows. These were some of his earliest fiction but the promise is already there.

The Warrior trilogy isn’t high art. It’s airport reading.  But they aren’t  just airport reading. They are the kind of books you are happy to find before a six-hour flight.

A non-wargamer reads Battletech Quick Start

As promised, I downloaded and read the quick start rules for Battletech.

I’ve read a lot of quick start rules over the years, admittedly for RPGs, not for war games. I feel like a quick start should try and do three things: give you the flavor of the system, give you enough to be able to play the basics of the system and make you want to play the system more.

And, I think the Battletech quick start rules gets 1.5 of those goals right.

Its biggest failure is not goving you a sense of the flavor of the game or its setting. It’s the future and people fight in giant robots. End of story.  Since I started looking into Battletech, I’ve found a surprisingly rich setting and timeline. I don’t expect to get all that from what is effectively a brochure. However, at least identifying the sides and emphasizing the ‘real robot’ aspect of the system would have been good.

The actual rules were pretty good. I particularly appreciated that it includes a small map, two standers and the stats for two standees. More importantly, the rules do their fundamental job very well. They lay out how the game works step by step. If I had seen these quick start rules back in the 80s, I’d have eaten them up.

The actual rules themselves didn’t excite me that much but I am pretty sure that’s ‘Seinfeld isn’t Funny’ trope at work. Battletech helped define giant robot gaming and science fiction war gaming. Of course it’s going to have an old hat feel. I’m sure the rules have been refined a lot over the decades but I’m also sure they didn’t fix what wasn’t broken.

So, really, what I want, what I think is painfully missing, is two paragraphs of fluff to make me care about Battletech’s world.

There are Battletech novels? Tons of them?

Ah, Battletech.

While I have been aware of Battletech since the 80s because I saw ads for it in Dragon Magazine, I have never been interested in it.

I’ve been aware of the giant robot genre since I was knee high to a grasshopper but I’ve never been really grabbed by it. Maybe it’s due to being exposed to Tranzor Z, a really bad dub of Mazinger Z, at too young an age. Put me off of Voltron without even trying to giving it a chance. The only cartoon with giant robots I really got into was Robotech and that was more because it was a soap opera like the X-Men.

(Incidentally, I know that many anime fans hate Robotech because of the massive editing that had to happen to scrunch Macross-Southern Cross-MOSPEADA into enough episodes that it could be syndicated on American television. I am not one of them because, dude, I was there. 

It’s hard to believe now, when manga and anime has become a mainstream mainstay, but when Robotech came out, there was no market for it. It was unlike anything we had ever seen before. As a cynical grownup, looking back, I’m amazed it worked. And it helped create an environment where authentic anime could flourish in a western market.

On the other hand, I completely support hating Harmony Gold for being a bunch of litigious jerks who sued anything that remotely resembled Robotech and locked Macross out of the western market. Which brings me back to Battletech, which got sued multiple times by Harmony Gold)

When Humble Bundle released a bundle Battletech fiction, I was completely non-interested. Until I saw that Michael Stackpole had written a bunch of them. Then I became very interested.

And I’ve begun to actually look into Battletech.

I’ve learned that, along with WH40K, it’s one of the OG science fiction warfare franchises. Neither of them started the genre but they both helped boost it. 

I’ve already read Warrior: En Garde, Stackpole’s first book. I was confused about how the clans didn’t get a mention in the book. Then I learned the clans hasn’t been introduced when the book had been written lol

Entirely new, setting altering factions getting added in? Damn, that is like WH40K!

I doubt I’ll ever play the actual game (just like Death Angel or Space Hilk are the only WH40K games I’m in any danger of trying) but I’ve downloaded the quick start rules to learn more about Battletech. 

However, like WH40K, I sure will read the fiction.