Campaign(Concept)aDay – The Mystery Mechwarrior Campaign

August. Let’s not talke about RPGaDay. Let us rather embark on a journey into K-Space and through a selection of the endless possibilities for campaigns.

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The Mystery Mechwarrior Campaign

This entire month, the campaign concepts I am presenting exist under the tension between sketching out enough to get the idea across and little enough to not detract from the (potential) experience at the table.

While this has not really worked out that well a number of time already, this time, it appears almost impossible to me to find a workable balance:

The concept of this Mechwarrior campaign is built around a central “secret” that is to be uncovered. If I give it away, there is precious little to play. If I don’t, there is precious little to write (other than this is a Mechwarrior campaign – done).

(By the way, just to manage expectations, this is nothing really groundbreaking. Still, I am going to leave some blank speace, for those who entertain unfounded hopes of ever sitting at a table with me running this.)

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The campaign makes a fundamental change to the Battletech universe.

To leave a bit of doubt what the change might turn out to be and to give the group a chance to make a home in and maybe event change the world a bit if they want to try, I would start the campaign some time before said fundamental change makes its presence felt in the Inner Sphere. I am thinking of the War of 3039 as a starting point, although that has pros and cons and is not set in stone. The change will manifest around ten years later – so obviously deals with the Clan Invasion.

The invasion does happen on schedule in the campaign – but it is not the Clans who do the invading.

In the earliest stages of the invasion – driven in part by the appearance of Elementals on the battlefield – there were fears that the invaders were not human but an alien species. Exactly this is the case in this campaign. Not any aliens though, but the Kafer from 2300 AD. With Mechs (and Kafer infantry in Elemental battlearmor).

The second phase of the campaign (i.e., after the Kafer-less pre-invasion introduction phase) deals in identifying the fact that the invaders are aliens, understanding the Kafer (obviously, players familiar with 2300 AD will have a signifianct advantage there, but still will have to figure out that these indeed are Kafers), and perhaps uncovering the history leading up to the war. Armed with such knowledge, maybe it will be easier to resist the invaders. Or maybe not.

What is that history? Where do the Kafer come from? And why do they come?

The Kafer invasion is indeed a close analogue to the Clan invasion. When the Exodus fleet finally reaches the Pentagon cluster it meets the Kafers. A brutal war ensues with the Kafer finally emerging victorious. Even so, the SLDF becomes to the Kafer the embodiment of the civilisation-ending threat of the smart barbarian. When – as in the original timeline – the Outbound Light arrives, the old fear is rekindled in the Kafers and they embark upon a crusade to defeat the barbarian once and for all. – Or at least some of them do, as after all, even in 2300 AD the Kafers are similarly factious as the Clans are in Battletech.

The Exodus War obviously results in the Kafers obtaining Star League techonologies, including battlemechs, which makes for a welcome explanation why the aliens should use these weapons.

Speaking of weapons and technology, the same reasoning can be used to justify using all the same equipment for the Kafers than is used by the clans, mabe with some exchanging of items against equipment published in later sources to differentiate the Kafers a bit.

Even the iconic maintenance-friendly omni-pod technology makes incredible sense for the Kafers.

The one big change ruleswise will probably be to model the Kafers stress-induced intelligence. My general idea for this is to have them start (quite contrary to Clan warriors) with worse skills which then improve over the engagement, especially when taking damage (and heat).

The importance of personal risk to the Kafers lines up with some of the Clan approaches to combat, allowing to keep those in place (even though no longer motivated by concerns of honor) and thus also having the players wonder for a longer time what it is they are facing – are these the Clans after all?

At the same time, though, a lot of things are radicall different about this invasion. The Kafers are not going to show any of the restraint of the Clans, no bids and batchalls for them, but instead will exhibit their trademark variable intelligence. ComStar will not collaborate with the Kafers but neither will they have any deeper insights into their nature and means. And the Kafers will not be in a race for Terra against one another, but are engaged in a massive campaign of conquest and potentially extermination against the whole of the Inner Sphere.

(What I am unsure about is whether or not the Kafers will have maintained a population of SLDF descendants as an enslaved technician caste – similar to their enslavement of the Ylii in 2300 AD.)

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Image by S K from Pixabay