Hello and welcome to the new episode of BattlePod. Today live from the PhoenixCon.
And with me is the Jan from the Phoenix Guard. Hello Jan. Hi.
And the Meldrick. Hello Meldrick. Hello.
And then our special guest Randall. Hello Randall. Hello.
So, we're going to do this interview in English.
Dementsprechend is the rest of the following in English. I wish you all very
much fun and see you later.
So, Randall. For the people in Germany or all over the world, who are you?
So I'm Randall Bills. I'm currently the creative director for Catalyst Game
Labs, who currently publishes the Battletech game.
I have been working on Battletech for a very long time now and playing Battletech for even longer.
So I do you want me to tell the whole story because it could take up a little
bit of time I'm fine telling the story but tell us the special interesting.
Well I so I'm 13 and saw.
Robotech for the first time and even before that going back to GeForce and,
uh, spaceship Yamato and Voltron. So I already loved space science fiction.
I already loved giant robots. I saw Robotech and my mind was just blown.
Uh, we recorded it on VCR tapes and I just endlessly rewatched it.
Um, and then I was at a, at a game store at that time in the U S there weren't really game stores.
It was a hobby store that had like model trains, uh, remote controlled airplanes.
And then in a little tiny corner was a couple of game books.
And I saw the battle tech.
Actually, the first thing I saw was, um, the Fox's teeth, uh, adventure pack.
Oh, okay. With that totally torn up Mac that even today you can't quite tell
what it is. It might be a shadow Hawk. It might not, you're not sure.
And I'm like, does that look like Robotech? I wasn't sure.
And then like a week later, I was at another place and saw the second edition box.
And I'm immediately like this, why is this, this is Robotech.
Like it's got the STF symbol right on the leg, but it was called Battletech.
And so we, I took me a month to buy it because I was doing a paper route because
I'm like 14, 13 at the time.
It was a fair amount of money to buy at the time.
And we raced over with my friends on bikes. We bought it.
I got home. We immediately tore through the rules, played it totally wrong,
but I played it once and that was it.
I, you know, never, never can go back. So I've been playing it for almost 40 years now at 39 years.
And then fast forward 10 years and I've been playing it that entire time loving
it to death just like you're doing here we were running local conventions running
Battletech I was living in Phoenix,
Mesa, Tempe, Arizona the southwest part of the United States,
running local game conventions there and Brian Neistel who was the Battletech
line developer at the time,
was brought out as a guest just like i'm here um and
he he was walking around with the
technical readout 3057 under his arm and
it hadn't been released yet and so i remember all of us trying to like figure
out how we could steal it without stealing it because i wasn't gonna steal but
can i just look at the can i just look at it yeah um and we had a great old
time and i had made a variant of the Succession Wars board game.
So the Succession Wars is a large-scale board.
It used a whole bunch of old-school chits that you would put on the counters you'd put on it.
Yeah, we played it all the time. Every convention, we would play it till sunup Saturday night.
And I had made a 3039 version of it.
So the Comstar clock was added to it. There's a little sideboard with Comstar
armies, hidden armies, of course.
Um and i jokingly said hey would you
like to play this game um and
he said yes and of course now i'm terrified that he's going to
sit down the baltic line developer is going to sit down and play my game so
we played it all that all night long he told he and the rest of my friends totally
teased me about how terrible it is and it is terrible i still have it somewhere
but i had done it right i had made the whole thing uh i had every counter hand
made and drawn up the whole thing.
Um, and so then the next year we had gone out to Gen Con, we then went down
to FASA and here I can tell you the geekiest thing that I may have ever done in my entire life.
So we're at the FASA offices and I'm trying to say to myself,
I need to be calm. I need to be cool.
And we walk in and of course it's the FASA offices, right? This is where the magic happens.
These are all these, all these people that are creatives and doing these great
things and come to find out.
So this is 93, no, 95.
And so the clan homeworlds maps had not been published yet.
Um, and he had a, and Brian Neistel had a hand-drawn version of it up in his cubicle.
And so we were literally distracting him. So one of our friends could draw it
onto his hand so that we could sneak out this crucial data that no one had ever
seen before for in Battletech.
Uh, and so then right after that FASA started to say, you know what,
I think we need a line developer, uh, or an assistant line developer,
somebody that could help all three lines. So at that time, it was Battletech,
Shadowrun, and Earthdawn.
And they started asking around local. And of course, they're paying nothing
because it's the gaming industry. And so no one wanted it.
And then Brian was like, well, hey, what about that one guy that came out and visited?
And of course, they're all like, you mean the guy that just ran around screaming
and like, oh, I can't believe I'm here.
And this is the moment I get to once again thank Brian, because if he had not
said, you know what, I had another convention with him. I walked around with him.
I think he might be the guy. I don't base it just on him coming here.
And I give a big thank you because without Brian saying that, I wouldn't be here.
And so then they, you know, emails were sent out and I came out for the interview and I accepted.
And then, so literally this coming February 1st will be 30 years.
So February 1996, since I started.
And then I've just kind of followed it everywhere it goes.
I do a lot of other things. I develop other games. I help the whole company. I've helped Shatteron.
Leviathans was my game that I did. I'm working on a My Hero Academia game.
So I do lots and lots of different things.
But one of my primary still concerns is to help a Battletech get out the door.
And I love it to death. uh i always give a shout out
to ray rostia and aaron cahill who are the current
line developer and assistant line developer and i just do
all i can to empower them to get cool stuff out
the door and then i get chances to do this go all over the world and sit down
with amazing this unbelievably amazing community we have and talk about this
thing we love and roll some dice and mine will betray me and i will lose and
you know that's that's how it goes yeah so there's my kind of I could go on and on and on about it,
but that hopefully it wasn't too long to tell you the long story to get here. Yeah. So, um, um,
One of our biggest questions is when we go to Battletech in Germany and Europe.
So the license was with Ulysses Spiele.
And after they lost it or they haven't done it anymore.
Our question is, do you have or Catalysts have plans for making an own?
Will you publish an own in different languages?
Or uh are you still searching
for partner or do you have any plans we
are uh so we absolutely um
are looking and searching um i think
it actually hurts my soul because i've been coming to germany for a
long time now i think the first time i came to essen was
97 um and
uh all the years at fan pro when
i came over as well um and so germany is literally the hat over the years has
been the second largest community after the united states so it hurts my soul
that in this giant renaissance that we're having right now there isn't a localized edition of the game,
part of that is that we have talked to quite a few publishers um and they just
don't want to do it because, and it's primarily because of the plastics,
doing minis is just complicated.
You almost always have to do manufacturing overseas and that makes it more complicated.
But here at the show, I had some new interviews.
I can't really say who, but absolutely we had some new interviews and are starting
negotiations to figure out if we can find a partner to localize and get the
game back in German, absolutely.
So, we talked in our podcast a little with MacForce Germany.
They tried to get a license. Could you tell us, I don't know if you can, why it didn't happen?
Um, there's a lot of back and forth on that.
Um, I don't feel very comfortable actually answering that directly.
Uh, I will say that they are one of the groups that we are still talking to,
to see whether that might not work or not.
Um, but a lot of it was just, you know, a lot going on in the world.
Uh, and then the year that I was traveling that, you know, I traveled for almost five months.
Um, was that last year? It was last year.
Uh, and so that was as amazing it was, and it was fantastic to travel everywhere.
I, I crisscrossed Germany constantly.
Uh, the number of times I had to fly through Frankfurt was kind of crazy.
Um, but that also just meant that some of the things that suffered was some
of these meetings and some of these negotiations.
So with me not traveling nearly as much, it's making it a little easier to get some of that back up.
So hopefully we'll have news sometime by the end of the year.
Oh, great. We would love to be able to finally make that happen and get this out in German.
Okay we're thrilled yeah so um
medrick do you have a question um yeah
actually i have written down some uh had some
uh it was quite a surprise for me to actually join this
interview so it was not that much time to figure out
questions but that sounds like a lot of questions well just uh
just showing up that's when i start saying um well
um the first thing that came to mind was
when we were talking uh downstairs um there is
kind of an official app for alpha strike
i think right now and i would like to hear your
thoughts on what is the future of uh the how
is it going to continue the app business everything and how does an app become
an official app i'm asking for friend uh well we are we are always well i mean
first i guess answering on the back end first we're always willing to sit down and talk with people.
Right? I'm always willing to take an email.
Sometimes it can take a while because we're all just incredibly busy.
Um, but I'm all, we're always willing to talk, look at something.
Uh, the presentation you did was fantastic. I would love to take further.
It's part of why I want to see it in action.
Uh, cause there's, you know, there's some really cool possibilities there.
Um, I will say that the digital side is probably our weakest side of things.
Uh, that's why it often just takes longer for us to do those projects and get
them out the door because we're often, um, outsourcing that.
That's not something we can do ourselves. We don't, we don't have that skillset.
And when we've attempted to do it, it hasn't happened very well.
Um, and so, yeah, every time you see one of the, like the, the Shatter and Dice
Roller apps, uh, or the Battletech Alpha Strike app, uh, that's always done
in coordination with another company.
Often,
People come to us and say, hey, we would love to do this because they're seeing
that Battletech is exploding.
Hey, this is great. We totally want to be a part of it.
And then you start showing them what it will take to make an app that will work for Battletech.
And nearly all of them will slowly back out the door just because of the sheer
complexity and the hundreds and hundreds of pieces of equipment and how it all
is put together, the dozens of types of units,
the thousands upon thousands of variants.
And so it always ends up being a little more complex than anyone coming to the table expects it to be.
So we continue to work. We're hoping to still provide that support for the AlphaStrike app.
In fact, I believe I just saw an email that there's another batch of the sheets
that are being generated to put into it.
So we do want to support it.
It just doesn't get nearly the support perhaps that the community may not or
the community may want just because it's always done outside of ourselves.
And so then we have to connect into that and help make it happen.
Yeah. As a follow-up for that, as a developer of an app myself,
I'm always wondering how changes would come about, for example,
if most of the apps that I know and the one I developed as well is depending
heavily on the master unit list, obviously.
Yeah. We cannot keep all the data ourselves. That's too much.
And it's a very logical thing to rely on one central database.
Yeah. Now there's talk in the internet about Master Unit List 2.0,
and everyone is wondering when will it come, what will it do,
how will it look like, and nobody knows anything really substantial.
So the Master Unit List is nearly done, I've been saying that for a while,
but part of that was just, I don't want to get into specifics,
but there was just a lot of real life stuff.
Real life crap that happened. I don't know any other way to say that for the people involved in,
uh, that we're working on it from, you know, some floods that destroyed houses
of some of the developers that were working on it to, it just, it was unbelievable.
Uh, so every snake eyes that can be rolled for the, the, the upgrade of this has happened.
Um, we are getting very, and you know, even,
even now we're now running into some server issues where one of the last ones
that came out that out of nowhere, the server is having problems and then trying
to update it's, I could go on and on. Uh, but it is, it is happening.
Um, it, it primarily, uh, it's twofold.
One is that the current is one was just made many, many, many years ago.
And so it is painfully slow.
Um, and so part of it is just rebuilding up from scratch so that it's just incredibly fast.
It can be, you know, accessed from anything from a mobile device to a laptop
to a table and have it be really quick.
Um, it is the force builders that are provided in it, uh, work a lot better.
There's a, there's a force builder in the one right now, but it's kind of finicky.
Um, every time I'm building one, I almost have to open up multiple tabs to keep
trying to go back and track things appropriately.
Um, so the force builder has been extensively expanded.
Uh, the thing that I'm actually most excited about is that the classic record
sheets are all incorporated into it.
So just like now where I can go up and look up, I can go up and build my force
and then hit print and it'll immediately PDF out all of the alpha strike cards
and then print from there that it'll do the exact same thing for the classic record cheats.
So there's no, which even I'm
excited because every time I want to run a game at a, at my local store.
To then get the record sheets, I have a whole separate set of PDFs that then
I have to go hunting through.
And, okay, where was that one variant?
So I totally get how annoying that is.
And that, I think, is one of the most exciting aspects of the 2.0,
is just that you'll have them all at your fingertips, all built right into build
the force, print them out right from there.
Another follow-up on that, if I may. Yeah, of course. the i'm
asking for all the developers out there uh the point is that all
the apps that are developed are developed against the
interface of the master unit list so you're requesting
a list and you get it back in a json form and
every developer i know would like to know if that format is
going to change because then you have to change everything that is
a level of detail that
i don't know but email me and then i can go talk to the guy who's heading that
up and i can get that response for you but off the top of my head it's just
a level that i don't know and i don't need to know so they don't tell is that
is that george is that still george uh no no no okay yeah that might explain
why you did answer my mails yeah,
Again, feel free to drop me an email. Please wait a few days. All right.
I need to get home, relax for a day, uncurl from the fetal position, get into emails.
But I'm happy to dig that information up. I just got to go talk to the person who's setting that up.
Well, there are plenty of possibilities there. For example, if you say that
you have a force builder.
For example, if the format is well-defined, like the
answer that you get from the interface would be a well-defined json uh
we can all for example use the force builder in the
master unit list and export all the units in the force right
into an app for example yeah where you don't have to do the manual
uh putting the the units into the app
yeah that would be fantastic and that is possible if we
have a well-defined information of how it
will work okay so i would definitely drop you yeah
um i have a question about the
master unit list yeah for the people who don't know what the
master unit list is what is the master unit list
so the master unit list is just a online database
of all the gameplay units um
and if you you know type in the atlas maybe that or the warhammer is the first
thing you know it's going to bring up an illustration right out of the one of
the tactical readouts it's then it's then going to have a line data for every
single variant and some of these mechs have you know, 12, 18,
25 different variants that exist.
And it'll have, you know, tonnage, battle value, all the basic data that you
need as you're building your force.
You, the currently right now, if you happen to be playing Alpha Strike,
then the Alpha Strike card is right there. You can print it right out.
When the 2.0 comes out, then you'll have a classic Battletech sheet that you'll
be able to print right out.
You can plug it into a force builder. It's just, it is the most used thing.
Bits of data from anyone in the community and
particularly on the alpha strike side because those cards
are available uh i know anyone
involved in alpha strike play is using it all the time
because it's just the simplest easiest way uh to
force build to get that data and so yeah so
once it's updated it's just going to be that much easier to
use that much more having players
whatever they want to do the whatever type of
game they want to play hopefully that database is
being used in a really good way to empower whatever you
want to do at your table no okay thanks yep
so you got to nothing yeah keep coming
popping up that's what i'm here for um about
the master unit list there was a discussion on the discord server and people
were wondering i was wondering um recently
we have seen colored versions of the artwork for the
units for the next and um they are on if you if
you buy the premium um classic uh
record sheets there are images of the
units and they are not the black and white drawings
they are full colored versions and we had the discussion i thought that um or
i was asking myself will there be those pictures for all the units and could
it be uh could they be accessed for example like an in an app like mine to just
show them in connection to the unit.
Sorry, some people say there's only a subset of all units made.
There is only a subset because basically what those are is once a unit has moved
through the redesign process for our modern styling and then has an STL that
is being turned over for manufacturing,
a clean render of that is made.
And then we have one of our artists go through and put a digital paint on that.
So those full colored only exist
for the ones that have new stls
made for them now at this point we're at 200 plus
and climbing but it's still you know
a small subset of the total amount and so we can't do it all at once it's just
not possible um but we we've got a really good starting point and it'll continue
to go from there but there is no way to just go hey let's do this the amount
of time and effort would be astronomical to just try to do it all at once.
The goal is to get them all. Sure. Yeah, right.
Um i could go on oh so let's
uh yeah so
one question at a time so um at
the moment there's a new uh playtest for the new battle tech rules yep so uh
you're right there will be no uh 2.0 version so it it's it's also it's more
like uh an updated version of the current yeah so for If you've been playing a really long time,
because Total Warfare, I can't believe it's already almost 20 years old since
that came out. It just blows my mind.
But even I, just because it's been almost 20 years, had kind of forgotten until
I went back and really looked.
There was actually quite a few changes made heading into Total Warfare.
Even outside of the inventory and vehicles that were radically redone.
There was a fair number of tweaks made um
and we've kind of forgotten that right um so
the the new rulebook which
we don't have a name for yet uh the new rulebook is
very much in that same vein that it'll be a total warfare level uh of changes
so the vast majority of the game stays the exact same uh i will say that there
are a few things that we're looking at like uh the possibility of removing those side tables.
They probably would be the biggest changes that have ever been made in Battletech,
but it's still a small, thin slice of the total experience in Battletech. And...
Part of the reason for doing these playtesting is because we want to ensure that they work.
And then the majority of players really love what we're doing.
You know, the side tables might not happen. That's the whole point of doing
these public playtests.
And it's actually kind of amazing because when I did Total Warfare,
that was back when the community was a fraction of the size of what we have now.
It was all on forums and little subreddits and local playtesting.
So what we were able to do playtesting compared to what we're able to do playtesting
now, it's order of magnitudes bigger.
And now because of the explosion of the internet, because of all of these,
where Battletech is at now and how many people are playing, you know,
hundreds of thousands of players.
Um it gives us this opportunity
to play test these changes at a scale that Battletech's
never had in the past so it's actually really incredible uh
so yeah like the packet three I think just dropped on Monday uh and then there's
a fourth packet as well as a coming uh Battlefield support aerospace packet
uh and so yeah I mean on the whole um I think they've been very well received uh and,
we're continuing to work on it.
It's awesome to be able to run this scale and really get the feedback from the community.
Like I said, Bialtrix has never been able to do that before. So...
For me, as a player who don't play this long and don't know the changes,
it would be nice if I can know which Total Warfare version are out there.
So I talked to someone who played this 20 years, so it could be other rules than I know.
So if I can't make a wish, please,
when you make a new version, um make it
2.0 or whatever so i can i know that's
the that's the version that's um the state of the art um well usually like every
single printing of total warfare has an edition or has a you know eighth printed
edition and nine printed edition on the credits page yeah um so it should do that Just like,
I believe I saw down on for the Alpha Strike tournament,
the, it noted this, so we'll use the seventh printing of the rule book.
So usually we do try and incorporate that in there. Okay, great.
Um the it's only for the
total warfare so for classic uh will
you make a rewrite for alpha strike um
we have plans on and i
don't know if we've said this publicly so maybe ray won't get upset
at me uh but yes the current plan is
a a new alpha strike rulebook will be
coming in the next year or two um the
plan will be this this next year gen
con is the new rule book um and then
once the playtesting is done for this
new rule book we'll then spin up a year's worth of play testing for alpha strike
um and the nice thing about that one is there's a lot of really great tournaments
that are running strong for alpha strike and so we can work with those communities
all over the world to, you know,
have them fold in playtesting as part of the events that they are running.
So we can have a whole year of just some amazing data to make it the best it
can be. And then that will become a future Warburg.
Yeah. Great. Nice. So, yeah.
Just while we talk about the Office Strike book, at the last half year,
I began to play Hinterlands with my community. and we'll play it with Off-Strike
and it's a real nice book.
You had time with the translation to get in it okay, but it's really streamlined
and nice and how would you go forward with these campaign books?
Do you mean... It's a really short timeline you can play and Do you mean for the Force Mania's?
Hint on it yes yeah we we have another book already being made uh draconis reach,
hotspots draconis reach which does the same treatment but
goes between uh the house cruder and house davian border um and then uh we're
just continuing to do that same thing that you know the the hinterlands book
went over phenomenally well sold like crazy which is awesome a lot of good excitement about that.
And so we're just going to continue to do more of those books,
allowing you to kind of hop around the inner sphere and choose which sections you want to be in.
Did that hopefully answer the question? When will the expo come?
The Dragon's Reach? Yeah. It should be next year. Yeah. Yeah. Should be next year.
Great. Doesn't matter. Oh, okay.
Coming back to the tool side of things. Yeah.
What are your thoughts about supporting a streaming community,
like, for example, people who stream on Twitch or on YouTube for tournaments?
That are done in Alpha Strike or in Classic.
How would you see us providing support for that?
I don't know, maybe having art packs with logos or anything that can be used
to design overlays and stuff like that.
Oh, so just packages where we would give out a free use these templates?
For example, or support them by
maybe making them the
official streamer for a specific tournament for example
for the european championship it would be a really nice
thing if you had a twitch channel somewhere where you
can point everyone who's not able to come here
but still want to watch it and then you can just say here this is the official
channel and um is there anything or have you thought um it is the the problem
with labeling something as official.
Is that that means that if it kind of goes off the rails, then that's on us, right? Yeah.
And so we have to, it doesn't mean we can't do it. It just means that we have to be careful about.
That the, the, the people involved, that what they are doing,
it just requires more oversight on our side.
Sure. And so it's, it's, it's more work, it's more time.
It also often sometimes can mean less freedom and flexibility on the side of
those that are running the streaming.
Um and you know so for example
you have the um the
penny arcade has been running a
alpha strike mech warrior destiny campaign
we've been coordinated with them to do the
black remnants force pack that we released but technically
we've never said this is an
official thing that is official battle tech
um because they want to be able to go off
sometimes and do weird wacky stuff that maybe doesn't quite
fit um so we're open to
having those discussions but just be aware that
that's part of why there's not a lot
of official attached out there just because it requires a lot more time and
effort and and the guidelines are a lot tighter and often people don't want
that right they want to be looser they want to do more crazy and wild things
that really wouldn't be appropriate within what is an official thing yeah i'm.
Well, maybe there's a possibility to have some corporations,
because you said there are a lot of people playing Alpha Strike,
there are a lot of tournaments, and it's an explosion of people who are actually interested in it.
Maybe there would be a possibility to do corporations, maybe not with the official
stamp, but just like a corporation to stream such a championship like this one.
To show what the community does.
So it's not on you, you're only You only give a window for the community to
show what they do themselves and others to watch, to get ideas,
to get in contact.
So that would be another one. I'm probably going to remember this anyways,
but put that in an email and I can take that over to our events coordinator.
And see, is there a way to kind of thread that needle?
Meaning it's not necessarily us creating a whole bunch of official support,
but instead you're coming to us and then we're simply boosting the signal, right?
We're just making all of the communities where, hey, they're doing this event.
You know, you guys may want to just watch this.
I'm actually not a streamer so it's not for me
but oh no sure but it's uh i was just thinking for
example we when we have the official no sorry again
that were uh if there's the european um alpha
strike championship or classic um that would
be perfect if there would be a stream yeah of someone who
is commenting on it yeah and you being here
having a commentary on it yeah on the
stream that would be kind of an official touch because you were here yeah and
still it would be a personal thing of the streamer who's doing it yeah so something
like that would be awesome i think absolutely we can we can take a look at that
i have no problem having that discussion seeing what we might be able to work out cool,
Great. So, my next question is, is there planning for new computer games,
PC games like Battletech from HBS?
We know that PGI, MacRawyer, Five Mercenaries, Clans, they are working still on it.
So, are there plans for other games?
I'm not aware. As far as I'm aware, the only ones continuing to work on the computer games are PGI.
Did that drop yet? They had a new expansion, the Ghost Bear expansion,
which I think is out. Yeah.
And then they're, had they announced?
I know they're working on another one. I can't quite remember.
I think that one is also out already.
Is it already out? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, they made a new for the mercenaries.
Shadow of Kerensky. Yeah, Shadow of Kerensky.
I know, I'm not going to say what it is, because I don't think they've announced
it yet, and I don't have the right to, I can announce our stuff all I want if I want to.
They are working on even another expansion after that. So they're continuing to do that.
That I'm aware no one else is working on other computer games.
I'm actually incredibly grateful that PGI is still doing a great job.
I loved the clans. I just thought it was fantastically done.
Voice acting was great. Uh, we, in fact, uh, me and my team,
my, like my son, his friends had played through it and we were just re-talking
about, I, if there was one small critique, I wish it had been a little more difficult.
Um, but the, when you're trying to get a whole hero off, um,
before they, uh, on, uh, on Edo, that was a fantastic mission.
It was great to like, see it, um.
And, uh, but, you know, outside of that, it's nothing else is going on.
Uh, but you know, we're, we're all here for the long haul.
Uh, and it always comes in cycles. You know, there was a good 10 to 15 years
where absolutely nothing was happening.
And then suddenly PGI came a lot. Well, let me be clear. MechWarrior Online
was there the whole time, but there wasn't a lot going on, right? It was that one style.
Yeah. Uh, and then suddenly MechWarrior 5 comes out. So you have MechWarrior
Online, you've got MechWarrior 5 and all those expansions and And PGI's biotech
game was just phenomenal.
So yeah, we don't have any say in that because that part of the license,
we have no control over whatsoever.
They were usually really good at trying to work together.
So the team at Piranha does a fantastic job of coming to Ray and the team and
saying, hey, here's the lore that we want to do. What do you think?
And then we comment on it.
But we just don't have any ability to go, You know, I would love to,
you know, press play and get another Battletech version.
Uh, or my dream would be to have like, uh, you know, a Stellaris,
uh, meets Europa Universalis, right?
Like some crazy Succession Wars style game. That would be, I could lose a month
of my life, I think, to play that.
Um, but yeah, so I'm not aware of anything else going on, but,
you know, again, very grateful Piranha is still giving us some really cool expansions.
At this point, um, more for the fun, uh, when, uh, did you, uh,
know anything when we will get the Battletech movie or the Netflix series?
Oh, that's, uh, that's complicated. Uh, well, the first answer is once again,
that's part of the license that we don't own.
Um, so, so for those who are actually curious, uh, almost any long lasting IP,
it gets complicated, right?
It gets, parts of it get sold and cut up.
So in, you know, I think it was 99 FASA Interactive Technologies,
which was a company that Jordan and Ross had made as sister companies to FASA
to make games and that was sold, or to make computer games, that was sold off to Microsoft.
So Microsoft owns the electronic gaming rights to everything Battletech and
Shadowrun related and they still own it to this day the movie rights then are
currently owned by a company called Tornante,
and that was you know because it was owned by Topps and then the licensed Topps
was WizKids then Topps it's now owned by Fanatics it's this whole complicated
skein so ultimately we have no say or input on anything like that.
I myself have read, I think, three different movie treatments,
one of which was actually pretty good, and it went nowhere.
That being said, the reason why it's never happened is,
Um, and this is, this is me putting together a supposition. I don't know.
Uh, but I think my supposition is, is really accurate, which is Hollywood likes
to be able to sign one thing and they like to then have it all right.
And with the contract divided up amongst multiple companies,
um, that makes it complicated and, uh, lawyers don't like complicated.
And I think that's one of the biggest parts. Could you ever get it all unified together?
Once again, I don't know if that's possible because companies at the scale of
Microsoft, they never sell anything off. They don't need to.
It's better to just sit on it and not let somebody else make money off of it, unfortunately.
So I would love to see that. Once again, I've talked with like two or three
Netflix executives, and we've talked about that both Battletech and Shadow would
make amazing animated series or movies, whatever you want.
There's so much. There's so much and it doesn't happen.
And so the only consolation, because of course, who doesn't want an amazing
Battletech movie, right?
The only consolation I have is that it's always a terrible roll of the dice
of whether it will actually be good or not and instead we might get you know
the halo tv series which was,
terrible beyond belief or anything that happened to stumble yeah exactly right
so there well so so i would argue not boy we could fall down that rabbit hole
i think there is a few amazing pieces of new star wars work like i think and
your is phenomenal there's a whole pile of.
Just awful stuff. Right. And so that's always the gamble.
And so really, of course, I still want the movie badly, but I console myself
with the fact, yeah, but it could be terrible.
So that's a long winded way of trying to say, cause everyone asked it.
Cause of course we all want it, but I kind of have to tell a little bit of the
story about why it's so complicated and why it's really hard to see it happen.
And I just don't know because of all of that, if it ever really will.
I just know some of them, what you told about, I think at this point,
if I wouldn't ask, we would be asked, why wouldn't you ask?
Literally everywhere I went, all over the world, that was one of the questions. I totally get it.
So we got presents. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. Absolutely.
On that note, did you see the Hyatt Steel animated?
Yeah, absolutely. What do you think about those? I loved them.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, they went, enough set. Yeah. No, fantastic.
There might've been a little tear as I'm like, Oh, Fulman, we can do this.
We're, we're right there. The technology exists. Oh, they did a great job.
Yeah. Really loved them.
Great. So, uh,
the line hello and welcome back our
uh device uh the
card was full so i saved
uh what we uh talked uh now and um i make new batteries in and uh we have a
clean memory card i just take another look because I don't trust my device.
Yeah, so it looks fine. So my question was, in the US, after 75 years,
the copyright is gone.
But Microsoft or the other company still hold the license.
And do you know how long it will be until the 75 years are over?
Well, I mean, we just celebrated 40 years, so 35 more.
But yeah, there's a difference between the ownership of the copyright and then
the protection of the copyright.
And at the end of 75 years, unless you have interesting ways to kick the can
further downstream and give yourself a couple more years,
it then falls into a common usage and one can then be able to use it.
Yeah. Um, so, uh, I mean, I guess I could look to be that old,
but if I, you know, who knows?
Luckily that is far future needs problem. And so for now, we'll just have to
deal with the fact that Microsoft owns that and Tormante owns the movie and television rights.
And we'll just keep making it and have an awesome tabletop games. Yeah.
We all hope that Catalyst will gather all the license back together.
That would be a dream. Yeah. It would just be a dream.
Alright, you have another question.
Yeah, I wanted to ask you about something I was wondering about for a couple of years, actually.
It is obvious that it is an accepted fact that fans are using a lot of assets
from Battletech, like pictures,
faction logos and Mac pictures and everything, for creating websites and maybe things like this.
Can you talk about that? Is there a problem in any way concerning copyright
stuff or anything that comes to mind for you about that?
As always, it's a little complicated.
The copyright laws in the U.S., they tend to work in a way that if you are aware
that somebody is violating the copyright, then you must pursue that copyright.
And you must protect it. So it kind of forces you to be proactive.
And so there are other companies in our industry, shall we say,
known for being much more strident in trying to stop people from doing that.
I try really hard, Catalyst tries hard not to go that far.
If you look at the example of, say, Lucasfilm and Disney, Um,
there is a good decade or more when they were, they'd sue everyone under the sun.
The second, somebody put a website up, uh, and they finally came around to a
point where, unless you're trying to make money off of it.
Or you're just being really terrible with how you're using it,
the strength that the community gives to each other through the use of that,
uh, those types of images in websites and paraphernalia for conventions and merch and all that,
that it's far better for the community to be able to do that.
Uh, and so, uh, yeah, there, it's very rare that we come out and have to tell
somebody, you can't do that.
Uh, it's really the dividing line is I'm going to do this and then I'm going
to start making money off of it. I'm going to start making money off of it.
Then we need to look at, well, you either you can't do that or you have to have
a license to be able to do that.
Outside of that, if you're just making it up for yourself, then you're all good.
It's not going to be a problem.
I'm sure a lot of people like that answer.
I know a lot of people who do fan webpages of a specific clan or specific faction,
and they use tons of images and stuff.
And again, by the absolute letter of the law, we probably shouldn't allow that.
But again, we believe strongly in how much that allows the community to feel
enmeshed and empowered to be a part of it and help others be a part of it.
And so, uh, it's just really important to allow, to figure out a way to draw
a careful line, uh, you know, and, and push it way up next to that line for
us, which is you can't make money off of it and also your official license.
Yeah. If you're out on that other side, then awesome, vote it out and make fun stuff. That's great.
Yeah, it helps to keep the, uh, the community a lot of it. Absolutely.
Absolutely. Yeah, I've been wondering because I had a website up and I was always
wondering, is that kind of legal what I'm doing here because I do not own any
of the copyright or whatever.
But I have the feeling that many people in the community just are testing the
waters, nothing happens, and then they continue doing it because it helps the
community and that's fine. Understood. Okay, that's a good answer.
Okay, I have two more. Okay, then I will have a small one.
There's an alternative Battletech rule set.
It was known as Destiny. I just forgot the new name.
Network? No, no, he's talking about... No, no, Override.
Override. Yeah, Destiny Override. Do you know it?
I will be able to know that name. Do you know Omega from Death from the Battle?
Okay, yes. Yes. So they make the small child of Total Warfare and Alpha Strike.
And my question is, do you think or do you ever plan about it to make it an
official third rulebook?
We've thought about it because you will. uh i
have run into people around the world uh in
the tour and then i did that are like you know biotech's too
much office strikes too little i want to just wait in the
middle uh and so we've had those conversations uh
and to date um we've
kind of felt like it mixes
the pot it mixes things up it
muddles it a little too much if they're too close no um
and right now we don't seem to
have any problem with people playing games
with people grabbing uh the the rule
books and the and the new plastic bottles and so
i'm not going to say never but we don't have any current plans
to try to do a middle ground rule set okay plan
okay sorry something i wanted to ask also for a very long time i would be interested
in how would you describe the the process of um developing the main story of
battletech how does that work uh very chaotic um.
Usually what ends up happening, and this started way back in mid-facet years,
usually what will happen is every three to four years.
All of the line developer along with the top novelists will all get together for a weekend.
And everyone will have come in kind of reacquainting themselves to storylines
and everything that's gone before.
Uh often the line developer will have
developed a whole bunch of plot threads that they
want to see happen and then we literally
lock ourselves in some rooms for like two
straight days of you know 12 18 hour days
sliding pizza under the door um and
like the last one we were at there was maps all
over the door there was probably 200 sticky
notes uh that were constantly you know
this character being moved into this storyline or into this storyline and
so it's really a kind of a free-form brainstorming of
all these creative people crafting what we
want to see happen and then coming out of
that the line of our developer will then generate a you know big set of documents
this is what we agreed to but really that plan then never survives contact with
the enemy like I would say 60%
of that plan will end up being what transpires over the next few years.
But just the nature of once, you know, we'll have a line that's literally,
you know, okay, we've got this storyline novel right here.
And then the novel's written. And when the novel's actually written,
some of the things that happen, you're like, oh, this is way cooler because
it went a little bit up here and that's going to bridge over here.
So that's going to change this whole line.
And oh my gosh, that's great. That's a new whole direction that we didn't think of in that meeting.
And so you always want to be flexible to allow the novelists to not feel completely shackled, right?
Like they're painting within certain lines, but they still get a fair amount of freedom.
And that freedom can allow them to create things that suddenly adjust.
And so then, you know, once again, three or four years will go by and you'll do the same thing.
We'll all get together and we'll see how much did we
shatter and not use at all and how much can we put back
together and so it's and it's been that way like i
said since the first one the first
one that i'm aware of i think was in 93 or 94
right before i started and then in 96 i was at the second one right after i
got hired and really the reason they had the first one is because they did the
clan invasion they did the the
blooded prince food trilogy it was awesome everyone's having a great time.
And they had kind of painted themselves into a corner of, well, then what do we do now?
Right? Like, where did we go? And so if you, for those that like were fans reading that material,
there was almost a five-year gap when very little large scale happened because
they hadn't planned, they had planned the Klan invasion.
And then once that was done, it actually took them a while to realize,
wait a second, we're, we're painted in a corner.
How do we get out of that? and then part of
getting out of that was the whole twilight the clan series that then
was developed in uh was developed in
like 95 and then the first novel started
coming out in 97 or 98 for the twilight the clan series and so um uh and again
that's just kind of a natural up and down uh of these so if you know anyone
who loves reading all the star wars novels or all the Star Trek novels, any of these big,
huge shared universes, you'll see times when there's weird down times that like
not a lot seems to be happening or some novels will come out and you'll be like,
wow, that didn't seem quite connected as well as it should have been.
Uh, and some of that is just the nature of dealing with this gigantic thing that we've created.
Um, and you have all these, uh, very passionate people working on it.
And that means sometimes it just doesn't go quite the way you wanted it to.
And sometimes it goes fabulously well.
So that was a very long-winded answer, but hopefully that shows you just how
it's kind of really chaotic, but then you can create some really cool things
out of it and how that's done.
Kind of reminds me of how I'm developing things.
Yeah, I mean, to be honest, it's really what almost everyone does in any type of setting.
And it's very interesting because you said that when the clans came in,
there was this gap and people thought, wait a minute, what are we going to do with it now?
We had this discussion in one of the previous podcasts also where people said,
well, if the clans would have continued the way they were described in the first
three books, they would have gone straight to terror without any opposition
because they were too good.
And so they had to be written down a bit
and you had the feeling in the coming novel in the following novels that
there were desperately or the authors were desperately trying
to to write them back a little so that there's something
yeah okay so i i read that you read
it correctly yeah absolutely i uh i came around
i i love the clans i mean i at the noah cats
i love them to death i've written plenty of times right
lots of love there but there were
so many things done for the clans from a story
perspective that were fantastic but from
a game perspective were terrible yes right um so
for example like the double names um when
you're reading lethal heritage and you're reading the
whole he names it a mad cat and then it switches back over and you find out
that it's a timber wolf and like that was so cool and felt very realistic right
like think back in world war ii when Both sides were naming the other tank, their own thing.
And then you didn't know what it was called until sometime late.
It went, so it's very authentic.
I love that. What it means is that then you have two names for every single unit out there.
And if you're bringing new players in, it confuses them to death.
30 years later, and we still deal with people totally confused.
Wait until you get the German translation of that. No, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
There were four names, so that's even worse, right?
Yeah. And so there's basically seven data points that make up a weapon.
And you could have taken four of those data points and tweaked them and made
them really powerful, and instead, they took all seven.
And not only did they make them really powerful, but in some things they just,
oh, we're just going to double the range. Why not? Right.
And so what that then creates is, again, it created a situation where the flavor
didn't exactly match the mechanics.
So when Brian and I developed the heavy,
large lasers that were in the Field Manual Crusader Clans that were really close
weapons that did tons of damage close, That was kind of our homage to what we
felt the claim should be.
Honorable, single combat right in your face. As opposed to, I remember when
3058 came out and it had the Fire Falcon V.
So here's the Fire Falcon that walks eight and has two ear-large lasers on it.
So 25 hex range with a targeting beer.
75% of heavy and assault.
Oh, throw the salt max out there. 75% of all the heavy maps don't move,
don't run faster than eight.
And that's, uh, at that time we were playing with rolling maps.
So if you're moving, you're going to put out another map. And then I realized
the fire Falcon could just walk backwards.
And just kill anything. You would never be the entire industry force would never
catch it. And it would just slice you up.
And that was just the antithesis of everything the client stood for.
And so there's always been this interesting disconnect between the mechanics
side of how it was done, uh, and the flavor side that haven't ever really, um, meshed very well.
I think in my head, um, now, obviously the game's doing fantastic right now.
We're still here four years later. uh but it's
just again to my mind it still comes back to when you're
creating a shared large game large
universe you're just going to run into these
times when things don't quite all work together yeah
and that's just the nature of you know
a beast like this yeah yes they still have a lot of people running
around saying everything before the clan is battle tech and
then i just fade out and don't want to know about that they're
they're all around so it's
an other theme yeah so i will say and
i have run into that as well uh you know the the
the question i always get so right after the when is
a movie ever going to happen the next question is you
know what is your favorite mech and then the next one's what's
your favorite era you like to play in and luckily
i love it all you know whatever
era it's the era that i throw some dice on the
table and i'm playing um i think each of
them bring very different styles and different fun
and things to enjoy uh but ultimately at the
same time we have this giant huge universe
uh and if you want to play just in the succession wars you know awesome uh you
know there's a million mechs to buy and enjoy um we try and still support that
with source books and novels every now and then that touch on these various eras.
I personally think you're missing out on some fun that other eras bring,
but you know, each of us are going to find that thing that we enjoy the most, and that's awesome.
It was really fun that you can play with the Succession Wars mechs in the newest era.
I also mostly played the Succession Wars.
I really liked the old tin mechs.
I mostly liked the Succession Wars designs and I didn't get into the clan era,
and then also because there are so many mechs I didn't really like.
That was a point for me, the miniatures, that I didn't get into play.
This changed for me with the new plastic miniatures and now I start to play
in the newest era, and mostly with Alpha Strike,
because it shuts the complexity down.
But you can play there with your old necks.
Because I went to the European Championship and made my list in this era for Alpha Strike.
And I got all my old mechs because I wanted to play with painted mechs and grab the new variants.
And so that was really cool in BattleTech that the miniatures continuous could be used.
Yeah, you lost some and there can be plenty new, but that's cool.
No, that was a huge kudos to Ray because that was his, Ray Rust is the current
Maltec Blaine developer and he was the one that came up with the idea and the
rec guides to make sure that in addition to the new mechs that always come along,
that you're, we're putting modern era variants that exactly match the weapon
configurations of the mechs from the Succession Wars and the Klein Invasion.
And we have heard that over and over again
the number of people that are now playing in the
new era because it felt good that they could take this mech they've had forever
and pull this thing over and go oh what's this new stuff and and still feel
like it invited them into play instead of you must go buy the new thing and
so yeah huge kudos to wait for that yeah you saw a lot but.
But they hardly need paint.
We all have our piles of shame. Oh, yes.
Or as one of my friends, Jared, he's like, I don't know, Piles of Opportunity.
Yeah. Yeah. Match practice.
Yeah. It's just piles to play with. That's right. Piles play with.
Will there be new plushies? Yes.
Yeah. Actually, we've been. So we, the company that made the previous ones,
it's just been really difficult to try and get new ones out.
And there's actually very few companies that make plushies
as many as there's like billions in the world it feels like there's
just not a lot of companies that do it um but we
are absolute negotiations with them
uh we want to do some client max because i really need a client plushie but
yeah we those will absolutely be coming also the catapult uh i can't tell you
which max okay i can just tell you that more are coming okay so he will write
in his mail that you should catapult.
I really like doing stuff for the conventional.
Also, I need to, anytime I need fonts, is there actual Battletech fonts,
like the actual Battletech signing with an E?
There's an old Battletech font that you can find.
Oh, I don't think it's an actual font. I think it was created. Yeah.
So the, the battle tech that we're currently using was actually made by Herbine
schemes for the battle tech game. Yeah.
And it was so fantastic that we just took it and adopted it.
And I don't believe that is its own unique, its own fault that we purchased.
It was something that was created.
And so you're just asking, um, could we put out some digital assets that people
could use, including that logo?
Is that what you're asking? that add that to the email
that you're sending to me i will follow
up with the appropriate people i don't see why we
could do that uh but i'll need to ask some questions of
some people and and we can do that i built
for myself i built some more letters uh that looks like the same phone yeah
to to get other words was the same feeling and uh but it's uh yeah that's a
lot to do and If there would be a font that would be great,
I will ask. That's a great question.
Yeah, I have one last one, actually, off my list.
You know that the people in Battletact are incredibly enthusiastic and they
love the whole franchise and everything.
And there are a lot of events going on.
People organize cons like this, but also tournaments like 2v2, things, whatever.
Also online with MechWarrior Online and different games, not only tabletop.
Of course there are also blood name
tournaments for example in mc warrior online we organized a
couple of those and there's always this discussion controversy
or no whatever that word is um when is a blood name a real blood name is it
official is it certified can i actually use that name or is that a false name
or correct one an official one whatever this discussion is going on forever
Do you have an answer to that?
Um, I don't off the top of my head because I'm not sure I've recently had that
discussion with Ray to see if he has a,
a new set of rules that he applies to that, add that to the email list.
All right. I will discuss with Ray and see if we can't come up with a definitive
answer that we could actually publish and let people know. Because yes,
it actually has been messy and chaotic for decades.
It seems like we have to make a new meeting to discuss your answers.
I have to be honest here. I'm coming along. But I heard something that there
are CGL agents that are, you know, certifying those tournaments or the results.
I believe that is the case. But once again, that's one step beyond who I really deal with day to day.
And so I can follow up and get those questions answered. All right. So that was...
On my list actually okay i have a few more um
so uh will you sell
um um max already
painted in the future as some uh
we are playing around with doing
a full force pack that's all pre-painted um
i think we've decided we're going
to do that i'm not exactly sure um but yeah
the putting the the single pre-paints in the four star
league boxes was just a total experiment and
to see how it would go uh so far it's gone
over wonderfully well and so yeah we want
to play around with that at the same time we want
to be very careful because we know
how much the community loves painting and
so um you know for example
the first two mechs that
we painted already had those models out and then the last two were new models
that hadn't been released yet and so then we're gonna release those unpainted
models in the near future um so there's always kind of a balance between there's
some people that love to buy the pretty painted,
but plenty of people don't want to be able to paint.
And so there's always a bounce between those, but absolutely.
We're looking at doing a full force pack, all pre paints and see what happens. Oh, great.
Okay. Um, there was a, um.
A Battletech era, I've got the name right, the Dark Times, where new figures.
With wheels under the mechs.
What's Dark Times? Dark Age. Dark Age. Dark Age. Dark Age.
So are you planning something to do with that?
No, because all of those, the click base and the wheel and all of that is actually
copyrighted by WizKids, they own that.
So then we would have to go and work with them.
Um, and so far we just haven't felt the need for that.
Again, it seems like we can barely keep up with, uh, what we're doing now. Yeah.
Um, we, uh, and unlike some of the previous areas, like the jihad,
the dark age was very well covered in novels.
Um so that doesn't mean that some you know every
shrapnel almost has a dark age story and we're still touching on the story side
but i don't think we have any desire to go back to the to the to have some type
of releases with the clipness is it all okay um do we know the uh mega mac the uh pc.
Do you play it? Do you like it?
I have played it, yes.
I have some friends of mine from clear back in high school that have been playing
almost every week in a campaign for like years at this point.
Um, I'm, I'm really lucky in that my kids play battle tech and I have a player group around me.
And so whenever I want to play battle tech, it's pretty easy to just sit at the table.
Um, but I have used it. It's very cool for what it does. Absolutely. Oh, great.
Um, so, um, what is your, um, your project in the battle tech universe? What you love the most?
Oh goodness um i mean
it's a couple things one those meetings
where we you know lock all
of us together in a room for a couple of days and it's
just us bringing all of our passion for
this universe all the creative ideas that we
have in our head and then uh you
know literally sometimes all those yelling at each other no you're wrong
my idea is better like just and figured out
how to get through all of that to come out the other side with
a really cool story and being able to look back and see those moments with you
know the entire twilight of the clans series and then the the various eras um
that is just one of the best experiences that i have um i think another.
Thing that i find really amazing is
that you know i've been doing this um longer than
almost anyone else has ever worked on this game there's there's a few novelists
that um are longer than i am uh stackpole for example but so far as being on
the other side on the game development side There's no one that can do as long as I have.
And so to still sit here and still be able to do a new thing in the universe
that allows players to experience it in a new way, that's incredibly exciting to me.
So for example, when the Battle Mac manual was published.
Um, the, uh, the battlefield support rules that are in that,
uh, I was able to go in and draft those because I had seen so many players that
are like, I love the idea of combined arms,
but just don't want to pull out all the record sheets for, and all the extra
rules for vehicles and infantry.
Um and then basically alpha strike
showed that you could have all that really well in a
combined arms aspect but they wanted in a classy
battle tech and so the battlefield support rules were
that vision and then the latest one is actually aces
um which is there's um
there's been plenty of rpgs of
board game rpgs like say bloomhaven that have
an incredibly good um ai
system that you solely or
cooperatively are playing against there's been
a couple of tabletop miniature games that are
okay but there's never been one
that's just phenomenal in my mind um and
so to be able to bring that experience
not only to battle tech but what might just you
know talking with pure hyperbole
here might be able to actually change tabletop
miniature played completely as hopefully
we're bringing in a whole new crowd of people that have only ever played
board games and i've always wanted to try tabletop
miniature games but it's always pretty intimidating uh and
because most board games the most successful board games of the last decade
or even two decades have all been co-op and so then like versus is icky which
personally i don't understand because i love slaying my enemies across the table
right but most people really like the co-op.
And so this idea that a, that an incredibly well-crafted AI engine and a co-op
play something that might have a whole pile of board game players playing battle tech, that just.
Blows my mind right that just makes me smile and so
30 years on i can still be a part of bringing something like
that out that's just magical for me
uh actually there was a kickstarter not a while ago that they just uh kickstarted
this idea where what for who i i had to look but um yeah they got small magnets
with chips and the camera you use a camera,
upside the battlefield and with the chips they already know where the miniatures
are and then you can move it and they say it go to this location.
So I'll have to hunt that out. I have yet to see a digital merging of Tim Tump
manage games or war games that really works.
Most of them end up just not feeling very good.
Um, and so then they die. There's been quite a few games that have tried it.
Uh, it'd be amazing if somebody actually managed to pull it off. So I'll do a lot for that.
I don't know if they finished it. I just saw the price and say,
okay, I want it, but, uh, at the moment I don't have the money and then I forgot
about it till now. Yeah. Ultimately the.
There's nothing inherently bad with trying to create a digital merger into the
board games, but I think too often they're missing the point.
Like some, there's a, um, there was a, uh, Arkham horror app,
which is, I don't know if you guys have played Arkham horror.
It's a giant board game and the app just helped you keep track of things.
So it actually was pretty useful.
I've used it. But too often they're trying to replace parts of the board game
or the tabletop miniature experience.
That is the whole reason I'm at the table.
Don't take my dice away from me. Like the physiological, like,
you know, rubbing the dice and hearing them hit the table.
That's part of why we're here, right? Don't take that away.
And so too often they remove what is part of a whole reason why we play these
games. And when you do that, I think it's when they fail.
That's what you sometimes have a feeling or a wreck for players who play Mega Mech.
They say, oh, the rolling of the diesels was so bad or so hard.
I said, did you mention our last board game?
Our last Battletech round? What
happened there? There were so much stories about worse or lucky dices.
And it comes also when you play it on the board.
But on Mega Mech, you play much faster and you get more of these incomes in a shorter time.
I think that's a strange feeling, but it's nothing so different.
And it's sometimes filled.
Well, it's really fascinating because it's,
you know, think back over the last 10 stories of a game, not Battletech,
some other game, that you told to somebody else, family, friend, another gamer.
And how many of those were victories and how many of those were failures?
And having talked with a ton of people and asked
this question everywhere almost everyone are
like yeah it's mostly if i did really well i'm not
going to tell them what i did bad and i'm like okay now switch that to battle
tech and how many times do you share a story and it's actually in the crazy
defeat that you most often tell the story and most of the time it's in the crazy
defeat And it's actually one of the things that makes, I think,
Battletech really unique in that it tells a story every time you roll the dice.
And often the best stories that you love are those unbelievable defeats, right?
You walk on and the crazy BB straight into the Atlas with the floating crit,
three engines dead, first turn, right?
Um and any other game right they're
like flipping the table they're stomping away and don't
get me wrong we all can get a little mad about that but most of
the time we're just laughing our heads off and then telling that story over
and over again right um and that's just kind of amazing to me that there's something
about that shared story that happens when rolling dice in battle tech which
is why it's you know four years later and i'm sitting here in germany be talking
together about this, because it's just phenomenal.
And the way it builds communities and has us all being here together.
I don't know if you know, Decent 2, the latest version of the Decent board game,
they made a companion app, and we played it, and that's what's really nice,
because it doesn't take anything away,
and only add the part,
some more info digital,
yeah but i have everything on
the board my my miniatures the
enemies the trees everything and i
think they did a really good job to to add the the extra so that you can play
a co-op and don't have a dungeon master like a decent one yeah absolutely that
that can be made to work yeah um but again that's still not a tabletop miniature
game i'm not sure i've ever seen a tabletop miniature game,
bring the digital side in in a way that actually works.
Um, and you know, maybe someday, someday I'll figure it out,
but there's something about just moving the models and pulling your string or the laser round, right?
It's, it's just such a visceral feeling that you want the physicality.
And if I'm playing digital, you know, I can go play Scaram all the time, working on this case.
Here's a great scene to battle tech. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. One other one. How do you play city maps? How do I play city maps?
Go to the streets with the hexes, so a building has a full hex.
Or sometimes we make the watchlines like the buildings are painted on the maps, printed on the maps.
I've done it every which way.
It's almost like the combined arms that I was just talking about with Battleforce.
I love the idea of playing upon Battletech maps with buildings.
The implementation of playing with buildings often is so time-consuming to track
damage at every hex that I usually just kind of sidestep it or the further all
Castle Brian hexes so nothing can be destroyed.
Um, no, I've printed out like the, the buildings that are on our city maps.
Uh, I have giant tubs filled with those ridiculously giant buildings and you
put it down there and it looks awesome, but to actually interact with them and blow hexes up and stuff,
it's one of the parts that is just really hard to do. Um, yeah.
And, uh, um, the point was, uh, how did you use the line of sight?
You have, uh, also two options. You can set only the building,
it's printed blocks, a line of sight, or the whole hex. Oh, sorry.
We do the full hex. The full hex. Yeah.
Because if you do only the building, my reasoning is, well, then why are you
not doing that for tree hexes?
And so for me, it's like it's considered to be filled the hex.
And that's part of the little idiosyncratic parts of the Battle Tuck.
Okay. The size of the miniatures,
are they now, especially the size between the Macs, are they now the real different
size or do you plan something that the Atlas is much, much bigger than the Locust or something?
Uh no when we were doing the new these new plastics that came out starting in 2018 i think,
um a lot of time and effort went into locking
down this is what the size is this is what the
scale and doing the sizes all the way up
at each time and then as each one comes
out it's carefully slotted in like there's a they'll do the dimensions and the
volumetrics and then even when all of that's done and the STL is done and we'll
then drop it in between the max where it's supposed to be in a set of renders of the max,
just as one final look to go, no,
I think it needs to be just a little bigger, a little smaller.
So no, a lot of effort goes into trying to scale those exactly right.
I've got two more questions from my co-host.
One is, when you do the next law meeting, it would be nice if you make the German
podcast battle pod something in-game.
Keep that in mind. Yeah, he will write it in the mail.
Okay, and then the last question is, what is your feature vision of Battletech,
or how do you see Battletech in like 10 years?
That is a great question.
So, when we launched the Mercedes Kickstarter at Adepticon 18 months ago, 18 months, 24?
Anyways, when we launched the hit mercenaries, kids started at Adepticon and we just.
And this time again, the card was empty.
I'm really, really sorry, but it was the last question and his answer was clearly good division.
His version was when someone came into a building store, he looked for something, uh, for a kid.
And he knows like Star Wars or Star Trek or tabletop war humor is that he not
only knows these traits,
but he knows Battletech as well.
So Battletech is one of the best.
Yeah, I don't know what else. I don't know what else.
Really sorry that the card was empty again
and checked it too late just after this
question I was gonna say goodbye
to him so I have to do it now I'm really sorry for the inconvenience I'm sorry
for my English and we make a follow-up podcast with Renner we talked about that he set yes,
and we will add it to our mail.
So thanks for joining us. Thanks for taking your time and here's this podcast with Rwanda.
If you have any questions or something else, just tell us and we'll see what we can do.
So have a good night, have a Good day, good evening, and till next time,
and now something in German.
SD-Karte was I was about to do 30 seconds later or a minute later I was not
getting now it looked like it was good on any way it was a very,
nice conversation with Rumble, the film was also nice, we have another episode about it,
Fragen,
Wünsche Anregungen normal, you can see us wieder zukommen lassen.
Ansonsten noch eine Info.
Wir hatten jetzt leider ein paar technische Probleme auf der Website.
Die sollten jetzt gelöst worden sein.
Ich danke euch alle für die Aufmerksamkeit für eure Zeit, die ihr genommen habt.
Falls ihr sagt, okay, hier, ihr wollt mal was in den Hut werfen,
das war uns ein besseres Mikrofon für außen holen können, als das,
was wir jetzt genutzt haben oder auch für den einen oder anderen von uns ein
neues Mikrofon besorgen können.
Wir haben ja Patrons study, or us also so schreiben.
I thank you all for the Ausnahmsenkeit and until next time. Bye.