Mercenaries in the Battletech Campaign
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Mercenary Campaigns
Mercenary companies make excellent PC organizations for a Battletech™ campaign. The merc outfit fits the classic swashbuckling role playing environment perfectly. The PC's can explore the Battletech universe and adventure through nearly infinite possible environments without having to be tied down to a single nation, house or ideology.
A nice feature of the mercenary campaign is that 4-6 players can easily form their own fully independant unit without having to be part of a larger organization. This permits a more free form exchange between the GM and the players. In a house regular unit the high command (run by the GM) hands down orders from on high for the PC's to execute. In a mercenary campaign the players can exert some control over their own destinies by picking and choosing between different employers and contracts.
All this is not to say that a house regular or periphery campaign is not a good idea, it is juts to say that mercenary campaigns are fun and rewarding.
Resources
This system is based on and extends some of the existing FASA mercenary rules. For both practical and legal reasons, this campaign guide is not designed to be used as a stand-alone gaming system. It is instead designed to be used in conjunction with existing materials published by FASA and Fantasy Productions.
The rules presented here draw most heavily on the systems provided in the first eddirion Mercenary's Handbook published by Fasa in 1987 and on the newer mercenary unit construction rules provided in the Field Manual: Mercenaries, Revised punlished by FanPro.
In my opinion, the first eddition provides a very elegant system for unit construction, organization, and maintanence. Finding a copy of the book is not easy, but there is often one for sale on eBay.
Other books that are well worth reading before running or participating in a mercenary campaign are:
- The Battletech 20 Year Update
- Objective Raids
- The Wolf's Dragoons Sourcebook
- Mercenaries Supplemental
Once you have read and familiarized yourself with the rules here, I invite you to check out the 3044 era campaign setting I have described out here.
Running a Campaign
This guide is designed to provide some information that may be helpful in designing and running a Battletech mercenary campaign. Some parts of these rules depend on the GURPS™ character generation system detailed elsewhere on this web site. Other parts can be used independantly.
This guide is broken into three sections: