BattleTech A Time of War

BattleTech Role-Playing Game

by Randall N. Bills (Project Concept), Herbert A. Beas II (Project Development), Paul Sjardijn (Project Development)

A Time of War: The BattleTech Role-Playing Game is the onesource reference for rules governing the role-playing aspect of the BattleTech universe. It includes a new system, designed from the ground-up for both maximum flexibility and compatibility with the Total Warfare series and its companion volumes, Tactical Operations and Strategic Operations. Series/Type: BattleTech/Core Supplement Compatability: Compatible with BattleTech Total Warfare, Tactical Operations and Strategic Operations. Selling Points: Long awaited edition restores playable compatibility between the role-playing system used in the MechWarrior, Third Edition/Classic BattleTech RPG and the tactical game represented by Total Warfare. Modular and point-based character creation rules allow players to choose between "organic" character designs or fast "build and play" type characters. An expansive listing of weapons and equipment for virtually any RPG adventure, compiling equipment published across the entire history of the BattleTech universe, updated to new rules. Role-playing expansions on tactical combat, including special pilot abilities and more detailed tactical combat effects on personnel. All new presentation, including hard cover, full-color.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Science Fiction, Games, Gaming

408 pages, Hardcover

First published November 24, 2010

Reviews

[Costan Sequeiros · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately: A Time of War is an incomplete core for an RPG game. First of, it has too little information on the background of the setting; sure, there are plenty of other books out there for Battletech, but in a core book I'm looking for all the key information about a game in order to be able to play it with that book alone in case I don't own more books, and in this case it's really hard to do with the background provided. The game rules are a strange Frankenstein that tries to blend in a small-scale RPG with a mid-scale tactical combat that can be tied into full-game Battletech; problem is that, most of the time, it wastes a lot of pages on simple rule conversions from one scale to the other, not really developing an interesting system by itself. And the art of the book is really dated, with plenty of drawings that look like taken out of an old FASA book from the 80s Battletech, instead of the high-quality art current RPG books have.

So, even though not all is bad and the systems in the game are functional, I can't say the game itself is good. Probably the best thing is the character creation system, Mechwarrior has always had a great system for that and this one is pretty decent, even if simplified when compared to the old one.