>>5777334Oh boy.
Battletech's one of my favorite settings, but I think you hit the nail on the head of it's hard to pull off a ruler quest with dozens of decisions and complicated plans at the same time on /qst/. I think this site does better with more personal, character-focused quests. Don't let me dissuade you if you think you can pull it off, though.
On the setting itself, well, I think a big theme of it is everyone's are in the shadow of a better, slightly more advanced empire in the past. Everyone in-universe Knows the Star League was the shining example of peace and prosperity, that things were better, once upon a time, and now there's only the squabbling disputes of monarchs trying to grab the last bit of that shining example, and still just dirtying it.
There are no paragons, rulers are people, selfish and mistake-prone, even as they try to proclaim that they're declaring wars for the betterment of humanity as a whole. Even when faced with annihilation, they'll try and stab their rivals in the back. I will maintain that some writers tried to make paragons, and that's fundamentally against the setting. It varies from book to book, but I really dislike some factions because of this, that they're clearly the writer's pet faction and they couldn't possibly lose or are doing things for the noblest of causes. (Looking at you, Fedcom and all flavors of Wolf)
The Battlemech is the pinnacle of warfare in this, new age. It is the fundamental building block of the setting. Yes, other things can destroy them, defeat them through numbers or guile, but at its heart, when mechs start getting trivialized, the setting becomes worse for wear, and you may as well take any other number of sci-fi universes.
Final setting cornerstone (to me): No intelligent aliens. This is about what humans can inflict on other humans, and an external alien race cheapens that. Clans are about the closest they come to it, and I think it's handled well, because they're so Different from the inner sphere.
There's a few things that I strongly dislike about the twists the overall setting has gone through, but there's also a goldmine of potential stories to be had. It's a rich universe.
For some amusement about the novels, the writers are apparently contractually obligated to give a certain amount of pages to mech fighting. So you know that when you pick up a book, there's going to be a mech fight eventually, no matter the political wrangling.
Oh, yea, I play the tabletop extensively. F Alpha strike, though.
