Introducing Battle Century S (Patreon)

Hello friends, rivals and assorted gentlepeople, don't mind me, I'm just going to drop the public beta of a whole new system at the same time that I'm announcing it.

I've been holding to this baby and making small tweaks for a long while, and I've got quite a bit of storytime to share alongside the basic intro to what it does, so let's get to it.

A long, long time ago

Our story begins September 2020. Sometime between the development of the Monsterpunk Bestiary and the Monsterpunk Playbooks, I got the idea to also write an official update for BCG. The game was starting to feel its years, and people deserved to play a version that didn't require referencing a separate errata document.

That month I started writing a draft for what I was tentatively calling "Battle Century G 2E". The idea was to update BCG using some of the skills I learned during the development of Monsterpunk and to modernize the game with mechanics that are more akin to my own sensibilities after all these years since the release of the original game. In theory, it would lift all the individual mechanics from BCG1 as-is (all the existing weapons, powers, etc) and adapt them to a touched-up system that streamlines some of the more complex abilities (transformation, combination, etc.), simplifies the math for increasing attributes and tightens up the combat damage ranges.

At that point I started to discuss with the Discord server about the mechanics that I was willing to change in more significant fashion. They were fruitful and positive, overall. Encouraged by these, the changes become more substantial than simply lifting things as-is. The game slowly takes shape and forms its own identity, clearly distinct from classic BCG at that point. By January 2021, it was pretty clear that what I had in my hands was fairly different from the BCG that everybody was familiar with, to the point some would consider it a different game entirely. This version had a different core mechanic, theatre of the mind (mapless) combat, long-term resource management during downtime and a plethora of other small changes. It was still recognizably of the same family tree: It still had Tension, Genre Powers, and separated pilot and mech rules. It was, however, very different in individual game mechanics, if not in holistic game feel. The GM of the IRL group that I playtested it with, for example, agrees BCS is much more convenient but misses some of the builds that the first BCG made possible. It wasn't going to be 1:1 compatible.

Add to this that I wanted to write a new setting, one on the quality level of Monsterpunk or higher. Doing both the writing and development at the same time would make both processes go slower, and take longer to complete. In the meantime, people would still be playing a BCG that was at its best when referencing an external errata document.

And three more years of telling people to go look up some Google docs was, frankly, unacceptable.

An idea came to mind: Instead of doing all of 2E at once, I could start with a system update for BCG1: It would merge both books, incorporate errata and tweak some extra things here and there where allowed. Those would all be fairly simple things to do on the mechanical end. To that I would add the new setting on top, allowing me to focus on writing that until it was done. This update (what would become BCG Remastered) would give the players who like BCG1 as-is the improvements they deserve, and I could add alternative rules introducing some of the larger changes I had in mind for 2E. The setting could also act like connective tissue as well, helping both games keep a consistent identity.

February 2021 was the public beta release of BCGR. A little under a year later, January 2022, the final version came out. I picked BCG 2E back up again at that point and continued to work on it and BC79 at the same time. (This, incidentally, is part of the reason it took so long to finish BC79) And so, within a few months of BC79's publication, the playable beta of BCG2E is coming out. Only, with a different name. Making the number go up implies that it's an improvement and a replacement, when it really is just a different way to play the game.

What does the S stand for? Nothing specific, like the G in the original BCG. I like to think of it as a combination of "Simple" and "Super", but you're free to interpret it differently.

Okay but what is different exactly?

Well, with the caveat that I'm not going to write down the contents of a 100 page rulebook down here, I think I can make a list of what I think are the 10 most important changes. 

● The Core Mechanic is a a table that goes from 1 to 20, divided into four ranges of 5 (01-05, 06-10, 11-15, 16-20). The results are Twist/Success with Twist/Success/Success with Bonus during Intermissions and Miss/Graze/Hit/Critical during Operations. If you've played Monsterpunk, it's a lot like that.

● You have long-term resources in the pilot's Health, Wealth and the mech's Structure to take care of, plus some opt-in resources like Crafting Points or Intel Points for PC concepts that care about those specific things. This makes Intermission combat like any other Intermission test (and no longer a binary feast-or-famine chore), adds stakes to Operations while keeping Live Another Day as an ability, and helps balance character actions that have disproportionate effects on the narrative if one treats them as a regular skill test.

● I've renamed Genre Themes, Genre Points and genre Powers. Now they're called Ace Themes, Ace Points and Ace Tricks, which helps conceptualize them as in-character quantifiable aspects of the fiction, instead of "meta" or purely narrative mechanics. 

● PL has a mechanical impact. Power Level, now renamed to Pilot Level, gives PCs three different benefits: 1 Ace Trick, 1 Ace Perk and a +1 to all Tests. Ace Tricks are just Genre Powers and remain almost the same as before. Ace Perks are passive bonuses, and replace the specialist upgrades like Duelist Model or Artillery Frame. Finally, PL is also a stat that you add to ALL of your rolls during Operations. This addresses the complaint that nothing "carries over" when switching mechs, replaces the need to buy stats with a static bonus that helps everyone, and quantifies differences in experience between characters in a tangible way. 

● Simplified, more balanced Attributes. Character Attributes are reduced to Fitness, Intellect and Charm, with Awareness, Willpower and Resources being made into functions of Skills and Traits. Mecha Attributes are simply HP, Energy and PL, the former two of which work just as they used to with PL being a replacement for Might, Systems and Speed. Specializing in having stronger weapons, tougher armor or being better at evading shots is represented through Upgrades and Tricks.

● Operations are mapless. There are still Terrain effects and Movement Actions, but it's a lot more like a JRPG, where you're always "in range" to use your weapons, and the movement rules are primarily buffs and debuffs that are themed as the product of positioning or movement.

● Every Turn you have a Secondary and Primary Action. The Primary Action involves a roll, while the Secondary Action is often a minor buff or debuff of some kind. You can now Aim + Attack, Engage + Suppress, Guard + Use a Repair Upgrade, or even Use a Minor Support Upgrade + Use a Major Support Upgrade without having to spend a whole bunch of points into passive Upgrades and spending Energy to do so.

● Initiative now separates combatants into different Priorities (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.), with a low priority number being faster. Faster priorities gain an Advantage to Offensive Tests, while slower priorities give an Advantage to Utility Tests (Maneuvering, Repairs, Support Upgrades, etc.) Obviously, because some builds will always want to benefit from one of these bonuses but not the other, you can change your Priority in the middle of combat using the Speed Shift Secondary Action. You can also change an Enemy's priority by debuffing them to not just go slower, but take away their Offensive Test Advantage. The logic behind Initiative-based bonuses is that, a superior initiative result gives you momentum and makes it easier to be on the offense, while a lower initiative puts you on the backfoot and encourages you to fight defensively. 

● Much tighter combat math. The values for Grazes/Hits/Criticals are fixed per weapon, and while things like Tension and passive bonuses can still affect Damage dealt, it means weapon choice is a lot more important. Weapons without drawbacks or that cause debuffs will always do low Damage, while high-damage or multitarget Weapons are going to have noticeable drawbacks . Because Damage values don't vary as wildly, the game doesn't turn into Rocket Tag as easily as BCGR does. Having said that, if you're worried that this makes the game take much longer, the intended combat duration of 3-5 Turns remains intact. (You can, just as before, extend this with reinforcements, forcing terrain conditions that take multiple actions, puzzle gimmicks, etc.) 

● There's Downtime Actions now. I mentioned in the last post that some people simply don't get what you're supposed to do during an Intermission, and they can only envision the game as a series of fights as a result. Downtime Actions are things that you do between Episodes and without using a Scene to do so. While this doesn't fully solve the problem (which, let's be honest, can only be solved by actually understanding the genre), it mitigates it by helping them find their place in the game world and offering tangible benefits for interacting with it. Downtime Actions draw from the BCG faction management rules, so they also help to make the PCs feel like true political agents in the setting as well.

There's a lot more. Bosses now have phases to make sure that they cannot get focus fired to death without showing off their abilities, Reactive Defenses can stack to compensate for the lack of a Guard stat, there's more Features (including True AI, which was the original inspiration for the version that showed up in BC79), etc. But I'd rather you read it and see for yourself.

BCS is much closer to the kind of game that I like to play and run these days than BCGR is and I hope you like it as much as I do.

BCS will be the focus of my work in the near future. In addition to fine-tuning the existing mechanics, I need to adapt the rest of BCGR and BC79 to it, so it's going to take a while. I do have other ideas for supplements (I've been looking at some of my abandoned drafts for new Monsterpunk classes with renewed interest, for example), but BCS will take priority until it is done.

That's all for now!

Gimmick Out.