From: canders@isr.harvard.edu (Carl E. Anderson)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Genres
Date: 27 Jul 92 18:15:05 GMT
Organization: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

>>>You can suspend your disbelief all you like (in this
>>>case, by the neck until dead) but there's no way giant huminoid robots
>>>will ever be a better military buy than something like a tank.
>For example, once you make the assumption that FTL tracel is impossible, a
>good SF story will extent that in plausible ways, such as having messages
>carried by FTL ship rather than light-speed broadcast.  In BattleTech, they
>start with the assumptions that there is "metal muscle" (I forget what it's
>called), and a direct neural link between a soldier and his 'Mech, which
>are certainly interesting and reasonable assumptions.  But then they
>contradict things we know (e.g. missiles can hit things with great accuracy
>over great distances) so many times that it's obvious that what they wanted
>to do was create a *fantasy* world in which huge robots beat each other up,
>not a *science fiction* world.
>>If giant-robot-type genres are not to your taste, don't play those type of
>>games.
>Saying that Battletech's world is implausible doesn't mean that it isn't a
>fun game.  It just means that it's not a believable world.  There are
>plenty of games played in worlds that aren't believable (e.g. Toon,
>Paranoia) so there's no shame in adding Battletech to that list.  Nobody
>ever accused Car Wars of excessive realism (you can't target windows, for
>example), but that doesn't mean that it's any less fun to play.  It's just
>a game...

	... which very nearly sums up the BattleTech (was Genres) debate.

	While being possibily the progenitor of this debate, I have tried
to stand back and watch (not being perfectly familiar with the game or the
mechanical/engineering issues at hand) but think I will go so far as to
contribute my tuppence:

	Certainly the reality of the giant robots is pretty outrageous
based on anything we can conceive of today.  And their weapons systems are
pretty poor (though I've heard this explained by saying
super-countermeasures are cancelling out the super-weapons).

	I would remind folks that plenty of technological innovations we
think of as standard today were once ridiculed as preposterous with a "It's
very pretty but it will never work attitude".  Airplanes, tanks, firearms,
metal ships, railroads, steam power, space travel - and I'm sure more, were
all looked upon as idle dreams at one point or another.  Why not giant
robots?
	Of course plenty of technological innovations were laughed at as
ridiculous, and are still laughed at as ridiculous.  And rightly so.  And
giant robots could be placed into this category as well.

	It seems to me that, while hardly flawless, the BattleTech
gameworld is not so outrageous as it might appear.  I for one am not
willing to place to much of a bet on what will or will not exist 800 years
into the future.  The BattleTech universe is a somewhat fanciful and
imaginative universe by contemporary standards, but what of it?
	It all depends how much deviation from contemporary
technology/science/whatever you are willing to accept and to play with.  I
don't think the game falls into quite the same category as _Toon_; Even Car
Wars and certainly Paranoia are a little farther off.  I don't think
BattleTech is any much farther from reality than Cyberpunk (as a whole),
and certainly closer than Shadowrun.

	Of course, it is a game, and individual preferences will always be
most important.  I think some good points have been made on both sides,
though, and I will certainly hold them in mind when running any future
games.

Cheers,
Carl

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Carl Edlund Anderson	            	"Hefi ek ok aldri sva reitt vapn
canders@isr.harvard.edu			at manni at eigi hafi vidh kommit."
OR
anderso2@husc.harvard.edu			- Skarphedhinn Njalsson 
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Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc