Once More Unto the Breach

 It is the mid-90's.  I am in middle-school and realizing that Battletech probably just isn't for me.  The reasons aren't complicated.  Even though everybody rolls their eyes at it now, the Battletech cartoon won me over with it's cheesiness.  But, some things were becoming clear to me:  1) I had no one to play it with. 2) The one time I did try it with a friend, we realized rules were too complicated for our 7th grade selves 3) The setting was too mature for middle-schoolers (making the choice of using a children's cartoon to generate interest in it kind of inane). 4) My parents rightly deduced that hanging out at the local hobby store instead of at, say, summer camp probably wasn't the best call for me from a developmental perspective. 5) Casual violence did (and still does) squig me out.

But there was something else.  Something bigger:  6) From my perspective, all of the factions were terrible.  Again, coming from the fairly black-and-white cartoon show into the constant war crimes of the setting meant there wasn't a single faction I felt connected to.  None of them deserved their victories.  None of them were sympathetic.  Why bother?  By the 8th grade my Technical Readouts were collecting dust on the bookshelf, and I had started flipping through Starship Troopers (an anti-war book) and Lord of the Rings instead.

Even now I am not particularly keen on Battletech's setting.  But I'm starting to understand it's "relevance" a little bit better.  Games are important.  War gaming specifically has something to teach us.  And Battletech has solid and worth-while perspectives that interact with and within culture.

I began to "return" around late 2019.  In that time I've discovered that this little table-top wargame had a number of intersections with my personal life as well.  I'll speak to some of that in future posts too.

I plan on publishing this popup-blog infrequently and only for a limited time.  I'm hoping it will take the following basic setup:

• Some brief update on the Battletech campaign I am planning (I have been working on this for awhile, some of the posts will be written like they take place in the present, but actually happened in the past) and how it interfaced with my life.
• Some thoughts on Battletech in general.  The game, the setting, etc.
• Something not specifically Battletech centered, but still tangentially related.

We'll see how it goes.

Also, just a heads up, I'm moderating the comments on this blog into oblivion.  Behave if you want to discuss anything I've written here.