Battletech and Mobile Frame Zero

Way back in the day, I was into Battletech. Really into it. Like, I had a copy of every novel ever published and all the rulebooks, supplements, and games I could find. I spent thousands of dollars on this game. There’s just something very cool about giant robots destroying each other. I played other games, like Dungeons and Dragons, Shadowrun, Werewolf: the Apocalypse, and some others, but Battletech was my first gaming love.

I eventually lost interest. It happened about the same time that the company FASA went under, so it was a good time for a breakup. I started college and didn’t have enough time to play a tactical game that takes hours to get through.

Cue 20+ years montage. My interests in different games grew and shrunk over time. I played various editions of Dungeons and Dragons, Mutants and Masterminds, and Hunter: the Vigil, and I picked up a ton of other RPGs and tabletop games, including more obscure ones like Sorcerer, Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, Burning Wheel, Continuum, and a bunch of others. I read a little about a tactical game called Mechaton that was played with LEGO robots, but if I wanted robots fighting I could have gone back to Battletech, and I didn’t have that much interest any more.

Somewhere during that time, I found a two-page “game” by John Harper called Ghost/Echo that took minimal rules and created a fun story. It was based on another game called Otherkind Dice, which was in turn based on Otherkind, and Ghost/Echo also added an early version of Moves from Apocalypse World (before AW was released, but from what I understand it was based on discussions during Apocalypse World’s development. As my available time decreased, I grew more interest in simple games like Ghost/Echo. I even created a simple hack that created cool stories about street-level magicians in over their heads a la Hellblazer.

After a while, I started looking into every game I could find based on Otherkind Dice and Otherkind generally. There are a lot of them out there. Among the most interesting (to me) were Ring of Changes, a full-on RPG about alchemists, and Project Black, an adaptation of Men in Black in 8 pages or so. (I do own the Men in Black RPG if you’ve heard of it.) At one point, I was reading a post on Vincent Baker’s blog (Vincent created Otherkind, Apocalypse World, and several other interesting games.) Vincent mentioned a version of Otherkind Dice and how it gives you meaningful choices with potential for catastrophe, saying it is uncommon and yet very tense and exciting at the same time. Then he mentioned other games that use the same system, including one called Mobile Frame Zero.

So in the interest of completeness I looked up MFZ and found that it was an updated version of Mechaton, that obscure war game also written by Vincent. Vincent had sort of passed the game over to Joshua A. C. Newman, who had renamed the game (to distinguish it from Mekton, another giant robot fighting game) and had clarified and changed some rules over years of discussion and play with Vincent and others.

So I looked into MFZ, and what do you know, it’s Pay What You Want! So I picked it up and started looking into it. Looks like a fun game that’s not too difficult to figure out, but with some tactical depth. What’s more, it allows for asymmetric play, so it’s easy to “balance” (and clear how to balance), unlike Battletech (which had several different point-value systems over the years I played, none of which worked well).

I looked around and started following a couple of MFZ blogs that included interesting LEGO builds, including Battletech-style mechs. Then I started building LEGO robots with my 9-year-old and having battles. Then I started re-reading Battletech novels and converting mechs for Mobile Frame Zero use.

So that’s how I got here. Once I figure out how to upload pictures, I’ll be showing some of the things I’ve built (tbh my originals aren’t that good), some alternatives to LEGO that I’ve looked at, and some kits that other people have created.

If you’re interested in playing Mobile Frame Zero: Rapid Attack, you can download them for free directly from the designer here.

Excited about LEGO spaceships? (SPACESHIP!) Check out Intercept Orbit.