For Something Completely Unrelated . . . Battletech!

I think I've mentioned a couple times that my first interest in tabletop gaming was BattleTech. I thought I'd take the time to post some house rules for that, my wife and I just tested. It seems to be a common thing that people want to speed up or simplify BattleTech. In most cases, like mine, they still love BattleTech, but just want a quick fix now and again, when the full rules are somewhat (or very) inconvenient.

The main contender right now is Alpha Strike, which is pretty cool, but not my cup of tea. It simplifies the game too much for my liking, removing the components I consider essential to BattleTech's feel, namely hit locations and weapon selection. The Quick Start rules also seem to be popular, but once again I feel them just a little lacking. The current house rules we came up with, though, can be used with the Quick Start rules for extremely fast play, or simply used to modify the full rules.

The rules are a bit like D&D in the feel and way they play. They're extremely simple, and definitely increase lethality, chaos, and random chance. Currently I like using them with the Quick Start rules, and adding Heat management, as I said I consider heat essential.

Here are my current BattleTech house rules:

1) All 2d6 rolls are now 1d12. Any roll of 1 on a table, is rerolled (or accepted as 2 or 12, your choice).

2) "To-hit" rolls of 12 are critical hits, causing double damage. Rolls of 1 are critical failures, usually resulting in ammunition jams.

3) Hit location is rolled on 1d8: 1 Center Torso, 2 Right Torso, 3 Left Torso, 4 Right Arm, 5 Left Arm, 6 Right Leg, 7 Left Leg, 8 Head. Attacks to the rear are rolled as normal, but double damage is scored on any torso hit, critical hits scoring triple damage.

Obviously removing bell curves makes the game more random, but I find that you hit more often this way, meaning the game plays faster. The hit locations are also more random, but I noticed with the normal table it definitely had a tendency to hit out towards in (I'm sure intentional)

Some rules I'm considering using:

4) Movement points are per hex, facing changes don't require movement points, and facing is declared at the end of the turn.

 All of these changes definitely alter the game play quite a bit, and make it a little less tactical, but that's fine for quick play in my opinion. Furthermore I think it lends itself to larger battles (something I like for sure).

I had also considered a lite version of the game that used a derivative of Total Armor Factor (including Internal Structure), probably cut in half. Hit locations would be rolled for critical hits, representing limb destruction. This would be even faster, and better for large group play, but it wouldn't work with the standard record sheets. I might post this later as well.