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Maybe they felt like they needed a lot of questionable storytelling to lower people's expectations for Hour of the Wolf, that way they could be braced for how bad it turned out to be.
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Jan 21, 2022 01:50
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Strobe posted:Friendship with Republic in Exile ended, Jade Falcon remnant is my new best friend. Not like this... Not like this...
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Jan 21, 2022 02:39
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Holybat posted:All told if CGL just wanted to shitcan the Republic, why bother with the Fortress Republic and what followed through 3145 to 3150? Why not just go "hey after they collapsed into Prefecture X it fell apart at the seams almost immediately"? I think the problem is that you expected them to have some sort of long term, consistent story planning.
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Jan 21, 2022 03:16
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Fortress Republic happened like 15 years and four line developers ago. I strongly doubt the goal was "shitcan the Republic" at the time (or since).
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Jan 21, 2022 03:28
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The only thing I want out of Fortress Republic is for it to be used as the new basis for batshit boondoggle tech books and wacky chassis/variants ala old star league stuff.
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Jan 21, 2022 03:42
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long-rear end nips Diane posted:I think the problem is that you expected them to have some sort of long term, consistent story planning. I think their problem is the other way around, they get an idea and stick with it no matter how badly it is received. The whole ilClan thing is an absolute narrative failure that they had seven years to try and address and just didn't. Instead they used the same outline that they had Ben Rome write in like 2010 and changed it just enough that he couldn't sue them.
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Jan 21, 2022 04:12
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Defiance Industries posted:I think their problem is the other way around, they get an idea and stick with it no matter how badly it is received. The whole ilClan thing is an absolute narrative failure that they had seven years to try and address and just didn't. Instead they used the same outline that they had Ben Rome write in like 2010 and changed it just enough that he couldn't sue them.  And it might just be me, but sometimes it feels like folks in the decision making circle get flustered that randos on the internet guess their twists or resolutions to mysteries, even if it's been signposted super hard. I remember playing MWDA in high school and finding out that Battletech was still around. I picked up some novels and started reading Patriots and Tyrants. So with the Devlin Stone leading a resistance against the WOB after being freed from a camp I thought it tracked pretty well to Arthur Steiner-Davion being imprisoned by the WOB at the end of that book. But instead I guess the actual result was Arthur never showing up in anything ever again and Devlin Stone is just a guy who got programmed to be the bestest at everything 
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Jan 21, 2022 04:29
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Having someone guess your twists is bound to happen. The real skill is finding ways to ask "and what do you think happens next?"
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Jan 21, 2022 04:45
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I like all the crazy Word of Blake manny dominos stuff and the Stone conspiracy knot and the Republic with all its super duper messed up contingency plans. Maybe I'm the only one, but I'd love to have more of it, it felt like the first real 'new' material in the setting since the Clan Invasion (rather than just endless variations of 'Clans menace, IS powers unite, unscrupulous IS politicians take advantage'). All the canon rumors are cool.
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Jan 21, 2022 04:48
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General Battuta posted:I like all the crazy Word of Blake manny dominos stuff and the Stone conspiracy knot and the Republic with all its super duper messed up contingency plans. Maybe I'm the only one, but I'd love to have more of it, it felt like the first real 'new' material in the setting since the Clan Invasion (rather than just endless variations of 'Clans menace, IS powers unite, unscrupulous IS politicians take advantage'). All the canon rumors are cool.  Stone conspiracy knot buddy.Some of my favorite BT sourcebooks are things like Interstellar Players or the Jihad Hot Spots format, I like having a lot more of the rumors stuff too.
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Jan 21, 2022 05:07
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They also trenchantly maintain that Arthur was never going to be Devlin Stone, so if I could ask Coleman one thing it would be what the point of that scene where some WoB dude finds Arthur's body and gets all excited about the things they are going to "do together." Is the end of Arthur's story that some weird old guy had sex with his dead body? Because that's what it reads like now that they pretend him being Stone was never the plan.
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Jan 21, 2022 05:07
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Hey, now. Victor Steiner-Davion is well known for going all-in on behalf of randos he knows nothing about.
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Jan 21, 2022 05:10
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Defiance Industries posted:They also trenchantly maintain that Arthur was never going to be Devlin Stone, so if I could ask Coleman one thing it would be what the point of that scene where some WoB dude finds Arthur's body and gets all excited about the things they are going to "do together." Is the end of Arthur's story that some weird old guy had sex with his dead body? Because that's what it reads like now that they pretend him being Stone was never the plan. Apparently the current line developer said he became a Manny Domino named Lucifer and then vanished with some WoB poo poo.
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Jan 21, 2022 05:29
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Lol at this post from 2015 about Stonequote:No, he's not. He never was. He was never created, intended, designed, characterized, planned, plotted, nor decided as any type of plan, failed or complete. By GhostBear, was that Ben Rome?
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Jan 21, 2022 05:52
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Yes, Ghost Bear is Ben Rome.
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Jan 21, 2022 05:56
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Yep. I absolutely don't believe him for a second, because of the Arthur scene. You're telling me you decided it was a really good idea to end the first book of your FCCW "spine" with a scene that foreshadows how, in twenty years, Arthur will be revealed as a henchman whose claim to fame is killing Paul Masters and is so devoid of substance his wiki article is one sentence long? That's just a dumb lie.
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Jan 21, 2022 05:57
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It's not like it's even particularly hard to kill Paul Masters. Paul Masters almost successfully does so a half-dozen times in the only book he stars in.
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Jan 21, 2022 05:59
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I (probably) killed Paul Masters, you don't see me going around bragging about it.
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Jan 21, 2022 06:07
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Funny that it went from "we couldn't let Victor and the gang save the inner sphere again" to it feeling like everybody in HOTW kept saying over and over that Alaric "VSD incest baby" Ward was the only hope to save humanity from the edgelord queen Malvina
Holybat fucked around with this message at 07:05 on Jan 21, 2022 |
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Jan 21, 2022 07:02
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Judging by the results in the Falcon OZ after she left I'm inclined to believe that might actually have been the truth. It's significantly less uncomfortable to want to play Falcons in the immediate aftermath of that, drat the rest of the consequences.
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Jan 21, 2022 07:05
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Holybat posted:Funny that it went from "we couldn't let Victor and the gang save the inner sphere again" to it feeling like everybody in HOTW kept saying over and over that Alaric "VSD incest baby" Ward was the only hope to save humanity from the edgelord queen Malvina Also they kept Victor around and continued making him a prominent character. Even them saying that, they couldn't bring themselves to not use that awful awful character.
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Jan 21, 2022 08:57
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Defiance Industries posted:Yep. I absolutely don't believe him for a second, because of the Arthur scene. You're telling me you decided it was a really good idea to end the first book of your FCCW "spine" with a scene that foreshadows how, in twenty years, Arthur will be revealed as a henchman whose claim to fame is killing Paul Masters and is so devoid of substance his wiki article is one sentence long? That's just a dumb lie. Devlin Stone was Jeremiah Rose all along.
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Jan 21, 2022 13:57
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Defiance Industries posted:I think the idea of a Republic in Exile died when Stone killed Redburn and told all their troops they were coming to die on Terra Redburn didn't get killed when Stone absorbed the Republic in Exile, he grudgingly fought on Terra and did that super-secret false flag super dumb assassination mission against both Ward and Malvina that got figured out in like 5 minutes. Was it really that hard to just target ONE enemy, so that it was more believable? Holybat posted:
Fortress Republic was a decision made by Wizkids in 2004 or 05, 2013-2015 CGL decided to keep going with the Republic in Fortress Republic. I think they just wanted to give false hope to ROTS fans and to make Clan Wolf "Work" for Terra, which they really... didn't. Except for the part where Alaric invited Malvina to Terra and f*cked up Stone's plans ,because that actually was sort of clever. Even if it was handled poorly. quote:Funny that it went from "we couldn't let Victor and the gang save the inner sphere again" to it feeling like everybody in HOTW kept saying over and over that Alaric "VSD incest baby" Ward was the only hope to save humanity from the edgelord queen Malvina The way that everyone, even ROTS POWs kept saying "oh yeah Alaric is better" was just so, so stupid. And barely even accurate. Alaric's got plenty of his own atrocities and executions under his record. He killed thousands of civilians in the FWL and massacred the Silver Eagles when they tried to surrender. If we could've just had a few character say "Clan is Clan, Malvina's just more crazy, they're both bad". No instead we get Wolf's Dragoons, ROTS, and others all thinking "Oh man we need Alaric he's a way better alternative to Malvina." In unrelated news, my Shrapnel submission moved up 5 queue positions, so 
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Jan 21, 2022 18:23
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Character-driven narrative making major changes to a morally gray universe is the worst thing about BattleTech. It’s 2022 and we’re not all 14 years old, come on
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Jan 21, 2022 20:27
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It is VERY "great man of history"
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Jan 21, 2022 22:27
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:Redburn didn't get killed when Stone absorbed the Republic in Exile, he grudgingly fought on Terra and did that super-secret false flag super dumb assassination mission against both Ward and Malvina that got figured out in like 5 minutes. Yeah you've hit upon the grossest part of the "Alaric is so awesome" bit to me. Being a fan of the FWL MWDA novels I knew him as a shitlord who wantonly kills when the mood strikes him, like you pointed out with the Silver Hawk Irregulars and FWL civvies. Then with some of the runup to ilClan like Alaric's character being retconed in Bonfire of Worlds as this "wow he did all this without civilian casualties" bullshit in his battle with Anastasia Kerensky were we all supposed to go better late than never re: stop doing warcrimes for Alaric? Edit: Also I mentioned it before but BLP constantly going to false flags as a core conflict generator in his garbage books makes me assume he's a 9/11 truther on top of being a confederate apologist chud. Holybat fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Jan 22, 2022 |
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Jan 22, 2022 19:30
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He's also heavily reliant on replaying tactics from historical battles rather than coming up with any ideas of his own, so that's probably part of it.
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Jan 22, 2022 19:42
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At this point I just assume that BLP's books are suffering from an unreliable narrator. Yes, I know they're third person omniscient. No, that doesn't change the above.
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Jan 22, 2022 21:33
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I've been enjoying Battletech fiction, but I've only read the first GDL saga and Forever Faithful and I have to say, the quality divide is super wide. I'm not saying this because of the constant "Nooo! You can't just tear down I guess my problem was that it was so boring, and also the really weird rear end inclusion of an Urbie in a clan front-line unit(star?) and I saw the extreme butthurt he got over someone criticizing that on amazon. Are any of his(or on a broader note, Clan) books really good or worth reading? I didn't like Clanner dialogue at all, it really is a step down from the way people in the IS talk to, it reminds me of that 'gently caress YOU LEATHER MAN' meme video from back in the day. I like decent combat and people coming up with clever solutions to difficult problems(and not the weird rear end exchange in FF where someone says "i could beat you with my arm tied behind my back" and the guy goes "WELL BID AND DONE :^)" and he just...goes along with this because honour?) and generally likeable characters. Ramaj(audiobook, please forgive) was a neat side character too, I like well developed supporting characters and those were basically absent in FF. This post is not formatted well, so tl;dr: What level of quality on a gradient scale of both Battletech and Clan-specific Battletech novels is forever faithful and can you suggest ones that are uhhh better, much better than that?
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Jan 25, 2022 18:06
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Wolves on the Border is the best book the IP has ever produced and it's not particularly close. Whatever you do, don't buy anything else by Pardoe, he's a huge piece of poo poo in real life.
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Jan 25, 2022 19:30
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Defiance Industries posted:Wolves on the Border is the best book the IP has ever produced and it's not particularly close. I mean, CGL is generally a bad company to buy from regardless, they just let an employee get away with embezzlement for no real reason, they don't pay freelancers, they poo poo the bed with Shadowrun 5e, on and on. There's tons of reasons not to support them at all, but also, I want plastic mechs and the one time I bought a 3D-Printed one, it cracked open and leaked resin goo on my hand, so, I go with CGL's moderately okay mechs. (I'm probably being unfair since my only other minis reference was GW but I'm starting to learn that basically nobody can do miniatures like GW, they are in fact unique in the quality of sculpts and such they bring to the table). Sadly it looks like WotB isn't on audible yet, next in line after the "warrior trilogy", so I guess I'm waiting. Oh well. And yeah, someone posted this gem:  which is a very normal and proportional response to a one line, three star amazon.com review. I've seen a lot of his weird-rear end behaviour and conspiraboomer shitposting and I don't really think I like the dude.
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Jan 25, 2022 19:48
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If you enjoy characters having to solve difficult problems, the Warrior Trilogy is not for you. It is a story where the biggest guy beats the dogshit out of the smallest guy and the big reveal of the story is that the biggest guy was in even less danger than we thought.
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Jan 25, 2022 20:08
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To be fair, the Federated Suns was only the third biggest guy at that point, after the Lyran Commonwealth and Draconis Combine.
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Jan 25, 2022 20:47
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Implying Space America isn't the best at everything doesn't really fit with the tone of the book
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Jan 25, 2022 20:53
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Even in the 80s it was Space Anglo-France.
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Jan 25, 2022 20:54
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Strobe posted:Even in the 80s it was Space Anglo-France.
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Jan 25, 2022 21:13
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:This post is not formatted well, so tl;dr: What level of quality on a gradient scale of both Battletech and Clan-specific Battletech novels is forever faithful and can you suggest ones that are uhhh better, much better than that? I don't know how you feel about getting into the Dark Age era, but a pretty fun standalone in my opinion is Wolf Hunters, which follows the breakup of a faction in that time and follows some of the Steel Wolf expatriates into new careers in small merc units, and one of them who forms a warrior co-op on Solaris. A side note but a factor I enjoy in any BT stories is when a writer sets any of the action on worlds that aren't just Earth like, and Wolf Hunters also has that going for it.
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Jan 25, 2022 21:15
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Defiance Industries posted:Implying Space America isn't the best at everything doesn't really fit with the tone of the book But it was written in the 80s, the age of the Samurai.
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Jan 25, 2022 21:33
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Strobe posted:Even in the 80s it was Space Anglo-France. If you want to convey that, you need authors who actually know about other cultures. Stackpole writes dinner scenes on Sian by rattling off the menu from a Chinese restaurant in Phoenix. Similarly, when we see what a "typical lunch" is for the FS and DC, it's apparently PB&J and sushi, respectively.
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Jan 25, 2022 21:36
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Yeah that's fair. There are a significant chunk of BT books written by hacks and there's no two ways around that.
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Jan 25, 2022 21:39
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