BASHtech House Rules anyone?

[Baelor]

I have been a fan of the Battletech universe for a long time. My son, a 14 year old autistic boy, has played and enjoyed the Mechwarrior titles for the Xbox 360. Because he is very visual, and not all that dependant on social interaction for personal validation, getting him to play D&D or other table top RPGs has met with little success.

So I thought about running a Mechwarrior campaign to peak his interest in TTRPG stuff, with plenty of mech to mech combat to keep things interesting for a teenager. I pulled out my old Battletech books and started to jot down some notes about a campaign structure.

As I tried to refamiliarize myself with the Battletech/Mechwarrior rules, I remembered an important point - I hated them! They were counter-intiutive, slow, and devoid of the fast paced excitement I would need to give this game a chance. For a day or so, I was in a funk because I was sure the campaign would fail if I relied on the Battletech/Mechwarrior mechanics.

Then I remembered that I owned BASF. Looking though it I realized that I could use it as is for the normal Sci Fi stuff, and just add some stuff for the mech combat and construction. The other benefit to using BASF is that my son has played BASH before for a superhero game set in the 1950 era of the Hellboy Universe. So he had some familiarity with most of the rules. All I had to do was write the extras to give the BASF rules the mech heavy feel that the Battletech universe requires.

What I came up with is now at 15 pages, and covers the basics of mech construction, training and combat. It is still a work in progress, and I cannot claim that it has been playtested for balance, but it has survived 9 play sessions and generated some good Mechfun. If anyone is interested, send me a PM and I will shoot you a pdf of BASHtech. Only thing I ask is that if you use it, LMK how it went. You will need the BASF rules to play [though you can likely get by OK with BASH too].

I anticipate adding things to BASHtech as play goes on. The players [three] are getting more tactical and that will mean some additions for that sort of play. Other stuff is to increase the options available for tech, weapons, gear, etc. As written, the rules are not specific to Battletech, but there a couple of nods to that Verse.