<<<<WARNING! WARNING! The following is meant as a JOKE. That’s J-O-K-E. Joke \’jok\ n. 1 a: something said or done to provoke laughter; especially: a brief oral narrative with a climatic humorous twist b (1) : the humorous or ridiculous element in something (2) : an instance of jesting 2 : something not to be taken seriously : a trifling matter often used in negative constructions. So, if you can’t take a joke STOP READING NOW! You’ve been warned so I don’t want to hear ANY complaining. If you DO complain because you CAN'T take a joke I WILL come to you house with a spinning bowtie, seltzer bottle, and a sack full of puppies (which may or may not be alive depending on how far I have to travel and how much air they get in said sack). WARNING! WARNING! This has been a warning.>>>>
With that out of the way let me explain why I have written what I have written. After a recent brouhaha in another thread I started thinking about the developmental history of BattleTech. How and why was it invented? How and why was it developed over time? Who were the people responsible for its development? Sadly I don’t have access to any of the people or documentation that would answer these questions; but like any of the post-modernist historians that populate most universities today I won’t let that stop me. So ladies (I’m going out on a limb there) and gentlemen please enjoy my grossly inaccurate and possibly banishment worthy work!
Booze, Broads, and BattleTech: an Unauthorized and Completely Made Up History of the Development of a Tabletop Mega Franchise (C in a circle, R in a circle, a T and a M floating off the end, all rights reserved, patents pending, your mileage may very, not responsible for lost or stolen items)
Our story begins at a generic American university in the late 1970s. Dungeons & Dragons was sweeping across every comic book shop, basement, and unused school multipurpose room in the country. Luckily for us the invisible hand of Providence would lead a group of tabletop game playing friends to a major frat party one brisk autumn evening. After one too many keg stands one of the intrepid visionaries would have an epiphany; or possibly an aneurysm, it’s hard to tell sometimes. He envisioned a game in which players stomped around exotic alien planets in giant, walking war machines. He told his friends about his idea and before they knew it they had developed a pen and paper tabletop game. They decided to name it Robotech, but quickly found out that that name was already being used by a group of drunken Japanese college students. So they decided to name their creation Big Stompy Armor Covered Gun Wielding Walking Robots, or BSACGWWR for short. Eventually it was decided that BSACGWWR was too much of a mouthful so they settled on the name Battledroids instead; and then settled again on BattleTech and a legend was born.
After college the friends decided to develop their ideas further. They started a company, FASA, and began to brainstorm. However, being young, poor, recent college graduates running their own company didn’t pay well so they had to find accommodations on the po’ side of town. Since it was the 1980s crack was king and the friends found them enslaved to the pipe; which was understandable since their house/corporate HQ was in fact a crack house. Once they came out of their drug induced haze they discovered that they had produced the material that would become known as the Terran Hegemony and the Star League. Then the DTs set in. After much sweating, vomiting, and hallucinations involving toaster worshiping later they discovered they had created the Amaris Coup, the Liberation of Terra, and the 1st and 2nd Succession Wars. Luckily for them this became a huge success and BattleTech was off and running. Then it all almost came crumbling down.
A few years passed and our BattleTech founders were living in the lap of luxury. Private planes, Hollywood mansions, trophy wives, and solid gold bathroom fixtures had caused the FASA crowd to loose their focus. Then an innocent invitation to a Phish concert caused a major relapse. The massive contact high led to the creation of the 3rd Succession War. At first disturbed by this semi-barbaric form of BattleTech the developers would eventually come to embrace its simplicity. This quest for a simpler, primal worldview would spill over into their real lives and would bring about a brief, but nearly disastrous, infatuation with Indian (that would be real Indians, not the Indians that live in India) religion. One weekend in a sweet lodge, and the semi-legal use of peyote later, of course gave us the War of 3039 (how else can you explain it). It was then determined that rehab was in order by the FASA PR department.
Meant to clear their minds, and hopefully gain the forgiveness and/or pity of BattleTech fans, this stint in rehab was supposed to be brief and therapeutic. Instead it turned into a disaster since the rehab clinic turned out to be located in Medellin, Colombia. Now hooked on the White Lady, the developers awoke in their mansions to discover they had created the 4th Succession War in less then 15 minutes on a Tuesday. Another round of rehab was in order, this time in a less tempting location. Everything seemed to be going well until 1991 and the first Lollapalooza Music Festival.
Days of watching musical acts and comedians was innocent enough, but the multiple hits of acid they took, both intentionally and unintentionally, gave birth to the Clans and the Clan Invasion (I’m told that Robert Thurston can still taste Natasha Kerensky’s death scream from
I Am Jade Falcon). But like the Amaris Coup, Liberation of Terra, and 1st and 2nd Succession Wars plotline, this too found success with the fans. Well, with some of the fans. Okay, with enough of the fans to call it a success. However, the powers that be couldn’t seem to leave it alone. They had to tinker with it. Weeks and then months of marathon sessions caused major burnout for most of the developers and eventually they fell back into their old, bad habits. This would ultimately lead to a 9 day meth fueled tweaking binge that saw the creation of the Second Star League, Operation Bulldog, Operation Serpent, and the FedCom Civil War. And that was the last straw. The FASA crew was at the end of their creative, and as it turned out financial, rope. All those years of hard developing and hard living had taken their toll. By 2001 FASA was no more.
Now it was the turn of a new generation of game developers at WizKid. The only problem is that the new generation of developers had the same vices as the old generation of developers. Left with piles of half completed and half thought out material from FASA led to weeks of all nighters and the consumption of gallons of Pepto-Bismol. Then one alcohol fueled weekend bender led to the unintentional publishing of material never intended for publication, now known as the Jihad and Dark Age. The WizKid boys waited with bated breath to see how their “mistake†was received, and it didn’t take long for them to find out. Soon letters and emails started pouring in praising their work, and then they realized they were all coming from one guy and their mothers. Then the flood of hate came from the old BattleTech fans from their Unibomber-esque mountain compounds and aluminum foil lined basements. But this “civil†and “constructive†dispute between developers and fans (and fans and fans) is not what brought down WizKid (though clickytech didn’t help). What brought down WizKid was a staff wide addiction to Oxycontin.
Now it’s up to CGL to keep the BattleTech flame alive; hopefully without the major substance abuse that has caused such trouble (and unintentional success) for this mega gaming franchise. So what does the future hold for BattleTech? I’ve heard rumors about a new generation of even more fragile LAMs, entire regiments made up of Quickdraws, hordes of Work of Blake zombies, and a possible tie in with the Twilight franchise. But at this point who really knows. We can only hope, wait, and pray to the spirit of William H. Keith, Jr.
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So what do you think? I think everyone would agree that this makes as much sense as any other explanations, right? Right? Hang on a second the door bell is ringing. That’s either
Loki ROM agents sent by Knightmare to silence me once and for all or the pizza I ordered. Either way I need to adjust my aluminum foil hat and get my George Lucas autographed, real lightsaber; just in case. So, if I haven’t been banned, or killed by Loki agents, I’ll see you on the boards.
-- Cestusrex
Edit: Fixed
