Scott's Game RoomThe Best Chaos Campaign
Chaos Campaign is a lightweight campaign framework for BattleTech that was introduced about 20 years ago for the Jihad sourcebooks. BattleTech had supported campaign-style play before then, but it was with a complex system that asked players to track C-Bills, individual supplies, all of their support personnel, etc. Chaos Campaign, originally just called the Warchest Point System, was much more streamlined. It provided a lightweight way to link together games in a campaign while players just had to keep track of abstract points representing their war chest which could be used for repairs, purchasing new equipment and personnel, and paying to get to the next battle.
Since its first introduction, the Chaos Campaign system has seen a good amount of support as well as refinements. In addition to being the campaign system for the Jihad sourcebooks, Chaos Campaign was supported by numerous Turning Points pdfs covering conflicts throughout BattleTech’s history. A free Chaos Campaign: Succession Wars version was released in 2019, and it powered the Tukayyid campaign book that was part of the Clan Invasion Kickstarter.
The Mercenaries box set and new Hot Spots: Hinterlands book have introduced the latest refinement of the Chaos Campaign system. Focused on running a relatively small mercenary unit, it allows for players to sign contracts and then fight battles to chart their unit’s future. It is by far my favorite iteration on the campaign rules thanks to a few improvements.
Warchest Point System No More
Previous implementations of the campaign system used two different types of points to track resources. Warchest Points (WP) were the main currency tracked, but then a player needed to convert those to Support Points (SP) in order to spend them on repairs and purchases. The conversion rate was based on the size of the player force. For example, a company would use a conversion factor of 3 (1 per lance), so each WP could convert to 3 SP.
The Mercenaries version instead uses only SP. A scale number, similar to the old conversion rate, is used as a multiplier for some rewards and costs, but a player only ever tracks SP. While functionally accomplishing the same thing, switching to a single type of resource points makes the system feel a whole lot more streamlined.
More Granular Repairs
Another nice change for Mercenaries is more granular repair costs for ‘Mechs. Older versions had repair costs cover fixing all armor or fixing all structure. Mercenaries expands that to have increased costs for repairing ‘Mechs that have been crippled or destroyed. This is a nice change to give players more reason to minimize damage to their units since more damage to it can continue to increase costs.
Cost-Free Tracks
Before Mercenaries, costs for running a unit were abstracted into a track cost. In order to play a game, a player’s unit needed to spend a certain number of WP in order to cover their costs to get to the battle. These had always felt odd to me since there wasn’t much story weight behind that mechanic. Mercenaries removes these track costs and replaces them with SP costs for monthly maintenance and transportation costs. This adds a little more tracking for players, but in my opinion feels much more flavorful.
These more granular costs also support the Mercenaries framing of negotiated mercenary contracts for the player units. A contract can now help cover maintenance costs, transport costs, and other costs in different ratios to give players the experience of different contract types and negotiating for what they care about the most.
Well-Defined Game Loop
A nice thing about the Mercenaries system is its well defined game loop for the campaign. Time is tracked in months with players paying their maintenance costs and taking in their base pay at the start of each month. Then they can play a number of tracks during that month depending on the specifics of their contract. After each track, they collect combat pay and can make repairs. Then when a contract ends, they have the opportunity to pick there next one.
The contracts also are multiples of 3 months in length (with most at 3 or 6 months), so in a big multi-player campaign, they provide nice quarterly snap points where players can shuffle around their pairings at different hot spots.
Battle Value as Cost
A change in the Hot Spots book is that the cost to purchase units is now based on their battle value. Previous Chaos Campaign versions had based the costs on tonnage. Battle Value, as a measure of unit effectiveness, nicely makes it feel a bit like prices are aligned with demand for units. From a gameplay perspective, it also means that players will be getting about balanced combat effectiveness for purchase costsl
Limits to Scale
While I like the change to Scale, I think it also brings some potential limitations to the system. The Scale system couples the size of a player force, the pay of a contract, and the size of games played, and it uses Battle Value (BV) as the measure of that. I think the BV definitions for Scale levels is great for a more open GM-less play mode, but for narrative GM-run campaigns, it would be nice to have alternate definitions based on the count of units. This is something that would be pretty easy for a GM to house rule though.
The other issue with Scale that I see is that advancing the scale of contract currently requires also playing bigger games. That feels like a good fit for the small scale units that are a focus of Hot Spots: Hinterlands, but I’m not sure how or if the concept will work for something like managing a company of mercenaries since conceptually I’d want company-scale contracts but not playing games with the whole company on the table at once.
Built for Battlefield Support
One disappointment for me with Hot Spots: Hinterlands was its lackluster support for players who don’t want to use the new Battlefield Support Assets rules. It says that players are welcome to use either the new rules or full vehicle rules, but most of the book assumes that the assets will be used. For example, here’s one of the potential complications while fighting on Apostica:
Your forces are ill-prepared for the dusty, sandy terrain of the day. The Threshold of all Battlefield Support Assets is reduced by one, while all
Battlefield Support Asset MP are cut in half, rounding up.
That doesn’t let players know how the complication would affect their forces if they are using full vehicle rules rather than assets. Alpha Strike, which doesn’t have assets at all and always uses its standard vehicle rules, runs into the same problem. Unless bits like that are fixed in errata, players who aren’t using assets will need to come to agreements on how rules written with an assumption that assets are being used should impact their non-‘Mech forces.
How Do Force Manuals Fit In?
A product that I want to see in the future from CGL is something to link the new force creation rules in the Force Manual line to the updated Chaos Campaign: Mercenaries campaign system. Right now, it feels like players can build a flavorful force with the Force Manuals, but there’s no official guidelines to then use that force in the updated campaign system.
Hot Spots, Coming in Hot
One last issue is that the Hot Spots: Hinterlands book has a few big errors in it with some missing pieces. These are being addressed as errata, but it is still a frustration for folks who bought the physical book. Hopefully CGL will be able to take more time on the recently announced Hot Spots: Draconis Reach and have fewer issues make it to print.
