BattleTech: Beyond Electrodrome: Spectacle Rules
What is BattleTech: Beyond Electrodrome?
BattleTech: Beyond Electrodrome (BT:BE) is everything the 80’s promised us 2021 would be and more. Its the BattleTech of futures past, the one true heir of vintage 80’s and 90’s FASA and science fiction.
Set in the Circinus Federation, a realm infested with villains, vigilantes, and everything in between, it is more than a mere gladiatorial module, more than an arena or a setting, BT:BE is a vibe.
Like this, but with ‘mechs, and in a giant, rotting, crime-filled metropolis in the desert, but with more sex and more drugs and more synth-wave music and keytars and poofy hair and gaudy neon lights.
Neon lights and dirty grey shadows. Street punks and corporate thugs, pushers, pimps and peasants all jockeying for space in overcrowded, dying cities.
Drugs of every type flood the streets and rise in a stinking vapor of blood-and-dirt to coat the “upper crust” of a degenerate society. Gladiatorial contests, be they between bareknuckle brawlers or rare, ramshackle battlemechs, are the way of the land. It sometimes feels as though the only reason this sun-blasted and hellish stone still hurtles around its sun is because the gods of this place revel in the carnage too.
Some people on Circinus just want to scrape by, content in their filthy little concrete rooms in giant gigablock public housing structures. Others want to conquer the world, one grift, one victory, one kill at a time.
Imagine Judge Dredd without the Halls of Justice. Imagine Ice Pirates without the Ice. Escape From New York spread across the world. Robocop without the Cop. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome but with giant ‘mechs and an audience just dying to participate.
BattleTech: Beyond Electrodrome is a wide set of modular rules that add breadth and color to gladiatorial combat scenarios and the spaces in between. There are new rules for career progression, new rules for corporate-sponsored experimental weapons, new rules for gaining the advantage over your foolish foes.
It also includes many new rules and options for both on-board and off-board assets such as:
Artillery support: coolant foam, hallucinogenic gas, low-yield tactical EMP bomb…
Air support: glitter bombs, fuel air bombs, and super simplified rules…
BattleMech weaponry: anti-mech ballistas, mag-slings, gas cannons…
Infantry equipment and training: pocket drones, anti-armor grenades, urban pacification training…
Drugs, more drugs, poisons, and in-cockpit medical solutions…
Audience participation: streakers, snipers, garbage day, and gang warfare
Vicious new animal units: egg-laying crana, swarms of vampiric leech locusts, Plasco’s walking trees, and the twin mech-eating megasaurs Felix and Magnarox…
Traps: nets, ankle snares, mechwire, super-claymores, pheromone mines…
Turrets, vehicles, psychopathic loner battle-armor-clad “celebrities” and so much more…
And all of this lovely sci-fi destruction runs on the very simple economy of spectacle.
What is “Spectacle”?
Spectacle is life.
Spectacle is the currency of the Electrodrome. It is a measure of the pleasure a pilot gives to their audience, be they simple peasants, mouth-breathing, drug-addled meat puppets drooling on their shoes in the stands, or the corporate sponsors that turn the wheels, watching from the safety of their quincrete reinforced bunkers.
Destroying enemies with style, discharging weaponry specifically modified to delight the crowds, spraying the stands with pleasure-inducing drugs, or pulping a pilot with their own mech’s arm…these are all the things that drive the carnage and elation of the Electrodrome. These are things that make your audience happy.
And a happy audience can be…generous. Gun turrets, artillery, glitter bombs, streakers, snipers, even the armor-clad megasaur twins known simply as “The Boys” will be laid at your feet as tools for ever greater glory.
The Spectacle Rules PDF
Below is a link to the Spectacle Rules PDF, a quick set of rules I developed to make for swift and slick generation of spectacle points, the currency of career advancement or, more enjoyably, raining hellfire on your enemies.
Spectacle Rules PDF
Fuel your chaos with spectacle!
The rules are essentially this: during end phase, everyone rolls 2d6 with the bare-minimum goal of rolling an 8. The higher one roles, the more spectacle points they earn. The more spectacle points they have, the more the fans and sponsors love them, the more they will help by way of sending reinforcements, fire support, or doing other cheeky, dastardly things.
Players spend their spectacle points to play assets/cards, which can make for a wild good time, or save them for the end of the game to progress through their career more swiftly.
Easy.
Now, since BT:BE’s conception, I have imagined these assets as spectacle cards. They have to be cards. Its fun.
But I’ve historically also always imagined each player having a number of these cards in their hands, held in secret, as resources available only to them.
And maybe this makes sense.
But I’ve also been playing a lot of "King of Tokyo” lately, and I like having a buffet of face-up cards to draw from.
So maybe this is how spectacle cards will be laid out: each player starts the game with a small number of cards in their hands, perhaps three, that are true secret weapons. And then there are another five cards laid out on the table, face up, that they can purchase, new cards from the top of the deck replacing those cards that are bought.
Just spit-balling here, but yeah…I like that.
What d’you think? What makes the most sense so you? What would maximize chaos, fun, and speed?
A Note To The Erudite
Let me be the first to admit that NONE OF THIS IS CANON.
According to MechFactory, Clayborne Remembered, the capital city of Circinus had a population of around 10,000 as of 3063, and the way I envision BT:BE is in sprawling, disintegrating cities, more like in Judge Dredd. Clearly these two notions make for poor dancing partners.
So how do we reconcile these things?
<takes a long drag on a short cigarette, and then shrugs>
Out.
