No aliens. No space magic. No stereotypical evil space empires. The eras are what they are, and they can't really be changed.
Life is hard, war sucks, the universe is a dirty and violent place and that can't be changed either.
Mercenaries take cash payment for death and war.
The front lines shift and change, and planets that were spared from war for a while are put under the gun. Other places lie in ruins, and civilization pulls itself from the rubble to rebuild. And often enough, the cycle starts again.
There is this rock-solid model to Battletech that draws me in. I am not going to have my expectations subverted and the investment I made in the game or franchise pulled out from under me and the game ruined because of one new story, product, or era. I can go back to the well-supported and existing eras and play there. Or say the new one never happened. I can go back to classic and play there, and say the Clan invasion never happens. I can play in the Clan era and say the future is open.
And there isn't much "silly stuff" in the setting that can change things, like aliens, psionics, or space magic. Advanced technology is about it, but that can be ignored like an unwanted era.
This contract with the players and fans is what I love about the setting, and it is replacing lots of other sci-fi franchises as my sci-fi genre of choice. Nothing is going to be changed for me by a billion-dollar company looking to extract more streaming service money from me and cause disgusting social media drama to drum up hype. Battletech is solid, well-established, stable, and fun. I don't need anyone telling me why I should be a fan, or making me feel I need to join a bandwagon, the game is great on its own.
The players are great too.
The complexity can be controlled. I can say "this box only" or pull in rules from the advanced rules books. I could run a role-playing campaign from the rules in the Beginner Box plus my ground-game RPG of choice and have fun like this was a game of Basic D&D with battle robots using simplified rules. At any level with many combinations of battle-set plus RPG rule-set, this is fun.
And the game is moddable, plays fast, and isn't a huge investment in learning rules, books, or space. The games do not take much time. To set up a game, grab figures and a map and go. I can plug in almost any roleplaying system to run the out-of-mech ground game, from GURPS to Aftermath to Cepheus Deluxe. Genesys or Cypher would work great. Savage Worlds if that makes you happy. Twilight:2000 with some modding. Or the official roleplaying game.
Right now, I like Cepheus Deluxe since in tech and feel it works very well, and the skills are 1-to-1 with the piloting and gunnery skills. The career paths also make interesting characters, and are compatible with a universe like this and add depth to it outside the mechs. Scouts, ambassadors, pilots, ground soldiers, merchants, criminals, and all sorts of personalities fill in the places between mech battles very nicely. I may make a few career tables based on the ones given to be more mech dedicated and use the more mech-focused skills, but if I allow swaps for skills I feel work better the charts work well as-is.
The roleplaying system should be simple and stay out of the way of the main attraction, the Battletech rules, and the mech fights. The RPG rules ideally set up the reason "why" the next fight is happening, and give you the "inside the hex" view during missions where pilots need to get out of mechs and rescue a VIP in an installation before fleeing to safety and getting covered by a skirmish force.
Right now this game is competing with Starfinder as my sci-fi game of choice. In Starfinder you have this artificial "video game" style of powering up a starship between battles, and it feels a bit programmed and on rails. There, the bold and iconic characters are the stars of the show, like the Guardians of the Galaxy movie.
Battletech does a better wargame job than Starfinder's ship battles, by far. But the characters aren't really the stars of the show here, it is the mechs and the stories of battles you play on the board. As a wargamer at heart, I find more enjoyment in the razor-thin tactical battles of Battletech than I do the level-appropriate and programmed d20 starship battles of Starfinder. I feel if I lose mechs and pilots in Battletech, life can go on for the company, and it will hurt. In Starfinder, it is hard to lose your only ship and have the game continue.
There is a real cost to a game of Battletech. Those index cards with the characters on them are on the line. The stakes for winning and losing are high. Making a choice to sacrifice a mech, and possibly a beloved pilot, to achieve an objective is going to really hurt. Is it the right choice?
That type of game isn't for everyone, but it grips me in a way an easy-heal, hard-to-die dungeon game does not. Even Starfinder feels weaker by comparison, like many d20 games evolved into this player entitlement mode to make things easy and keep you in the game and buying books at the expense of character loss or any risk. Yes, Starfinder has mechs, but they are not Battletech by any stretch of the imagination.
This is the real thing.
I am happier here. I don't feel like I am being pandered to, tossed a kitchen sink of pop culture and told to make it work, or playing a game that wants to be something else.
And the fights mean something.
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