BATTLEBLOG - Errata: When to make a rules change

[DeJaVu]

Errata can be tricky in many ways.

The first, of course, is simply the mega task of looking at say a 300k rulebook and realizing that verifying errata can be difficult. The fans are great at this, of course, as they continually toss questions to us about a rulebook and that forces us to look at sections and either confirm that they're correct (though they could perhaps use a little clarification), or they help us figure out that something really is wrong.

Second, and this one is actually on the easy side compared to the third part, is to simply start compiling true errata: the cost of X weapons should be Y not Z, the example is wrong and should say X and so on. It's still not a very easy task across an entire 400 page rulebook...but if you've got a good person whose volunteered to compile it all for you to review and sign off on, then that helps considerably (thanks Roland...and Joel for keeping after me).

The vast majority of errata falls into the category above, thankfully.

Finally, and the most difficult part of errata, is when you get some fans suggesting that a particular rule doesn't work. Not just that they would prefer it another way, but that it flat doesn't work. And really you can't make a knee jerk reaction on that. For example the changes to hover vehicles in Total Warfare were not taken very well by some and they spoke up that we'd broken hover vehicles, making them worthless. So I did the only thing you can do in that situation...I let time go by. After almost a year of play I then tapped my playtesters, all the commandos and even some that I simply know run a lot of games; including the Europeans still running the massive Galtar Campaign each year. I was willing to make some changes if the general response came back that hovers were indeed broken. Instead, almost unanimously the response was that while the new rules required a complete re-thinking of strategy, they worked just fine within that framework.

Almost without exception the "hover vehicle" of Tactical Operations was the scatter rules for artillery. Once again, however, I can't knee jerk react. Instead I waited for most of a year to pass and once again tapped a pile of people constantly playing the game and asked them if the scatter artillery fell into the "no, it's not broken, you just have to re-think how you play it" or "yup, it's broken." This time, however, almost unanimously, the response was that it was in fact broken.

I'm here to help make cool rules that make BattleTech games fun and if that means I need to step up and admit that one of my rules that made it into print simply doesn't work and needs to be changed...that's just part of the job ("he eyes the wakazashi and decides that's going too far"). I've posted up a complete and current Tactical Operations Errata (in the Errata portion of the website), which includes a modification to the scatter artillery rules that should completely fix the issues.

See ya next time.

Randall