from Dragon #71

 With or without context, I find this quite droll.

A True Relation of the Great Virginia Disastrum, 1633 Promo

Engines of Destruction

 

So, I'm back on my BattleTech bullshit. The construction rules in the original BattleTech rulebook included this handy chart.

Multiply the tonnage of your mech by its walking speed in movement points. That gives you the engine rating needed for you mech design. Look at this table to find how much the requisite fusion engine weighs. And the manufacturer of that engine, which has never had any impact on play, in my experience. But it is kinda funny to discover that your giant robotic killing machine is powered by Nissan or General Motors.

But what finally struck me the other day, nearly thirty years after first encountering this chart, is that this chart has more entries than it needs. 

Mechs are always designed in tonnages divisible by five, between 10 and 100 tons inclusive. Walking speeds are always positive integers, generally between 2 and 10. That means that there are some engine ratings that appear on the chart but are mathematically impossible to achieve. My math suggests that, under the rules as written, there's no combination of tonnage and movement that will produce the following engine ratings: 115, 145, 155, 185, 205, 215, 230, 235, 265, 290, 295, 305, 310, 335, 345, 355, 365, 370, 395. Feel free to double check the numbers on that.

Is there anything to be done with this information? I dunno. Maybe someone should write a scenario where the attackers are raiding a stockpile of fusion engines, only to discover they are a bunch of Vlars that won't do a damn bit of good in any mech chassis in the whole damn Inner Sphere.

I don't need DriveThru. Does DriveThru need me?

Below is the message I just sent to DriveThruRPG via their contact page: https://help.drivethrurpg.com/hc/en-us/requests/new.  I encourage you to do the same. Feel free to cut and paste from my letter if that helps you to get started. Note that copying and pasting my draft into the text box screwed up the formatting and I ended up re-entering the paragraph breaks by hand.

Dear DriveThruRPG, 

I have been a customer of yours since October of 2004. I don’t know if the 512 items in my DriveThru library makes me a big, medium, or small customer. But I wanted to make sure to let you know that I am a fan of your service before I took the time to complain. 

I honestly do not understand what the hell you are doing with James Edward Raggi IV and his Lamentations of the Flame Princess (LotFP) products. 

I purchase most of my LotFP books as pdfs via your site, as I just don’t have that much shelf space any more. I would like to give you money to buy last month’s new releases, including Don't Fuck the Priest, The Butchery of Agnes Gooder, and Orgasm, but James reports that you will not list these three products for sale. 

Do you not want my money? 

Your site possesses adult content features. If you find the material objectionable, why not list them with the other adult content? The idea that there is a level of content beyond “suitable for adults” is the fairytale stuff of secret societies, conspiracy kooks, and prudes. 

Personally, I find lots of stuff in LotFP products objectionable, were they to leap from the page and manifest in the real world. But I reserve the right to read the books and make that call for myself. Why are you trying to do that for me? Are you concerned that I am an unsophisticated reader lacking in proper analytical skills? Do you worry that I cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, an absolute minimum requirement for anyone who enjoys the rpg hobby if they are to function in larger society? 

This situation is no longer tolerable to me and I am seriously considering taking my business elsewhere, even if that means locking myself out of many future rpg products. I’d rather make that decision for myself than allow a middleman to make that call for me. Even for one book. 

Please explain yourselves. 

Sincerely, Jeff Rients