Jack of Harts

Castle Con had some 700 people show up, which is an amazing number. Especially for a first year con. I’m frankly amazed.

I ran approximately two-dozen of them through demos, and had another dozen watching. Most of the watchers were parents who grew up playing BattleTech and were letting me give their kids their first shot at playing it. Around a dozen of those who played at my table were kids. None of them had played BattleTech before. Of the adults, it was half and half between those who had played BattleTech before and those that had not.

Now Castle Con was created by a board gaming group, so the attendees trended towards that distribution. The kids and half of the adults had no concept of what BattleTech’s movement system was. They played like board games, or like Alpha Strike, simply measuring the distance between start and end and going there. The idea that they had to expend movement points to turn, could only walk forward or back, and that movement points used was not equal to hexes moved was an alien concept to them. And converting only the second number, and not the first, to the TMM was equally alien.

Obviously, I’m going to have to brainstorm a better way to teach the movement system. I am ten years plus out of practice on that. But I find it very interesting that such a large number of my demo players simply had no concept of the idea. Some of them groked it after repeated explanations. Others did not. It was something I had to actively teach and keep on them about it or they would forget it.

It was the single largest hangup people had about learning the game, and I find that very interesting.