Good thread.

In Poland, because of gomunism, rpg games were hard to get, not to mention that no official translation was avaiable and hardly anyone spoke english in that time. First game that managed to go through the curtain was Warhammer Fantasy Role Play. The game received sort of cult status. Even traslated, the books were rather expensive and not easily avaiable. People weren't buying them and learning how to play from them. Only a few did that. Most was taught, sort of like in master-apprentice relationship. This is the reason why older games like d&d weren't so popular here. Also there is a joke that some people are so hard warhammer fans they say they don't play tabletop RPGs, they play Warhammer.
Can I assume that folks here know how world in this game looks like?

Personally I only played 2nd edition which was imo good, although some old timers would probably scorn me. Fantasy setting but not too much generic, nice late-medieval/renessaince world, HRE like empire. Simple mechanics, no bullshit overpowered characters, well equipped high-experience warrior can still be killed by a bunch of goblins if there's enough of them. No mana bullshit for wizards, instead casting spells is risky (and fun).

I also played Warhammer 40k rpgs which are relatively new products. THe titles were Dark Heresy (play as a bunch of fresh acolytes of inquisition and try to survive) and Deathwatch (play as a Space Marines and beat the shit out of enemy mobs easily and duel the strongest xeno motherfuckers the universe have to offer).

When I said "I played" I mean I was GM/DM/narrator most of the time because I was hardly ever fully satisfied with how my friends were doing their campaings.

I recall some polish titles.

The first thing I remember is Kryształy Czasu (crystals of time). I remember rules were being published in polish magazine about tabletop games in the 90s. Never played it but from what I seen it had super overcomplicated rules, shit like 10 kinds of resistances, endless tables etc. World was a fantasy setting with 6 trillion races, bunch of everything and more mixed together. Browsing those magazines I never actually found basic rules required to play, just more and more expansions, races, rules, tables how to roll a random castle, temple, whatever. Idk maybe I missed one issue or something where they explained it. Basically from what I've seen when people mention this game (which they do rarely) they make fun of it and it's author.

The other one is Neuroshima. It's basically fallout rpg. Post-apocalyptic america, big mean machines on the north, deadly jungle on the south and in between some goons pretending to be functioning countries and a lot of bandits, mutants and anarchy. Also everyone have some kind of illness and one of the main concern of your character will be looking around wasteland for specific medicines that will let you sustain your life. I didn't play it much, but from my memory it had rather strange mechanics although overall I had good time playing it.
I see the developers of this game are having some success selling it. Not only there's rpg game, but I also have a board game, I've seen some mobile shit, books and tabletop with figurines as well. They're having some smoll successes outside of my country as well.

With the ETK we moved a bit fast forward.
I read somewhere that the Big Green itself was sold in 20 000 copies. It was a huge success. I overly underestimated this previously. No matter.
With all those the players came lots of feedback. They saw where the system lacks probably this is why they come up with the Second Code of Law. However they wanted to remake the whole system. They wanted a new book then they saw it needs two. Then they realized it's not enough and planned three new books which would reform the whole game.
So in 1996 they released the first book of the Summarium called: A Teremtés Könyvei (The Books of Creation) in the hope that in 1997 two more will follow: the Számok Három Könyve (Three Books of Numbers) and the Törvények Három Könyve (Three Books of Laws). The first was the description of the world the second two should have been the actual rulebooks with the system but they were never published. Instead they fixed up the Big Green and released the ETK in 1997. So the system remained the old one but they gave a bit more information about the world itself (as the Big Green had this only in a shorter form).

The Summarium still is an important book which changed the view of the players on the world. In the beginning Ynev was a high-fantasy world with absolute Good and Evil duality but supplemented with the human shades of grey as the world itself in the era of the game's present is a human dominated world where the ancient races are fairly driven out to the peripheries. The Summarium however created a picture which resembled more to a dark fantasy, made the human shades of grey darker and added a Nitzscheian-Machiavellian twist to some inhuman races of great power.

With the book came some much needed maps fairly similar to picrels.

Now I have to talk some about the system because this one created by the rulebooks is the most popular system up to this day. This is the one which will come to the mind of a MAGUS player if you say MAGUS. This is the one which were tinkered to infinity by hardcore MAGUS players in their home brew rulebooks.

This is a d100 based system like >>12636 Warhammer because the attack rolls and tests against percentile skills are made with d100. But it uses d10 and d6 for everything else. And maybe sometimes d2 and d3.

Playable Races
MAGUS is a DnD inspired system but has much less than that: Humans, Half-Elves, Elves, Dwarfs and Orcs. That's it. Every non-human race has some limitations tho, for example wild Orcs aren't playable only "tamed" ones. The Second Code of Law added some other: Amund (Egyptian statue-people), Dzsenn (Über-Arabs), Khal (Lion-furries), Wier (vampires). The first two was part of the game from the beginning but were non-playable. Where they pulled out of the last two, I've no idea. One more race was added by the players and was made official by the freshest rulebook: Kyr. These are human-like but inhuman conquerors arrived from another continent, they have ash colored hair and hereditary defects thanks to wincest they practice in present era.

Alignments
Four basic: Life, Death, Order, Chaos.
And their combinations: Life-Order, Order-Life, Life-Chaos, Chaos-Life, Death-Order, Order-Death, Death-Chaos, Chaos-Death.
A Character belongs to a certain Alignment depending on which principle(s) he/she considers the most important or which he/she aligned to the most.
So for example a Life Character will consider every living things sacred and they try to protect these and avoid killing if possible but this doesn't mean they won't fight when they have to. Of course Death-Chaos is the most based without question.


I'll continue tomorrow.

Oh, the RPGs.

We played AD&D 2E in school after lessons, although sometimes teachers were not really fine with this and forced us to go because these strange board games are creepy for non-knower. We had stable team of few people and some outsiders often joined but gone away after few plays. MTG also was somewhat popular but it was too costly, especially in these times.

Some people from our "team" also played Battletech and Mechwarrior RPG then, because some guy discovered it by chance.

I may say that Russian RPG scene couldn't develop fully because these games arrived in country in 90s, when computers and consoles (especially consoles) became popular, so it was rather obscure thing to do. Who will play with pen and paper when you can play videogame, except some hardcore strange guys? There were LARP movement of course, although they mostly drink alcohol and used funny swords made from some trash (I was on their party once). Don't know about local Russian RPG systems, they surely existed but were too unknown at that times.

Fun fact: we had IT substitute teacher in school for few months, some young student who wasn't popular and kids often tried to joke about him in different ways, and he was pretty angry. After some years (when he already gone from school) we discovered, that he was the main translator of AD&D manual to Russian, and also a known person in that community. So, we played used his translated book not knowing that he is near.

Classes
Few races but fuckton classes called literally castes in the game.
Fighter, Gladiator, Headhunter (assassin), Knight
Thief, Bard
Cleric, Paladin (Cleric-Knight)
Martial-artist, Sword-dancer (literal translation: Sword-artist)
Witch, Witchmaster (Warlock), Firemage (Firewizard?), Wizard.

Bards are technically crossbreeds between rogues and magic users just like in DnD. In fact some of their stuff was copypasted from there. It's a Mary Sue class for one of the writers as in his novels - some of which predates MAGUS - the main hero is a bard. His personality, behaviour and magic in the novels is clearly based on the DnD description of bards.
Cleric and Paladin subtypes are numerous since every gods have their own. Well some gods only has Clerics, some only Paladins.
All magic-user class has different magics. Bards, Witches, Witchmasters are only empirical-magic users it's kinda low-magic stuff and they don't have a grasp on the Arcane, unlike Wizards who use high-magic, and they have the knowledge about the essence of magic. Firemages are inbetween as they don't have the arcane knowledge but use the fire-magic line of the high-magic. They are somewhat sacral casters as well.
Wizards use mosaic-wizardry, certain smaller pieces are defined in the rulebooks and the players are encouraged to create their own spells from these mosaics or even come up with new ones besides the examples given by the authors.

The Second Code of Law gave new classes, the nomad shaman and the monk, also defined some new Clerics for some gods and gave a longer description, more exact rules for the Firemage. In this case the monk itself is more similar to European monks and not like the chinky DnD monks as these were already materialized in the Martial-artists and Sword-dancer castes.

The Summarium described new classes for non-human races.
Elves got the Preserver with several sub-classes, sacral servants of the elven kalahoras, god-ancestor type ancient elves. Smells like Druid to me. Elf fighters got some specialties and "prestige classes" (in DnD terms).
For the sons of the stone (Dwarves) fighter and cleric castes were flashed out, typical to every fantasy ever.
I think the book allowed the create wild Orc player character and not just tamed ones. The Fighters got the Song-teller prestige class, Clerics the Orc Shaman, Witchmasters the Orc Medicine Man.

Hardcore players then come up with their own prestige classes, typically they grabbed their favourit class then overpowered them with all kinds of crap. Some of these later made into official rulebooks in a revised fashion.
Throughout the years from 1993 two large reference guide came out about the Fighters and Clerics I'll visit this topic later.

Huh I forgot about how a battle goes down.
Battles are turn based, 1 round is 10 segments (basically they represent seconds in the game's time). Actions have certain lengths which can be expressed in turns and segments, they cost that much time to perform.
Every round starts with Initiative Rolls. Everyone participating (PCs and the KM for the NPCs) rolls with d10 then adds this to the Initiative Value every character has. The highest starts with an action. An action can be an attack or any other activity (most likely battle related, like moving, casting a spell, drinking a potion or such). Initiative rolls are omitted in situations when it's clear who starts, for example at ambushes.
For attacking a character have to make an Attack Roll with d100 and add this to his(/her) Attack Value. An Attack Value consists of the character's full Attack Value (base + skills + weapon) and Situation Modifiers. If the Attack Value + d100 is > the targeted character's Defense Value ([base + skills + weapon] + Situation Modifiers) then it's a hit and Damage Roll comes.
Damage calculation: weapon's damage (e.g. d6+2) + attacker's Strength Modifier (if any) - defender's Armor Rating (if any). The Damage then is subtracted from the Pain Points first, if the Pain Points get to 0 or below then the character passes out and further damage is subtracted from the Health Points. Health Points can be reduced directly with Overkill. If the Attack Roll + Attack Value > Defense Value by 50 or the roll is exactly 100, then it's an Overkill and the damage will reduce HP's. Every HP lost comes with doubled PP reduction as an extra.
The attacks follows each other in the order established in the beginning of the round. Some characters can have more than one attacks if their weapons and skills and such allow this.
Ranged weapons use Targeting Value ([base + weapon + skills] + Situation Modifiers) instead of Attack Value for attacks and the Defense Value is equal to the range and can be modified by the situation ofc (does the target moves? etc.). Ranged fighting has the Archer Rule. When you roll damage and get max score you can roll again, and repeat as many times as you roll max. Players came up with a neat little trick. The rulebook describes a magic item, the Lucky Coin which gives +1 to every roll. In the world the player can make or pay someone to make a ranged weapon with d2 Damage. With the Lucky Coin if you roll 1 on d2 it counts as 2 which is the max score on d2 hence you can roll again and again and again... instakill everything... with a d2 weapon.
Situation Modifiers: attacking from behind, attacking from semi-behind, ambush, from height advantage (not the height of the body but from a higher place), from height disadvantage, from moving horse, when blind or in pitch dark, in semi-darkness, when stationary, when laying down, when dizzy, when paralyzed, when frightened, with full of hatred, storming, concentrating on defense, with the intent of capturing the enemy.
It's much detailed ofc but that's about it. Too many calculations if you ask me.

Back to the story.
They published not only rulebooks, but reference guides and other complimentary works too. In the 1993-1997 period not too many tho. They released the Készlet Játékosoknak (Handbook for Players) in 1994 but some mistakes compelled the editors to make a revised edition called Játékosok Készlete (Player's Handbook) in 1996 the same year when the Bestiarium - containing descriptions for the monsters of Ynev - got a second edition (I dunno when the first one was published).
The Harcosok, Gladiátorok, Barbárok (Fighters, Gladiators, Barbarians) came out in 1995 and gave the players three new classes: the Amazon, the Barbarian and the Duelist, also a bunch of prestige classes for the Fighter. These prestige classes aren't really new classes more like background info and a selection of skills for the regional varieties of soldiers.

In 1998 the Papok, Paplovagok Kézikönyve I (Handbook of Clerics, Paladins) was published and the II next year. These added a lot culturally to Ynev itself and not just detailed descriptions of these classes. On that world Gods and religions are just as important as on ours if not more as the Gods are sure realities. (This of course led to lots of speculations and arguments that the fact how would influence the world view of those people.) The books discussed other topics as well for example the Web of Mana I mentioned before, skills and cultures. All in all these two are great resource. About this time the authors started (again) toying with the idea of some renovation of the system, still they adjusted these guides to the rules of the ETK. Oldschool style.

From the first years of the new millennia the creators faced many enmity among each other, new people appeared who wanted to add their ideas to the game, many legal problems surfaced with lawsuits and many publishers came and went. I'm not sure about this events so I won't write about it but before all these happenings the original crew released a new rulebook in 1999.
A new "basic supplementary rulebook" in fact, the Új Tekercsek (New Scrolls) which brought the changes or at least some of the changes they planned. I made notes on these in previous posts: the five level skill system, the point allocating system for character creation, the Perception as new attribute and so on. They came up with new stuff too: two playable races (Gnome and Goblin) and two classes (Psi Master and Illusionist) and about 100 new skills (I'm sure some ideas came from the players) which is a lot considering the ETK has less than 70.
If I had to draw a line in the History of the MAGUS which marks an end of an era I might draw it at this rulebook.

It's a fairly important fact that the present of the game is driven by novels (and short stories). Several authors produced many books but not enough: the background material the rulebooks gave to the players is short compared to the topic it should cover and has more holes than a mouse chewed Emmentaler and I believe it's not just the fault of the length limitations of the rulebooks but the authors' of the novels because they wished to reveal more and more mysteries about Ynev and it's history gradually but never completed enough to cover everything. Most novels have chronologies, biographies, dictionaries (while they haven't created languages they come up with a fair amount of words to help to set the mood) sometimes even maps but the main resources about regions, countries, religions, cultures, folks, customs, everyday life, etc. are the stories themselves. Just never enough stories and I have to admit lots of them are subpar quality.
Many questions remained unanswered for a long time. When a KM creates an adventure, a module (as DnD players would put it) or a tale (as we call it) he will face the same questions over and over again. For example Ynev itself is a huge place with all the varieties our planet can offer in climate, flora and fauna and when I point at the map that our tale will be played here or there it will come up: what's it like there? What should I tell my players what kind of environment they face? It cannot be everywhere the same fucking oak forests and barley fields, with four seasons, deers and wolves. It's impossible but it's almost no reference about this. And while certain Jew posters could blink on a map and tell what type of weather should be at which area and know everything about geography we cannot expect from the KMs to be the same. And while I believe the KMs try to do their homework for the gaming sessions it is unfair to force them into decisions they have to make about the setting of the world.
So in the first years of 2000 a new group started to work on Ynev with the aim of making it more rational. The group was called Szürkecsuklyások (The Ones with Grey Hood, it's the name of one of the two greatest thieves guild on Ynev) and sadly they (or more like their leaders and the publishing company they worked for) got into a legal conflict with the original team (I think there were some cooperation with some people from this team tho). They put great effort into the game but legally they were in the wrong (at least that's what I can find on the internet, I myself knew nothing about this for a long time) and most of their results were kinda in vain, their work cannot be considered official, canonized material. But I believe those players who use their material and try to make it compatible with the newer releases are doing right. Years ago I managed to save most if not everything from their site with the help of the Wayback Machine.

The posted pics in this and the next posts are their maps.

The guys with the Grey Hoods not only made these maps but created an Encyclopedia containing all the fantasy words the writers came up with up to date (they could only reach F), the portray of the countries on Ynev's present (most of North Ynev was finished), gathered info on the two greatest wars of South Ynev (with some maps), and wrote a whole new supplementary reference guide for one of the Northern countries. The latter work was published with the title Enoszuke (Enosuke, it's Japan on Ynev) in 2002 and they meant it as a beginning volume of the Satralis - Geoframia Kivonatok (Satralis - Geoframia Compilations, Geoframia is a fictional work of some Ynevian dude, very typical method of the MAGUS franchise to write point-of-view stuff) series which, similarly to many other MAGUS plans, was never realized.
About the time of their operation the competing companies released several books among them the reference guide Geoframia (2003) which signaled there won't be any continuation for the Enoszuke volume. It contains many snippets of information but again it failed to give a unified picture and many content was known from previous works. Some snippets was entirely revolting or mind blowing for some people - depending on their views of the topic. Of course it's a useful stuff, now we know such things that the Satralis is the 4th planet in it's star system.
In 2004 came the MAGUS D20. Yes. They "modernized" the system with DnD's D20 Open Game License and not much else. Because that was the thing missing, ya know, nothing else... It was a failure. I think the resistance was too huge.

I think the legal situation stabilized about 2006. Next year came a new rulebook, the Új Törvénykönyv (New Code of Law, UTK from now on) which ... is kinda good I have to say, me rikey. The best thing is that it very much like the ETK. Even it's looks. It's back to d100 but they introduced some changes, most of these weren't exactly new but even those were revised. For example they threw out all the bullshit races they kept the original ones and added the "Kyr-blooded" race, kept the Perception ability, defined over 80 skills (more than ETK but less than New Scrolls), etc.
I think I should describe the character creation.
It's point based, the player can distribute 135 points over the 10 attributes and get 50 Character Creation Points (CCP from now on) to buy all the other stats. At every levelup the character gets this 50 CCP (minus certain amount in special cases). CCPs can be exchanged for:
- Backgrounds: new stuff, gives some more customization options, examples: Nobility, Pal of Ghosts, Wealth, Instinct, Race (non-human characters must be bought); some Backgrounds are must have for certain classes (e.g. Cleric needs the Favored/Blessed BG); if the PC belongs to a clan, order or school this must be purchased too (these give the character some nifty benefits, items or learnable skills, but the CCP amount spent for this BG will be subtracted from the CCP at every level).
- Fighting values (Initiative, Attacking, Defending, Targeting Value)
- Pain Points
- Mana, Psi Points
- Skill Points (Base Skill Points at every level = Intelligence)
The Skill System was revised. The Skills are now only learnable if there's someone or something around to learn from. If the PC didn't fight then the player can't raise his fighting skills. It takes time to learn new skills or hone the old ones so that time should be calculated into the campaign. Most (if not all) skills and every level of them have requirements (ability score or other skills) but obtaining a certain level from a skill raises one related ability by one point.
There are many minor changes too. For example in the ETK the "Weapon Usage" skill had to be purchased for every fucking weapon or you couldn't use even a similar one. E.g. you had Weapon Usage for Knife but you couldn't use Dagger or other similar short blades. Now in the UTK these similar weapons are grouped which makes more sense.
AFAIK this rulebook got much criticism. Mostly about the unbalanced classes. I dunno I haven't got the luck to really test it intensively. I heard players bitching that the Wizard class (for example) was gimped and how terrible is that. But considering the Wizard was the most overpowered from all the OP classes how terrible could this change be?! Now the player has to choose, his Wizard will be a spellslinger without any useful skills or a serious scholar who is only capable to cast few magic tricks at most or inbetween. Not bad if you ask me.

With the new system the game revitalized. Or it seemed. In 2008-2009 two huge supplementary work were published, Toron (it's just a name of a country) and the Északi Szövetség (Northern Alliance, bunch of countries), both very detailed account about half the North basically. If I have to compare to previous works with the exception of the Enoszuke guide then I have to say these are extremely detailed accounts, especially the Toron with it's 480 pages (just for 1 /one/ country!) is a beast.
And that was it. Nothing since then. Well, almost nothing. As I did snooping around for info for this thread I found an anniversary issue from 2013. It's a supplementary booklet with magic items, spells, skills, ship types, monsters throughout the impressive amount of 14 pages... for the ETK!!!! Whhhyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy... what the fug?

And the future:
On a role-playing forum (probably the largest Hungarian one) I found a thread, started on 2017.04.23 (this is a correct order of writing dates btw), with an OP about an official facebook post by the creators of MAGUS. It says they are working on a new rulebook (the only thing what we needed ofc) and a new d6 based, classless and skill-centered system (amen to that, I'm not sure how I feel about d6 tho). They were planning to publish this at the end of the year or next year which is basically next year (for now). They also want to publish reference guides and other supplementary books in every half year. For now it's all mythical and I take the position of St. Thomas: I'll relive it when I see it.

Does Bernd know the board game Risk? Can he play it? What's his opinion?

>>12867
A local spinoff named "War" was launched in the 70s and has since become quite popular. Its pieces are abstract and it vaguely seeks to represent modern warfare, but as far as I know the mechanics are very similar.

There's a sequel with planes and improved aesthetics, a 4-player version with a prettier map set in the Mediterranean with actual soldier figures instead of tiny cilinders, a luxury edition with infantry and armor miniatures and a very simple card game edition that's only notable for its "special cards" with perks such as instant defensive/offensive victory or peeking on another player's cards.

A victim of mugging and home invasion also designed an unofficial meme version depicting gang warfare and law enforcement in Rio de Janeiro's neighborhoods.

Risk itself is a relatively recent introduction into the national market and is an actual Hasbro product, unlike War, created by four autists who made their own board game company (Grow)and released it as their first product. I've never played the actual Risk.

I've played both the core game and some homebrew variants, though a lack of suitable playing partners and time means my last match was a long time ago. But it has acted as a sort of gateway drug: the game's simplicity left me hungry for more, and so I delved into trying to devise more complex variants (sadly, all of my attempts failed) and reading into military history and other wargames. I should write some more about them, because I'm fascinated by this subject.

>>12894
I'll give some examples.

Mage Wars.
People call it "Magic the Gathering the Board Game" although I never played MtG so I won't comment how accurate is that. Idea is simple, two mages enter arena and they fight to death. Large amount of different card spells and (thanks to expansions) a lot of different characters to choose from make it quite complex tactical game. My friend I used to play with called it modern chess. I think I mentioned this game here earlier.

Descent.
It's like RPG dungeon crawler board game. You have your characters, they have stats, equipment, skills etc. There's Dungeon Master who control monsters, traps etc. There's book with scenarios, and there are puzzle like terrain pieces that can be arranged in many ways. Scenarios can be played separately or as a campaign so between battles players can go to city to gear up, heal etc.
There was very similar game where instead of scenarios players would travel on a big world map with cities, monsters etc., but unfortunately I forgot the name. If I remember correctly it was made by the same company and set in the same world.

7 Wonders.
You build your civilization based around one of the ancient 7 wonders. The one that scores the most points in the end of the game, wins. There are many ways of getting points: there are cultural buildings, resources, economy, war. What I like is that it's not necessary to go to war, you can't really get annihilated during the game and if you're good you can loose every battle that occurs and still win the game.

Settlers of Catan
Based purely on economy. Gather resources, trade, build your infrastructure. Guy who gets big enough wins.

Tried Tikal this weekend. Pretty cozy game for 2-4 players.
Background story: archaeologists compete at the Mayan temple Tikal who can dig up the most temples and gather the most treasure.
The gameplay relies less on luck (no dice rolling) and more on planning and tactics/strategy.
The layout of the board is created by the players on the fly, they choose the hexa tile cards from ordered piles (this is one source of randomness) at the beginning of every turn then they spend 10 action points on different tasks: movement, excavation, treasure gathering, camp building and temple guarding.
The other source of randomness is how the treasure is distributed on the map. Certain tile cards have treasure marks (2-4) and the players draw blindly so the treasure tokens are chosen randomly.
How many points are earned depends on the treasure gathered and temple secured. Temples has levels which can be increased by excavation, the points one get for a temple equals with this level. The players secure temples with their workers ofc.
Workers and one archaeologists get on the map via camps serving as entrances they start their journey on the map from these. There's one main camp everyone can use and all players can set up two camps of their own elsewhere.
Basically that's it.

I said I'd write more about wargaming and here I am.

My board game interest led me to discover many epic-sounding wargames that'd take too much effort to acquire and play: with legit physical versions too hard to get, I'd have to adapt and print the board & other contents or do it all in my computer. I did, however, encounter a handful of games specifically built for printing and easy use. They include:

>Battle for Moscow
Classic wargame from a veteran designer, Frank Chadwick who's even a boardgamegeek.com member. German player gets to choose his starting unit disposition, while the Soviet player has, with a single exception, just a single unit type. German player must capture and hold Moscow by the end of seven turns, with mechanics for mud and Siberian reinforcements, aswell as German armored movement and Soviet rail movement.

I only realized War's (>>12874) combat system was slow and clunky while playing this; attacker/defender strength ratios and results determined by a single dice roll + looking up a table of results is infinitely more sophisticated than War's method of repeatedly comparing the results of two d6 to eliminate each individual unit.

But although it's fun and simple, its fun rapidly dried up after repeated solitaire plays, all of which ended in a Soviet victory. Maybe solitaire play is completely impractical or I haven't correctly understood some rule.

>Eastern Front 2
Designed by Philip Sabin, a lucky assburger who gets to write articles on wargaming (see https://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/departments/warstudies/people/professors/sabin/index.aspx) to be as simple as possible and still produce realistic simulation results. Players start in either 1941 or 1943, with minor changes possible to test alt-historical scenarios, and play out the entire war,
The Axis can nominally win if it can take 2 of 3 major Soviet cities -Leningrad, Stalingrad and Moscow, but that's impossible unless the German player is exceptionally lucky in his rolls. Therefore, he has two other victory possibilities -holding out until late 1945 spring and capturing a certain proportion of the hexes bordering Siberia.
Units, hexes and game turns are massive in scale and thus few in number. Industrial zones are destroyed if taken by the enemy and can never be rebuilt, a confusing rule to a normalfag fellow player. Each side's stacking limit is fixed for every turn, artificially representing many factors that couldn't be organically simulated due to the game's simplicity.

Overall, although entertaining and ellegantly designed, it's a weak choice for repeated plays due to its simplicity and for being designed primarily to prove the author's points rather than being a fun game.

Tomorrow I'll write about the difficulties in starting a match, an awful board game I found in my folder and maybe the games I've never played but hold an interest.

The Nine created sentient species and brought new ones during the wars. It's not sure if any of them survived but the magic they used during the wars opened portals to other dimensions and universes, through these new races arrived. New higher-beings appeared who also formed new creatures to fight for them.
Now from the viewpoint of Humans of late these races can be divided into two groups: Aquirs and Draquirs. Supposedly Draquirs are just a sub-group of Aquirs who have wings, and they are in fact - surprise, surprise - Dragons! The difference between them according to the successor races (the elvenoids: this is the equal of anthropoid on Ynev) that the Dragons aren't evil but Aquirs are very very much.
So these races built new civilization and fought among themselves. These wars were fought in the sky among the branches of the Auld-Tree, the Aquirs used clever flying machines and built their cities in the skies. Everything was drenched in magic and these creatures themselves magical beings.
The earliest appearance of Elves can be placed somewhere in the late First Era. Their god was Urria, who might appear in this age but also they believe that Urria is the Auld-Tree as well. Nevertheless they committed some sin which made Urria butthurt and turned away from them. Noteworthy that the Elves of the "present" aren't the entirely same Elves as the past, and they call their most illustrious individuals Auld-Elves, so it's possible the first Elves on Ynev was Auld-Elves. Still they were like children compared to the Aquirs.
As the closing accord for this Era the Auld-Tree caught on fire and burnt through millenias. Not sure when it was torn down, probably during the next age.

This was less chaotic then the First, almost peaceful. All the remaining species formed their own domains, sometimes they cooperated with each other sometimes they fought some petty wars but nothing really remarkable. The higher-beings realized they are as mortal as anyone here but they were still more than others. They started to support their followers, helped them live and reproduce.
The most notable event was the deed of an Aquir, called Opalsailor. The Satralis has three moons, the Blue, the Red and the Silver. Opalsailor managed to make the third disappear. Basically it's still there (and conceals the hiding place of the Nine) but invisible. This act caused the disappearance of the Dragons too. Most of them slumbers on a pile of hoard in the Sheral like all good dragons do.
The Elves of our day might appeared in this age first, also the Janns and Amunds (but they might be First Era creations also).
The higher-beings got restless and their machinations awakened Orwella again who might not had direct access to Ynev, but her influence was enough to turn everything into chaos again.

The Elves, Janns and Amunds fought a destructive war when the Amund god Amhe-Ramun tried to influence directly the events on Ynev. The Janns destroyed his manifestation but the war also obliterated the forests south of the Sheral and turned it into that strange desert. The Amunds retreated into their labyrinths and temples located deep in the desert, the Janns were decimated, lots of Elves lost their mind and become loony lonesome Sand-Elves, the rest withdrew into their forests.
Especially after the fall of the Auld-Tree the magic sipped out of the world slowly, the Web of Mana formed around the globe.
The Aquirs went to hiding too. Some subspecies of them into the oceans but the "regular" ones burrowed their new cribs around high concentrations of magic. One such place was in Krán (South Ynev), where they gathered around the veins of living metal (also called blacksteel, but it might be an entirely different material which also can be mined only in Krán), the other one is in the North, in the mountains of Ediomad, among the roots of the Auld-Tree.
Most likely the first Humans saw the daylight first in those days. And maybe the Orcs and Goblins were created by Orwella at that time.
The higher-beings - now can be called gods - made a pact that they will stay away from the Primary Material Plane and they only try to shape the fate of the world via their followers. This is called the Ancient Treaty. The gods from now on can be considered the same in their essence, they only got different names in later ages.

Now I have to interject few things.
The Nine created a bunch of Planes, elvenoids exists on three: Material (body), Astral (emotions), Mental (conscious thoughts) Planes. Other different Planes were created as well and the gods made their home there. For example the Three Headed God, Tharr's plane is Lyndigass, the Shandin is the name of Darton's Plane, who is the God of Death and Jokes, and Noir owns Antiss, the Dreamworld (World of Mirrors).
The gods themselves are mortal, their power depends on the number and dedication of their followers. Some gods faded away and other beings elevated among the gods.
All right.

While the Human races built their sand castles Ranagol came and made a pact with the Aquirs of Krán. They took his faith and he gave them his thirteen demi-god children (the oldest and most powerful is called Shackallor) to be guidance for them, who are actually barely (if any) more powerful than the noble Aquirs themselves. From this date the "Empire" of Krán started to grow slowly throughout the Eras as some of the Elves, Humans and Orcs moved among it's mountains and become the follower of Ranagol. Now Krán is the oldest existing country on Ynev. They fought many wars with the Demonic Old-Empire, the first Human inhabitants of Krán was originated from there as POWs.
Ranagol's religion is simple: change is constant, struggle is constant, and basically the two are sames, the individual always has to be ready to fight, to defend himself and what's his and to take what's others' so he can raise himself above others and ensure his survival. The Aquirs were doing this since forever anyway so they made a bargain. With the Demi-god Bastards they gained a cohesive force. Despite this the infighting is constant, which they find necessary anyway to weed out the weak.
The demi-god bastards traveled all over Ynev in the next few thousand years and searched for potential recruits. One of them found a group of elves who still harbor hatred against the Aquirs and try to hunt them down. Another found some entity with great power beneath the ocean then they fought and that monster-demon was so fierce Ranagol made it his first Chaos-Angel (there are many now, they are considered as aspects of Ranagol and the people of Krán worship Ranagol through them).
The Thirteen built a tower in the middle of Krán, which give them mostly safe haven. The structure of Krán looks like this: the closer you live to the Tower the more powerful you are on your own right, there's a movement from the periphery toward the center as everyone tries to climb higher over others, but the closer they get the more tougher competitors they have to defeat and take their place (and then defend that place from those who live outside of it). Even the Bastards aren't really safe, three of them were challenged and defeated. Their place were took over and three other being risen to demi-godhood and become the Child of Ranagol. I think that's enough about the Dark Empire.
For some unspecified reason the authors named Ranagol the Ram-headed Lord. Probably because the good guys (Pyarronites) think of him similar to Satan.

Other noteworthy events:
Niare was created by the Mighty Ones of Toron, they even gave a god them, called Kaoraku, who was a simple dragon previously. Niare is China and was created for a reason I dunno. It's written in a novel but it's blurry and unimportant despite the authors claim it's the most important thing ever.
The refugees from the north settled in the valley of Kie-Lyron and built a bunch of city states. Most of them fell against Krán. These are the first settlements of the Southern City States and the Alliance of the Six Cities.
The Elves also found a new home in Tysson Lar on a peninsula just south of Krán, ofc they fought many wars with the Dark Neighbour.
Three mages created a school and named it Doran (North Ynev, cca. 1200 BP), soon it become a settlement and in a few hundred years a town. The three mages taught three main school of magic later a necromancer joinded them.
Another center of magics was founded not long after the fall of Kyria by the refugees right on the only pass of the Sheral: Ordan. The main force behind the city is the Church of Sogron, the Fire Cobra, however these guys aren't the same as the ones in Toron, it's a different and rival organization. A wizard came from Old-Godon and with his help they perfeceted fire magic. If a player want a fire mage character that dude can only start from here.
Bunch of city-states grew on the shores of South-Quironeia.
As a closing accord: several new Human folks arrived to the North via portals bringing their own gods but later they were become the followers of the Pyar gods with a switcheroo, basically their deities just got another label because in their essence they were the same.

It turned out this started with the rise of Godon and not with the arrival of the new folks. Oh well, the boundaries are blurry anyway and in the history of Ynev few hundred years don't really matter.
I'll try to keep this short.

Not many important events happen during the centuries pre-Pyarron.
Four states was created in the North on the same area where Dawa lay: Erigow and the Northern Three (Eren, Gianag, Haonwell). All four are principalities (actually Erigow is Grand Duchy) and have typical European feudal society, economy and culture. Their population has two components: the autochton folks and some others, called Ervs, who arrived from the west (which makes no sense so I just consider them among those who arrived through portals). Two notable things: Erigow's capital (she has the same name) was founded over the old Kyrian capital, Enrawell, and originally these states was parts of a kingdom, they went separate ways much later, but as I said I'll try to keep this simple.
In the South the castle of Shadon was built by Godon, this will be the seat of the king of Shadon after Godon fall and a new state emerges. More later.

A bunch of adventuring knights from Godon settled in the valley of the river Dorlan, they did chivalric tasks, defended the needy, freed kidnapped princesses, saved cats stuck on trees and such. The good folks in that area preferred to set up their tents beneath the protecting shadow of the knights' HQ, and soon a small town started to shape, they named it Pyarron.
Then a group of gods contacted one of them, a dude named Selmo and told him... I dunno maybe they said they are the good guys or something but it must have been damn convincing. They made him their prophet, told him to spread their faith and blessed him with an exceptionally long life. This is the year 0 according to the Pyar Calendar. And he did spread the Word. The stuff these gods said to him was very acceptable for all kinds of people and the new faith spread fast. Fastish. 1km/year.
These gods already existed under different names and they had no connection to each other. It seems they made an alliance and the new Pyarronite faith sold them as a family of gods, similar to the Greek or Roman ones. Let's list these gods, and say a few words about them:
Adron - god of magic and light
Alborne - goddess of songs, music, legends, feasts and celebrations
Antoh - goddess of sea and storms
Arel - goddess of fight, struggle, nature, bravery, obstinacy
Darton - god of the dead, death, (dark) jokes, as you guessed he's the most coolest of this bunch
Della - goddess of arts
Dreina - goddess of wealth, order, true rulers, fidelity
Ellana - goddess of love, beauty, levity and pleasure (literally: she's a whore, her priestesses are prostitutes, and her churches are brothels... ... ... very expensive ones)
Gilron - god of artisans and smiths, his churches are forges and smithies
Krad - god of science, explorers and travelers, the central god
Kyel - god of creation, destruction and fate, dad of Krad
Noir - goddess of dreams, illusion and luck
Uwel - god of revenge and pain, one can pray to him for revenge on someone, leave a sum on his altar, he judges if the request is just then one of his priest/paladin will fulfill the revenge, he's the designated coolest for those who think Darton is for the edgemasters, but the enlightened ones who realize both Darton and Uwel are for edgy kids know that the coolest is Kyel.
The Pyarronites consider Orwella the daughter of Dreina and Uwel, and call her The Outcast as she was cast out from the Pantheon. However we know she's a much earlier force, don't we.

And now we are in the years of Pyarron.

As the House Wars end in Toron, some families fled to the southern shores of the Quiron Sea to Yankar where they took over the leadership, from now on any Kyr family that gets exiled go there. She's a very multiculti city like Erion became throughout the millenias but she's smaller and has much less adventurers.
Also the new ruling dynasty created a new power out of Toron, they elevated the province to a country. Their chronology starts with this, in 170 Anno Pyarron. They have caste system and overcomplicated army organization. The control of the country is in three hands. First is the Emperor's, Second is the Church of Tharr's and the Third is the Council of the Witches and Witchmasters.
Another folk starts it's calendar in 286 AP. This is the year of the arrival of the Dwoons to Ynev. They built another country, the Dwyll Union, just north of Toron, which is a confederation of chivalric orders. They worship and praise their only God, Ranil the Sun. These are very virtuous, traditionalist and militarist people, led by the High Priest of Ranil and the Grandmaster of the Order of Ranil. The nobles are paladins in chivalric orders, but she's a feudal country just the same.
Among the newly arrived human tribes two other found a home in the North.
Tiadlan is a half-chinky country, also bordering Toron, with martial artists and ruled by a triumvirate. Actually with only two viri the third one is a woman.
Ilanor is a tribal alliance they are half-nomadic folks something like the Hungarians were in the Carpathian basin during the first hundred years after the Conquest. Other aspects of their history were also inspired by our history. In fact there's a saying among M.A.G.U.S. players: "Ilanor represents everything good in Hungarian history and Toron represents everything bad". These guys live in extended families herding their horses, cattle and sheep throughout the year and they settle along the rivers for the winter. They are great archers and have culture of bards, they follow Pyarronite faith, but the priests who took over the roles of the shamans are reverted to be a little bit like those and they worship their gods on the names they have known them since forever. Their favourite is Arel.
These countries - Erigow, Eren, Gianag, Haonwell, Doran, Dwyll Union, Ilanor and Tiadlan - created the Northern Alliance which is a defensive pact against Toron. Later Toron gained some allies herself: Abasis, Gro-Ugon and the Aquirs of Ediomad, among others. Then magical, conscious flags in red and black colors apeared in the North and chose owners for themselves from the leaders of the two rival parties. Since then their wars are called Flag Wars, and there were 15 of them during the era.

Krán found the growin power of Pyarron unsettling, she learned from the previous exchanges with the Demonic Old-Empire and Godon so she launched a pre-emptive strike.
First they managed that the Southern Nomads chose a Great Khan over all the tribes, it was in 3672 AP. Next year the nomads attacked the Pyarronite Commenwealth from the south and gave them a good thrashing. Two years later the Pyarronites gathered themselves and won a flawless victory and began to chase the nomads out of their lands.
Then came a big punch from the West. Krán herself sent Orcish hordes from the mountains and destroyed everything in the Valley of Dorlan river. The chasing armies turned around but were beaten and disperesed. At the end of 3674 AP a provincial legion from Krán and some Aquirs arrive through a portal to the walls of Pyarron city. They destroy it and kill everyone.
However quarrels erupt over the loot between the Orcs and nomads this divides the attackers. The Chei, king of Yllinor, won some battles over the nomads, and finally (four years later) help arrives from other yet untouched Pyarronite states (e.g. Six Cities) and Shadon. These forces with mercenary companies from all over Ynev and irregular units (formed by the remnants of the destroyed armies) liberate the lands by 3685.
The city of Pyarron transforms into a big cloister and the capital moves into the river delta of the Dorlan. New Pyarron was born in 3691.

In the history I wrote fairly lot about the gods, but it feels a summary is needed. Also this will be a different approach to the cultures of the present.

The main religion Human folks follow is the Pyarronite. It's a pantheon of gods I already listed with a human centric message, they represents all aspects of human life. They are worshiped on almost all parts of Ynev with a common tongue called Pyar (it's a fork of the old Godon language) which has similar role tha Latin had: the language of the religion and also a lingua franca within the Pyarronite Commonwealth. Many of the point of view world descriptions are written from their angle, for example introduced as a work of Krad clerics.

Another pantheon is worshiped by the Jad (the Arabic Human folk) and the Jann (Arabic non-human people). They have three gods who are more similar to patron-saints: Galraja (travellers, maybe merchants), Jah (farmers, shepherds, craftsmen) and Doljah (god of thieves, warriors). Now I read in the Handbook of Clerics that the Janns didn't worship any god and these three was heroes among the eldest Janns. The only sacrifice they need is a gulp of water splashed onto the sand.

I should have given titles for the previous posts too. Oh, well.

The Kyr religion was originally the religion of the Kyrs, a non-human race which arrived to Ynev at the beginning of the Fifth Era. It was present a very long time on the continent, went through many changes, not just by itself but it changed with the Kyrs (their life, society, politics etc.) and with the impact of the Human population brought when it was introduced to them. Now the people of Ynev - and therefore the players themselves - don't know how it is looked like in the beginning. Supposedly their religion was always about the conflict of dualities and the new stuff growing out of this conflict.
The authors listed five gods, three males: Sogron, Tharr, Weila; and two females: Igere, Morgena; but lots of smaller deities/spirits exists, they call them hekkas, they are the products of the chaotic Sixth Era, the struggle of Dawa and Ryek. When I met MAGUS, first I read ETK where Igere was nowhere but later they added her and I got the feeling there were other gods too. This was confirmed by the Handbook of Clerics and Paladins, before they arrived to Ynev they had many more. Every god had Anyrs who can be considered as multiclass cleric-mages in DnD terms, they were in the top positions of both the church and the state of Kyria, but in the wars against Orwella they all died or fled.
Igere is the creator and while her cult disappeared from Ynev she stayed the main goddess of the Kyrs left behind on Calowyn. Her sacral places were the most ornament of all the Kyr religious buildings on Ynev. She has power over the created beings and weather, she's the god of light, birth, development and old age. Her worshipers are/were first among educators and healers. She was deposed by Tharr and her Ynevian followers slowly become extinct.
Weila, the Forger of Fate (forger as in smith), the strongest of the ancient fate-gods, he might assimilated all the others. A warlike god and the central figure in the Kyr pantheon on Ynev for a long time. He's the antithesis of Igere as he's a destructive too. He has/had power over the material, nature and time, he is/was a patron of wizards. He was weakened by Tharr as well, his followers slowly disappeared.
Morgena is the Lady of Shadows, goddess of gloom, dreams and inspiration. She's an antithesis of Igere as the darker side of a female duality (Igere is daylight, she's the night). She supported Tharr in the feud so she could preserve herself and her followers, still they can worship her only in secret. Her initiates support bards and arts, they know the meanings of dreams and proficient in astrology, psychology. Witch sects seek her patronage. Most hekkas serve Tharr but one, Ilho-mantari, the patron of some thief and assassin guilds serves her.

Sogron also lost power against Tharr and now his church is assisting to Tharr's. He rules over the element of Fire (I think he's the only god on Ynev who does such thing, I mean ruling over an element, I wonder why the authors made him that way and no other). His followers are torn apart into two (three?) rival sects, one in Toron, one in Ordan. Sogron supports both. He was also a fate god, and the god of curiosity, now he's more liek the patron of cleansing and the hearth of homes, also destruction. He is passionate and vengeful. His monasteries are called Smokecloisters.
I was a little inaccurate when I wrote about Tharr in the history of Ynev. He was already a god when the Kyrs arrived but not the main god of their Ynevian pantheon which he became after the fight in the hanging gardens of Erion. He took over many aspects of the deposed gods, Igere and Weila. Firstly he became the representation of necessary changes and constant renewal which is kinda nature-like and have some common grounds with Ranagol - it seems the authors couldn't really come up with something entirely unique for those gods who are stood against the "good" religions. He absorbed the polarized properties of creation and destruction. He's a god of fate and the judge in the other world who decides about the souls of the deceased.
Tharr battled against both the demons of Ryek and the magic of Dawa so he must care some about his subjects but he will always prefer those among them who proves to be the strongest in a given moment. He accepts food and drinks as offering from regular people but demands blood sacrifices from his clerics. It can be animal or human but the more prestigious the origin of the blood the more favorable he will be toward the cleric who made the offering. If a cleric incurs his anger that cleric should pay with his own blood. If Tharr accepts the apology he heals the wounds. Beside the usual clerical structure he has special wandering priests, called khóttors, who preach his faith to the people wherever they go. He accepts food and drinks from them with a few drops of blood.
The religion of Toron becomes more and more monotheistic, built around Tharr, and gained lots of influence on the southern shores of the Quiron Sea, mostly in Abasis and Yankar but in other city states too. The Kyr pantheon suffered some losses in South Ynev - when the Six Cities adopted the Pyar Faith - but there they weren't much popular to begin with.

I wrote about Ranagol in the history a lot, what I don't really want to repeat. His monotheistic faith was for non-human races first then adopted by Humans as they became more and more powerful factor on Ynev and Ranagol recognized this shift. He's worshiped officially in two countries: Krán and Gorvik but numberless cults are working for him on all over Ynev. He's the most influential in the South, where several city states also sacrifices to him. The two countries worship him in different ways.
In Krán it's a more personal thing, while there are clerics no official state level church exists. Here however on many occasion they worship him through his Chaos-Angels, who are deified entities - basically monstrosities for outsiders - and many chaos-sects dedicated to and for them exist in and outside the country. Supposedly we can't know much about how the religion works in Krán as the Pyar clergy and scientists don't have many sources. Even the Handbook of Clerics and Paladins covers only the religion of Gorvik. However I remember reading somewhere about a blood lottery which decides who gets to be sacrificed to Ranagol (or his Chaos-Angels). The "lucky" ones have a short window of opportunity to relegate others instead of themselves.
In Gorvik which is a pure Human country and the leading strata of society came from Shadon - the home of the ultra-organised religion - the formation of the church was inevitable. Here clerics tend the spiritual life of the inhabitants and make the offerings in the name of the communities they represent, directly to Ranagol - the notion of Chaos-Angels is a heretic thought. This country was founded by a cleric so it's not surprising that two (or maybe three I'm not sure) of the five province is lead by ranashaviks. In Gorvik they value the ties of family a lot, but it can be artificial family too like a guild, clan (as in thief, assassin clan, and not gens) or chivalric order. The peeps here idolize the perfect human bean and they are pretty racist toward non-human races and they view every other human ethnicities the examples of imperfectness or straight failures. They also revere saints who are badass psychos. Their sacrifices are rarely deadly, they do such only on more important feasts in larger temples. The more common type of sacrifice is to offer the pain, the suffering of sinners, those who violate the rule of emergence (to become Übermensch basically). They view emotions as sin and as they are very temperamental people I guess there are always much surplus in sinners who has to atone. With the torturing of mentioned sinners they purify them and their communities from sin. They can also relegate others to suffer instead of them. These guys are very sadomasochistic and tales/modules played in Gorvik are always full torture chambers and flogging. No exceptions.

So I talked about Human religions, then Human religions with non-human origin, and a one for everyone. Now let's review the non-human faiths.

The Orcs - with the exception of one tribe - renounced their ties to Orwella. Instead of her they worship their own Heroes who cheated the Curse of Orwella and retained their souls. They are deified entities but not on the level of gods. They grant powers to Orc shamans tho. Southron Orcs are all belong to Krán and serve Ranagol, and a tribe took Darton as their patron, who turned them white. White white, not pink white.
They were created from many creatures but their closest relatives are Humans and wolves. They are stronger than humans but less spiritual and usually less intelligent. They are carnivores who live short (bout 40 years) but intensive life and live to fight.
Orcish blacksmith and weaponsmith's make good steel as they utilize coal as well but crude items out of it coz no need for pretty ones. Mostly human slaves are working in their iron and coal mines, basically they are worked to death as they have to follow the lifer rhythm of the Orcs who sleep very short periods and active as fuck. No other industry really exist, maybe tanning hides and woodworking, otherwise they hunt their food or plunder it from human settlements. Some tribes keep boar herds and feed them acorns in oak woodland. I dunno how feasible is this. Sounds cool tho.
Orcs are divided into sixteen tribes in the North and unknown number in Krán. The leading tribe is the Seers, the Stormwakers are very good fishermen and pirates, Loyals sacrifice to Orwella and the Taciturns serve Darton.

Goblins are similar, but small, skinny and have many tribes. They worship all kinds of gods but they also have a Hero, called Menegle. Every tribe has different views on him but it's common that he's a "king in the hill" type of champion who will come back later. Some say he has already returned, others try to resurrect him with certain rituals.

Well, this should fix the OP.

>>19914
Oh god, this is a long thread.

I read the wrong topic in search of new info on the new rulebook. But I found finally what I was looking for and that's what matters. And the new info is: date of release is unknown. They might release it sometimes.
But they at least acknowledged they came out the news prematurely when they really didn't know if they even release it. They got a system from a dude which looked very promising and that rose the flame of their spirit high and made them overly optimistic. It was a system what deserved attention but only after they took a closer look they recognized it's shortcomings. To correct everything and the shaping of the system to fit MAGUS well proved to be a slow and too large work to see the end of it.
There are other tidbits how the system works, character creation, the vision about the magic inner operation etc. which mostly looks promising but for now they are just nice words. And maybe it will remain just that. Oh well.
It seems they released few new novels, maybe anthologies in recent times tho.

>>21073
found and it was 3
enjoy bodaydo gualidy from fuggin 2010 :DDDD

Does Bernd know about Battletech? I remember I posted about Battletech the pc game some time ago and there was a minimal interest. Well I got into the tabletop version.
If someone isn't aware what it is, it's basically about giant robots (battlemechs) shooting and punching each other in the distant but not too much distant future (few hundreds years from now).
There's actually few games under that brand: there's the wargame that has like multiple levels of complexity and whether you want to include ground vehicles and spaceships or not; there's Alpha Strike game which is supposed to be very simple and fast; lastly there's the RPG A Time of War where you focus on playing as people and not the mechs, but it strongly encourages to mix it with the wargame (for example the free pdf the creators put on their website has a adventure where the last chapter can be played either as a Battletech or Alpha Strike game).
There's ton of fiction as well and the game lore and what not for all the nerds who like to get into this kind of stuff. I find myself slowly drawn into this while I distance myself from warhammer 40k. As a wargame it feels much more cooler and dramatic, with lots of memorable moments. Im talking about situations like when you score a lucky headshot on an opponent and kill the pilot while keeping his machine intact, or when your mech is badly damaged, limbs blown off and your wounded pilot is doing his best to escape and preserve his life while constantly under fire. Or when your guns got disabled so you uproot a tree or pick up a blown off arm and proceed to beat your opponent to death with it as an improvised club.
I own a boxed set A Game of Armored Combat which has everything you need to play (the figurines, the mapsheets, rulebook etc., just not enough dices) which I occasionally play with friends. Ofc there's a lot more stuff that you buy separately, but unfortunately its kind of lacking. The current producer of those things (Catalyst Game Labs) got their license somewhat recently and they're not a big or popular company like Games Workshop, so some mechs and other things exist only on paper, or as older models (which imo look not good) or 3d prints people made themselves. Thankfully they're constantly working and expanding their wares so this problem can be solved by simply waiting (or getting into 3d modelling and printing).
There's also this fan made application called MegaMek which you can use to play the tabletop wargame on pc, either against other people or against a somewhat competent bot. It's very good at simulating all the original rules (which tbh can feel bloated sometimes), but it also doesnt teach you anything on how to play the game itself, which as I understand it is to avoid any copyright strikes and related stuff. What many people do (myself included) is to play a campaign in megamek where you take on contracts as a mercenary unit, manage your staff, your mechs, finances, logistics etc. Application takes care of computing everything, generating avaiable contracts, stuff on the market, what opponents you will face. You could even print the generated stuff, play a tabletop battle and then input the results back into your pc campaign.
Catalyst have free pdf with introductory rules on their website, I think its enough to get a taste of how the game feels like and perhaps get into full game in MegaMek without the need to get the full rulebook.

>>48421
>There's ton of fiction as well and the game lore
>The current producer of those things (Catalyst Game Labs)
It seems there is/was some US culture-wars battle between one long-time writer of the franchise and the current owner of the brand (CGL). Not clear but it seems the writer, Pardoe, was in the socially-conservative team and was fired by the company.

>>48470
>>48472
>>48473
"Realistically" mechs could be a variation of exoskeletons. With armor, and mount points for weapons.
They don't need to be several meter tall robots. As for the dimensions could be a height of a tank (2-3 m) max, the width and length are obviously less. Not sure about the speed, or agility, or the power source... (gadget X propulsion)
They could fix machine guns, anti-material rifles, infantry anti-tank rockets, even mortars upon them. Or some kind of a multiple rocket launchers (like on the Catapult models or something).
They should withstand small arm and machine gun fire, grenade and mortar shrapnel, anti-infantry mines, but I wouldn't expect them to withstand something more serious.
Maybe they could climb stairs, or the lighter models could scale walls.
They should have some kind of HUD, with screens which could display video feed (from other mechs, or drones).
One problem I see especially with the heavier ones: the pressure from the weight is distributed on too small areas (soles). They would need wide feet.

>>48474

Battletech has something like this, although it is not available for every infantryman.

>>48478
I guess battletech has that covered too since a thing called Protomechs exists. I guess it's still a mech since its a vehicle that is piloted by a person rather than an armor that he is wearing. It fills that size niche in between the smallest "normal" mechs and the battle armor. This is also where the skinny dudes are put in (the faction that produces them has a eugenics program going on and a caste system based on it). Protomechs can't really survive under heavy fire so they rely on their small size and speed for survival.

Reading a novel plays in the setting of MAGUS, on Ynev, in the South. Deep South.
The hero travels through the steppes south of Sempeyer towards the southernmost mountains (see map here: >>19931). He joins a caravan of merchants visiting the nomads roaming around, trading their valuable goods originating from far away lands for "horses and knickknacks". These friggin nomads outjew the fantasyjews! Not the merchants the ones selling glassbeads to the nomads for furs and whatnot, but the other way around! My brain just stops reading this book.
But also made me thinking how trade should be done on nomad lands. Well, "nomad" as I wrote elsewhere. And I don't want to theorize about how it was here on Earth, but in such fantasy setting, or how can happen on Ynev.