Catalyst Game Labs had another in their AMA series on YouTube on Saturday, and this week's topic was "Writing for Battletech". Obviously, it's a topic that means a lot to me, and I was lucky enough to have the day off, so I plopped myself down in front of my keyboard, locked the liquor cabinet to avoid any temptation to talk about Clan Smoke Jaguar, and settled in to see what I could learn.
A lot of the information was stuff that I stumbled upon myself over the last few months in my journey towards getting my first piece published in Shrapnel. There was the usual mix of people wanting to write about the secret history of the Wolverines, the truth behind the pleasure barges of Stefan Amaris, and people wanting to know the best way to get their 200k word novel about Julien Tiepolo's long-lost third cousin published.
But through all of that, one consistent, and incredibly important concept kept coming to the front. The biggest thing to understand getting your BattleTech writing published is fundamentally understanding what it means to write in an owned universe. Too many people, it seems, struggle to differentiate between playing in and owned universe, and writing in one.
The Battletech universe doesn't "belong" to you, me, or anyone other than the legal owners of the IP. We can play in it and have as much fun in it as we want (within legal boundaries), and that's what makes it great. But it's not ours to change, rewrite, fix, or destroy.
Now, that's not to say that you can't do any whacky old thing that you want in your local gaming group. Want to refight the Battle of Tukayyid? Sure! There's a million resources for doing that, and you'll have a blast doing it. Want to have Clan Golaith Scorpion fighting against the time-traveling descendants of Stefan Amaris over the deed and title to a newly reinvigorated Canopian Pleasure Circus? Have at it!
But if what you want to do is write for and in the actual Battletech Universe? Guess what, you have to actually write within the universe. This is a great IP with a rich history and a depth of detail that few other properties can match. And that is what is so amazing about it. That is the thing that has drawn me in and kept me coming back for more, year after year, and accepting that part is the biggest step towards actually deciding to sit down and write in that universe.
Look at it this way. It's your birthday, and you've just unwrapped your present. It's a hand-crafted action figure of Sir Awesomesauce the Knight. He's the coolest, most badass action figure around, nobody else has one like him, and you can't wait to show everyone else how cool your freaking Sir Awesomesauce is! So you go down to the playground, and head straight for the giant sandbox. It's the coolest sandbox around. It's the sandbox where all the coolest kids play and they have such awesome adventures, you watch them every day and it's so amazing. There are giant Sandcastles as big as you are, huge sculpted mountains, rivers, bridges, forests. You can play around in it for hours every day and only see a fraction of the whole sandbox.
The problem is that what most people imagine it means to write in the BattleTech universe is like going into that sandbox and bulldozing the biggest castle in the middle because you think you can build a better one. Or taking that small village where little action figures farm over in the corner and building a mighty fortress over it where your Sir Awesomesauce sets up his realm and rules all of Badasslandia under his grip of awesomeness!
But that's NOT what writing in BattleTech, or any other owned universe is like. What writing in those universes is really like is taking Sir Awesomesauce over to the giant castle in the middle where all the cool kids are having huge battles right now, and realizing that nobody ever paid attention to that little spot over at the southwest battlement, and realizing that the moat there is just shallow enough that Sir Awesomesauce can wade across and sneak into the castle through a secret passage in the back. And once he breaks in the back, he discovers a secret document that's hidden there far away from the pile of gold and treasure that everyone is fighting over. And with this secret document, he sneaks out and over to that little farming village in the corner and saves them all from disaster with the wisdom it contains, ensuring that they get to farm for another season, while Sir Awesomesauce straps on his sword and stalks back off to the huge fight at the castle.
You haven't destroyed the sandbox, or rebuilt it, you explored it, you found the little hideaways and forgotten parts of it, and you did the awesome things in that sandbox that only your very own hand-crafted Sir Awesomesauce could do. And you know what? That's freaking awesome! It's the best feeling in the world, and you can go home that night, put Sir Awesomesauce on your nightstand and dream about what he's going to do tomorrow.