entering high security area
StarDate
BattleTechnology - nothing there, yet, but I have laid out a structure, a "construction roadmap", if you will. :-)
Challenge - and another, very modest, "roadmap"
White Wolf
Fine Arts - exceptional illustrations featured in magazines - now with minimal content; finalisation pending the conclusion of the TRO sections.
Legacy Section:
TRO: 3055 - the original
StarDate started as a FASA house publication and originally covered all of the company's games systems (and games from various other publishers, in line with GDW's Challenge Magazine and TSR's Space Gamer). Reluctant Publising's short-lived volume 3 (6 issues) and the single, abortive StarDrive issue featured increasingly heavy BattleTech content. This included both fiction and game content. Contributors included Blaine Lee Pardoe, Dale L. Kemper (one of the authors of TRO: 3025) and John A. Theisen.
BattleTechnology was founded in 1988 as an in-universe magazine. The whole publication was originally set in 3027 and time progressed 1:1 to cover all current events in the BattleTech universe! But it was not all stories; it also contained a large amount of house rules, some of which duly found their way into FASA publications later on. The contributors were illustrious: of course, the magazine was founded by William H. Keith, Jr., alongside with his brother J. Andrew Keith. Contributors included Michael Stackpole and Thomas S. Gressman, while Dale L. Kemper and John A. Theisen joined over from StarDate.
The only fan website I ever found which actually featured these Magazines was BlackDawg's BT Page. Have a look at his evaluation! It is accurate. However, I would not agree on his view of BattleTechnology beyond issue 0204. Keith's departure surely was detrimental, as he was also a brilliant illustrator. But the content remained excellent, if not universally so. I would not call BattleTechnology #7-21 bad - it continued to have absolutely brilliant articles - but it was somewhat inconsistent.
GDW's Challenge magazine featured some extremely interesting articles on BattleTech of consistently high quality. Their TRO write-ups - if not explicitly servicing elaborate scenarios - featured complete illustrations and lots of special rules. Yes, that Duane Loose illustrated the three tanks!
White Wolf Magazine featured a few scenarios, but only presented some 'Mechs in one issue. That article did feature 5 (or 6, depending on interpretation) different - and idiosyncratic - designs. Long forgotten by most fans, I deemed this early entry into design diversification worthy of its own section.
There were some regular art contributors to StarDate and BattleTechnology. Since those wonderful illustrations are now lost in the annals of the publishing history, I am including a section here that honours the three most noticeable artists with a reproduction of some of their finest works. I was originally going to include the majority of works of these artists; disk constraints force me to restrict this section to a few samples. Gideon and W.H.Keith represent the glorious heyday of the two publications; J.Gammon, on the other hand, is the very best proof for my statement that while BattleTechnology may have become less consistent in its later issues, in no way was it bereft of its own share of brilliant contributions.
The TRO: 3055 section may seem out of place here. Yet in real time, it dates back almost as far - it was first published in 1992. There was a lot to fault in this TRO - the formating never was as bad again (though I personally hold the original TRO: 3050 to be the worst offender), the write-ups were brief, the illustration - despite some interesting work by VML - were one-dimensional. However, I fell in love with that tome from the first moment on - and not just because it was my first TRO ever!
This in itself would not be reason enough to include it - at least on this page. However, recently the author responsible for the Clan 2nd line 'Mechs has rejoined the BattleTech community. Her insights into the creation process should be of a more general historic interest. That is why I have decided to both create a legacy page for the TRO and to include it in this part of the site.
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In other words: I do not want to steal anyone's hard work - I want to celebrate it! Should I have failed in making this intention clear -
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