MEST Basic Rules

I think the MEST Basic Rules are ready for Beta testers.

I've been working to get the QSR or "quick-start rules" finished.  It's been over two years and about 50 play-test sessions but I think its ready for public scrutiny.  As well, I've been trying to figure out a format for the basic rules so that when it goes to print it will look nice.

The difference between the two is as follows; the QSR basically is a two-pager with the core system rules for the MEST tabletop minis game ... and uses really, really, small type.  Everything that I could keep in it is there; much of the other stuff has either been pared away to the trash-bin or kept safely hidden within my design notes for use in the future.  The MEST Basic Rules is the content of the QSR put into a nicely-formatted document.  There are numerous illustrated examples and a stylized layout; I opted for 1930's pulp for the design. There's even a table-of-contents.  Nothing too fancy otherwise.

I'm still working on the Advanced Rules which I think are still nascent. Some of the interesting stuff there deals mostly with modern fire-arms such as fields-of-fire, group fire, and suppression fire.  However, there's also universal-system elements that are pending completion such as the introduction of Champion and Trooper characters, mission varieties, and a campaign rules set.  Much of this is already documented but hasn't been entirely play-tested.  Using my methodology assessment (shown here) I'd say it's in the Alpha Draft set phase where as the QSR and Basic Rules are in the Alpha Test phase ... nearing Beta.

The QSR and the Basic Rules are available in the down-loads section of the MEST Tactics Web site at http://sites.google.com/site/mesttactics/downloads/ .  Keep an eye out for the date-time stamp; the current build is 2012.01.26.  There will be small tweaks during this late alpha phase but if I get some beta-testers I'll start keeping a better grip on the version control.

Join the Google Groups for this project to help me out as a Beta tester here; http://groups.google.com/group/mesttactics/?pli=1