MW1e: Attack By Natives

The first edition MechWarrior RPG has a general weekly encounter table. You have a chance to be attacked by things, to receive reinforcements, and a number of other events, all being more or less likely depending on your current assignment.

There's no table to determine the players' current assignment, but you have to figure that most forces are in garrison, so the chances of getting some other kind of duty should correspond with the chance of an equivalent event happening to a garrison. If the Garrison Events column gives you a 3/36 chance of being attacked by natives, then I figure that's equivalent to a 3/36 chance of being assigned to Pacification Duty.

Now, whatever assignment you're on, if you roll the "attack by natives" event and get attacked while in your 'Mechs, you roll 2d6 (then modify the result depending on your assignment) to see what support they get. I wanted to know just how often the natives had 'Mech support.

I noticed something peculiar.




Take the chance of getting infantry, getting infantry with tank support, and getting infantry with tank and 'Mech support, then weight it by the chance of being on a given assignment, that assignment's encounters/week, chance of battle/encounter, and battle events per day, AND YOU GET A 1D6 TABLE.

The odds of this happening by chance are on the order of one in a million.

This means the "Adventure Architects" (Richard K. Meyer, Walter H. Hunt, Evan Jamieson) were super careful when they created these tables. It also means you can use the garrison column (or whatever assignment you've just completed, I guess) to roll the next assignment for your regiment (reading the non-combat entries as flavorful garrison assignments), or to estimate how many 'Mech regiments are assigned to any given duty at any given moment.