I utterly adore DFA. From the characters to the plots, the RPG moments to the battles... I just love it all.
DFA is set about a thousand years from now, and humans have colonised space. There are Houses that control vast expanses of space, and a few independent planets but they are rather rare. I will admit I'm not fully aware of all the Battletech lore, but that's OK. DFA introduces what is necessary and the rest of it can be a surprise. Oh and there's no in-battle healing, and it is permadeath. Oh and when they take damage in game, the 3D printed hand-painted mechs get destroyed.
Season 1 started with a jailbreak. The Lord Commander was in prison, and he was "rescued" by Talon, Valravn, Beta, and Diva - originally the Pork Chop Express, and later the Marauders. After some time, you discover that the group has been brought together through blackmail and must perform certain missions for the Benefactor. For Season 1.5 we are introduced to the Renegades, a performing mech group that find themselves in actual combat. Season 2 sees them join with the Marauders to protect the planet they have learned to call home.
Every character is wonderful, and the relationships between them build and flourish in what feels like a very natural way. Nothing is forced; even the handful of romantic relationships are charming, rather than the forced clinical "romances" that I've had to tolerate in a lot of fiction. There's also a cat called Scrapple that the Hyper RPG Book Club has come to adopt.
I'm going to include here a quote here from Paxamo, another huge fan of DFA and Hyper RPG:
I started watching DFA with no idea what Battletech was or what the rules were. That didn't seem to matter. It was the characters that kept me coming back. The story was compelling and dramatic, and the characters could make you laugh as well as break your heart. I started writing fanfiction because I had such a strong emotional response to the storylines happening in the show, I needed a way to express them. Any story that affects someone in that kind of a way must be doing something right!
You can find the earlier seasons on YouTube (links here, here, and here), and the opening to the third season tonight live on Hyper RPG at 6pm PDT (that's 2am UK time!).
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