Mechwarrior 2nd Edition Changes
The changes to Mechwarrior 2nd edition are minimal. I removed the Mech row and Priority 0 column from the Priorities table, resulting in the following table when choosing Priorities:

I have some rough guidelines for Aerospace support so I would have allowed the pilot, but none of my players choose a Clan member so it wasn't an issue anyway. I used the flexible priorities that allow a player to choose up to 10 pts from the 4 categories. Most took Human for 1 pt, 30 Attribute points for 4 points, and split the remaining 5 between skills and advantages.

Next I added some new Advantages based on the Mechwarrior: Dark Age game rules (see appendix below) and disallowed some Advantages that would be inappropriate due to the new setting or other restrictions (mostly because they required a Clan character).

For Skill selection I allowed all skill packages but ruled that University packages represented a House or Republic warrior while the general packages represented a self taught or learn as you go type of training.

Finally, the characters purchased equipment. This rounded out the Mechwarrior RPG portion of character creation.

The following are new Advantages available to Mechwarrior characters. They may only be used in Dark Age tabletop battles and have little use outside of battle. Many of the Advantages require an Edge point to use. Edge points are a pool of points that may be spent by players during a game for their character's benefit. A character starts with 1 Edge, and as he gains experience, he gains more Edge points. At the beginning of each game a character's Edge pool is reset to maximum. Normally an Edge can be spent to reroll any one roll. This in and of itself is a great advantage, so a player with one of the following advantages will sometimes have a tough choice deciding whether to spend the Edge or not.

Inspiring Leadership-1pt
At the beginning of your turn, you may spend 1 Edge to make a Leadership skill roll at a standard difficulty. If successful, your force gets 1 extra action this turn.

Great Reflexes-1pt
If your unit is an Infantry or Mech unit, and you are successfully struck by an enemy attack, you may spend 1 Edge to make a Piloting skill roll. If successful, your unit avoids all damage from the attack. The Piloting skill roll target number has a penalty equal to the damage that would be inflicted by the attack.

Endurance-1pt
You can push yourself beyond normal physical limits. If your character is a member of an Infantry unit, and that unit is pushed, you may spend 1 Edge to make a Build Saving Throw. If successful, your infantry unit does not take pushing damage, although it still receives a second token.

Patience-1pt
You wait for the precise moment before striking. Before you make an attack roll, you may spend 1 Edge to make a Strategy or Tactics roll at the standard difficulty. If successful, the unit you represent may make an attack at a +2 to hit and +1 to damage. If unsuccessful, you have waited too long and suffer a -2 to hit on the attack roll.

Nimble-2pts
Add 1 to all Break Away rolls made by your unit.

Ferocious-2pts
Enemy units in base to base contact with you subtract 1 from their Break Away rolls.

Combining the RPG and Tabletop Games

There was very little conversion necessary. In fact, I only needed to make house rules for 2 facets of the RPG game to let it tie in flawlessly:

Gunnery and Piloting Skills
In Classic Battletech you rolled two dice to see if you hit. The standard roll required was (assuming absolutely no modifiers for range, movement, etc.) a 4 or better, or 4+ as we gamers like to call it. Now Mechwarrior went out of their way to make their RPG tie into their classic rules, and through a formula involving multiple attributes and skill levels you calculate a target number for each of your character's skills, with 4+ hopefully being the average target number for most Mech skills. However, some characters could have higher or lower target numbers (usually higher but they drop rapidly with experience). Suffice to say, average was 4+.

For Dark Age I initially considered ignoring the black die and letting characters roll 2 dice plus a fixed number that would be based on their target number (probably 6 minus your target #). However, after playing a few straight games and seeing the discrepancy between some unit's attack and defense, and knowing that an RPG would be based on the characters each piloting powerful units not using infantry formations etc. to boost attack values, I decided that system simply would not work.

Instead I stuck to the idea that in the RPG, an average Mech pilot has a Mech Gunnery and Mech Piloting skill of 4+. So I came up with a simple solution. If you have a 4+, you roll the straight 3d6 to hit as normal. For every point higher than 4+ your target number is you subtract 1 from the roll, and for every point lower you add 1. So the table looks like this:

This gives the characters some impact on the tabletop game without throwing off the numbers too much one way or the other. Also, the skill used (and thus the target #) depends on what you are piloting and what you are doing. For instance, the attack skills are Gunnery: Mech, Gunnery: Battlesuit, Gunnery: Conventional, and Gunnery: Artillery. Characters in a Mech use their Gunnery: Mech skill, most Infantry use the Gunnery: Battlesuit skill, and most Vehicles use the Gunnery: Conventional skill, although I ruled that Indirect Fire uses the Artillery skill instead. Foot Soldiers may be stuck using skills like Small Arms and Support Weapons, but we'll hope the Player Characters are never in that situation!

To complicate things (but only slightly), a character can Specialize in a skill, making him 1 point better in a single aspect of a skill but 1 point worse in all others. So a character Specializing in Gunnery: Ballistic Weapons may have a 3+ when firing Ballistic Weapons but only a 5+ with Energy weapons. This makes things interesting when combined with my Charisma rule (see below) as a character won't always get a unit that capitalizes on his Specialty.

The other important skills are Pilot: Mech, Pilot: Battlesuit, and Drive: Ground. These skill modifiers are used instead of Gunnery skill modifiers when making Melee, Charge, Ram, and Death from Above attacks.

Charisma Attribute
Charisma is, at least in terms of game mechanics, the least important Attribute in the Mechwarrior RPG. So I made it important. Right now only one character owns a Mech, the rest are assigned vehicles and mechs by the Republic and the Ingress government. I have a master list of what vehicles may be available. Before each mission the characters request a vehicle of their choice. Then they must roll their Charisma or less on 1d6 (Charisma ranges from 1-6). If they do, the vehicle or mech is available. If they roll over their Charisma, someone of higher importance took it and they have to choose a new unit and roll again. This is to keep them from ignoring this attribute and stacking all of their points in Reflex and Intuition. So far it has worked really well.