I’ve been writing for Sarna long enough to know that there’s a lot of stuff happening in the BattleTech world pretty much all the time. There’s also a lot of opinionated people that love to share their thoughts--sometimes more crassly than others. Trying to get the word out while also making sure everyone plays nice is a tough job, so I feel a certain kinship with Catalyst’s Community and Marketing Director Rem Alternis.

For Sarna’s next interview, I sat down with Rem to see how she’s settling into the role, some of the challenges she’s faced, and how to interpret Catalyst’s recently-released community guidelines. Enjoy.

Sean Murray (Sarna): Well, first of all, thank you for agreeing to chat with me. I’ve been chatting with a bunch of Catalyst folks to start the year, and we wanted to chat with you since you’re going to be one of the front-facing figures for Catalyst with the Discord and the YouTube channel getting a lot more focus as Catalyst builds its brands and its community outreach. So thank you very much. 

Rem Alternis (Catalyst): Of course. 

Sean: To start us off, what is your BattleTech journey? When did you hear about it, what BattleTech games have you played, and what’s your favorite product of the BattleTech brand?  And if you have any games that you’ve played, what have you played before? 

Rem: Yeah, so I’m fairly new to it. I first heard about it alongside Shadowrun when I was going to the cons, but I was always more of a role-playing person than a miniatures person so I didn’t really pay attention. But at a con in about 2021, I was talking to Rhett at the Catalyst booth, and he told me that I might like the fiction because it’s big stompy robots meets Game of Thrones, and I was like, “Ooh, that sounds fun.”

So I kind of started getting into it. I started reading En Garde from the Warrior Trilogy, and then, as I got hired for Catalyst, I was like, “Man, there’s so much in here,” so I stopped reading because I was like, “I’d love to put everything that I’m learning into a stream for others to learn with me.” That just hasn’t come to life yet because we’re so busy with everything. But yeah, that was the first start. 

Sean: Alright, cool. Have you played any of the games? RPG, tabletop, or video games?

Rem: None of the video games. The RPG, not yet. But I have played Classic. I’ve done a grinder, which was a ton of fun, and I just got to play Alpha Strike with the Aces beta ruleset on Six Sides of Gaming. So that was my first Alpha Strike. I’m still not 100 percent clear on the rules for Alpha Strike, but I’ve got Classic down pretty well, I think.

Sean: Alpha Strike I find to be a lot easier, and faster paced, and with BattleTech Aces, it also lends itself to a lot of interesting cooperative scenarios. I’m very much looking forward to Aces coming out, along with many other people, I’m sure. 

So you’re fairly new to BattleTech, but I’m still going to ask this, do you have a favorite ‘Mech?

Rem: Well, the ones that I’ve learned, I got the Archer plushie, so I knew what that was. And I’ve painted the beginner box, so I have the Centurion and the Rifleman. And so when I did the grinder, I started with the Rifleman, and when he died I grabbed the Atlas, and all of a sudden people weren’t so nice to me anymore; everyone started trying to shoot me.

And when that one died, I grabbed a random one, which happened to be the Daishi Widowmaker, and everyone still tried to murder me a whole bunch. But that one was the moment where I really started to be like, “Oh, this is fun,” you know? ‘Cause someone did a full alpha strike on me and, like, the damage could be called cute. Whereas I then unleashed my Ultra AC/20 and just demolished through armor and everything else. That was a ton of fun

Sean: Yep, that’s why people gravitate towards the big guns.

Rem: Yeah, yeah, it was a blast. 

Sean: Well, you mentioned earlier that you came into BattleTech through another FASA product. Are you a fan of any other FASA products under Catalyst’s umbrella today? 

Rem: Oh, I’m a big fan of Shadowrun. I was lucky enough that my first game was with one of the writers as the GM. He was in our D&D group and he was like, “I want to run this cyberpunk fantasy game for you.” And I was like, that sounds dumb, but here I am absolutely in love with the world. I love the setting. I love the characters. And it’s a dream to get to work for the company that creates it.

Sean: I love Shadowrun too. It’s a very cool merging of these two genres that, surprisingly, few others have really tried. People kind of stick with the cyber side of cyberpunk and ignore the punk.

Rem: Yep. From what I’ve noticed, they like sci-fi or fantasy but they don’t like to blend the two a whole lot. But I think it’s great. The option of having it in our world is very attractive to me. I’m actually GMing on a recorded episode on Six Sides of Gaming starting in March.

Sean: So people have something to look forward to in March. I’m excited!

As you mentioned earlier, you wanted to kind of share things as you learn them. I’m guessing that was sort of what the Crescent Hawks video was like. What did you learn from that experience that you were then able to apply to make the Mercenaries Kickstarter even better? 

Rem: Well, I wasn’t around for the Clan Invasion Kickstarter,  but I have heard tales of trying to keep commitments small so that we don’t overburden ourselves with stuff. I started two weeks before the Mercenaries Kickstarter launched. And so, I knew the team was planning for just about as successful a Kickstarter as Clan Invasion. They had stretch goals planned up to two and a half million dollars, and that was it.

I was actually at GaryCon during the launch and I had to drive down to AdeptiCon and wrangle Loren and Randall to be like, “We need stretch goals! We need to hurry! The community’s waiting! We gotta go, we gotta go!” We were live streaming, so every time they were off camera, I had to kind of bustle them together for a quick ten minutes between shots and be like, “What are the ideas? Come on, let’s go!” So, it’s a lot of cat wrangling.

But in terms of the Crescent Hawks video, I was pretty excited about the opportunity to do that. It was not my start on the lore. I’m a producer; I make all the creatives look good, that’s what I do. So I actually got to work with an uber fan, some of the writers, some of the developers, and they created the script. Then it went through the whole line of fact-checkers and editors, the fiction director, the line developer, and an assistant line developer for BattleTech to make sure everything was accurate. And then it got sent to Trendane Sparks, who narrates a lot of the audiobooks—he did the recording for it. So I was kind of just moving the pieces. Like, we’re here, now it needs to go here, now it needs to go to editing, and so on. So I didn’t work a whole lot on that one, I just produced it and made sure it all happened.

We had plans to do more. We want to do more, but this is not a small job. Everything is always a priority, so it’s been hard to get the focus back on it. I’m just now getting a committee together to help me implement YouTube content and stuff like that, and then Crescent Hawks will be back on the table. So we’ll do more of that, but It’s gonna take a little time. 

Sean: I hear that everybody wants to get into video production but it’s just so much more work. 

Rem: Yeah, it’s a lot, but it’s a blast. Eventually, I could see this job becoming, like, there’s marketing, then there’s someone doing community, and then there’s someone doing content and I love content. It would be great to be able to do that full-time, but right now it’s like one day of my week.

Well, we are tired of keeping EVERYTHING a secret, so we are starting a new program! Tuesday Newsday with our host, Rem Alternis!

Starting next week on our YouTube channel on February 13th!https://t.co/L3pbMpEep3#podcast #newrelease #catalystgamelabs #video pic.twitter.com/wk3n5MaEvk

— CatalystGameLab (@catalystgamelab) February 6, 2024

Sean: Yeah, fair enough. Well, let’s see if maybe we can expand things so you can be the content manager, and someone else can deal with the community. I know you’ve only been in this job for a short time, but what do you think is the most challenging part of marketing for BattleTech?

Rem: I want to give a thoughtful answer here. I think probably one of the challenges is we’re all a bunch of creatives, you know? Everyone’s so excited to work on what they’re working on. Sometimes things get lost in the planning, and they’re still trying to integrate me into their plan. So, sometimes they forget to let me know what’s coming and when it’s coming. I think it actually happened just yesterday; there’s a new BattleTech book that just dropped, and I got the notification about it yesterday. So now it’s like, alright, we gotta put that together. 

I would love what I did for the Camo Specs Online painting guides. I got those several months in advance, so we were able to actually tease and talk about it before it launched. And the engagement from that was huge; we went from 30 reactions to 300 reactions. So, there’s value there that I’m still trying to convince everyone is there and to include me in the process so that I can get some of these dates early on and get them out and advertised. 

It has gotten better. I was able to announce so much at PAX Unplugged. That’s gonna be our con from here on out where we stream and say, “Here’s everything coming next year that we can talk about.” I’m excited that we get to kind of promo that stuff, but it’d be great to have more of this ahead of time.

Sean: It seems like that’s a bit of a process that is improving day by day. Alright, let’s talk about something that was a bit of a controversy recently. The Catalyst Community Guidelines came out last month, and if anybody’s wondering what those guidelines are, they’re available on the new Catalyst Discord.

A lot of it is pretty standard, I would say: be kind, stay on topic, no hate speech, no bullying, no spam, and respect privacy. But there was some blowback for one of the items being a discussion of real-world controversial topics, as well as protecting the IP. 

Let’s start with how the community guidelines developed, and who might have been consulted in their development.

Rem: Sure. It was a long process. So in June, there was the whole Reddit thing that happened. There was an issue with a fan Pride Anthology where someone had reached out to me and asked me to post about it, and I was like sure, so I did. And then they posted it to Reddit and it got deleted as being real-world politics. So there was a big uproar on the subreddit saying, “Well, why is Catalyst okay with this but not Reddit?”

It came to light that there was a lot of moderation against anything Pride-related. Any minis painted in rainbow colors or flag colors got taken down. Some people even spoke up and said, “I didn’t even know it was a flag color and mine got deleted for it.” So there was a pretty heavy hand in moderation in terms of anything LGBTQ+ related.

There was kind of an uproar that happened and I had a bunch of people reach out to me and tell me about it. And I was like, well, one of my initiatives Loren wanted was more communities for Catalyst to participate in and make into official spaces. So I decided; if the people want an official subreddit, we can do that.

Since I was away moving that weekend, I assigned someone to just go ahead and find mods and make it happen. Other than that one moderator, I didn’t know anybody. They set it up, there was a great migration, and by the end of the weekend, I got a message from the original Reddit owner that said, “Hey, I just caught up on everything that’s going on. Holy crap, sorry about that. I’d love to not see the community fractured, I’ve already removed all of my mods, what can we do to bring this back together?”

I don’t use Reddit. It was before I would have ever been ready to jump into managing a subreddit or anything like that, so I didn’t really want to fracture the community, and I know that’s ultimately not the goal of Reddit. So I was like, well, maybe if we can get some community guidelines in place and if you can follow those, it’ll be a little clearer where Catalyst’s lines are in terms of what to talk about or not talk about. He was like, “Cool, can I have your moderators?” And I was like, sure, you can reach out to them. So he did, and they all migrated over.

From there we closed the new Reddit, and everyone moved back to the old one, but we had the new moderators in place. But I don’t own the Reddit, I’m not involved in the Reddit. There’s one freelancer that is a moderator and the rest of them are fans. Some of them are demo agents, I think. I’ve heard about one or two, but that’s it in terms of Catalyst’s involvement. 

The problem was the new Reddit moderators wanted community guidelines that didn’t exist. So, we kind of looked at a couple of online communities that were pretty positive places and cobbled together something quickly for the time being, but I realized that we needed something that’s gone through the process.

We took that as a kind of starting point, added them a little more, and then partnered with a bunch of different people. We had a lot of reviews. We brought in the BattleTech and Shadowrun forums and had them review our guidelines. They all had experience in this that we didn’t as a new community. Those moderators gave us feedback on what they’ve seen or not seen and how that could work. We also sent it to the demo team; they have a very robust operations guide to compare to that and see what the differences are. 

The thing is each of these communities is also different, so we wanted something all-encompassing that can be applied everywhere. But if we need more specific rules for the demo team, or more specific rules for the forums, or wherever else, then we can still do that. Then we had them reviewed by all of the directors, by Loren, we got some feedback, and finally, they were ready to post. We got that out in January.

So that was the process. We tried to do a lot of research on what was already existing out there and what we still needed. We were thoughtful about the language. And in terms of the controversy, it’s just honestly being respectful to each other. Like, you don’t have to agree, you don’t have to be politically on one side or the other. You just have to not be a jerk to other people in the community. That’s all it is. 

Sean: Some people might find that a little difficult, but It’s the internet. I’ve been here long enough to know how it goes. Well, let’s take one of the controversial topics head-on. What is okay, and what is not okay, in terms of discussing real-world topics? 

Rem: So real-world topics: if it’s politics within BattleTech, you’re welcome to talk about anything lore within the universe. 

What is also the defining factor for the team that built these community guidelines is that—and I think if it says this in the community guidelines—identity is not political. Anyone identifying themselves as transgender or any of the LGBTQ+ options that are out there: they exist. They exist, it is not political. They exist and deserve to be treated respectfully. Where it gets political is if you’re gonna talk about social movements, if you’re gonna talk about law or any of that stuff, that is politics. And that’s real-world politics, and it just doesn’t need to be talked about here. 

The example I’ve been using is, if you don’t believe in gay marriage, I’m not mad at you about that. That is your right to believe in what you want to believe, but we’re just not going to talk about it in the BattleTech spaces. Even if you don’t agree with that lifestyle, you should still be respectful of the people in the community who do live that lifestyle. 

Sean: I think that’s fair. Everybody should just get along. 

Rem: Yeah. Be nice.

Sean: That’s what we keep kind of circling back to: just be nice. Let people live their lives. Alright, and now let’s get into the other controversial topic that came from a bit more of the tech-focused people in BattleTech: protecting the IP.

There, the big topic is 3D printing and the sharing of 3D printing digital files (or STL files). Why would sharing STL files for BattleTech be a bannable offense, and what is okay and not okay for BattleTech fans to share in terms of 3D-printed materials?

Terrain, like this Double ‘Mech Bay from Cross Electric Designs, is okay to share.

Rem: Well, we do want to give warnings. Like, someone might genuinely not know, and we don’t want to ban them immediately for making a mistake. But, in terms of protecting the IP, we are stewards of the IP. The IP, you know, belongs to Topps, which is in turn owned by Fanatics, and that whole relationship is messy too.

But as Catalyst, we have approached Topps previously about branching into 3D printing. We know that there’s profit to be made there. There’s a lot that you could do there, and they just have no interest. They don’t even want to have a conversation about it. And as stewards of the IP, we have to enforce that in our communities. So in our spaces, we just can’t talk about 3D prints, can’t talk about or promote STLs. 

Word of warning to the community out there: there has been stuff over the years that has been reported to us, and we do have to investigate that, and as kindly as possible do a cease-and-desist.

Not only does keeping it out of our community protect the commitments that we’ve made to Topps, but we also have deniability. We don’t go looking for people doing 3D printing or STLs, but if they find us and are loud about it, it’s something we have to investigate. It’s just better for everyone if we just leave that out of our communities.

Sean: Fair enough. It sounds like Topps is the one preventing Catalyst from adapting to this technology. One of the things that I would have liked to see is redesigned ‘Mechs that maybe aren’t popular enough to bother manufacturing into ForcePacks but could be sold as 3D-printable models. It’s relatively cheap to have an artist redesign the ‘Mech—the real expense is getting manufacturers set up to produce that design in plastic. Selling the 3D-printing files as something official and legal would be a nice new income stream, but it sounds like Topps is just digging their heels in and making sure the game remains in the 1990s.

Rem: I hope that changes in time, maybe with Fanatics getting involved.

Also, just because that is the rule for one IP does not mean it’s the rule for other IPs. So who knows, for Leviathans, maybe that’s something we look into in the future. I don’t know what the restrictions are on that IP, so I’m just making that up, but we have a lot of cool stuff coming for Catalyst with some different IPs. If we can have a good showing of it and try something to break into 3D-printing in another IP, and then be able to show those kinds of figures to Topps, maybe that’ll change their mind. But it’s not within the current horizon. 

Sean: Fair enough. So, don’t expect anything anytime soon. 

Rem: Right. 

Sean: Is managing BattleTech the most work of Catalyst’s brands, or are the Shadowrun or Leviathans folks even worse? 

“Operation Bulldog Ambush” by Florian Mellies

Rem: I’m gonna make someone mad no matter what. So, when I started, my first event was GaryCon, and I was so excited. I was meeting people in the industry and saying, “Hi, I’m the new Catalyst Community and Marketing Director,” and I would get a very raised eyebrow look, and people would say to me, “Good luck with that community. They are opinionated, they are passionate,” is a very nice way to say it. There have been challenges, but in my experience, it’s been the vast majority of the community has been excited, supportive, and enthusiastic. 

I would say that it is the BattleTech community that’s the rowdiest. But when you look at the Kickstarters, that’s 25,000 people that back the Kickstarter and even one percent of 25,000 is going to be way louder than one percent of 2,000. So it could just be relative. 

Sean: Where do you see Sarna factoring into the larger Catalyst community that is currently being built? Would you consider Sarna as a partner?

Rem: Sarna is absolutely a partner. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with the developers or the freelancers where I asked a question and they’re like, “Oh, let’s check Sarna.” I think there is a close relationship there, and I am looking forward to ways that we can utilize the experience and the knowledge that’s within Sarna. 

There are a couple of ideas that are too preliminary for me to talk about publicly, but it would be an amazing platform to play within the lore and build on it with maps and campaigns and different things like that. Have it be a marketing tool as well as a community tool. There’s no way that we would be able to take on an undertaking like that without support from Sarna, in my opinion. So I think that there’s plenty of room for a partnership in the future.

It’s one of the next agenda items for the community. Reddit has asked for more presence from Catalyst in terms of posts, perhaps a monthly post on announcements of what’s coming, or doing an AMA every quarter or something like that. So I want to implement that and get that moving. I want to make sure that all the social platforms have what they need and feel supported before I dive into a massive new project for the community. I need a break after Discord.

Sean: Fair enough. Well, whenever you’re ready, Sarna is waiting and ready to help. 

Rem: Awesome. I’m excited for that. 

Sean: Alright, now for the fun part. This comes from some of the Sarna staffers. If you had the opportunity to set up a BattleTech anime soap opera, featuring a Clan and a House, which Clan and which House would you choose, and which five BattleTech staff slash CGL staff would you enlist to be their voice actors?

Rem: Ooh. Alright, so I know enough that the drama would be great with Steiner versus Marik. That would lead to some good soap opera drama moments. And then, gosh, in terms of voice actors. Oh, I love my team, but they’re not faces. I think Randall would have to be a voice, because, I mean, he’s just legendary. Loren I would love to, but he talks so fast, so he’d have to be one of the fast-talking wheeler-dealer types. 

Sean: There’s always one of those. 

Rem: Yeah. Gosh. I would bring Jason Hardy in. He’s on the Shadowrun side, but I’d bring him in for the snark. Ooh, Ian would be a fun voice actor—Ian is the art director for Shadowrun and he sounds like Eeyore but way more sarcasm. So, I think that would be a fun one. Let’s see, I need one more, I think. You know what? I’ll say he’s a freelancer: Michael Ciaravella. He’s got a good voice, so I think he’d do it justice. 

Sean: Alright, next question. Henry Cavill’s interest in Warhammer has attracted much fan attention in recent years. If you could pick any media star to get hooked on BattleTech, who would you pick? 

Rem: So I know Sam Witwer is super into BattleTech, so there may or may not be some hopeful conversations in the future.

But gosh, you know what? I’d like to get the Game of Thrones actors in. Since it’s like big stompy robots meets Game of Thrones, I’ll go with Emilia Clarke. We’ll have the Mother of Dragons come and take over in BattleTech. 

Sean: Alright. Interesting. I don’t know who she’d play. 

Rem: Yeah, I’m not sure either. I’ve heard a couple of the female character names. Isn’t it Natasha  Kerensky?

Sean: Yes, although she’s typically portrayed as having big, fiery, ‘80s-style red hair. But maybe she’d be better at playing Anastasia Kerensky. 

Anyway, the last question we have here. What has been your favorite BattleTech-related experience so far? 

Rem: I did love that moment where I was like, “Oh, I get where the fun is.” Like, that was a cool moment when I bought in. But, I will say that my very first game was on Tabletop Simulator, I was learning, and we kind of were dancing around each other a whole lot, and I got bored with that, so I just charged in. He was up on a mountain, so he tried to Death from Above me and ended up missing, critting, and killing himself. So I won without ever touching him.

Sean: Sometimes the dice giveth, and sometimes they taketh away.

Well, that’s everything I had. Was there anything else you wanted to shout out?

Rem: In terms of BattleTech, I’ll sneak this in. Can’t say too much about it because the project’s not approved yet, but Loren went around to all the directors and asked at the beginning of the year what is the one thing that we want to accomplish for this year. 

I have a massive BattleTech project that I want to see come to fruition. And I know I get flack because I came in on Shadowrun and people are like, “Oh, she doesn’t care about BattleTech.” Trust me, I care about BattleTech and I’m very excited for this to happen. It’s still early on, but I’m hoping that I at least get the approval this year and can move on it as soon as possible. 

Sean: I know that we don’t necessarily talk about these before approved projects, but it sounds interesting.

Rem: It’d be a big marketing spin, so that’d be cool.

Sean: It has been a while since we’ve seen a big marketing push from BattleTech outside of the Kickstarter, of course. 

Well, thank you so much for talking to me, sharing your thoughts, and clarifying a few things on the community guidelines. And even giving us some things to look forward to.

Rem: My pleasure, thank you.

Sean: Okay, thanks so much. Have a good day. 

Rem: You too! Bye! Bye!

Thanks to Rem for sitting down to chat, and looking forward to seeing what surprises she’ll have in store for us in the future!

And as always, MechWarriors: Stay Syrupy.