“The Inner Sphere in Flames!”
Fasa’s BattleTech series (find at Amazon.com*) quickly learned to use fiction to drive their storyline and sales, constructing game-wide events that triggered the launch of new game products. There was the introduction of the Clans (see this old advertisement) as one big storyline, but before tht we had Stackpole’s “Warrior” trilogy, as seen in this Gateways magazine ad. I totally need to read these again.