Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[Ghostse]

One of the games has FMV cutscenes and tells an interesting story.

No I mean a literal animated series

https://heavy-gear.fandom.com/wiki/Heavy_Gear_animated_series

From a now deleted YouTube video, he claims that after losing the licence to mechwarrior, they bought heavy gear and made another mechwarrior game, just with a different licence. They supposedly ignored the lore.

They literally made Mechwarrior 2.5. Mechfinder if you will.
They reused the engine from Mechwarrior 2 mercs with a few upgrades. I don't know enough about the lore to say if they abandoned it, but there's a landship and Gears with tread-skates so its HG as far as I can tell.

I don't remember much about HGII, I never played it.

Then they did a resurrection and were going for a full game but scaled back to an arena shooter because of incompetence.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Sorry in advance for the repeat, but the more I dig into Lancer lore the worse it gets, and I want to complain to somebody.

First, it should be said that the lack of players is still an issue. There is one guy who really wants Lancer however, and putting some YouTube on in the background is no skin off my nose.

Second, I had always heard the lore was it's a commie utopia where everything is 3D printed, there is no scarcity or money. This is partially correct. This is the state of the world in the galactic core, but the game is set in the periphery which doesn't have this kind of life, which brings me to my third point.

None of this is gameable. It's the anti-Eberron in that it's all dates and names and fluff and history and none of it the PCs get to interact with. eg. There have been three versions of ComStar SecCom who are currently in a civil war. Does this matter to the PCs? Nope. They're fighting far away. There are big space battles between mega corps, but none of this involves mechs so what is it doing here? I assume they're just clueless, but it could also be that they want to create these eras for spin off games. The same way mech warrior have different eras with different mechs you can use.

There's a bunch of enemies you can fight. Mega corps, rebels, planetary governments, pirates, but none of them really have much motivation because, again, the galactic core is a post scarcity commie utopia. Why would they care about some border world?

But wait, it gets worse. There's what lore YouTube describes as a sentient eldritch computer virus called Horus. This sounds so stupid I have to assume this is the YouTuber getting it wrong. It's a computer virus that infects every printer, so you might go to print a rifle and get a weird alien weapon courtesy of Horus for reasons unknown but with a plan in mind. I'm on board so far. I imagine something like The Machine from Person of Interest, or the God Machine from The God Machine Chronicle. There is just one small problem that ruins this concept. Horus has the power of time travel and changing reality. There goes any stakes with that faction. Maybe the YouTubers were wrong because while having Skynet as a faction could be neat. Having an all powerful omnitient Skynet, not so much.


The one thing I do like about the setting is the mega corps, since they make mechs and even common items based on a theme. So there's you're Japanese company making anime mechs, your arms company making milletary mechs, an industrial supplier that makes modified construction equipment mechs, and a couple of others. In a world where things can be 3D printed, why you'd resort to modified industrial equipment instead of printing a combat mech is a question I've not answered yet.

 

[yydszmiteg2]

no scarcity

Maybe this is too much economics sperging but if there is no scarcity then it's not communism by defintion... that doesn't stop retarded commies from pointing to non-scarce sci-fi as an example of communism but regardless.

In a world where things can be 3D printed, why you'd resort to modified industrial equipment instead of printing a combat mech is a question I've not answered yet.

This whole setting seems retarded and like you'll either need to re-write it yourself or throw it out in favour of a better one *Cough*Battle tech*Cough*, at any rate the only reason I can think to use non replicated stuff would also be a good one for a setting with mega corps. DRM. If you cannot pay retarded license fees then you need to use other stuff. This is the reason in the setting of the game star sector.

 

[Generic Harem Master]

@Judge Dredd

Sorry, it wouldn't let me quote and I'm a retard who can't figure out this site no matter how much I try over the years. Part of the issue, my big issue with Lancer because of course whenever I mention mechs, someone somewhere recommends this to me, is this is actually on point. It's why it winds me up trying to figure out how people play this.

The players are completely removed from the game, and have no reason to do anything. You're PMCs. You don't have to be part of Union, but nearly every adventure requires you to be working for them. Somehow, Union is a world which is post scarcity, has a set-up where people choose if they want to work, and how long for - there's no penalty to not working, because post scarcity. They have their own currency. But they produce nothing. Somehow, they constantly keep the other megacorps in check by maintaining huge levels of trade, and 'buy' the stuff they need to run 3D printers, but it's never explained how they do that. They just have a currency, and it's backed by ????? but any currency every other faction has is evil and exploitative.

Union has a vested interest in the other worlds, because they're an ideological Commie empire. They're Space EU. They tend to prefer overwhelming satin glove diplomacy to iron fist, but they will totally iron fist you. Pirates threatening your border? Well, we'll come in and sort your shit, give you free medicine, food, etc. which we can infinitely reproduce. We won't ask for anything, and you don't need to do anything! All we're saying is you can't enslave people (note: enslave in their tenants also includes 'having to work to survive'), you need open borders. You're completely free to run your country/world/whatever as you want, as love as your Union Rep says it's okay. Their plan is to take over the world, make everyone a vassal, but this is a Good Thing(tm) and has been confirmed by the writer. The reason it's 'utopian' in the writers mind is because Union not only is a force for good, they're objectively right. If left to their own devices, they will take over the world, they'll win and make the world a better place. The bad guys are bad because they're actively impeding Progress, not because they're bad. It's selfish to want your own world, why not let in the Space Commies, bro?

Which is what leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It will constantly moan about about imperialism, colonialism, etc., but at the same time, the entire premise of the game is that you're playing PMCs fighting a proxy war on all fronts to destabilize the world so the Good Guys can bring about change.

Another of my big issue is yes, straight up weird Eldritch bullshit is real and it's happening. But it's also based on 4e D&D, so mechanically, it's all the same shit. Yes, NHEs (Non-Human Entities, or whatever it is they're called) exist, and in every adventure I've seen, they're straight up Final Fantasy bosses. If they become Unshackled, they begin to devolve, devolve the world around them and fuck up everything. You can choose to level up and have a robot digger arm ripped off a construction vehicle, or a -literal chassis which is a time travelling paradox machine- which is obviously based on Jehuty/Amon from Zone of the Enders. These are presented both in setting, and mechanically, as equal choices and they are.

For the final part of hypocricy, Unity relies on slavery to work. But whenever it's written about, from the writers view, not unreliable narration, it's presented as a good thing. These Eldritch AIs, given free reign, will eventually degenerate and fuck up the world. It's a good thing we're enslaving and constantly mind-wiping them because what we're doing is destroying their sanity, because if we didn't, they'd cause even more damage. It's a literal no-stakes setting where mechs can be 3D printed in a few minutes, you can even mass clone yourself without any issues. (Some people will argue that's not what the setting says, but that is what it is in practice. Cloning is supposed to have issues with it, and mass cloning yourself will fuck you up. But what that means in practice is there's a random roll table where your clone might come back with six fingers, or 'they act quirky and have a dark state'. But this is also stated to be optional from the player's point of view. For play purposes, cloning is always perfect, you get your character back whenever you want and you only roll for quirks/flaws from cloning if you, the player, consent to it)

 

[East_Clintwood]

Sorry, it wouldn't let me quote and I'm a retard who can't figure out this site no matter how much I try over the years.

Null disabled full quotes on long posts to stop things getting out of hand. You can quote parts by highlighting each individually:

 

[Judge Dredd]

if there is no scarcity then it's not communism by defintion...

I don't understand.

that doesn't stop retarded commies from pointing to non-scarce sci-fi as an example of communism but regardless.

The game is made by retarded commies. Even the introduction talks about "anti-fascism" and "solidarity". They know they fucked up when they didn't include money because the first expansion introduced money.

This whole setting seems retarded and like you'll either need to re-write it yourself or throw it out in favour of a better one *Cough*Battle tech*Cough*

Agreed. That's why I was sperging about mech games the last few pages of the thread, and have done so a few times in the past. I know a guy who has played Lancer before and really wants me to run it.

The problem with writing my own setting for Lancer specifically is how closely tied the mechanics and setting are. It's kind of like Battletech in that the game only plays one setting. The 5 major megacorps have to be present because the games level up and customization system is built around them. ...I think. Shits complicated. I might have a way around this, I will cover in a bit.

(Long post)

Thanks. It's not just me then. And it's good to know I'm getting this dumb setting right so far, though I didn't know a lot of what you mention (like the PCs being PMCs). It helps me out in knowing more, but as you said, it still doesn't give the PCs motivation.

This puts me in a bit of a catch 22. The setting is beyond saving, but at the same time it can't be divorced from the mechanics. What I should do is do what I've always done. Ignore the game entirely. Perhaps look more into other options recommended by Kiwis. But then there's the DnD 5e problem where it's THE game and people won't play anything else.

My idea before reading your post was to scrap everything that isn't directly linked to mechanics. So keep the mega corps, keep the 3D printing, keep Horus around but with some changes. And within that framework create a basic setting around it. I hadn't figured out the specifics as I wanted to check if it was viable first.

But your post and information about Union provides an idea that might sound a little edgy and try hard, but it's workable. Make Union the bad guys, and maybe even a failing communist state that requires constant expansion. Any pre-written lore was just propaganda from an unreliable narrator. Horus, as mentioned before, will be given a role of The Machine from Person of Interest, mixed with The God Machine from The God Machine Chronicle.

 

[Generic Harem Master]

Thanks. It's not just me then. And it's good to know I'm getting this dumb setting right so far, though I didn't know a lot of what you mention (like the PCs being PMCs). It helps me out in knowing more, but as you said, it still doesn't give the PCs motivation.

The motivations can be anything, and I forget where it explains it, but that's what a Lancer is. Lancers are mercs for hire, who may or may not be a formal PMC, but essentially, every Lancer is a deniable asset. They could be in it for the money (which again, makes no sense, because if you're working for Union, they cover all your costs and needs. There's literally nothing to buy), or fighting for Union to give someone they love a new leg or some shit.

And you're right, imo. It's the same issue I had. "You can just set it somewhere else", but it's hard, because I have to rewrite the whole game. You can't remove the ability to 3D Print mechs and repeat cloen without also removing several abilities, because some of the pilot skills and mech parts are built on the idea that suicide/sacrifice is a temporary set back. You either need to include the groups and the weird Eldritch stuff, or completely rewrite them entirely, because the game is built on your abilities coming from those groups.

Unironically, I've seen that even the people who love the setting (and Union, to some degree) on places like Preddit do this too. Because Union is not only hard to write apologia for, but one of the first expansions and best selling ones is how to play games outside of Union, how to play on the Outer Rim sort of thing (and of course, the game couldn't resist throwing constant slams at how people living in the backwaters/rural areas are selfish, evil bigots), so even people who like the game don't like the base set up. I think the writers are aware too, as you're all Lancers, not Union members, because I think they realise how little people would want to actually play it.

One of my friends, who is a bit of a shitlib who kinda likes the setting, even she doesn't run it that way. She almost exclusively runs games set within Albatross, which is still a gay as Hell name, but they're essentially a cross up of Celestial Being from 00 Gundam and a lost Space Marine chapter. Space knights who run interference wherever they please, on a giant ship which may or may not get constantly tossed up through space and time through The Warp and are generally disliked by Union because they'll step in and fuck them up because they have no loyalties other than 'honour and liberty'. Which I find hilarious that the 'honour and liberty' guys are generally painted as bad guys in this setting.

(Fun fact: I'm a big Gundam fan, which is why I even looked into Lancer, 'cause I wanted to do something like Iron-Blooded Orphans. I swear Lancer is a full on rip of it without irony. The fact the main group is called Union, who are the totalitarian, EU subversives who use outside powers, the Peacekeepers, to try and crush dissent in the name of 'protection' while benefiting from infinite renewable power, and they unironically make them the good guys tickles me just right in how backwards these commies are in their ideology.)

 

[Knud Lavard]

Speaking of RuneQuest (a game I know nothing about):

https://x.com/SandyofCthulhu/status/1881170105641640003

Sandy mentions how gods work in that game and to be honest I love the sound of it. Has anyone played it? Would it work you think to shoehorn them (or at least the mechanics behind obeying them) into (((World's Greatest Roleplaying Game)))?

Religion pervades every aspect of the world of RuneQuest, to the point where atoms and elements don't exist - the air you breathe isn't O2, it's tiny air runes, over which the air gods hold dominion. If they like you, then you can wield these air runes to fly. If they dislike you, they might prevent the air runes from entering your lungs, choking you. A character's appearance and personality will be shaped by their worship, such that a Vingan will always have red hair and an Uroxi will always be bull-headed. Every action you take relates to the gods to some degree - which is a big departure from modern D&D, where Paladins don't even draw power from gods anymore, and you are only really expected to interface with religion if you're a Cleric.

I think the simplest way to go about things would be to steal the Passions and Augmenting system from RuneQuest. The main purpouse would be to have a Devotion: Whatever-god-they-worship Passion, but since you're using the system, you may as well make other Passions with your players. RuneQuest runs on percentile dice, so a Passion would have a percentile value associated with it, but you could just as easily divide the value by 5 and have your players roll to that number or lower to succeed, to keep it in line with the rest of the game. If so, shave off the rules for varying degrees of successes and maybe use a system wherein passing the check gives a +3, passing the check with 10 or more gives a +5, and inversely so for failing the check. Similarly, you can axe the rules for when you increase/decrease your Passion since d20 has less fine-detail than d100 and just do it when it makes sense instead.

Alternatively, consider running RuneQuest if it sounds jokes. There's a fun little CYOA-esque game that lets you try a simple scenario in the system, to see if you gel with it. If you feel like the setting is impenetrable, playing some King of Dragon Pass or Six Ages: Ride like the Wind or Lights Going Out is an easy way to start understanding the setting and how everything works.

 

[Quintus]

I played in a Lancer game very briefly. I wasn't a fan of the rules or the lore. The lore is the worst offender imo. I don't really see a "utopian society." to be a great basis for a game about blowing people up and fighting for... money? I guess you're not fighting for money and that was what truly baffled me when I was making a character. I wound up playing a former space Nazi that fights for Cognac and fancy cigarettes that burned people alive. So that was kind of fun I guess. Can't say I would recommend it unless you have a solid dm and group. I certainly wouldn't run it.

 

[Overly Serious]

@Knud Lavard Is Runequest the game with the ducks? I recall playing a game a very long time ago that I think was Runequest. And I was a duck.

 

[Knud Lavard]

@Knud Lavard Is Runequest the game with the ducks? I recall playing a game a very long time ago that I think was Runequest. And I was a duck.

It's the game with the ducks, yeah. I think it speaks on Glorantha as a setting how duck people are among its least outlandish ideas.

 

[Judge Dredd]

and fancy cigarettes that burned people alive

They must be really fancy if they do that.

 

[Mexican_Wizard_711]

@Knud Lavard Is Runequest the game with the ducks? I recall playing a game a very long time ago that I think was Runequest. And I was a duck.

Not a fan of Runequest, especially since the /tg/ threads are full of Grognards sperging about Jeff or how their game isn't more popular

 

[Generic Harem Master]

I played in a Lancer game very briefly. I wasn't a fan of the rules or the lore. The lore is the worst offender imo. I don't really see a "utopian society." to be a great basis for a game about blowing people up and fighting for... money? I guess you're not fighting for money and that was what truly baffled me when I was making a character. I wound up playing a former space Nazi that fights for Cognac and fancy cigarettes that burned people alive. So that was kind of fun I guess. Can't say I would recommend it unless you have a solid dm and group. I certainly wouldn't run it.

As much as I like to bash it, mechanically, I think the game is fine. I really think Structure is a great mechanic (as much as I'm loath to admit it, as it's the only original thing they didn't take from another game). It really does a decent job of having HP pools which can be high-ish, but at the same time, you can still be taken out in one or two good shots, without being able to game it like 'Well, that gun is only doing d10+5, and I have 50HP, so I can safely take at least 7 shots before I need to worry about him'. But everything else in the game is taken from somewhere else (combat is 4e D&D. Advancement is taken straight from Shadow of the Demon Lord. Skills, which had to be added in the expansion because there's literally no rules for doing something outside of shooting things with a mech, are taken straight from Blades in the Dark).

Part of the big issue for me is the game is... well, it's a game. I'm not opposed to overly gamey mechanics and putting the game mechanics before immersion, but the game has zero immersion. Why can you not fly more than X, or weapons can't have a range of more than Y? Because we didn't know how to balance it. They straight up tell you in the combat section that having long range is too powerful, so you can't have it.

It's not really an RPG, in my mind. It's a wargame, with good rules for building encounters (which again, is faint praise as they took 4e D&D combat wholesale - which is known for being fantastic mechanically) and some ideological setting crap thrown onto it. The game has little support for anything but, essentially, several vaguely linked combats where your roleplaying is, at best, a couple of times where you sit by your mech after the fight and chat while you wait for the next SitRep. Nothing feeds into anything else, and everything is starkly separated. Does the fact your mech is an Eldritch monster which can be 3D printed and can literally travel through time to dodge attacks come into play or the narrative? No. Because there's no narrative to it. Your mech being able to travel through time is solely one mechanic of 'roll d6, on an even, the attack misses' even though the actual fluff of it is an entire cringy blurb of how you can extort and travel the various worldpaths or some bull to travel through time.

 

[Morethanabitfoolish]

This puts me in a bit of a catch 22. The setting is beyond saving, but at the same time it can't be divorced from the mechanics.

Quick and simple way to fix it seems like it would be to make the utopian empire evil.

The stupid Horus thing isn't a virus, it's part and parcel of design of these magic printers and the payoff is bit by bit it's shaving away at the lives of people across the whole empire, the freak results are unintended but errors with excess amounts of said overall reduction in more conflict heavy regions (AKA PC zones). Hard to see since the rapid expansion means not many have noticed it yet but pretty much every single region that has fallen into their sway is having the average life expectancy slowly reduce and those on the front line of major conflicts it's much more noticeable but anyone pointing it out tends to go AWOL.

Should be an easy enough thing to build in, just go the reverse of settings like 40K where you have ludicrously old characters be centuries old and instead have meeting characters older than fifty say be a genuine abnormality. For bonus fun it means the old mentor trope becomes justified because many of them will be ones who actively can remember a time when dying pf old age before 45 wasn't the norm.

 

[Snekposter]

As in, the setting was a sport where mechs fight each other

That's One Must Fall: 2097. A 2D fighting game... but with giant robots instead of people.

They reused the engine from Mechwarrior 2 mercs with a few upgrades. I don't know enough about the lore to say if they abandoned it, but there's a landship and Gears with tread-skates so its HG as far as I can tell.

I played HG2 ages ago when I was a kid and had no fucking idea what I was doing, but thought the skating was awesome, at least.

Sorry, it wouldn't let me quote and I'm a retard who can't figure out this site no matter how much I try over the years. Part of the issue, my big issue with Lancer because of course whenever I mention mechs, someone somewhere recommends this to me, is this is actually on point. It's why it winds me up trying to figure out how people play this.

The players are completely removed from the game, and have no reason to do anything. You're PMCs. You don't have to be part of Union, but nearly every adventure requires you to be working for them. Somehow, Union is a world which is post scarcity, has a set-up where people choose if they want to work, and how long for - there's no penalty to not working, because post scarcity. They have their own currency. But they produce nothing. Somehow, they constantly keep the other megacorps in check by maintaining huge levels of trade, and 'buy' the stuff they need to run 3D printers, but it's never explained how they do that. They just have a currency, and it's backed by ????? but any currency every other faction has is evil and exploitative.

Union has a vested interest in the other worlds, because they're an ideological Commie empire. They're Space EU. They tend to prefer overwhelming satin glove diplomacy to iron fist, but they will totally iron fist you. Pirates threatening your border? Well, we'll come in and sort your shit, give you free medicine, food, etc. which we can infinitely reproduce. We won't ask for anything, and you don't need to do anything! All we're saying is you can't enslave people (note: enslave in their tenants also includes 'having to work to survive'), you need open borders. You're completely free to run your country/world/whatever as you want, as love as your Union Rep says it's okay. Their plan is to take over the world, make everyone a vassal, but this is a Good Thing(tm) and has been confirmed by the writer. The reason it's 'utopian' in the writers mind is because Union not only is a force for good, they're objectively right. If left to their own devices, they will take over the world, they'll win and make the world a better place. The bad guys are bad because they're actively impeding Progress, not because they're bad. It's selfish to want your own world, why not let in the Space Commies, bro?

Which is what leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It will constantly moan about about imperialism, colonialism, etc., but at the same time, the entire premise of the game is that you're playing PMCs fighting a proxy war on all fronts to destabilize the world so the Good Guys can bring about change.

Another of my big issue is yes, straight up weird Eldritch bullshit is real and it's happening. But it's also based on 4e D&D, so mechanically, it's all the same shit. Yes, NHEs (Non-Human Entities, or whatever it is they're called) exist, and in every adventure I've seen, they're straight up Final Fantasy bosses. If they become Unshackled, they begin to devolve, devolve the world around them and fuck up everything. You can choose to level up and have a robot digger arm ripped off a construction vehicle, or a -literal chassis which is a time travelling paradox machine- which is obviously based on Jehuty/Amon from Zone of the Enders. These are presented both in setting, and mechanically, as equal choices and they are.

For the final part of hypocricy, Unity relies on slavery to work. But whenever it's written about, from the writers view, not unreliable narration, it's presented as a good thing. These Eldritch AIs, given free reign, will eventually degenerate and fuck up the world. It's a good thing we're enslaving and constantly mind-wiping them because what we're doing is destroying their sanity, because if we didn't, they'd cause even more damage. It's a literal no-stakes setting where mechs can be 3D printed in a few minutes, you can even mass clone yourself without any issues. (Some people will argue that's not what the setting says, but that is what it is in practice. Cloning is supposed to have issues with it, and mass cloning yourself will fuck you up. But what that means in practice is there's a random roll table where your clone might come back with six fingers, or 'they act quirky and have a dark state'. But this is also stated to be optional from the player's point of view. For play purposes, cloning is always perfect, you get your character back whenever you want and you only roll for quirks/flaws from cloning if you, the player, consent to it)

Reminds me of Eclipse Phase, but intentionally made even gayer and more globo-homo.

 

[Quintus]

They must be really fancy if they do that.

Haha. Perhaps they're filled with thermite?

 

[GhastlyGhost]

That's One Must Fall: 2097. A 2D fighting game... but with giant robots instead of people.

Or Mobile Fighter: G Gundam, the best Gundam Series.

 

[Warm Lasagna]

So wait, did we ever settle on a GOOD mech game or are we still shitting on Lancer?

 

[Ghostse]

So wait, did we ever settle on a GOOD mech game or are we still shitting on Lancer?

The only good mech game is B/X but the fighter class is called an Armored Core.