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

[Ghostse]

Warg rider.

 

[demicolon]

Warg rider.

For those who like their Uruk-Hai more on the goblin side.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

What WOULD the slur for willingly getting rammed by an orc's 'longsword' be?

Literal race traitor.

 

[MazonLabs Recruitment Rep]

For those who like their Uruk-Hai more on the goblin side.

DID SOMEONE SAY GOBLIN?!

 

[Imperial Citizen]

Dice Scum has been drafted into the Emperor’s Inquisition and are prepared to reveal its secrets. For knowledge is power, guard it well.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Just finished the Dice Scum on Lancer. @Adamska really doesn't like it. His shtick of trying to break the game, only for it to turn out to be a viable build...

Maybe I missed it, but you guys didn't talk about the worst part of the game. The setting that makes missions impossible. Communist utopia, cloning, and free mech printing make most of the conflicts pointless or nonsensical. eg. Why have piracy when you have infinite resources? The DMs guide has nothing you can do to set an adventure. Supposedly they put out expansions to fix this, including money and conflict "hot zones" to set your game in.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

Why have piracy when you have infinite resources?

Because I love death and violence.

 

[ColonelCadaver]

Communist utopia, cloning, and free mech printing make most of the conflicts pointless or nonsensical. eg.

Core book's artstyle, clearly made by twitteroids, should've been a dead giveaway. Somebody can't write dark future with war n'sheit without also making it full auto luxury gay communism.

Although, the world seems to be written as if it'd make for a good "gang of chuds travels on mechs, subverts established hierarchies, shits and moves on" type of deal.

 

[Adamska]

Maybe I missed it, but you guys didn't talk about the worst part of the game. The setting that makes missions impossible. Communist utopia, cloning, and free mech printing make most of the conflicts pointless or nonsensical.

We did, and much like every other complaint that I had, Lancer does actually explain it. The core of the system that you work for is a Utopia; the edges of it as well as the areas they don't control in the Galaxy are nightmarish shit holes. It actually explains that the setting has that as an actual element of hypocrisy.

I don't particularly like the setting but they at least did their work, even if I don't particularly care for the setting or how it uses para causality as magic excuses. It's similar to eclipse phase in that regard.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Because I love death and violence.

Well you only get half of that due to free cloning.

We did, and much like every other complaint that I had, Lancer does actually explain it.

If it does, it's either in the expansions, or buried under walls of irrelevant text.

Although, the world seems to be written as if it'd make for a good "gang of chuds travels on mechs, subverts established hierarchies, shits and moves on" type of deal.

Same with Radiant Citadel, and that doesn't get a pass.

 

[Red Dragon]

I've seen two different streamers talking about how excited they were to play Lancer for the first time, only to never mention it again after they played it. As a mecha fan, Lancer always seemed to me to be only surface and no depth.

 

[MazonLabs Recruitment Rep]

Fuck it, if I run Lancer, I'm running it in THIS world instead.

I'll keep the neon, but no cloning and instead of a utopia it's two authoritarian and one anarchist faction vying for control of a Blade Runner set piece planet called Solo Nobre.

 

[Adamska]

If it does, it's either in the expansions, or buried under walls of irrelevant text.

No. It's literally a section in the core book that we read out and cleanly. It ain't in the front half, but it's in there. It's on page 356, right after the timeline segment that occurs after their stupid fucking boilerplate page that tries to assert that they're allies to gay people and all the retarded libshit takes like how they flagellate themselves for lacking melanin and how they are not compelled to suck cock literally.

I've seen two different streamers talking about how excited they were to play Lancer for the first time, only to never mention it again after they played it. As a mecha fan, Lancer always seemed to me to be only surface and no depth.

Its' big limitation, at least for me, is that I just don't find the setting that particularly interesting. It's relatively sound mechanically speaking, though it does lack the crunch that you might want in a mecha game.

 

[Sayer of the N-Word]

Lancer does actually explain it. The core of the system that you work for is a Utopia; the edges of it as well as the areas they don't control in the Galaxy are nightmarish shit holes. It actually explains that the setting has that as an actual element of hypocrisy.

Isn't that just The Culture?

 

[Adamska]

Isn't that just The Culture?

Das rite. It's dey kulture to exploit the shit out of the poors. Because much like cell phones in reality, someone's got to be the exploited labor giving them their goods for cheap.

It's why a common mission as a lancer is to effectively play pinkertons/NKVD and beat the shit out of them. There's also slight handset politicking because technically you're dealing with the third Union, the second Union still has leftover remnants from the Purge.

 

[Ghostse]

Das rite. It's dey kulture to exploit the shit out of the poors. Because much like cell phones in reality, someone's got to be the exploited labor giving them their goods for cheap.

It's why a common mission as a lancer is to effectively play pinkertons/NKVD and beat the shit out of them. There's also slight handset politicking because technically you're dealing with the third Union, the second Union still has leftover remnants from the Purge.

I think he means this culture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series

 

[Henri Barbusse]

Fuck it, if I run Lancer, I'm running it in THIS world instead.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=4VhMzf_7qywI'll keep the neon, but no cloning and instead of a utopia it's two authoritarian and one anarchist faction vying for control of a Blade Runner set piece planet called Solo Nobre.

This game really confused a lot of people on the Steam forums, who didn't grasp that you don't play as good people and kept earnestly asking why does the score go up when you kill civilians.

 

[Judge Dredd]

No. It's literally a section in the core book that we read out and cleanly.

Will have to give it another read then, because it's the big element I keep bouncing off of, and something I'm told is fixed in expansions. But fuck reading page after page of dumb lore that doesn't matter, then reading a bunch of expansions of dumb lore that supposedly fixes it.

I got the impression from the podcast that some of them knew the expanded setting, like explaining that certain mechs only appear in later modules.

I'll keep the neon, but no cloning and instead of a utopia it's two authoritarian and one anarchist faction vying for control of a Blade Runner set piece planet called Solo Nobre.

You'll have to go in deep with the house rules then. At very least you'd have to Horus mechs.

I'll have to wait until after a re-read, but from what I think I know of the setting. I'd make some more subtle changes to the setting. Either Union are the bad guys with claims of utopia being propaganda and it's actually a shit hole on the verge of collapse. Or play it the other way where Union is a utopia, but not a communist one.


I watched the Quinns Quest video on Heart, and it sounds pretty good. Which is odd because I disagree with him on pretty much everything else.


On the opposite side of the coin. Was throwing some ideas at the few remaining players, and was told that they want a setting that light hearted and fun. I guess they're burned out on grimdark. Anything I should look into for non-grim-dark settings. It doesn't have to be a RPG, it can be shows like Star Trek that I can adapt.

 

[Judge Dredd]

It ain't in the front half, but it's in there. It's on page 356,

The closest I can find is-

the Good War, a
conflict to dictate the end of this age and the
beginning of the next. ThirdComm's task, agreed in
principle though not necessarily in specifics, is to
avoid this future, but failing that, to navigate the
bloodshed, to end it, and to ensure no one lives in the
shadow of utopia.
Your character exists at this moment, the instant just
before the moment. They will not bring it about or
prevent it on their own, but however history goes, they
will be present for it

Maybe I'm just retarded, but I don't see that as a compelling setting for a campaign.


Giving the whole book, as well as the expansions found on the high seas, a skim brings me to the same conclusion. The only "evil" faction of note is pirates. And this might be an unpopular take, but space pirates are to sci-fi what "rodents of unusual size" or "first level goblin cave" are to DnD. If those get mocked as lame and inconsequential, the same is true of random pirate raid. Maybe the Ungreatful could be something of a villain, but being anti-capitalist resistance, they seem to be painted in a positive light. One of the official "campaigns" has the villain do a false flag attack posing as them.

As for the expansions, what I saw I wasn't impressed by. One that stood out as something I might actually play is Operation Solstice Rain. The basic gist of this "campaign" is that your transport gets shot down and things go a bit Market Garden. There's even rules for looting special weapons from enemies. There are two obvious problems however.

First, it's only two missions. Second, it's not a RPG campaign. There's no RP. It's a wargaming campaign with redundant players. You could get a similar experience with One Page Rules narrative campaigns.

 

[Acrid Alchemist]

Last week my players made a throwaway joke about playing mini golf to destress after losing a Gym Battle. It came up again in the group chat during the week so for the memes I threw together a mini golf course map for what was supposed to be a joke. It turned out to not be a joke. They played mini golf for 2 hours. One of the players came up with rules to use their Pokemon and stuff during mini golf. It was a mess honestly.

This group may also be psycho. Twice now they've walked up on rituals in progress, saw that it would summon something and then just let it happen and have to fight boss monsters. First they were traipsing around a jungle full of hostile mutant Pokemon, found a human unconscious who was being picked over by some wild Pokemon and they just followed when they dragged him away. The group followed the Pokemon to a temple and watched them drag the unconscious man up the steps and onto a ritual table and only when the Pokemon started attacking the unconscious man to sacrifice them did they act. They didn't make it in time and he was sacrificed and it summoned a dragon star monster that they had to fight.

This past session after their mini golf adventure they went out exploring and wandered upon a group of weirdo occultist kids messing with a Henge and they were like "Hmm yes let's help" and then were shocked when the sketchy ritual the occultists had summoned the Stonehenge themed monster and that the strangers they just met would flee from the consequences of their own actions. They did weaken the monster and capture a piece of him. I joked about having to return to the Henge later to evolve it because that's how it evolves in the video games and they actually agreed. If they don't bond with it and just dump XP into it without ever sending it out its just going to swell with power and attack them again when they return.