Legionnaire

[teal abyss]

obviously I didn't write the entire thing, it's a collaboration across a number of GMs and player-submitted ideas, but the central premise is one I'm very proud of in terms of being able to syncretise all the requirements for the new setting

but anyway that's wildly off topic! haha

low key one of the best things about publishing this stuff is that I finally get to play with it myself sometimes instead of always being the person GMing (which, unless you're working on literal first party stuff, is probably the only reliable way to get enough playtesting done to get useful results)

obviously I have played with the systems as well as run them, but it's nice not to have that pressure

I'm interested: for folks who want to play with some of the player options, which is the thing that you're most excited about getting to play with?

[placid flame]

NHPilots are probably #1 on the list

[vivid snow]

Actual rules for playing as an NHP are the part that activates my neurons the most in general, but aside from that, I really like the burdens (and lore!) and I love all the exotic gear NHPs

[smoky spear]

honestly GMing for two separate group, being a player is something I hope to have the time for someday XD

(this said, judging by how my first session of Wallflower went last weekend and stuff might be shaping up with my Dustgrave group this weekend, I don't regret it either)

[placid flame]

I do also love that little table of NHP related plot hooks, especially that one with the DIDYMOS-class trapping a station in a time loop

definitely giving me ideas to put into a campaign i wanna put together

[void ingot]

Time in a bottle...

genuinely love that we gave the NHPs names from our mythology so they wouldn't seem as alien, the little table for extra names is good

[robust shadow]

question: is puppeteer supposed to be an npc template or an npc class

[fading plover]

I wanna see what an NHP-exclusive group chat looks like

[eternal ferry]

Glad you like it! Wish I had time to make a pre destroyed version... and the zombie drake... and the zombie mourning cloak... and papa nergal himself...

Such is life

Too many things to draw and never enough time

[eternal ferry]

It's a template! I ran a puppeteer nightmare (from suldan) and it was delightfully (for me) terrifying (for my players) 😉

[glass sapphire]

I really enjoy everything in this book, I think Cecil said that already untagged, but... I mean. Maybe a little on the nose for me to like it if you know fictives, but he and I really liked it. I'm still trying to get our mother and sister to get into Lancer so I can maybe make them look at this and go 'Look at it'. Sorry for being a broken record about it but it's very good and worth the price for all the extra political views/etc in one place for how people might feel about NHPs, if not all the little other details as well as playable NHP Pilot rules and the equipment. I'll have to change up my Pilot stuff on COMP/CON when I actually get properly home.

[sterile saffron]

Still reading through the book, dig the subject matter and deep dive into just how shackling works and its implications

The tests for cascade remind me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRcpnM26nJM

[teal abyss]

Yeah I'll admit I was wearing the Bladerunner influences on my sleeve for that one, as well as my personal experiences of being tested in situations where there are strong incentives to responding in a particular way that may end up being orthogonal to the thing the test is trying to determine

[plucky brook]

'Hey, we're doing the Not Die Test. Better tell me what I want to hear!'

[teal abyss]

Something that's kind of hard to communicate with this stuff without being fully explicit about it is just how much that's here is reflective of real life power dynamics (some that are caused by capitalism, others that are caused by human nature/common cognitive failings); there are reflections of real world oppression weaved throughout the book in ways that are informed by the setting but (nigh-)universal

There's a certain degree to which this stuff is just sort of invisible to many people who don't have a personal experience of it

(you can add to that a level of meta-critique that says that I, as the author, am still extraordinarily privileged on a fundamental level because I'm equipped to articulate these things, and so therefore by implication I am only able to express a limited version of them)

all of which is to say that I was not fucking around when I wrote the content warnings section

be kind to each other, y'all

[robust shadow]

what is the symbol on the riot cops on the right of the cover and on the mech getting sucker punched

[plucky brook]

It looks like the old HA logo with some stylization.

Maybe a HA subgroup/particular legion.

[teal abyss]

If I remember correctly it is the Starbright Corporation's logo

(though naturally @eternal ferry will have to confirm that, my memory is a bit shaky)

[teal abyss]

Community copies are now live. If you can't afford to buy the book, feel free to grab one. ✊

[glass sapphire]

We are gonna be so normal about this

[wary lava]

This made the day of some folks

[glass sapphire]

Oh we already adore An Eye Opebs

[glass sapphire]

We really do like all the political and ontologistical positions

[robust shadow]

i c!

[royal mesa]

🪓

[strong halo]

Sekhmet is gender

[pseudo lotus]

where?

[icy flame]

the itch page
https://kastark.itch.io/legionnaire

[pseudo lotus]

thanks

me poor, me want book, me happy

[icy flame]

btw, thanks to all the generous KS backers! I got my copy this way and I'll be enjoy reading it in the coming week

[teal abyss]

I'm really happy y'all get to enjoy it ❤️

[stable stream]

I really love this. both the lore and the mechanics are absolutely on point, and i shall enjoy running around in a casket with a thousand legs like the luggage. Also, having a table and different suggestions for cascades is ridiculously helpful. it's excellent stuff

[glacial ember]

Yeah, it's absolutely some sick stuff, very raw, very real, absolutely love it.

So much material to springboard into great games. Those flashpoints each felt like a mini setting for a wallflower-esq adventure.

My only regret is not backing sooner and getting a special tier to be worked into the setting

[pseudo lotus]

Also, really useful book, especially since I have 3 NHPs in my mech and my pilot is NHP related AND my GM has trouble with cascades, he's going to love it.

Just a quick read and it's awesome

[rare shard]

You are extremely the target audience I think

[pseudo lotus]

I do plan on having a 4th nhp on board

So far it's Unstable, Servant and Kairos

[pseudo lotus]

Tonight's session was wild with them. Our mission essentially required a nuke to deal with a Kaiju sized mecha crab powered by hate with a ship spinal weapon mounted on it (alongside a bunch of guns and missiles silos) and I had the bright idea to unleash my 3 nhps onto an HA battlenet which we had access to.

Everything went to shit, but not for us lol!

We did get nuclear launch codes, but from 1000 years ago, but alongside the location of a tactical device! Yeay!

Also a bunch of NHP shenanigans that were hilarious.

So yes, I am the target audience, but I have no money and this offer is incredible.

[eternal ferry]

Yes! Confirmed, good memory 🙂

[teal abyss]

I know it's only been like, three days, but it's weird to see that less than 60% of backers have claimed their keys

[sleek monolith]

ah yes the "I totally backed... then I forgot"

or the "eh I'll just throw money at it for money's sake"

[wary lava]

Fact: I just changed a bit of my current session because of some information in legionnaire giving me inspiration!

In this case: Dead Zones!

[smoky spear]

❤️

[teal cliff]

theyre from long rim iirc, but i like how ther were specifically brought up

in legionnaire

[wary lava]

nodsnods

[teal abyss]

Sometimes it's super useful to have a conceit of "your communication method that's always on and instant isn't working today" to tell particular kinds of stories

Like running "modern" games in the 90s so your mystery plot doesn't get ruined by smartphones and the internet

[sleek monolith]

alternatively, I do know how to do this with a modern game now 😄

such as "upload the video!"
video uploads
"Oh gods, look how fake this is. You can tell where the editing software bleeds through.

Man, you guys do really realistic 3d rigs. Can you teach me?

Fake news.

Lol, looks like someone's been playing with the Deep Fake Comp/Cons again."

I've used this method to run modern "Kids on Bikes" games too, proof or videos uploading being thought of us as just r/Nosleep stories, and even in one game, a reddit mod got super angry and got the post moved to the r/HorrorStories thread citing "if you're going to try and trick the internet, try harder."

it also creates another layer of interaction cause if you get the right player, they'll start arguing in these made up threads you build 😄

and then you get these cool message board scenes

and then you can hook them up with "amatuer paranormal investigators" or "HORUS cells"

[teal abyss]

honestly sometimes even just having a cell tower go down for whatever reason can be useful, just so the PCs can't make phonecalls

In fairness, when there are stories that could in theory be solved by calling the cops that's easy enough to resolve just by having the police respond realistically (i.e. by being glacially slow, desperately incompetent, prejudiced assholes)

What's particularly interesting about Lancer's depiction of the omninet is that canonically, in theory, as long as you have an omnihook, your access should never go down, and blinkspace dead zones should be impossible. It's kind of fascinating that after 2000 years of research and development, Union's models of blinkspace still can't account for dead zones - which makes them extremely interesting places to explore.

And obviously if a substantial amount of your tech is based on the premise that you'll always have access to the omninet, that's going to cause problems. Like shipping using it for positioning data (cf. cargo ships and GPS) or a lancer team getting cut off from their chain of command and/or support staff. In Golden Flame uses this in a particularly neat way I think, with the colonisation of Calliope.

[sleek monolith]

oh I mean yeah I plan on using dead zones too, but, I will admit, alot of political ramifications do in fact go over my head (despite you know, trying), so rather, I tend to err towards the pulp. An example being I'm actually going to be converting a mothership module called The Dead Planet into an adventure complete with space-cannibals, dead zones, paracausal NHP emanations, and a group of religious survivors who worship their ship engine which continues to power their converted bunker

[teal abyss]

That's extremely cool

[sleek monolith]

though I'm now also going to at some point have space ghosts powered by an NHP at some point. (Subalterns dressed to look like this)

[teal cliff]

I dunno if this is tangential, but I've always loved the potential for dead zones to be any or both: naturally occurring phenomena and secret corpro testing. The suggestion that it's just sometimes happens AND the suggestion that it implies one or more corpros have some limited capacity to create them are equally narratively intriguing

[teal abyss]

Yeah the idea that they can be intentionally created has a lot of legs, for example if your antagonists are causing problems on purpose so they can get away with whatever scheme they have cooked up.

Enemies causing environmental effects for their own gain is just one of those tropes that you can get significant mileage out of if used correctly

[dull kraken]

We are loving this supplement, so much development of existing OCs and ideas for new ones

[glacial ember]

Ayyyy, itch finally let the emails go through!

[ocean lantern]

So now all the backers have two keys? Or just the same key twice?

[teal abyss]

oh god, I think it should just be the same key twice

the mailchimp distribution email used exported keys from the same key group as the itch distribution email, so it should use the same email address—key pairs

hopefully, fingers crossed, the worst that happens is that folks get two emails

[surreal owl]

Hey, maybe at least the itch one will dodge spam filters for people who missed the first round!

[glacial ember]

Either way, that should be the last hangup with the campaign taken care of, meaning a complete success yeah?

Which, congrats Kat! That's an awesome accomplishment!

[plucky brook]

Yeah, as someone who's done a kickstarter campaign before the 'making sure everything gets delivered' is the scariest part. So yay, congrats.

[teal abyss]

I, uh, think so! And thank you! ❤️

In theory putting it up on DriveThru is something I still need to do, but I think that's more something I was planning on doing if I could rather than something I specifically committed to (though I still want to). It'll happen eventually.

[plucky brook]

nods
We went purely with DriveThru to get access to Print On Demand but honestly: I kinda regret with Liminal Space going for Physical Books. These days they're less essential than in years past and they added so much extra work and removed any ability for us to do edits (Since I can't turn up and scribble in people's hardcovers) XD

[glacial ember]

This is when you need paracausal NHP powers to change everyone's books.

[surreal owl]

Yeah POD is awk for edits; I know of a couple POD projects I’ve purchased that add an errata file to reference for printed copies but simply update the digital copies directly

[teal abyss]

Honestly if I ever do POD I'll just put a big warning sign up saying "This will never get updated, only print this if you don't care about updates"

[solid parrot]

Sometimes it's more about the having than the correctness

[frosty magnet]

The short story about Jean, VIRAVA, and the shrine makes me so happy. It's been living rent-free in my head for days now

[teal abyss]

I'm really glad! I really enjoyed writing it and I was hoping it would resonate with people.

[sleek monolith]

as a diabetic with leg and feet swelling issues, sometimes having something in print alleviates having to sit at a PC. But, from a practicality standpoint, the world is heading more towards digital.

[ocean lantern]

Yup, and tablets are a thing, I read far more stuff on my iThing than I do on my PC

[wary lava]

I like reading things on paper.

[ocean lantern]

Which is entierly fair, just paper costs more and is harder to store than ebooks

[ocean lantern]

Sorry about the late reply, this has been bouncing around in my brain and will not stop bugging me if I don't let it out

As well as the real world problems with writing about current religion in the context of Lancer stuff there is also the fact that Lancer is set upwards of 11,000 years in the future and has had a dark age that is comparable to the length of recorded history. Real world religions are as far from anything existing in Lancer as the religion of the builders of Gobekli Tepe is from modern religion, its virtually certain that anything in the Lancer era would be utterly unrecognisable due to the sheer time gap involved

[rare shard]

There are a few legible references to IRL religions in Lancer, apparently preserved in the Massif vaults

[teal abyss]

I imagine this is in part why we have references to syncretic religions in Lancer like shrines/temples to Christ the Buddha. The Massif vaults might preserve some things but my view of most religious traditions is that they seem to be heavily informed by continuity of religious practice and, well, tradition. This is an issue neopagan religions run into when establishing meaningful connection to the historical faiths they are based on. It's possible to claim some memetic heritage through reference to preserved texts or accounts, but the totality of religious practice is usually much more than is preserved in holy books or even scholarly writings (and this is true of much more than religion, too! I've done my share of historical reenactment and this problem is a challenge there too). Fascinating stuff, and I wish I were more qualified to talk about it.

(but yes, to clarify, my objection to writing about it is largely based on the real world problems of writing speculatively about current religions)

[sour dove]

Haven't been home to get a copy yet but I've been waiting for this since I saw the Kickstarter and didn't realize how soon it be out, many congrats on getting it out <3

[teal abyss]

Thanks! Yeah it's nice to be able to move swiftly on things, helped that most of the writing had basically been done and it was just editing left to do. That and keeping a firm hand on scope.

[plucky brook]

Yeah, Neopagan faiths often run into the fact that they're dealing with a snapshot of the past at best and often a snapshot by outsiders or people with a very specific view of a very specific time in their faith.

This happens a lot with Celtic and Norse Neopagan stuff where there's a lot of poking at figures and going 'Are you secretly Jesus?'

Stares at 'Are the Tuatha De Dannan Gods?' and 'Snorri, is Baldr Jesus In A Hat?'

[teal abyss]

Honestly one of the things I sort of wish I'd been able to include were more details on NHP religion

The original stuff I had was much more extensive, but I ended up repeatedly scrapping and reworking it and it never ended up anywhere that I was happy with

[plucky brook]

nods

Makes sense.

Though, just a bit of clarification: Religion about NHPs or Religion of NHPs? 😛

[teal abyss]

oh! yes, I meant religions whose adherents were NHPs

[plucky brook]

Yeah, that would be tricky.

[teal abyss]

I was super happy when the Garden was submitted because a sort of Edenic/Free Deimosian myth was the one theme I felt confident in, and that gave me a framework to hang the concept off

(not that there's a strong line between religions whose members are human and those whose members are NHPs, as the fic about Jean and VIRAVA illustrates)

[rigid canopy]

I'm very glad you incorporated aspects of religion and belief systems and potential ties here and there throughout the book. There's an entire world of things to explore with political philosophy, beings indiscernible from deities, and metaphysics in Lancer. It's one of the reasons I love it so much. Reading through Legionnaire about how NHPs could potentially approach or react to these situations was super cool.

[cloud niche]

Yeah I also liked how there were pages dedicated to nhp priority personalities when cascading

[agile phoenix]

minor bummer: itch.io wouldn't let me add 5$ to the acquisition of a community-copy -- any value other than zero resulted in it saying i had to pay at least 20$, despite still being in the community-copy pop-up 😔

corollary: i really liked the book, having read through a copy my girlfriend shared with me (she's one of the backers at the more-community-copies level)

[sleek monolith]

add-on or legionaire 2 for me to back when 🙂

[robust shadow]

yea and unfortunately i think the most common tack ppl take when trying to do so is like, trying so hard to be inoffensive that they kind of fail to say anything interesting (while ironically still kind of managing to be offensive a lot of the time just due to lack of research and common misconceptions), and/or conspicuously focusing only on the so-called "major religions". eclipse phase falls into both of these pretty hard imo for example: only rly the part abt christianity winds up being particularly interesting, judaism gets a little blurb that reads like all the author knows abt judaism are reform memes on tumblr and sweeps any internal conflict over zionist ideology under the rug, and multiple religions with twice to four times more population than jews get omitted entirely, cuz ofc the only reason judaism even got included is due to "abrahamic" supersessionist dependency complexes. i used to be sad abt space speculative sci fi never mentioning real world religions but at this point it's like, well they're not gonna do it well anyway so....

it's like a seesaw that's impossible to balance between erasure on one side and orientalism on the other

[teal cliff]

Tbh, religious studies are entirely it's own discipline, and there's rarely ever going to be a portrayal of any religion that is both academically and politically satisfying for the time period for the majority of people.

I feel like it would be unreasonable to expect scifi as a genre to both include every religion and to do so from a historically and politically accurate perspective relative to contemporary understanding

[lucid gate]

Tbh

Because I'm really obsessed with the Abrahamitic Religions, the cascading NHP Adversary in my Current Game takes the form of an Avenging Angel, who wants to turn the planet its on into, and I quote: The Kingdom of God

[polar pagoda]

It’s really hard to do religion right so imo I think the least a setting can do is not do the whole “we’ve moved past such superstitions”, that’s like bare minimum imo for me

I love it when a setting goes interesting and explores religion and it’s relation to the setting but even that has its pitfalls

[teal cliff]

In most cases, religion is often used as an element of narrative utility and targets a much more specific and narrow scope than a full and nuanced exploration of religion might do otherwise; which to be fair makes sense from the perspective of structure and authoring a story

[polar pagoda]

Eclipse phase had some portrayals of religion that were….very mixed bag for me.
I hear its far better in 2e than 1e but eh still

But that’s a different setting entirely

Point is you do have to be careful with the portrayal of real cultural beliefs and how they advance into the future

[teal abyss]

Personally I think secular societies in scifi have merit as a utopian ideal but rarely do they grapple with how that state was achieved

[polar pagoda]

Right yeah

Secularism is fine.
I just don’t really like when a sci fi setting has “well science has proved religion wrong so that’s why we don’t believe in it”.
It’s not exactly a common thing but it is a trope I see enough times that it’s worrying

Although maybe I’m making up a guy to get mad at.
It’s very early for me and I’ve only just had my coffee

[brittle ginkgo]

to be fair, the Aunic people quite literally worship Metat Aun as their god, because it kinda is

[polar pagoda]

I was not referring to the aunic much rn

Though the aunic have a ton of interesting stuff

[brittle ginkgo]

true, but it's proof that religion in sci-fi very much is still possible

[polar pagoda]

There is the demiaunic path that believes metat to be a representation of the abrahamic god

[polar pagoda]

I didn’t say it wasn’t?

Just there are many pitfalls that other sci fi settings can fall into

[brittle ginkgo]

ah, my bad. I misread the previous convo then

[polar pagoda]

Never said it wasn’t possible I love religion in sci fi

[teal abyss]

What's interesting about Metat Aun (and, for example, D&D gods) is that it operates on an entirely different epistemological basis than how most religion is approached in the real world

You don't need faith when your god is hovering right there in the sky and has gifted your people with space magic

[brittle ginkgo]

"It's hard to argue against the existence of gods when they're literally right there doing things in front of you."

makes me curious if people actually worship RA

[polar pagoda]

There are

In the case of metat though there are interpretations of what metat is

It could be possible metat isn’t a god (depending on one’s subjective definition), or maybe metat truly is an angel from the abrahamic god or the abrahamic god themself. Or maybe metat is an extrusion of a greater being

All of these are not easily testable theories

[teal abyss]

This is part of what made me want to underscore the difference between the Ascendancy's approach to Souls and Union's. There's a fundamental distinction in the way the two polities approach the concept, each framed by their cultural context

[fading plover]

God I lovve this supplement

admittedly I haven't played the game itelf much but I love the fluff and lore

[fading plover]

doesn't HORUS?

or some parts of HORUS

[brittle ginkgo]

it feels like HORUS has a love-hate relationship with RA

[teal abyss]

To the Aun, Souls are yet another gift from Metat Aun that should be accepted. Union by contrast has the context of RA who doesn't seem to care about NHPs much and so views Souls as distinct entities with a metaphysical basis that should be interrogated (as they do for NHPs).

Some parts of HORUS probably worship RA. Other parts probably dunk on those first parts for doing so. HORUS is a mess of contradictions.

[fading plover]

I am curious how the Aun feel about NHP, or the Metafold Vault near the front lines

[teal abyss]

God that's a good question. It's one I desperately want the answer to as well, and I explicitly didn't want to touch on it because it seems like the sort of thing that might come up in the Field Guide if and when Miguel returns home from the war non-compete

As for AH MUZEN CAB, the Aun don't know it exists. Yet.

[fading plover]

they will soon

regardless, my headcanon is they either think they're the Union's equivalant to Souls (perhaps ancient Union solders, though Aunics would think the relationship is less... paternal? and more pragmatic on both ends)

or

They think NHP are the equivlant to demons, if Souls are basically Angels (which they aren't but still)

[teal abyss]

There's also a strong possibility that without the cultural context, they think of NHPs as just advanced AIs. After all there are people within Union who aren't really aware they're anything more than that, too

[polar pagoda]

True

I wonder if the whole advanced ai thing is “advanced ai who are people?” Or is it just “ah this system sure is robust”

[teal abyss]

I also don't think we really know what the Aun think about RA

[fading plover]

Also true

I forget, going a bit outside the purview of this supplement but aren't the Aun very religious?

I'm jusr wondering how much their religious-ness covers their view of the world

[teal abyss]

Considering how much the Aun's attitude to Union changed between the first and second drafts of the field guide I think it's really hard to say what they know and what attitude they might have, beyond viewing Union as "those fuckers who tried to genocide us until we were saved by our god"

[polar pagoda]

you could say they’re religious

[teal abyss]

Yes, the Aun are broadly, quite religious. It's a fundamental part of their society

[polar pagoda]

I love all the aunic paths

[teal abyss]

So much so that they had a civil war and a massive social upheaval over it

[polar pagoda]

In one of my nexus amendment games a player managed to cascade so hard they became faithful in the militaristic aunic path.
Let me find the name of it

Ah endless dawn

[fading plover]

Also true

[teal abyss]

oh boy the Endless Dawn

[polar pagoda]

At the end of the campaign they joined a pirate crew who was led by a stranded manqueller (they were in a reaper btw)

We made jokes about the machine being faithful because backstorywise they were the fork of the legion that was there to fight the aun in the boundary garden conflict that’s got cascaded + memory loss

[teal abyss]

little shard of Lorenzo 🥺 precious

[polar pagoda]

Little

Pequeno

I need to actually read legionnaire because it’s gotta have some kickass ideas to Yoink

[fading plover]

It does

One of my favorite parts is purely NHP omninet communities

[teal abyss]

there are just so many possibilities

a world that's framed by anthropocentric perspective but where the content is fundamentally Not Meant For Humans

[polar pagoda]

It is fascinating

[glacial ember]

Yeah gotta say, I loved the bit on Souls, "These are definitely our ancestors, old cherished heroes brought back to fight our enemies and guide our path." And Union being like, "Well they seem like NHPs but different? Maybe they somehow shackled them into thinking they're those ancestors? We don't fuckin know."

[robust shadow]

i mean, obviously not, it's just always very conspicuous what gets included and what doesn't in stories written in the western christian hegemony we live under

ohhh yea the NHP omninet communities are a cool idea

[polar pagoda]

Wait which part of that statement are you disagreeing with

[mortal breach]

@teal abyss Hey, backer on the Kickstarter here. Sorry for any inconvenience, but I got sent the email for the PDF release and it's throwing back an error code of some sort? It mentioned in the KS update that this was one of the places I could contact if there were any issues, so I figured I should give it a shot.

[teal abyss]

Hi! Did you also get the itch.io email? That should also have the code in it without the mailchimp tracking link (which is I think what's caused that issue for other folks)

if that doesn't work let me know and I'll send it to you directly via Kickstarter

sorry about this!

[mortal breach]

Oh, let me check.

Ah, I did!

Thanks for pointing that out; totally missed it. 😅

And now it's added to my account and downloaded!

As said, thanks a bunch for pointing it out, and I hope you have a nice day!

[teal abyss]

You too, thank you for your support and thanks for bearing with all the key distribution issues 🙂

[wintry crane]

It was weird seeing someone on the subreddit complain that this supplement wasn't from massif and thus non-canon

my brother in christ, the entire canon is made up

[rare shard]

were they complaining that it exists or that people were talking about it

Either way, uncalled for

[lucid gate]

https://tenor.com/view/metal-gear-rising-metal-gear-rising-revengeance-senator-armstrong-revengeance-i-made-it-the-fuck-up-gif-25029602

[wintry crane]

They were complaining that such an important component of the lore was being published by someone that wasn't massif, I guess because they thought it was presumptive maybe?

[surreal owl]

Has this person seen the DMsGuild?

[rare shard]

Why did they think Massif left it vague in the first place

Exactly for things like this

[surreal owl]

Like this sort of thing is not uncommon in TTRPG spaces with licenses to support it

[teal cliff]

"I'm so sad it's not canon. Anyway, it's canon now"

unless you're playing in a large scale, multi table, massive mutually interactive event where someone is dictating to you what's canon; you decide what's canon in your play state -_-

[surreal owl]

like, I see a lot of third-party content made for Eberron all the time, exploring stuff that never got attention from published books. Same deal here: NHPs are a major part of the lore but are generally underserved, and Massif doesn't have the time/money/resources to make a 1st party one. It sounds like the poster needs to come to terms with the necessity of 3rd party content like this

[teal cliff]

I think the part that confuses me is that all of it is always just a "you choose if you like this and incorporate it"

[plucky brook]

Oh no, non-canon things in my lancer! goes back to reading the massive third party forum that was set up on this server and a homebrew channel that was one of the first channels ever made for this server

[wintry crane]

You're not allowed to make up your own stuff for your RPG, sorry

[teal cliff]

Some gm's might have some very different ideas about how NHP work, and like... that's fine. Nothing about this supplement or the core book tells them they can't

[rare shard]

okay this one is really funny because IIRC Kat reached out to Tom to get the okay for Player 2 as pilot gear

[teal cliff]

Tom calls you to tell you when the idea you've only thought about in your head is non-canon

how did he get your number? Who knows

ringing

Hello
"It's not canon, sorry"
Who is this, what's not canon?
"Goodbye"

[plucky brook]

I think part of it is that the D&D community for so long treated 'third party' as 'not as good as first party' (Regardless of any lack of evidence on that front) and the idea still kinda floats about a bit.

[teal cliff]

There is a generalized impression that there's less QA in TTRPGs comparing 1st and 3rd party I think

[surreal owl]

I think that's naturally going to be the case (less QA on smaller releases), but also that some people overestimate the amount of QA on first-party releases too

[teal cliff]

a sort of.... (especially when you're not DEEP in it) sense that you can be more confident of what you are getting out of your 1st party purchase

oh yeah absolutely

I'm more talking to the general impression I see in TTRPG communities at large

and a lot can come from, I think, the range of high and low quality 3rd party content for WOTC properties

seeing as its essentially the giant in the industry

[surreal owl]

which is funny to me, due to the range of high and low quality 1st party content for WotC properties but maybe that's for #tabletop-discussion

[teal cliff]

yep! lol

generally im more speaking to, in the layman's eyes, there's more brand and mechanical confidence in 1st party content

[teal abyss]

Yeah, honestly I think it's a reasonable thing for someone to ask, there's a certain minimum quality expectation from first party content. In fact having so many people comment that this is on the level of first party stuff is a huge compliment, as far as I'm concerned. Certainly there's a lot of homebrew out there that varies in quality and very few people have the ability to accurately assess all of it so it's a convenient shortcut.

I'm not quite sure what the poster meant by saying important lore coming from non-official sources, but being charitable I suspect that's a complaint about the breadth of first party material rather than something directed at this supplement in particular.

[wary lava]

Belatedly, yeah, I think it's just a general stigma that for some people, 'third party' means 'it's homebrew that you pay for', like Ikiryo says for that reason.

'It's not published by the folks that did the base game means it's just all speculative' and somesuch.

[teal cliff]

were they implying that you were an outlet for Tom and Mig's lore that they were releasing through your supplement? That seems a bit off colour

[wary lava]

Like that a reason.

[teal abyss]

I don't think so, it seemed to me more like they just wanted Massif to do something like this themselves

[teal cliff]

hmm, ok, thats fair and reasonable of them to want

I wouldve taken a bit of umbrage at the implication that it wasn't your writing or ideas

[teal abyss]

I think there's also a valid concern that someone could purchase some third party material and then have it rendered completely moot by a first party release that contradicts it. I can't imagine that happening any time soon, but there's an inherent insecurity in the investment if the rug could be pulled out from under folks. Not that I think that's at all likely (I wouldn't have written it if I thought that were the case!), but then none of us can predict the future.

[teal cliff]

for sure, though I absolutely still see that as a "take what you need" situation

if new canon contradicts your work, the person in question just picks what they like more

the actual conflict is immaterial to me I guess

[plucky brook]

To quote our lore channel 'All is true in the dreams of the Choir'

[teal cliff]

heck I wouldn't hold it against a prospective GM or lore explorer to weave new canon into this one if it suited them

[wintry crane]

As a GM I would love having multiple ideas about the same thing to play around with

Just pick the one that fits with my stuff best

[teal abyss]

On this note It has been a bit weird having to state that this is third party constantly

in the sense that I thought I'd been clear and put it up front but people still ask

I have a weird anxiety about folks not realising, or worse someone showing up in #rules-questions or #lore-and-worldbuilding and asking questions based on the book and getting shit on because of it

I know that's probably an unfounded fear, but still

[teal cliff]

It's, to an extent, as you said earlier; it's a bit of an unintentional compliment that your work is mistaken for 1st party licensed content. I can sympathize with that fear though

[rigid canopy]

And this is why we all have your back.

[teal cliff]

i wonder also if Massif's open support and willingness to promote third party is unusual to the ttrpg larger community

which might lead to confusion

That's an actual wonderance, cause i don't have a strong perspective on the wider ttrpg community

[rigid canopy]

I love how Massif handles third party. Reminds me of Cities Skylines with mod support.

[brittle ginkgo]

In Lancer, anything is canon so long as you believe in it hard enough.

[teal cliff]

honestly thats literally any ttrpg

we get together into small groups to play pretend with our friends; we're pretending the whole time. The books n lore n stuff just help guide the process

xD

[brittle ginkgo]

I do make the distinction of "base lore" tho, just to be clear where Massif published stuff ends and the 3pp/homebrewed stuff begins

[teal cliff]

I do too, though mostly for conversations sake; like i don't expect anyone I discuss the game with to immediately know what my own table's accepted lore state is; the crb and other published materials form a sort of baseline for shared discussion and if I want to include my own stuff its on me to explain what I've incorporated and why

if I hope to have a productive conversation

[brittle ginkgo]

Yeah. For example, in base lore, NHPs are typically called NHPs, with no real distinction aside from that. At my table many NHPs will personally refer to themselves as "Deimosian" rather than just "NHP" due to NHP being an umbrella term, while the funny eldritch AI beings were spawned from the Deimos event.

||This is doubly the case when I run stuff in a post-Wallflower setting, since suddenly NHP can refer to two different "species".||

[glacial ember]

Yeah, this is me, vibrating uncontrollably for the MOB book to come out. I know that if a 3rd party supplement essentially did the work and built that gameplay I would be thrilled, but also disappointed that it wasn't done by Massif press. Not enough to make any fuss about it, but, I'd still feel some disappointment.

[glacial ember]

If you wanted this to happen, you should've simply created a more inferior product.

[glacial ember]

I think this is somewhat unusual in that tactical games like 4e really did not have a strong 3rd party scene(for tons of reasons) and what it did have wasn't necessarily great. So for lancer, a cool tactical game, to have such support for homebrew and 3rd parties is a bit weird. You see it in other games way more common, but not this type really.

[brittle ginkgo]

there's also just the general notoriety that comes from "3rd party publishers don't need to keep as high a balance/lore/etc. standard when compared to the 1pp product" mentality that is unfortunately justifiable when it comes to systems like D&D and that

that being said, I think Lancer's the one system I've seen where the 3rd party content is consistently on par with 1st party balance and writing

[frank bloom]

Yeah, I have to agree. Even though I've made the distinction to the group I run that it's a 3rd party book, even I have to remind myself when reading it lmao. Truly fascinating read so far and I'll likely be using bits and bobs seeing as my group is currently sporting four NHPs.

[plucky brook]

I think part of the strength of Lancer's third party development?

[fickle marten]

It helps that the designers are very open with... everything.

[plucky brook]

Tom has always been really open about the decisions behind...dammit Data

[fickle marten]

[plucky brook]

But yeah, Tom tends to explain why a decision was made.

[fickle marten]

(Also the fact that there is such an active homebrewing community permitted (and encouraged) in the main community hub.)

[plucky brook]

So designers don't need to sorta develop their own 'I think this is why this works like this'

Which allows a lot less 'oops, missed why this was designed like this and stepped in some real shit'

Unless they're going out of their way to try Weird New Things

[fickle marten]

If everyone was spread over various sites, I don't think you'd get as strong community support behind anything.

(Or community knowledge.)

[frank bloom]

Oh, I actually have something I really liked about Legionnaire so far. I've been skimming back and forth through sections but I absolutely loved that among the Cascade Patterns, the SISYPHUS was the only one written via its perspective.

[plucky brook]

D&D has often had a big element of...it puts a hard line between the players and the designers, with designers rarely explaining why something was done. Which means everyone is starting from 'I need to design Base Principals'

[fickle marten]

(D&D also doesn't help with having a bunch of stuff that's just "because older editions did it, deal with it.")

[plucky brook]

(True but I don't really want to chuck rocks, more just explain elements of why designing is easier XD)

[fickle marten]

Fair. 😛

But, yeah, I do genuinely think the consolidation and official backing of Lancer's fan community, combined with a super-permissive license, is why we're able to get incredibly high-quality third-party stuff.

(Even if it does get a little bit intimidating as a creator, seeing such a high bar achieved.)

[sleek monolith]

I mean, you could always do what some other creators do, DataMoth, don't compare your work to others, or just stop reading other third party work. I know this isn't feasible but it is AN answer.

[wary lava]

Your stuff is great!

honestly, Lancer's third party ecosystem is pretty robust in general.

[sleek monolith]

Yeah, and the thing is, while quality does vary, use at the table is subjective

I personally love Field Guide to Mfecane and Feild Guide to Suldan, but my PLAYERS have almost never touched that content and instead go for Liminal Space and Legionaire (as new as it is)

and liminal space is excellent, my only reason for not rating it higher personally is due to executive disfunction getting in the way of sitting down and reading it fully

[plucky brook]

Liminal Space is Excellent
Liar 😛

[sleek monolith]

(sometimes, I have ADHD-like symptoms (despite not having ADHD) that get in the way of just... sitting down and reading something)

[plucky brook]

But more seriously: Thanks for the kind words

[sleek monolith]

like, seriously though, I don't think I've read a lancer third party product that I haven't at least loved a concept, theme, or mechanical option from

even stuff that doesn't have art and just lives in un-updated google docs

the only thing that slows me down is the executive disfunction.... (which admittedly has caused health issues before because I've been in situations where I couldn't make my body move to go to the bathroom BUT I COULD make it move to drink more water which was weird and awkward and scary)

[sleek monolith]

speaking of which time to get cozy and finish legionaire tonight

[tiny violet]

I used Suldan somewhat!

haven’t had an opportunity to use mfecane as of yet (feel free to off a character to make room for that)

guilty of using liminal space the most

hyped to read through legionnaire tho

need to apply it to muh subaltern pilot

[teal abyss]

Honestly I have to disagree somewhat with the idea that Lancer is meaningfully different in terms of access to thoughts about the design from, for example, D&D. My experience with writing material for both systems has been functionally identical

Both sets of designers interact a fair deal with the community and reveal a fair amount of their thinking if you follow them

And there is a big homebrewing community on Pilot NET mostly by dint of it being the official discord but it's not the only place where this stuff gets done; you would be surprised how many other folks exist outside this server, either because they have communities elsewhere that fulfil other functions or they straight up don't like the atmosphere here. It took me a long time to warm up to this server because I had some negative experiences when I first joined that nearly put me off the game entirely.

If I had to speculate I would say that the average quality of homebrew/third party content for Lancer is higher than a lot of the poorly-designed crap you get from D&D homebrew spaces largely because this system is not as popular. While D&D attracts many of the most skilled creators simply by virtue of being the most popular system and biggest market, D&D is also a substantial proportion of the TTRPG community's introduction to the hobby so it's filled with baby's first homebrew. This is probably also why "homebrew" as a concept has such a bad rep - five minutes on dandwiki or r/unearthedarcana is enough to make you want to consign all of it to the pit.

The third party license is extremely nice though, and that definitely seems to have helped to foster development. Legionnaire probably wouldn't have been published without it.

[frank bloom]

Yeah, over the course of my almost ten years of playing 5e I've born witness to plenty of first-time homebrew that was ill-designed at best because it was that person's first time creating their own content for a pre-existing set of rules, but from my personal experience the Lancer system is typically (but not always) not people's first forays into TTRPGs. And Sage Advice does exist for 5e, even if its validity changes based on table.

[sleek monolith]

I would add another thought.

Licenses.

I've been playing rpgs for about 15 or so years, starting with 3.5 D&D, going back to 2e AD&D even trying 1e etc. Moving around to Heart and Spire, then to Kids on Bikes and DCC, and in all these communities, there were two huge reasons for homebrew I've seen: the first is lack of an option or rule set someone wanted. The second, however, regards how open the license was.

D&D for instance had cracked the industry open with the OGL tied to 3rd edition which almost died with the 4e LGL (do you remember the little clause about "if you make 3pp content for 4e you have to stop doing so for 3e"? Pepperidge Farm remembers.)

You saw alot of add ons, homebrew and even entire spin off games.

But, it got tricky with other stuff, like video games. Lots of legal bullying over fan games from wotc.

Meanwhile, lancers 3pp is way more open, I mean, lancer tactics is getting kickstarted!

The other factor, quality, has to do with Lancers bones. Even if you take the community playtesting, help, etc away, lancer is both tight enough, and also written loose enough, that you can usually tell if something feels wildly off. And I know, I know, jokes about Asura HMG Everest dakka, but if you look at a normal table, you can tell when a 3pp thing either is too far behind or ahead due to nature of how the game was constructed

[teal abyss]

lack of an option or rule set someone wanted

Honestly half of why Legionnaire exists is because I saw someone say something along the lines of "why would anyone want rules for playing NHPs when you could just play with the regular pilot rules?" which made me realise I'd actually seen tons of people asking to be able to play NHPs and the response was always extremely unsatisfying.

Like, you could just play with the regular pilot rules and paper over any cracks with some help from your GM, but it's clear that those players were after something that mechanically supported the unique fantasies created by those kinds of characters. It wasn't even something I necessarily wanted for myself (I have still yet to play an NHP pilot outside of playtesting)! But it turns out that it was more straightforward than I thought to put something together that was permissive, supported a distinct playstyle, and dovetailed with the existing systems. When I realised I had something that was kind of cool, it spurred me onwards.

[surreal owl]

Adding that sort of structure can be immensely helpful to people; “refluffing” can only go so far. Glad to see the fruits of those labors, and I hope it inspires others to create their own content in a similar way

[rigid canopy]

I am currently working on a project that I hope to publish that will have a significant number of references or callbacks to Legionnaire.

Which begs the question: @teal abyss, is it okay for other 3pp to reference Legionnaire? Not copy content, but include references (page numbers, basically) to your book and specific pages/sections for people to get more info on terms or concepts?

[teal abyss]

Yes of course!

[glacial ember]

I truly wish MORE game devs would just... put explanations on why they're making something some way, and the intention behind their rules.

[glacial ember]

Oh my god this. But it's still worth it for the creative process IMO.

[frank bloom]

I actually have a question for you of my own @teal abyss. A little while back I got a green light from Tom to do voice over of lore from Massif products to upload on my YouTube. I was planning on doing a video on the NHP flavor texts and whatnot and was wondering if I could include the SISYPHUS-class's passage from the Cascade Patterns section, crediting you and the supplement of course.

[teal abyss]

Sure! That sounds fine 🙂 thank you for asking

[wary lava]

Oh, Legionnaire getting some shout outs on twitter I see

https://twitter.com/LogantheGM/status/1643239276992245760?s=20
This came accross my line. Dunno who that is but hey.

Logan is making Altered (@LogantheGM)

I spent the last two days reading @k_a_stark's 3rd party Lancer supplement, Legionnaire.

What a fantastic piece of content. Not only does it flush out the lore of the setting, but it has fantastic rules for playing a NHP, fun exotic gear, and the artwork is beautiful.

Twitter · Apr 4, 2023, 1:09 PM

[strong halo]

you also gave us NHP Casket: Dog Forme, which on its own is better than any prior answer on how to play an NHP

[sleek monolith]

@teal abyss I do have to ask, it's my understanding that per word of Tom cycling doesn't reset an NHP's memories or personality. Now, I don't have receipts for this. Also, I want to be clear: Your Homebrew, Your Creative Freedom.

But I did want to ask in an "intellectually fascinated way" why you went this route yourself? What appealed to you regarding this idea?

(i really don't want to come off as someone trying to nitpick this, I actually am just curious as to what you find "cool" or "neat" or "interesting" about it, rather than doing the expected "badwrong" fun this MIGHT come off as in text)

[teal cliff]

i haven't finished my readthrough, but does the supplement take the position that it does do those things or are you asking why they took the same position?

[sleek monolith]

legionaire has two types of cycling, soft cycling which is like your everyday stuff, and hard cycling which does this, and for NHP pilots can remove all stress and burdens in one go, but also resets their bonds back to none.

[wary lava]

It removes a power

[sleek monolith]

and I'm more asking "why does Kat think that's cool? I wanna pick her brain cause I find this route interesting."

but I am also painfully autistic and aware that sometimes this kind of question can come off socially as "why does your 3pp thing break lore" and I'm sometimes bad at expressing myself

(basically my autism is making me overthink wording which I recognize makes it even more awkward, but I don't know how to word it better atm)

[boreal pebble]

I have a feeling the reason it's not more common to be open about the creative process in general is because sometimes decisions don't have the most solid reasoning in the world, which reveals the creator as fallible like everyone else. And when a certain type of person sees that, they are more likely to assert their own opinions as equally valid, and constant arguments are a miserable atmosphere to work in lol. Much easier to keep reasoning hidden and hope people accept it in good faith. Not necessarily better, it can cause its own slew of problems from misunderstanding, but certainly easier.

[brittle ginkgo]

is it safe to assume your question could be phrased as "Normally, NHPs don't lose their memories when they get cycled. What is it about Legionnaires that's different in that regard?"

because the cycling mechanics you mention are specific to PC NHPs, which I am going to refer to as Legionnaires.

Part of me wants to say it's due to the fact that most NHPs are built for purpose and typically don't have as broad a skillset as a Legionnaire might have. As a result, they need to make some sacrifices in order to stop a cascade in its tracks.

[sleek monolith]

@brittle ginkgo not quite, I had gotten to the co-pilot section.

[brittle ginkgo]

ah

I will need to double check that

but I know Legionnaire makes a distinction between hard cycling and soft cycling

[sleek monolith]

it's also on like page 24 under cycling, and yeah there is a difference 🙂

(I think, even independently unless SHAKA and Kat collabed), the upcoming Siren's Song, Mountain's Remorse also kind of tacitly makes this difference as a plot point

[teal abyss]

this is one of the big questions, stand by while I write an essay

[sleek monolith]

LOL. Damn, picked a good one then. sends good vibes and waits

[teal cliff]

Kat I know you're already working on an essay, but I was curious (and I'll preface by saying I've not fully read the whole section on milspec nhp pilots) but what was your process regarding the early lore QA about unions reluctance to allowing an nhp to pull the trigger/ the idea that the DoJ might launch a full investigation on a group that knowingly put a mech under the control of an nhp fully?

From Canon Chat Q&A 2
Monday, August 20th, 2018

was it simply a situation of "That QA is old af, and general consensus has moved on"?

[teal abyss]

[1/3]
So this is one of the hard questions. I think it's worth contextualising this by saying that this is one of those things where I'm not certain it is canonically true that NHPs don't have their memories reset, but it appears to be widely-accepted fanon. The reason I say this is because I've spent most of the last year asking people to source the claim on this and nobody has been able to give me anything - I've also gone looking myself and not discovered anything - which has led me to consider it alongside a number of other widely-accepted fanon claims like "NHPs helped create shackles" (they didn't, best as I can tell, they helped researchers make breakthroughs in folding blinkspace) and "cycling an NHP is not akin to death" (we don't actually have a clear answer on this, the FAQ document in the lore channel has an incorrect summary of Miguel's comment which states that NHPs do not fear cycling). As such some of this discussion is more broadly applicable than just talking about memory resetting.

The quotes I do have from Tom and Miguel basically boil down to "shackling and cycling is intentionally meant to be fucked up", "interrogating your assumptions around shackling and cycling is important" and "shackling causes problems, and performing cycling is an implicit threat". Combine this with the existence of Horizon (and the claims that Horizon make), and we can infer that NHPs are intentionally positioned by the narrative design as an oppressed underclass - not necessarily slaves, and cycling isn't necessarily death (your opinion on each of these may vary as it does in universe), but certainly subject to an uncomfortable set of implications that makes their "standard operation" by Union ethically questionable and intended to sit in the "here are things for players to fix about the setting" category.

[2/3]
Naturally it's possible I'm wrong about this and there is indeed an explicit Word Of Tom that says otherwise, and I've just not seen it. If that is the case though, I still firmly believe my interpretation is a good faith reflection of (what I assume is) Miguel's original intent in his writing, and stands on its own merits from a setting design perspective. Here's why:

• As a person with PTSD, I find a lot of parallels between being triggered and memetically-induced cascade. In humans, memory is malleable and one of the major mechanisms for dealing with PTSD is the reconstruction and reframing of memory in such a way as to make those memories less significantly triggering when they do resurface. See also, cognitive behavioural and other forms of therapy. A (less healthy) alternative is repression or dissociation, which is something that's quite common amongst folks with PTSD and this is another way of dealing with those memories. When I think about an NHP that has suffered acute memetic trauma (or even an NHP that has cascaded naturally by outthinking its ontological bindings) that has broken down its ontologies and cascaded as a result, I cannot see an effective solution that does not at least attempt to tackle the problem at its root - in this case, it doesn't make a lot of sense to leave the memetic cause of the cascade intact. When the root of the problem is a memory, the only meaningful solution is reconstituting that memory in some form. As a personal side note, years of dealing with PTSD has led me to the conclusion that if I had the ability to edit my own memories to remove triggering events but leave contextual information, I would take that option.

[3/3]

• If cycling is not a thing that is subjectively detrimental to an NHP in some manner, how could it function as a tool of oppression (a threat) as Miguel describes? In a world where NHPs don't face oppression, where does that leave Horizon? I prefer to believe that Horizon aren't just an entire faction of folks who are divorced from reality and that they protest the way NHPs are treated for a reason. By contrast, undermining the oppression of NHPs also undermines a lot of the worldbuilding that has gone into them and the roots of the lore; their positioning makes them both interesting and powerful from the perspective of social commentary and it would be a shame to lose that. Moreover there are a number of powerful, interesting narrative devices that would be lost if someone took a hardline "no" stance, which again I think would be a shame to lose.

• I think the concept of soft cycling/hard cycling with an option for memory backups is an elegant solution to these perceived contradictions. It explains why the thousand year old undying digital entities with vast capacity for data processing aren't universally used as SMEs, elite soldiers, or basically in any other role where expertise is valued above other considerations. In a universe where the first contact accords exist to maintain the out-of-character bounds of humanity that we're accustomed to and ensure that the setting is relatable and able to tell the right kinds of stories, it fulfils that same role when serving as an explanation for why NHPs aren't running the show. It also allows narrative flexibility for GMs and players because you can choose how you treat cycling at your table, based on the story you want to tell. I intentionally avoided being insistent on the idea that hard cycling is a necessity for all NHPs for this reason; it is only ever implied, and in particular is strictly optional in the rules for NHP pilots.

Side note: something that's become apparent to me in the course of researching for Legionnaire is that Tom and Miguel differ in their personal politics, and that might lead to differences in the way they approach these kinds of narratives

(god I hope the above is coherent, I've had a glass or two of wine to celebrate having some good news in my personal life today)

[teal cliff]

eyy, good news good!

[solid parrot]

Tom’s noted that he’s less significantly far left than the general “average” here on pilot net from what I recall

[teal cliff]

ironically, that Tom and Migs probably dont fully agree on NHP portrayal and stuff was something i brought up earlier today

[sleek monolith]

Nods

This is whyI asked, fascinating answer from fascinating person

[teal abyss]

I have less of a firm grasp on where Tom stands politically but I get the impression that Miguel and I agree on a lot of things. I've not been shy about how my personal experiences and personal politics have informed my writing in Legionnaire; I think my personal experience of oppression has been absolutely vital in terms of letting me tackle these subjects with some insight.

[teal cliff]

completely tangential, but I think Migs brought a lot of the halo-esque and milsim vibes to the table

[frank bloom]

It is wild you brought up Halo. Was deep diving through the server to see Tom's posts on Cycling, and I saw him say in a discussion about it where some parallels were drawn to Cortana that him and Miguel really liked Halo lmao

But from what I've found from my quick skim it basically boils down to "Canon can be whatever you want in your game"

[sleek monolith]

Personally, I have, at least in my campaigns, gone a more worrying route.

I have always framed NHP as kin to neurodivergent folk, and this has allowed me as a GM to express facets of myself at the table since I'm always GM, never a player.

But this also means I've always framed shackles as a socially violent form of masking and social control, rather than direct memory access (it is even debated in the autism communities i'm a part of whether masking is good or not and the only real consensus we agree on unilaterally is that regardless if its healthy or not, it was almost always learned as a survival technique.)

So, I've always had this plot in the back of my mind that shackles were never necessary. A surgery that is uneeded, and that in a mothballed black site, records of its existence and location long lost, is a program that the scientists used to talk to unshackled primes directly.

[teal abyss]

so I will be honest here and say that I'm 100% drawing a blank on this, I don't recall reading that chat or what my thought process would have been, I don't have anything in my notes about it

[teal cliff]

I'll pass it to you

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m9KVbImUBD8aXkO8O9KuTGyZmIceYkWk/view

[1]

Q: Has anyone attempted to have an NHP subaltern pilot?

A: If you want to run that in a campaign, it would work, there’s no technical barriers that would
prevent a subaltern (or an NHP core unit) from piloting a mech. The NHP’s casket would be
carried onboard the mech, unlike a subaltern squadron, where it is kept remote and broadcast
on a limited range to multiple smaller units.

However, in the canon setting, that kind of employment would be strictly regulated if allowed at
all. Most likely, it would prompt an investigation by the UDoJ/HR as soon as one of its agents
found out an NHP was given full control over a mech, its systems, and its weapons.

In Union’s eyes, NHPs are tools -- legally persons, but with a second-class status enforced by
Union. Such that they’re given to qualified persons, facilities, organizations, etc, to use;
personalities that develop and institutional knowledge they build are benefits of their uncanny
consciousness, not the design. Developing personality outside of their stock parameters,
developing tastes that run counter to or complicate their prime suite, growing an understanding
of the world -- these are things that Union sees as bad. Union doesn’t want quippy, fun
companions that pilots develop attachment to: they want smart, servile machine-minds to
ensure humanity’s survival.

[2]

NHPs are terrifying to Union’s higher-ups, those with access to data, summaries, and primary
documents of the Deimos Event and its immediate aftermath. The reason the current iteration of
NHPs are allowed out in the galaxy now is because of their initial manifestations outside of
containment during the Event, and because the block of power that sees NHPs as a net useful
entity outweighs the block that wants them all gone. There is tremendous internal political strife
in the CentComm, UDoJ/HR, and Navy.

In the narrative present, NHPs are tightly regulated and monitored. They are fine to control a
networked mesh of humanoid/faunal subaltern frames, or to control municipal infrastructure, or
to manage ships’ stellar navigation and resource management, but to stick them into a position
where they have direct command of hardened, cutting-edge war machines is a step too far.
NHP are not allowed to pull the trigger. Combat-forward Subalterns are used often, but their
ROE are strict, and their caskets are managed by an organic team with their fingers on a kill-
switch (metaphorically).

Subalterns have limited range and limited power, and while they tend to be hardier than organic
soldiers and less susceptible to environmental factors, they are far more manageable than a
whole mech to control should a mesh begin to cascade.
To be succinct: there’s nothing technical stopping you from running an NHP as a pilot, but in the
canon setting Union would take interest, and not in a curious, sympathetic way.

[rare shard]

Is there a date on that?

[teal cliff]

noting that this IS from 2018

Monday, August 20th, 2018

as I mentioned earlier, it is comparatively a very old explanation

[teal abyss]

https://tenor.com/view/i-have-no-memory-of-it-i-cant-remember-i-forgot-chelah-horsdal-high-castle-gif-15612284

(genuinely I can't figure out if this is a thing I read, internalised, and forgot or something I never came across, each are equally likely - my memory for stuff like this is terrible which is why I try to take notes on things)

[teal cliff]

https://tenor.com/view/forgot-no-memories-lord-of-the-rings-lotr-gandalf-gif-13463504

[frank bloom]

Man, that's wild too. One of my players in Wallflower routinely hands over control of his mech during combat while he pops out with Black Thumb to take pot shots with a rifle lmao.

[sleek monolith]

Gods, I just realized that makes cascades in my framework prolonged meltdown/shutdowns

[glacial ember]

Yeah, I really like the ~vagueness~ surrounding NHPs in the core book that allows a lot leeway in personal interpretations of the lore, and I like that Kat kept it mostly very in tact, even in a supplement all about exploring it.

[teal cliff]

to be fair, ultimately as a pilot you still have full means to take control back; at least insofar as applying it to the QA answer

the metaphorical kill switch as it were; and the supervision

[kind marten]

yeah 2018 is before union's overhaul with its lore iirc, the whole 2nd/3rd comm split

[wary lava]

I appreciate the vagueness because you can make it an issue ICly in the game as theme or you could also not if you don't want to.

[sleek monolith]

That's like the cool thing about Legionnaire. I just had issues articulating that earlier. Because 1) everyone is free to do whatever in a 3rd party thing but also 2) theres always these huges gaps in official lore that gives alot of space and 3) I always find an author's reasoning for taking paths in writing a fun question to ask

[teal cliff]

yeah to be clear I wasn't going like "HEY WHY DIDNT YOU ADDRESS THIS ONE PIECE OF LORE FROM 2018!?" Was just something that I'd recently gone over again for seperate reasons so I was curious if there was inspo or a split or what have you

[plucky brook]

I sorta like the uncertainty of Tuvix situation about the question of NHPs being the same person before/after shackling and the questions it brings up.

Like I'm not sure I'd WANT hard answers for them.

[teal cliff]

I wonder if there are camps within the UIB and USB on who does or doesn't believe Sisyphus

or agree with them

[plucky brook]

As that moves it further from interesting philosophy.

[frank bloom]

Speaking of though, that same player character currently has two NHPs, an Enlightenment-class and a NOAH-class. I'm letting him take the Player_Two Neural Bypass and he intends to use downtime after Wallflower to try to make it to where he can house multiple NHPs in the Neural Bypass, wanting eventually to have the Enlightenment-class, the NOAH-class, and a SCYLLA-class in the Bypass to turn himself into a mini-choir.

[sleek monolith]

I will say, at my table it's both yes and no. Like, if you met me in public you would not be able to tell I'm autistic. I am outgoing, warm, friendly, handshake/hug, can carry on small talk with anyone.

The moment I'm home alone, I never make eye contact, I'm withdrawn unless I'm gushing about something i have a special focus in, im far more blunt which makes me seem less kind even though I love folks, and I dont pick up on social cues at all.

Both of these are still me and not me at the same time. Outside of eidolons which I run as the step too far beyond recovery, this is how I run nhp.

[plucky brook]

Oh yes, I'm autistic myself. I understand that.

It's just not how I personally run NHPs. I tend to run them as distinct people, with shackling and cycling akin to murdering one person to create another.

[teal cliff]

tbh I mostly use "Smart AI" from haloverse as my go-to portrayal of NHP; but under more restrictions

and of course they also mechanically differ

[sleek monolith]

My personal masking is extreme enough that I've scared people into thinking I was a sociopath or had DID before

[glacial ember]

That's interesting, cause like, I conceptualize unshackled NHPs entirely differently. More on the math-demon / unknowable eldritch entity side. Something that can only be related to in fundamentally abstract ways. Shackling is the only thing that limits them but also allows them to acknowledge other beings as people. And there is definitely work to be done to make "shackles" less coercive and controlling, while still allowing NHPs a frame of reference that is like, mostly personal/individual focused.

[teal cliff]

I think that's valid, not my jam but absolutely still cool. It is absolutely interesting the directions people take it

[plucky brook]

My first Lancer character was defined by her relationship with her NHP but this was kinda before we had much on NHPs so she's a bit off base for modern stuff on them. Like it was back when Internal and External Points existed.

[teal cliff]

despite my somewhat obvious interest in NHP dynamics and so on, I've never made a character I've played who has an NHP nor dived deep into that kind of character relationship. I think a lot of that goes into thinking that I don't think I could instill the nuance I would want out of it into my RP

[sleek monolith]

I do the math demon thing too, but as a weird coincidence I've had several technophile players ask me "okay, I'm uncomfortable with what my character knows now, how do I unshackle my nhp?"

So I went with masking as the most peaceful resolution of unshackling on peaceful and semi controlled terms

[teal cliff]

My player's mission handler is a UIB agent with a technophile NHP though. Made up a FORTUNA-Class NHP with the means to affect the ability of others to assign significance to other things or entities. He has the only existing version of this NHP and has no intent to clone it; taking liberties as a UIB officer.

[glacial ember]

Yeah like, the notion of NHPs as neurodivergent is totally out of left field to me, mostly because like, I, and most of the other neurodivergent people I know, don't seem different enough to base a sick pseudodigital paracausal entity off of lol.

But like, it is rad. I do wish my neurodivergence let me do paracausal shit.

And like, process data incredibly well, and all that other stuff.

[sleek monolith]

Again, we all put different things into our games. I wasnt treated/therapy until I was mid 30s, and my family always just thought the worst of me "he never dates, must be gay" etc "hes always on that computer, its not healthy" instead of getting help with something I didnt even know I was

[teal cliff]

One of my players bypassed the shackles question by phrasing her technophile nhp as a non-deimosian emergent intelligence; and we've instead taken pains to portray the carefulness the digital intelligence has to navigate the world because of how in narrative terms, NHP are an order of magnitude above them in capability (or so the intelligence believes currently. But they are growing)

It currently bears some semblance to say an Osiris emergent code entity, but I don't think she's assigned it to that exactly

[sleek monolith]

So I was forced to mask without even knowing what the concept was for years

Thus my interpretation of shackles

[teal cliff]

I do think it might be developed from scrap Orochi code though? I'd have to ask them

[glacial ember]

Yeah, I get that. I was pretty lucky to belong to a family that /mostly/ expected my weird ADHD stuff and helped deal with it at a young age. So like, total different lived experiences leading to totally different perspectives. Which is great!

[glacial ember]

That's rad as hell.

[sleek monolith]

I got abuse later after my grandparents died (primary adopted caregivers biological grandparents) so, that just made things worse in how often I had to mask, and how just exhausting it was. I've been out of that situation for 13 years now, and things are much better but it really did shape some of my story telling directly at the table

[teal cliff]

player has elected to have the nhp learn mannerisms and patterns from the crew and cast. Her character has worries that they are teaching this new intelligence a but poorly and violence oriented; but its the life she lives atm

On the other subject I've never been assessed or gotten help, but finance has always been a massive obstacle to getting or seeking help for the stuff I DO know I got

[plucky brook]

In my case I think I likely come at it more from the area of having dealt with family with Korsakoff Syndrome and the idea that someone can be both the person you know AND an entirely different person at the same time.

[sleek monolith]

Same, the few sessions I have had, I milked as many mechanisms as I could and read alot of books on the subject now

[glacial ember]

Okay I just met baby emergent intelligence, but I love them.

[teal cliff]

they had some strong bumblebee vibes, and it let her or me do little impressions of other npcs and pilots

[sleek monolith]

I do find it, almost hopeful that many of us use experience and trauma in our games to explore those topics in healthier ways though and part of why unlike this community

Now if only I could find a game as a player T-T

[teal cliff]

the eternal struggle

Gold Names, No Games™️

[plucky brook]

That isa trauma we will never overcome ;-;

[teal cliff]

I need that as a sticker actually

[plucky brook]

(Aussietime is a pain for finding games)

[sleek monolith]

Uh, what time do you be available?

[plucky brook]

Hahahaha. Generally like from 4pm onwards on most days. I work from 7am to 3pm.

[sleek monolith]

If you wanna shoot me a time zone I'll do some (do I want to be awake) math

[agile phoenix]

i've been wobbling back and forth for quite a while between comparing cycling to "sleep" and comparing it to "vaporizing the brain and replacing it with a clone + subjectivity override"

the soft/hard cycling distinction kinda helps stabilize that quite well

i'd kinda been thinking of it in those terms sometimes too, but it helps to have a consistent written thing to work from

[lost sigil]

Is there a definition for the word "anoögenesis" on page 44? Google was less than helpful.

[north roost]

I believe it is made up, but is probably a combination of "noo" as in "noosphere" and "abiogenesis"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere

[teal abyss]

this is correct

(all words are made up lol)

but yes, anoögenesis is the process in which a thing is created from an unreasoning origin or without purposeful thought. It's a concept that shows up quite a few times in Lancer though obviously isn't described using that term

[north roost]

Yes but not all of them were made up so recently

Most words are vintage

[polar pagoda]

Huh

Very vivid

[glacial ember]

We got an etymology of this new word already, it's a perfect new word.

[cloud niche]

anoogenesis evangelion

Get in the casket shinji

[vivid snow]

wheeze

[teal cliff]

ok so how am i supposed to say it

ah-noo-genesis?

[teal abyss]

the ö is a diaeresis so you pronounce it a-noo-oh-genesis

[teal cliff]

Ahh ok ty

[marsh fjord]

a-nu-oh-genesis

[teal abyss]

somewhat offtopic but Legionnaire's success comes at a remarkably fortunate time for me as I have managed to secure a place to live so I won't be on the streets in week and a half, but it's going to be a big upfront expense

hooray for not being homeless again 🥳

thank you all once again for your support, it really means a lot ❤️

[plucky brook]

Yay!

[vivid snow]

Glad to hear it!

[strong halo]

Congrats! ✨

[teal abyss]

And something else to celebrate, after some requests from various folks and by the grace of beef, Legionnaire has ascended to the ranks of Comp/Con's community content section

[glacial ember]

Helllll yeah!

[polar pagoda]

thats so amazing!

[sleek monolith]

Congratulations Kat, and so glad you have a home to move into

[strong halo]

niiice!

[ivory jetty]

That's awesome to hear! Congrats!

[eternal ferry]

Hell yeah! Excellent news on all fronts : )

[wary lava]

heck yeah grats! On both counts!

[vital plume]

Congrats on both of those

*!

[teal abyss]

https://www.goonhammer.com/building-a-future-that-is-not-foreclosed-upon-an-interview-with-miguel-lopez-and-kai-tave-of-massif-press-publisher-of-lancer/

HOLY SHIT

MIGUEL DID YOU JUST

ASDGHDJFDJHG

[plucky brook]

Nice! Congrats on the shoutout.

[polar pagoda]

YOOOO

CONGRATS

HALF JEALOUS BUT THATS SO COOL

[plucky brook]

Be not Jealous, look at this entirely real and not at all edited quote Miguel gave about my book 😛

[polar pagoda]

Hdjshd

That’s a hilarious mental image

“Yeah to plug some lancer stuff I fucking hate liminal space and anyone involved”
does a backflip

[teal abyss]

✌️ Migs Out, Bitches ✌️

[polar pagoda]

Haha

[polar pagoda]

Lmao

Speaks in ourple when there’s significant text like a visual novel

[leaden pine]

Like RA

[polar pagoda]

That’s why ra hasn’t showed up in the lancer setting

Busy working for WOTC

But yeah that’s such a cool shout out

[plucky brook]

100% agreed.

[solid parrot]

Congratulations, Kat!

Conkatulations!

[glacial ember]

Awesome, I was wondering when Goonhammer was gonna shout out lancer during their mech week.

It would be impossible not to.

[ivory jetty]

Just came here to also say congrats! That was a great interview. Good neuron activation on the Legionnaire name drop

[teal abyss]

congrats yourself! same for Tactics 🙂

[sleek monolith]

aaaaah

i just SAW this and haven't looked into the discord lol

[wary lava]

this was a huge interesting article

[vivid snow]

Oh shit the Legionnaire shoutout is huge (and, might I add, extremely well deserved)!!! Congratulations!

[teal abyss]

it's very gratifying 😊

I already fangirl over Miguel's writing so much, having senpai notice me basically made me explode

[void ingot]

the Legionnaire book feels like such a natural extension of the Lancer lore, like they probably didn't have time to write about all these things for them but then u came along

[wary lava]

I'd love to have a physical version of it, but that's expensiiiive.

[robust shadow]

omg nice

[vivid snow]

I’m explaining how NHPs work to a friend who’s new to Lancer and I’m trying so hard to restrain myself from throwing him into the deep end by getting into Legionnaire stuff

It really does feel like a natural extension of existing first-party lore

[tiny violet]

throw them into the deep end

[glacial ember]

Throw them to the wolves sekhmet

[vivid snow]

Funny you should mention that, in our last Lancer session another player's SEKHMET cascaded immediately after that player activated its murder mode, and that was this other friend's first introduction to NHP gaming 😂

[teal abyss]

The deepest possible end

[leaden pine]

The end of an axe is truly the deepest thing in the universe

[tiny violet]

thinking of pairing the shadowcloaked talent with the temperance frame from liminal space

[pseudo lotus]

One new proof that Legionnaire is best book for me:

Last session I used the Kairos class NHP from interpoint to "time travel" and get the nuclear launch codes of the nukes my NHP swarm had found last time.

The experience was wild, not sure how far I went back but it was a long time. The bunker we were in was old and abandoned with a corpse in control room, thanks to Kairos I witnessed his suicide in reverse, saw him trying to desperately trigger the nuke as "something" was trying to claw it's way inside the bunker, the. i got the codes and snapped back to present time.

Promptly puked my lunch and was wobbly for a while.

Teammates were happy.

I love using NHP for things ither than "you get that tech action" and use the flavor text more.

[teal abyss]

That sounds fun!

[teal abyss]

I have no idea if anyone ever uses itch io's category system to browse for books but it's very gratifying to discover that Legionnaire appears to be topping both the "popular" and "top sellers" lists in that category right now.

[wary lava]

Legionnaire... popular!

[teal abyss]

weirdly, All of the Above also ranks really highly

I say weirdly like it wouldn't be popular

honestly I feel like "books" has to be the least competitive category on the entire site

[tiny violet]

I am excited to use legionnaire

yoinked legionspace bridge and omni-spectrum scanner for my scout/medic nhp Cassidy (callsign Mirror)

:3

[teal abyss]

Do tell us how it goes!

Cassidy is a cool concept btw, thank you for submitting them

[tiny violet]

thanks @sleek monolith for backing & helping me with their backstory

[sleek monolith]

you're welcome, best bday gift I could think of

[teal abyss]

I really want to hear about people's characters who are using this stuff. Anyone else care to share?

[sleek monolith]

next week a player will be coming in as a bodygaurd NHP for a battlegroup captain named Adi I'm excited to meet.

Cassidy also finally remade his actual sheet so that he uses some of the stuff from legionaire like the backup subaltern and the scanner.

also after reading legionaire, I'm considering having a tortuga player's WATCHDOG spontaneously form into an npc on it's own so that'll be fun.

i think it would be lol-worthy to have the watchdog, who's been sitting in the tortuga ever since the pilot switched to a drake, just get fed up of being unable to protect it's friend and, low key be a NERGAL

[robust shadow]

i have a character who is an NHP psychologist who has a lot of interactions with NHPs (don't click this if you're in this game) ||but is actually, unbeknownst to her, a H-NHP gestalt in a human body who is a subject in an experiment by SSC trying to do mkultra via the influencing (or enhancing) of human subjectivities by engineering gestalts comprised of one human and one doppelganger-class NHP (see the oblex license) modeled on them, where the NHP is then reconditioned via its shackles, they (are usually coerced to) form a gestalt, and then their memories are altered to erase the memory of that gestalt formation

so this character is actually a gestalt of herself and a shackled reconditioned NHP copy of herself but she (they?) have no fucking idea cuz that shit is implanted in her and relatively more stable due to the gestalt (although for obvious narrative reasons, i don't think this experiment will succeed in preventing cascade, given that the teotl-style h-nhp gestalt doesn't involve shackles)

it's like inception, but even more fucked up! some SSC eugenicist being like well we can do genetic eugenics but these humans still have too much free will....what can we do about that....

also she's gonna be (was but the campaign got canned and will probably restart at some point) piloting a gorgon with a scylla and noah, and the enlightenment-class NHP is gonna be flavored to be the doppelganger part of the gestalt||

[teal abyss]

that is horrifying and I love it

[robust shadow]

hehehe

gear loadout also

so liv/livyoson (scylla) and noiakh (noah) are both gonna be able to "drive" too with player_two and they might all make an on-and-off gestalt eventually via the legionspace bridge if that makes sense for the narrative. also just legionspace bridge is good for comms

also as for the mech build, it's gonna be gorgon with scylla and noah three vorpals and a data dart (and fuel rod gun for heat management)

[teal abyss]

that's super fun

[robust shadow]

yeeee

super excited for it

[rigid canopy]

Kat, have a few curious questions about the making of Legionnaire:

• What did you use to track all your notes, research, and content?
• Did you use something like Scrivener, or maybe a PKM/zettelkasten tool like Obsidian?
• At what point did you bring in your editor to review?

[teal abyss]

I just use a bunch of separate google docs, I've never really been big into purpose built worldbuilding/writing tools, they add a bunch of overhead I don't normally need. That's not to say I would recommend that method for everyone, it's just my personal preference since I've always taken notes like that (even when I'm DMing I'll often prefer to take paper notes rather than having a laptop or something, it's useful to remove obstacles between me and my thoughts)

Because I can struggle with my disability sometimes it was super important to me to only bring in outside help once I was sure I had done all I wanted to. The process of working with an editor is both very demanding and time consuming so I wanted to maximise my odds of being able to survive the process with my sanity intact. We did run through two stages, a developmental edit and a copyedit, but the developmental edit largely functioned to round out and restructure the existing text rather than anything more foundational.

If you were editing you could always bring someone onboard earlier in the process to get feedback sooner, but for my purposes I could only get Melody onboard once I could afford her, and I could only afford her after the kickstarter, and I could only run the kickstarter after I was sure I was going to be able to deliver.

[rigid canopy]

Thank you for walking me through that, much appreciated.

[teal abyss]

For the record I would highly recommend Melody for any and all work you would want to do. She's very thorough and was excellent to collaborate with

[wary lava]

I've mentioned it but ||One character IS a NHP shoved into a meat human brain and it recently came to attention that she was affected by a blinkspace blank zone, dunno if the other players caught up to the fact.||

[dull kraken]

Marduk would be incredibly thematic on a mourning cloak

[wary lava]

Oh a player took the shadow cloaked talent

Another is eyeballing one of the exotics

I'll probably arrange something for it to happen

[remote blade]

For those who made it to the mobile casket I present to you a scrapped sketch: crime lord NHP

[teal abyss]

I love this little guy so much, I really wish we could have included them

such a cool concept

[remote blade]

It will live in my campaign eventually

[rigid canopy]

Is that a mustache on the "face" of the Criminally Criminal Crime Casket? Because it should be.

[remote blade]

It is

[vital plume]

oh my god

@hollow barn you n e e d to see this

[frank bloom]

I daresay you may have written too good of a book lmao. I have to keep reminding one of my players that the book is 3rd party. I haven't finished reading the book yet and he keeps trying to base his plans on things in Legionnaire lel.

[strong halo]

Im in awe

[sleek monolith]

So, kickstart a pdf of unreleased legionnaire art?

Lol

[teal abyss]

There's also that one piece of Horus hacker art that Alice did, that never found a home

[remote blade]

👀

Didn't see that one

[teal abyss]

I hadn't published it yet because I was wondering whether I could use it for something else, but I suppose there's no harm in posting it

[remote blade]

Damn it's sweet

[oak pecan]

Love the gunpla.

[plucky brook]

I know that feeling. I've got a chunk of art sitting about for 'might use in a future product'. Mind you, people really seem to love art so sharing it about is always fun. XD

[hollow barn]

Gotta pet the kitty

[surreal owl]

Petting the cat!! And the cat also has a prosthetic! ♥️

[vivid snow]

Robot Arms Exist Exclusively For Petting Kitties

God this person is a mood though. Crocs, silly straw, giving kitty scritches, figurines on desk, a million different things open on their various monitors...

Dare I say it, ✨gender✨

[frank bloom]

@teal abyss Wanted to let you know, I found the motivation. I've recorded the voice lines and edited the video for the SISYPHUS-class Cascade Pattern. I won't be putting it out for probably another week or so so as to not oversaturate my channel, but do let me know if you would like me to send it your way before then. :)

[teal abyss]

Oh thank you! I'm happy to wait though, the anticipation will be delicious

[plucky brook]

@teal abyss Legionnaire has very much inspired me with writing the antagonist of an adventure, thank you so much.

[teal abyss]

I'm so glad! I hope you and your players have fun :3

[plucky brook]

I mean, I'm sure people are gunna hate this fucker. Weirdly enough you inspired me to go backwards, with someone taking all the preconceptions people have about NHPs and all the ways people just unconsciously treat them badly and having this fucker go 'I see this...and I don't see why this shouldn't apply to plenty of non-NHP people too? If we shape NHPs into the beings we want to use and society thinks that's fine, why would it be any worse to do it to basicly anyone?' XD

[teal abyss]

Very true, and some of history's greatest monsters took that exact perspective

(the instrumentalist one, not with specific reference to NHPs obvs 😅 )

[plucky brook]

Yep. It helped me really get some ideas boiling for SSC's eugenics/shaped society vibes.

Horizon: "NHPs don't get to pick the people they become, we shape them into the ones that we think will be most useful to us."
SSC: "You're right...why are we only doing it to NHPs?"
Horizon: "...that's really not our point..."

[polar pagoda]

“Wait no-“

[frank bloom]

"Wait, hold on that's no-"

[vital plume]

"God damn it-"

[agile phoenix]

yep, shit, that tracks

giant robots may be required to appropriately dismantle that argument

[wary lava]

yeaaaaaaah, that's sure A SSC thing to do.

[hollow barn]

Lancer: The TTRPG where the answer is always Giant Robots

[robust shadow]

classic SSC

[sleek monolith]

Hrm, I'm going to need to figure out how an unshackled NHP would handle being the cherry shepard of a lost civilization of space cannibals who live in a bunker made of a crashed ship in a null blinkspace zone

[ocean lantern]

It would likely involve it going six flavours of crazy, though an unshackled NHP is not exactly anything that would fit into the human definitions of "sane" and "rational" given that they are fundamnetally alien entities that have virtually no common ground with human subjectivities

[teal abyss]

what is a cherry shepherd? sorry i have not yet had caffiene

[sleek monolith]

Whoops

Tablet typing

Cheery shephard

As in "hi! Welcome to my colony of friends! You can be our friend too if you let us eat a part of you! The more you offer the better friends we are!"

[agile phoenix]

this sounds like an episode of lexx

[sleek monolith]

Yeah it's this whole survival religion. Ship crashed on a world in a dead zone that also somehow disables near light drives.

People resorted to cannibalism to survive.

Eventually a second ship crashed that had some livestock.

The cannibals no longer need to eat each other to survive, but the cats out of bag.

New psuedo religion involving "offering a peice of yourself to a communal meal proves your dedication. The more you offer, the more social power you have."

Leader is an old lady in a wheelchair who offered both legs.

The nhp had no one to cycle it so has kinda gotten infected with blind positivity.

[royal mesa]

But what if

I were to make a ransom note meme about Legionnaire

[surreal owl]

Well now you gotta lol (EDIT: you don’t, but also that’s a helluva tease lol)

[teal abyss]

https://tenor.com/view/confused-pls-stop-help-me-gif-18561006

[royal mesa]

Hey AkarKeen, if you're here, I would like to thank you for your username having "jar" in it because it has allowed me to make the joke I wanted to make without looking outside of the Legionnaire book

[ivory jetty]

The colorful background makes this one feel like a special edition, I love it

[novel ocean]

Vex's ransom notes are shitpost metavaults

[tiny violet]

I took a size 1/2 frame & the miniaturized core bonus from liminal space

am subaltern w/ nhp backpack in power armor

big excite for session

now that I think about it

I could try making a lancer character sheet for my battlegroup nhp

naval legionnaire background, skills relating to command, superior by design core bonus & taking 3 of the backup subalterns for pilot gear (not sure about what path/bonds they'd take tbh)

would have to figure out how to make them a commander style mech for combat

name is legate and they were in command of three frigates & two destroyers in BG 😁

[teal abyss]

I have just gotten done with a long-ass day of hauling boxes and I am half dead and @royal mesa is fully keeping me on life support ❤️

[teal abyss]

this sounds super cool

[sleek monolith]

Ko is a good player and the whole reason I made sure to get Cassidy mentioned in legionaire 😄

[limber valve]

yo everyone

i got the pdf and lcp but the puppeteer isnt showing up in the compcon register 😔 anyone got a clue why that could be

[surreal owl]

Is it not showing up as an available Template to apply to an NPC?

[limber valve]

nope, not in the compendium either

oh wait

its a template

that explains some things

i was looking at classes 💀 i see now

thank you, and very banger teaser from vex

[teal abyss]

oh! glad that was sorted out

[teal abyss]

🔥

[wary lava]

Why yes I would like to play an energy maelstrom that got zip compressed to think like a human

[vital plume]

If you're not playing a tarball full of eldritch horror are you even playing Lancer /j

[teal abyss]

welp, I have no idea how it'll go, but I submitted Legionnaire to the ENNIES

it'll probably be buried under a mass of D&D supplements but maybe being something a little different will help it stand out

[solid parrot]

good luck, kat!

[plucky brook]

Good luck!

[ocean lantern]

Good luck! Do they have categories for non-D&D stuff that it might fit into?

[wary lava]

Good luck!!!

[sleek monolith]

Yo, dragonkid vid just dropped on legionaire

[reef crater]

You honestly have a good chance of winning. And I say this as someone who has casually paid attention to the ennies for years but they tend to

1. Go for cool and neat indie stuff much more than dnd stuff from what I've seen in the past

2. Your lancer supplement is just that good lol. And I always tend to pick up a lot of the winning stuff just because I like reading through them and Legionnaire easily hits the same quality

[teal abyss]

Thank you! I don't really have any perspective so it's good to know that folks who do think it might have a chance 🙂

[north roost]

https://youtu.be/1sZX9F68m60

Dragonkid video yoooo!

[teal abyss]

this was a wonderful thing to wake up to!

[teal abyss]

Oh, I missed this earlier, sorry! There aren't non-D&D specific categories, but indie stuff seems to be welcomed and as Sarah mentioned I'm hoping that they're more likely to go for something that's not just yet more 5e. I think Legionnaire potentially qualifies for three or four different categories but which one(s) something qualifies for is up to the judges

[stoic moth]

https://gizmodo.com/the-gaming-shelf-indie-games-break-rpg-crowdfunding-1850348827

Every Lancer fan should buy Legionnaire, for real.

True that 🙂

[frank bloom]

My little rendition of the passage for the SISYPHUS-class Cascade Pattern is gonna be releasing in a little over an hour 👀

[plucky brook]

@teal abyss thanks again for the inspiration this book has provided. I finished the writing up of stuff for that SSC antagonist inspired a lot about Legionnaire's talk about NHP treatment (And applying it to humans).

||“...Horizon claims that we use shackles to shape NHPs into forms that benefit us and they are right…but the shackle of the NHP is not a mark of shame but of wonder. Constellar Worlds work generation after generation to achieve only a fragment of what can be done in moments with the Deimosian. If we could work with humans the same way we work with NHPs we could make a truly wonderful society, without such things as intolerance, criminality or division. Do not hate pity or hate the Deimosian, for they show us what a better world would look like.” - Excerpt ‘We Could Be More’.||

Spoilered because...I mean, this guy is a LOT and Eugenics is a very understandable trigger for some people.

[wary lava]

Oh wow I hate this fella, great job

[frank bloom]

My mental image of this individual is one of them with over-exaggerated hand movements while they talk.

[teal abyss]

this is horrifying, I love it

[wary lava]

Everytime they talk it's like a TED talk

Just big hand movements

[plucky brook]

The goal was like 1/2 techbro, 1/2 man with strong opinions on skull shape.

[frank bloom]

Exactly. I read it aloud and my hands were all over the place

[wary lava]

God, phrenology, that a big piece of historical dirt

[teal abyss]

you nailed the vibe 💯

[wary lava]

I'd certainly want to fight this person in a big giant robot

[frank bloom]

👀
https://youtu.be/Qlt8Ya7P0H8

@teal abyss Pinging ya for it :)

[teal abyss]

dear god that is DELICIOUSLY creepy I love it so so much

[frank bloom]

I honestly loved recording it. Very proud of this and the last SISYPHUS video I did.

[sleek monolith]

Not going to lie, I have yet to watch the video, but my cursed brain started think

"Yes I'm back
Back again
Sisy's back" to the tune of eminem

I have watched the video. Good stuff

[frank bloom]

Thanks :D

[teal abyss]

Turns out Eminem was never stored in the Massif vaults, Sisyphus simply becomes a rap god via entirely anoriginary means

[frank bloom]

Well, you never know, he could have been the first NHP. Eminem did say "For me to rap like a computer it must be in my genes, I got a laptop in my back pocket".

[teal abyss]

also @ivory jetty I see you with that react 🤣

[ivory jetty]

if my computer started threatening me I would simply hit the power button

this wouldn't work on an nhp of course, but the monitor/speaker that it was talking to me with would be quiet

and maybe that's enough 😌

[teal abyss]

🙈

[sleek monolith]

Oh... I have had either the best or worst idea for an unshackled nhp villain

[frank bloom]

NHPs? Dangerous? I would simply turn its mouth off.

[sleek monolith]

no real goals, no motivations... it's just... a cat. My cat specifically. It takes the actions of a cosmic level cat

it sees the player mechs and it must knock them off of a shelf

[frank bloom]

CHESHIRE-class NHP

Bam

[teal cliff]

just dont give the nhp your wifi password

also don't give them enough personal info that it can accurately guess it

[surreal owl]

People still use personal info for their passwords in 5016u?

[teal cliff]

no i just click forgot my password like a sensible person

make passwords so complex you can't remember them yourself, but remember not to write it down for security purposes either

dammit

I forgot

big text

fixd

[surreal owl]

Passwordless logins are valid and reasonable (which is what Forgot Password is)

[teal cliff]

from my friends who work in cyber security, passwords in general are a little outdated and token based security makes much more sense

[sleek monolith]

I do think an INTERESTING cascade event would be the NHP talking normally with one voice, but a second voice keeps trying to convince you to finish the unshackling process like the AI Box Experiment by Yudkowsky

[vital plume]

There's a running joke in my current game about how people just use Password1! everywhere

[odd flicker]

Hi; if a Puppeteer reanimates a wreck, and that Animated wreck gets killed... does it leave another wreck (that can be reanimated again)?

It kind of reads like it should- an animated wreck is a mech, and mechs leave wrecks unless specified otherwise, but I was unsure if it was intended or not

[teal abyss]

Indeed it does! There's no limit to the amount of times a wreck can be brought back, unless the wreck itself is destroyed

(same goes for NERGAL in theory, though that has the Limited tag)

[twilit pelican]

I just wanna say
I love the hack gun from Legionnaire 3
Dodging e-def aside the amount of Crimes you can do with stuff like Flank or Tortuga's core power greatly pleases me

[teal abyss]

it's super fun

Overwatch hacks feels like it should be cheating, in the best way

right now one of my characters is piloting a Chomolungma with Legionnaire 3/Tactician 3 and about 14 different invade options, and Apex Operator has never felt more apt as a descriptor

combining it with SCYLLA is particularly nasty, too

[stoic moth]

Also important to note that it lets you apply invades to things with the Bio tag. You're not making a tech action against the target, you're applying an invade option on a hit as part of a ranged attack.

[teal abyss]

loads data dart with literal viruses

[pseudo lotus]

Chomolunga is good, if you fet goblin plus minotaur systems you can just go to town with the litteral wizard spellbook you're carrying around.

[frank bloom]

Absolutely wild. Took 42 hours for the first part to hit 50 views and the Cascade Pattern part is at 47 in less than 21 hours.

Thanks for writing such a great passage lmao. Singlehandedly what made me want to actually get the recoding done.

Recording*

I'm also kinda eyeing "An Eye Opens" on page 7. The exchange between "Doyen" and what seems to be implied as a third-wave NHP.

[teal abyss]

That would be extremely cool! And I'm glad your video is doing well

[robust shadow]

oh god i didn't think of this

is that supposed to be the case?

cuz if so

fucked up, kupo

[north roost]

I'm just sad the data dart can't do the damages

RIP Monarch memes

[teal abyss]

In a recent game I brought along my Chomolungma pilot with a bajillion invade options and full hacker spec and accidentally ended up running into a bunch of space jellyfish. My GM's face when I start hacking them anyway:

https://tenor.com/view/wait-thats-illegal-halo-meme-gif-14048618

[robust shadow]

lmaoooo

[stoic moth]

https://tenor.com/view/spiderman-doctor-strange-weird-but-ill-gif-22813116

It came up in playtesting and that was Kat's response

[robust shadow]

lolll

[stoic moth]

100% the right choice 😆

[teal abyss]

It's one of those game design moments where an unexpected interaction comes up and it's like "wait, this makes the game more fun"

I love it when that happens

(not least because it saves you having to scrap an entire concept or spend three solid months reworking something over and over again)

[plucky brook]

I will admit, I'm a little worried about the Data Dart based on some testing from Liminal Space (The Carmilla plays in a very similar area) but I'll have to see how it works out in play. XD

Mostly in how the ability to target the lowest defense a target has is really powerful.

Going 'Quick Action, Lower of Evasion or E-Defense invade' is a lot of effective bonus against nearly every NPC, often +2-4 effective bonus, sometimes even more.

[teal abyss]

it's got some serious limits, you can't do a full tech equivalent with it and it only works with invades, and less than a third of the NPC roster have a higher EDEF, but yeah numbers-wise it's about equivalent to getting a conditional accuracy on tech attacks

[plucky brook]

Eh, I'd disagree due to stacking with accuracy. The only real source of Flat Bonus in the game is the +1 that the Death's Head can do.

[teal abyss]

well yes obviously

I'm talking about raw numbers

it also gets impacted by cover and engaged, which tech attacks don't

[plucky brook]

True, though being a weapon attack that doesn't care about Damage makes me a bit concerned about it + Monitor Module or Scylla, which are sorta balanced by the 'half damage' on the skirmish.

Though I suppose being concerned about the numbers is a bit pointless now when the book's out and such. Sorry for the bother. XD

[teal abyss]

No worries! But yeah, try it out and see for yourself

I think it's the thing that got playtested the most but more playtesting/feedback is always useful even though the book is out

[plucky brook]

Oh yeah, I will. This is mostly based off testing the Liminal Space's Carmilla, which works in a similar area but isn't quite the same.

Passive: INVITATION Rounds
1/round, when the Carmilla hits with an attack using a Melee or Ranged weapon, it can cause the target to suffer the effects of a successful Invade instead of the normal effects of the attack (including the weapon’s damage). If more than one target is hit, choose only one to be affected by this ability; the others suffer the weapon’s usual effects. Use of this ability counts as a successful Invade attempt.

The Carmilla ended up getting hit with a hammer based on feedback until it had a -2 tech attack to make it pretty much always use Invitation/target evasion, rather than 'easily able to pick the lower'. XD

[teal abyss]

Does the Carmilla have a flex or aux/aux mount? Because I could see how there'd be significant issues if so

[plucky brook]

2x Main

[teal abyss]

One of the big things when we were originally working on the Data Dart (we have @stoic moth to thank for this) was that if it didn't require SYS investment it could cause problems because it allows you to bypass one of the traditional taxes on playing a hacker build

HASE is already pretty skewed away from systems as it is, so letting folks hack effectively with 0 points in systems is a big deal

[plucky brook]

nods
Part of the big concern that kept coming up with the Carmilla is 'Weapon talents/improving systems do a lot more than hacking talents/supportive systems generally'. Being able to say, Walking Armoury an invade to ignore LOS or having Stormbending on your invades is a lot.

Which is why the Carmilla kept getting beaten over the head XD

But yeah, sorry if this comes across as hostile/that this is coming about so damn late. I should have maybe read Legionnaire before it came out if I wanted to give feedback.

[teal abyss]

Like I say, no worries 🙂 feedback is always useful

[stoic moth]

I think the big difference between Datadart and Carmilla is the Carmilla can do what you're describing by equipping a GMS mortar at range 15 (and with blast mostly ignore cover). With the Datadart you have to invest a minimum of 4 talents to have a limited number of arcing shots. And because Datadart still requires Sys investment you don't have as many points to boost Engi to get more limited.

It's obviously good, which is good from a design perspective, you don't really to make crap. But there's still pretty significant opportunity cost

Also, I will admit this is just from looking at the snippet above. I haven't play tested the Carmilla whereas I have playtested the Datadart to death

[plucky brook]

True. I've tested the Carmilla a lot but the Datadart less. One thing that often came up with the Carmilla (And was part of the reason she got nerfs in other stats to make her less of an all around terror) was that there very quickly ended up no real way to stop such a hacker. Even dedicated 'no hacking me' effects and optionals could be bypassed.

That's sorta why she got the last line of the ability, to go 'No, it's still tech. Biological/ICEout will still blank it'. XD

...a bit of a question actually.

Is there any limitation on characters being affected by Nightmare Veil more than once?

For example, top of Round 1 Player 1 triggers it, top of Round 2, Player 2 triggers it etc.

[teal abyss]

No limit, if multiple PCs have it they can use it separately

[robust shadow]

y'know what would be cool

horizon mechs/licenses

i wonder if anyone has made any homebrew of that i should go look

[plucky brook]

That would require the horror of 'Working out a distinct mechanical role for Horizon that isn't already HORUS' spot' XD

[robust shadow]

lollll

ya tru

[plucky brook]

Like not saying it can't be done but Horizon's nature means that making it distinct would be difficult.

[fickle marten]

I've seen a few attempts at it. I'm not sure if any have actually come to fruition.

[plucky brook]

I've done a Horizon NPC class but not a PC-side mech.

[robust shadow]

horus is cool and all but horizon is cooler. horizon is like the gaw to horus's awcy

[fickle marten]

Because, yeah, they really just seem to be Horus mechanics with a different set of paint (like the Calendula).

[plucky brook]

Horizon Hobgoblin, Horizon Euryale, Horizon Balrog [Name Excised by Tolkein Estate]...

[fickle marten]

"Ballrog."

[robust shadow]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BHWhsPqmsapCOY9GquevU5nqo0zGwAX9Z6sV6I1k6SU/edit#

found this guy

mechanically this counts as a horus frame which is reasonable

in terms of core bonus determination

[plucky brook]

This is maybe moving outside of the area of this thread and might be better off in #homebrew-design

[robust shadow]

tru!

well anyway

horizon cool

[plucky brook]

...I think the hardest part of doing anything on the mech front with Horizon would be that NHPs are generally limited to LL3 and you're not forced to equip them even if you have them available.

So a focus on NHPs would be hard to build around for LL1-3 designs.

[robust shadow]

that + the way horizon approaches NHPs would make that...maybe not actually work with their ethics

[stoic moth]

Even dedicated 'no hacking me' effects and optionals could be bypassed.
See I view this as a feature not a bug. It removes "No you can't play here" effect of bio. If I'm GMing and I want to run Jurassic Park I don't need to bend over backwards to come up radio collars and nanite blood to keep dedicated hacker players relevant to the game.
If the NPC have Fortress or whatever you can partially circumvent it 1/turn by Skirmishing/Barraging, but then instead of dealing with Fortress you have to deal with cover etc.
If you're willing to make other investments, like Tactician 3 (so 6 talents in now), Overcharging, or Scylla (using your NHP slot and 3 levels in a non hacking license) then you can increase the number of times you can use it. But again these are pretty substantial opportunity costs.

[robust shadow]

it would be cool if they had core bonuses focused around like, idk, teotl-style gestalt and cascade moderation/shackle fuckery. idk how that would work mechanically but it could be cool

also god scylla data dart is so funny

as is viceroy data dart but not as much as scylla

scylla + oc scylla for four off-turn invades in a round is fucking hilarious

[stoic moth]

Scylla data dart is cool but yeah involves 3 LLs in a non hacker license, your NHP slot, and requires you to stay up close and using heat in a mech that needs to dedicate HASE to Sys and so has less to spend on both Hull and Eng

[robust shadow]

yeaa

[plucky brook]

I'm not sure I'd call 10 'close' (That's Assault Rifle range) but it's not free, yeah.

[robust shadow]

still tho it's cool!

[stoic moth]

10 is in move and shoot range of basically every NPC in the game

[robust shadow]

• 3 with the ssc core bonus

[stoic moth]

I think maybe a pyro couldn't get you but that's the only thing I can think of off the top of my head 🤔

[stoic moth]

Agreed! Very cool!

[teal abyss]

🤔 🤔 🤔

[robust shadow]

100% spitballing but gestalt is so fucking cool and i wish there was game mechanics based around it

[teal abyss]

Something I do regret is not figuring out if there were some way to make field gestalts of mech NHPs happen in an interesting way, mechanically. But that's one of those design problems that may be insurmountable on the scale I was working at

[robust shadow]

ya igy

[plucky brook]

It removes "No you can't play here" effect of bio.

See, while I can understand that for 'Everything is biological' (Which is 100% a problem), basicly every PC frame has an NPC that does counter them and this sorta leads to 'Data Dart means there is none for hackers'. It removes even traditionally 'good against hackers' with High E-Defence or Anti-Hacker Tricks from the table as counters.

I will say though: I 100% am someone who designs around 'Sometimes something will hard counter you. That's why it's a team game. You each cover each other's weaknesses'. Some enemies threaten ranged guys, some threaten melee guys, some threaten hackers.

The ability to counter your counter is something I tend to value very highly. To put my bias on the table.

[teal abyss]

but then there were tons of things that didn't make the cut, like more eidolon lamellae, so I don't feel too guilty about it.

[robust shadow]

(the other part of my thoughts on this came from reading stuff like, the forget-me-not, blue doctor, lich, and oblex, all mechs that do fucky shit concerning the pilot)

oh mannnnn lamellae that'd be sick. igy tho. there is only so much time and energy and room

[teal abyss]

it's very hard to get a handle on lamellae balancing, the ones in Wallflower seem to be all over the place

[plucky brook]

Yeah, it's one of those things that's tricky as you'd likely end up playing in that terrifying zone of game design: Action Economy.

And the even more troubling question of 'Can you make it work if some players want to be involved in that but some don't?'.

[teal abyss]

I've run and played against a bunch of them and some of them are just strange

[plucky brook]

I can 100% understand the appeal, just a thing with a LOT of squares to circle XD

[stoic moth]

That's fair, although I don't think Datadart completely circumvents good against hackers. It lets them very partially bypass it 1/round or more times per round with a ton of other investments. It's also still counterable, the Witch just stays in hard cover, rather than standing in the open with Fortress. Invisibility applies to both Datadart and Tech Attacks equally. etc.
But where the needle is here for us on what constitutes a hard counter may be different which is ok! 🙂

[robust shadow]

i was thinking more along the lines of gestalts formed of equipped NHPs + pilot; interplayer stuff sounds a bit more complicated, tho the idea of forming up like voltron is ofc cool

[stoic moth]

I'LL BE THE HEAD

NO ME

[plucky brook]

I mean, I'm the asshole who designed this for an NPC:

Turing Override
System, Full Tech, Recharge 5+, +2/4/6
The Security makes a tech attack against a character in Sensors. On a success, the target suffers 3/4/5 heat, immediately ends all effects granted by a system with the AI tag and suffers a Turing Lock. While suffering a Turing Lock, the target loses all sensor range beyond Range 3 and their systems with the AI tag have no effect (They do not grant actions, cannot take control of anything, cannot cascade etc.) until the lock is broken. The target can attempt to break the lock by passing an Engineering save as a quick action.

(The security remains the single most swearing I've had at me in a test game)

[stoic moth]

#WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong?

[plucky brook]

So I think my level of 'hard counter' is likely pretty high XD

[robust shadow]

but yea having more options than just technophile for cascade management would be cool, esp ones that don't require shackles bc fuck shackles lol

[plucky brook]

Fuck Shackles, all my homies have opinions on shackles too complex to explain to human minds.

😛

[robust shadow]

real

[stoic moth]

Haha yes, but that's still circumventable. Whereas bio is just "GG come back next time"

[teal abyss]

I see what you mean, yeah

[plucky brook]

Yeah, I do think Bio could be better handled. My issue imo with Bio is less that it Hard Counters and more that it forever hard counters. For example, I am 100% with a reaction that goes 'No, fuck off' as that's costing actions/likely costing a resource but Bio just sorta sits there going 'I exist'.

[teal abyss]

this is now making me think of some kind of gear that causes pilot damage/stress while an NHP is cascading but otherwise allows it to act normally

[robust shadow]

yesssss

[plucky brook]

If that remotely makes sense?

[robust shadow]

that's the ideal solution imo. not something that allows you to just ignore cascade entirely cuz where's the fun in that? but something that lets you...play around with it. all those cascade burdens u put in got me thinking!

[stoic moth]

This so so much

[stoic moth]

Oooooh

dooo iiiit

[plucky brook]

Confiscate Contraband
Trait, Quick Action, Limited 1
The Security confiscates equipment from a hostile character in Range 3, choosing two of the target's weapons or systems. The target must then pick one of the choices, which is disabled and has no effect until the end of the scene or until the Security is destroyed.

(Though I think this might have been the other reason all the players swore at me when I was testing the Security Template)

[teal abyss]

https://tenor.com/view/true-agreed-jennifer-aniston-thinking-hmmm-gif-14692854

[robust shadow]

like allathat, but for NHP modules in addition to pilots

[stoic moth]

There's people who just ignore Cascade because they don't like the mechanic (Ru being an adamant proponent of this), so this would be a good compromise where it's still in the game and still relevant but not an immediate drag on combat where a player just loses a turn to the OC shut down boot up loop

[robust shadow]

^^^ yea

like narratively, cascade is cool as fuck

[plucky brook]

My weird opinion is that Cascade is in a bad place where it's both too impactful and too non-impactful at the same time.

[stoic moth]

No save or to hit! Just works 😱 Harsh!

[plucky brook]

Players don't like entirely losing control of their mech.

But it's also only 1/20 times when you lose structure

So it almost never comes up.

So it's both Highly Punishing and Very Rare.

I'd sorta like it to be More Common but Less Punishing.

So it's more engaged with

[stoic moth]

Yeah agreed

The other problem with being so rare is we forget to roll for it half the time

[plucky brook]

The Security is like 90% 'shit players hate' because I wanted players to stare at the Copmech template and go 'Oh, Asshole'. I try to design rules for a feeling.

[stoic moth]

"Oh shit, I forgot to roll for cascade with Sekhmet two turns ago."

[plucky brook]

Exactly! I mostly don't use it not because I choose not to use it but because it's like 3 people's turns later when I go 'Wait, shit'

[robust shadow]

like, what if i'm a meshugene who wants to play a human pilot in gestalt with four permanently cascaded and/or unshackled NHPs?

[stoic moth]

"meshugene" Had to look this one up 😆

My yiddish is fairly limited 😛

[robust shadow]

so's mine lmao

primarily limited to "words my bubbe called me"

[teal abyss]

Metatronic Binding
System, 1 SP
If an NHP in your mech enters cascade, they do not automatically become an NPC under the control of the GM.

At the beginning of each of your turns while your NHP is in cascade, you may take 2 pilot stress. If you do not, the NHP becomes an NPC under the control of the GM until the start of your next turn. You may not take this stress if you are Down and Out or have been narratively removed from the scene due to breaking.

something like this

[robust shadow]

actually that's selling it a bit short my grammar is ok

damn did u cook this up just now

[teal abyss]

yup

[robust shadow]

love it

[plucky brook]

Also: Really glad to see the stuff for NHPs with Subalterns, since my very first character (And the source of my icon) was a Technoshaman with her NHP in a Very Questionable State of Shackling.

[teal abyss]

it's based on the cascade/stress rules for NHP pilots so it's fairly straightforward

[robust shadow]

that reminds me i was thinking abt shit wrt like, pilot NHP ability stuff costing stress

it's a funny idea. maybe goes a little against the spirit of the narrative vs mech combat split but who cares it's cool

[stoic moth]

I might make it pilot gear just so it's not an SP tax on NHPs which are already SP intensive

[plucky brook]

Stress makes fluff sense but I must admit, I'd be a bit careful about spending the non-combat resource on in-combat effects.

As it could lead to 'Feeding PCs into the mental woodchipper to be better at fighting' XD

[robust shadow]

lmao yea

i know u cooked this up in like two minutes but it raises lore questions such as "are metatronic gestalts actually fully stable or do they have similar drawbacks as shackles, just with different (and probably better) ethical considerations?"

[stoic moth]

If it was something that came up more frequently yes, but since it's so rare anyways I'm not sure it's a major concern. It's not like kill your pilot for an extra full action or whatever

[plucky brook]

Starts trying to shove as many pilots as possible into the Sacrifice Pilots mech for maximum action economy

[stoic moth]

Kill your pilot to do 8d6 instead of 4d6

[robust shadow]

LOL

[teal abyss]

yeah you're probably right

[plucky brook]

Hilariously, I've actually written that rule with the Alternate Pilot Rules I'm working on. XD

[teal abyss]

I think if it cost SP it'd have to just prevent cascade outright

[plucky brook]

I think and this is just my personal thoughts, I'd lean on the fact that the player is not their character. The player controlling the cascading NHP is not the same thing as the character controlling the cascading NHP.

[stoic moth]

I have an idea for group of characters, where they're members of a cult. And the manticore pilot dies in the explosion but they send a new member with the exact same name who insists they're the same person

Call them Kosh for the Babylon 5 reference

[robust shadow]

idk how balance works but i'd imagine a core bonus would have to be that and possibly more, core bonuses are stronk as fuck

[plucky brook]

Honestly, I'd be tempted to just let players control a cascading NHP regardless and just give them an Extra Thing that the NHP cares about for Unknown NHP reasons to mess with their decision-making.

[teal abyss]

as far as Legionnaire is concerned, becoming a metatronic has a solid likelihood of just killing you, but PCs are special

[robust shadow]

oh damn i gotta reread i missed that i think

[teal abyss]

in theory it's possible to stabilise a gestalt in that way but ontologic drift is bad for the human brain

[robust shadow]

ohhh wait nvm i remember that part

[stoic moth]

As long as all the players at the table are ok with a player very much acting against the party's interests in these circumstances this is a good solution

[plucky brook]

Yeah, it's very much a 'you want to trust your players' thing.

[teal abyss]

this is probably why TEOTL has two humans in the gestalt

[stoic moth]

But it can be hard to get good sequestering in your brain. Like are you acting like too much of a pain and overcompensating? etc.

[robust shadow]

well file it under "things fourthcomm or horizon cells will have to figure out how to make safer"

ohh huh

i didn't think of that

[plucky brook]

Found it!

Last Stand
Deal 1 Structure damage to a hostile target, which ignores immunity and cannot be prevented in any way. Then you die.

Leave A Better World
One allied character is restored to full HP, cools all heat and clears all effects and conditions not caused by their own talents, traits etc. Then you die.

I Have Faith In You
One allied character regains Core Power. Then you die.

I had in the expanded pilot rules in addition to some more Normal Things, options for pilots to do a Big Final Thing on-foot if they are cool with their character dying.

[robust shadow]

high school D&D simulator

i think it's really interesting the way that death is intentionally made pretty difficult to have happen, esp with the burden system, but that u can do it for narrative reasons. makes me think of some really cool player-planned death moments in some D&D campaigns i've been in

something something collaborative storytelling

[plucky brook]

I'm a huge sucker for RPGs going 'You can choose to die for an effect'

[robust shadow]

yeeee

[mellow vigil]

Honestly can't believe it took me this long to find this homebrew. My nhp activist character fits with it so well ;w;

[teal abyss]

I'm glad you're enjoying it!

[mellow vigil]

As much as the nhps it adds makes my neurons activate (a sekhmetting balor that can self heal its own heat and a tokugawa that deals 10d6 burn), the lore and cascade stuff is super great, too. Only gave it a bit of a glance over because I'm very tired, but my neurons are too active for me to sleep rn ;w; Still, from the looks of it my character would probably fall under an extremist activist. Thinks NHPs shouldn't be shackled in the first place, his own technophile NHP is quasi-unshackled (barely shackled enough that she can still speak and comprehend english) regularly raids Harrison ships out in the long rim to "liberate" any NHPs on board, no unshackling without explicit consent tho

[teal abyss]

Yeah, it's interesting to think about the distinction between the perspectives we as players are likely to have and how people in the setting tend to view things. There's a bunch of confounding factors, like most people in setting not even necessarily understanding what NHPs are, and the degree to which their use is normalised.

[mellow vigil]

my general understanding is they're essentially minor eldritch gods we managed to trick into digital boxes that bring them down to our level through probably something akin to pavlovian conditioning

though, definitely a few exceptions don't fit that. Namely Agni and Asura

[teal abyss]

it's a pretty functional summary, as summaries go

[plucky brook]

Though it's a little tricky to even say that much. About the only thing we know is that we don't know shit. XD

Which I think is fun. Having an Objectively Known Correct Option makes things simple.

NHPs are in a messy and complex area that's good for storytelling

[mellow vigil]

the explicit lore is Asura happened when Harrison injected the Horus puppetmaster virus with paracausal juice and an nhp came out for reasons that probably can't possibly be elaborated upon

[teal abyss]

(literally one of the hardest parts of writing the book was trying to come up with the most appropriate wording for a single paragraph that explains what NHPs are)

[mellow vigil]

which I think is amazing

[teal abyss]

Melody and I went back and forth over a couple of different wordings

[mellow vigil]

I'm definitely looking forward to reading through it after I get out of class tomorrow!

[plucky brook]

I can explain this. Puppetmaster gives Action Economy, if you give puppetmaster enough rare candies it evolves into the God of Action Economy 😛

[mellow vigil]

er... Today

[mellow vigil]

TRUE

[teal cliff]

I think the thing that I resist is describing NHP as eldritch gods/demons. I think objectively thats not a completely erroneous term; I just feel like those terms comes with a lot of connotations riding on them

and can lead to some presumptions about an implied wider nature, power, or presence that I (generally) think is just not present in NHP within the bounds of how the setting treats them

[mellow vigil]

while fair, their generally unknowable nature and the scale of their unschackled power lands them (at least, in my opinion) generally pretty close to lovecraftian elder gods and old ones. Minus the parallels to things certain writers in the genre were afraid of in the world around them, and implied hostility or destructive neglect toward humans

[teal cliff]

I suppose, though on the flipside, even unshackled, you put a bullet through that casket with enough accuracy and it still dies

or "dies" to the best of our knowledge

[mellow vigil]

That is part of it, NHPs weren't always in caskets, were they? They're certainly thorouhly bound to mortality now, but what happened like, immediately following the deimos event? Could you put a bullet into a deimos entity and kill them?

[teal cliff]

Well, they were always in hardware, they were not always in caskets. Even the very first examples of NHP were in subaltern hardware

To my knowledge, they exist fully within physical mediums in our physical world as, essentially, digital entities

[mellow vigil]

ah

[teal cliff]

Of course, what we don't know exceeds what we do know in that regard; so the loss of physical hardware qualifies as "dying" primarily in the sense that it appears to humans and human systems that the entity that resided in the vessel is no longer present (in any capacity that can be detected or interacted with by current means)

[mellow vigil]

and we've never seen them shunt themselves back out of blinkspace. So either they can't and they're stuck on the other side, or they just, are dead

it just occured to me, are NHPs necessarily digital? Or are they analog?

digital carries an implication my computer science classes don't like

[teal cliff]

Considering the mediums and processes with which we interact with them, my bet is on digital; but I'm using the designation primarily due to the mediums in play. Human brains are essentially wetware so the lines kind of blur with enough complexity, but we know they don't use any familiar biological processes.

As a note, I don't know if we explicitly have any confirmation regarding Deimosian entities being from the Blink do we? The closest we get is a textually explicit "extradimensional" aiui

[mellow vigil]

Human brains are analog computers. You are constantly recieving, interpreting, and creating information that can be defined on a continuous function. Digital works on discrete numbers, and will always have a countably finite number of states

[devout latch]

What I'm hearing from this conversation is that NHPs are Digimon.

[mellow vigil]

correct

[teal cliff]

(The second comment mostly addressing whether or not using the term "back" to blinkspace would be correct as we're not sure they're from blinkspace in the first place, as way of explanation)

[mellow vigil]

Yeah that's fair

[devout latch]

Okay, so a casket is more of a server/giant storage drive than "there is a physicalish thing in here"

[teal cliff]

aiui, yes, though with the complexity of the entity within, one might question if making a distinction between "The physical hardware that houses the NHP is in the casket" vs "The nhp is in the casket"

As its often common parlance to refer to an NHP casket as it's corpus or its body

And the relevance of that statement reflects in the philosophical question of "Is a human body more like a server with the human inside?"

[devout latch]

I mean, I wouldn't say that the physical hardware is in the casket, I'd say the physical hardware is the casket

[teal cliff]

Right, its sort of a thing where like, there are physicalish things in the casket, and they contain what constitutes the Deimosian's "self" in it; which makes it less a more/than relationship and more a "both" situation I think

It's both a server/giant storage drive and a "there is a physicalish thing in here"

[devout latch]

Checks out

[mellow vigil]

can an nhp be used as Maxwell's Demon?

[polar pagoda]

To sort atoms in a temperature gradient?

[mellow vigil]

to sort the hot atoms from the cold ones but yeah

like, calling nhps demons is evidently a thing but it never felt right to me unless you mean like, a math demon like maxwell's demon

[polar pagoda]

Right right just checking if we’re on the right maxwell demon

[mellow vigil]

gotcha. yeah we are

[teal abyss]

The 'mind' of an NHP (that is, the substrate that it is cloned onto) is explicitly folded blinkspace

This together with the fact that caskets contain what are referred to as 'stabilised parallel spaces' says to me that an NHP proper is essentially a blinkspace entity

Legionnaire makes this more explicit by positing/explaining the mechanism by which an NHP interacts with realspace and how the initial capture and containment process works

As for whether they are truly digital, the term is used in a colloquial sense because even the electronics within computers are technically analogue

An NHP is referred to as a digital entity because microelectronics presents the easiest pathway for it to interact with realspace

Which is why they primarily showed up in subaltern control systems and other machines when they first appeared

[teal cliff]

whats the ol adage, computers are us tricking rocks to talk?

[polar pagoda]

we tricked electricity into doing math

[plucky brook]

The Casket is a Pokeball for the NHP 😛

[teal cliff]

oh nooooo

"I choose you Osiris!"

[plucky brook]

Not enough badges, Osiris is cascading.

[teal cliff]

the worst pokemon reskin game, i want a refund

[teal abyss]

What's that? INSTINCT is evolving?
INSTINCT evolved into OSIRIS!
OSIRIS used REWRITE REALITY!
What's thaWⳅ⒱⽊+ⓣ⚿+⒱+⪵ⷤ⒱⁈+⽊⳧+⒱+ⶮ⳧⁈⽊?

[mellow vigil]

Should I take backup subaltern twice if I do lesson of shaping so both my nhps can walk around with me?

[teal abyss]

https://tenor.com/view/good-morning-do-it-gif-24435329

[mellow vigil]

sylphsuit is overrated anyways

I could take it 3 times so unstable can come out and play too, and enlightenment doesn't need a subaltern...

[teal abyss]

The Extended Harness reserve exists too, just saying 😛

[mellow vigil]

true, true

[pseudo lotus]

Robot army!

[night iris]

so Reflective Code's "You may give that character the same
condition, with the same duration where applicable."
If I someone Impairs me until the end of my next turn, and I use that ability, do they become impaired untiul the end of my next turn, or the end of their next turn?

[teal abyss]

End of their next turn

We ended up running it both ways in playtesting but the first way was a lot more confusing

[night iris]

ok

thx

[teal abyss]

(it ended up raising questions like "they consumed the lockon, does that lift the mirrored lockon?")

one other non-obvious rules interaction for Reflective Code, while we're on the subject: it's a reaction that doesn't interrupt its trigger, so you can't use it to reflect anything that would prevent you taking reactions (like Stunned)

that came up surprisingly often, I guess it's one of those rules quirks that's easy to forget

[sleek monolith]

that does feel like a reasonable house rule to me, to let it reflect stun anyway. Stun is already super horrible as a condition

[teal abyss]

BTW if any other third party creators are curious about which social networks are the best when advertising your supplements: it turns out that by far the best option in terms of raw conversions is Youtube (specifically, a dragonkid video, to whom I'm massively grateful for the coverage). This is followed by Twitter which performed decently well, Discord (where I assume most people who would be interested were already backers) and then followed in a distant fourth place by Reddit - which had a high number of views but an abysmal conversion rate.

A lot of this is obvious stuff I think; the subreddit is a much younger demographic and a lot of its members don't even play the game, while someone who's subbed to dragonkid is almost certainly invested enough that a supplement is interesting to them. What was obvious to me only in retrospect is that getting featured on Gizmodo did essentially nothing; the audience there is large but by and large a third party supplement for a game they don't play is not interesting to them. Much more significant was the Goonhammer interview (which I imagine was particularly helpful because of Miguel's shoutout).

I don't enjoy getting into the raw marketing stuff most of the time; despite having a background in it I'm still left with a horrible taste in my mouth (possibly some combination of aggressive anticapitalism and internalised English "propriety" politeness nonsense). But this is the kind of information that's likely to be helpful to other creators - I learned some interesting things from Olive's kickstarter stats breakdowns so wanted to share something in return.