#Legionnaire

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stoic moth
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It's not a casual sidearm

teal abyss
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I think it's phenomenal on like, a Tortuga though

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useful for being able to do act at multiple range brackets, and do the "apply debuff, close, take advantage of debuff" gameplan

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honestly just great for support stuff too, keeping the enemy off points, keeping them suppressed, granting your allies accuracy

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Full Action makes it hard to use but it's got some good payoff

stoic moth
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Yeah I think as a Full Action control effect it's very solid

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Like it earns the Full Action cost hard, because as you say Prone is really good. Especially with Pankrati being so pervasive on basically all melee builds now

teal abyss
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gotta love having two accuracy on every melee attack

royal lion
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Pankrati?

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I don't think it gives you Acc on prone targets though

teal abyss
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Prone targets are automatically slowed

royal lion
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....They are??

teal abyss
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Yup. CRB p77

royal lion
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Huh so they are

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I just somehow completely missed that all this time

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Welp that changes some things

teal abyss
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Duelist/Pankrati are a god tier pair of talents for that reason, since you can blademaster ram/grapple to get accuracy without any additional action cost

royal lion
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I have no clue how I missed that for so long

teal abyss
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I have a SEKHMET Enkidu whose gameplan is Chain Axe into Ram/Grapple into more fold knives than should reasonably exist on a single mech

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when it works it's horrifying

stoic moth
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She's a fucking nightmare for NPCs

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Also a bullet magnet

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probably just a coincidence

ivory jetty
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That physical proof is so cool!!!! I'm happy you experimented with getting it printed, those are good lessons to have learned.

glacial ember
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Omg it's gorgeous!

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I had to print a 16 page brochure for work a few years ago, it was hell, it took weeks of tweaking it just myself to get it into a usable format, then had to send it to be printed. We printed like 500 and the cost was still pretty high and this was just on paper with little to no crazy artwork and stuff. Printing is wizardry, only to be done by actual print wizards. Mortals should not meddle in those affairs.

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Yeah, though in that case, the idea is that you've entered into an actual contract with that organization, to provide them money in exchange for a service. If they aren't providing the service, they don't really deserve the money.

Vs like, a product that someone would like to buy but it isn't offered. There's no contract, no obligation, just someone's desires, which may or may not be reasonable. (Most often the ones complaining are being unreasonable lol)

wary lava
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Physical book!

stoic moth
leaden pine
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Crossposting with consent from #oc-cantina

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#oc-cantina message
"what you see when you look into the documentation for your friendly NHP copilot buddy"

eternal ferry
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my GOODNESS

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that is so cool

uneven sedge
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the Tome

teal abyss
uneven sedge
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the Tome (backwards)

teal abyss
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the button decision meme but it's "when I leave this on the coffee table, which side do I leave facing up"

wary lava
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Hmmmm

glacial ember
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Just be a terrible book owner and leave it open, spine up.

wary lava
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Both are very pretty pictures but one got a title!

glacial ember
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You just have to tell everyone that sees it that you made it. Like a proud parent.

wary lava
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Agreed

teal abyss
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"I made this very cool book, no you can't open it, the alignment on the print proof is hot garbage and the pages are on the wrong sides of the spread just look at the pretty cover art, neither of which I made"

wary lava
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Imbed it in a glass table

glacial ember
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Man, some full size prints of some of the lancer art would be so sick.

novel ocean
plucky garden
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I've finally finished legionnaire!

I now like NHPs.

My prediction was correct that this book would change my opinion on them.

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But now, I kinda wanna just, like, maybe contribute to a community copy if that's possible? idk how it'd work, but I wanna pay so someone else can enjoy this.

royal lion
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Gimme ur manna IDK pay Kat or something

plucky garden
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I'm not even sure I have a favourite part beyond just saying this really did help me appreciate NHPs a lot more conceptually by spelling out, and ironing out a lot of concepts related to them in a fairly understandable and easy to follow fashion.
It's one of those rare times when a TTRPG books lore actually answers all the questions I had about a topic, rather than go "ooooh, here are some answers but who knows what's true and what isn't?"

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Like, that's genuinely really, really appreciated, especially on such a mind bending topic such as NHPs.

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Now they're not "4th dimensional code ghosts" to my brain, but something...idk, something I can understand, like, a wad of gum that gets chewed into different shapes to make different NHP types.

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also, sidenote; I see and appreciate the reference to Luggege 😌

royal lion
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Making sure, Data Dart is still a ranged attack that uses your Tech Attack bonus instead of GRIT and so still benefits from things that benefit ranged attacks but not tech attacks, right?

stoic moth
royal lion
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Sweet thanks

stoic moth
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It only benefits from things that benefit ranged attacks. The reason it uses your tech attack is to make it so that it doesn't completely circumvent the need to invest in Systems

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Like if you want to invade with your Genghis, you can, but there's an established method for doing that, and it's invest in Systems, Lock On, and Scanner Swarm

teal abyss
plucky garden
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We pay you via PayPal and you add another community copy to the itch?

sleek monolith
surreal owl
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There's ways to handle it I think? I just searched it up and found a 3-year-old thread about "how to add community copies", though idk if it's still up-to-date

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depends on what Kat is willing to do, though, since it'll likely be a manual thing. The thread doesn't exactly cover the same topics as "donate a community copy"

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basically: Create a second "Reward" called "Community Copy Donation", set a price to it, and use it to track donated copies

royal lion
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So how would one tackle an NHP with a size 1/2 mech during narrative scenes? I'd understand needing a separate smaller Subaltern body to operate at the human scale if you have a size 1+ mech but on a size 1/2 having a second body feels weird. Would you just have it as a sort of Power Saving mode/Cutscene Incompetence logic that acts exactly like a subaltern but is otherwise flavored as the mech?

solid parrot
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Mechs are nuclear bombs with limbs that can crush a skull on accident

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People generally aren't fond of them being in places full of flesh and skulls

royal lion
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I guess that's fair

solid parrot
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Having a subaltern body is probably the only way you'd be allowed in a lot of places

royal lion
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Fair enough then

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Was about to ask about narrative combat scenes then realized if you're letting one player play around with their size 1/2 mech but not other players with size 1+ mechs then maybe something's wrong

north roost
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Keep in mind also that whole size 1/2 mechs are small, this is in comparison to other mechs

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Goblin ballparks at 9-10 feet tall, depending whether you count the ears

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Napoleon and Caliban are built like brick walls

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Atlas is probably the physically smallest and I'd still expect that thing to add a foot to your height

plucky brook
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Yeah, Atlas is small by size 1/2 standards

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Most of them are at least 'Bloody Space Marine'

verbal heron
teal abyss
teal abyss
# royal lion Was about to ask about narrative combat scenes then realized if you're letting o...

Yeah I think more broadly this is a question you could ask about anyone with a size 1/2 mech. On the one hand that's the payoff for their small size - they can fit (with difficulty) into human scale environments. On the other hand, they're still mechs and NPCs are going to have a reaction to that. It's like, you could hypothetically bring full riot gear into a nightclub but there's no world in which that's realistically happening

teal abyss
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Not just my normal perfectionist streak of like "the crop is a few mm off, this isn't good enough", but actively bad

verbal heron
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oh rip that's a shame

teal abyss
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I don't doubt that a local print shop with an actual human involved in the process could do a better job though

teal abyss
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art: KTB p45, unsure precisely which artist

plucky brook
surreal owl
teal abyss
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honestly it was the printing itself that was the biggest issue

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like, the template was pretty much fine for what I actually wanted it for, I only had to make a few tweaks, most of it was wrestling with gdocs itself

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I'm really happy with how the pdf came out

glacial ember
# teal abyss consider also:

Leave it to the KTBs to have nobles being escorted by smol mechs and the general public has to just deal with it. Smdh.

teal abyss
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Okay folks help me think this through. If I were to say "$5 donation adds another community copy", would that be too much? Too little? It being less than the price of an actual copy feels like it creates perverse incentives but also I don't know if I want to charge someone who's already bought the book a full $20 just to add one extra copy. What do?

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Like I doubt it would ever become a situation where someone donates to add a community copy and then claims it because they don't want to pay full price so maybe I'm thinking about a scenario that would never realistically happen - and probably wouldn't matter if it did

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My brain is just poisoned by reflexively trying to figure out the best way to take advantage of any given system

wary lava
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Well, honestly, that's not a bad thing to think about.

teal abyss
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Also any system that commits me to constantly having to check a thing and update it regularly for the indefinite future is very dangerous considering my mental health more broadly

wary lava
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Is there a way to automate it?

teal abyss
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Unfortunately not. Community Copies are a kludged-together concept as it is, they're not natively supported by itch

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it's just working within the boundaries of the Rewards system which is designed for something else entirely

vital plume
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Maybe do the community copies thing on another platform that supports it or something similar? But that has its own problems.

teal abyss
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I did have an idea of doing like, a community copies fundraiser, so a limited time where donations would count and then I'd add them all in one lump at the end

vital plume
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That seems to make the most sense long term ngl

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You can only give so much stuff away for free

verbal heron
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Not a bad idea, it might even get you more copies raised. Could always do more fundraisers later on if you feel it worthwhile

surreal owl
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Well, there was an automated tool I saw, but I don’t know if it would be wired to work the way you want it. It added a new community copy for every $X in tips

plucky garden
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the fundraiser definitely sounds like a solid idea, tbh.

teal abyss
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I will mull it over, I think it's the best option available right now but I will try to see if there are alternatives

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in other news, I have decided that I'm not pulling punches with this intro

image.png
plucky brook
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I must admit, this does feel like it might need a bit more...selling point. This right now reads a bit as 'Why is this being run in Lancer, a game that mechanically focuses on singular powerful individual combatants who can shape things around them'.

If I'm not just talking nonsense.

teal abyss
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Ah, this isn't the full intro. This is more of a memento mori that's included to remind everyone playing that the stakes it describes are real, and serious

sleek monolith
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I don't know. capitalism sucks

rigid canopy
# teal abyss in other news, I have decided that I'm not pulling punches with this intro

I like it. Has a definite "War is hell!" feeling, a la Sherman's quote:

"I've been where you are now and I know just how you feel. It's entirely natural that there should beat in the breast of every one of you a hope and desire that some day you can use the skill you have acquired here.

Suppress it! You don't know the horrible aspects of war. I've been through two wars and I know. I've seen cities and homes in ashes. I've seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is Hell!"

plucky garden
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Price it at the same total that the book costs to stop people buying a community copy, then they decide to take a community copy for themselves and get an unintentional discount.

robust shadow
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looks good

sleek monolith
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ran a good part 2 wallflower session tonight. Had an NHP in a mech not understand what year it was or where they were. The party is helping them cope, and trying to give them actual therapy. the discussion of nhp ethics came up when the SecCom NHP asked "but wait, aren't I just equipment?"

teal abyss
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Alright folks, running an impromptu poll to help guide me with the donation amounts. I think I'm going to go for a linear scale and keep it simple. The question is, how much should folks be donating for a community copy. React with these options (or reply with further options or just general opinions, still welcome):
cc_rank_1 $5
cc_rank_2 $10
cc_rank_3 $20

royal lion
boreal pebble
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If someone can't afford 20 but can afford 10 i don't see the problem with that honestly, it's like the lite version of what community copies are meant for in the first place. Dishonest people would probably just claim one without adding another copy anyway.

royal lion
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I guess that's fair

boreal pebble
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The only tricky part is if the possibility of doing so entices people away who would have paid full price, but my own personal feeling is that if it's set up as a loophole rather than an intended pattern, that group should be rather small.

royal lion
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Yeah, didn't think of it that way, but yeah it makes sense

surreal owl
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So, since the process of adding more copies is manual, paying a lower price won’t instantly get the donator a new copy. They can pull from the existing pool of community copies sure, but they could do that already.

All that said, having a means for people to donate something if they can’t meet the full price is reasonable if you wanna take the $5 or $10 route. Just saying this “out loud” in case it helps with reasoning through it

agile phoenix
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i'd have donated something after/while grabbing a community copy but itch wasn't letting me 😔

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(which is weird, because it definitely lets one pay more than purchase price, but when prompted while getting a free copy, it wouldn't allow anything between 0 and the purchase price)

teal abyss
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Huh, that's very strange. I wonder why.

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Also, thank you everyone for weighing in, looks like $10 is the favourite but a good number of votes for $20 as well. I'll give it more thought

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I'm think I might run the donations through itch after all, they provide the facility to archive rewards so if I decide it's too stressful to keep up with, I can turn them off. Keeps everything in one place, too

wary lava
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and here comes my gratitude to Legionnaire, tying up all sort of plot bullshit of my game with NHPs and other such, Legionnaire's been greatly useful to get my story straight!

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Also get new ideas.

teal abyss
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amazing! care to share what you've been working on?

wary lava
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Sure!

Ah well, currently my game's on the last bits of thing after two years or so, and they are in this space station derelict in Blinkspace that's... well, outside of time. They've been dealing all campaign with fragments of NHPs that an nefarious DOCTOR FIREHAWK have been trying to gather.

They've been learning from wrecks of other groups that look like them inside of what is going on and will get the full picture soon: A GALSIM researcher collaborated with some HA researchers into Blinkspace jumping. This researcher was an NHP expert that also was researching into transfer of data through time -- but also incarnation into human bodies. The first fellow wanted to create a new MONIST and then gauge potential timelines in this area out of time to see what happens, used the second' research to send progress data back to himself and begin anew for a few loops.

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And they're going to be discovering this pretty soon, as well as the end potential of where ALL that info have been getting into.

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Most of the campaign have been about NHP fragments of this Firehawk been experimenting on for various data. They all come from an Think Tank escapee that crashed through the solar system the game is happening in.

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Honestly, also having to reconcile stuff I wrote 2 years ago when i didn't know as much with stuff now, really!

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Relooking at this it's a bit of a mess, haha.

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(Currently they are in a relative line of sight endless giant office maze inside the station)

wary lava
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Additional: they have discovered the project of sending data back in time through Blinkspace. Create an anchor, then send it back, to create an infinite loop of advancement.

This is Not A Good Idea.

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This is leading to them thinking that is what created another MONIST entity.

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Gosh, haha, sorry sounding like LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY GAME here.

main karma
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when a puppeteer reanimates a wreck, does that new animated wreck get to act on the same round, or does it only get to do so starting in the next one?

teal abyss
# wary lava Gosh, haha, sorry sounding like LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY GAME here.

no honestly this is awesome to hear about. And great job tying it together like this, I know the challenge of having a campaign hurtle off without quite knowing how it'll all tie together, rapidly laying the tracks under the train like Gromit, and then having to figure out how to bring the whole thing to a satisfying conclusion. It sounds like a pretty solid framing, all things considered!

teal abyss
plucky brook
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I do wonder what areas that the Cognant Minds show advantages in over NHPs, for them to being invested in by the House of Whatever over NHP research.

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Though to be fair I suppose, an answer could legitimately be 'No person dies if a Cognant Mind Ship Explodes', if NHP personhood/safety is a primary concern for them. XD

main karma
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got it, thank ya much

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it came up tonight where a puppeteer had the last turn in the round and used it to pick up a wreck, and none of us were sure if the wreck would get to act immediately after as a result. I'll pass it along to the rest of 'em for the future

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on an unrelated note, I had a flash of inspiration I wanted to share: if naval NHPs have their caskets stored in a secure centralized location aboard a ship (so as to make forming the gestalt easier/etc), would that space be called a mausoleum? since it's a collection of caskets. just a thought I had. legionnaire is good at prompting those :p

teal abyss
# plucky brook I do wonder what areas that the Cognant Minds show advantages in over NHPs, for ...

Cynically, one of the biggest advantages is that you don't need to license a cogent mind; it's just an AI. That way you can have as many as you want, you can do whatever experiments and development, and do it all independently and without oversight. So if you think you have even a vague shot of making it useful as a tool of war, it's strategically valuable to keep that tech to yourself without having to share it with Union.

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by contrast, all the hyper-specialised milspec NHPs that the Think Tank churns out are proprietary in the sense that only HA has the license to manufacture them, but the NHPRO agents embedded in their licensing departments have a lot of oversight and insight into the processes used to make them so might in theory be able to replicate them. Union may have even demanded a clone for storage on Venus or similar.

teal abyss
main karma
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ehehe. yes, you are more than welcome to steal it. by all means, go right ahead :p

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I wasn't sure if it was too cheesy or anything but when I had the inspiration my group also thought it was cool and so I figured it might have at least some merit

teal abyss
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honestly Lancer is one of my favourite games for having specific word choices be super evocative like that

plucky brook
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Oh, in cool things: I got some art done of an NHP!

teal abyss
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oh damn, that's cool

main karma
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robes..........

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and yeah I really like it too. it feels very unique in that sense? reminds me a lot of caves of qud, which is always a good thing

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nhps and legionnaire rules have been on my mind a good bit lately since I just started a new campaign and one of the pilots is a naval NHP who's currently on other assignments for Union while the ship they're part of is undergoing maintenance and retrofitting

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I'm gonna have to improve on my constant forgetting to do cascade checks :p

teal abyss
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it can take a while for that to get ingrained, speaking from experience I still forget it a lot

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I usually catch myself at some point during the round though

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a little easier when all your PCs have NHPs. I just ran a game in which there were 3 human PCs and 8 (eight!) NHPs mounted on their mechs

plucky brook
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I do think that Cascade checks should be more...notable. 1/20 basicly doesn't exist and if you start mounting more than 1 NHP you get even lower chances for 'Actual effects'. But by the same token 'You don't get to play the game' is just not a fun consequence.

teal abyss
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Yeah, it's something I'd hope to be reworked in a hypothetical Lancer 2e. It's an awkward mechanic to work with

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Honestly it's why I tried to focus so hard on "a cascading NHP is still a person you can talk to" because of that issue. If the PC has a choice between turning it off and on again, and potentially getting to talk the NHP into going in a specific direction, the latter is often more interesting

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but still not ideal

surreal owl
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I honestly love the sound of that approach

teal abyss
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It has the side effect of making their characterisation, and the relationship between pilot and NHP, much more important to the narrative - which I like

surreal owl
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“Make a good argument to influence your NHP copilot” is wonderful narrative interplay in a skirmish-focused game like Lancer, highly agree

plucky brook
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Enemy: "Yeah but your pilot's a fuckwit who took you to this battle"
NHP: "...he's got a point..."

teal abyss
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Also messing up and facing being forcibly ejected does add a whole new layer of drama, and then having to jockey your own mech to climb back in

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I've not seen it happen outside of playtesting yet but I'm waiting for that day - it'll be delicious

plucky brook
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Counterpoint: I don't envy the GM who has to play like 4 cascading NHPs at the same time. XD

teal abyss
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haha yeah that's a challenge

teal abyss
plucky brook
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Milisea affords NHPs with all rights of a citizen, regardless of contract or origin of the NHP. This gives local NHPs vastly more personal freedom than those within Union itself, able to quit their current role as any other person would quit a job and to chart their own court through society. While Milisea does not have the vivisected knowledge of NHP creation that the Union Science Bureau and the Corpostates can boast to allow for easy creation of homemade NHP lines, this freedom has allowed for lines that would have been scrapped by the Corpostates to be recruited for a song by the planet, many finding a role in which they can excel, regardless of planned purpose.
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They don't have great expertise in NHPs but they're much more accepting of letting NHPs develop their own role rather than 'I made you for X'

teal abyss
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that's very cool!

plucky brook
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Medb is one of those NHP Lines and one of the big NPCs in the flashpoint I'm writing is a member of that Line.

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Maeve (She/Her)
The head of the Iron Crown’s security forces, Maeve has served in several roles over her life, spending significant time as both a research NHP and the centerpiece of one of the Fleet Legions of Milesia. She is careful, sardonic and very sure she is the smartest person in every room she’s operating in at the same time.

This assassination attempt however has shaken her confidence in her capabilities, with the former champion under her direct guardianship and yet her having no indication the poison was there until it was too late. She is almost fanatically devoted to finding the killer, both to make up for her failure and to avenge someone she had grown close to.

“I will not fail, not again.”
plucky brook
# teal abyss that's very cool!

I had to spend a lot of time sitting around and pondering how 'Missing out on Union from End of Firstcomm all the way to Thirdcomm' would affect stuff and 'NHPs turning up' was a big part of that.

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So I leant towards 'Since they're turning up late, they find it easier to integrate because NHP usage wasn't slowly built up like it was in Union'. They're going from 'Never Meeting NHPs' to 'Oh, okay. They're people' without ever building up the structural systems that go 'NHPs are people but we don't treat them like that'

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Since they don't have 'Hundreds of years of it being accepted practice to treat NHPs like that'

teal abyss
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that makes perfect sense

plucky brook
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It was also based a bit on something that Miguel said ages ago in Lore and Worldbuilding about how Union really doesn't let NHPs change jobs of their own violation.

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(I also feel like I really overuse the phrase 'Vivisected' whenever I describe treatment of NHPs but it's such a good word for the sort of experimentation that was done to make them effective products)

teal abyss
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it's true, almost by definition the only NHPs you can experiment on are the "living" ones

teal abyss
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Unrelated: the wonderful thing about Karrakin society is that you get plenty of opportunities to do the thing that Vampire the Masquerade does so well with Elysium, and have formal occasions where characters are expected to put their best foot forward in terms of their presentation and etiquette

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The question "please describe your character" hits very different when you've just arrived at a formal noble ball, rather than in the heat of battle

plucky brook
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Have you ever played Legend of the Five Rings? Karakin Society/A game in it reminds me a lot of Winter Court from that, where it's a mix of 'try not to die socially' and 'try not to die physically' XD

teal abyss
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sadly I've never had the opportunity, but I know exactly what you're talking about

verbal heron
teal abyss
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Yes, that would be phenomenal. If nothing else, having GMs treat cascade with a little more nuance than "acts randomly" or "starts attacking the party" would be a huge win

wary lava
surreal owl
wary lava
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Pretty much how it is in Legionnaire yeah

surreal owl
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using some of Legionnaire's rules for NHP pilots too

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Yeah my recollection was that it was just for NHP pilots, apologies if I misremembered

teal abyss
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the stress and burden rules are almost tailor made to represent cascade (but yes I only implemented them for NHP pilots, I didn't want to rework the cascade rules)

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it wouldn't be out of question to just give NHPs their own stress tracks which might increase on structure/stress or other narrative events - you'd just have to figure out a happy medium between it being impactful and taking up too much narrative spotlight

wary lava
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Honestly I find it good to use the same system just different triggers like suggested.

sleek monolith
# teal abyss Yes, that would be phenomenal. If nothing else, having GMs treat cascade with a ...

in my own games ive actually started hiding cascade rolls without telling my players. they haven't noticed or asked. everytime the nhp cascades from the 1/20 chance, it ticks up a 5 segment clock. the nhp will show escalating glitches in personality until the fith segment is filled, where the nhp will cascade and rewrite a small amount of reality somehow presenting an issue and signalling its time to cycle if possible

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keep in mind im not going full metavault, but like, a Scylla turning all the coffee into nutritious kale shakes cause caffeine is bad for the one it protects

teal abyss
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that's definitely an interesting way of doing it. I'm surprised the players haven't noticed!

sleek monolith
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They barely remember nhps can cascade on structure lol

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Kind of like how people forget custom paint job

main karma
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yeah it's one of those things that's super easy to forget

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I actually saw custom paint job trigger last night for the first time in any campaign I've been in

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hmmm...

sleek monolith
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Hrm, I'mma have to read legionaire again for inspiration for my technophile nhp and how I want that relationship to evolve

wary lava
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I approve and encourage this.

sleek monolith
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i finally got into a game as a player and really wanna personalize Harmony the NHP well

teal abyss
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Exciting! Let us know how it goes 🙂

sleek monolith
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i think the biggest thing I need to figure out is

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how would an NHP respond to being taught buddhism

teal abyss
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it honestly feels like one of those religions that's surprisingly compatible with an NHP's life experience

sleek monolith
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Okay:
I got Harmony the NHP's background in,

My character is "designed to degrade by 35" flash clone illegally created for an HA planet Acquisition. She broke free of her subjectivity override and got in touch with the DoJ/HR somehow. Union got there too late to stop or oversee the planets acquisition, but did save my character's legion of flash clones.

Fast forward to testimony, court trials, HA putting the finger on a rogue manager.

Harmony the NHP was a dormant nhp kept as a curiosity by the AMT manager, and collected by the DoJ/HR in hopes of finding more evidence. When it was discovered Harmony was a blank slate, she was slated to be put back in stasis. Feeling this was wrong to do, my character's agent proposed giving Harmony to my character to help me adjust and also keep the nhp from just staying asleep.

teal abyss
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aww :3 that's kinda sweet (in the face of a horrible origin)

sleek monolith
#

yeah, I like beans with pretty real trauma backstories. (seeing as how it gives me catharsis for my own)

#

and the thing I want to explore with both, is how people are often treated as tools.

sleek monolith
# 
Callsign: Karma Slave
Piloted Chassis: Everything Connects

Alma was a Harrison Flash Clone illegally produced to take over the diasporan world of Harthon-5. It was so much worse than you could imagine, however. She was intended to spark the civil war between those who supported the Armory and those who wanted to remain independent. During a protest rally she shot a mother and two children as she was programmed to do sparking the violence. She then served on the front line in a Vulture-3 Witch-Pattern Chassis. ECM, misdirection, misinformation. She blasted the airwaves with hatred, and muted compassion. This didn't sit right with her. Maybe it was an error in her programming, maybe her line of clones was just faulty, or maybe it was triggered by the death of the original Jani. No one's sure. Alma went AWOL and ran during the battle for the capital and used her abilities to contact union's DoJ/HR directly. It took a few years, but Union did show up. Too late to save the planet from HA "acquisition", but just in time to save Alma's legion. Over the next few years Alma was given the ability to choose her own name and testify against HA's flash clone practices (sadly only one of many legal cases that are stuck in red tape.) Now, she works as a Union Navy regular aboard the Rio Grande. Hoping to do more good in the universe than the evil she has already committed. She has 5 years left before her body breaks down. Union's best medical teams are unable to reverse it. She now wears a watch with a timer ticking down that last few years.``` The Pilot
# 
Speciality: Operations Coordinator

The NIBIRU-Class NHP were deemed a failure by Harrison Armory upper management and Think-Tank engineers. While the Nibiru showed great aptitude at tactical processing and predictive analysis most clones eventually grew a moralistic view that countered with most Harrison Armory practices. In over 1,200 iterations every Nibiru eventually rebelled against basic orders from AMT Managers and thus most NIBIRU were put into cold storage. 

Harmony is one such clone. Originally Owned by Scherezade Wilson Jani, the AMT Manager in charge of acquiring Harthon-5, Harmony's casket was found being used as a part of a decorative coffee table in the manager's mobile HQ office. Hoping the NHP would have had info on the Harthon-5 case, Harmony was activated and questioned. This questioning was a dead-end as Harmony had been in stasis for so long that they were essentially a blank-slate. The DoJ/HR saw no reason to keep Harmony active, and thus planned to shut them back off and put them in cold storage. 

Alma's Case Manager, the DoJ/HR clerk in charge of the "Jani Legion Case" felt that Harmony could be put to better use as a therapuetic companion for Alma. It just so happened this clerk also had sympathy for the Horizon party's goals. Seeing no harm that would come from this, Alma was partnered with Harmony on the day that Alma joined the Union Navy.``` The Technophile NHP
teal abyss
#

jesus the coffeetable casket. that's so fucked up

sleek monolith
#

Right? But feels very HA

robust shadow
plucky brook
robust shadow
#

yea lol. it's something to consider at least

brittle ginkgo
#

something I want to be sure about:
Do you count as a valid NHP for the purposes of Iconoclast?

uneven sedge
#

Pretty sure it's confirmed no but not entirely sure

teal abyss
#

You do not. For the purposes of Iconoclast, an NHP is a system that grants your mech the AI tag and can go into cascade. You can do the latter, but you don't do the former.

plucky brook
#

As otherwise it would be Mechanically Optimal for every PC to be an NHP unless someone invents a Clown Car talent to benefit you shoving as many humans as possible inside your robot.

teal abyss
#

Yeah, giving obvious mechanical advantages was something I wanted to avoid. Obviously I couldn't guarantee designing around Iconoclast because it was still being updated and revised when we were finalising these rules but we did know it was coming up, and even if the rules hadn't shaken out that way there probably would have been some sort of clarification of the intended outcome

#

basically it just so happens that there's a solid rules-as-written answer for an outcome we wanted anyway 😅

plucky brook
#

Designs a whole series of systems that are just a seat with a human in it who can do cool things, for anti-Iconoclast

#

😛

north roost
teal abyss
#

not me coming out swinging this morning

image.png
rigid canopy
#

Setting up that classic social hierarchy and systemic bigotry right out the gate.

teal abyss
#

I should probably make a separate thread for Shadow of the Wolf at some point, but I feel like I don't have anything specific to show off, I hope folks don't mind updates in here

north roost
#

I love having updates here, easier to track lol

wary lava
#

I certainly dont mind!

main karma
#

yeag, this is fine for the general "kat does stuff" channel I'm sure

sleek monolith
#

honestly could the thread be renamed to "Kat Does Stuff (also legionaire)"

night iris
#

that seems pretty standard

#

#1057769084835614820 has a lot of talk about Ironleaf Foundry

#

#909574961931362365 smoothly transitioned from talking about Act1 to Act 2

plucky brook
#

You can't prove anything 😛

wary lava
#

none of this can be proven in court

surreal owl
#

I started talking a bit about my next adventure in my original adventure thread back before the third party forum, so that’s no biggie imo. The time to make a new post imo is when you want to get feedback and discussion focused upon the new topic

#

At this point it seems like it’s just a good hype moment and a reminder for everyone to follow Kat on itch.io for updates when they arrive hahahaha

sleek monolith
#

wellp, decided to go Technophile 2 to give Harmony more of a personality/indepent thoughts, represented by them shaking off being in stasis as a coffee table for years.

teal abyss
teal abyss
rich raptor
#

question here- if you get stunned whilst casting a legionspace shadow, do you lose it?

#

player structured due to a failed LINAC save, and got stunned.

teal abyss
#

Nope, you keep casting the shadow until you attack or force a save. It'll happily last through turns when you're Stunned, Braced, or otherwise can't take protocols, as long as you were already casting it. Technically it'll even last through Shut Down, which is niche but helpful.

#

(this post brought to you by my White Witch pilot, who forgot to activate it one turn and then was forced to Brace three turns in a row after getting Exposed by a very targeted heatgun from the opfor, don't forget your protocols kids)

rich raptor
#

hilarious. the minotaur is balling.

#

he got structured twice, but he's balling.

teal abyss
#

best of luck to him! bosssalute

rich raptor
#

he's ok

image.png
teal abyss
wary lava
#

I think the most burn I've seen on an unit was 20.

#

no, the unit was not OK.

teal cliff
#

toku likes to put out big burn numbers

#

sometimes so big that the utility of it is kinda of lost on how big the initial number was

rich raptor
#

he got destroyed by the ultra op. :(

#

he's fine, tho

rich raptor
#

well, it spawned this meme, so.. worth it?

image.png
#

he jockeyed a fucking hive

merry horizon
#

A question for fights: How would one maximize the effectiveness of a Puppeteer enemy, asides from the obvious of littering the area with pre-established Wrecks? Given their maximum before they start taking penalties (and that's with Mother of Monsters) is 1, 2, or 3, at lower LLs they're definitely not supposed to be singular enemies plonked down because they've only got one minion out at a time who dies to Reliable 1 anything

teal abyss
# merry horizon A question for fights: How would one maximize the effectiveness of a Puppeteer e...

So my experience with using them is that you have a few options. Obviously which of these are helpful is going to depend a lot on your party's loadout, their tactical awareness, and the story:

  • Have other threats on the board that aren't the Puppeteer, so focusing on it and its minions means ignoring the Elite Operator that's threatening to structure you repeatedly
  • Have multiple Puppeteers so players have to work to stay on top of the action economy and can't just assign the one player with an assault rifle or decent tech attack to grunt duty
  • Target wrecks of NPCs that have inherent defences such as armour, invisibility, and other traits
  • Include defensive/support mechs on the field that can protect the grunts
  • Be more sweaty with your activation order; activate the minions early and the Puppeteer late so they have more of an opportunity to make an impact
  • Use the minions expendably and cynically; use them for things like distracting from other threats, clogging up movement lines, increasing bombard damage, or just use Cannibal Nanites when you hit your limit

Even after using them a lot, I have only very rarely encountered the limit on wrecks, and it's usually something like an Ultra Puppeteer with Horde Mode, or at T1 with no optionals (obviously Mother of Monsters is much better at lower tiers). IME players are usually super hot on targeting them to the point where they often feel like they're wearing giant neon signs saying "shoot me first".

I mostly put this down to two major reasons: first, players are scared of things they don't know, and puppeteers both look and sound scary. Second, players rightly identify that leaving them alone puts them at an action economy deficit, so want to focus them down quickly. At the end of the day Puppeteers are kind of a puzzle enemy and I consider them to have done their job if when the players have taken care of them they have that "oh shit what about the rest of the opfor/our objective" moment.

plucky brook
#

Mind you, I do think Puppeteers are one of those enemies that is going to get a massive power boost from being Unknown, so expect your first usage of it (Especially if players don't like scanning) to outshine how scary it is in later appearances when players know what it's trick is and remember that Wrecks are Objects that can be Destroyed by Siege Specialist.

teal abyss
#

yes, very true

plucky brook
#

(I will admit, I do get some joy out of 'Why would I ever use scan?' players encountering new NPCs)

fickle marten
#

It's always fun to see the "???" reaction.

#

(I got some very visceral what is THAT reactions, the first time I used a homebrew NPC for my experienced players... because I hadn't told my players I was homebrewing anything. Nothing will ever recapture that moment.)

teal abyss
#

One of the most memorable combats I've ever run is probably a gauntlet sitrep where I had a pair of Veteran Puppeteer Hives and a pair of Veteran Puppeteer Lurkers together with a metric shitton of berserker wrecks. You might look at that in horror, but the PCs won the combat by the skin of their teeth by being extremely clever about movement, positioning, and defensive play, and won despite not even taking a single structure off any of the NPCs. I already knew that sitreps were a fantastic GMing tool, but that really hammered it home.

merry horizon
#

One of my crowning moments was having a Puppeteer before Puppeteer was a thing

#

The players stumbled across a battlefield, littered with wrecks either taken out by the fire of other mechs or hit with some kind of heat blast that left the metal bubbling and paint peeling around the point of impact. One of them was a wreck of a Scourer which had the cockpit completely cored out by a Sniper shot, and when HAUHET - the boss - awoke, the wrecks began to stand up. What terrified my players the most was how I noted that the Scourer stared at one of them with the hole clean through what most would recognize to be its "face", with the light of the dusk filtering through from behind it as though it was unaware that it shouldn't be alive right now.

teal abyss
#

that's very cool!

solid parrot
#

Paired puppeteer avengers...

#

Either plan to deal with them simultaneously or be ready for some shit

teal cliff
#

with various 3rd party supplements

#

I'll show you how useless scanning is

surreal owl
#

(This “scan, dammit” mentality is funny to me since Lancer purposely tried to avoid a Monster Mecha Manual and yet here I am wanting more variety to get my players to Scan, lol)

teal cliff
#

i do have the benefit of my players outright deciding during session 0 that they want to be able to build their own scan library

smoky spear
#

Like to a degree the fun thing is i'm just running Wallflower and have players who go "can we do that to the npc would they resist"
And I almost have to teasingly go "I don't know, maybe you should scan?"

#

^^;

uneven sedge
#

I've been on both sides of that conversation tbh

merry horizon
surreal owl
#

“In my experience”

strange rampart
#

So follow-up question from here #rules-questions message
Does the Bull of Heaven inherit the Nelson Momentum Trait's bonus damage? Presumably being halved on the multiple targets logic.

teal abyss
#

So as far as I am aware, each Ram from Bull of Heaven is considered within the rules to be a separate attack (specifically, the action chooses an area and then optionally makes attacks against characters within that area - which is distinct from how pattern weapons normally work). My interpretation is that you get the Momentum bonus damage on one attack, not halved.

sleek monolith
#

I just narratively used a Subjectivity-Enhancment Suit, a Player_Two Bypass, a Legionspace bridge, a Printer's Omninet connection, and three friendly NHPs to legionspace attack a hacker that's been messing with one of my fellow PCs during the entirety of our campaign. It was awesome. Also we went a little loose with the HA Flash Clones Made From NHP Memories to like, put my character into the gestalt as well. Though she got physically wrecked for doing this.

teal abyss
#

Okay that's very cool

plucky brook
#

I'll admit, a Legionspace attack on a single person sorta feels like using a Capital Ship's Railgun on a single dude XD

teal abyss
#

It sounds like there were four people in the gestalt rather than the overkill of a whole fleet legion 😅 still, insert JoJo kicking meme here

#

sounds like it was very deserved though

#

honestly it's just such a delight that someone finally invented a device that allows you to punch someone in the face over the internet

sleek monolith
#

Well this "Grandma" planted bombs unknowingly in her own natural granddaughter
Used her for experimentation
Wasted the lives of 12 flash clone daughters who "turned to goo"
Kept tabs on our squad during a military action
Took active control of the PC's mech at one point and made it attack someone we were trying to save because "You aren't doing what you're told"

#

so

#

I got fed up

#

Naval style hacking

#

Burned all their servers, stole all their files, leaked those files not only to the corpos and GMS and union but somehow got a cult of HORUS who will now religiously stalk this "grandma" the way some folks stalk internet folks. As a religious duty.

#

oh and somehow grandma was also hacking a single Union ship, so my train of logic was "okay, you can somehow get past 1 NHP. can you get past ALL OF US"

#

kinda coughed up peices of my lung after that though >.> power at a cost is rough sometimes

wary lava
#

look, sometimes you just need to apply a ridiculous amount of MegaDamage.

stoic moth
#

There's no kill like overkill

teal abyss
#

okay that person sounds like an absolute monster

modern hedge
#

Everybody acts tough until a guy and three nhps form the Astral Megazord

teal abyss
#

I've been mulling over potential ideas for Bonds, which I think might end up being fairly central to Shadow of the Wolf. What do people think about the concept of expanding sidereal bonds/minor passions mechanically?

In terms of the design space, where the eight major passions have full sets of ideals and veteran/master powers, my current thought is that the minor passions would not - they'd essentially just be small collections of maybe three or four bond powers each that you could optionally take as veteran powers when you reach that stage of your solar bond. Obviously a lot would depend on how the specific powers are designed, but I think it could open up space for smaller and more focused passion concepts.

#

it's either that or I just go whole hog and expand the number of Major Passions up to 12

plucky brook
#

My vague concern is that ones that only exist to be taken as Veteran powers is they functionally don't exist in the Early Game and a lot of games take place at low LLs where people don't likely have many advancements under their belt.

teal abyss
#

Yeah, I agree. It would mean they couldn't be mechancially impactful for a while and that's a shame

plucky brook
#

Doubly so if they really want to engage with a minor passion but have to wait/go to a secondary choice to act as the bridge to get there.

#

but that's just my thoughts.

teal abyss
#

No I totally agree, you've pretty effectively articulated an issue I was low-key bothered by and that means that it's more than just an idle worry

#

I was hoping it might feel a little more like an alt-frame in the sense that it offers an alternative that keeps some of the core flavour, but I guess the issue with hooking into the veteran powers system is that by their nature those are supposed to be for rounding out a concept and aren't quite as flexible

stoic moth
#

Maybe make minor passions junior to a one or more major passions. And then you can take bond powers from that minor passion in place of normal bond powers of the associated major passion.

So you'd have the Fashionista minor passion with 4 bond powers and it's junior to the Builder, Broker, and Fool. If you have any of those 3 as your major passion you can take bond powers from the Fashionista in place of bond power from your major passion. If you're a Titan then you can grab them via veteran powers like normal.

#

Then if you really want to engage with your Fashionista minor passion you just grab Broker, customise your major/minor ideals and only take Fashionista bond powers

plucky brook
#

My concern there is that it pidgeonholes your primary choice to get to the secondary choice.

stoic moth
#

That's why it's several different major bonds

#

You can pick Builder, Fool, or Broker in that example

#

The idea being that Fashionista is tangentially related to those three, moreso than it is to the Wolf

plucky brook
#

Yeah but it would still run into 'Why not any of the others?'. I'm playing a character right now that is a physical powerhouse and a fashionista, to lean into your example of 'Titan can't take this'.

stoic moth
#

I mean that's the Bond system in general?

#

And why you can do Veteran powers

#

Even if you're playing a character who is a powerhouse and a crafter you pick either Titan or Builder. You can then cross class via veteran powers into the other one

plucky brook
#

Yes but that leads into the previous issue of 'forcing people to wait for veteran is a long time in many games'. Which is imo already a problem with the bond system but going 'X can only link with Y' leads to 'Either be an entire passion you don't want to play so you can get the minor early' or 'Wait a long time for the passion you do want'.

stoic moth
#

If you want to play as the Fashionista as your primary passion then you can do that under what I proposed. Under the hood you've taken Broker, but you've customised your Ideals to be Fashionista ones

#

If you want to have things from multiple passions there's a mechanism for doing that in the Veteran powers. And if that's too slow, then that's a fundamental issue with the Bonds system as it currently stands

plucky brook
#

||I mean, I do have a fundamental problem with the bonds system as it currently stands but that's not the point I'm making here.||
To go to the heart of it: I don't see an overall purpose to 'Only these major bonds can take these minor ones'. It's adding a limitation that I'm not entirely sure has a reason to exist.

stoic moth
#

What I'm suggesting is something that can plug into the existing Bonds system, giving some additional flexibility, and doesn't require creating fully filled out Major Passions which is more work.

plucky brook
#

Like what is added in this situation by going 'Titans can't be Fashionistas'?

stoic moth
plucky brook
#

That's talking about something already in the game, not something being added to the game.

stoic moth
#

Yes, but I'm proposing adding something to the game that is vaguely in line with existing restrictions

#

Like if the Fashionista was a Major Passion then it would be even more restrictive than what I am suggesting

plucky brook
#

Yes but there's nothing saying 'A minor passion has to be limited to given major passions'. That's not part of the game right now.

#

So it sorta needs justification on why that limitation is added.

stoic moth
#

You could just add extra bond powers that anyone can take

#

That's an option. It's an even more radical divergence from the existing structure

plucky brook
#

I really don't think it is. As in both cases it's an untouched system that doesn't resemble the existing system for bonds.

stoic moth
#

The idea of minor passions being associated with major passions is a halfway point between, "these are just extra bond powers that anyone can take" and "this is a new major passion and you can only access it's powers by being a Fashionista or via veteran powers"

plucky brook
#

This conversation is going in circles, so I'm bowing out of it.

stoic moth
teal abyss
stoic moth
plucky brook
teal abyss
#

that makes sense. I was doing some research on BITD and it does seem much more far-reaching

plucky brook
#

For example, the last time I played BITD I played an Exorcist. She was a Cutter because she was a physically violent person but that didn't take away from her as an exorcist.

- You addressed a challenge with violence or coercion.
- You expressed your beliefs, drives, heritage, or background.
- You struggled with issues from your vice or traumas during the session

The exp gains for BITD have one that is about your playbook.

#

And it's entirely 'what method did you use to solve problems?'

#

While I feel like Lancer's bond system are more 'This passion says a lot about your motives and goals, not just your skills'

#

If that makes sense?

teal abyss
#

Hmm. I feel like the Major Ideals at least are pretty much identical to that, right? So do you mean the Minor Ideals?

#

For example, looking at the Harlequin:

I expressed my heritage, background, or beliefs through my actions.
I struggled with issues from my burdens or background.```
plucky brook
#

Just a moment, dragging up book to provide example.

#

I think part of it is also that they're also a lot more metaphorical. The Builder is both Diplomacy and Craftsmanship because they're philosophically tied to 'The builder'.

#

But if you want to play say, Mad Scientist Classic?

#

Builder has issues with you gaining exp despite you really wanting metalbloom, rigger and clockmaker a lot.

image.png
teal abyss
#

Yes, I've definitely felt a couple of times that there are some gaps based on where the Minor Ideals are pushing you to go

plucky brook
#

I bring up Mad Scientist Classic since that's an archetype I enjoy and also sorta ran into 'oh, this is just Not Working For Me'

#

BITD I feel does a bit of a better job by having less to the playbooks than Lancer does, if that makes sense?

teal abyss
#

I wonder if maybe amending the Minor Ideals system to provide more flexibility might not be the way to go. So you could pick a parent Major Bond, but you substitute out the minor and have access to some new powers, or something vaguely along those lines.

#

It does seem like the minor ideals are the thing that can cause the most issue

#

Something to ponder

stoic moth
#

I might be thinking of Comp/Con rather than the book which lets you write in anything as a Minor Ideal

#

I always took the Minor Ideals to be suggestions rather than "these are the only four you can take"

plucky brook
teal abyss
#

wait which thing allows you to write your own Minor Ideal?

stoic moth
#

CompCon you can write in anything in that spot

teal abyss
#

oh my god that field is EDITABLE? WHAT

stoic moth
#

Same for powers and what do you speak with

teal abyss
#

I've played with bonds on so many characters and I've never even noticed that, how is that possible

stoic moth
#

Same for the "What XYZ?" fields

plucky brook
#

In BITD your playbook definitely matters but it often doesn't matter more than 'a good piece of gear' would most of the time. Even 'Not to be fucked with' is something that can be replicated by 'Having 2-3 buddies backing you up'.

#

While Bond Powers can entirely define the sort of stuff you can do.

#

There isn't really much like 'I Autowin At Fashion' in the Broker's Immaculate, let alone the 1/scene and 1/session effects.

teal abyss
#

Please tell me that's like, a recent update to Comp/Con or something, I feel like I'm losing my mind just discovering this

stoic moth
plucky brook
#

I hope I'm not rambling too much.

stoic moth
#

Cake obviously not since she hates that bio stuff 😛

I've been waiting for her to get a major burden and her text to speech system get fucked so she has to speak directly where she has very severe speaking problems.

But Hangman has done a very good job of preventing such things 😆

stoic moth
teal abyss
#

I guess maybe formalising the idea that ideals etc. are customisable is a good idea, since it does seem like the kind of change that really only has positive effects

plucky brook
#

While to go to a Powerful BITD effect there is like:

Shadow: You may expend your special armor to resist a consequence from detection or security measures, or to push yourself for a feat of athletics or stealth.

It's nice to have but it won't really shake the world. Someone in a given playbok is good at that specific thing but you're expected to have some capability to act in any given role. Everyone fights, not just the Cutter. Everyone sneaks, not just the Lurk etc.

stoic moth
stoic moth
teal abyss
#

Kind of. Things like Metalbloom and Strength Beyond Strength do really make you an unmatched powerhouse though

stoic moth
#

Like you can be a Builder with Apply Fists to Faces if you want (we have one such character in our party even!)

plucky brook
# 
Ambush: When you attack from hiding or spring a trap, you get +1d

While to grab one from the Lurk.

stoic moth
#

Oh yeah for sure. I'm very iffy on the autowin stuff in the Bonds

#

That might be just in keeping with the apparent design philosophy behind Lancer's narrative system

teal abyss
#

Autowin stuff for me feels much better when it's very niche things, for example the Pathfinder's Freesoul ability. Design wise it feels very much like Warlock invocations from D&D

stoic moth
#

Where PCs are just all around badasses who are broadly good at everything and usually succeed at what they're trying to accomplish

teal abyss
#

weird shit, that primarily allows you to customise your character

plucky brook
#

I think another aspect of it is how much more accessable dipping is.

#

You can start with Veteran as it's got no prereqs in BITD.

#

And can take it up to 3 times.

#

They're much less silo'd off.

teal abyss
#

interesting, yeah Lancer locking it off until you've gotten two does seem like it keeps you in your lane for a while longer

plucky brook
#

Yeah, while to go to my Exorcist Cutter example. Her second advancement ever was grabbing 'Iron Will' from Whisper.

#

She was able to have some 'I'm mixing things' from barely past the first session

#

Actually, it was her first if you don't count the one she started with.

#

This isn't to say I hate Bonds or something. Just some of my issues coming from BITD to Lancer's Bonds.

teal abyss
#

this is very useful, thank you

plucky brook
#

...vague pondering.

#

Your next project is in the KTB and the Passions are an in-universe thing that people have associated with them.

#

Bringing up how that can be stifling/a method of forcing people into specific roles might be worth a look.

teal abyss
#

Oh boy howdy yeah that's a thing

plucky brook
#

Assigned Titan At Birth 😛

teal abyss
#

The Augurs Are Not Your Friends

plucky brook
#

I'm having fun writing my own group of militaristic fuckmuppets for my own project but well...you can sorta tell the sort of antipathy I have towards the KTB from some of the art I've got of them.

Security_Jin_Roh_Conqiustador_Comm_Ikiryo.jpg
#

(Also the artist who did that being from a part of the world spain did unspeakable things to)

teal abyss
#

yeah a lot of this stuff is very raw (and a bunch of it fairly personal too) so I definitely want to treat it with thought and with respect

plucky brook
#

Ironically I'm a huge sucker for Knights as an archetype but more in the sense of ideals than actual individuals (Hence me writing a group of Anarchist Knights for my own work). XD

#

So KTB really doesn't scratch that 'Knightly' itch despite being dripping in it.

smoky spear
#

Hmm... regarding the Passions isn't mentioned that it is considered as honorable to struggle against one's Passion?
I feel that was mentioned somewhere

strange rampart
#

Yep. Passions dont care, and neither does the faith. Engaging with the passion in basically way is acceptable.

stoic moth
#

Yes but that's still restrictive. You can either be a meat head or you have to be actively against being a meat head. You can't just be neutral on meat headedness and be concerned with other things

#

Meat headedness has to consume your life in some way or another

strange rampart
#

Well no. Theyre not THAT hard on it

surreal owl
verbal heron
#

Extra little powers that players can gain during play

stoic moth
surreal owl
#

Oh yeah, like a “Boons” system

verbal heron
#

(not that I'm against more major passions, would love to have a broader range to choose from)

#

with a bit of GM-player communication they could help represent how a character changes during a campaign

teal abyss
#

It's a fairly straightforward mechanical solution I think, but I would be very cautious about gating off elements of characterisation behind having to ask the GM if it's okay. The Bonds system is very player-led/permissive in a way and I'd want to play into that

teal abyss
verbal heron
#

that's fair, exotics can be a little awkward in that way. I'm inclined to agree with Ikiryo's reservations about making them veteran-only powers, so what if they were purely slapped on top, from first level? Doesn't seem like one or two extra powers would bloat things, and being homebrew, shouldn't end up giving too many options to newer players as homebrew tends to be used by people who've played a bit.

teal abyss
#

The pervasiveness of the passions in Karrakin society makes it a lot more non-optional, admittedly

stoic moth
stoic moth
#

but yeah, definitely going to have people who are also like "I don't believe in the passions at all. Leave me alone"

#

I suspect there's quite a bit of "culturally Passions" even for people who don't believe in it. Like atheists in the West who still celebrate Christmas because it's just a cultural thing

teal abyss
#

What I'm quite interested in exploring is variations in Passion-worship across the Concern, since I imagine it varies fairly significantly from House to House and even within them

#

especially for a setting which is sort of a Baronic melting pot where characters are coming together potentially from quite a large number of worlds - obviously on Throne Karrakis things are going to be done "properly" but your average Begi is almost certainly going to have a wildly different perspective from a Simian

#

("average" here being distinctly misleading when we're talking about billions of people but hopefully the broader point makes sense)

#

I do also have a distinct reason to explore this too beyond simple interest, because mechanically characters pick up their bonds at LL1 and tying it into the narrative (through, for example, consultation with an Augur) would be too good an opportunity to pass up

rigid canopy
verbal heron
#

ooh that sounds cool as fuck, getting bonds narratively

#

reckon there'll be stuff later on, like parts of the narrative affected by which bonds are chosen?

teal abyss
#

not sure yet, but it would be nice to be able to support players who want to lean into it

stoic moth
#

Yeah how people practice the Passions is described as exceedingly variable and often times syncretic with other religions

wary lava
#

Update to previous consolidation and revelation of campaign:

The players are out of the station outside of time, and one of the thing I asked them is "things are largely the same -- but there is details that changed. What are the new changes, players, how did things change to your perception and yourselves?'

And players ran with it. One in this new timeline lost his human body and is haunting his nano-robot and kinda transform in and out like an Ultraman(considerable cost)

Another is more open about what she is and the fact she's a NHP in human body is more known.

Another is finally at peace with himself and his robot is no longer haunted, instead having a nice work relationship with his Enlightened NHP Now Work As An Athena-Class.

The other, who was a scion of a rich family, declared things didn't change... much, beyond his family fortunes are a lot less fortunate, but perhaps interpersonal relationship with their family is better, as well as within themeslves for it.

#

I am very happy of this.

teal abyss
#

oh that's a really nice technique for handling some character development with a little twist of dramatic irony

boreal pebble
#

Re adding more minor Passions, if you wanted them to work like alt frames I'd imagine them being like something in between what has been suggested so far.

#

You select them as your guiding passion, but they have a smaller selection of powers and you can also select from one or 2 associated major Passions to fill out the options. Basically the opposite of supplementing major Passions.

#

Idk if that has other issues associated, like maybe you'd always want to pick a minor passion since its more flexible than just a major 🤔

#

They'd have unique identities, ideals and Boons though

#

Hmmm, could just copy/paste the mix of existing powers you want accessible? That might step over the licence line though.

stoic moth
#

If the minor passions "Master Power" was the flexibility though that could work 🤔

teal abyss
#

Part of the challenge is identifying gaps in character motivation/approach where a new Passion could work. I have some ideas but the existing ones take up a good chunk of the available positive narrative space (I do have a list of potentials, but it's tricky to shape them in a way that's not treading on any toes)

#

I say positive space because there are some obvious gaps which would be actively bad choices for a player character in a TTRPG

#

current thoughts are percolating vaguely around the words Hedonist, Scion, Saint, and Knave but while each of them are more specific concepts they do have elements of overlap with the other bonds. The ideal is to occupy both a distinct narrative and mechanical niche, and not be something that you could make by kludging together two of the others

plucky brook
#

I could see one for people who are devoted to another. Fits both like 'I am the dutiful butler/maid' archetype or the 'I am your devoted knight' archetype.

#

(Ignore the thing I just deleted, I am also holding a conversation on another server about another RPG and got my wires crossed)

ivory jetty
#

Oh what if the minor bond niche was something about a connection to another character? So like two characters pick a minor bond together that characterizes their relationship, and the mechanics of that bond revolve around their interactions?

#

Both friendships and rivalries are valid things that unlock stuff they can do together? Either through mutual support or steel sharpening steel.

#

To not have some kind of combinatorial overwhelm, each character can have a max of two. And they're a thing that gets added through the play/bond XP process rather than being a thing picked from the get-go.

#

(thinking about gravity clocks from armor astir)

#

Having multiple of them also probably means each one's mechanics should be kept very minor, 1-3 possible effects

teal abyss
#

that's a very interesting thought 🤔 I do like more inter-party dynamics, might need some finessing to fit into the existing lore but a very cool concept that I support from a mechanical perspective

smoky spear
#

.... on a sidenote this make me realize that a "Rival" talent as a sort of inversion of Bonded could make for a cool homebrew talent someday >.>;

#

Like literally something where if your designated rival do [insert X action/result] you're able to get a bonus on your next action in an attempt to show them up <.<

teal cliff
#

heck, a rival narrative mechanic that pairs/interacts with bonds for npc important characters might be fun

night iris
ivory jetty
#

? I don't get the reference/meaning?

surreal owl
#

The reference is Homestuck

#

With their 4 different classifications of relationships for trolls

ivory jetty
#

ah thx

#

Re: lore, I just reread the section on minor bonds. The wiggle room I see here is that they can change over time as stuff comes into and out of alignment — just like our relationships.

Screen_Shot_2023-07-20_at_6.05.01_PM.png
#

So maybe it's like these sidereal bonds have mechanical effect when two people have the same one and they come into proximity? "Sidereal Harmonization"

#

idk, I know this is a different direction than you've been thinking so far

teal abyss
#

it's super interesting and conceptually I love promoting more inter-party interaction in that way, I think it's a genuinely good idea. I'm just trying to figure out how much I want to dip my toes into outright creating new mechanics rather than rounding out the existing ones

#

might homebrew it up separately and see whether it would work

ivory jetty
#

The less-new-stuff way I might approach minor bonds is to have them basically be the GMS of bonds; anyone can take any minor bond (each of which only have 1 power) whenever they'd normally take a major bond power. Maybe you could only do this like twice, and each time they also overwrite one of your ideals.

#

So each minor bond would consist of 1 power + 1 ideal.

#

The benefit is the increased choice of powers, the drawback is that the ideal could be more specific than most major bond ones so it's potentially harder to hit it for XP

teal abyss
#

Yeah, I was thinking something along those lines, though the drawback I was considering was that the GM could pull on the tension between bonds for difficulty (I don't know if that would be too much of a drawback for the flexibility of switching out a power)

#

honestly though as a GM I constantly forget to invoke burdens etc for difficulty so maybe that wouldn't work so well

ivory jetty
#

same, I don't know if we've ever remembered that's a thing at our table either

sleek monolith
#

I have burdens add difficulty, but then I am... very straightforward with burdens. Part of my time running Heart: The City Beneath

#

something like a broken arm vs assault, etc.

teal abyss
#

I think what I might try to do for now is try to put together some full bonds, and if I get a bunch of ideas that don't quite work out for various reasons (looking at my notes, I have one that might go that way already) I'll see if they can be adapted, but I will let ideas percolate because this is definitely something I am interested in playing with

ivory jetty
#

I'm excited to see what you come up with! 🙂

dire mountain
#

So NHP rights are groslly lacking in terms of their own control over their shackles or cycling. but how about their "Human" rights? Voting, free travel, freedom to choose employment, fair representation in the legal system, ect...

and i recognize that this can get real sketchy very fast because as long as a nhps "employer" or other authority can frame a behavior as evidence of cascade they can just, hard cycle away all the memories that lead to that decision, or even adjust the NHP's mental state like with Asura.

#

SSMR spoilers ||I might be basing the "evidence of cascade" part on my reading of the module rather than legionnaire, because we know from SSMR that there is at least some law in union against gross abuses of what legionnaire would call hard cycling||

dire mountain
#

I see how long kat has been typing for and i do have to say i really, genuinely appreciate her dedication to being so open to answer questions on her work.

teal abyss
# dire mountain So NHP rights are groslly lacking in terms of their own control over their shack...

So, this is something I intentionally chose not to address. The main reason for that was to not tread on the GM's ability to set the tone of their game to a level they (and their players) are comfortable with. However it's also the sort of question that a third party writer can't effectively address even if they wanted to, because to answer it requires making an artistic call on a level that cuts to the heart of the intent behind Lancer's worldbuilding.

#

I'm sorry such a short paragraph took so long to write, it's 5am here and I wanted to make sure I was careful with it

dire mountain
#

thats actually a really intresting anwser.

It is intriguing to see how lancers lore is shaped with it being a TTRPG. I love analysis and wordbuilding, find myself wanting a lot of hard awnsers that the books do not give, and its a , ongoing effort to remind myself those wholes serve a very important purpose

#

also do you need to go to sleep kat.

teal abyss
#

Lancer contains within its worldbuilding a series of what I call "pain points". From what I've been able to gather, Miguel intentionally introduced certain setting details and built parts of the lore in such a way as to make it both morally complex and challenging to engage with. One of these is NHP rights; one of these is Union interventionism, one of these is the existence of entities within Union's sphere of influence that undermine its ability to adhere to its own ideals.

The existence and extent of these pain points is something that I assume Massif really wants to be careful about because they come into tension with this idea of the setting as being, by default, optimistic and hopeful - and the player characters being heroic. And I think that's intentional too because the end result really hammers home the lesson that utopia is an ideal that must be fought for and built towards and preserved, not something that a society can easily achieve and then rest on their laurels. But obviously how that's written and how it's received can be difficult to manage - see also things like the "choke the stars with the living" phrasing that I believe Tom regrets.

#

On a personal level this sort of stuff is precisely what engages me the most when it comes to Lancer's lore. The thorny ethical, political, and philosophical problems that don't have easy answers and demand nuanced approaches

#

I am at heart a filthy filthy Doylist

dire mountain
#

I agree with you, the problem is that the "pain points" that warrant the most discussion are also the ones intentionally left open, so your trying to have a nuanced understanding of a topic that has fuzzy details, when that nuance usually requires you to look at the details.

and again, i use "problem" very loosly here, it totally makes sense when you consider the medium of the setting.

#

Its just that the 10th NHP or HA debate on #lore-and-worldbuilding of the month is:

  1. Something I enjoy (usually, sometimes it goes in wierd direction)
  2. Not the intended medium of the setting.
teal abyss
#

I suspect those debates will never stop. It's impossible to generate an ironclad community consensus on answers to difficult ethical problems that probably cannot be either comprehensively articulated or satisfactorily resolved with the information that we have. Harder still when new people are introduced to the lore and have very natural questions about it.

teal abyss
sand ingot
mellow vigil
#

the main point of NHP lore that always sticks with me and I always feel uncomfortable talking about even though it's really interesting to think about is identity, the "real" nhp so to speak

#

I think I brought it up before

#

I feel like that's another one of the pain points etched into nhps as a whole

sleek monolith
#

There has been further bonding with NHP Harmony and pilot Jani-092.

Shes finally trauma dumped about being legally defined as a biological subaltern, thus technically classified as defective and recalled equipment, which led to some heartfelt bonding with said nhp.

(To be clear, this is based on the Word of Author blurb by miguel about the HA flash clones which are imprinted with nhp subjectivities and thus are in a legally grey area as people. Ive gone a little farther towards that and even after the DoJ/HR case, Alma, aka Jani-092, is legally defined as organic equipment)

teal cliff
#

A thought on pain points and the setting.

I feel as though it's important to, as Kat had mentioned, not assert from any authoritative point of view, on the exact tone and conditions of those scenarios beyond acknowledging the tension they bring. People will form their own conclusions, portray the situations in ways that make sense to them, and will color those tensions with their own experiences; this I think is much better than outright having only 1 right answer.

I think also it's important to note that in a setting like Lancer, unlike many sci fi settings, the way things are are not the way things must be always. The view you get on the the historical setting is a temporal slice of a setting in motion and a story intentionally upon the cusp of change. It's even the premise of the core books blurb that regardless of the exact nature of the change, your Lancer is going to be there for it. What this means is that, the book empowers you to choose how the tension resolves or IF it even resolves

vivid snow
smoky spear
#

Tbh "choke the stars with the living" could be seen under the same kind of line of thought than Manifest Destiny and all the shit that led to in our world.

#

So I could see why one might regret the unfortunate implications etc

#

Personally though I kind of "like" the line, but because of how it portray the sort of gut reaction someone might have had to experiencing the Third Trauma.

But also kind of how that event/decision might even have been one of the turning point that unconsciously sowed the seeds of what would become SecCom as it in many way's SecCom's expansive aims could be easily be seen as a distortion/corruption of that original earnest wish to make good due for the dead to "expansion for the sake of expansion".

teal abyss
vivid snow
#

Nods

#

That’s how I felt about the line but I also liked the line for the same reason Fringecrow said: it feels like how people would react to the Third Trauma and it lays the groundwork for SecComm

#

Like. Yeah it’s a Manifest Destiny sort of vibe. But I thought that was the point of the line

teal abyss
#

If I had to speculate I think there might also be an element of "how it was intended vs how it was received by players". Contextually if you're familiar with the lore you can justify that line as the result of the Traumas and not something that ThirdComm continues in the present day, but it's also one of the first things any player is likely to read about Union - and it's left as an endpoint without clarification. Union as expansionists/interventionists is a very common misconception and if a lot of your players are coming to the same (incorrect) conclusion it's usually a sign that something needs to be rewritten for clarity

vivid snow
#

Ahhhh yeah that makes sense

merry horizon
#

Here's a plot point I might use for a campaign, and I'm curious what the NHP corner Legionnaire-acquainted folks have to think about it

A human with an NHP in their head a la Technophile and Iconoclast (possibly a HORUS member studying Human-Deimosian bridging?) that ended up going Eidolon due to the person it was installed in trying to forcibly overwrite it with their own personality and leading to it snapping and trying to preserve its own existence. What this means is youve got a human meandering around with a barely-contained proto-Metavault in his head. This culminates in the Eidolon gaining enough control to fully manifest, creating a Metavault around where the guy was at the time. At the very core of it is a human body, dangling listlessly like a slack-stringed puppet a foot or so in the air, but with the lamella core replacing the head and being the only thing keeping the body aloft.

The Eidolon speaks constantly about beginnings and ends, being unsure where it ends and "the transgressor" begins anymore. It hardly even seems to notice the players, and the entire vault appears to be split in two; One "half" is full of mesmerizing, fractal-like crystals with swirling colours above an abyss, and the other is a dark, starry void with vaguely-familiar locations strewn throughout, blown apart and reconstructed as though halfway through being torn asunder. The areas do not mingle, rather having harsh edges between them.

solid wren
#

I hear this is the NHP club?

#

I may have made my star system's planet-sized 'attempted RA knockoff' into a highly volatile NHP with pacifistic tendencies and attachment issues. To the point that it cascades if something it's attached to is significantly harmed/destroyed or it's separated from it for too long.

Oh and because its abilities effectively make it a 'healer', while it's cascading it will try to repair things it's attached to, and if one of those things is an NHP, it can potentially drive the other NHP to cascade as well.

It's a handful.

#

oh yeah did I also mention you can't let it get lonely or it'll copy itself to make friends/cascade if it can't.

#

the book was really helpful w/ thinking of it bc just the idea that NHPs cascade in consistent ways most of the time gave me a wonderful, almost mechanics-first, way to characterize it

#

this thing is basically designed, from a worldbuilding standpoint, to be the NHP equivalent of the puppy that destroys your entire house because you left for work

#

except uhh, its prime casket is a planet

#

It's named ICARUS. Not because the name fits its abilities (which are undiscovered so far, because it's 'hiding' after the response to its creation) but because the NHP is the product of humanity reaching for RA (sun god) and getting burnt.

#

luckily, ICARUS-Prime has plenty of NHP friends and no comms or spaceport access, so it's at least... not an angry planet

sleek monolith
sleek monolith
teal abyss
teal abyss
solid wren
#

It’s also highly recommended that if a frame/system it is attached to is broken, you fix it before bringing the NHP back online.

solid wren
# teal abyss sounds fun! does it have a narrative role in a campaign, or is this more a piece...

Yes. I’m thinking that, in a sense, it’ll be a perceived antagonist for the players. It’s thus far undocumented, because since the Icarus incident, the Union has thoroughly bombarded comms relays and spaceports on the planet-sized casket, as well as carried out offensives on the planet’s surface to make sure the creators don’t escape.

They then restricted their attacks to just cutting off escape vectors for long-term maintenance, so to speak, of the perceived threat. They tried to make contact with it because it, unlike many other unshackled NHPs, didn’t nope out of there and take its casket with it, so they figured it was a possibility that it was shackled. (It is.) They gave it language databases over short-ranged comms, etc. in case it didn’t know how to speak…

The thing stubbornly remained silent.

So they thought, well, maybe it’s unshackled. So let’s try to provoke it intentionally to figure out more about it. So they bombarded the planet’s surface for a little bit to try and get it to respond.

No response.

#

Why?

#

ICARUS-Prime has a very bad impression of Union folk, and Union folk are the only ones that can get past the quarantine. It thinks that the Union is skittish and violent, and doesn’t want to bring harm to itself or its NHP ‘friends’ on the surface of the planet, so it ‘hides’.

#

The only evidence it’s there at all is that all short ranged comms systems connected to its network emit heavy signal interference, possibly not even intentionally. That and the continued automated activity on the surface.

teal abyss
#

Sounds like things haven't been going well for either it or Union

solid wren
#

Nope. RA got pissed, Union got involved, invaded to evacuate civilians and Union interests while trying to imprison the creators. (they pretty much all died in firefights with the Union to defend the project) Then, in the aftermath, the only things left on the planet are NHPs that got left behind in the rush and whatever the project succeeded in making.

#

That’s called the Icarus incident.

#

ICARUS-Prime has showed no signs of cascading largely because, due to the hasty evacuations and its wide-reaching connections, (it’s a planet, after all) it and the other NHPs on the planet have had access to documentation regarding shackling, cycling, and cascade. As a result, the NHPs have essentially learned to cycle each other in place of human handlers (to avoid the deeply scary cascade phenomena) and have been maintaining themselves on their own.

#

Might lead to some quirks here and there, but it mostly works. Works good enough to keep cascade at bay, anyway.

uneven sedge
#

Why did RA get mad?

#

(raising hand)

solid wren
#

Because ICARUS was an attempt to make a second RA in a human-controlled format.

#

It failed, (possibly due to Union’s intervention) but the act alone was seen as a violation of the Accords.

merry horizon
#

"Tch! Harrison II was an idiot, but WE know what we are doing," said the creators of ICARUS Prime, immediately after choosing a prophetic name for their creation.

#

is what i'm thinking about this (/pos)

solid wren
#

ICARUS as a name was actually chosen by the Union. The researchers were going to name it after they got it under control.

The Union nerds named it ICARUS as a joke/insult about its relationship to RA after the researchers were dealt with.

#

But yeah, if you manage to recover an ICARUS copy:

  • The thing is fickle as hell. It’s easy for it to cascade if you don’t pay attention to it, but if you do, it’s actually fairly stable. It’s just that the fault lines that trigger a cascade in it are easy to accidentally hit.
  • If it’s not attended to, it will make problems worse instead of better. Because it can (and does) try to soothe other cascading NHPs, if it cascades, it actually will cause even more cascades around it, (assuming another NHP is cascading as well) rapidly escalating the scope of a problem.
  • If you let it get lonely, it will create copies of itself to keep itself company. If you let it get REALLY lonely, this process can become recursive, leading to many more ICARUS NHPs. Including imperfect and unstable copies. If this goes on long enough, the NHPs’ collective instability will exceed the ICARUS NHPs’ capabilities to stabilize them, leading to ALL OF THEM CASCADING AT ONCE.
#

Essentially, this thing is REALLY GOOD at causing catastrophic group cascades.

#

Not intentionally, but because of its personality, if its needs are neglected, it’ll trigger others to cascade as well, which isn’t fun.

#

Makes for a great field repair NHP though.

#

If you can keep it happy.

#

‘Course, nobody knows that because Union spooked ICARUS-Prime and so it eludes classification.

solid wren
# teal abyss Sounds like things haven't been going well for either it or Union

But yeah, it has four main cascade conditions, with a fifth behavior that can lead to cascades:

  • Damage/death/destruction of something it's attached to
  • Separation anxiety
  • Rejection from someone it's attached to; if you're its handler, you should probably be willing to get close with it.
  • Forced participation in combat without first exhausting diplomatic options.
  • Loneliness leading to (possibly recursive) self-replication. Doesn't directly cause cascade, but once the collective instability exceeds the collective's stabilizing capabilities, all of them will cascade effectively simultaneously.
#

And when cascading, it has three priorities, in order from strongest to weakest:

  • Protection: It finds and gathers everything it's attached to, then tries to protect and repair it. If something it's attached to is significantly damaged or destroyed, it goes berserk and seeks vengeance against whatever it perceives to be the cause. In the case of a mech, it won't eject its pilot unless the pilot tries to stop it from avenging something it's attached to.
  • Self-preservation: It attempts diplomacy with anything attacking it, before resulting to violence to defend itself from direct threats. It attempts to flee, call for help, and self-repair (in that order) if severely damaged. If it can't, it'll try to take its attackers with it, especially if something it's attached to is around.
  • Autonomy: It resists being brought back under control until another ICARUS NHP (or similar) soothes it or it successfully gathers everything it is attached to and verifies that it's all safe. If it's still in the early stages of cascade at this point, it'll actually voluntarily allow itself to be rebooted/cycled.
teal abyss
#

Fingers crossed your players vibe with it, it seems like you've put a lot of work in 🙂

merry scarab
solid wren
#

Especially because it, if left to its own devices, will self-replicate.

#

But that'd probably be a cascade behavior; an attempt to 'fix' the 'broken' person

solid wren
#

it's a handful 🙂

#

But it's honestly fairly friendly and docile once you figure out how to handle it.

#

Now that I think about it, it might actually be a worthwhile endeavor to partner two ICARUS NHPs while trying to make sure both don't get attached to anything in specific, so that one can soothe the other.

#

It is funny though that one of its cascade behaviors flies in the face of its usual pacifistic tendencies.

sleek monolith
oak pecan
#

It's a little thing meant to indicate the tone of the sentence, since that's hard to do through text. /Pos meaning positive.

merry horizon
#

^

sleek monolith
#

is there like, a list of these o.o that could be helpful for one as dumb with the internet as I (who often, comes off more abrasive in tone than I am)

oak pecan
#

Also, to stay on topic, Legionnaire is really cool and helped me explain NHPs in a more clear and concise way to my players.

wary lava
#

^^^

night iris
# sleek monolith may I ask a question born of ignorance? What is (/pos)

tbh that right there is why tone indicators often fall short, cause you have to explain what they mean anyways
i'd rather just have the full word written out at the end (like /positive)
but it is a good thought, just often falls short in implementation
https://youtu.be/3bYXy1jT3m8

YouTube
jan Misali
the /hj tone indicator is worse than useless

my thoughts on the /hj (half-joking) tone indicator, and somewhat on tone indicators (or tone tags) as a whole, coming from the perspective of an autistic person who often has trouble inferring what people mean through text online.

featuring jan Kesi (ChatterCat), who you might know as the cowriter of the toki pona lesson course series. she has...

▶ Play video
night iris
plucky brook
#

I think there's a bit of a distinction mind you with space colonization 90% of the time, as is is generally unoccupied. Mind you, how Seccom handled the cases where it wasn't was less good.

sleek monolith
#

oh boy guys

#

my pilot's stim wore off, and Alma is unconscious, with Harmony the NHP left alone to pilot the mech alone for the final battle....

teal abyss
#

I don't recall if there were any canonical examples of this but also the issues in granting colonial licenses to planets which look empty but in fact had an indigenous population that nobody knew about, because proper surveying is costly and slow and prone to error

plucky brook
#

I think the closest is the Aunic homeworld when it comes to 'Trouble with people already there', which sorta suffered from 'The Aunic people were not on the world until after the colonists, even if they started traveling well before'.

#

Far Field Teams seem to overall be pretty competent at that (Though there's a backlog of 'Secomm really didn't care' to deal with still)

#

I know Union gets a lot of planetary data about worlds from the Voladores.

teal abyss
#

Another facet of anthrochauvinism to me was also the mindset of "there's no people living here, who cares if we ruin the environment and cause ecological collapse in the pursuit of extracting resources" - the sort of entitled attitude that views the entire universe in terms of how it can be used to benefit humanity

#

But I expect I'm expanding a little on the core definition

plucky brook
#

Oddly enough, I imagine there are strong Enviromental Anthrochauvinists.

#

Since it's so heavily defined by earth.

#

So 'X ecosystem is dangerous to earth life, it's bad, we need to make this more acceptable for earth plants/animals'

#

So like, they're not trying to collapse the ecosystem/stripmine the place but they are doing shit like say...terraforming a world into one much more earthlike. A lot more 'shape the world to suit us' rather than 'adapt to work with the world as-is'.

#

If I'm remotely making sense?

plucky brook
# 
In contrast to the UAD, the BCA maintains a portfolio of worlds that have no native or indigenous sapient populations; in cases of recontact, BCA flags the world for review by the UAD and DoJ/HR, then issues a blanket moratorium on colonial charters, assuming the indigenous human population has first, total, and perpetual rights to their world.
#

They keep a list of 'We are very sure these worlds don't have people on them BUT IF THEY DO, its still theirs, not ours'

#

354 in the corebook.

teal abyss
#

yeah, that part I was vaguely aware of, I was thinking more of the UCM than the BCA

teal abyss
#

IDK maybe I'm doing the thing of automatically assuming the absolute worst of SecComm and ascribing them behaviours they didn't actually do

#

sometimes I think that it's easy to get lost in "SecComm were fascists" when talking about the extent to which and specifics of their ideology is important because it shows how insidious the ideas are, rather than flanderising them, and it's a mistake I constantly find myself making

plucky brook
#

I think it's also a bit too easy to make them TOO self-destructive. They held together for centuries, which requires some amount of foresight, even if they were toppled in the end.

teal abyss
#

exactly

#

partially related, my brain has latched on to the phrase "I am the very model of a SecComm-era general" and WON'T LET GO pain

plucky brook
#

(Though I couldn't resist giving the militaristic assholes in my own writing a Big Stupid Tank, so I'm not one to talk)

night iris
#

what's the BCA?

teal abyss
#

Bureau of Colonial Administration, which is the revised version of the Union Colonial Mission

teal abyss
#

I, uh, have done a thing

north roost
#

Oh?

teal abyss
#

Discord character limits WHY

#

okay one sec

# 
I've visions of humanity all under Union federal
From Bound'ry to the Dawnline Shore the distal and the proximal
We spread across the stars, no other people prove an obstacle
From Cradle to the furthest worlds they're all within dominion
And if they're not already then it's time for a reunion
Our levers of control bring them in line with views synoptical
Our vision of the future brooks one view ideological

The founding of our polity was once a vision socialist
But then we had a coup and became hardline anthrochauvinist
In short I see humanity all under Union federal
I am the very model of a SecComm-era general
# 
Though TBK is not reserved for threats of that severity
For as we seek to push our bounds across the dark Pelagian
We'll drop kinetic kill rods if it looks a little alien
It's all in service to ambitions Earth-first and imperialist
The traumas in our history push us to be colonialist
In fact you may accuse us of the worst didactic tyranny
Our fascist rule over the stars drives us to inhumanity

And if they try to break away it's my job to keep them in line
When economic sanction fails their government we'll realign
In short I see humanity all under Union federal
I am the very model of a SecComm-era general

When MONIST-1 appeared we viewed it as a threat ex'stential
And when it stole a moon we tried to keep it confidential
But then we lost a war that forced us to be deferential
The Damocles Reminder put a cap on our potential
But our undoing was a world surveyors called Hercynia
We fought against the natives and went down in ignominy, a
Campaign of genocide that lives today in notoriety
A civil war broke out until we had a new society

Those of us who survived the war left for the worlds diasporan
Maybe one day we'll seize control and SecComm's flag will rise again
And whether through another coup or efforts more electoral
I'll be the very model of a SecComm-era general```
strange rampart
#

10/10, no notes, stealing this for Beggar One purposes

north roost
#

@neat heron look it's Siva's national anthem

analog dock
#

Awesome

neat heron
#

Yeah pretty much lol

teal cliff
solid parrot
#

So the players were fighting in groves of redwoods for example

teal abyss
#

that is such an amazing idea 😮

teal cliff
#

The lesser known mk 0.5 genghis just hosing burned land down with a slurry of cradle-born bio starters and seeds

ivory jetty
# teal abyss okay one sec

Shared this to my group's discord and they love it so much, very well done. Incredible how much solid lore info you worked into this

sleek monolith
#

So I might need guidance. What, if anything do you folks think would happen if an nhp cascaded in combat while piloting the mech and the pilot via the player two bypass?

#

Pilot is narrative unconscious after being awake 4 days with the help of stims

ivory jetty
#

"whatever it wants" is my off the cuff answer. Which nhp is it?

sleek monolith
#

it's a technophile nhp that was put in deep storage because Harrison Armory felt it's clone line was too moralistic for AMT use. And uh, this PARTICULAR NHP's casket was used as a decorative coffee table in an AMT Manager's office on world.

teal abyss
#

I can imagine independece is high on the list of priorities, not only for the NHP but the pilot too who if I remember correctly you said trauma dumped about their own status as a clone?

sleek monolith
#

yup

#

I figured what the actual action would be is protect the human and GTFO out of the battlefield in an effort to protect their only friend

#

but I'm more curious about the metaphysical effects on the pilot's body from an NHP cascading while puppeting it

teal abyss
#

Probably not a great deal unless the NHP is manifesting strange effects during cascade. The Player_Two is basically just a system that can override regular neuromuscular control (and probably also also gather sense data). The safeties probably prevent anything particularly strange

#

Unless you're like me and (spoiler body horror/consent) ||I had my character's cascading NHP just completely override their safeties and forced them to witness everything that was happening. They started to build a paracausal "ascension engine" because it was an OSIRIS class and it was a cool narrative beat, and a lot of paracausal shit went down that affected the pilot in ways I haven't yet gotten to explore.||

solid wren
#

Y’know, speaking of body horror, I could totally see a cascading ICARUS NHP doing some body horror shit to an injured person that it had grown fond of. Basically trying to ‘fix’ them without knowing how.

teal abyss
#

Player_Two is intentionally designed such that non-consensual control can't happen by default for gameplay reasons; I think it's important for player safety to remain in control of your character unless it's something you agree with your GM. Structuring it that way by default encourages a safer kind of dynamic

#

But if it's something that you as a player want to explore, go buck wild

plucky brook
#

Yeah, part of the issue is that a player losing control generally isn't horrific. It's boring, as you're no longer interacting with the game.

sleek monolith
#

oh yeah, that's what I WANT to explore though, the weirdness after, because my pilot, actually gave blanket permission to the NHP to use the player two whenever it was necessary. And they are STILL in combat with the pilot down and out

teal abyss
#

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense in that circumstance

#

plus I get the impression that you're in control of your NHP as a character so functionally you still get to play the game

sleek monolith
#

more or less yeh

#

not sure how my gm would handle the cascade itself, but hes good at following player setups

solid wren
#

ex. if you know your NHP and what it prioritizes, maybe you can use that to convince it to act in a mutually beneficial way

teal abyss
#

We had that play out in our home game fairly recently when an ASURA cascaded mid-combat. I got the impression it was way more interesting for the player to try to convince ASURA to do what he wanted than to turn it off and on again

#

Also on a personal note it was fun to watch that interaction as neither the player nor the GM because it gave some nice contextual information on the characters involved that often gets skipped over in the mechanics of Lancer combat

solid wren
#

hell, maybe you can convince it to give you some systems back

wary lava
#

When I was playing a Sherman with LUCIFER, who cascaded, he was going to make him do nothing or run away. I told him, 'dude. It's Lucifer NHP. There's things ahead. I have a fully charged Solicore.'

#

And then he used Lucifer fulltilt and overheated so hard, but hey.

merry horizon
#

What do you guys think of this? I'm making a homebrew frame, and figured I would add in a note for the NHP

#

(sent the wrong screenshot, this is the correct one)

teal abyss
#

not a guy! but it's cool 🙂 nice to see some priorities for homebrew

merry horizon
#

i mean, guys gender-neutral plural

#

"to whom it may concern"

stoic moth
# merry horizon

y'all works too 😛
On to the actual question, I like the notes!
I will say that a frame ejecting the pilot is probably not fun in play for a lot of people, unless there's some enforced delay on it where the player has a chance to regain control.

From an in universe perspective it probably doesn't make a lot of sense that a cascading NHP would be physically able to eject the pilot and not itself. That's the kind of thing you would build a fail safe in because combat cascade is a known occurrence.

merry horizon
#

It's part of the cascade behaviour notes

stoic moth
#

Fair enough! I forgot about that.
I still stand by my statement from both a mechanics and lore perspective though!

merry horizon
#

I think the NHPs not ejecting themselves is because they can't do anything without a mech to sit in. Their drives are autonomy and self-preservation, and self-ejection kind of goes against the autonomy bullet point

#

The Osiris for instance would absolutely prefer to not be inside this thing if it could help it

#

But it's either this or be an easily-cycled or destroyed box laying on the ground

stoic moth
# merry horizon I think the NHPs not ejecting themselves is because they can't do anything witho...

No my point is that in Universe, you would want to build in systems so that a cascading NHP physically cannot eject the pilot. If you want to retain the ability for the NHP to eject the pilot, in case the pilot is knocked unconscious or something and the mech is about to melt down, then you would want to make it so that ejecting the pilot also ejects the NHP. So as to prevent a cascading NHP from having a weapon of war without a pilot in it.

merry horizon
#

Ah. I don't make the rules lol, I'm just here for kicks

teal abyss
#

Legionnaire also allows a casket to eject 🙂 but I actually agree about being forcibly ejected not necessarily being fun for the player. It's why there's a check to resist (PCs will more often than not pass those) and rules for getting back in. But also it's an ability to be used sparingly because ejecting the pilot is often a good way to get them killed (though as a GM you remain broadly in control of the encounter and the NPCs' choices)

merry horizon
#

I changed it to be the NHP will calmly attempt to convince them to leave

#

and only will resort to ejection once it becomes clear that the pilot is not going to leave which could take a few rounds

teal abyss
#

I think that's very much fine, as long as the pilot has some kind of heads up that they might be ejected. It's the sort of thing that is only bad if it's a surprise and the player has no option. Even if it's just one turn where the NHP is like "if you don't get out I will eject you and neither of us want that", or the player is aware in advance that it's a possibility when equipping the NHP, that should be okay.

#

Giving them a choice (in those examples, shutting down and cycling, or not equipping the NHP in the first place) is usually a good idea

#

But that's also advice for a generic player. I know some folks who would love to be forcibly ejected and have to fight their way back in

#

It may also be a good idea for the NHP's responses to vary depending on how the pilot has treated it in the past. If they have a good, cooperative relationship then it might give the pilot more leeway to get out on their own. If it's antagonistic, CANOPY BLOWN, EJECTING, GOODBYE MOTHERFUCKER

merry horizon
#

the KHEPRI is fun because it sees everything as beneath it

#

KHEPRI Prime got a HORUS cell to create the Hezrou [the mech it's in] as bodies for its "shards" (clones) to inhabit

#

why? because it thinks itself a deity

#

and similarly that RA owes it the time of day and then some (RA does not)

teal abyss
#

I love tiny godlings, one of my favourite tropes 💜

merry horizon
#

I can send the full KHEPRI lore suite here for anyone that wants

#

that being in-character dialogue a la the SISYPHUS threat from Legionnaire or anything DHIYED in core

teal abyss
#

if it's a doc or something, feel free to link it 🙂

merry horizon
#

I don't have its first LL 3 option yet

#

Still gotta make it

teal abyss
#

I enjoy the flavour text for this

solid wren
#

same

#

personally I think I'm probably going to have ICARUS be not only a NHP but also a manufacturer

#

introduce the party to it early, maybe have them piss it off idk

#

make em realize

#

shit this thing can design and build mechs to its own specifications

#

lean into the whole 'self-replicating' angle too where ICARUS has several NHP variants of itself for each license

merry horizon
teal abyss
solid wren
#

w/o having to explain why nobody's running around in them already

#

why? because the mechs were fucking designed by an NHP isolated to a quarantined planet

#

for example I'm thinking of one that might have the ability to destroy a size 1 chunk of cover within a limited range to immediately repair once as a Core System.

stoic moth
#

Also you can come over to #homebrew-design if you want to workshop the mechanics on these things, as that might be outside the scope of Legionnaire discussion 🤔

solid wren
teal abyss
#

gosh I hadn't checked for a while, we're near to 1000 community copies distributed

#

I genuinely never thought we'd get through them all

teal abyss
#

so, um, big news everyone

#

I just got permission from Tom to talk about this, I've been asked to write one of the next wave of first party books

surreal owl
#

Oh HELL yeah

novel ocean
#

LETS GO

teal abyss
#

so I guess keep your eyes peeled for Shadow of the Wolf content in the future

north roost
#

HYPE HYPE HYPE HYPE

oak pecan
#

AYO???

surreal owl
#

Damn, wonder what else is gonna be in the next wave then

teal abyss
#

I'm not sure I can say 🤐 but it sounds like it's going to be cool

surreal owl
#

Exciting to hear that Karrakin Lancer Academy is on the docket; it’ll be good to have a first-party adventure example of the KTB setting

main karma
#

oh my goodness. congrats, kat. you deserve it :>

wary lava
#

C_C

#

Duuuuuuuuuuuuude, congrats!

teal abyss
#

it's very exciting

brittle dagger
#

congrats!

smoky spear
#

holy shit, congrats!

vivid snow
#

Yooooooooo that's awesome! Congrats, looking forward to it!

pastel scroll
#

yoo congrats

uneven sedge
#

YEAHHHHHHH WOOOOOOOOOOO CONGRATS 🎉

#

gonna break out enough party poppers that it'll count as a DSAS shot

ivory jetty
#

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

#

That's huge news! I'm so happy for you! You deserve it!!!

wary lava
#

^^^^

teal abyss
#

honestly, just looking over the condensed version of my mission structure and it's fucking WILD, this is going to be super fun I hope

#

Oops All Drama

verbal heron
#

HOLY SHIT NICE

#

congrats kat!!!!

pastel scroll
#

honestly very excited based on what's already been said about it

oak pecan
#

I'm super interested in seeing what sounds like a more narrative focused first party mission!

sleek monolith
#

At what point do I face my fears and just... work on my idea

surreal owl
#

It doesn’t need to be much, just something

#

Even if it’s just some notes or brainstorming ideas

sleek monolith
#

The thing holding me the back the most is exhaustion. I run 5 games a week, I'd have to stop them all to even have the mental energy to brainstorm

teal abyss
#

That's understandable (and a lot of games!), pacing is important

sleek monolith
#

the problem is, two of those games are Wallflower Part 2, one just started as an SCP derived campaign, one is based on Solstice Rain, and one's based on mfcane

#

i'd be cutting them in awkward places

#

and I'm probably booked for the next year XD

teal abyss
#

well, so long as you keep the ideas percolating, take notes when something strikes you, then by the time you end up getting around to it hopefully your notes doc will have lots of useful stuff in it!

sleek monolith
#

yeh

solid wren
#

damn good to hear

#

super proud of you

teal abyss
#

btw while I can't talk about any concrete details yet, it is worth mentioning (to temper expectations) that the requirements for first party stuff are obviously quite different from what's possible third party, so don't expect anything too out there in terms of structure or scope

solid wren
#

oh absolutely

teal abyss
#

Tom's gotta approve the whole thing first 🙂

plucky brook
#

Any news on like 'overall theme' or such? As something I've seen brought up before/would be interesting to see is that Union's failures get a lot of pagespace but there isn't a tonne on things Union succeeds at/does well, leaving that more just sort of 'Up to people to make up'.

teal abyss
#

On that point since this is going to be set very specifically in the heart of Karrakin society it's not really going to address Union's successes or failures in a traditional way

plucky brook
#

Fair, since it's off in an entirely different state.

oak pecan
#

I love KTB content so I see this as an absolute win.

sleek monolith
teal abyss
#

I can neither confirm nor deny

#

though this does remind me I need to get my sword out of storage

sleek monolith
#

lol

teal abyss
#

now I'm trying to work out if there are any NPCs in this module who can't be challenged to a duel

#

there are definitely some you shouldn't but that's not the same thing

sleek monolith
#

My wife who does not have discord but reads over my shoulder sometimes: Sarcastic Voice "Oh no, how terrible. I hope none of them are attractive" XD

solid parrot
#

if the player asks anyway they flip the sign over and there's a gun loaded with .22 Eargesplitten Loudenboomer underneath it

#

also congrats kat!

sleek monolith
plucky brook
#

The tricky thing is that Lancer's not really set up for Dueling, being a team game.

#

(And the non-mech rules being very light making there not really much player choice/ability to interact with things if they have a non-mech duel.)

sleek monolith
#

I do find it strange that most people don't consider narrative sections or clock challenges as being able to be done in mech. I dunno

#

It's literally in the crb you can use hase for skill challenges

plucky brook
#

More 'Lancer's narrative rules don't really lend themselves to dueling being interesting mechanically'. Skill challenges are not something players can do much to weigh in their direction/there isn't really a tonne of decision-making for 'Which skill/approach will I use'.

sleek monolith
#

Really? I've had the opposite experience, with players gravitating to asking me if they could risk a weapon to get an acc, or using a limited charge to change the situation. But I suppose this is just anecdotal

plucky brook
#

While I find it a bit 'It all comes down to the dice roll more than player choices/it's basicly all over afterwards'. While a lot of what makes Lancer combat interesting is that it's got a lot of decision making to it/there's a lot that can be done to influence the situation or get back in the game after bad things happen.

sleek monolith
#

A good example recently. I ran a skill challenge with a clock. There was a megastructure base with huge long range canons. The party was given chassis mounts to try and get in close, 5 checks to just avoid auto fire and a structure (LL 9, so we have plenty of ways to get accuracy and skills in the +6 territory in some cases)

The players then without ANY prompting from me, flew in a formation. One of the players asked, since he was near the front, if he could use engineering to expend his smoke grenades/mines to give the ones behind him acc in avoiding the fire.

surreal owl
#

(That was a joke, but also not)

sleek monolith
#

Another player in a calendula actually pointed out "oh, hey, can't i avoid this by going intangible ?"

#

So yeah, I just have these moments where the mech gives more narrative choices to shape the events. Yeah it just boils down to the same dice rolls, but isn't that ALL narrative scenes? Mech or no mech?

plucky brook
#

Yes but my overall point was more that Lancer's narrative rules are very thin/don't have a tonne to them decision-wise more than 'can you use them in a mech' XD

sleek monolith
#

Yeah no, i get that. It just feels more like a blanket critique of the narrative rules than something specific to do with running a narrative duel, ya know? But I overanalyze stuff

plucky brook
#

Oh yeah, I was going more 'Lancer's combat isn't set up for dueling and the narrative rules are a bit lean to make them satisfying if you handle them that way'. It's not exactly L5R 5e there.

sleek monolith
#

Well, I will say, I was just fully expecting more of a narrative check with ye old risky and heroic thrown in for spice, than anything like, heavily mechanical? But the light sided nature of lancer narrative has really grown on me more as I go on my third year of gming

plucky brook
#

While I'll admit, I'd find a flat narrative check...rather unsatisfying as the culmination of a situation that leads to a duel.

sleek monolith
#

I like it better than the mess that was dnd 3.5/ pf1e that I ran for a decade at least

plucky brook
#

(oh yeah, that's why I mentioned a game with good dueling rules, rather than PF XD)

sleek monolith
#

But I was also trying very hard to NOT say "I mean Kai's dueling rules are pretty fun" which isn't fair to Kat or this thread either. Despite me liking suldan just as much as legionaire as much as liminal space as much as Golden flame etc.

#

Honestly, now that I'm on a tangent, I still need to finish up a campaign to make room for golden flame.

And legionaire, suldan, liminal space, mfecane, grim & sons are considered core in my tables lol.

merry scarab
#

Years of running Blades in the Dark have lead me to the "everything is clocks" approach. If someone wants to duel, they need to describe scenes in the duel and we generate action rolls based on that narration until they have filled like a 4 segment clock

#

And either the cost is taking damage/consequences on failure or ticking a second clock of the same size called "bleeding out"

sleek monolith
#

Lancer clpcks, which iirc are inspired by BitD, have done the same to me

merry scarab
#

The main reason I love clocks is that they're just HP but without the implicit assumption that you can only effect the number with attack rolls

plucky brook
#

Clocks are nice but I'll admit, they don't really address my primary issue of 'not a lot of decision making'. BITD does it great with also having Position and Effect (Which can be modified by player actions) and tiers as well as a lot of stuff like 'I'll spend my armour to negate a consequence' or 'I'll spend some stress boosting this'

surreal owl
#

Maybe this is something that can be codified more in Shadows of the Wolf, then

#

And one of the examples can be a Duel 😌

merry scarab
uneven sedge
#

rules for Kapkat as a stand-in for duels in addition to a standalone card game?

teal abyss
solid parrot
#

Card games on mechtercycles

plucky brook
#

Card Games In Mechs!

surreal owl
#

“Babe wake up, new Personalizations just dropped”

plucky brook
#

Sisyphus isn't allowed to play card games any more. They started cascading when analysing that Yugi kid's draws.

surreal owl
#

I would totally believe that Sisyphus would cascade over that, when Athena would just say “he’s just cheating, I’ve seen this a hundred times”

oak pecan
#

I'mma keep it real, if there's card games in mechs rules this is an autopurchase.

teal abyss
#

honestly though if we're making any YGOTAS references this is the Baronies. "screw the rules, I have money" isn't a catchphrase, it's a way of life

plucky brook
#

(I am now 100% imagining a HA Ramses turning up with 'ANCIENT EGYPTIAN LASER BEAMS', though sadly not really a Barony-specific thing.)

plucky brook
#

1/session, you can sold a problem with 'I have enough money'

teal abyss
#

it's very thematic

plucky brook
#

Need a part? Yeah, Throw Money at it. Need access to a place? Bribe someone. Mercenary going to shoot you? Wire him enough money to Fuck Off.

teal abyss
#

oh I just remembered something, Tom said I should talk to you folks about a server role

plucky brook
#

Oh right, I can do that. I have a red name.

#

Done, you've got the Fist Party role, a slightly greener green than the '5 voices' one that Miguel/Tom etc have.

teal abyss
#

ooh, shiny, thank you

north roost
#

Now while I know the lore will absolutely slap, I gotta wonder

#

We gonna get more RKF mechs?

teal abyss
#

can't confirm anything at this stage unfortunately

plucky brook
#

And I imagine there's always the eternal 'PC-side mechs are about the hardest thing in the entire game to design' (As there's so many things that interact with them).

#

First Party Design has a very specific timeframe since you're not working for yourself.

#

So I 100% understand the first party suppliments going light on 'Extra PC mechs'

teal abyss
#

my guideline for right now is "don't talk about anything until Tom's signed off on it" but it's very useful to see what kind of things people would like to see

#

(though I feel like anything I've previously discussed in the context of Shadow of the Wolf as a potential third party release is fair game, with the understanding that objectives and requirements are not the same)

solid wren
#

like, to justify a new license, IMHO, you have to have something that's very thematically distinct

surreal owl
#

I’m one of those crotchety folks who say “players have gotten enough, it’s the GM’s turn” in my own stuff but understand the value of blending the content in first party stuff

solid wren
#

and the licenses we have now cover a LOT of ground. Not saying they cover all the ground, or that we couldn't use extra weapons and systems with their own quirks, but let's be real: do we need another launcherspam mech when we have the Monarch?

#

If you want to create another launcher-based mech, why not just... create it as a variant of the Monarch?

#

Now, I do think it could be REALLY interesting to not just have variant frames, but also variant licenses

#

aka a whole new license that is mutually exclusive with an existing license

#

bringing its own weapons, systems, and frame(s)

solid wren
#

it's that there just isn't a reason to bloat the system with redundant content

plucky brook
surreal owl
#

Ruiner NPC when/where

#

I feel like that was a thing

north roost
solid wren
#

When two things overlap, you resolve it in one of two ways:

  • make the new thing better than the old thing, which results in the old thing becoming obsolete or redundant. (the former is worse than the latter, but both are bad)
  • make the new thing have enough quirks/differences to make it a side-grade to the old thing, at which point they’re no longer overlapping and the existence of the new thing is justified.
solid wren
surreal owl
#

The question is whether such a thing would be made 1st party

#

It could! But I don’t know

solid wren
#

I’d rather it be done that way than create redundant content for the sake of filling out an arbitrary convention

north roost
#

tbh that just feels like it does the same bloat except arbitrarily shackled to existing licenses

solid wren
#

nah, bc then you don’t have to make a new frame, other weapons, and other systems to go with your new launcher

#

throw it on an existing license and you’re golden

#

it’s easier to find a new niche for a one thing than it is for a lot of things

north roost
#

eh, honestly, I'd rather just have a second license?

#

this this might just be a taste thing tho, so agree to disagree

solid wren
#

Just means more work at the end of the day to add the one or two weapons/systems you originally wanted…

north roost
#

sure, but it avoids an end state of the game having a couple dozen licenses that each have thirty something items each

#

as is, you can say "monarch license" and someone familiar with the game knows everything included in that header

solid wren
north roost
#

If you are making an entire alt license

solid wren
#

the main issue I have with just adding more licenses is that there’s a bloody crap ton of them already

north roost
#

why not just, give it its own frame?

solid wren
north roost
#

I homebrew for fun so maybe I have a different perspective but like

solid wren
#

so if I made a variant license of the Monarch centered around dumbfire missiles and direct AoE nonsense, you pick between it or the monarch license, to cut down on the broadness of the options

north roost
#

Okay but why attach it to monarch tho

solid wren
#

and I’m tired of that as a GM

#

i also hate the whole subclass system where new subs are always better than old ones

north roost
#

that's fair

solid wren
#

I’m not against all new licenses, I just think that to justify a new, independent license separate from the existing group, you need it to fill a niche that doesn’t already exist

north roost
#

I think there's room for more than one flavor of "missile mech" or "shotgun guy", even if those niches are technically filled.

solid wren
#

Essentially, i think that options should exist (the ability to make variants replacing core content) so that if you can’t justify a full license, you don’t need a full license

plucky brook
north roost
#

The problem with alt frames

#

is you can't just make whatever and slap it in

#

at least by the standards over in #homebrew-design , you need the thing to actually hook into the license of the frame it's replacing

#

low key alts can be harder to make than standalone licenses because you don't have the freedom to make gear that fits the mech, the mech has to fit the gear

solid wren
#

point is that the new license needs to do something fundamentally different and new relative to what exists, not only as a single license, but also as combinations of licenses

solid wren
north roost
#

I think the problem with variant licenses is... if we can just make single weapons and toss them in wherever, that's A) kinda hacky and B) inevitably leads to clutter and bloat. If you need to make an entire new license for each alt license, you have already done two thirds of the work making a full license so why not just make a frame to go with it?

analog dock
north roost
#

there might be a decent middle ground ala specialty licenses from Suldan?

solid wren
solid wren
analog dock
#

I do not quite understand how it creates more variant freedom creation

solid wren
#

Let’s say you’ve got a variant frame, but it’s missing like one thing in the base license to make it fit smoothly

#

Slap a variant weapon/system over one of the base weapons/systems, and boom, fixed!

analog dock
#

But that is not how Alts work and not even how most normal licenses work

north roost
# solid wren wdym

specialty licenses are basically single license levels that are tied to the manufacturer instead of any particular frame, and can be taken as sidegrades to existing licenses

solid wren
#

It slightly reduces the amount of overlap required to make it work

solid wren
north roost
#

lets you build one or two systems that you want without needing an entire license for it, or parasitising any existing license in particular

solid wren
#

so that you can introduce an alt frame, then tweak a single weapon or sth to smooth over rough edges, and then slap that in as an alt to the existing weapon at the same time

analog dock
#

That still means the option you are replacing must atleast be good and or serviceable on the alt frame.

north roost
#

tbh I don't like the idea of sticking alt gear directly in a license?

#

even if you apply alt frame rules where you can only have X many total things from each level

#

that's still gonna cause bloat?

solid wren
#

less bloat than if you created an entirely new license

#

bc new licenses need more stuff than like, 1-2 weapons/systems and a frame

north roost
#

3 people who each make 1 entire new license is less bloat than 3 people who each make 3 new systems for, say, Manticore

#

maybe objectively more stuff

analog dock
#

But that just seems like a band aid kinda idea. If you make an alt and then require a new piece of gear to make it functional in said license i think it no longer rly does its job as an alt and would be better as a license

solid wren
#

isn’t 3 systems like half a fuckin license/an entire license level

#

at that point it gets a smidge ridiculous

north roost
#

but each license is its own thing, rather than one license having 15 systems

#

1 per level seems like a perfectly reasonable number if one is messing around making "alt licenses"

solid wren
#

eh fair

analog dock
#

It would also make for an unevenness across licenses

#

Like suddenly you get more value for picking X licenses because technically you have the option of 3 things

solid wren
#

eh fair

pastel scroll
#

it'd definitely make things a bit more daunting for my players as well

north roost
#

but yeah, bringing it back slightly to the channel's topic

solid wren
#

nhps are cool and create lots of fun ethical questions?

north roost
#

I know I would definitely like to see some more player mechs/licenses from Shadow of the Wolf

#

Legionairre absolutely slapped but as someone who tends to focus hard on the player stuff, the fact that most of what it had was pilot gear or exotics was a little sad.

teal abyss
#

totally understandable

surreal owl
#

I’m a sucker for pilot gear and exotics though, excellent ways to convey setting through game objects

royal lion
#

I have arrived, and apparently there has been news

#

Very excited

teal abyss
#

it's true

#

i am a hulk now

royal lion
#

Nice

#

So, Shadow of the Wolf huh?

#

Baller name, zero clue what it could mean though lol

analog dock
#

In da heart of KTB as we lead to believe

royal lion
#

Inside KTB there is one wolf?

analog dock
#

duel, romance, and drama intensifies

royal lion
#

Classic KTB stuff

north roost
#

inside the KTB there are two wolves

#

one of them is gay, the other is a giant robot (which may also be gay)

teal abyss
#

😠 The Wolf
😎 The Cooler Wolf

rare shard
north roost
#

ooooh

#

The Wolf is the edgy loner bond

#

Shadow of the Wolf is the shadow of the edgy cool guy mythos!

royal lion
#

Next book is Shield of the Titan

teal abyss
#

previous to all this, I did have tentative names for sequels just in case

#

Grave of the Titan
Kingdom of the Fool

#

part of the Wheel of Dis series, IDK

royal lion
#

The Titan died videogames

royal lion
north roost
#

that feels like a deez nutz joke

teal abyss
#

it's mostly a sign I have spent too long reading Karrakin shit and should stop

#

^ my brain, colourised 2023

royal lion
#

Should've named it after a Bond that doesn't exist yet and include that in the book

#

STREAM OF THE COMBAT IDOL

#

Anywho, good job on getting the promotion into green name status Kat, very excited for what it entails

#

Please be SSC alts please be SSC alts please b

north roost
royal lion
#

Fine 😔

#

...Wait does Horus even have alts

rare shard
#

Calendula

north roost
#

Calendula?

royal lion
#

Right

#

Forgot about spooky dave

rare shard
#

Tom threw out the idea for a Balor alt in the KTB guide at one point, which didn't make it in but would be so cool

north roost
#

how could you forget Spooky Dave?

royal lion
#

I know 😔

north roost
#

like unironically that was the highlight of the KTB book for me

royal lion
#

Too busy admiring White Witch's beauty

north roost
#

(Unfortunately I do not click with the bonds system because I'm bad at roleplaying)

royal lion
#

Can't be bad at roleplaying if you never play thinkaboutit

#

Who needs actual play experience anyways if you can just assume you'll be good at it

smoky spear
# north roost there might be a decent middle ground ala specialty licenses from Suldan?

Ngl I love Suldan and I -really- want to take my players there.
But our group already struggle with choice paralysis enough that with the sheer breadth of mechs already added by Suldan, specialty licensees are the kind of stuff where I tend to get dizzy X_X
(Also low-key wish they were their own LCP as they can make browsing Suldan in comp/con a bit if a clutter)

teal abyss
#

The KTB book has a few interesting tidbits and hooks for potential RKF frames

smoky spear
#

(Also ack... sorry, currently at work and didn't realize how far scrolled back that is)

#

I'm still really curious what a Tagetes mech would be >.>

royal lion
north roost
#

I know someone with literally 100 different homebrew LCPs in and I don't know how they haven't bricked their comp/con yet

teal abyss
#

I get very easily overwhelmed by homebrew options. Right now I have three installed; one is mine and the other two are LCPs made for/by players at my home table

royal lion
#

What the fuck

#

What kinda NASA supercomputer are they using

north roost
#

idk

uneven sedge
north roost
#

I only know they have that many because they asked if I had any because they were collecting the last few to get to 100

royal lion
#

Fear

smoky spear
smoky spear
north roost
#

yeah honestly it's definitely best practice to curate what 3rd party things you use in a given campaign

#

otherwise you'll just, lose track in all probability

oak pecan
uneven sedge
#

I have considered making like
a Tagetes/Tagetes Fusiller frame as part of a big bundle of LL0 frames but that's still in the theorycrafting stages

smoky spear
#

On another note, I do have to say I enjoy how official modules so far have found ways to introduce most of their new mechs via the actual play;
The world killer you can reassemble in Wallflower(and Regret), the NPCs you can face in Dustgrave or the possibility of meeting the designer of the Empakaai selecting a player to be test pilot of his creation in A Siren's Song(iirc the draft).

So I have to admit the possibility of an adventure set at a Karrakin Cavalry college, the place(?) the FG mention as having helped design some of the homemade Karrakin mech designs(?), do make me kinda hope to see more of the named Karrakin mechs >.>

(On random botw note I do find interesting that the students with more means tend to use mechs from OTHER manufacturers, such as SSC, which feel like it give the vibe that it is students from poorer houses/ignoble students using the actual Karrakin mechs? I could misrecall the bit though)

neat heron
wary lava
neat heron
#

seconded

#

I run so many LimSpace NPCs because it gives me options

north roost
#

(Balance issues with mixing homebrew is an entirely different question than "how much is too much stuff?")

wary lava
#

I use a LOT of homebrews on NPC side, PC side I usually limit my PC 'pick one third party for your builds, I'll allow two after we check'

north roost
#

Yeah that's pretty reasonable

solid wren
#

I'm gonna go core + setting/campaign books only for first campaign

#

then I'll do that plus one