Stolen Crown & Assorted Material

[tribal rose]

🪢 https://stolencrown.co.uk/

I get a lot of feedback for Stolen Crown, but I can never act on it since it's not all in the same place, and I don't keep up to date with discord servers! Hopefully, I can use this thread to make a list of feedback to implement, and keep track of.

"Would love to see this endorsed as THE starter adventure of the system." - random youtube commentor

Sleeping above a Stolen Crown is a three part adventure for Lancer RPG set on the frozen wastes of the planet Sparr.

Set in the far future, you follow a group of Lancers, skilled mecha pilots finding their way in a post-scarcity universe, as they uncover hidden secrets on a frozen planet, and grapple with the remnants of the planet's bloody history.

The module is written to take your group from LL0-LL2, and is designed to be friendly for new GMS finding their feet.

I'll follow this thread, but feel free to @ me!

[knotty zephyr]

Even more stuff!

if this comes with lcp's then this'll be my 7th one i downloaded... I need help

[tribal rose]

it does, the lcps can also be downloaded free, without purchasing the module

[knotty zephyr]

this is a unhealthy obsession i have now that's being fed by glorious homebrew that I love

I will install them though. Excited to see what you've come up with!

[vapid pewter]

Loved the preview, Death on the Glacier, for how lean and compact the writing is. It delivers the basic setting and then immediately segues into adventure, love it

The layout designer for the full Stolen Crown did an excellent job as well, it’s a clean af publication

[knotty zephyr]

Yeah it is

A size 3 gms mech, that's interesting

[vapid pewter]

The mechs in Stolen Crown are basically designed for the adventure, which tbh I like

[knotty zephyr]

Ok I really love how the OROHENA is built, it seems like a nice get up close and say "Your fighting me now" style of mech.

Yeah

[vapid pewter]

Other people may raise their hackles at mechs designed for a specific purpose, but I love that for Lancer and for specific publications like this

Often there’s a lot of “this is generally good” when you could tell a more focused story with “this was designed with this environment and these foes in mind”

[knotty zephyr]

I also LOVE Environmental Tuning. Im a sucker for that kind of just modularity based on the enviroment

[vapid pewter]

Absolutely, it tells you what was most important for the in-universe creators of the mech

[knotty zephyr]

yeah

tho i gotta find the different mechs now lol

ok so im new to lancer so what does reprint mean exactly?

[vapid pewter]

Like, reprint a mech?

[knotty zephyr]

The LOKI can choose whether its Size is 1 or 1/2 on re-print.```

[vapid pewter]

Ay okay. When you take a full repair you can completely recreate your mech from scratch, so I interpret this is “after a full repair, pick a size to last until the next full repair”

[knotty zephyr]

ah yeah, maybe reword it to "after a full repair," instead of "on re-print"

but other than that honestly... I love the loki, it's a really interesting support mech

or well controller

Loki and Orohena just looks like fun mechs to run

I can't speak on the actual like adventure and whatnot since I didn't purchase it but if the mechs are built for the adventure specifically, I'd think it's a rather fun aventure.

[tribal rose]

Thank you!

[knotty zephyr]

keep in mind this is from someone who only played 2 lancer games, and both were playtest for another third party homebrew

[shy delta]

Yes, you definitely need help if you have so few LCPs -has 27-

[acoustic mountain]

I ran Beneath A Stolen Crown as my winter/xmas adventure. The final chapter concluded on xmas eve and had us saving Yule on Sparr.
I took significant artistic liberties along the way to adapt to my group’s preferences, but the inspiration from sc was fantastic and very exciting!

If anyone wants to run this and likes to have music ambiance, I can’t recommend this enough; the Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla ost serves Sparr wonderfully

[vapid pewter]

I haven’t run the full adventure, but there’s a segment where players have an opportunity to negotiate and debate with another NPC. There’s a detailed description of how the NPC will react to certain types of arguments, which I feel is super helpful for understanding an NPC’s philosophy and creating an engaging social encounter. I haven’t seen such a setup in many other dnd adventures I’ve run

[acoustic mountain]

That was one of my favorite parts - made fleshing out such an important character easy as pie on the gm’s side of things. It allowed me to focus on making the presentation all the better since I already had directions with how the dialogue might transpire. Wonderful addition!

[primal abyss]

yeah this bit is great, really useful for establishing the narrative conflict and immediately gives me ideas for lore seeds i should feed my players early on

[royal chasm]

Hate to be a bother - but "No Labels" and "Labels" on the map of the valley are reversed.

[tribal rose]

Darn it

I'm gonna fix that when Im back from holiday

[royal chasm]

all good

tbf all this came about because i was looking at my "To Read and Run" pile and found Stolen Crown

It's not like something's broken :p

[tribal rose]

Is that on the main website or on the itch download?

[royal chasm]

Main website

[cosmic vault]

jsut bought the physical version. I don't get the pdfs too, right?

[tribal rose]

You do, but weirdly the way shopify works is the digital downloads don't get delivered to you until I manually mark the order fulfilled

[cosmic vault]

ah, ok!

anyway, downloaded the lcp files for now, the new mechs are neat!

[tribal rose]

Sorry about that, there seems to be no way to fix it!

[cosmic vault]

it's all good 🙂

[cosmic vault]

got the files, thanks!

[tribal rose]

Great!

Just so you know your physical copy might take longer than usual because of this...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.sky.com/story/amp/royal-mail-unable-to-despatch-items-abroad-after-cyber-incident-12784457

[cosmic vault]

aww

for how many players is the adventure balance? gonna find players to run the adventure

[tribal rose]

Up to 4

There's specific combat adjustments depending on your number of players

You can also probs stretch to 5

[wild parrot]

Is there an unlabeled version of the Ynn map? I like to have something just to throw up in front of the players with just the pertinent NPC names on it as they come up.

[tribal rose]

Hmmm

There's a CC version of the map on Dyson logos website?

[lunar leaf]

So is the loki meant to be an option at ll0 like the gms mech?

[tribal rose]

Yes

[lunar leaf]

Okay cool, so for the random encounters on act 1 what maps do you guys use? Just make your own or just kinda wing it when they happen?

[vapid pewter]

I pulled some snow maps that I had lying around; not sure if I got them from the pinned #resource-hub-archive map spreadsheet or from r/battlemaps

[lunar leaf]

Gotcha, thanks

[near arch]

Was just going to search/ask about this myself, but found this answer haha. Thank you for a super interesting looking module! I'm excited to run it at some point soon! :D

(also I'm always so happy to find physical prints of Lancer content, so thank you for also going through the hassle of developing a physical version, too!)

[tribal rose]

You should have it now!
And Royal mail is resuming international shipping soon so I'll be able to post the book to you 🙂

Have just had 2 weeks of no international shipping because RM got hacked 😔

[lunar leaf]

Potential Spoiler warning for later game stuff: The Saga of ages is listed both as a famous mech and as an important ship used later in the adventure. Are there two separate saga of ages or?

[acoustic mountain]

There’s a few other typos I’ve spotted too, but I presumed those won’t be helpful with the book already in print.

I’m unsure about the mech vs ship thing. I wound up renaming the mech to keep the details straight

[tribal rose]

You can always send the typos, I will reprint some day

[lunar leaf]

So does this mean that saga of ages being a mech is a typo? Just making sure.

[tribal rose]

|| It's not an accident, you can read ch3 to work out why, it's meant to be foreshadowing. But you can change it if you find it confusing||

[lunar leaf]

Ah okay thank you very much

[primal abyss]

@tribal rose Heya, I was wondering if the map of Ynn that's in the book is available as a png anywhere?

[lunar leaf]

I was wondering if anyone had advice on how to run the first major encounter. Spoilers ahead: ||It says to split it into four quadrants and enemies activate once the enter the quadrant. Are the players meant to start outside of those four or start in one with enemies starting in the same quadrant as them. It also mentions that the enemies deactivate if they move 10 spaces away from their sector is that for each quadrant or the map in general?||

[tribal rose]

yes, it's on the dyson logos website, as a CC map

it is labelled differently though

I'm unwilling to circulate a png without DL's labels in case it ends up getting shared without attribution

[tribal rose]

I've always started people outside the quadrants. And it's 10 squares away from the map in general

[primal abyss]

Thank you, I found it!

[lunar leaf]

Do you happen to remember what the map was labeled as on there? I'm also looking for it and can't quite seem to find it

Nevermind sorry I found it. It's flipped on the website 😅

[primal abyss]

Holy City of somethingsomething

but yeah its flipped

[cosmic vault]

got my copy in the maiL! thank you 🙂

[lunar leaf]

hey is anyone around that has run the the snow-bound battlefield encounter? I had a few more questions on it. ||When the party enters a quadrant and activates the enemies do you have them activate near the center like normal recon deployment or scattered around the quadrant, and how did you handle reinforcements? where do they come in on the battlefield?||

[vapid pewter]

When I ran it, I had them only located in the activated quadrant. I had reinforcements arrive from the side opposite of player deployment

[lunar leaf]

Ah I mean like in recon it shows the enemy deployment zone as the center of the map overlapping all four quadrants did you have them in there or like all over the quadrant itself?

[vapid pewter]

Yeah I had the described enemies within the quadrant as the adventure described. Like iirc it says there’s like, 1 witch, 1 hive, and 2 assaults per quadrant? I can’t remember the exact numbers, I changed them for my table of 2 players

Whenever the players trigger them in a quadrant, just that quadrant’s NPCs would wake up

The others stayed sleepy

[lunar leaf]

Alrighty thank you

[vapid pewter]

I assumed it was a purposeful change from default recon

[lunar leaf]

Yeah it seemed to imply that just wanted to make sure haha

[primal abyss]

since players start outside any of the quadrants, should there not be any enemies on the board until they enter one?

[lunar leaf]

That's what I did earlier today and it went pretty well. They figured out the gimmick pretty quickly

[vapid pewter]

Yup, I’d say that the “player deployment zone” is separate from any quadrant. Same for enemy ingress zone tbh

[scenic bay]

Hey, does anyone have a good map for the Approaching the Eagir encounter? 👀

[fresh herald]

am i correct that the ship ||in the second phase of the Ynneval-returned|| is supposed to be able to move around?

is there a separate token for it for vtt

[lunar leaf]

For act 2 where did y'all start the base guardian?

[scenic bay]

Near the door they have to open but that was kinda a mistake since the party pinned it against the wind :/

[lunar leaf]

Hmm I see. Well I currently cannot get the map to even remotely fit the grid in roll20 atm

[tribal rose]

Yes, but there isn't a token, you can use any ship

Actually I've been looking to pay someone to make some vtt tokens for a while but have never got round to it

[tribal rose]

I'd turn the roll20 grid off, or use the gridless version that is available online

[primal abyss]

I’ve been working on some vtt tokens for my own game (so far mainly just for megafauna tho) - will probably draw up a ship soon

also wondering how folks have run the broker - im planning to introduce him a little earlier (first downtime) in my game since im planning to string this into a baronies campaign and a lot of my party are barony folk

[primal abyss]

Finished running Death on the Glacier today!

For the Hexcrawl they rolled the Glacier Raider gauntlet and Glacier Beast den - they schmoozed their way past the first with narrative checks and almost did the same for the latter (sneaking the injured person past the beasties) but it ended up in a fun little combat. Ended up making the person they rescued the leader of the WRS team, who then led them to the Snowbound Battlefield.

Ended up changing the structure of that encounter significantly but it worked out and felt very tense. I liked the mid-mission sitrep switch and it felt quite dynamic.

Onto downtime in Ynn; gonna have them go to a Sparri party and meet some of the political players perhaps, maybe with ||the Broker|| showing up to mess with the Karrakin PCs. ||Or Bjarki in disguise or smth||

[crystal widget]

I’m planning to run this from LL2-4 for a group that just got done with Solstice Rain. Any tips for keeping the difficulty on par with players? Also, any resources/recommendations for sprites and such?

[acoustic mountain]

It’s all still tier 1, so you should be fine with difficulty as is

[tribal rose]

As above, but if you have particularly skilled players, you can add any ability from their NPC class to the templates provided in the book, or upgrade a few weapons on the field to T2

The game has been designed to be beginner friendly but all the key combats have reinforcements making it pretty scalable if necessary

There are a few maps on stolencrown.co.uk. I've been thinking about commissioning a token set, but haven't got round to it yet

[primal abyss]

been doing some NPC portraits for my game as of late and got a few of my own interpretations of some SC characters in there

Also some Glacier Beast and White Vulture tokens - will probably get all my custom tokens together eventually and drop them in a google docs folder for other folks to use

[scenic bay]

Oooo they look very nice! I love Bjarki's and Ylva's looks. I'd totally use them if I didn't just finish the module last week

[tacit warren]

Made this for the Hex Crawl

[primal abyss]

ooooh]

this is great

[tacit warren]

Thanks 😊

[waxen isle]

hey, just a lil feedback on the loki after an LL3 one-shot combat with some new players:

• the player thought the core system was good, it saw use here
• generally it was thought to be a good LL0 tech frame
• it's fairly reliant on adjacency though, and thus its traits largely went unused (on a control sitrep with only 3 players)

[little cloak]

I will be running Death on the Glacier as a one shot for three players in an open table context - the people playing won't necessarily know each other. We have a 3 hours time slot, and I'd like to avoid a "we'll finish next time" situation.
To address the time constraint I thought I would start the mission with boots on the ground at the beginning of the hexcrawl.
To address both group size (three instead of four) and to help the players "gel" as a group I thought I'd give each of them two pbta-inspired "relationships" to fill in, of the kind "you and {other player} almost got killed in your last mission together, what was it? Why was it your fault? Why has {other player} forgiven you? You both learned something from the experience, each of you gets {something I need to come up with}" Which would grant both characters some kind of boost, either some the perks they would get at LL1 or something in reserve.
With these premise - do you thing that the time slot is realistic for the hexcrawl (w. Possible encounters) and the Snowbound battlefield?
Is it necessary to grant some boon for 3 players at LL 0, or could I just take some of the question from the core book and call it a day? Prep time is short and precious sadly

[vapid pewter]

I think that PBTA-inspired relationships would be great for building fast comradery. I would say to avoid "true mech combat" in the early hex crawls, instead treating them like narrative encounters but in mechs

Save the actual mech combat for the Snowbound Battlefield

I ran Death on the Glacier as a one-shot for 2 players and it was a narrow 4 hour completion with a "brief" (read: 1.5 hour) deathmatch vs 2-3 NPCs, some narrative interlude, and the final battle

[little cloak]

mnh. good advice.

I had half an idea of starting the hexcrawl with a blades-style clock, like..."find the survirors", to impart the sense of urgency (and keep with our time schedule)

[vapid pewter]

that's fair too

[primal abyss]

Yeah if i ran the first mission again for my group id probably add a clock too

and yeah id echo the stuff about turning the hexcrawl encounters into narrative stuff - especially with the open table format

[royal chasm]

To anyone who got to The... second chapter? || For those who chose Eagir, how did people react to giant goats with grinding teeth ||

[scenic bay]

With an "oh okay"

https://tenor.com/view/started-blasting-gun-eyeglasses-so-anyway-i-started-blasting-gif-16955226

They did play strategically around the gimick tho!

[static current]

uh so im not sure if im dumb but ive bought a digital copy of stolen crown and i can not find the player version of the map of Ynn anywhere

[royal chasm]

oh that's a reproduction issue i think

gimme a sec i've found the source

https://dysonlogos.blog/2017/07/25/the-holy-city-of-guerras-el-essat/

There we go

[static current]

Thanks your a life saver

!

[royal chasm]

have fun

[willow lotus]

This is apropos of nothing, but I was re-reading Stolen Crown recently and I just wanted to swing by and say how much I appreciate some of the unique stuff this module does that even newer modules don't do

I really like the attempts at non-linear missions, e.g. the hexcrawl and the mini dungeon-"crawl" such as it is

Putting NPC builds at the back of the book and giving the builds names, then referring to those build names in the combat blocks instead of reproducing the same NPC builds over and over (re-using builds rewards scanning)

The confrontation with ||Bjarki|| is awesome, the way it lays out the different potential arguments

Also, you gotta love the zine-style layout sensibilities. I'm not a huge fan of the "official" layouts in first party books so I enjoy seeing some different styles, both in layout and in graphic design

I'd love to see more modules take cues from this book

kudos to Laurie and the team

[tribal rose]

Aww thank you! I'm still working on a sequel 🙂

[royal chasm]

Oh boy

[vapid pewter]

I’m personally with Dodgepong on all his points; I like how Stolen Crown was unafraid to push the envelope for Lancer and expand what kinds of adventures, mission structures, and conflicts it could cover. Takes a lot of the old RPG wisdom and applies it to the younger Lancer

[royal chasm]

Trying to align the battle maps for encounter 1

can anyone tell me where i could find the dimensions for it?

[subtle oracle]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/489490742318989363/1156728881978552370/msedge_dFt32sgK74.gif?ex=65160738&is=6514b5b8&hm=7f706391c99346a4fd40a0cec5e73cbca16599b90a4cd7448bf5def451c02b7b& here's my silly little landing page for my run of the scenario

heavily edited but the general situation of the module rocks

[royal chasm]

Ooo nice

[tribal rose]

I don't even know

But there should be a hex free version

[royal chasm]

I managed it in the end

[little cloak]

I run Death on the Glacier yesterday, and wanted to offer feedback, in light of the advice I got from here.

First time running (and playing) Lancer, one player had experience, two other first timers.

We had fun! It run 3.5 hours, starting in the mech at the beginning of the hexcrawl, with a narrative flashback where each player introduced themselves (open table, so players that had never played together) and used some prompts to tie the characters back stories to each other.

I had prepped the hex crawl encounters to be run as skill checks / challenges and rolled what they would encounter as they crawled the hexes. The temptation to prebake just one or two as suggested in the book was strong but in the end I also wanted to be surprised by what happens at the table, and the old school hex crawl ans the potential for emerging narrative was very appealing.
Anyway, the players aced all their skill checks and in one hour teacher the snowtop battlefield. Which was a fun, brutal combat. || The players spread out on the first turn, instantly triggering three quadrants worth of enemies. That lasted 2.5 hours and ended with a destroyed mech and the pilot crawling out of the wreck and saving the target on foot. It was great. ||

Really appreciated having the stat block for the custom enemy in the pdf, and generally found the pdf well laid out all around, very usable at the table.

In the end. Worked very well as a one shot, we didn't go way longer than expected, with physical props (printed quick rules references, real nomnoms for tracking popcorn initiative, etc) being very effective at countering our little experience with the system.

Thanks for the advice and thanks to the author for a great module!

[royal chasm]

did you do the hexcrawl with a custom map?

[little cloak]

No, I kept the map, and the gist of the encounters, but I tweaked some things for our time constraints.
I gave them a countdown clock with 6 segments to find the survivors, which would tick at every hex travelled and possibly as a consequence for failed skill checks. This kept them moving, for instance choosing to not go look for the lost caravan guard and push to find the WRS survivors instead. || (if the clock had reached the end I would have added the glacier beast to the snowtop battlefield as a wildcard, hostile to both mech sides, and if she's ever alone in the quadrant with the survivor at the end of a round she'd nom nom on Annette) ||
They knew where the landmark were to begin with, marked as manmade structures on their mechs' radars, and had a reserve to flashback advance reckon on a hex to know what they'll find, and as said above I run all the hex encounters as narrative checks (also as a chance to teach the system)

[tribal rose]

Just popping in here to say I love reading all this feedback

I rarely respond because I'm not a big discord user, but with the death of twitter its been really hard to get my stuff out there and when you're losing time and money it's really easy to lose motivation as well

Reading that people are actually playing my stuff and enjoying it is all the motivation I need!

[tribal rose]

Heyy guys, just popping in here to say I'm still working on a stolen crown sequel but if you like my work, you could also have a look at my current project, which contains equal amounts of cool stuff and social commentary. Hope this is okay to say! Like I said before, i'm pretty useless at marketing now so I just rely on word of mouth to get the word out there

Thank you!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/laurieoconnel/death-game

[primal abyss]

#1211742466277900290 message Just popping in here to say I've collected the various visual assets i've put together for my Stolen Crown game in one folder

This isn't exhaustive or anything both because i mostly design my own encounters and also because im still running the game, but i hope it might help anyone interested in running the module.

[scenic bay]

Oh wow that's really good! I already finished the campaign but I want to rerun it at some point (or do a sequel to it, not sure yet), so I may use them for that 👀

Did you do the art yourself or did you find them?

[primal abyss]

It's all my own stuff with the exception of the older dungeondraft maps, which iirc are mostly default DD assets

[scenic bay]

Nice! Great job!

[royal chasm]

whoops meant to post here

those tokens are great

well done

[boreal obsidian]

Hey, I'm running this mission soon. (Starting as a one-shot but doing prep that for if we do the whole thing.) The book mentions Ynnevalian scripture.

I'm trying to figure out what exactly her beliefs and scripture... are? I understand she is the Queen of Wires, and there is a heavy spiritualism in the tech, but anything more specific of their values? My group is heavy in the rp and lore and one of them plans on being religious and a technoshaman, so I want to give them something to bite on and work into with them for it.

To have your dead god not only revived, but then potentially fight them is not an rp opportunity I wish to waste.

[primal abyss]

There’s a bit more in the Lancer corebook and some snippets in the NPC appendix of SAASC but I can share a bit of the lore i made up for my game (my players are also very lorebrained) if it helps provide inspo

the act of crafting natural objects and shaping the environment is deified; with machines and more advanced technology being especially so, but it extends down to basic crafted tools as well

re: Ynneval specifically: mythological Ynneval I had as a goddess of navigation, maybe derived from a tutelary deity of the Yggdrasil or even representing the Yggrassil itself (a mythologized machine mind?)

NHP Ynneval meanwhile has more warrior goddess overtones - but also knowledge, wisdom. She’s also revered as a peacebringer/unifier generally, and associated with the domstol justice system

in terms of scripture/themes - exodus is a big one. On my version of Sparr there’s an epic poem based on a mythologised account of the Long Trek from Yuga to the equator (Myth!Ynneval supposedly guided this trek) - and its a common theme in art.

Rituals vary: Technoshamans do a lot of routine blessings for construction (like shinto and orthodox priests), some esoteric divination involving neural bridging with NHPs, memorise and recall ancestral records, and are also an artisanal guild/educational institution

fwiw: i also had ynneval contact the players directly in my game (via an empath player) to bargain with them during mission 2 - i think having bjarki being her only voice in the module feels a little lacking. if you have a technoshaman player, id definitely have her approach them in some way - possessing an NHP, or through other technology.

oh yeah i also have a bit of distinction between folk religion (which encompasses general beliefs about technology, machine spirits, honour, ancestor worship etc) which is still very prevalent, and ynnevalianism (the specific cult of ynneval, which is nowadays mostly confined to the Technoshamans and traditionalist clans)

[boreal obsidian]

Thanks. (Btw, you're art and maps are great. They're really useful and my group really likes the npc portraits)

[primal abyss]

!!!! im really happy to hear my stuff is getting used

there’ll hopefully be some more coming soon, got a bunch i need to do for clan leaders and stuff (my players are getting mixed up in politics)

[royal chasm]

Oh i used one of your maps for an unrelated mission

it was really nice to have something that just worked

[primal abyss]

oh! which one out of curiousity?

[royal chasm]

the crashed dropship

Added a few more bits

[primal abyss]

i gotta give credit to pilot net folks for that cause i had a lot of help laying it out lol. hope your players had fun!

[little cloak]

Starting a run of stolen crown and was wondering about the last chapter:
|| Thinking of changing the last encounter as an Eidolon fight, doing a sitrep switcheroo when they manage to disrupt the launch. Anyone else toyed with the idea? I haven't done any writing for it yet, thought I'd poke the common consciousness first 😄 ||

[deft bramble]

||Ooo that's a cool idea, I haven't tried it myself (haven't had much of a chance to run an Eidolon fight.) So I am not sure what would be best for that.||

[heavy pendant]

does anyone have any tips on doing the snow bound battlefield from chapter one?

[little cloak]

Make it clear to your player that finding the survivor is only part of the mission - if they think that after the first sitrep the extraction happens narratively and not tactically they might budget their actions very differently.

Also
|| If one of their mech gets destroyed, have one of the witches use their power to summon from reinforcements to reanimate the mech of the pc instead. It really ups the stakes when it is their own mech they have now to put down - like a mechazombie movie ||

[primal abyss]

im 1.5 years into a stolen crown game and i somehow never thought of this damn

good one

[scenic bay]

Damn that's long - did you extend it?

[primal abyss]

Yes, tho my group is also monthly-ish

We're around 30 sessions

[scenic bay]

Nice!

[little cloak]

Took us 4 session (online, 2.5hrs each) to get through the first module, giving space for roleplaying and exploration (but still with a countdown timer on the hexcrawl, so they trying to find the target and not just wander around).

With this group we are playing weekly, but with the previous one scheduling was so complicated we would have taken six months to get here.

[little cloak]

Thanks! Pretty proud of the idea, was eager to share 🙂
|| One of the destroyed / reanimated mechs had a NHP from technophile inside it, wondering how that will affect the party future encounters with the next iteration of that nhp now that it and ynneval have already "shaken hands" ||

[primal abyss]

Something similar actually ended up happening to my group during my version of Mission 2: ||While hacking into the Bastion's systems during a dungeon crawl of the base, one of the players (an Empath) and their techno NHP ended up meeting Ynneval in legionspace, and negotiating with her for a bit, before she kicked them out, and they got ambushed by a Prophet and its thralls trying to retake the facility. Now both the NHP and the player occasionally get whispers and visions of her.||

[primal abyss]

Nice! First mission for us was about 3 sessions at 3.5 hours each online so you have us beat 😁

My scheduling has unfortunately gotten pretty complicated since I moved to working 5 days a week, so it will likely be at least six months before I get to a conclusion

[primal abyss]

Players are headed to Shyfing territory in my game, so made a map for a city in the Yuga Pocket

Might redo my Ynn map with some landmarks like this

[scenic bay]

Oooo cool!!

[tacit warren]

Had the opportunity to run this in person. For people looking to learn LANCER.
Players loved it.

Ignore my emotional support GUNDAM

[little cloak]

i can see the hexcrawl map on the left of the picture, did you use the big center piece for one of the hexcrawl encounters?

[nova valve]

Just finished the hanger combat with my group this past weekend. My players really enjoyed it!

[tacit warren]

Sorry for the late reply.
Yes! Exactly right!The big peice is modular so I could mix it up depending on what the party encountered.

[midnight bear]

I am running SC for the first time and was annoyed at the lack of example scripture for the Ynneval NPCs, so I came up with some of my own to use with the attacks they have. Thought I would share them here:

Predatory Logic - "And with a sharp cry of thy will, his hand shall falter and his arrow fly, striking his own kin as the bonds of loyalty shatter in an instant."

Creation of the Huskarl - "And from the shadowed halls of the fallen shall thy call summon them forth, their rest sundered by thy will, to take up arms and fight at thy side once more."

Tear Down - "And thou shalt mark thine enemy with but a flicker, a taste of flame, that when the inferno rises, they shall know it was but the promise of their undoing fulfilled."

Blind - "And the light of thy wrath shall burn so fiercely that it sears all sight, leaving thine enemy to stumble in darkness, lost and powerless before thee."

Aegir Reclamation - "And the blade that sought thy life shall be turned by whispered cunning, that thy foe may rise as thy thrall, bound not by honor, but by the shadows of thy will."

I made distorted .mp3 files for each one and using foundry I play the audio as each attack happens.

Here is one of the audio files.

[scenic bay]

Oooo those are very cool! Nice work
And the example mention does exist: it is in the page with Ynneval-Returned statblock (p. 70). I didn't find it until late into my campaign >.>

[midnight bear]

There is another one in the Servants of Ynneval-Returned page under the base features Creation of Huskarl (p. 64 for me): "Within the horde, the prophet's sword, brings servants to protect the lord."

But yeah, its an odd place to put it. I missed it until I started making my own.

[scenic bay]

huh I never saw that one lol

[midnight bear]

and thank you for the appreciation!

[primal abyss]

these are great!

[wanton helm]

Hi! I'm attempting to setup at game for my friends. In the SC book it meantions in the downtime activities after Mission 1 that players can try to earn experimental tech. I didn't see anything listed. Is this something that the GM makes up or does anyone have a list of possible items?

[acoustic nimbus]

I assumed it was the superior scanning drones but I've just looked again and they come from the WRS, that's what I gave my player who took this downtime action

[wanton helm]

Thank you! That did cross my mind but in the module it is described as gear given before starting mission 2 and didn't describe it as "experimental". So I figured this was more of a thing unlocked by story progression

[acoustic nimbus]

Yeah I actually think you are right, I opened up the book to see what the name was of that but then when I was reading the page I saw that it comes from the WRS, so I guess it is for the GM to decide you could grant them a piece of gear from a different license as an exotic gear piece?

[wanton helm]

That's a good idea. I'll keep that in mind. Hopefully the players don't go that route but I'll figure something out with them I suppose.

[little cloak]

I read "acquire experimental tech" as a possible flavour for the regular downtime action Scrounge and Barter from the core book (p55). In my game a player went for this and after some roleplay with the technopriest he came out with an experimental weapon mod for their melee weapon that they could use for the next mission, taken from a license they didn´t have access to.

The superior scanning drones and flamethrowers are options the WSR throws in before mission 2

[wanton helm]

Thank you! I'll go over the core book. I'm pretty new to running games so I appreciate the help.

[little cloak]

We recently finished a full run of Stolen Crown.

|| At the end I had Ynnevall burst into an Eidolon and had her pull a Storm Eagle, blast open the top of the Saga of Ages, and do the final fight on the exposed deck of the ship, propelled toward orbit by spite and paracausality. 5/5 would have them kill god again ||

[wanton helm]

I'm on my lunch break and am going to read the rest of the module now! This sounds like a lot of fun!

[carmine nexus]

So! Working through this adventure, and my players are very close to the end of the module.

Which leaves me with a situation.

||The players captured Bjarki early on, due to a confluence of events resulting in the group leaving a player behind to watch their mechs while the rest of the team went into the underground bunker, and that player (who had been absent that session) turning up just in time to be there when Bjarki came in to sabotage the mechs. Bjarki was captured in the course of this, her Ace shot down, but I had Ynneval transfer herself to a backup-backup casket over the Omninet hook that the party's showboater constantly streamed his fights over.||

||As a result, Bjarki is back in a cell currently, and the party is about to go deal with Ynneval. So they need to go back to Ynn to find out what the plan is and try to win Bjarki over.. However, thanks to the clever use of Bond powers, the party managed to bypass the Trolley Choice of helping one clan or the other. With Lightspeed, they managed to burn through Stress and get themselves from Chapter 3(b) to Chapter 3(a) in time to promptly force themselves through an extra-long battle that resulted in saving both clans.||

||But now, they have to run back to Ynn, talk to Bjarki, and then go stop Ynneval. But I'm aware that the way the module is written, they should have to decide which of the two clans to save, then go straight to talking to Bjarki in the field and confronting Ynneval while damaged.||

||I could deal with this by having Bjarki escape and confront them after the second battle. But I don't know if I'm going to be short-changing the players by having them go through two battles and then confronting Ynneval. But I also don't know if I'm going to make things too easy if they head back to talk to Bjarki and make repairs. In particular, I'm not sure if they should be confronting Ynneval at LL2, or LL3. That's probably the biggest question, for obvious reasons. I'd thought originally that they should be LL3, but on re-reading, I'm not so sure any more, and I don't want them final battle to feel like a cakewalk because I went and gave them a full LL and the rewards for helping both clans. This is the big climax and all, after all, and even with a few of them being esceptionally weak to tech attacks, they have defenses against a lot of that too.||

So, thoughts? Should I give them time to at least do a full repair? If I do, should they also get their LL3 boosts first? Or should I give them the rewards laid out in the mission, nothing more, and say "hey, great news - you're Big Damned Heroes! Bad news is, that means you're going into this final fight at a significant disadvantage compared to what the module expected. Good luck, Lancers!"

[wanton helm]

||Simplest thing I can think of is continue the story as they have made it. They will need to talk to Bjarki. Give them enough time to have a conversation but not enough for a full repair when they receive a call.

The final with Ynneval will be with their rewards from saving the clans. They may be in dire need of a repair but it was their decision to save both.||

I'm actually finishing up chapter 1 with my friends! I'm a new GM so I hope they don't derail things for me, lol

edit for extra note: ||If you want to be nice then maybe allow the repair in Ynn but make the final more difficult. I don't know if a tier up for NPCs would be too much. Maybe some extra reserves.||

[scenic bay]

I also agree that it would be simplest to just continue on without levelling up, plus it would add a lot of good tension. My party did a similar thing actually when I ran it but with less success than yours it seems 😅 I continued it as normal and it made for a really good finale! || Ynneval hacked one player, the White Witch, so much that his reactor was about to explode but, instead of ejecting, he ran up right beside her and the explosion damage did just enough to destroy the Saga of the Ages due to an unlucky structure check! This only could have happened since they didn't have enough resources to repair all their damages sustained and was really cool :v||

[carmine nexus]

Okay, that's about what I was figuring, and the extra "spare" LL from the Eagir will help make up for the lack of a level up. And, of course, the bonus upgrade from the Ynngling helps make up for the lack of repair. Especially if they call in some of their reserves, and bring ||Annette|| along. Bringing in a Sniper that one of the party befriended made the ||Jormungandr|| fight a lot easier (a trick the party's sniper replicated when defending the Eagir, helpfully).

Main thing is that I wasn't sure if they were supposed to be at LL3 when they confronted Ynneval, or if I was misreading that.

Sounds like things aren't too nuts here.

[wanton helm]

Yeah, it should LL2 for chapter 3 if things went to plan 😂. If they have backup then I'd lean more towards having no time for a full repair/level up.

[carmine nexus]

They have backup if they remember her.

I can also drop a couple more NPCs into the fight too, if needed. They haven't only made friends; the Broker is very much in a "you're useful, but I don't trust you to stay out of my way" position with them right now, and they've got some tension with the fact that there's a devout Horus member along who's in the "I really wish we could do this without probably ||destroying Ynneval, since I'm on her side up to the point where she's looking to create a military fascist dictatorship over humanity here"|| phase of things. So having a couple other Horus ops show up, possibly funded by a certain masked man, is a distinct option.

[little cloak]

Mine went through something similar. I didn't give them a full repair after the clan fights before the final confrontation, but I did give them a recharge of their core power but this only because || I added an Eidolon combat as phase 3 of the fight - see my spoilers post above. ||
Giving a full repair makes the final fight a cakewalk, in my opinion.

[rugged wagon]

@primal abyss I hate to be a bother, but I'm thumbing through your incredibly gracious Stolen Crown Asset Folder for my own group's upcoming venture through it, and wanted to ask what exactly the plot/events of your own game ended up being? A lot of the maps are clealry very different with new towns/cities and even a new setup with the SSC Cargo ship, so I was curious what direction things headed and how they unfolded in your playthrough, if you'd be so kind to elaborate whenever you've got the spare time! Thanks

[primal abyss]

my game basically went off the rails after the frozen bastion lol

I'll make a rough writeup in a bit, but the tl;dr is from there on there's not much overlap storywise beyond ynneval still being a factor. I also had a lot of Karrakin PCs so i brought in some baronies/horus intrigue.

I also had a bunch of side missions for my party to get to do some more 'wilderness rescue' stuff (so the shuttle crash was one of those setpieces, and there was also another where they explored an old seccomm facility in search of some missing archaeologists)

[primal abyss]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-PlheDOH96oK4VHI_Mz_n35DUVJyw-hLkIwstF2IJpQ/edit?usp=drivesdk

this is a very rough and probably slightly incoherent summary of events

the campaign ran for almost 40 sessions and went up to LL6 so there’s a lot im leaving out

||a lot of stuff i invented (like the horus sect trying to drive ynneval to cascade) was to mesh with my PCs backstories and downtime subplots, but other stuff I wanted to do was center Ynneval a bit more as a character and make her almost sympathetic (she has a sense of honour, and she really does care about sparr in a paternalistic way, but she’s also deeply traumatised and still mentally fighting the old war). I borrowed a lot from the stuff in the book for Bjarki in this regard.||

[acoustic nimbus]

This is really cool to see as my game was heavily inspired by the assets made by Szkin,

||I've expanded the scope of the whole thing based on the inspiration from the assets in the folder.

I'm doing a whole faction rep thing with the big four manufacturers based on the SSC sponsorship track, except no one has picked HA so I'm having them join up with Bjarki.

I've made a job board and emergency response side quest thing for the WRS.

I'm including other cities on Sparr like Erishheim and Tarfjall that have their own WRS station and associated Job Board and stuff going on in those cities.

I've increased the scope of the WRS to also be included in the building of a Mega Engineering project a Worldwide Mag Lev rail track.

Bjarki has been manipulating the building of said MagLev from behind the scenes to enable her to get troops into Ynn to take over the space elevator. She has recruited two of the northern clans entirely to her cause already.
Bit off way more than I can chew and scope creeped the hell out of it tbh, but my players are enjoying it. Just sort of finished what I'm calling Act 1 which included everything in the book until the frozen bastion bit and discovering all the cryo sleep people with a bit of extra stuff of my own making.

They are just discovering that the newly completed first part of the MagLev might in fact be under the control of Bjarki already.||

[rugged wagon]

Thank you both for your input and experiences in fleshing it out further, I really appreciate it. I don't know that I'll bump it to nearly forty (!) sessions but I definitely want it to stretch a little farther since this group will be coming in from solstice rain where Cressidium is kind of a lost cause, so they'll already be ll2 and Im thinking getting up to ll5 or maybe 6 to round out the build might be best.

Like Jaymax, I'm definitely super inspired by the assets Szkin made so I'm really interested in making Tjarfall the starting town/outpost, and working my way out from there, though nothing concrete yet on how much I'd want to mess with the rest of the module besides including more jobboard centric stuff like you guys have done, where the hexcrawl can be revisited and players can keep exploring the area to discover more things beyond the central mission

[primal abyss]

hell yea

glad my stuff was inspirational!

[junior wagon]

Reposting from the lore channel :

I finished reading Stolen Crown, and I am pumped to GM it as my first Lancer adventure. But I have a few lore questions:

Why are there mechs en 4000u when the first true use of mechs was in 4500u ?
Why weren't the PC's mechs hacked/taken over like the other mechs on the plateau ?

Any other lore point I should be careful of ?

[wanton helm]

From what I have gathered we take the timeline as a suggestion. For me I don't put a hard line for when mechs came about. Neither do my players focus on those kinds of details. So feel free to either fix the timeline according or even easier is to ignore it.

The PC mechs can get hacked by the custom tech attacks of the Servant of Ynneval Returned. That attack should be one of the first thing this mech does as the effects persist even after the mech is destroyed.

Oh, if you use the maps included then take note that the hanger bay map is backwards. The door to the outside should be the cardinal direction of east and the inner door of the hanger going deeper in is on the west side

[junior wagon]

"Most of them have had their brains bashed out
within their own cockpits" > this doesn't sound like the result of the custom tech attack

"Something took over their mechs as the team searched the field for survivors. It was
completely imperceptible until it was far too late. One moment they were in control, the next,
they weren’t."

"There was a limit to the range of the creature’s power. The distress signal the team were
responding to was weak and the creature could only attack mechs within a certain range of
the battlefield. The creature must be limited by distance, and thus could be physically present
in the area."

Apparently it's describing another sort of Tech Attack.

[wanton helm]

Then make something up. I basically just said that the interference overloaded the meat bags inside so they cooked like a microwave.

There are going to be gaps like this through the book so easiest thing is to be aware so you can add lib

There is a more clear answer. I'll write it after relearning how to do a spoiler tag

[junior wagon]

Thank you. I am thinking about the timeline thingy: SecComm actually encountered viable mechs for the first time on Sparr. In Stolen Crown, Sparr was used to technological marvels in the past, before SecComm's arrival.

Which would make mechs a Sparri invention in this timeline.

[wanton helm]

||Bjarki came to scope out the battle field and double tapped anyone that may have survived.|| This is just my own speculation but the players wouldn't find this out

I hope that you run this and that everyone has fun!

So far it's been a blast for me and my group despite me being new to running a game

[wanton helm]

Take a look at the mechs in chapter 3. They have a distinct style making them more distinct than any war machine for it's time. I just used it as a slight reference to show how different mech like machines were back then. Especially on Sparr with their technoshamans.

[junior wagon]

To answer my own two questions :

1. ||The basis for the modern mech was first developped on Sparr, taken by SecComm and upgraded until the 4500s deployment.||
2. ||Bjarki was there with the sword-casket. I will rule a special tech attack for Ynneval. I might prepare a counter-measure to give to my players for the final battle.||

[austere sparrow]

No card found for “The basis for the modern mech …”

No card found for “Bjarki was there with the swor…”

[wanton helm]

You won't really need a counter measure for this tech attach. It takes 3 rounds to really get going and they are granted a saving through each round their mech is out of control. I thought of doing the same but it didn't matter in the end

Oh also the tech attack itself could fail if e-defense is higher

[little cloak]

First time i run death on the glacier I also wondered about the tech attack. Second time I run stole crown I had the tech attach ||also deal 1d6 damage to the pilot, which freaked the hell out of my players. Flavored as the very inside of the cockpit coming to life, with the same 'lady of wires' imagery i used later for ynnevall||

This was the same fight where I did the ||mechazombie thing, with the 'reserves' being one of the player's mech that had been destroyed rising up to fight them as a revenant||. Really set the creep dial for the campaign

[wanton helm]

Oohh, I really like this! We are at the end of chapter 2 so maybe I'll add it for the final battle

[junior wagon]

I think I will do so too.

[onyx smelt]

The module is actually[^1] an omni-vid dramatization of events, and takes liberties with history for the sake of coolness. Sparri historians now argue for hours over drinks in the food and drink quarter about whether these embellishments appropriately honor the spirit and drama of what happened, or whether such significant inaccuracies are a problem. In a few exceptional cases, the spirited arguing (and drinking) led to all-out brawls between the scholars, although by the time security showed up, they were singing songs from the time of Ynneval's fall, which the omni-vid did portray and research remarkably well.

[^1]: it's not, but this is the framing I went with when I ran it a few years ago

[primal abyss]

iirc theres some mention in the fluff of chassis precursors for civilian use + mechs developing from heavy hardsuits. i went with the explanation that ynneval and the old technoshamans extrapolated from those to develop mechs convergently

(i also explained them repairing/puppetibg destroyed mechs with nanomachinesTM, and homunculi pilots trained on long dead technoshamans to give the priests some personality)

[wanton helm]

does anyone happen to have battle field maps for chapter 3? I'm trying to find something to use for the ||Eagir and Yngling|| locations. Any help is much appreciated

[scenic bay]

There are no official ones but I did make some when I ran them :v

I can share them though I can't vouch for their Lancer battle map quality :/

[wanton helm]

yeah, the official list only has the final. I've been looking online for all the rest and haven't been able to find anything for these

i can't make any myself so i'd be happy for anything youre willing to share

[scenic bay]

||Yngling and Eagir respectively.|| They are better than I remember them being!

[wanton helm]

These are really cool!

[scenic bay]

yeah! I made them soon after getting Inkarnate :v

[wanton helm]

I don't suppose you have one for the ||Volsung guild hall||? I found one for buildings online but the quality is pretty low

most of what i find online is a fantasy setting so it doesn't fit well

[scenic bay]

Unfortunately not - I used an AI generated one that someone sent me and it was pretty eh so I deleted it to save space once I didn't need it :/

[wanton helm]

no worries. i had to ask, lol

[scenic bay]

yeah of course!

[wanton helm]

Thanks again for the two maps!

[scenic bay]

no problem! good luck hunting for the other one

[little cloak]

I made one for my game - functional, but really ugly! was a 20-minutes-before-the-session collage. Can look into it when i get back to my pc if you want something as inspiration. I had the guildhall as a massive piramidal construction and a bunch of power stations arrayed around it as double feature explosive/cover

[wanton helm]

Hi! Thanks for the offer. My session is tonight and I think I have a pretty map now. Your setup does sound pretty awesome but I'm going to be too short on time after work today to implement anything new.