#In Golden Flame

1 messages · Page 3 of 1

lilac tartan
#

Original meme here
"Hahahahahahaha…"
"Huh!?"

1693733129472.jpeg
dusky cradle
#

Whopping 4d6 damage straight to the face, while being grappled, nobody managed to hit the hornet before it detonated

#

Original meme from a Hongkong comic by the way

#

Now where have I seen this before

lilac tartan
#

What's worse:He didn't pass the AGI save
then took 14cc_damage_explosive

#

that lead to a structure damage

dusky cradle
#

He should be glad that I didn't ram him INTO dangerous terrain THEN detonating

#

Pulling a bomb-trick is dramatic enough, no need for another 8AP

lilac tartan
#

What an IMPRESSIVE combat

dusky cradle
#

This fight was very well-designed, I had to throw in a map-change-during-combat for good measure, but the results are fantastic

lilac tartan
#

It looks like Vex wants to kill all the player mechs here

#

But the truth maybe GM wants to kill us
Who knows

maiden ferry
#

Mission 4 spoilers: ||This is how I've set up the battlefield for the event horizion battle with CAUSTIC. The rules for terrain are as follows: Characters can move freely, as if the battlefield was entirely flat. To draw line of sight, however, we imagine the battlefield as a 3d space - so from their current position on this image, the pcs can't shoot caustic, but they can shoot the mirage and goliath, and some can hit the hive.||

SPOILER_image.png
#

||it provides an element of non-euclidian architecture that I think really sells the "fuck space" that is a metavault||

heady topaz
#

I love it

thorn hinge
#

Okay, love that.

heady topaz
#

I neeeeed this map

maiden ferry
#

its a screenshot from the prophecy dungeon in destiny 2

#

lemmie find it

frail kayak
#

@maiden ferry be like:

SPOILER_image.png
heady topaz
maiden ferry
#

the d2 fight is hard to explain without just watching a video, but it gives aditional context to how I'm imagining the fight (most of my players play destiny as well so I haven't needed to explain it before and I'm finding it difficult)

thorn hinge
#

||I already have plans for the first two fights at the Spire, but I need to figure out that particular third fight myself. I'm editing the code for the isometric module to rotate the grid to strange directions, which I'll used in the CAUSTIC fight for similar non-euclidian fuckery, changing the angle every round of combat. I just... haven't figured out what the actual map will be. Currently debating making a montage of various abstract video loops to cycle through, Taking some scenes from video games that aren't isometric, or even learning more Blender to make my own black crystal fuckery. I don't have time for much of any of that though. Here's an example of the angle change, using my map from the S1GN4L fight:||

SPOILER_image.png
fallen geyser
#

(I love it)

heady vale
#

Oh just saw the later part of convo

#

Ill be YOINKING that

#

Ty!!

maiden ferry
#

I’m also proud of another concept - ||a player wanted to grab a Pegasus - I had caustic send the file before they destroyed him. Should that player every choose a Sisyphus class nhp they’re gonna hop in and hear the words “WHAT WILL BE IS NO LONGER CERTAIN, AND IT IS THANKS TO YOU” and have triple-point as their new co-pilot||

willow cloak
shell bison
willow cloak
#

About to run Beat 6 tonight, gonna channel the spirit of Halloween to spook my PCs

#

Is there a stated name for Andros's Genghis? His name is infamous and feared enough to also serve as his callsign, or "Hound of Hell" if he's in a formal mood, but I couldn't find a name for his machine.

#

Oh wait nvm its in his dossier: "Can of Beans"

maiden ferry
#

Okay I just finished running Event Horizion with my funny map, and I have thoughts: ||1) The way the map is run, you need to explain things very clearly. The circles on the walls/floors are alligned with the center of the cube. That helps a LOT with deciphering line of sight. 2) Both the mirage and CAUSTIC can teleport, and this becomes fucking hilarious when teleporting anywhere can place you in a crazy angle. Caustic really takes advantage of his echoes and can engage several players simultaneously. That being said you need to be REALLY careful of letting him get exposed and out of reactions, because he drops HARD and my players took full advantage of that, but thats on me for poor positioning of what is essentially a lich. Overall I highly recommend, its a highly unique fight that I can't imagine placing into many other encounters.||

feral dust
#

Still did a lot of horrifying shit. Good opportunity to also start making amends and repairs.

shell bison
maiden ferry
#

It’s less “valid footing” and more “drawing line of sight while imagining the room as a 3D space” that’s the issue

wild flame
#

Yeah, my understanding is that everywhere is valid footing

#

Though do correct me if I'm wrong

wild flame
#

Also @maiden ferry is it cool if I steal the map and idea for when my group gets to mission 4?

maiden ferry
#

Oh for sure. And yes make it clear that movement is free as if the board was flat, but drawing line of sight is the 3D. Explaining the layout of the 3D space is important, that there’s a floating cube in the middle of the room that can be stood upon and also blocks line of sight

wild flame
#

o7 much appreciated

maiden ferry
#

And depending on how hard your party kicks ass, I might crank caustic up to 3 actions on a group of 4

wild flame
#

Oh caustic is gonna be taking 3 turns anyways - I'm running for 5

shrewd sorrel
#

Soon™️ ||Next week my players start thermopylae. They did really well in their investigation, and I ran a little narrative bit where they infiltrated the depot on foot to do some recon before going in, so they're starting in a more favorable position. I showed them the map and the normal starting zone, but put a couple others on the side about 10 spaces closer. I'm guessing the first scene's going to be fairly easy they've once again told me they're going to bully my engineer, which is understandable in this situation.

They also did Killer Sound and Send in the Clowns first, and taking some inspiration from ada, i told them they could take the catastrophe beam or give siren a sick laser cannon. Since one of my players is getting a tach lance anyway, they opted to give siren the big gun, so she's gonna show up for the sunbird 1 fight. I am unreasonably hype for this bongocat . I did buff sunbird 1 a bit and add an extra reinforcement, but they only have to survive until siren shows up.||

SPOILER_image.png
vocal relic
#

Honestly that boss fight inspires me to have it for my own solstice rain extension if it goes that far, something about fighting ||a huge fucking ship|| is just perfect way to end things

shrewd sorrel
#

its such a good setpiece

#

||zero-g fight over a neon city against a giant ship is so rad, and the sitrep objective just being "SURVIVE" really brings it up a level||

wild flame
#

i have metafold shoved 2 people into the atlas missile immediately before impact

lol lmao

image.png
toxic stump
#

Help me. Now they want to ship Striga with S1GNAL.

willow cloak
#

One of my PCs threw a chair at Switch for secretly streaming the last bit of one of their mech combats

#

He's a fugitive who would prefer to not have to flee another system, so, totally in character. One of the other PCs jumped in to hold him back, while everyone else apologized profusely and tried to deescalate.

#

They now have a deal with Switch: they have permission to stream and comment over their combat footage, but not live footage. They'll record it, edit the vid to obfuscate their mechs' appearance, and give it to Switch after some time has passed.

frail kayak
wild flame
#

ey, nice. i grabbed it from the IGF resource spreadsheet

frail kayak
#

Thanks, @quaint pebble!

quaint pebble
#

im glad people are using it!

wild flame
#

its a good map! I had the red and blue barriers alternating open/closed at the end of each round to add a bit of dynamic change to things.

quaint pebble
toxic stump
#

And we just got through the ||Tachyon exploration||. Apparently I made it especially spooky/unnerving and I'm a bit proud of that.

thorn hinge
#

My players have just set down on ||Boltzmann|| and they're already terrified, I'm so hype for the next session tonight, and for... what's coming >:D

toxic stump
#

Right in time for Halloween!

toxic stump
#

Also in the Denial of Service they convinced the Seeder (Callsign "Dodge this!") to come to Hell's Gate. So they'll get to have reserves next mission and I get to have another NPC to play in Hell's Gate.

warped ibex
shell bison
#

Huh, my players tried to convince him, he showed up for the next fight and they proceeded to AMR his cockpit

#

"Every gets one chance. Just one."

willow cloak
warped ibex
#

i believe we've discovered another IGF canon event with people befriending the S1GN4L seeder

willow cloak
#

Alongside Kitch, Vampires Are Real, Zipties, and Moondog

#

I'm having so much fun with my callsigns

warped ibex
#

making npc callsigns is so fun

heady topaz
#

The Seeder when I ran beat 5 was named Pipe Bomb. The rest of the mechs were Wood Chipper(berserker) Mortar(Engineer), and Brick(demolisher).

lunar panther
#

our Seeder was Crayon

thorn hinge
#

My Seeder was ION, and was teamed with the demolisher, callsign AEON.

Calamity killed him by stomping on two explosive mines right after he deployed them and was still adjacent. Honesty, points for style.

tight pier
#

here's the NPC callsign lineup i ran with (young daniel and Crayon got sacrificed into a clock somehow)

image.png
quaint pebble
#

our seeder was "L + Ratio + Landmined", unfortunately obliterated by a cyclone pulse cannon rather than recruited
(accompanied by "CallOutpost" [Engineer], "Banhammer" [Demolisher], and "@ everyone" [Berserker])

shell bison
#

Ours was P1N34PPL3

quaint pebble
#

got all my assets in line to run thermopylae tomorrow, i am glad that my party managed to get to a perfect point to call it and say "ok here's what we're doing next time" because I was sweating about having to prep multiple potential combat scenes in one week just in case 😅

frail kayak
#

Mine was * checks foundry * ... "Seeder" 😖

image.png
frail kayak
tight pier
#

it can be memorable if certain NPCs have a "weird" callsign or if some NPCs with a callsign do memorable things

#

and it gives you a chance to re-use those callsigns if you wanna make your characters remember the old NPC and make them hate them

#

my players are totally gonna remember the assault named Superconductor, he kicked their asses and im sad i cant bring back that call sign because ||he died on the tachyon|| and if i implied he escaped that then the players might start asking who else might have escaped

thorn hinge
#

I've used plenty of callsigns in the campaign but ||in chapter 4 I'm not using any. None of the revenants are broadcasting valid ID codes, so they all get marked as unknown and then a letter. Until the second fight, when the system changes. Yeah yeah, Deutsch... look, I'm basically obsessed with signalis, that's why I'm using it for my map, this was a natural choice||

SPOILER_image.png
polar tusk
#

Is there any way yo stop the bomb thrower NPC from doing their funni charge on death? Like, does slowed affect it at all

tight pier
wild flame
#

For the Witness Me! optional, I believe slowed would disable the movement, but not the un-break Mining Charge effect.

heady topaz
#

anyone got maps for Beat 6? I'm running it tmrw and the map I scrounged from the community assets is a bit confusing to work with.

willow cloak
#

For exploration, or the battle?

heady topaz
#

The battle

#

The exploration is gonna be theatre of the mind

willow cloak
#

I was gonna do the same; I pulled Ada's map for the fight.

#

Should be in the pinned asset compilation

heady topaz
#

I checked Ada's maps too, but I've never used Isometric stuff

willow cloak
#

Nah, she has one for Beat 6 that's topdown.

heady topaz
#

oh?

willow cloak
#

Lemme find it in my asset folder real quick

heady topaz
#

oooooo

#

me likey

willow cloak
#

Yeah, thanks be to Ada

#

(at least I'm pretty sure its hers lmao)

thorn hinge
#

Nope! I'm all iso all the time. ||though I might do t-d for one of the boltzmann fights for the weird factor||

heady topaz
#

well this map is great!

#

to whoever made it, thx for saving me braincells

willow cloak
#

I'm also starting Beat 6 tomorrow, lets compare notes afterwards

heady topaz
#

hell yeah

quaint pebble
heady topaz
#

tysm for making these, they're sick

wild flame
#

^^^

quaint pebble
#

It's nice to see or hear of other people using stuff you made

heady topaz
#

also, for beat 6 are all the big cylinder things meant to be coolant junctions?

quaint pebble
#

thats what I used them for

heady topaz
#

hell yeah, I like that they're different sizes. the book says all size 1, but I think having a variety is nice

quaint pebble
#

I can't take credit for any of the assets they're all various dungeondraft packs 😅

heady topaz
#

lmao mood

#

I use dungeon painter stuff more my maps, i think I recognize some of these

#

honestly, keep us updated whenever you make new maps, these are sick

quaint pebble
#

I'm not sure how I am going to do the combat after this one yet, probably find or make some large image I can blur and put behind all the terrain
but need to be careful it isn't too busy

willow cloak
#

Oh hey thanks Jac, sorry for miscrediting

quaint pebble
#

no problem

heady topaz
#

Behold! I have set up Beat 6's combat map with everything nice and labeled. This map is nice to use.

SPOILER_image.png
#

thx again to Jac, these maps rule

thorn hinge
#

For chapter 4, ||I made all of the audio logs as actual audio files to play in foundry. Each character is voice acted by a different person, and I put a lot of time into doing sound design for them. The files are up in my share drive, and also I posted them in the Feedback thread here #909574961931362365 message||

||I did Aurum and McKenzie myself since I play them as npcs in the game, but|| hopefully this is a nice resource for some of you other gms out there.

cloud reef
#

Boss fight: ||A FIREBIRD ULTRA PLUS AN ELITE PLUS SUPPORTING NPCS??? VEX YOU MONSTER that was an excellent fight, maybe the most intense five rounds of lancer combat I've played. 😩 ||

|| We had multiple snake eye structure rolls and went from 5 mechs at the start to ending with 1 surviving mech with 1 turn before reactor meltdown. Rainmaker is such a fun boss to play against as a chomolungma+goblin controller, it ate its own wolfhound once before learning to not do that, then at least 4 of its own javelin missiles (albeit still with some armor up). I sorely missed playing my dustgrave big sal as we all constantly were getting missile podded into javelins.||

||It had too many activations to ever get hit by the support strut, but I clocked the sentinel with it at least. I liked the strut as a map hazard; twice we had stunned PCs in its path so there was some fun teamwork of allies darting in, stabilizing to assist, and darting out. Or just puppet systems-ing allies to safety.||

thorn hinge
# cloud reef Boss fight: ||A FIREBIRD ULTRA PLUS AN ELITE PLUS SUPPORTING NPCS??? VEX YOU MON...

||Such an iconic fight! I love how often it works out as a huge amazing set piece for these games.||

||I was going to say that Vex got her comeuppance for making that boss in our remix game, but... she was the only one of us to not lose a mech against sunbird-1. We hit the ship with (iirc) two meltdowns. The third got destroyed preventing a meltdown, and I got destroyed outright. We won that fight by the skin of our teeth.||

austere prism
#

I am so hype that my group has finally found enough clues to let me inflict that fight on them

toxic stump
#

We've been progressing fast: This friday my players are gonna go through Beat 6 fight. o/

toxic stump
#

Also shitpost time:
I've mentioned that the pcs convinced one of S1GN4L's pal to come to Hell's Gate. Last sessions, it came up that we had no pictures of him as I forgot to find him a portrait, so one of the players volunteered and after the session offered this picture:
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/783796443311112232/1168151082220920873/aedef125463056ed3f945f4715a27fe3.jpg?ex=6550b879&is=653e4379&hm=7fb540df09300eb05b12660ef1a1e0138c123300b0119dce0b5260228fd771d7&=&width=522&height=671
They all agreed because they're a bunch of thirsty bastards but I remarked that it was a bit strange as they were supposed to be a bunch of... basically the equivalent of 4chan users in Lancer's setting.
Thus came this masterpiece:
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/783796443311112232/1168621251925909534/image.png?ex=65526e5a&is=653ff95a&hm=600d364ef488b359f5447b5f7307c9ac6e5ef567984354fa03a812eb53fc647b&=&width=297&height=671

wild flame
#

incredible

shell bison
#

I just used some of the DE union members as depictions of the Pirates from the S1GN4L fight that said f it we joining the gate after given the chance.

#

All of them agreed, S1GN4L was always an ass and let him run away. M.Bison (demolisher) Print F (Engineer), Advice Dog (Berserker) (Is actually super chill)

image.png
toxic stump
#

Oooh cool! They do really good portraits.

toxic stump
wild flame
#

i'd believe it

tight pier
#

our group actually failed (tied, technically) Denial of Service so they werent able to capture/relocate anyone :(

heady topaz
#

RIP

#

How'd your S1GN4L fare? Did he take any damage

heady topaz
#

Also, update on the sesh i ran tonight. It was mostly the players exploring the ships in Beat 6(Patty, the kooky old mech tech, looted some subalterns from the Tachyon) and then Capella jumped them as they tried to leave with the printer relay. Also, i had the corpse near the printer attack Patty when he kept poking it with a pole bcz it kept melting whatever touched it. ||An aspect of Feather manifested and slammed him into a wall||. Lastly, during transit to the Tachyon, I hinted at Chapter 4 by having the merc's mech get fucked with and have the mantra from the chapter manifest in his mech, along with ||black crystal shards||

tight pier
heady topaz
#

My S1GN4L got OTKd

#

Turret Drone+Thermal Lance+One really unlucky Structure Roll

lilac tartan
#

d6=1
Direct Hit
2 Structure=1 Structure
2=1

heady topaz
willow cloak
# heady topaz Also, update on the sesh i ran tonight. It was mostly the players exploring the ...

Here’s our session notes, courtesy of my group’s blessed scribe.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zFxofFMSH7j2pq18m-YDWtfo615LCFlyOmkcRdDjyeM/edit?usp=sharing

Google Docs
IGF - Session 6

Lancer - In Golden Flame Session 6 - 10/30/2023 Nerds: Calico Erin’s Character Venator Alex’s Character Frank Nick’s Character Hewlett Danny’s Character Orpheus Trent’s Character Recurring Important Thingamabobs: Jerry Masters Very anxious guy in charge of Hell’s Gate Notable Nouns for Today’s...

#

Featuring

One of the coolant junctions burst, spraying Capella with hot coolant and causing him to overheat, like a bitch, and become impaired

#

It was a 1/60 for that junction to burst in his direction lol

regal forum
#

My group just finished ||Anti-Capital||, they managed to scrape by by the skin of their teeth. With 4 mechs destroyed and the 5th and final mech awaiting imminent reactor meltdown, the ||Sunbird|| finally went down leaving only a 6 hp sentinel on the field vs a bunch of dismounted pilots. They took a couple sketchy hits but managed to beat its 18 hull check and jockey it with a roll of 21, finally taking it down in style. All around great combat, the only thing I wish went differently is that one of my players got unlucky with stress checks after getting the attention of the ||elite hornet|| and went down round 1 😭 . On the bright side this inspired some good rp and a homebrew discussion for making pilot combat more robust. The scene didn't end entirely without casualties though, with the PCs mechs destroyed, one of the player's beloved comp/con units "O3" went with them leading to a furious search of the ||Sunbird's destroyed hull. A half dead pilot laughed at them through gritted teeth, saying that it was too late, and soon a new world would begin so this life means nothing, blah blah blah cultist things etc.||

tight pier
#

5 out of 5 players down over the span of just two fights is NUTS

willow cloak
#

Jockeying the ultra, sheesh.

regal forum
# willow cloak Jockeying the ultra, sheesh.

They jockeyed the sentinel, the boss went down from a combo of getting overheated and structured a bunch just before the final player mech went down. Sentinel was the last enemy on the field, it had been involuntarily moved to the far side of the ||support strut|| and by the time it made it back to the action shit had hit the fan.

heady topaz
heady topaz
lilac tartan
heady topaz
#

ah

#

ngl the numbers you typed like hours ago made no sense

lilac tartan
#

An elite,2 structure,but unluckily get a Direct Hit and killed immidiately,just look like it didn't had its 2nd structure
2=1 is just a joke among some Lancer players I know

heady topaz
#

Ah i get it now

#

also, this is the second Elite in a row...

#

the first one was the ace in Beat 4

lilac tartan
#

same thing happened too much time so 2=1 has became a joke

heady topaz
#

My players are about to fight Capella, and knowing their streak of luck I'm keeping the NPCs for a 5 PC fight as reserves in case they chew through the main force.

lilac tartan
#

And I know a guy suffered 4=2 in Wallflower
Got two 1 at his second Structure Roll
This unfortunate scene only has a 2.78% chance to happen

heady topaz
#

fuckin hell

lilac tartan
#

yes fuckin hell

heady topaz
#

iirc in a Wallflower game I was in a buddy had that happen during the combat where you're running from the horde of reanimating mechs. I was laggin behind in a Saladin, when suddenly his drake got bricked and we had to bring in his partially repaired Sagarmatha to tide him over till the next full repair.

lilac tartan
#

There is no limit to bad luck

willow cloak
#

5 players can fuck things up

#

very

#

fast.

heady topaz
#

I mean as in I have a 4 player party, so I'm keeping extra npcs on the backburner

willow cloak
#

Oh, gotcha, that does change your meaning.

heady topaz
#

in case the initiative starts to lean in favour of the PCs to early

#

also, how's that Capella fight going? Has the Capella Curse activated?

willow cloak
#

Nope! There was an opportunity, but he rolled a system destruction instead of a weapon.

heady topaz
#

phew

#

at least in this fight he's got the Leash to sacrifice

willow cloak
#

The logs I posted include a turn-by-turn breakdown of the combat(because my scribe is absolutely insane) if you're curious

#

Its even color coded

heady topaz
#

nice

willow cloak
#

Bless that man's autism

heady topaz
#

redin it rn

heady topaz
#

blessed be the neurodivergence

frail kayak
frail kayak
# willow cloak *very*

and throwing NPCs at a group of 7 is often just an exercise in "will it blend?" I'm hoping Tier2 will help out with that 😆
(we did mission 1, extra mission 1 content -> mission 3, -> mission 4, and are just starting mission 2, so I've upgraded all the NPCs to tier 2 so they don't get immediately rolled by 7 LL4 Lancers)

dense urchin
#

7 players sounds incredibly difficult to balance for

shrewd sorrel
#

yeah, I cant imagine dreadfried

toxic stump
frail kayak
#

There is no hydra 😆
This LL, we have: goblin, chomolungma, pegasus, blackbeard, white witch, atlas, and gorgon

#

Admittedly, the goblin has 1LL of hydra for the nexus

cloud reef
#

how long do your rounds usually take with that many players? have you found good management tools?

frail kayak
#

they tend to take a long time, we get through 2-3 rounds in an approximately 5-hour session. Sometimes it takes 2 sessions to get through a fight, and sometimes the players just steamroll hard enough to do it in 1. I don't know if I have particular tools aside from "have a 'canonical turn' for your NPCs" (a default set of actions they take). One rules change I made is that Stunned PCs can still take a single Quick Action on their turns, so that you aren't totally shut down for half a session. I started using "the player who took the previous PC turn chooses who takes the next PC turn" at some point, but the players got good enough at negotiating turns that it wasn't really necessary anymore

vocal relic
#

yowza

#

that sounds fair enough tbh

#

my custom campaign is 6 players, but atm doing solstice rain and i've decided to always go 5 players tbh

latent lintel
#

Am I good to share page 91-92 in full with the players if they win the combat in Beat 5?

#

or should I do a dramatic reading 🤔

heady topaz
thorn hinge
#

Session 25 recap
During the ch3 downtime, the party split up. Kraken stayed on Hell's Gate while the rest went to Icebreaker for some R&R. In the previous session we covered what happened on icebreaker. This session checks in on what Kraken was up to, and then kicks off chapter 4.

SPOILER_image.png SPOILER_image.png SPOILER_image.png
#

We're actually through session 26, but I forgot to post this recap and haven't finished writing the one for 26 yet.

heady topaz
heady vale
#

Cleaned up the plans of the apartment im giving the party in golden flames

#

And the chart that rolls daily issues

latent lintel
heady topaz
#

nice

frail kayak
thorn hinge
frail kayak
#

the cursed HTML is chefkiss

lunar panther
tight pier
#

player's planning on taking Tear Throat, cant wait for them to pull a Boomer on ||ignatius|| in mission 3

polar glacier
#

More emotional moments between Siren and her crew, and a hell of a way to wrap up that rp thread.

image.png
regal forum
heady topaz
#

Calamity is a bro with one of my players. Patty, the doomsday preppin engineer, was the one who found her destroyed mech floating in space and rescued her. They're pretty damn close because of this.

polar glacier
regal forum
#

That's extremely dope

polar glacier
#

Anybody using those characters, I'd love to collect stories of how they were used in other campaigns.

||I'm a few weeks from running Beat 22: The Hall of Mirrors, and I want to send the players through alternate timelines; living out their NPC lives, repeating those stories from other games. If I can, I'm going to stretch Vorsehungsmotor out to a full session alone||

warped ibex
#

so, full disclosure, i have no clue how accurate these are to the actual PCs... but its alt universes anyway, so! spoilertagging all of this just in case
||kraken has had a sparse few appearances in my campaign, and has given a few of my players prosthetics before the campaign start - i have kraken as a member of the Truth (and the one who makes The Pilgrimage instead of striga), and in their few appearances they have mostly infodumped about their current interests (and prosthetic design), and have bonded with our own techsavvy sigdiver player. kraken has also had an odd few Muse appearances as 'eventcrab' (coined for a running joke they have where they post about 'crab events' - whatever the vent crabs are up to that day). the party seems to be very fond of kraken.

gabriel sparrow i have utilized all of the Faith coincidences for as a red herring. i fed my players the Faith prophecy about there being someone chosen by the One who shows all the signs of the ones favor but is not part of the Faith, and then subtly implied it was him. npcs they've discussed this theory to thus far have found it unlikely, so their suspicion of him might be waning. i'm not quite sure yet. they have yet to meet him in person.

this party has not met calamity havok before, but jerry and the pc s'more (who unintentionally has a lot of parallels to calamity) have mentioned her a good few times in reference to taking former Hounds on the Gate; the party hasn't met her yet, but they definitely know of her.

aaaand this specific party is still in chapter 2, so no dust yet.||

thorn hinge
#

This is all good stuff, thanks. ||If you want to tell me your PC's names, I can turn these into scenes and reference them directly. ||

||In a way, I'm flipping it around; all the PCs for other games that have met my PCs as NPCs are going to show up in my game as NPCs, lol||

warped ibex
#

||--ah, as i've mentioned before, i have... a ton of players in this campaign, lending to it being text-based. sorry if this is a tad overwhelming? lmao

Alice Mussorgsky, callsign "Alice" — referred to as Alice
Sou Spacius Lynk, callsign "Alsciaukat" — referred to as Lynk
Marthe, callsign "9 Thermidor" — referred to as Marthe
Chandler S.G.T. Capall, callsign "Lavender" — referred to as Lav
Jeanne Ovark, callsign "Saint" — referred to as Saint
Vick, callsign "Vickers" — referred to as Vick
Ember Bon Idris, callsign "S'more" — referred to as S'more

the techsavvy sigdiver i mentioned would be Lynk.||

frail kayak
#

||ah, a fellow GM for 7, I see||

tight pier
#

which i think is funny

thorn hinge
#

we got 2/4 slots, and if the other two slots didn't get filled so quickly they probably would have been 4/4 lmao

dense crescent
#

lol

#

in my group, Symphon's player talked about hoping to get a slot in Act 2

regal forum
#

In my group we have:
Gene ‘Roto’ Bessemer (he/him) - An HA ex-pat filmmaker who is ashamed of how he had to get his start in space Hollywood making HA propaganda films.
Wyatt ‘Colt’ Barnes (he/him) - A farmer/ space cowboy from the outer habs.
Noe '03' Plecido Lotspeich-Cwik (she/her) - A manic pixie dream girl space trucker who is obsessed with her anthropomorphized comp/con units and drones (future hydra pilot)
Sveilla ‘Salt’ Hak (she/they)- An ex-pirate turned spiritual guru after a near death experience and a really good nature documentary. She is currently exploring the idea of becoming a priest of the One but rapidly starting to think better of the idea as things progress on Icebreaker.
Sampa 'BOOMBOX' Guita (they/them) - A rowdy young sig diver with prosthetic legs (supplied by Kraken ofc), and founder of the spindergarten (Jerry's daycare for feral tech prodigies of which Kraken and S1GN4L are now members, along with Striga who invited herself and is by far the oldest member). Boombox is looking to become an influencer and thinks Switch is super tacky, definitely not just jealous of their clout.

#

||As I mentioned, Calamity was dragged along on the tooth for several missions, including the 2 week journey each way to and from Chameleon.

Roto spent a lot of the time bonding with Siren over binge watching Beyond the Pale. When taking breaks from the show, he would sometimes join the other crew members including Calamity.

No PC was willing to play FleetComm with Siren but Calamity went a few rounds with her.

Most of the PCs became invested in starting an ‘aero-ponic micro-gravity herb spiral’ (the space-ship garden jawn from the expanse) and Calamity begrudgingly helped with setting it up. She claimed it was out of sheer boredom but isn’t a very good actor and seemed to genuinely enjoy it.

The encounter with Andros was a heated moment for everyone, Calamity was stuck on the ship but participating in the battle via comms. There was no shortage of angry pirate words being directed at the hound of hell.||

frail kayak
#

So, my players decided if they are going to Space-Vegas, they were doing so in style. This spawned a "describe your DRIP" thread. One of my players is a talented artist, and decided to draw them. I had to share. (she's done three so far)
Spoilers are denoted like this (Mission 1)||S1GN4L WUZ H33R||

Gigi Hammond, callsign "Gaslight" (she/her)

GigiHammond.png
#

A former sex worker on the Icebreaker, who became a folk hero after she nearly succeeded in assassinating Rodericke Steele.
Has become somewhat unmoored in space and time after encountering a mysterious paracausal toaster, which was later discovered to contain an eccentric NHP with a God complex. She occasionally wakes up to discover she's one of Elske's pirates, or an Albatross Loyal Wing, and just kinda goes with the flow.
Pilots "Gatekeep", a Goblin with hydra drone systems and a pair of bright-fuschia truck nuts

#

Alexei Tarovich Kozlov, callsign "Gherkin" (he/him)

Gherkin.png
#

Ex-Mirrorsmoke Merc, Human-NHP Ontologic bridge
Despite being a muscular combat-cyborg, Gherkin's attitude is rather friendly and up-beat, maintaining a cheerful nonchalance, even when planning an assassination or facing immediate, life-threatening danger.
(Mission 1)||Stayed on the Tachyon when it blew up, in an attempt to understand its technological wonders||, only to show back up at Hell's Gate a day later piloting a Lich, with no idea where it came from. (Mission 3)||It was sent by The Crone||. Proceeded to fight on foot for the entire next License Level, with his NHP piloting the mech, because the Lich could just self-destruct to wind back time if he died.
Experiements wildly with different builds, but currently piloting "Firewire Mk-II", a Chomolungma/Manticore/Dustwing/Goblin stunspam/heat-hacker

#

Anmari Hayter, callsign "Bastille" (she/her)

Bastille.png
#

House of Moments noble, who left to the Rim to make her own life, free of the confines of Karrakin high-society.
Has leveraged her extensive Karrakin military training to shape the Hell's Gate Milita into a well-organised fighting force worthy of any House Company.
(Mission 1)||Carries S1GN4L around as her personal assistant after he accidentally decorped himself.||
An absolute beast on the battlefield. Has not structured since reaching LL2 and unlocking the White Witch.
Pilots "Regnent Splendor", a White Witch with Black Witch tech and Bad Star's Shotgun.

Gray_Witch_nh_lash.png
cloud reef
#

That white dress/tux combo is a FIT

frail kayak
#

Right?

heady topaz
#

my man be ballin

wild flame
#

The white tuxdress is CLEAN

thorn hinge
#

all these fits go hard af. I adore the dress with the third arm.

heady topaz
#

not sure if I've posted my group's mechs, so here goes:
Bellerophon-1: The white quad mech, piloted by Albert Ross the Albatross. Packs a thermal lance and is a hacker/artillery in an Everest. He's the sane one.
FUBAR: The cursed skittles flavoured franken mech, piloted by Patty the prepper. Has guns, but they're fired by the subalterns he keeps in his salvaging backpack. His personalizations give him a bonus to salvaging, and it's actually come in very handy.
Hecuba: The yellow-headed mech, piloted by Ser Agro-Rott of the House Of Glass. He's the new player who's figuring out his build, but has decided to inevitably build a TCB Manticore. The horrors this man will commit will be many, mostly to my sanity.
Spoiler Alert: The mech with the golden sword, piloted by Bartellomeo Grumps the mercenary. He has no idea what he's gonna spec into, aside from the fact that he's gonna also be a melee monster.

Bellerophon-1.png FUBAR.png Hecuba.png Spoiler_Alert.png
frail kayak
tender seal
#

Wanted to share my incredibly scuffed attempt to mimic @maiden ferry 's incredible map for Event Horizon while playing on a physical tabletop with a wet erase map since my group might reach it next session

SPOILER_20231105_042825.jpg
#

My biggest takeaway is that I am not a good artist and it is even harder to follow rules of perspective when it's difficult to draw and erase guidelines, lol

fast parrot
#

honestly i think it's pretty great

frail kayak
#

Yeah, I feel like a wet-erase map is supposed to be 1: clear and 2: interesting, and that ticks both boxes

austere prism
fast parrot
willow cloak
#

Good choices. Disco Elysium OST is a great fit.

maiden ferry
tender seal
#

That was what I was attempting yeah, lol. I'm not sure how well I conveyed it, when I was moving around it almost looks like "down" would be more appropriate towards the right side of the map with the cubes attached to the wall. I'm hoping it'll end up conveying how weird things are getting to navigate a 3d space in 2d in the same way, though way harder to sell with wet-erase markers, haha

#

Worst-case though I figure it should still be a fun fight

heady topaz
#

Welp, my players killed Capella by cooking his mech to death, causing Meltdown. He tried to take the Sagarmatha with him, but Hecuba popped Core the turn before and passed the save, reducing 15 damage to 2.

#

THey then edited his death into an MLG Phonk edit and shared it on the Muse

meager vine
austere prism
shrewd sorrel
#

Sunbird 1 went well

i had my players sweating the whole time. Since they'd gotten Siren a Big Gun, instead of the sitrep being "kill sunbird 1" it was just survive
i didn't tell them exactly what they needed to do, or how long they needed to live for, which is pretty unusual for me. Usually I over share information to my players, telling them more than i probably should, but in this case I just said "you need to not die". When they asked how long, I said "as long as it takes for siren to get here."

and that was the sitrep

the "hidden objective" was either structure sunbird 1 twice, or live through 6 rounds of bombardment (an important note. My players are LL2 and very experienced, so I buffed sunbird 1 a bit knowing they could handle it). They managed to structure it the second time on round 5. I had Siren, who i'd hinted was on her way to help, arrive at the end of the round. I pulled sunbird 1 back and let them mop up the rest of the enemies while siren dealt with the ultra. I think it was a good fight (at least, my players seemed to think it was fun) though the sherman had a very rough time. they absolutely cleaned house combat 1, taking down half the opfor single handedly, but couldn't land a hit in the sunbird fight. and i weep for the tortuga, who could have stressed the hornet to death if they'd have just focused on invades WhenLifeGetsJaska

Still a great end to the mission.

#

also, idk if anyone has art of Dr Nyambose, but she's become a very central figure for my party, so I had to get some art of her
and I very frantically grabbed art of Kirisu Makise from Steins Gate. That's probably very wrong, but Nyambose now is just Kirisu and it can't be changed

shell bison
#

wha

#

Also, apologies people I haven't been making more style intro cards for people. My game took a break for a bit thanks to my players needing to do things irl. So I've been coasting a little on the card creation 💦

heady vale
#

What does. This have to do with golden flame 😭

willow cloak
#

Nothing! This person is lost.

dense crescent
#

aw damn, another poor sod that got dumped in calliope

heady vale
#

Hold on wait
[Deleted and replaced]

dense crescent
#

no

#

the witch should be Striga

heady vale
#

You're so right wait i got this

heady vale
#

There we go yea this feels right

heady topaz
#

this is Muse level shitposting

#

absolutely cursed. Shelly is probably censoring Jerry's Muse feed to prevent these crimes against eveballs from reaching him, lest he have a(nother) stroke

heady vale
#

WAIT

#

SORRY IM REREADING STUFF LMAOO

#

I'm going to potentially rename a major plot character / plot beat because one of my players and friends is named Basil

#

Not their character like the real person who is playing in the game

#

Lmao

warped ibex
#

||lean into it and imply your irl friend is a basil clone [/j]||

heady vale
#

It's also still funny that I can't tell anyone about my in golden flame party, without spoiling the entirety of wallflower

dense crescent
heady vale
dense crescent
#

||>players||

heady vale
#

OH LOL right, my In Golden Flame explicitly takes place 200 years after good ending events of wallflower, wallflower happened earlier in my Lancer continuity

heady vale
# dense crescent ||>players||

||So because of that, with the eggregorians and hercynia accepted into Union space, and having been properly protected under union rights, some have began to live in other parts of the galaxy. They are an ambassador from a planet that has cultural trade with the Calliope System, And there is likely going to be a small community of them added to either furnace city or an underground town on Asphodel connected to FC||

#

Sorry, didn't mean to double tag

dense crescent
#

||the joke was you said one of the "players" is an egregorian, not one of the "player characters"||

heady vale
#

OH LOL LMAO

heady vale
wild flame
#

My party has officially killed Andros

Cut in half by the TCB Everest

shrewd sorrel
quaint pebble
#

Got my map ready for the second combat of Beat 10 on Sunday (and up in the google docs folder), got about 2/3rds of the way through the first one last time so it will be a fun thing to transition to mid-session.

shell bison
#

Session 19 went great, they are already sepculating :)

image.png
heady vale
#

Couple of Question
What part of the epilogue is actually meant to be read to the players, and what parts are just for me (the dm)

austere prism
#

as many as you want?
I'm planning on basically reading them the Award Ceremony to mark the "official" end of Act 1, then drop the rest of the red text as handouts in chat later

heady vale
#

Ohhhh that's a fun way to do it

thorn hinge
#

That's more or less my plan. I tend to give my players everything I can... when the act is over I'll be giving them the whole book (with an edited redaction to ||ratio salvager's true identity|| which, best I can tell is the only act 2 spoiler)

heady vale
#

I think my plan is to do the epilogue, but specifically placed a few months later, and then do the epilogue again at the start of part two.

I plan to modify in Golden Flame a big, to leave space between at least with part one and two, so I can explore with my players what their characters would be doing in the system during down time

#

Also doing that so there can be like a gameplay lineup of us putting a few months between each game, both IRL and in game

thorn hinge
#

Oh, same. I want to take a break to give me time to prep for act 2, have a lot of downtime scenes to let the PCs develop and relax... but in-game I don't want to give them too much time. I still like ||the cliffhanger hitting that "just when you though it was over" vibe||

heady vale
austere prism
#

just did Thermopylae. the melee person on our team hit like 6 crits with a heavy charge blade in a row on various things

#

now they're facing sunbird and its gift of missiles

lilac tartan
#

I wonder will an Albatross character from MK Levant face problems when fighting against Impact Dynamic due to their prohibition for attacking Enterprises

IMG_20231112_103141.jpg
#

Maybe a temporary honorable discharge is cool here

IMG_20231112_104212.jpg
austere prism
#

spotify UI made me do a double take today

image.png
#

(the cover art for IGF and the cover art for Ankor's White Dragon album looks very similar when downsampled to whatever resolution that quick access bar uses)

meager vine
#

Had my groups session 0 yesterday, super excited to get this campaign going, beyond stoked by the characters the players came up with.

The PCs are

  • An ex boxer who refused to throw a fixed match and fled to Calliope to escape the mob.
  • An ex merc gunslinger with a heart of gold who refused to execute enemies who had already surrendered and thus was abandoned by his mercenary group in Calliope.
  • A 19 year old punk kid and hobbyist sigdiver who thinks he's cooler than he is and is the son of a refugee from nestor.
  • A former union auxiliary who served in the Nestor conflict and fell in love with a Nestorian revolutionary. Said revolutionary fled with their family to Calliope while the conflict was ongoing to bring their family to safety. PC was meant to rendezvous with their partner there when their contract ended, but couldn't track their partner down and has been stuck in Calliope since.
thorn hinge
#

One of my players (the person behind Calamity Havok) has decided to run IGF himself. And yet, he's spoilerphobic and won't come here to talk about it. So I edited the book to redact anything he wouldn't know from my game so he has someplace to start.

He's run a session 0, though not all of his players have pitched their ideas just yet. So far we have:

  • JOYEUSE "Joy" - an NHP pilot. She was a member of The Circuit until TRIPLE-POINT suddenly ordered them to torture her into cascade. Then she got captured during a raid on an Armory convoy, robot therapy'd back in the box, and fell in love with a human HA tech. The two ran off to Hell's Gate and are gay robot married, using the player_two neural bypass gear from Legionnaire to stay together. Kind of two PCs for the price of one.
  • Moxi - a weapons design engineer who was working for Impact Dynamics in their vestigial nearly mothballed weapons department. She fled when Steele took over the company.
  • Name pending - Sparri warrior woman themed around polar bears, to fill the "big angry animal themed woman" slot. This player is another player in my game (Pear Bradford), so that's gonna be interesting.
  • Name Pending - hacker who stole Big Secrets from one or more corpostates and is laying low in Calliope
  • And a fifth character that apparently has some fun concepts going on but the player has been away on vacation for a bit and hasn't shared them yet.
#

I'm extremely excited to see how this goes, both because it's going to be interesting seeing a player midway through chapter 4 running a game, and also because Joy is just about my favorite lancer character concept I've ever seen

heady topaz
#

@wispy quail in here!

wispy quail
#

yeye

#

reposting:

#

thinking of running my current TTRPG group through In Golden Flame
[7:57 PM]
the main problems: the last and only time i successfully GMed any TTRPG was about three years ago, in college, and it was Tomb of Annihilation (5E)
[7:57 PM]
I've played a decent amount of Lancer, a little of that being recent, but my players have never actually played any Lancer before
[7:57 PM]
(to the best of my knowledge)
[7:58 PM]
i'm not really 100% sure how to construct battlemaps but otherwise i am cautiously optimistic

#

oh those early beat maps by Jacquerel (in the resources in the pins) look really cool and good!

#

aesthetically they remind me of some old SWRPG maps I played on

thorn hinge
#

IGF was the first lancer game I've run OR played in, and it was the first game for all of my players. My players and I are mostly very experienced with ttrpgs, though one player only has a game or two of experience. This campaign has been the best any of us can recall. Mapping can be done fairly simply, even just using basic tile systems and mapmakers, though I think IGF makes that a bit harder by having a lot of fights in very unusual locations. You can still get away with simple map options but it certainly offers a lot of opportunity for someone to go crazy with the mapping. (cough cough...)

wispy quail
#

my current question is a bit more of a philosophical one

#

it is, of course, "which In Golden Flame character, if any, is the Vriska"

#

IGF seems like the sort of a story which demands a Vriska

#

it might actually be Ignatius Aurum

dense crescent
#

oh

#

it's Striga

#

this is not a contest

wispy quail
#

oh right yeah duh

#

striga von aldenberg is the vriska

#

i forgot about her implied tragic parental backstory (big vriska points)

#
  • implied to be a transgender woman
  • outspoken and opinionated
  • has lots of advice for the main character(s), much of it questionable
  • appears places she shouldn't
dense crescent
#

also like

#

look at her

wispy quail
#

yeah.

thorn hinge
wispy quail
#

oh lol i think i remember seeing this on vex's twitter as it happened

rough bluff
#

Hello all. I was thinking of making up a system map of Calliope, but I wanted to make sure I hadn't missed any before I started work on it. I didn't see on in the docs linked in the pins. Did I miss it or am I right there isn't a nice one yet. Mostly I've seen cheat sheets and the like.

maiden ferry
#

theres this one and I'm so sorry because I dont remember who made it but its excellent

system_map.png
rough bluff
#

That IS excellant. I might be excellent enough I don't take my own stab at it. We'll see. I have a few days to decide, I was going to work on it over Thanksgiving Week.

heady vale
maiden ferry
#

oh god please somebody figure out who made this I'm so sorry

#

I'm trying and cant

heady vale
#

I'll try to see if i can later

dense urchin
wild flame
#

Absolute hero

maiden ferry
#

Amazing ty

thorn hinge
#

That one by konros is still my favorite, but I made this one in-game with foundry functionality.

frail kayak
#

I actually did something fairly similar

image.png
heady vale
frail kayak
#

ok, I should have watched more of the gif, I didn't see the journal entries, that works really well

fallen geyser
heady topaz
dim pelican
#

I'm stoked to be starting IGF with a group of mine - I've read through the whole of Act 1 and think it's just phenomenal!
I have one question, has anyone put together a "player's guide" for the Calliope system that can be handed out to players? I was thinking of editing the PDF to strip out just the stuff that can be handed out but (after seeing all of the awesome resources shared here) I wondered if some enterprising individual has already done that here.

warped ibex
#

i think a few of us have! i cut it to page 48

quaint pebble
#

honestly the first like, however many pages of the campaign guide before the "players stop reading here" marker work fine
its pretty dense though if you wanted a reduced version

#

I know my players were mixed on how much they read ahead of time

warped ibex
#

yeah, same with mine - which is fine! i just made sure to give them a rundown personally too

#

on the big important parts

dim pelican
#

Sweet, thanks! I'll be a very happy GM if all of my players read through that much of a guide but might as well share as much info as I can 🙂

wild flame
thorn hinge
#

also if you're gonna cut it to page 48, consider removing the table of contents on page 7 too, it could be slightly spoilery and reveals how many fights remain to the end of each mission

#

I also made a version of the book that has all spoilers for chapter 5 removed, and some of chapter 4, as a gift to my player who is starting to run the campaign while my own hasn't finished yet. But that's probably less helpful for most people lmao.

dim pelican
#

I took the advice and cut the first 48 pages (while removing the table of contents, lol I'm sure one of my resourceful players would find that info interesting...) and gave that to the players. Should work great I think 🙂 do you mean that you have a more condensed players guide, because I'd definitely like to see it!
I've bought the book and I'm also excited to support when the Act 2 Kickstarter begins (I've already begun reading through the newest draft - some might call me obsessed with IGF lately lol)

heady vale
#

All of my players finally got in all of their character info to me

frail kayak
thorn hinge
#

Yeeup I've basically been running, prepping to run, or in some way thinking about IGF every single day for at least a year and a half now.

vague fog
#

Has anyone ran In Golden Flame inside of tabletop simulator?

#

Me and my group that I play with usually run lancer in tabletop sim but I'm not sure if there are any resources for IGF that are out there for tts

frail kayak
#

I know folks have done it for Wallflower, but I'm not sure about IGF

rough bluff
#

Holy s$%^. @fallen geyser can write.

#

Don't take my surprised tone as insulting, I had the same reaction to the first Brandon Sanderson book.

shell bison
#

I have successfully made Siren the mamabear of my group by

  • Having her offer to guide a PC into the sig dive of their technophile NHP daughters casket and help start the healing process after a cascade rendered her inoperable.
  • Vibe check a pc via telling them, no you can not take your date on the Dragon's Tooth just to show off your mech (She was convinced other wise, but no going to the rooms. )
  • Have one PC now doing training drills in her new Atlas with Siren offering combat advice.

Siren is a lovely character 😌

shell bison
#

Also, one of my PC's hates that vent crabs but the player loves the little guys

Bust-2.png
heady vale
#

Lobster subspecies /pos

vocal relic
#

that is some good art

maiden ferry
#

I realize that some of the things that don’t have answers are meant for the dm to work out, but I gotta know - what’s the deal with Anthony Callahan? He’s got people after him from the seccom era and probably has magic

quaint pebble
#

I believe some more of that will be revealed in Act 2 (or maybe more accurately, an optional extra that goes alongside Act 2?)

meager vine
#

Has anyone used Gun Brother Ten? Curious how folks have utilized him in the campaign

vague fog
#

How should I give the players the background information, like the "five minutes" story and the history of calliope? I'm not sure if thats something I should read out to them through like an NPC, or if I should just copy and paste it and send it out to the players so they can digest it before making their characters

#

I've got some DMing experience but not much with actual campaigns so some stuff like this confuses me a bit

warped ibex
wild flame
#

I sent my players an amended version of the pdf (cut the table of contents, cut part of travel in calliope cause of minor spoilers, cut everything after the big "Players stop reading here" sign, added the new bonds) about a week prior to session 0 so they could read it at their leisure

vague fog
#

Gotcha

wild flame
#

and as things come up in game I talk about them

vague fog
#

I'll probably go with that route so everyone can have a good understanding of the lore to build their characters around

wild flame
#

yea my players found it helpful for exactly that

vague fog
#

I also told my players that its recommended for them to get an EVA module or something of the sort since I read the book mentioned that its gonna be very useful

warped ibex
#

the book outlines a few approaches for how to handle that, but yeah there are a good few space combats

vague fog
warped ibex
#

i imagine the nearlight bolt blurb on page 29

#

||given it says you get nearlight support after chapter 4||

wild flame
#

yeah i cut page 29

super minor spoiler but my players wished to remain fully spoiler-free

warped ibex
#

i never noticed that until just now, actually, so that wasn't removed from my players copy haha

#

i guess none of them noticed it either, or just willingly forgot about it

wild flame
#

they still got sent the travel-time chart on 30 and I went over all the stuff on 29 once we actually got to the dragon's tooth

vague fog
#

Gotcha

warped ibex
#

ohp probably don't send that

#

at least here

vague fog
#

my b

warped ibex
#

given that is an excerpt from a paid book

vague fog
#

OH

#

right

#

sry sweatblob

warped ibex
#

uh, you could dm it to me for me to look at! given i already have it i think that'd be fine

warped ibex
#

my party wanted to, oocly, do some test combats against eachother or npcs and stuff, so i've set up a channel to do it in, but: ||given TRIPLE-POINTS simulations, i thought it'd be funny to present it from the perspective of TRIPLE-POINT being the one running them and taking notes. this party has no clue who TRIPLE-POINT is yet, so when they finally learn about it, i think it'll be fun to see their reactions to that little tidbit||

rough bluff
#

On the subject of a Calliope System map I decided to goof around for a half hour or so tonight. This is very preliminary and I'm not sure I'm satisfied with the direction so feel free to give notes, but here's there I am after a little noodling. No labels or habs or anything.

Calliope.JPG
frail kayak
#

You put the eccentric orbit of Chameleon in!

image.png
amber viper
#

That's some good attention to detail

rough bluff
#

Thanks, my first attempt was more zoomed out than that, but then the exagerated scales didn't look right. Or at least that's the balance I was struggling with. I'm a hard sf writer at heart, despite the fact that my publication credits are mostly humor, so I strive for that kind of accuracy, but I was ALMOST an artist, so I also prefer my maps to be, you know, readable. 🙂

#

The biggest liberty, of course, is the nebula. But 1) boring space backgrounds are boring, and I didn't think they invoked the theme of the setting. And 2) I wanted the map to give you the feel that the entire system hung over a seething mass of worker dissatisfaction and blue-color rage, ready to explode, where otherwise honest people were driven to piracy just to survive, and fought soldiers how might otherwise just be looking for a quiet place to get lost from a troubled past on the knife's edge of an unforgiving void, and the whole thing could erupt into revolution at any time, if only to vent the growing despair. And maybe just a hint that the Hell's Gate name was more than a colorful curse against a smelter, but a metaphor for the entire Calliope exitance. And under it all, the looming hint of the doom of the phoenix.

#

But I'm only 18 pages into the adventure, so this is just the impression @fallen geyser has given me so far. 🙂

quaint pebble
#

I always make space a little colourful even if there is no nebula, maybe space is just like that in the lancerverse

rough bluff
#

Okay, A/B testing time. If you read this, tell me which you prefer. These are two slightly different scales, and I think one might look better but one might be more easy to parse, but I thought I'd just put it to a vote and see which the community prefers. @fallen geyser, feel free to vote too. 🙂

floral glacier
#

I like B, honestly

#

It's a bit more snug but maps are supposed to be representative and all that

thorn hinge
#

B looks better, A has more space and may read better depending on how you intend to use this / present it to the players.

floral glacier
#

Also hey-ho IGF thread, I'm running a game at the moment; got a pretty good group, we

#

're currently on Asphodel

rough bluff
#

@fallen geyser Is Fort Cerberus in Stygia's preceding trojans or trailing trojans? Or dealers choice?

fallen geyser
#

Your choice

rough bluff
#

Thanks, @fallen geyser. Okay, all, this is my first draft.

Calliope.PNG
#

Feel free to point out any inaccuracies of typos. Or give notes if you don't like something. Also, I don't exactly have an Accessibility Team here at Shiro no Bob, and when I added the habs it became information dense enough I started needing to color-code the orbits in the magnification lines. So if you need alternate color profiles for color-vision requirements other than yellow and violet, just let me know, I'm happy to make alternates to suit peoples needs. Take about five minutes per version once we know we have the final draft.

wild flame
#

Bit of immediate feedback - the pink lines showing where the stations/ships go are kinda hard to make out against the background - thr lines are pretty thin and there's not a whole lot of contrast between them and the nebula

rough bluff
#

Noted.

wild flame
#

Does look awesome though

rough bluff
#

Thanks!

thorn hinge
rough bluff
#

Thanks. That's why I had them pointed at the name of the system in general, but I waffled between that and your take. Also noted. 🙂

#

(BTW, I'm letting these suggestions build up to work on them all at once tonight).

rough bluff
#

Note to self, since all the notes are here right now: I imply Hell's Gate the Icebreaker are too close to their gas giants.

thorn hinge
#

Session 27 done, Chapter 4 combat: ||Pressure Point||. I chose not to do my gimmick where I ||change the map to 2d halfway through, I'll save that The Swarm which will start on the same map.|| A lovely little fight where in each of the players really got to show off some of their favorite bits of their kits. Also given the objective of the fight, we realized that it might be a good idea that if anybody happens to bring the ||Rebound Pulse Mineral Scanner, they should be able to use it to instantly know which zone is the true CP.|| Synopsis below, combat spoilers for one fight in ch4.

SPOILER_image.png
rough bluff
#

Okay, Second Draft, implements fixes for every suggestion. For the line visibility, On this pass I made the line thicker. Tell me if that got the job done @wild flame

rough bluff
thorn hinge
#

Gorgeous, I love it

wild flame
#

Very nice work

rough bluff
#

Okay, I showed the map to Josh Peltier, my editor at Final Redoubt Press on a google meet just for fun, and he asked what you all had done to offend me. Since the confusing ordering of the habs on the right was clearly an act of violence against anyone forced to look at that map. Then he watched in presentation mode while I fixed it. (Also, we talked about holiday plans and family stuff). THIS might be my last pass. I think the text around the twins might need a LITTLE more finese, but it's very close, if not finished. I'll make a google drive tomorrow and figure out what to do to get it on Ada's pin, I don't think I need to show any more versions to you unless someone asks for a change.

Calliope.PNG
fallen geyser
#

I was going to comment on the overlapping lines

#

But this fixes that

#

I would personally move Chameleon slightly further from the edge of the image

rough bluff
#

Good note. I will do that and update the google drive this evening. If anyone has downloaded it, look for a date change on the pinned doc.

maiden ferry
#

is IGF intended to be played with bond powers?

amber viper
#

It comes with two bonds so yes

warped ibex
#

given it has bond content, i'd be shocked if it wasn't at least made --

#

yeah

maiden ferry
#

oh my god I need more sleep

warped ibex
#

its not required, however

maiden ferry
#

okay yep

#

thanks

tight pier
#

ime its agnostic

#

nothing outright requires it nor would i say it is designed around bonds at any point, and same for the inverse with base lancer narrative play

#

it is a campaign that bonds are good for though

#

at the same time if you dislike the complexity/flavor/consequences of the bond system, you can totally just Not Play With Bonds and not have any issues

rough bluff
#

Oh, I did my upload after midnight, so it already had today's date. The map is updated now.

#

I have a history question for the campaign. This is from the "Player Friendly" section, so it should be good spoiler-wise. The first wave ships arrive, and some of the ships are able to head back, so they do, and the history makes it sound like the colonists that had to stay tried to get the companies that backed them to send more supplies via the second wave before ships made it back with news that Calliope had no colonizable worlds. But with them in a blinkvoid, how did they make that request? Any signal they sent would arrive at the same time as signals from the colony ships. Heck, they'd only arrive a few months to a year before the colony ships themselves. I'm not sure how the second wave got launched. Anyway, that's the only bit that wasn't clear to me.

quaint pebble
#

Signals travel at light speed and ships travel slower than light speed

#

Any message they send early enough can arrive before any returning ships

#

Many companies are more likely to want to believe their investment is sound and ignore a few odd sounding messages, even though others will listen and pull out

#

It's still perhaps a little far-fetched but it's believable enough

#

I think most transmissions will arrive years before any ships rather than months though, they do not need to accelerate/decelarate in the same way
And the transmission from Calliope will be doing their best to decry those from ships that turned around as tricks or corporate espionage

rough bluff
#

Well the setting makes a pretty big deal about how close to light they travel and the history even points out that it takes month for them to get up to speed. So effectively, the message just has to beat them to the blink gate by their acceleration/deceleration time plus their difference between the their speed and light. Honestly, I wrote the Spacemaster game, I can tell you EXACTLY how long the behind the transmission they are if I know their acceleration speed (I made some charts so people dealing with this kind of thing didn't have to do the math at their table). I'm just trying to avoid that math. For instance, assuming "months" if we put it at 5 gs, the message arrives three months ahead of them, it takes them 10 years, three months to get there, and 1.5 years of ship time passes. But that's the kind of math I'm trying to avoid. I like the games rule of handwaving all that for the most part.

#

But if your answer is they are about to get the Second Wave going and launched in that time, and they just don't believe the ships until they get there with hard records, I can kind of swallow that.

#

Hey, this is better, I think. I don't think the history says WHEN the blinkvoid ends, just that it had been going for some time and it ends by a certain date, maybe it ends before the returning ships get to a point where they can send an omninet message aback... Then this problem goes away completely.

#

Yeah, it says the blinkvoid made it so that the ships returning couldn't get word back, and that it had receded by the time of the second wave, so maybe it receded a year or two after the first wave arrived, and they were able to send their requests well in advance of the returning ships.

rough bluff
#

@quaint pebble Thanks for helping me work through, that, BTW. I really appreciate it. Sometimes you need to talk things out to get past the bit you're fixated on.

dense crescent
#

it would even make sense for the blinkvoid to recede in calliope before it recedes for the travelling ships

#

since they didn't know about the blinkvoid, that implies it wasn't coming from the direction of rao co to calliope, so it'd make sense that the ships flying back would stay in it longer

#

as they were moving "with" it

#

...I realize I think of blinkvoids moving through the galactic plane like clouds on a sky but I relize that might not be the case, not sure where I got the idea from

rough bluff
#

And if they have an epicenter of sorts, they could just sort of recede.

dense crescent
#

though that epicenter could be a bit outside calliope, in the direction of rao co, still making the ships stay in it longer than the system

rough bluff
#

That's what I mean, if it's a lightyear or two toward the blink gate, the ships could be in it for years longer than the system once the effect starts to end.

#

We don't know how big they are or anything, they are supposed to be a spotty effect, so it could be big but inconsistant, or something neigther of us has suggested yet, but that still had the same effect of letting Calliope out first.

dense crescent
#

IIRC the one in the first wave era was called out as unusually large/long lasting

#

there's one in the travel event tables that seems to only last a few hours, which I assume is closer to the norm

rough bluff
#

Yeah, they said "Decades long" in a way that felt like that was noteworthy.

austere prism
# rough bluff Well the setting makes a pretty big deal about how close to light they travel an...

Note that, while there is the whole "nearlight ejection" mechanism some ships use to basically go from 0 to .995c instantly, that's explicitly an emergency mechanism that inflicts a lot of damage on everything involved. Regular ships, especially big chonkers like colony transports, use more gentle ways of getting to near c, so there is a considerable delay between messages from Calliope arriving and those ships getting back into contact

rough bluff
# austere prism Note that, while there is the whole "nearlight ejection" mechanism some ships us...

I'm aware of that, but the timeline gives how long the colony ships took to arrive. It's 10 years (or so) for 10 ly. That matches they handwavy numbers the core rulebook basically tells you to use. Basically, they have a way to accelerate reasonably well without killing people on board that's somwhere between nearlight injection and what we can do and it's never explained. If my players ask, I'll say they have basic inertial damping, just enough to get some extra Gs of acceleration, becuase that's mentioned in some of the mech stuff and it explains a lot of other problems away to, and the setting never says the CAN'T do it. But there also could be some medical solution, like in Expanse or several other ways. But the book insinuates the people inside the ships usually experience .1 G to 1 G, so something the messes with the inertia just a bit is the cleanest handwave, and it solves about six problems at once.

austere prism
#

right

rough bluff
#

If people care, as someone who worked with these numbers a LOT, if all the ships USUALLY accelerate somewhere between 5-10 Gs, that whole "Just say 1:10 ratio" thing keeps being a pretty good rule of thumb. Some of the ships are a little below. Some just a hair above.

austere prism
#

Personally, when asked about this, my improvised-on-the-spot answer was "the people that stayed behind asked the leaving ships to keep quiet, and most of the ships that left belonged to corporations that wanted to see their rivals dump attention and ressources on a failed project"

rough bluff
#

Heh.

#

There is something to be said for "If we come clean right away, we're dooming a whole BUNCH of people to death."

#

I have the coolest idea (I think) for the first two battle maps. I can't wait for you all to see them. I like two weeks when I get that far in my prep. 🙂

austere prism
#

couple of people in my area are planning to do a small TTRPG event for people to check out new systems (or check out TTRPGs in general). I'm planning to run an abbreviated version of the first IGF beats there, that's going to be fun

rough bluff
#

Oh, cool, then I'll tell you my idea. If you're playing on an actual table, this might be a bit harder to implement, I was going to give people cut-out assets if they wanted to print my maps, but I thought since those first two combats are in deep space everything (or almost everything) that's cover should also be in motion, relative to the direction of the PC's fight. Easy to do in foundry with staged battlemaps. A little more finicky is all your elements are paper from a printer and not printed on cardboard or something a little heftier.

#

That was my version without spoilers. "Things in space move" isn't really a spoiler.

austere prism
#

yeah, my idea was pretty similar to that - part of it was to let the players position some or all of the terrain before the battle starts

rough bluff
#

Are you going to pick which of the first two combats you do for them?

#

Just kinda jump right into the fight?

austere prism
#

yeah, I'm going to send them right into Snack Run cos that let's me play some decent narrative beforehand to set up the universe and all that

rough bluff
#

Oh, see I thought you were doing the other, because you said they got to choose. 🙂 ||So snack run, I was going to have all the cover coming in AT them. Maybe bounding off stuff and ricocheting around (assuming I put something out there that isn't debris as well, like an asteroid). In the other I was going to have it heading out away from them in a fan, in case any of them wanted to take up positions behind pieces and drift with it, using it to advance, hidden.||

austere prism
#

given that this is supposed to be a simple thing to get people started off, I'm going to keep it simple 😛

rough bluff
#

I AM putting up a version that good for a static battle (assuming I get the others working) when I publish mine to the commity. I figure some groups will have been playing Lancer for years, and a space map might be a little old hat, and some people this will be their first game, and they'll be teaching the players the very basics.

#

I just wanted to tell you what I was excited about. 🙂

austere prism
#

that's what we're here for

#

speaking of things we're excited about in relation to IGF, I'm hoping I get some cool voice drops this week or the next. I hired a VA to do the splash texts for Chapters 4 and 5 to surprise my players with, that's gonna be so cool

rough bluff
#

That's awesome, tell me what you get! I have a good mic but not a good room, or I'd offer to help out.

austere prism
#

gonna put them in the GM ressources folder

rough bluff
#

Sweet. Put the system map their earlier if you missed it.

austere prism
#

gods I got so much stuff to prep and overhaul and not enough week to do it

rough bluff
#

Testify, Brother.

austere prism
#

luckily i get three weeks off over christmas, lots of time then

rough bluff
#

Same here. I took next week off and a bunch of time at Christmas.

austere prism
#

noice

rough bluff
#

I used to work a WHOLE bunch of conventions and I saved all my PTO for them, but now I just do two, more or less, so more and more my PTO just burns off at the end of the year.

austere prism
#

haven't been to an rpg convention in literal ages. I go to SPIEL every year, but that's about it

rough bluff
#

When I got my start as a game designer, I used to do Origins and Gencon, and then when I started publishing fiction, I added in all the local writers cons and academic symposiums, and such. Now I just mainly do two, and FanX (Formerly Salt Lake Comic Con) is kinda iffy. They might have ruined it.

austere prism
#

the formal description for the intro adventure:

image.png
floral glacier
#

Whereas a full Near-Light Bolt is a much harder initial kick blunted by antigrav and cruising at something like 15g with medical assistance with another antigav blunted kick to stop it or at least return it to something like the local reference frame

polar glacier
#

Something I wrote for Chapter 4 ||as my players enter the metavault and things start getting properly weird. This is the first steps of Hall of Mirrors, just before the voices start. I'm working on a whole lot more too :3||

SPOILER_image.png
maiden ferry
#

I decided to actually run IGF and my party has made characters like that. In order of creation:
A former seccom member that had a hand in ||the hercynian crisis and the creation to the Agni nhp||. They escaped to the long rim in stasis when the war went south and are trying to work off a stain they can’t wash out. Desperately trying to pass themselves off as a purview deserter.

The second character is a traumatized ips-n contractor who witnessed a basilisk point-blank. It’s seared itself into his mind, to the point where remembering the event hurts to think about. He got dropped off by northstar to the ssc office to get a custom voice modulator installed to replace his broken larynx, but his ship left him. To make matters worse, over time the comp-con within the voice mod was overwritten with the calliope edition.

A member of the bleach boys who, upon Bad Star dissing them and causing problems by being a spoiled brat on orcus, is on a batshit crazy mission to rival bad star by being a good guy streamer, and a bad guy heel mech fighter, pretending to be two different people/personalities.

And finally, a knight of the dark core that took the “chivalry” bit too seriously and volunteered to help hells gate for mostly free.

#

I love that I feel comfortable allowing character ideas in this setting that I’d shoot down in an instant in some of my other games. The setting lends itself so well to like, any character as long as they’re mostly a group player

toxic stump
#

Players who do fanart of a campaign are truly a blessing. Case in point:

IMG_1693.png
#

It's a vent crab that hangs out around Jerry's office, so people started nicknaming him Crab-Jerry and put the stickers and all. He also steals some coffee apparently which should be toxic for him but he seems to handle it fine.

Of course, Jerry is completely oblivious to all of this.

Shelly, who is usually the most serious person ever, find the whole thing hilarious.

austere prism
#

does he live in a jerry can

vocal relic
#

this is beautiful

wild flame
#

I would die for crab-jerry

thorn hinge
wild flame
#

Great minds

thorn hinge
#

Chapter 4 spoilers, and a request for help from anybody interested in making some recordings for me.

||Okay, I wrote up all my nasty whispers for The Outer Myriad and suddenly thought it would be cool if I had them pre-recorded, featuring a bunch of voices that aren't my own. If anybody wants to help out, pick a line, record it, and DM it to me. I made a spreadsheet for tracking here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LwONIUNJFqEd3CkWIC3BWvSr3ENPVbjVZDmAFGWFEpM/edit?usp=sharing||

||I'll also take as many recordings of the chapter 4 mantras as I can get: "WHAT WILL BE MUST ALWAYS BE, WHAT WILL BE MUST NOT BE" and "WHAT WILL BE IS YET UNWRITTEN, WHAT WILL BE MIGHT STILL NOT BE". I plan to make a big mix of them (along with some synth work and creepy effects) that others can use in their own games! There's an example of the mantra's pacing I'm going for linked int he spreadsheet above.||

toxic stump
wild flame
#

cowards, and those without conviction

heady topaz
wild flame
#

Out of curiosity, will you be releasing the recordings for other people to use like you did with the boltzmann logs?

thorn hinge
#

totally, I love to share if that hasn't been made quite obvious lol.

wild flame
#

I will look forward to using them when I run chapter 4 (at least, the voicelines that apply to all parties)

wonder if any of my players will clock that one of the whispers is me

wispy quail
#

it's cool and normal to put your personal Lancer OC in as a supporting NPC when you're running a campaign, right

thorn hinge
#

Also yes, but my perspective is likely incredibly skewed lmao.

wispy quail
#

i mean yeah i know about the original campaign characters

#

though tbh i did completely forget that johan existed

#

like. until i saw someone list off all four of them in a row

thorn hinge
#

lol, yeah. Just also for my own perspective... my first ever lancer character is named in the book as a character the players can't meet, and the PCs in my game are all NPCs in the book. And one of my players is now running, and being faced with the prospect of playing their character as a GM of the game instead of as a player. So from where I sit, it's not just incredibly normal it's practically the only way to play.

wispy quail
#

fair enough!

toxic stump
remote oasis
#

Ended up in a second In Golden Flame game, and I'm super excited for it! I wanted to pop in to share my character with y'all.

Name: Lucretia Weathers (Lucretia was chosen when she got to Calliope as both a stage name for the arenas, and because it sounded more imposing to her than her given name. Weathers was chosen because of both the conditions of her homeworld and her tendency to "Weather the Storm")

Original name: Mina íshella-Sigridsdottir

Callsign: Frostbite

Starting Mech Name: Ursae Polaris (might be changing this)

Background: Sparri

Role: Defender/Controller

Backstory: Her eldest son left Sparr for adventure and glory, as is the custom. He got sick and died in a backwater hospital somewhere.
Mina left to bring his body back to Sparr. While she was away her husband and younger daughter were killed in a MegaFauna attack. She was not there to protect them, and she took that pretty fucking personally.
Her daughter loved white bears, and so she took up that mantle to honor her memory. Quite literally, wearing a white and purple dyed fur cape/cloak despite the temperature.
She did some mercenary work as a guard for the Voladares before seeking out some semblance of glory in the arena fights in Calliope. She dabbles in scrimshaw and poetry.

#

Starting Mech image, Ivory and gold, with a touch of purple for some presence/royalty, and a little heat tempering on the weapons that I am super happy with:

#

Future White Witch Mech image, Ferrofluid reflavored as ice, with the transparency on the shield provided by @thorn hinge :

#

And now I'm going to go do something else so I resist the urge to scroll up/click on spoilers...

thorn hinge
#

I heard she broke the rule of food in the briefing room in the first beat specifically to bring Jerry a sandwich to eat.

thorn hinge
#

❤️

remote oasis
shrewd sorrel
#

did some portraits for our cat girl SRT

The Nyakuza blobcatknife

image.png
dense crescent
#

LMAO

amber viper
wispy quail
#

lol

#

very nice

digital raven
#

I never mind an OC on the GM side as long as they stick to good game running practices. To paraphrase one of the greats, drive your NPCs like stolen cars, fast and directly into trees

#

(I didn't want to go dig up my Monsterhearts book to get the quote right)

heady vale
#

Added a new song to my in golden flames GM vibes playlist

This is for me, mostly, not players

thorn hinge
#

Shit. Over the Garden Wall is a great choice. It really fits some of the vibes I love about IGF. Surreal reality, tons of fascinating characters in every little corner of the world, humor that ranges from subtle and intelligent to downright silly against a plot with incredibly serious stakes, and an overall message of how important it is to care about other people...

heady vale
#

Right??? It was on my friends thanksgiving playlist and i went

#

"....wait"

wispy quail
#

hm

#

question

#

is DRIVETRAIN someone that the players could ever meet, even over a secure omninet connection, or are they strictly a GM-facing character?

maiden ferry
#

I've always wondered if they're on hells gate or the icebreaker, or some random hab someplace

thorn hinge
# wispy quail is DRIVETRAIN someone that the players could ever meet, even over a secure omnin...

At current I think it's left up to the GM to create that content for players if they wish.

In my game, Kraken talked with DT online and got an invite to Drivetrain's Sigdiver Hangout. The first thing they saw was the motd with ||big love to S1GN4L wherever you are right now, miss ya buddy --ADMIN||

||"oh, i think i killed that guy. awkward.||

The big secret is ||They didn't kill S1GN4L. He got away. Something else got him later...||

wispy quail
#

fair enough

maiden ferry
#

oh wait I forgot that Calamity is a pc in your game Ada. What would her response be to a former bleach boy, similar in a LOT of ways to megacorroder, that likes working on his mech? I figure she'd take him under her wing in an awkward friendship mentor thing but if you think the dynamic might be different?

thorn hinge
#

I love it and it's very appropriate ||and if I wasn't hiding these sorts of stories from the player as a part of prepping for Vorshungsmotor in ||chapter 4 ||I would have sent them screencaps of your posts about it already. I might include this, in fact!||

Calamity in my game use a downtime action to Get Organized and set up a groups specifically to give former pirates resources and support to go straight ||mostly after seeing the desperate hell hounds working for steele in||chapter 3|| and realizing that they're right. What are they supposed to do, when nobody would give them a chance or a normal job?||

Hell, she basically already did this, but with another hell hound; In their first fight, the Veteran Cataphract in Snack Run, callsign Stomp, was the one that talked to the party and set the engagement terms. After chapter 1 when ||andros dies|| he bailed on the hounds and went solo. She met up with him and the two came up with the idea for an org together (and some help from Jerry and Mistress Elske).

maiden ferry
#

I love it when stuff like that lines up

digital raven
#

we somehow ended up with 2-3 of 4 ex-pirate PCs (Karl would argue he was a contractor and thus technically not a pirate) so Calamity has become my "I'm not your mother but I am responsible for you so be good or I'm giving you to Striga" NPC.

maiden ferry
#

worked out a nifty way to visualize the station stability clock ||- the inner cult influence clock gets blocked out by station stability||

SPOILER_image.png
rough bluff
#

Do people actually use square grid over hex? Asking for a map-making friend? 🙂

quaint pebble
#

lots of people do

rough bluff
#

Cool. It's more work, so I wanted to make sure I wasn't wasting effort.

fast parrot
#

hexes are objectively more lancery though

rough bluff
#

I just wanted to make sure I wasn't going to add 5-10 hours to a space map for no reason. The ones where everything is set by the fundamental geography, like the city maps in Solstice Rain would be quicker, but some of the maps in this you want to make sure your Cover pieces all fit perfectly in the the grid, so things will shift a little if you want it to look perfect (on top of redrawing all the zones, which might be the lesser task...I've set my zone art style so it's looks cooler in hex, but it's easier to redraw in square to save me work).

rough bluff
tight pier
#

hexes are more "Lancery" and some people consider them the Absolute Rule In How You Must Play Lancer (even though it's not), but are more work on the GM side. in exchange you can move in 6 "straight" directions instead of 4 and dont have to deal with weird diagonals

squares are simpler, easier to run, simpler to plan turns with, simpler and easier to make maps with, easier to set up, and dont require any fucky compatibility shenanigans to get up & running, and they're what lancer was designed around (afaik?), with the main snag being the fact that diagonals are a bit.... weird

#

there's also Gridless... which is easy to set up, lets you do some cool stuff with maps and movement, but causes issues and some weird questions regarding movement in the game... but it DOES mean you get to run Size 1/2 units as actually being half size :)))))

#

all this really just to say that squares make everything so fucking EASY its not even funny - no fucking around with compatibility modules and weird patterns in map making software, just Holy Shit Wow It Works

#

and the ONLY disadvantage to making your life so much simpler is "haha diagonals sure are weird huh" and thats about it

rough bluff
#

BTW, you don't have to convince me of anything. I'm a long-time map maker. I know the difficulty issues. 🙂 I just wanted to make sure some of my audience actually used squares before doing both.

tight pier
#

aaah yeah

pliant ibex
#

For sure people use squares, the one official module to come with maps (at least afaik) has both hex and square grid versions, and I think even endorses using square grids for ease/for things matching up well

tight pier
#

most lancer gamers i regularly interact with use hex grid but square is used enough that official modules build for it and reccommend playing that way

pliant ibex
#

Well, frankly, for a lot of us, it is that battletech/mechwarrior type of jam that got us into here in the first place

rough bluff
#

I prefer hex, but I came from battletech, mech-combat wise. If I played on squares I'd want diagnols to work like 3.5.

rough bluff
#

This is funny. So I was asking about the square grid because I've been dialing in all my style settings for battle maps after doing that system map. It takes a lot more tweaking than you might expect if you don't want it to look kinda obviously computer generated. Anyway, when I export this as a png, it's like 65 meg. In jpg...2.5. That's a lot of heavy lifting that PNG format is doing. 🙂 I SUSPECT all the anti-aliasing for the hex grid is imbedded in the PNG metadata. I haven't done A/B testing to check. I just think that's funny. The system map was a lot more complex and it was under 6.

Combat_1--Spitting_Distance.JPG
austere prism
maiden ferry
#

Im sorry to necroping, but where on earth did you find such a magnificent token? I've been searching the pins and retrograde and cant find it. Thanks!

rough bluff
austere prism
maiden ferry
#

I dont think it is - its pixelart depicting that illustration, sure, but its pixelart, and its not found in the book

austere prism
maiden ferry
austere prism
#

But that looks like a retrograde kitbash

rough bluff
austere prism
#

Well, thing is, PNG doesn't have layers, right. It's literally just a bitmap run through zip compression.

rough bluff
#

Yeah, I know.

#

(At least the layer part, I haven't examined the white papers or anything.)

shell bison
vocal relic
#

re: hex over square
hexes is more lancery cuz in the end its more sci-fi and it allows for easy movement (no dealing with diagonals and stuff)

pliant ibex
#

I feel like this association is kind of coming backwards

#

We think hexes are better for mech games because of aforementioned sources, therefore we want to play Lancer on hexes

quaint pebble
#

I simply use hexes for the vibe despite them making my job of creating maps less convenient

dire cloud
#

I like hexes because squares give me D&D 3.5 flashbacks ("How many diagonals was that? Every other one counts as 2.")

fast parrot
#

I like hexes more. They just vibe better. Could be mechanically worse, I do not know!

rough bluff
#

I looked it up last night. I couldn't find any stated recommendation in any book, unless its one I don't own yet or I just couldn't see it. They usually mention hexes before grid, unless what they are saying would be disingenuous in that direction, like saying it's easier to grab grid or hex paper, or it's easier to put things down on a grid or on hexes. That said, I love a good square grid, and my square grid maps ROCK. I have these great 3-D grid effect that give a little beveled look to the map that I love and those don't translate to hex, despite me spending like four or five hours trying to reproduce them a week or so ago for Lancer. 🙂 But I once wrote Hero Game system licensed adventures, so I'm used to throwing down a hex grid too, or playing Silent Death or it's way crunchier predecessor on hexes so I have a love for hexes. And of course battletech.

vocal relic
#

the reason lancer has hexes is because it just looks sci-fi, lancer's playtests were all originally in squares

#

just a lil trivia

#

in the end it doesn't matter, it's up to u as a gm and no player is gonna mind it and also yeah zemyla is right, squares will just remind peeps of other tabletop games!

rough bluff
#

Yeah, if my players wanted squares, I'd have no problem with that, I'd just do 3.5 diagnols.

#

Probably

round fjord
#

the story I've heard is this
Lancer was first played on squares, but could honestly allow hexes
the reason we get hexes in the core book is because of them needing weird examles like size 2 etc.
but if you read the text of things like bursts, they still apply equally to squares.

#

as far as diagonal, I don't get why folks are like "diagonals are a problem" as lancer has 4e design in it's dna and 4e D&D didn't do weird measurements for squares

rough bluff
#

I agree with you. I think you're 100% spot on there. That's why I realized the moment I wrote that last one I might give up on that thought right away and wrote "Probably" as an afterthought. It would all depend if it was easy to handle in Foundry. If it wasn't, I wouldn't bother, I don't think.

#

When I first told my group about Lancer I said, "I think I found a more streamlined Battletech that we might like, and it has Foundry support." Then I did a little research on enemy creation and came back to them the next week and said, "Correction, this isn't streamlined Battletech, this is 4e combat with mechs..."

#

Since most of my group either LOVES 4e combat or is perfectly fine with it, that actually got a better response than the first pitch. Even those who weren't the biggest fans of 4e thought it was a pretty good tactical combat game.

round fjord
#

On the topic of making diagonals cost more though? Thankfully I've been an armored core fan since 1 on ps1. And it is truth you always go faster bunny hopping diagonally!

rough bluff
#

Table-Top wise? Same with blood bowl.

thorn hinge
#

Relatedly, my game just switched from hexes to squares for a gimmick in one fight (also switching from isometric w/ retrograde tokens over to 2d topdown with handmade low-res tokens). Since we're in foundry, hex vs. square made almost no real difference. The engine's rulers took care of everything. There was a little bit of confusion with blast sizes and line-of-sight but it worked out fine.

Images are spoilers for chapter 4's enemies, both narratively and mechanically. All my assets are available in the spreadsheet in the pins.

SPOILER_image.png SPOILER_signalis-mine-tileset.png SPOILER_2d-tokens.png SPOILER_sketch-1699812557348.png SPOILER_sketch-1700478605270.png SPOILER_signalis-mines.png SPOILER_signalis-2d.png
rough bluff
#

That's very awesome.

#

Hey, related note, I felt it was a slam dunk to post the system map here, since that's player-facing, but if I want feedback on the Act 1 combat maps, is this the best place or the Feedback forum under gm-corner? It would be a slam dunk as well, but I saw someone over there explain once that all Act 1 discussion happens here these days and that forum is mainly for Act 2 on. Not sure if that included battle map feedback.

heady topaz
rough bluff
#

Cool beans.

heady topaz
#

yep

#

you got it

#

nice

#

how'd you make this map?

rough bluff
#

I made it in Campaign Cartographer 3+ with the cosmographer add on (although I don't know if I used any cosmographer features on this one.) The background is just a photograph. The zones are all hand drawn and it has various levels of transparency on the different sheets and effects, glow on the text, etc. The symbol elements on this one are almost all symbols I couldn't find a legitimate source for, so I had to create them with AI. I don't like using AI to take money from artists, but since I'm the artist on this one and I bought everything I was allowed to buy, it passed my ethical filter.

wispy quail
#

i'm doin a big think about the Thief

#

if the players seem absolutely confident that he isn't who he says he is, would he come up with a lie as to some greater power he's working for, or would he just stick to his story to the end?

#

because obviously he's not going to say that he works for Union

#

but he could, theoretically, lie that he's secretly an agent for some other corprostate besides SSC, if the players don't buy that he's doing this for... whatever altruistic reasons he claims to have

#

i've also been musing over the idea of the player losing to the Thief on purpose

#

because the loss consequence to that fight is "the Thief survives and does their transmission, the Blacksmith is annoyed enough to withdraw support but not actually mad"

#

so if the players regret ever taking the mission after having that talk with the Thief, it's possible they could try and throw the fight

#

there's also the funniest possible player response to that fight

#

which is to kill the Thief and then steal the data and try to make the transmission yourself

wispy quail
#

i plan on running IGF for an actual play podcast I'm on once the current season is over (let me know if that would be bad form), and one of my ideas was to have the Crone address the podcast audience directly

#

specifically, one of my ideas was to have her tell the podcast audience to skip to the time code in the podcast description if they didn't want to deal with all the meta stuff

frail kayak
#

(speaking only for myself) I'd be really interested in listening to an AP of this

rough bluff
thorn hinge
#

glances nervously at the quarter terabyte of unedited footage recording the entirety of her 28 sessions so far... uh yeah an AP would be cool

rough bluff
wispy quail
#

right now we're doing a season of HEX run by a different GM but i've already volunteered to run a Lancer game for S2

tame tide
#

Ayo, so I'm likely going to end up running IGF, and I was looking through. Despite being far down the line... I've been looking at the spicier comments and I'm a tad confused about ||sunbird 1, mostly the support struct... Essentially is anything hit even the ground deleted by the strut. So at the end of round however when the strut has reached the far side of the map should there be any cover left on the map?||

#

Or even floor to stand on... Should there even be map?

austere prism
#

there should still be a map

wispy quail
#

iirc ||your friend the support strut is only three spaces big, so it just crushes everything in its path and leaves the rest of the map alone||

#

||it will leave a three-tile-wide path of devastation and a notable lack of cover in its wake||

austere prism
#

yeah, ||the strut deletes all the cover||

tame tide
#

||Oh I read a vertical line as it's a 3 wide line that takes up the entire height of the map. Not vertical as in it extends from Z axis||

wispy quail
#

||by vertical it means y axis, i think||

#

||since most maps are two dimensional||

#

||i'm pretty sure the way you're meant to interpret it is as a vertical line that's three tiles tall||

tame tide
#

Still trying to comprehend it with my simple brain

austere prism
#

think of it like this

#

the battlefield is a piece of paper

#

this piece of paper is intersecting a wheel. each turn, the wheel turns such that one of its spokes intersects with the paper.

#

everything caught in the spoke's path is pushed aside or annihilated

#

it's like a giant blade that cuts through the battlefield

wispy quail
#

i think that's maybe even still overcomplicated

#

put a pencil flat on the table point up and move it right at the start of every turn

#

though it's not actually a very large pencil

austere prism
#

wait

tame tide
#

And as it's 3 spaces wide and moves 3 spaces to the right surely there'll be no spaces where the ||strut doesn't touch, so the I can only imagine the entire map getting crunched||

#

If combat lasts that long of course

#

Me struggling and asking questions about a combat that is easily over a month off before I actually run it

austere prism
#

yes

#

also, overpreparing is normal

#

(which reminds me that I'm behind and need to catch up, I need to prep all of mission 3 and I haven't done any of it)

quaint pebble
#

idk what other people did but there's no large functional difference between "no cover" or "no map" so by the end of our combat it basically was just people floating in a void

austere prism
#

my players discovered the Sunbird 1 speedrun strat ||(hacking it to death)||, so we never got through the whole map

wispy quail
#

in the 2d, XY plane

#

it's simply not large enough to destroy the entire map

#

at least. if i'm not COMPLETELY misunderstanding it

#

wait

#

i think i might be?

#

heck

austere prism
#

it is

wispy quail
#

i might be stupid

#

i've been interpreting "three spaces wide" as "three spaces tall" because it says that the line is vertical and then doesn't specify a height/length

austere prism
#

you draw a line 3 hexes wide and parallel to one map axis. Every round, that line moves three hexes. Eventually, every hex of the map will be hit.

wispy quail
#

the sitrep doesn't actually say that the line spans the entire height of the battlefield

#

but like. i guess you just gotta assume?

tame tide
#

Yeah

regal forum
#

I ran it with the strut spanning the height of the field and it was fine. It was a large map and would have taken 10 rounds to get to the far side but we finished in 6 I believe. I thought it was a cool gimmick to have an ever shrinking area for cover. The islands didn't matter too much since it's 0g and everyone had evas.

frail kayak
austere prism
wispy quail
#

hmmmmm. wondering if the cool NPC side mission reward idea I had would actually work out in practice

#

that being, if they successfully complete a sidequest for my GM OC insert, she rewards them with challenge coins featuring their likeness and the insignia of the mercenary company she used to run with

#

on the one hand i think that's a neat little trinket, on the other i'm struggling to think of any denizens of Calliope who would actually care

rough bluff
#

So I really liked @fallen geyser's advice in the adventure to name the enemy with callsigns, but still somehow make sure the player's mechanically know how each mech is built. But I didn't want that to be cumbersome. So I found the portrait box module and made a quick bit of portrait art for each mech so if they mouse over it, it shows a "passive scan" of the mech in the top right of the foundry screen. Basically all the info I would normally tell them, the NPC class and options I'd selected. Once I made the template, it takes me about a minute to make a new portrait:

image.png
#

Seeing it on this monitor, the red might be too dark. I'm off to bed now, I'll think about that tomorrow.

wispy quail
#

you don't have to tell the players what optionals the enemy has, if you don't want to

#

technically all they get without a scan is what template(s) it is, iirc

vocal relic
#

That's really neat

#

My only concern is the information overload whenever players put their cursor on an npc, but that's iy

shell bison
#

I tend to lean on the name and then slap on parenthesis make the name and templates known.

For example:
Padre (E.sentinel)
The e being elite
The sp as spacer
U as on ultra, etc. etc.

digital raven
#

Anyone use a map for Send In The Clowns that they really liked? I'm still trying to figure out how to fit in all of the interactables in an interesting way.

thorn hinge
quaint pebble
frail kayak
#

(it can be found in the pins in this channel)

rough bluff
#

Also, the screenshot doesn't really show this, but that's pinned to the top right corner, so the screen isn't quite as cluttered as that looks, even with both, unless your target also just happens to also be at the top right corner of your screen.

vocal relic
#

Oh, that's weird that it doesn't show for players? My players can see the tool tip just fine. Did you use a setup that was pre-made per chance?

rough bluff
#

Yeah, I did, but yours can see info they don't have rights to access?

vocal relic
#

The configuration I have shows templates and class to the players

#

Everything else is hidden

rough bluff
#

I didn't find that config when I looked. I actually remember having trouble more than most modules. That and my HP module where I can easily apply damage (which I never got working). And the bar brawl macro, which my buddy insists works on PCs and Ultras on his machine, but on mine just sets all characters the same no matter what their stat-block.

#

Turn it down if you had it handy. I don't know how to share one, though. 🙂

#

Oh, there's an export. Want to export your settings?

maiden ferry
#

Considering adding to my custom Event Horizon combat, ||remove all the enemies that arent the ultra and add a 1 layer eidolon with gaze. Combined with the crazy map layout, it makes line of sight even stranger and more important.||

#

||If the players destroy the layer first (which lets be honest, is likely), they reach triple-point’s casket during the fight||

shell bison
#

Currently working on the cards I need for Chapter 3,
Elkse
Black Smith
Canaan Zhou
Maybe one for personal favorite side characters for Ana and Clip

Elske_Card.png
maiden ferry
#

I did not headcanon the knight’s ships as looking treasure-planetey, I do now

shell bison
#

I mean, Elske is mad extra right? It makes sense she would.

#

Just trying to make sure it's legible and all, any critiques would be helpful since I love to make these for the core NPCs and moments 🙏

dire cloud
#

It may just be me, but it looks like she's about to star in a Don Bluth movie.

dense urchin
#

dark text on a dark background is hard to read imo

shell bison
#

Fair point, was trying to copy her hair color deviation from black to blue. Also, Thank you Elske for making blue hair a canon color

wispy quail
#

oh my god

#

Mistress Elske has blue hair and pronouns

shell bison
#

Not sure if to go for a hot pink on her quote or the red

image.png image.png
dense urchin
#

big fan of the pink

wild flame
#

Pink's good

dense crescent
#

Not sure how well the quote works without the context of "rumored to be in secret relationships with just about every major figure in Calliope", unless you'll just say that via voice

dense urchin
#

imo it works well to show her gossipy nature even without the context

rough bluff
#

Boy, that mouseover scan graphic went over like gangbuster last night. I have three players, one couldn't stop raving about it all night. The other is planning on starting a Lancer campaign when I hand off our Saturday campaign to him after my current adventure, and I had to promise to send him all the necessary instructions and files after the session. The third didn't say anything, but he doesn't speak much during games, so I wasn't terribly surprised. 🙂

#

And to @wispy quail from the other night (you posted after I went to bed)...yeah, I know they only call out telling the player class and templates. I threw in the systems as an RP thing. We have a long history in our group, pre-lancer, of talking about variants, "You see a Hunchback on your sensors, and you're pretty sure its the medium laser variant." So I have the systems on there without descriptions. They have to scan to get more details, but they are conversational queues. "Those assaults with Rank Discipline are moving like they have extra squad unit training." "That Bastion looks extra durable." "That Ronin has odd launchers on its back." That sort of thing. They'll figure out what they do over time, but I've heard from veteran players that most players stop scanning after a time anyway because they learn the NPC statblocks and options so well. I don't mind my players feeling smart early.

rough bluff
#

@wispy quail Thanks for looking out for me, though. I appreciate input on this stuff. I've only been running lancer for a few months so I still value the input of more experienced heads, and if you think my reasoning above is flawed, let me know. I'm coming at this with experience from lots of other games, but it doesn't always translate exactly. 🙂

shell bison
shell bison
#

Been punching through it, hope this looks better with some CRT line effects

Elske_Card_copy.png
rough bluff
#

So I finished the a pass on my ||staged map|| for|| Spitting Distance||. While the|| static map|| is meant if a basic version of the combat (especially if you're teaching new players and don't want to introduce too much complexity), this one introduces a more ||dynamically changing battlefield.|| Also, holy crap, did this take a lot more work. 🙂

rough bluff
#

Obviously, this was inspired by the tactical description @fallen geyser provided. If you want to see all 8 rounds, check the entry for my google drive in the pin. I'll do something similar for the second combat map. After I finish gridless and square grid versions, of course.

rough bluff
#

To the cartography-challenged: Feel free to put in requests for In Golden Flame maps to me directly, if you would find that useful. I just checked, and only Ada has Chapter 4 maps, for instance (so if you don't play isometrically, they aren't that helpful to you), and I know there are people much farther along than me. I'm prepping at least a year ahead of myself right now, so I have no need to do the battle maps in order. If you need a map, and you would prefer to see what mine look like before you do your own, feel free to make a request and I'll work out of order. I'll probably need the map for myself eventually. Just be aware I'll probably need about a two week queue to be safe.

#

I might have to ask you some questions to make sure I have all the details straight. 🙂

quaint narwhal
#

I totally would love to see a non-isometric map for Send in the Clowns

rough bluff
#

Okay, I'll look at it on my lunch break and DM you if I have questions. Actually, I'll DM you right now.

dim pelican
#

I'd also love to see Send in the Clowns (and Killer Sound)!

fast parrot
#

bean man gets deleted in a single shot

heady topaz
#

holy fuck

#

RIP Mr. Bean

dim pelican
#

I also just had the capella fight. My party started at ll2 and I wanted more challenge so I buffed him up to an Ultra... he was critically hit 3 times by the melee PC, overheated and rolled 1 on the overheat check twice = exposed and then crit again lol. All in all the fight lasted 3 rounds with him only getting one hit off. 😂 Andros seems to be getting clobbered lately.

rough bluff
quaint pebble
heady topaz
dim pelican
heady topaz
#

same here

#

ur maps rock

fallow widget
rough bluff
#

How fast do you need it, right now I'm looking to produce Send in the Clown and Killer Sound over the next month.

thorn hinge
#

Just had this come up in my youtube recs, instantly joined my icebreake borealis playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGsooO-r4sk

YouTube
Shafeeq Khan
Visit Venus - Music For Space Tourism Vol. 1 (Full Album)

1 Brooklyn Sky Port (Departure) 0:00
2 First Man On The Moog 12:42
3 One Step Beyond 19:21
4 Stellarphobia 25:39
5 Shaft In Space 33:31
6 Zoom 42:27
7 Venus Beach Resort 48:58
8 One Passenger Lost 54:51
9 Orbital Workshop 2 1:02:05
10 Harlem Overdrive 1:08:27
11 Home 1:13:40

▶ Play video
fast parrot
# heady topaz RIP Mr. Bean

||turns out he was supposed to have seige shielding but alas, he got exposed and ate a roland bolt thrower shot ||

SPOILER_SPOILER_image.png
heady topaz
#

fuckign RIP

wild flame
#

Lmao

My groups Andros got Wide Area Code Pulsed twice and then cut in half by a TCB. Andros has been having a rough few timelines.

heady topaz
#

As he should

wild flame
#

bastard deserves it

fast parrot
#

he only managed to inflict like ...3 burn to the swallowtail and 9 burn to the Bunyan pilot

dim pelican
#

Yep - Andros only got about 3 burn off before the Balor got a hold of him and tore him to pieces. (As an Ultra! Granted the PCs were rolling incredibly well and he rolled absolute crap...) I'll have to step next chapter's challenge up at least a little bit 🤔

#

It's funny how across all of our different timelines we've all had very similar outcomes for this man 😂 Karma must be real. He truly deserves it.

fast parrot
#

the manticore , swallowtail and my stortbort all had cp

#

we all popped cp

#

the manticore deleted the other enemies, the swallowtail shredded em and took a chunk outta em. The everest sniped him, then we bolt throwered the life outta him

dim pelican
#

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one starting IGF at LL2+. How has challenge felt for your group so far? I know ch1 (and indeed most of Act 1) is largely meant to introduce new Lancers to the game so it's on the low-side of difficulty.

quaint pebble
#

My players breezed past chapter 1 at LL0 despite not playing the game before but I put them through the grinder on Anti-Capital

thorn hinge
#

||Andros|| managed to get Calamity Havok up to fifteen burn, which remains the record high score in my campaign, though Pear tied that when double-teamed by scourers in ||Send in the clowns||

#

Now Calamity's player is running the game and I'm egging them on to try and beat my high score.

dim pelican
#

Damn! you really managed to turn up the heat 🔥 I definitely wanted to make him intimidating and scary but he kinda just fell flat on his face 😂 even still, the whole thing was rather cathartic for my PCs, one of which had a bit of personal beef with him.

quaint pebble
#

I've dropped my version of Send in the Clowns in the shared folder, as I know some people were waiting for it
obviously not running it myself until Sunday and I haven't done an Extraction before so time will tell how functional it is, looks like this for me in foundry

I have a lot of flyers (+ one with mag clamps), the elevation might be more of a problem for other people's groups but you can also just label everything differently 😅

SPOILER_image.png
dim pelican
#

Oh that's phenomenal! It'll be perfect 👍 🤡

wild flame
#

oh that looks perfect

#

also man im so glad you're like 2 beats ahead of me

#

means i don't gotta make maps

fast parrot
quaint pebble
# wild flame means i don't gotta make maps

I am glad other people are getting some use out of them, I haven't had the experience of running a module at the same time as other people before so it's a fun collaboration

shell bison
#

Line up of potential opponents that one of my players can pick from joining the league tonight

image.png
#

Cotton Candy (Swallowtail Vtuber streamer)
CHOP SHOP (HA's strongest construction worker And Saladin Pilot)
Buddy ( "Goblin" :) )
BUSTA BLADER (LET IT RIP METALMARK)
GAIA (Least Chill Disgraced Karrakin Barbarossa)
CLE4N SW33P (Hacker Man Chomo)
DJ KOBO, YOU KNOW? (Music blasting Monarch)
Gorillaz Class NHP (Angery Melee Caliban)
SINISTER (Totally not an Ekidu Tokugawa)

thorn hinge
fast parrot
#

With ours, Andros didn't specifically target anyone but when given two equally viable targets he targeted our sniper Webbe ...mainly due to the round 1 amr shot to the dome

shell bison
#

Session went great.

Hell Fire League match went well. Atlas pilot took down a Karrakin kiddie Barbarossa pilot by prying the head of the mech apart with the blades and caused the Apoc rail to fire into the air in a damn fine laser light show that got her a LOT of followers.

Vol player got a deal now with Gabriel for better humanitarian aid for the people that got displaced from the sunbird fight.

Catboy got some more influencer fans from winning a shotting competition.

and former Union detective got some underground fighting to destress from getting wrecked in the sunbird fight.

They are finally home back to hell's gate and ready to prepare for Switch interview and Chapter 3 :)

image.png
rough bluff
#

Okay, so ||Killer Sound|| is interesting because we don't have a great grasp of exactly WHERE it takes place in relation to everything around it. We know it's close enough to the ||rave|| in the ||Amphitheater|| that people there can ||mistake the fight for part of the show.|| But is also needs to be a place where t||he Faith would hide the macguffin,|| so it needs to serve dual purpose as a ||hiding place that can be mistaken as a plainly viewed extension of the stage.|| I went with the ||scaffolding and catwalks above the stage and mosh pit, where the lights hang. Assuming that the rest of the mech fighting is happening in a elevated area, if the characters suddenly pop into view above the stage, that would seem like just more of the same, and yet that seems like a securable position that's difficult to access. They even have it set to be airlifted away.||So, the zones aren't marked yet... that can take me more hours than I have before I pass out. ||PC deployment is the platform at the bottom of the map, down the short stairs on either side. Ingress is at the top of the map down stairs on either side. The Objectives are the platforms with the crates. Enemy deployment in the middle. If someone wants to try to walk the girders, the light colored beams, I was going to make them difficult terrain. The square struts currently glowing faintly white are cover, suspending this entire thing from scaffolding above, since there's audience below. The blurry round bit kinda in the center seen through the gaps in the flooring is right about the middle of the mosh pit. The stage itself up by the ingress zone, a brownish blur.||

austere prism
#

First pass at setting up Surprise, Surprise

SPOILER_image.png
fallow widget
#

You are a miracle worker.
I "need" it by Monday but this is more than good enough!

frail kayak
#

So much good stuff being posted lately!

maiden ferry
#

Dude I’m so happy for the maps - mapping is easily my least favorite part of dming

fallen geyser
#

Okay, genuine question: has anyone's playgroup pissed off the Blacksmith?

shell bison
#

I think there is potential that mine can but they are not at Chapter 3 just yet

rough bluff
#

(My favorite bit on that map is the 5 mph posting.)

wispy quail
#

i think in the current version there's less of a reason for the group to side with the thief over the blacksmith - which is fair!

#

also, re: the podcast actual play of IGF that I was planning - one of the cast members of the current season is also a member of another podcast network, and they had a tabletop module review and discussion show that stalled out and went nowhere after a season and a half

#

so we're currently working on a pitch to see if we can kinda just. slap the two shows together and host it on their network

#

and if we do, the first season of that would be me running IGF

maiden ferry
dim pelican
#

Phenomenal!

grave wave
#

Minor bug report, the Hyperkinetic Gauntlet and Leech Hunter's Blade don't seem to actually be exotic, we think. (within the LCP, we mean)

rough bluff
#

@fallow widget tell me if you need square or no grid instead.

#

Thanks to @dim pelican for fight logistics/map location brainstorming collaboration on this one.

frail kayak
# fallen geyser Okay, genuine question: has anyone's playgroup pissed off the Blacksmith?

Mine did, they said they'd look into this thief business, but specifically didn't promise to kill him. Then they didn't kill him. "Smitty" wasn't happy, but him swearing eternal revenge felt undermotivated at the time since they didn't go back on their word. The players really liked The Blacksmith, so I later had Elske smooth things over somewhat. On reflection, he probably would still be pretty mad about the players' course of action, given how dangerous The Thief's information is to his position of leadership. I'm planning a thing in the ID chapter where Union demands Steele be treated according to wartime conventions, but The Blacksmith demands to kill him personally, and see what shakes out of that

wild flame
#

Looks good! What's the purple outline correspond to?

rough bluff
#

Difficult terrain. I’ll mark that!

#

Mech balance beams.

shell bison
#

Getting some more cards ready for Chapter 3.
Ana because personal favorite
And Zhou do to plot relevance.

Ana.png zhou_copy.png
#

Now to cook for the menacing energy for Capella

thorn hinge
#

Ahem

#

no yeah these cards are great

shell bison
thorn hinge
#

The girls in front of it actually.

#

The one on the left is a human version of the character in my profile pic

shell bison
#

OOOOOOH

#

I had no idea!

thorn hinge
#

...and the one on the right is the character in my work acount pfp. They're homestuck characters

shell bison
#

Neat :)

thorn hinge
#

I wrote lancer-homestuck crossover fanfic for a zine specifically about those two, I'm honor-bound to point them out :3

shell bison
#

you know what, I respect it

tight pier
#

also yeah homestuck references are ABUNDANT in the images and in igf in general

shell bison
#

I think I went a BIT overboard.
Only going to be scene if my players think they can take him in during that meeting.

# 
THE. FLOW. OF. FATE. 
AND. THE. CYCLE. 
DEMANDS. 
YOU. 
DO.
SO.```
fallen geyser
shell bison
#

This is is supposed to be him giving a warning

maiden ferry
#

is that if kantele is breached?

shell bison
#

You can use it however you feel fit.

oblique berry
# shell bison

i clicked by accident but holy shit does that fuck obscenely hard

heady topaz
#

Update on my IGF Campaign:

  • One of my players has almsot gotten the pigs he wanted, on the condition that they're not pigs. They're called Bone Boars and they like to ram things and leave dents in metal.
  • Another player is selling the subalterns he found on the Tachyon to people on the Icebreaker, unaware that I was going to have those go crazy after ||the firegate in Beat 10 goes haywire.|| Ah well, it'll cause some chaos. Also one of the Subalterns he's keeping has a Comp/Con he bought inside of it.
  • At Jerry's begruding request(read: they presured him into accepting he and shelly need help), the party found a non-milspec Noah-NHP that I now have to think of some fun stuff for.
wild flame
#

your party got jerry an intern

heady topaz
#

Yes, on the explicit note that Shelly doesn't find out, lest she maaayyy get upset and feel like Jerry is replacing her

#

Side note, what'd be the closest approx. that a Prometheus-NHP would be to an NHP in the mainline content, or should I just make a custom one? Completely unrelated to the Comp/Con being in the the walking timebomb of a Subaltern.

dim pelican
#

what'd be the closest approx. that a Prometheus-NHP would be to an NHP in the mainline content
I also found myself with this ^ question as my players learned of the Prometheus class NHP and immediately trying to dig up any info they could on the Omni net.

heady topaz
#

I'm thinking since it's a ||4Comm|| NHP, something HA related like a Lucifer or Agni.

dense urchin
#

||feather comes from probably way in the future from 5016, there could def be new NHPs that popped up then||

heady topaz
dense urchin
#

i think i see, spicy

#

||judging by the name, a lucifer-like effect might be a good start||

heady topaz
#

hell yeah

tight pier
#

my immediate thought for a system like that would be:

#

||```
PROMETHEUS-Class NHP
3 SP, Quick Action, AI

Activate this system as a quick action. When activated, clear all Heat and Burn affecting an allied character adjacent to you.

Next time you deal damage this turn, deal the amount of Heat and Burn you cleared as bonus damage.```||

#

(THIS IS NOT BALANCED)

heady topaz
#

yeah no if I've learned anything heat siphoning for powerups without taking heat yourself in the process is nutty.

#

I think i might have it start out as an NHP with no ability, then depending on who uses it, it will 'hatch' into a new form to suit the pilot, mimicking a current era NHP.

dense crescent
frail kayak
#

So, I messed up the briefing for (all spoilers are for mission 2) ||Killer Sound||, and told the players ahead of time that they would be ||posing as the mech fight entertainment in the middle of a rave||, but this actually turned out great, because they got the opportunity to dress-up their mechs for the part.

SPOILER_disco_lineup_S2.png SPOILER_disco_lineup_S1_2.png
dire cloud
#

Ace (Derogatory) I love it.

frail kayak
#

The Gorgon's ||disco-name is "Do Not Stare Directly Into The Funk"||, and the Pegasus is explicitly using parts salvaged from ||Send In The Clowns (I used Cruye's sprites)||
Gherkin's sprite is a modified version of "Out of the Abyss" by LoopDeLoop on the retrograde chop shop

frail kayak
#

I just realised the alternate sprites are on the bottom in the first image and on the top in the second🤦

thorn hinge
# thorn hinge Chapter 4 spoilers, and a request for help from anybody interested in making som...

Just gonna bump this request once. I'm taking recordings from other IGF GMs (and IGF players if they're past chapter 4, and anybody else who doesn't mind the spoilers) to enhance a portion of my game. I got a lot of great submissions, and two people even recorded every line for me so I've got everything covered, but if anybody else wants in there's a few more lines that could be done. Attached are some examples of the lines from people after I got my filthy editing mitts on them.

I'll be using these recordings this friday.

||Also, for extra fun, I got my players to each record one line, in-character, about one of the other PCs. Which is slightly tipping my hand, but for creepy horror like this I find that sometimes giving them a teaser out of game can enhance the anxiety. Now they know there's going to be something with audio saying mean things, but they won't be prepared for the full scope, mwahaha||

Thanks to all who helped out, the lines went over great. editing this in here so anybody who sees this later knows the deadline has passed.

wild flame
#

Oh damn, I love the processing you did to my line

sounds pretty awesome

lunar panther
#

oh I would be absolutely happy to do this! i'll do every line as well

#

should I just DM you?

thorn hinge
#

yeah, that's preferred ❤️

tight pier
#

||"The thing about the Ultra Pyro is, it's immune to burn."||

SPOILER_250px-Protip.jpg
fallen geyser
tight pier
#

if i had to balance it - you take the heat and burn when you take the action

fallen geyser
#

The thing is that's so funny on a Genghis

#

"Okay, I take the heat, which I actually like doing, and I take the Burn, which I don't."

tight pier
#

i think that's fun

#

harrison armory frames in general (and lancaster) would love this

heady topaz
#

Hmm that might actually be a fun balance. The flame does not discriminate. It only BURNS.

fallen geyser
#

Except if you're a Genghis or a Lancaster, in which case it doesn't

heady topaz
#

The flame makes some allowance for certain frames, but only those ones. It still BURNS!

#

Ok now I'm imagining Prometheus clones talking like this

#

and that humors me

tight pier
#

oh, i should show this off here too:

||NPC class i homebrewed (thanks to all the boys in #homebrew-design for all the help balancing this happeh)

built to be a Faith of the One NPC class i can add to fights throughout the campaign, support that clears the heat off allies or heal them.

It wants to Skirmish then Quick Tech on its first turn, then Stabilize on the next to refresh its Sympathy Nexus and clear an ally's heat. Pairs well with Scourers & Pyros (try not to friendly fire!!!)||

SPOILER_image.png
heady topaz
tight pier
#

gonna run one in both ||Thermopylae|| and ||Send in the Clowns|| and see how it runs there

fallen geyser
#

Extremely ominous

tight pier
#

yeah i dont have any idea what to name it

heady topaz
#

Maybe something spoopy like "HEAR THE SCREAMING"

wild flame
#

Contagious Overhaul

fallen geyser
#

This is actually quite similar to the Glacial from Act 3

#

Covers some of the same territory, and some different

#

I like it

wispy quail
#

near the end of the book, ||Andros Capella's special stat sheet in Ch5|| doesn't have ||Pyro's Firebreak Shield||. huh.

#

i'm going to assume that's an intentional choice but up til now i literally had not noticed

dense crescent
#

tbh GMs also forget about it when running pyros like... half the time

wild flame
#

Real

thorn hinge
#

I think I never used it with ||Andros|| and only used it once in the last fight to have a pyro.

fast parrot
#

It cropped up in our fight but unfortunately we had a Manticore with beckoner who just swapped to pull ||Andros || outta the shield and into the stortebecker bolt thrower rangee

rough bluff
#

I think these are my finals of ||Killer Sound||. The normal 4 versions uploaded to my drive linked in the pin.

SPOILER_Combat--Killer_Sound.jpg SPOILER_Combat--Killer_Sound--Gridless.jpg
shell bison
rough bluff
dense urchin
quaint pebble
#

I've updated my resources folder to add Send in the Clowns and also moved everything into folders because it was getting a bit unwieldy 😅
This one I inundated with animated lights in Foundry though so the actual map image might be a little less impressive

dim pelican
thorn hinge
#

Not really I'm afraid. I had a weird eclectic mix of random songs from my own collection that seemed to fit and weren't too bombastic to distract. Daft Punk's songs often would bee to much, but Nightvision off Discovery hits just right. I also used some aphex twin ambient tracks, some random vaporwave I have collected, and this album in its entirety: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e0nzT9LEBA

YouTube
Rabbithole
slowerpace 音楽 - Lost in space 宇宙の冒険

Check out our web radio ➡️https://rabbithole.club
Spotify Playlist ▶️▶️ https://sptfy.com/MTDG 🐰🐰

Support the artist 🐰
BC: https://slowerpace.bandcamp.com/album/lost-in-space

Tracklist
00:00 - 01 pass to infinity
03:58 - 02 onboarding
08:08 - 03 rings of saturn
14:08 - 04 cosmic dust
20:38 - 05 eagle nebula
24:38 - 06 dance of the galaxies
30...

▶ Play video
#

@dense crescent used some electroswing in her remix game to great effect, so I can confirm that Caravan Palace slaps quite well on the Starstrip.

dim pelican
#

A bunch of vaporwave is definitely what I've been looking at! Thanks for the suggestions! Lol I realized as I started the session today that I had prepped the EDM music for ||killer sound|| before just general everyday ambience.

dense crescent
frail kayak
dense urchin
#

whenever i think of ||Killer Sound|| i just hear Hit the Floor from Katana Zero

wild flame
#

Thank you for selecting the music

heady topaz
#

Hotline Miami and Furi are also good for Killer Sound

thorn hinge
#

Payday 2 has some good ones there as well

maiden ferry
#

For combat music I like carpenter brut, overlaps with hotline miami and furi lol

heady topaz
thorn hinge
#

chapter 2: vaporwave for narrative, synthwave for combat.

tight pier
shell bison
#

The interview with switch went great :)

image.png
shell bison
#

Switches chat got a new emote

fast parrot
#

a slightly horrifying thought occured last session

#

cows are like... super expensive to have in calliope

#

so where does the milk for switch's milkshake come from?

heady topaz
#

Probably something like almond or some other nut

#

Or maybe goat milk

#

or some other animal

#

Hell, my player who wants to farm pigs instead got a surprise when I gave him Bone Boars, which are totally normal boars. Except they are covered in boney dermal plates, are much larger, and can dent solid metal by ramming it.

#

There's also another answer: It's Calliope, you're better off not asking.

frail kayak
#

(Mission 2 spoilers) ||If you run Getting Railroaded, don't deploy all the enemies near the edge of the map that they will be moved off of in the case that they aren't on the train. My players managed to destroy two of them and throw the rest of them off the train in the first round, leaving them in positions they were guaranteed to be moved off the map, through goblin/black witch/ ramming/ stunspam shenanigans||

SPOILER_image.png
quaint pebble
#

oops!

frail kayak
#

they still had a good time, at least 😆

fast parrot
quaint pebble
#

they're milking the vent crabs

fast parrot
thorn hinge
maiden ferry
#

What you haven’t had a crab shake before?

heady topaz
#

None of those words are in the bible.

#

which is a statement that I feel sums up Calliope pretty well

prime spoke
#

how often and through what avenues do yall distribute some of the exotic gear in Act 1

frail kayak
#

It seems like it's there for the "it seems like the players should get a thing for this" or for downtime action rewards. I keep forgetting, and then giving it out at the end of chapters

digital raven
#

Just got through Send in the Clowns and it went great. Threw in a couple of flourishes for the plot by saying that the Grand Aurora Amphitheater is the repurposed refracting chamber for the old mining laser and making Loki Valentine an insecure twink with a cat-man boyfriend (Dr. Nyan-Bose).

prime spoke
#

for the first mission, do PCs have time to simply rest between combats or do they have time for Full Repairs, reading it it sounds like full repairs for most except maybe between beat 5 and 6?

quaint pebble
#

PCs cannot fuill repair until they have completed the first mission for narrative reasons based on why they are doing the first mission

#

on a more structural level I wouldn't adjudicate when you can full repair based on "available amount of time", it's a balancing tool
explaining why they can't do it is something for your creative muscles 😅

prime spoke
#

gotcha, I had a feeling but was rereading the rest/repair on core book and wanted to make sure

quaint pebble
#

(the justification here is "until you have completed the first mission, Hell's Gate literally does not have the resources to spare for a Full Repair")

thorn hinge
wild flame
digital raven
thorn hinge
# prime spoke gotcha, I had a feeling but was rereading the rest/repair on core book and wante...

Generally IGF will specifically use the term "full repair" if there's time for one. By default, there's only a few in act 1.

Chapter / Mission 1: ||after returning from the Tachyon with the printer part||
Mission 2: ||One at the end of each investigation: One after the Mictlan arc (Thermopylae, Anti-Capital), one after Balor (Send in the Clowns. Killer Sound) and if the team didn't thwart their plans there, one more full repair after the Spreading Fire beat (Getting Railroaded, Powerhouse)||
Mission 3: ||One immediately after the opening fight Surprise, Surprise which the players should be informed about. That fight is there to show off and play with their new LL2 tools. Players might be able to secure supplies for a full repair during beat 17:Unforgiving Terrain, but they might not. It's up to them and what they choose to do during the Journey Preparations. If they don't get the supplies, they won't have a full repair until the end of the mission after leaving the Steele Dome.||
Mission 4: ||The only full repair in this chapter is at the end of the mission||
Mission 5: ||There is no full repair in mission five. Players will certainly have time for such before the start of Act 2.||

If your players ever need something like a full repair and can't get it, there's always Power at a Cost, but I recommend just offering some part of a full repair that way, rather than a full one. Reset your overcharge counter, gain two stress, that sort of thing. Full repairs don't just take a lot of time they might not have, they also require a lot of supplies and tools, if not a full printer.

heady topaz
#

https://youtube.com/shorts/ILdPTulX0bg?si=B8W68WG86Xrm-HbT y'know of all the bloody places I'd expect to see a coment from Vex, this was not one of them.

YouTube
House of Memes
Imagine how he should clear the syrup from the room🤦🏻‍♀️ #tiktok #s...

Tags:
tiktok , funny tiktok , new tiktok , tiktok music , tiktok music , tiktok compilation , tiktok meme , tiktok challenge , tiktok boys , tiktok girls , tik tok , tiktok 2019 , tiktok 2020 , tiktok cringe , tiktok dance , best tiktok compilation , tiktok trend , tiktok trending , ultimate tiktok , tiktoks , funny tik tok , new tik tok , tik t...

▶ Play video
#

I was just scrollin along the comments and BAM

#

I legit had to do a double take

heady topaz
#

Also bcz my players have been curbstomping my encounters, I've decided that adding a bit more to Beat 10-2 would help things out. ||I'm gonna have the Operator for the 5 Player opfor be inside the Sunbird, and gave the Elite hornet the heat missles to give it some more kick.|| Again, considering how hard my players have stomped previous fights, I feel justified in doing this.

dim pelican
#

My PCs have also been curbstomping everything - I might end up making similar additions to the opfor.

heady topaz
#

Considering that Capella was toyed around with and Signal got OTK'd, my players are more than competent to figure this out. And if they don't ah well, losing in 10-2 doesn't have too much backlash compared to the other fights.

dense crescent
tight pier
# prime spoke for the first mission, do PCs have time to simply rest between combats or do the...

if they have to have a full repair during mission 1, i personally would rule that, yes - they can, BUT, it costs Station Stability to do so, as they cannibalize important and hard-to-replace shit from the station itself to repair their mechs with. As a result, quality of life decreases throughout the station and people start getting mad at the people stealing essential shit from the station so that they can maintain their giant armored killing machines

#

the most important cost, though? jerry would be upset

tight pier
#

man, i've been playing Wasteland 3 and listening to its soundtrack has been giving me Thoughts and Ideas for my own campaign

austere prism
#

My group finished Killer Sound (and with it, the Borealis mission) yesterday - much fun was had, several structure hits happened, the crowd got HYPE, all good

#

afterwards, they wanted to take a closer look at this cult thing and so I dropped this on them
(voice acting by Jacob Burgess)

oblique berry
rough bluff
#

Is there anywhere it goes into more depth on why you can't print printer parts? The meta reasons are obvious, but I'm wondering if there's a lore answer anywhere.

tight pier
#

"It is not possible to print a printer."

rough bluff
lilac tartan
#

What color are Jerry's eyes?
Cannot recongize from official artworkspain

dense crescent
heady topaz
#

Is "Horrific Malaise" a color?

heady vale
#

Personally I plan tto describe them something like "Eyes that reflect back the color of his coffee"

heady topaz
#

Ran 10-1. ||The sniper fucking missed with 4 Acc. I also forgot the Priest Commander could give re-rolls, but ah well. The players steamrolled, then I ended the session with an introduction to SUNBIRD-1.||

SPOILER_image.png
fast parrot
heady topaz
#

@shell bison hey do you have like a folder of all those character cards you've made?

shell bison
#

Oh! I do. Which do you need

heady topaz
#

like, all the ones ya got

#

plz

shell bison
shrewd sorrel
#

Ran Surprise Surprise the other day, using Adas map. went really well, they absolutely smoked the encounter. || Veteran Witch for 1-turned, Elite Assassin got 2-turned. I also included a pit of death so my Tortuga could puppet someone into it but they never got a chance sadboiloaf ||

The two highlights were accidently giving Jerry a panic attack (it was very funny) and the lead up to the fight. || I had them make system checks flying thru and the higher rolls saw more ghost signals in the debris field. One of the signals they heard were radiation damaged fragments of old hell hounds comms; they heard the ghost of Andros in the hounds comms, long dead, and it freaked them all out.||

#

from one of my players (Sunny, the tort pilot)

SPOILER_Screenshot_20231214-083019.png