In Golden Flame

[rough bluff]

Nice guy. Told me how dangerous that was very politely. 🙂

I back up the whole server every 5am. I don't do incremental though, so if something big is happening I backup the last backup to make a snapshot of it.

[thorn hinge]

hah, I once had someone very politely point out to be that I had left a password on a server config that I pushed to github with a message that just said "so the password is ||[redacted lmao]|| huh?" with a link to the offending file.

I generally make a fresh incremental every game session, which is every two weeks. Random manual backups throughout depending on how much work I'm doing between sessions

[rough bluff]

I have one world that was 9 gigs after importing from Roll20. I have it down to 2 now, and still working on it, but I can't make TOO many backup versions.

[thorn hinge]

all too fair, I was feeling the sting and culled a few older versions... but then my partner jsut got a 12TB nas set up so we're more than able to handle some excess here.

[rough bluff]

HAH! I want one, let me know if you have an extra just lying around. 🙂

[tight pier]

if my laptop didn't literally cook itself i could use it as a server, but alas

[thorn hinge]

IGF ROMANCES THO

Rosé , my character in Cruye's All-GM game, has admitted to harboring a crush on Siren who seems open to the idea (but there's some not so insignificant social hurdles to cross before that can happen, long story). And her headmate Isidora might have revealed a little too much admiration for Elske's style in a report to Jerry, and will likely end up hitting on her (for strategic reasons, I swear, kinda long story too)

For my game, Pear is dating Rat, and has been hanging out with him and Switch, though there's nothing established between them yet other than being metamores. ||The chapter five reveal of switch's kidnapping is going to hurt though, especially because Pear fell off the wagon and was too far gone on a bender to meet. Rat had to go to Gabriel to find out that his other boyfriend is drunk again, and also missing||

Gabriel has been taking Rita on occasional dates, but it's been a very casual thing. When he's got time to visit they spend a little time together, but outside of that, it's nothing more. I think it's not even quite romance so much as giving her a night to relax now and then. They both know they couldn't do a proper relationship

Calamity.... If Rosé/Isi in Cruye's game is a 'long story', Calamity's a whole-ass five book series in a four book box set that's becoming even more obsolete as the sixth book is about to drop

Calamity has been getting very close to Siren, it's been a long slow burn that might get somewhere soon. And then Calamity ||found her long lost love on Boltzmann, and she died in her arms (Annabelle McKenzie did not survive my chapter 4). In her grief, she|| started pushing everybody away and said some very mean things to Siren. They're going to patch it up soon, but right now it's a mess of painful emotions. The other problem is, they'll make up just in time for it all to explode again. In chapter 5 || after Silence the Guns, Siren's going to send a message to Calamity saying "when this is all over let's go on that date". Unfortunately, there's a landmine waiting for that... When they get to the fire gate in Lift the Veil, Calamity's going to dive in and come out with a resurrected Annabelle / Avaline / girlfriend. ||

[rough bluff]

Has anyone actually TRIED to run ||Anti-Capital|| as a ||behemoth|| sitrep?

[thorn hinge]

Cruye did that in the All-GM game. We got our asses kicked. 4/5 mechs destroyed, and we only got it because two of those four melted down on the damn thing and took all its components at the same time. It was rough. You have more players though, it should be somewhat more manageable.

[rough bluff]

Did they add or remove enemies, or did they just swap the existing NPC for the Behemoth?

[thorn hinge]

I don't entirely remember, I think she dropped the escorting npcs and replaced sunbird-1. Hey, @dense crescent, if you got a second...

[dense crescent]

hi

behemoths are meant to be a solo fight always

[rough bluff]

Cool, I thought there was a thing in there about escorts, but that might be referring to Flight deck.

[dense crescent]

yeah i think it's just fluff

they're not thoroughly tested around using existing ultra optionals instead of only the behemoth optionals, but i kept wolfhound missile cause it was iconic and it seemed to work fine

[rough bluff]

That's a great idea.

[dense crescent]

don't double dip on shield node and ship-class projected shield

[rough bluff]

kk

Did you add a vehicle template?

[dense crescent]

no, I did give it the ultra hover thing too just for space movement

cause I thought the behemoth melee attack still made sense as just ramming stuff

[rough bluff]

Yeah, or as an burst of point defense.

[dim pelican]

I did, it went great! My PCs are quite ready for the challenge and it ended up being super flavorful as well (I also gave it the Wolfhound missile).

I went PD, missile, Shield gen, and hangar nodes.

[shell bison]

It's a long story is nice way to put it 🤣

We got some fun romances brewing in the game I play on and the one I gm for.

[thorn hinge]

=3

[shell bison]

Player game:
One of our players is the party firecracker red head. She's dating Loki. She brings the spice and he brings the stability.

Our former corpro SSC midnight member Elijah is "trying" to get with Elske of all people. We keep trying to wing man for him but they both are perpetual head empty.

Char, my character, got smitten the second Ana tomboyed her way into asking for a drink at a celebration party since the end of act 3.

Our other two players already have an NPC wife in with union, long story

And the party hacker man is trying to flirt with Char's daughter. She ships them.

[frail kayak]

In my game, Promise is dating Elkse, and seems interested in (Act 2)||Lyria, which will be interesting when I reveal who she actually is||
Gaslight instantly decided that Anthony Callahan was her goth boyfriend when he was introduced
Ace (Derogatory) and Howl are a potential ship. They'd make an absolute mech-gladiator power couple
Loki is constantly swooning over Bastille, but she doesn't seem to notice
(Mission 4) ||Gherkin and Shelly were an item in one of the Vorsehungsmotor flashbacks, surprising everyone, but this hasn't translated into reality||

[heady vale]

So, one of the things in my fairly modded in golden flames im doing, is giving each character a couple of "partnered npcs", npcs theyre most likely to interact with who will, try to interact with them a few times throughout game, and, there may be benefits if they keep doing so.

obviously, each player is gonna get 1 npc for existing in golden flame ones

1 for their related character arc

and, 1 for other backstory things that would, if acted upon, may grant each of them access to unique mech options based on their backstory

The streamer for example, is sponsored by Chandrasekhar & Herschel's energy drinks. Do well enough.... and they might give some exclusive access

[warped ibex]

does anyone have any good songs to use for howl's theme?

[maiden ferry]

the pokemon theme song metal remix instrumental. I'm only half kidding. Like yes funny meme but it works

[thorn hinge]

This is what Calamity is using as an arena entrance theme for my game, it goes hard as hell and would work great for Howl. Just. Not in my game lmao.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rt5sdsKlYU

[shell bison]

I did something vaguely similar for my players. Giving them an NPC that they can connect to and one that is going to know some backstory hints about them.

[shell bison]

Two songs come to ming for howl for me.

Red Vox: Atom Bomb
And
A stranger I remain from Metal gear rising.

[shell bison]

Man, I wish I knew about calamity before our IGF game started. We jumped in before 1.0 dropped so a lot of things came custom and filled in the blanks by the time act 1 was dropped proper.

I feel like Calamity would have been a neat foil to Charlotte's self improvement arc.

[thorn hinge]

well... you could have her found and brought into hell's gate at whatever point your game is in now :3

it'd be a bit weird but it could ||serve as a hint / forshadowing of the "starving sunlighters" even fromt eh start of mission 5||

[wild flame]

I used Beast In Black - Beast in Black as Howl's intro music

[shell bison]

I would love to Ada, but we are post solving a the....ahem...one thing in act 2

[past agate]

Final combat spoilers!
||So, uh... I know that this probably isn't how this is supposed to work, but I pictured the "primary blink actuator" being the entire head of the sunzi. I had to make my vision a reality.||

just duct taped the bastard on

[maiden ferry]

okay I did the same thing but you've done it far better

[past agate]

I might've seen your token, actually

that's what inspired me to base it off the ||dusk wing||

good stuff!

[maiden ferry]

||I dont think so I didn't post it. I took the default priest from the folder and slammed a sunzi on||

[wild flame]

Yeah, this fucks

[tight pier]

this is how i imagine any Striga encounter going down
(anime is ||azumanga daioh||)

[heady vale]

Yea

So its like, for
Golden Flame NPC -
Back story NPC -
Company Contact NPC -

[past agate]

I'd kill to play in an IGF game, not gonna lie

unfortunately, I have
-To run a couple of other games
-Already read the book (not a dealbreaker)
-Homework

[tight pier]

same

[willow cloak]

One day.

[thorn hinge]

I have read the book, helped write the book, run my own game, and yet I'm still playing in the all-gm game and it's a blast even knowing what's coming. One of my players has started running and we're still in the 4th downtime... and one of my other players is a player in that game. I love this campaign so much.

And even with all that I can still say I'd kill to have the time to be in another IGF game, or to run another!

[digital raven]

Also, like, your GM might just deviate from the book a bit

||because I can't keep things simple for myself, I pulled a hard turn when my players got really suspicious of Switch when they first turned up (I forgot to put them on screen until halfway through mission 2). Switch definitely isn't Baldur now but I know who is||

||also one of my player's has the "you know when someone is lying to you" ability and our last campaign was for UIB. So I'm rubbing my hands together for when they finally meet The Thief.||

[wispy quail]

yeah i would also love to play in an IGF game ahead of the one that I plan on running sometime this year (the timeframe is. uh. kind of a mess)

[shell bison]

I really want to run a second IGF campaign as I am having a boatload of a time running my current one and introducing the Vol as a much more involved portion to the story.

[heady vale]

Me AF

[past agate]

Yo Ada, the 2d lowres sprites are pretty neat, but I’m not quite sure where they’re used or why

For some trippy sequence? I saw you had PC mechs in there too

[thorn hinge]

||I used them for chapter 4's second fight, The Swarm. Every fight in my game was isometric hex grid, and The swarm is supposed to use the same battlefield as Pressure Point before it. I wanted to make things feel off, so I made my own sprites and tileset to recreate the whole map in top-down square grid. It threw my players for a moment but once the fight started it felt very natural... even as it creeped them out. I had too much fun with it though so I ended up making tokens for every enemy in the chapter except CAUSTIC||

[past agate]

Ooooooh

[pastel tiger]

Just finished Mission 1! Last part was definitely the most fun.

|| My players were spooked by the Tachyon, and were moving super careful while expecting to get jumped by some paracausal shit. The characters spent a good bit of time debating on if they wanted to even check the NHP Core - torn between characters who were curious and those that just wanted to get the power relay and get the fuck out of this haunted ass ship. Eventually they split off, one checking the core while the others grabbed the relay.

They fully expected something to get them once they grabbed the relay. Needless to say though, they did not expect Andros Capella to rock up. Combat was fun, as people panicked looking at burn amounts that breached double digits, and ended up with Andros shredded by an MG until he exploded.

The character that got the killing volley is also a follower of the Faith, so exploring the implications there will be fun. ||

I look forward to other chances to spook them and/or inflict ungodly amounts of burn in later missions

[willow cloak]

There are many! Probably not much in Mission 2, though.

[pastel tiger]

Yes but in mission 2 I get to inflict || the pure evil of an ultra rainmaker with Argus armor ||

[willow cloak]

I'm about to run that encounter on Monday >:)

The fun part is it doesn't matter(much) if the players lose Anti-Capital, so I get to be mean.

[meager vine]

in send in the clowns it says loki turns up to help at the start of the third turn - is that supposed to be third round or is it actually the third turn. Like at the third activation

[tight pier]

Round 3. It says in addition to an enemy reinforcement wave. which wouldn't make sense if it was three turns

[heady vale]

The parties @ jerry
https://www.tumblr.com/beardedmrbean/742345904743432192?source=share

[signal canyon]

Has anyone made a mini for ||Sunbird 1|| besides what's in the pinned resources folder?

[rough bluff]

Oh there was a great one, let me look.

#1059603134504255528 message

[signal canyon]

ty

oh, yeah, I actually got some players together to run this!

[rough bluff]

Woo woo!

[signal canyon]

we had a sesion zero last week and hopefully we can start character introductions next week

[rough bluff]

Last night and early today they were talking about how much people wanted a game and I was watching just in case one spontaneously formed. I have a hard time imagining it would fit in my schedule, but I could have watch them form a group kinda whistfully. 🙂

Awesome. I have it on my slate but its a couple years out, probably.

[past agate]

distinctly going to make the cult scourer in the 'dance as a quick action' sitrep a rap god

if I'm able to hold a rap battle midgame, I know I've peaked

veteran cataphract and commander hive

Elite Demolisher and Vet. Pirate Assault (mission 3)

The snatchers (assassin, witch, demo, archer, berserker)

Tomathan is he-blunt-him instead of he-slash-him

[tame tide]

Neo pronouns have ascended since last time I checked

(fuck/you) 😩

[pastel tiger]

I can't wait for Mission 4 where I can use a lot more || Signalis OST. I used some for the Tachyon segments, but they'll probably fit even more in the mission that takes place in a haunted sci-fi mine that's been overtaken and corrupted by a powerful force deep inside it. It almost fits too well lmao ||

[past agate]

I gotta play all of fucking signalis

Right now.

You are not going to stop me

Also: heard there are some NPCs from other modules that unfortunately can’t be used in IGF (unsure if there are any in act 1, though). A way to go about it could potentially just be a footnote mentioning the intent and suggested optionals?

[tame tide]

What do you mean NPCs from other modules that can't be used in IGF?

[rough bluff]

Things published in other books not in the license. If Vex includes them, she needs to either get permission to reprint them or she forces us to buy another book to use here adventure.

Like the templates in Dustgrave.

[tame tide]

Oh I'm dumb

I thought NPCs as in named characters not combat NPCs

[thorn hinge]

I mean, have you seen the map I used for ||Pressure Point||?

I used the Signalis OST extensively in this last chapter. It doesn't help that I added a whole subplot that's basically that games plot but with one of my PCs as Elster (SIGNALIS spoilers: ||Her Ariane was Annabelle Mckenzie, and also has white hair, and also has a similar tragic end but, y'know, not exactly that one; She succumed to injuries from being trapped in crystal shortly after they were reunited. The player, who had not played signalis at the time, uttered the phrase "remember your promise" unprompted during some of the weirdness in the mines before they got to Caustic. In her case, the promise was that she'd come back and they'd be together.|| )

[thorn hinge]

And you. Yes you do. All of you need to play it. Signalis is amazing and I can't recommend it enough. If you want some good mood inspo for ||chapter 4||, this stuff is perfect.

[rough bluff]

Wishlisted! My halloween queue is getting a little light, so thanks for that. 🙂

[tame tide]

Holy fuck that looks cool

[thorn hinge]

To tie it into IGF very obliquely, HEALTH recently released a new music video produced by rose-engine, the developers of Signalis, using scenes for the game and a few new assets. HEALTH being vaguely IGF related as they were in the musical inspiration section of Act 1 during an earlier draft:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN1qM4f8_J0

[past agate]

Lets fucking go

[maiden ferry]

@fallen geyser one of my players wants to know if the muse handle nsfwEntomology is an ||Egregorian ||joke

[tame tide]

HEALTH my beloved ❤️

[tame tide]

What's this text box from?

I was actually very tempted to use their stuff for killer sound...

[pliant ibex]

Earlier draft of act 1, from inspirations

[pastel tiger]

Amazing

[lunar panther]

athena bought me signalis yesterday and I will play it Eventually
(my schedule is very busy)

i don't think i'm legally allowed to tell you what not to do with your own OC

ana is your character and if we are soft canonicising ana dating siren then hell yeah

i will absolutely be using Clip Magazine but i need to practice the voice for that

[fallen geyser]

I mean ||Egregorians|| are not public knowledge in 5016u

[maiden ferry]

True, they were just wondering if that was something you had in mind since egs are hitting the galaxy in my game due to concurrent games

and thought it was really funny that he was replying to eg posts online

WAT

[heady vale]

yea, the only reason i think theyve come up a lot here is cause of ME

[fallen geyser]

I mean, to be fair, it is 100% in character for Calliope to have moths and just like

Barely even notice

[wild flame]

"can you fix an air filter? cool."

[fallen geyser]

Oh you're a ||psychic alien moth from the planet that started the ThirdComm revolution||? Okay I know a dude who's called Xenotech Routerman and he collects funko pops from alternate timelines

Calliope has so much weirdness that you really have to be supremely bizarre to stand out against the background radiation

[rough bluff]

I haven't played ||Wallflower|| yet, but unless it does big time skips, all those events have happened, so it COULD be public knowledge in your game. I'm just guessing, though, I'd only read the GM advice portion of the adventure before the other Lancer guy in my group said he wanted to run if.

Fun fact, that's how I ended up here!

Also fun fact, I spoke highly of all y'all when I was answer questions during a panel today at LTUE in Provo.

And now I want to write a Jerry story. It's been bugging me all night. Is there a policy on that. I'm kinda hoping there is and it forbids it. I don't have time to write a Jerry story.

[tight pier]

i hate to say it, but i dont think theres anything stopping you from writing a jerry story

[pliant ibex]

Only being aware that it is fanfic of an adventure module for a tabletop game

[quaint pebble]

If you think about it everyone running IGF is writing Jerry fanfiction

[lilac tartan]

need more Jerry fanfiction plz or I will write by myself

[tame tide]

Jerry fanfic called "Jerry has a good day" where it's just a day on hell's gate where nothing goes to shit

[quaint pebble]

Unfortunately he'd just get more and more anxious the longer it is until the shoe drops and he finds out what went wrong today, no news is bad news 😔

If nobody is reporting a problem surely we must have some kind of comms outage

[shell bison]

We love Calliope being so weird of a place the most normal person seems like an anomaly

[thorn hinge]

Look, I wrote homestuck / lancer crossover fanfic set in calliope nobody should feel self-conscious of anything now. Ever.

[heady vale]

"worse thing that happened today: ipswitch's stream got taken down for inciting intergalactic conflict. This is normal. Could've been worse!"

[past agate]

Wonderful

[shell bison]

My players are going to either completely kill this boss encounter picking up round 3 of the cliffhanger from last week or this will be a long fought fight. They got him dead to rights.

[maiden ferry]

||Ignatius's Geryon|| for chapter 5 ||(A way to introduce homebrew and also, I think the cult developing a mech that holds a fire gate is rad)||

Im so excited for chapter 4:|| I plan to change the Jerry simulation into everybody getting their own simulation of "what if you joined the faith of the one". They all have, in my opinion, pretty compelling reasons to do so. One of the characters wants to play a Geryon so I'm going to have her see herself instead of ignatius in chapter 5 facing a hells gate response team, and when she exits the sim the geryon will replace her saladin, complete with cult iconography.||

And so when they ||fight ignatius in chapter 5,|| theres a moment of "wait that could have been me"

[frail kayak]

Chapter 4 ||is such an excellent catalyst for spooky nonsense||

[maiden ferry]

especially because Chapter 3 ||is so grounded that it makes you almost forget that the story so far has involved near-eidolonic nhps and death cults with the best blink technology the galaxy has ever seen||

[thorn hinge]

I love it so much and fully encourage people to do this sort of ||personal hit job with that chapter on your PCs. I did a similar "this could have been you", but with Calamity ousting Andros and then becoming the leader of the Hell Hounds. She had a simulation of going to the tachyon at Ignatius's request, and fought The OG SRT of Switch, Nautilus, Howl, and Johan, before she went up in a fiery blaze and heard the screeching of some great bird of prey before she died and the sim ended. ||

And yeah! The pacing of the story is perfect, Chapter 4 fits in such a remarkable way.

[thorn hinge]

I'm running the second session of chapter 4 downtime tonight. I already did a good dozen scenes last session for this, and I'm currently sitting on thirty three more scenes. This downtime is easily going to be three sessions. Maybe four.

[maiden ferry]

So one of my players wants his stream chat to name his mech. I thought it would be fun if you guys had a crack at it

For reference he's a streamer with fucking cat ears on a daft-punk style helmet, has a camp councilor vibe, and his name is Cuddlefish.

The previous mech's name was WUB WUB HOTTIE

[tight pier]

FISH FUNK

[maiden ferry]

thank you

[quaint pebble]

"my dog"

[tight pier]

That Dawg In Me!

[heady topaz]

I just noticed the mini mechs on the horns

[maiden ferry]

its so fucking cursed

[heady topaz]

Oh yeah, did I mention the fuckin plot point I got in store for my Bligh player?

[maiden ferry]

the bit with ||Mind|| right?

[heady topaz]

Yep!

Can't wait for them all to learn just how deep that shit will go

And also I can use it as an excuse to run ||SSC|| route in Act 2 first, ||because I'll have Fuck I.T. start nagging them to help it and Bartender||

[shell bison]

My Former Harrison Armory catboy just quoted FNAF at the ||UIB Thief|| and then shot him dead.

[heady topaz]

...which quote?

[shell bison]

"Don't keep the Devil waiting, Friend."

[heady topaz]

damn I hate that that line goes hard

why'd it have to be a fnaf quote

[tight pier]

||Send in the Clowns & Killer Sound are ready for tomorrow! Thanks defendi for the cool maps & thanks jacquerel for the cool tokens||

[shell bison]

Spoilers for ||[ERROR]||
My vol player said they...."wanted to look for anomalies"

You found one.

[heady topaz]

ayyyy that's my boi!

[tight pier]

nice

[shell bison]

Thank you so much for having these amazing spooky void tokens 🙏

[heady topaz]

np!

[shell bison]

I put this as the cliffhanger and they are considering,

Do we want our allies to deal with this fight with us?

[tight pier]

let us know how quickly ||[ERROR]|| gets flattened

[shell bison]

Well, they could have an expose weakness Ana scout

And a Sunzi

They are so panicked about it :'D

[maiden ferry]

because fnaf is a mess of irreconcilable lore stitched together with moments that go so hard they carry the franchise

[tame tide]

I thought some allies refuse to follow you to the Crone

[shell bison]

I'm bending the rules a little.
I only added them as a choice they can make.
Allies means more damage activations against Ultra, BUT it also gets more activations
Not having them means less activations but less from the ultra as well.

Plus, my game leaning a lot into the supernatural aspects of Calliope, so it comes with a question.

Do you want to traumatize your new friends before the big fight? :D

[tame tide]

So treat it like 3 activations if they exceed 5 players/NPCs

[shell bison]

Mhm

[light mist]

idk if i missed something obvious but when exactly did the tachyon reappear around chameleon? is that directly related to the anomaly that appeared 3 years ago that odin takes interest in?

[maiden ferry]

Yes, the tachyon showed up then. Feather spent some years cascading more, then turned on the radio and heard ignatius giving a sermon, decided she was the one plumed in golden flame he was speaking of, and left the ship. The reason its relevant in mission 1 is because Ignatius is on fort cerberus giving Capella a hard time, and Ignatius wants the tachyon. Andros hires signal into searching for it, and you find the data when you raid signals base.

[light mist]

mmkay, that makes sense
thanks for clearing it up!

[maiden ferry]

and the other data, the one that buyer X is looking for, ||pertains to the Sunzi of Switch, formerly Baldur Valentinian. Their father, Odin Valentinian is searching for either the mech or his son. When DRIVETRAIN pms Odin saying hey look at this weird time data, Odin decides to make the trip anyways with a small battlegroup. They arrive at the end of act one.||

[wispy quail]

is the Tachyon what caused the anomaly above Chameleon, or did the anomaly above Chameleon predate the Tachyon showing up?

[signal canyon]

Oh, I had a question about ||The future Feather is from.||
||If blinkspace is truly gone, or inaccessible, does that mean no NHP could exist outside of a casket?||

[tight pier]

@lunar panther made this for ||Eye of Balor||:
|| https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/867543754428121108/1208579380679544922/PrinterSnafu.png?ex=65e3cc42&is=65d15742&hm=b012478997ff71e1aef65531c691bd61ca11ab80d9d234f8bb1475d6811b21fb& ||

||players had/have to find shit in this list that could potentially be used in a focal array||

(there's a ton of injokes in here)

[rough bluff]

I'm curious about the date is that from the past or did you move when your campaign takes place?

[tight pier]

@lunar panther

[lunar panther]

THAT WAS A TYPO AAAA

that should be 5016

[rough bluff]

🙂

[lunar panther]

Some extra details:

• Image source (license doesn't allow me to share the source .xcf)
• A few of the items on the list are in different languages - they are just Google Translate'd versions of items that otherwise exist in English
• There are 23 total relevant lines (6 of them duplicates in other languages)
• The longest line is a hint in Portuguese that if a player understands the message, they are given the location of 2 items for free

[rough bluff]

Saved! Stolen shamelessly. 🙂

[tight pier]

||They solved Eye of Balor, without setting foot in Gift-Bronze. Nice!||

[light mist]

i think i accidentally introduced a plot hole ._.
my players captured and interrogated S1GN4L and learned that S1GN4L had just given andros the tachyon's location -- whereas the book has S1GN4L just about to tell andros when the players attack
i'm having a hard time thinking of a believable explanation for why andros would show up at the tachyon after the players, given this change
since he's really eager to find the tachyon, it seems like he'd want to leave as soon as S1GN4L gave him the location
i dunno, am i overthinking this?

[rough bluff]

If you think the players will catch it, have them learn about something that would have delayed his leaving. like taking heavy damage in a battle with other militia people right at the wrong time and needing to repair all their mechs.

[maiden ferry]

it likely caused the anomaly

[tame tide]

I think it's a case signal doesn't give Andros the location, Andros is hurried and under equipped because they are following the PCs to where it is

[maiden ferry]

Thats actually something that ||Dr. Odin Valentinian points out in act 2 when people are telling him to stop his research, he's going to blow up blinkspace.||

[tame tide]

300mm tungsten rod

UMMMM

DON'T PRINT THAT

That bad

[pliant ibex]

||This is in universe unclear whether Feather is telling the truth or not, the fact that folded blinkspace exists within caskets (and thus it being destroyed would remove NHPs entirely) is pointed out, and Feather is in deep cascade so she's not a perfectly reliable narrator; that being said, it's extremely consequential and so she could be right in her timeline and there's other NHP weirdness we don't know about keeping them within our frame of referential reality||

oh I actually misread the second part, but either way

[fallen geyser]

||Odin Valentinian|| calls her out on this specific thing in Act 2

He also points out that the idea of "destroying" blinkspace is nonsensical

[signal canyon]

Much to think about..

[worthy root]

||My Personanl Thery is that Blinkspace isn't destroyed, but basicly the entire galaxy has been engulfed by a Blinkvoid of unprecidented size and power||

[signal canyon]

That sounds right

[fallen geyser]

To be fair ||Odin|| also points out that blinkvoids don't make sense either

They shouldn't be possible in general but their specifics are even weirder

[signal canyon]

||I remember reading in Legionnaire that NHPs in caskets aren't directly affected by blinkvoids, so I guess my question is, what happens when a cascading/unshackled nhp tries to breach its casket in a blinkvoid?||

[fallen geyser]

Good question

[maiden ferry]

Im sure this is not forshadowing anything and vex is just making cow tools, because I've never been burned in the past when I think that

[tight pier]

Players wrapped up ||their investigation for the Eye of Balor - towards the beginning of the session they got a call from Riley Hyeon about the blueprints issue, then got given the printer junk list (posted above.) Injokes fucking FLEW, it was great. The players knew even before then that the Cult was trying to bring the laser back online, but finally could conclude their investigation with that. They got the go-ahead from Rita and were trying their best to go into the warehouse quietly and were making it a really fucking big deal to avoid civilian casualties.... then got informed that the focal array was being taken to the ampitheater, where an open-air rave was taking place...... They were mad (in a good way! but mad).

We got through Round 1 of Killer Sound and they almost maxed Panic/Hype already. Let's see how long that lasts.||

@lunar panther we gotta make Gate of Mictlan harder for 'em

[rough bluff]

I have been speaking at a convention/symposium for three days (it destroyed me physically). But now I had time to finally draw that last few zone on ||Lowest Bidder Work|| and upload them to the drive.

[fallen geyser]

Okay I laughed so hard at this people in the coffee shop were looking at me weird

[wintry dragon]

Our crew rolled up on yesterday's mission briefing in matching JERRY HAS A POSSE t-shirts. Enjoying IGF very much! now i must leave the thread before i see spoilers

[lilac tartan]

Just accomplished Act1 Mission 2

"Battle…yes!"

[dusky cradle]

Jerry Gang rise up.jpg

By jove ||Feign death|| worked wonders! The ||amphitheater fight had my players maxxed out the HYPE METER, due to excessive critical hits, the audience went wild, both of my PC overcharged until the meter is running at 1D6+4, just about every one lost structure... but in a good way.|| Star of the show is when the audience were asking for an encore, so I had the ||Veteran scourer rose up for another round, amongst the burning drone swarms, scattered mech wreckage, with both players exposed, and right on top of the objective point, going out in a blaze of glory||. After which Dragon's tooth flew by to deploy a magnetic grappling hook, snatching ||that focusing array right into space after the final round||. The only reason I triggered the trait like this was because I forgot it during the fight, but it somehow ended up being real theatric instead.

[dusky cradle]

GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE.JPG

Jerry will get his gang, complete with a gladiator pit gambling cartel, no matter he likes it or not

[rough bluff]

I really like @thorn hinge's layout for her ||roadblock|| map. I don't think I can come up with a take on combat flow on it that isn't just straight-up inferior. So I don't think she'd object (speak up if you do) but I think I'll steal at least the ||street|| and ||gate|| layout from her straight up, and try to bring that excellent map to GMs who play in top down, not perspective.

[thorn hinge]

Everything I make for this campaign I offer freely and gladly with the community ❤️
It makes me happy that you like it so much! And I love that you've been making these excellent maps so the community has a ton of options to pick from. If you ever end up ahead of me there's a chance I might take yours and go 2d for a fight just for the change.

[rough bluff]

That's what I thought you'd say, but it's always good to check. Being a good forum citizen and all that. 🙂

[thorn hinge]

I love this community ❤️

[crude briar]

@rough bluff I'm putting together some maps for my new group, and I just saw the ones you made for Anti-Capital. These may be some of the greatest maps I've ever seen. Well done!

[rough bluff]

Thank you! That one took the longest. 🙂

I think I'm gonna run it as a ||behemoth fight|| from Lancer Enhanced Combat. It reminds me of Armored Core VI.

[crude briar]

I can imagine it did! It's super cool. And I just picked up Enhanced Combat... I just might do the same when the time comes...

[light mist]

so i've been having a little too much fun making my own maps

[tame tide]

Death

[heady vale]

Evil

[austere prism]

the one true cognitohazard in the world

[grave wave]

oh my gods

[rough bluff]

Am I dense, I don't get it? 🙂

(I don't think I got most of the jokes in that parts list either.)

[quaint pebble]

it's built in the shape of the notorious Ctrl-Alt-Del comic "Loss", in minimalist form, which as a geometric arrangement in itself has become a reasonably popular meme where recognising the pattern is similar to rick rolling someone or making them lose The Game

[rough bluff]

Ah! I stopped reading CTRL ALT DELETE about 10 or 15 years ago. 🙂

[past agate]

oh my god it IS loss

[grave wave]

We've... never read the comic, but we recognize the format.

[rough bluff]

I probably also don't hang out in the places where the meme circulates. 🙂

Ironically, I read the comic it's based on back in the day, I just didn't know the meme.

I might have read LOSS the day it came out. 🙂

[amber viper]

It's one of those near universal things that terminally online people recognise in an instant.

To paraphrase the influencer bond power: Memetic subculture

[wild flame]

Incomprehensible, too!

[tame tide]

In Spring, a pillar was constructed
In Summer, another was made
In Autumn, they both stood
In Winter, one fell

[light mist]

I figured s1gn4l would be the type of person to arrange a listening station into a meme

[shell bison]

I made him use it as his hangout for him and his crew to play fighitng games

[wild flame]

my players hate mirages and this is manifesting in an incredibly funny way: every time they fight a mirage, they steal some of that mirage's drip

They convinced s1gn4l to give them his cowboy hat (and by convinced i mean "give us print codes for the hat or we'll tell everyone where you're hiding out after we beat your ass"), and they have now stolen the cloak off the Illusionist mirage in Send In The Clowns

[quaint pebble]

I said that the hell hound troops he had with him doubled as his personal discord moderators

[rough bluff]

lol

[shell bison]

[past agate]

amazing

[rough bluff]

I've uploaded square and hex exports to the share. It includes that lighting, of course.

[tame tide]

Oooo

The lighting really adds to it, looks cool

[rough bluff]

If we ever get a v11 version I'll change the red lights on the last two maps. I want them to be those spinning emergency lights, but we don't have that animation in v10.

[tame tide]

There's a plugin

On phone not PC but I have one for V10 that allows me to animate lights

I have for killer sound a bunch of lights that go back and forth, rotate and change colour

[rough bluff]

Oh, maybe I'll get that. I'll want to not use it for my exports, but for myself...

[tame tide]

Valid

Yeah, using lights killer sound is probably my most visually boring map (at least the version without lights) but when I added animated lights it looks beautiful

[rough bluff]

DragonFlagon Active Lights do you think? not sure if you remember offhand.

[tame tide]

I don't, the page has like a laser going back and forth, a lighthouse and an energy shield I think

[rough bluff]

That's the one. And a cop car. I wonder how they did the cop car. 🙂

[rough bluff]

Rotating every 2 seconds. It's cool when it shines through the windows.

[past agate]

I resolved to make every veteran or elite a named character

It’s, uh, happening

[willow cloak]

Does it keep hapening

[digital raven]

I usually don't bother with full names but everyone gets a callsign

[past agate]

yea

they get sick callsigns

also: Does ||Andros in the final fight|| lose firebreak shield or is it just not listed?

[rough bluff]

https://www.f-16.net/callsigns.html

[past agate]

checked that a couple times

[quaint pebble]

he might as well not have it given how good I am at remembering to use it

[wild flame]

real as fuck

[shrewd sorrel]

😔

[wintry zephyr]

Do we have any prebuilt maps for this book?

[tight pier]

None official. As for nonofficial community made ones, peep the GM resources spreadsheet, here: #1059603134504255528 message

[rough bluff]

If you look at mine, let me know if you have any questions. I assume my readmes are getting the job done, but just @ me if they fall short.

[past agate]

True

[tame tide]

I'm using this right now in my session and my players are having a BLAST reading through it! Thanks so much!!!

[frail kayak]

one of my players had just shared the WIZARD ALE video right before you posted that, so my group appreciated that part

[lunar panther]

the list was like 30% stream of consciousness so i'm so excited for that to completely fade from relevancy 😆

[tight pier]

a lot of that list is just random injokes like or extremely obscure references like computer tsuakase

[rough bluff]

I did it. I wrote a Jerry story. Okay, it's technically an vinnette. Stay tuned.

[past agate]

YESS

Crackhead idea: IGF hype video or campaign intro set to Time For A Smackdown! from Pizza Tower

opening shot of Jerry at his desk is all I need in my life

[fallen geyser]

YOU

[shell bison]

Well, my players partake in the ||[ERROR]|| fight. Time to scare them to hell with the teleporting :D

[austere prism]

my players are about to enter that as well - they've sort of aligned on a "throw it at the balor to eat" approach for their problems, i'm curious to see how that works out for them

[quaint pebble]

mulling over what I'm going to do for that, I do want the map to look a little weird in some way
maybe just some chromatic aberration will be enough though

||thinking of hand-drawing a map and all the player tokens for that one fight in Mission 4, although it means not using the really cool retrograde tokens people have kitbashed for the boss||

[rough bluff]

I've uploaded exports of ||Anti-Capital||. FYI.

[rough bluff]

They hint in the Hell's Gate material that Jerry is a war hero and that he fought in some terrible, terrible engagement. Do we know what that was?

[amber viper]

Yep

It's in the back of act 1 if I recall correctly

[amber viper]

page 254

[rough bluff]

Thanks. I might want to work it in to this Jerry stuff I'm doing.

[toxic stump]

Okay tonight we ran Send in the Clowns. The players completely steamrolled the fight but it was the funniest encounter in the campaign by far.

The scourer had a reactor meltdown in the second round. Because Chomolungmas are hell.

[vague fog]

Does anyone have a token for the base IGF enemy types? I'm using a Slinger in a combat of mine but I cant find a token for it

[rough bluff]

Ada has a slinger in her cult tokens. Check the pin.

[vague fog]

Thank you

[fast parrot]

I think that might be a mutual thing? My team knocked through it in like ...3 rounds or so?

To be fair we are ll2 and a Manticore and storte go a long way

P sure the way it was narratively is we solved it before Loki could arrive lmao

[wild flame]

my (3 person) crew finished send in the clown after 5 rounds. one enemy left on the board, and objective was halfway to the extract, so I just called it there. Loki was clutch as hell for my players.

[maiden ferry]

I buffed the shit out of everything and they still bodied it, I kept the dragon in reserves just in case and made it an ultra

[toxic stump]

Loki was basically that guy from the sailor moon meme.

[maiden ferry]

I made him a voider and had him kidnap the mirage

instant favorite

[toxic stump]

I forgot him in round 3 so he arrived at round 4 when the VIP was like two standard moves away from the extraction point and went "My job here is done".

[fast parrot]

Yeah that'd do it

To be fair, having frames is a significant buff

My goodness we've gotten so much value outta prophetic scanners, Manticore deterministic damage, stortebecker sheer fucking damage output and Pharos lock on

[thorn hinge]

I gave my 4 players the 5PC sitrep, but had the veteran cataphract switch sides at the start. Calamity knew the pilot and he owed her a favor (a previously agreed reinforcements reserve). Lots of things happened in that fight, like Pear using a Breaching charge ona enemy reinforcement point and destroying the mech elevator, taking the point off the map then tying the game's high score of 15 burn as two scourers focused on him. Gabriel got the most use out of a smoke grenade I had ever seen, causing five attacks to miss, and I bent the rules a bit; he was able to load ||Nyambose ||in his expanded compartment, and Loki used Metafold Shove to drop him near the evac point.

It was still a close match

[maiden ferry]

here was my sitrep

[wild flame]

my loki came in round 3 and then went "alright players, time to learn how to daisy-chain an extraction objective" and then i forgot about multiplicity for the entire fight

i greatly enjoy mirages

getting real particular about positioning is very fun

[tight pier]

our player got a good relationship with Loki so I gave them their ||Act 2|| statblock and gave the player a reserve that lets the player call him at the start of any fight during Chapter 2

[wild flame]

also - incredibly funny happenings today during Killer Sound:

So, one of my player's characters is a streamer. They've got technophile 1, and the background we came up with is that their NHP was a moderation bot they made that ended up personing itself (calliope moment).

During the fight, they get jumped by a ronin and structured - that means a cascade roll. I take this opportunity to implement a new homebrew rule: we all enjoy NHP stuff and cascades never happen, so the new rule is that the player can choose their own cascade thresholds. Player thinks on it for a bit, decides that it'll be at 2. They then proceed to roll a 2.

Approximately 3 seconds later, that ronin was wrecked by assault rifle fire while the NHP shouted "GET BANNED, ASSHOLE. THE REST OF YOU, SUBSCRIBE TO NYASUKA." (Nyasuka being the PC) from the mech's speakers.

[quaint pebble]

thrown up my go at "Guns at Noon" in the community folder, given that it seems like my players will be running into it soon
I'm giving "bigger maps" a shot as I think I've been making them significantly smaller than the recommendation of some other community map makers I respect, which potentially has also contributed to my sitreps being over quicker than I expect
we'll see how my players handle it :p

[rough bluff]

Oh, I like that. What's the size? I can't count hexes effectively while in a game. 🙂

[quaint pebble]

35x40, as opposed to 20x27
might be too big a swing in the other direction but we'll see

[rough bluff]

Now that I recounted all the official maps, I've settled on 32x32 or so and 18.5 x 35. I've also gone back and made sure all my maps are doable in the time alloted. ||Send in the clowns|| require 80 hexes of travel. I was relieved to see they have 10 rounds. 🙂

[quaint pebble]

yeah those sound like good target dimensions

[rough bluff]

32 x 32 is the average of the solostice rain maps (I think a couple are more like 33 or 34.) The other is the size of a Dustgrave map, and the half is in the 18 because it make a pretty even number of hex rows.

My initial bigger maps were because I counted something else about the same time I was doing Solstice Rain and confused the maps in SR with other one (I don't remember what game that was.)

[rough bluff]

This appears to be done. ||Roadblock||. I usually post hex because I think most people play hex, but this is a great example of a map where square zones are clearly superior.

Oh crap, missed the crosshatch on Enemy Deployment.

[rough bluff]

They are uploaded to the share.

[dim pelican]

That looks so good - really nice work! 🔥

[rough bluff]

Am I officially ahead of your group yet?

[dim pelican]

Lol I've been very quiet about it but actually just this last week I played Roadblock and finished up ch3!
I've used several of your maps throughout it, thanks! 😁 they're fantastic!
I'm about to begin ch4 next week actually XD was wondering if you were going to be starting on that next.

[rough bluff]

I can jump ahead. I haven't look at the structure for 4 yet. Is it linear or are their multiple maps you could need first?

[dim pelican]

Ch4 is ||very linear when compared to the last 2 chapters and while there's 3 battles, they really only take place across 2 maps.||

[tame tide]

Saaaaame, my players did it. Loki also carried. Now they're terrified of "PERILOUS BOGMIRE SCOURGE OF THE FEY REALM" (Regular hive)

I also fucked up with the dragon and the same thing happened, they used puppet systems so it didn't lose heat, then I fired the gun and stressed it turn 2 or 3, then rolled a 1 on the stress table

At the end it was an obligation to refer to PERILOUS BOGMIRE SCOURGE OF THE FEY REALM in full name every time you referred to PERILOUS BOGMIRE SCOURGE OF THE FEY REALM

[rough bluff]

@fallen geyser So I'm about to start the three Chapter 4 maps to get the first one done before @dim pelican needs it. Do you have any special wish list on these maps that you didn't feel you could ask a GM to try to implement in a brief paragraph? Especially one that I could do with my staged maps. For instance, one idea I had for the ||Spire|| maps was to have ||reality change every round (maybe just three or four variations.) One round, it's a sylvan glade with sunlight streaming in from a not detectable source. The next is a swamp or maybe a boneyard. The next, it looks normal but there is a giant corpse or skeleton visible through a mostly-opaque floor. Or maybe a creepy little girl. Normal horror movie fare. That was just the first Idea I had, though,|| I was wondering if there was anything you had thought of that you thought would be too hard to ask random customers to implement on their own...

[light mist]

so my party is at the tachyon, but due to an error on my part, they know that andros is coming, so they're trying to cloak the dragon's tooth to avoid a confrontation with him
....do i just let them dodge the last fight of the mission?

oh wait nvm i think they just want to ambush him

[fallen geyser]

Cloak the Dragon's Tooth? Where in the fuck did they get the tech to do that

[light mist]

their idea was to disguise it as just another derelict ship
i guess the obvious hole is that it isn't all scuffed up?

[rough bluff]

I think they could scuff their ship, the obvious flaw to me is that space is big and open, and he has probably been watching his entire inbound approach. At least since he could resolve the image (Which I expect is good way out.)

He is moving fast enough he can't see them until he enters their light cone.

[light mist]

yeah that makes sense
i think i'll just have him drop in and broadcast "i know you're here, you're the only other ship that was burning for chameleon"

[rough bluff]

Yeah. I can't remember if they are there long enough for him to see their flame, but it's easiest to assume that works out then to do the math. 🙂

Although I'm sure the math works.

[wild flame]

the flight to the tachyon takes 2 weeks - he had time to spot them burning towards it

[rough bluff]

Yeah, I'm in the middle of an escort mission where we are BARELY holding on, so I couldn't look it up. 🙂

[wild flame]

godspeed

[dense crescent]

Andros is also specifically tracking the Tooth cause he lost the data from S1GN4L's post due to the players

so that wouldn't work

at most you'd have the fight happen in the Dragon Tooth instead of on the Tachyon

but even if Andros goes to the Tachyon, the players don't stop him and just run

Andros still dies from it trying to jump, and the system could still think that the players kill him

[light mist]

i goofed when debriefing the players after the s1gn4l fight, so in this AU andros got the tachyon's location right before s1gn4l's post got taken down
as for why he arrives after the PCs anyway, i'm chalking that up to not being able to leave from fort cerberus immediately for some reason

[rough bluff]

Yeah, he could have had repairs to do and such. He has a life outside of the PCs. 🙂

[dense crescent]

He might have also needed more convincing from Ignatius

[rough bluff]

Okay, I threatened to write a Jerry story. And I did. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WzEbOls74WkB60Q-WCNV2Y6vY3Z6tLQz/view?usp=sharing

[fallen geyser]

Hahaha the argument over Jerry accidentally implying Shelly put on weight is amazing

[crude briar]

That's amazing! Very will written! Can I share it with my group?

[rough bluff]

Yeah, share it however you like. 🙂

[heady vale]

😭😭😭😭

[fallen geyser]

“Shells keeps a list!” Jerry said with a little more enthusiasm than was seemly.```

[heady vale]

I think so much about how my party is going to bring Jerry unmeasured and unrecorded levels of anxiety and stress

[wild flame]

Peak IGF gameplay is the SRT setting new records on the Jerry Stressor Leaderboards while also simultaneously trying their hardest to make Jerry's life less stressful

the printer always being referred to as the Printer (Union certification 126 years out of date) is a very good bit that I will be stealing

alright, i've read the whole thing

Very good stuff

i love a recurring line with multiple meanings

[fallen geyser]

Yo can I base something of my own off of this?

[lunar panther]

oh yeah totally!

do you want the unedited/unscrambled list? it has ~215 items in it (including the focal array parts)

[fallen geyser]

Nah I think it's funnier if I work based on the scrambled list

[lunar panther]

sounds good

[rough bluff]

Are you going to share it with us when you're done. 🙂

[fallen geyser]

Of course

[tame tide]

Please tell me the comically large estrogen pill gets successfully printed

[heady topaz]

Lmao

[lunar panther]

who up building fusion reactors

[wild flame]

Who up hotswapping they muon catalyzer?

[past agate]

Just finished. This is absolutely amazing

cannot wait to see the list™️

[short current]

i'm sure it will be completely fine.

[wild flame]

The rejection message implies that you can print your own version of howl's rig so long as you get permission first

[tight pier]

probably like that so someone can print you your mech on your behalf

"hey my blackbeard got slagged can you tell the icebreaker to reprint it. i'll be back in 72 hours thanks"

[fallen geyser]

well she probably has people in her team authorized to print her mech for her

[wild flame]

Tragic. No mechs for the loyal fanbase.

[wild flame]

Request #AX-4849590
Serrated knife not for stabbing a person

[fallen geyser]

Extremely wholesome moment: there is a plushie shop on the Icebreaker called The Friend Adoption Center

[wild flame]

Awww

[tight pier]

these are such fun :)

[lunar panther]

i absolutely love how you're taking these as a "request the printshops to do something"

i took mine to just be filenames

[tight pier]

azumanga daioh is canon in our campaign now

[lunar panther]

fuck yes

i'm so glad pronouns two got noticed

[weary dust]

Is this campaign suitable for a GM that's new to running Lancer?

[rough bluff]

I think so. What game you coming from?

[weary dust]

It's not me, but someone I know. I'm pretty sure they have a lot of experience with 5e and some other systems. They're just now getting into Lancer.

I really want to play In Golden Flame, so I want to suggest it unless it would be difficult for a newcomer to run 😂

[tight pier]

Most of the book has decent advice for first time GMs, but some fights may get difficult for brand-new players. Absolutely a suitable campaign, but note that the lore and setting runs deep

[rough bluff]

It is more RP heavy than, say, Solstice Rain, but if they like that, it's perfect. They'll want to look at the pin for community resources. If they decide to go with my maps, I'll point out I have static versions for someone that can't (or doesn't want to) have to deal with the staged versions, and staged versions where the terrain changes round to round.

[past agate]

What minor tweaks should I make when running for first-time players?

[tight pier]

nothing, honestly

i think it's manageable

[past agate]

👍

[tight pier]

just talk to your players and offer advice on their mech builds & stuff

if the fight's going really bad you can choose to withold reinforcements

but almost every lost fight in IGF is recoverable save for ||the final fight at the end of act 1||

[wild flame]

I'd say it's very good for first time lancer GMs (source: me, first time lancer GM)

[past agate]

Gotcha

[wild flame]

Speaking for myself here I have made no changes to encounters for my players, all of whom are entirely new to the system

[past agate]

Nice

[thorn hinge]

It's my first Lancer campaign, and the first game for all of my players. 34 sessions later and it's our favorite game of all time across any system. Most of us have a lot of ttrpg experience across multiple games, so that helps. The only concern I'd have with doing IGF as your first game is that other lancer campaigns might never measure up after.

[past agate]

Correct and based

[rough bluff]

Uploaded exports of ||Send in the Clowns||. FYI.

[frail kayak]

The setting elements get introduced really gradually, though, with more bits becoming relevant each chapter
I guess a bunch more becomes relevant in Act 2, but at that point, the players are hopefully invested in the narrative

[maiden ferry]

Yeah its nuts because not only does it create its own deep lore, but it also draws from most of the lancer lore, leading to a massive frontload on the players from a lore perspective. If your pcs love that, like mine, then I dont know a better prewritten campaign in any game or setting.

[heady vale]

The more I think about the list the funnier it is.

• a vigilante who's from icebreaker, who based his persona off of springheel jack from the precradle records of him
• a mech building and lancer combat streaming vtuber who's mass streaming his [her] escapades across the LR
• an egregorian technipriest who grew up on hercynia and is diplomat for his new planet
• a currently suspended/ laid-off IPS-N trucker... Who is a blue man who's a xenoglossia runaway
• a man raised in Furnace who's a freedom fighter takes inspiration from the albatross
• a scrapper from furnace who is a secret private military project reject super clone

The game has not even started yet and I feel they have found a way to speedrun a stress induced heart attack in Jerry

It really is astounding how they all found a unique way to stress him out

[tight pier]

LMAO i did it, i accidentally got one of my PCs ||(ana's brother) believing that Ana is dating Clip Magazine||

[heady vale]

CW: Close Up Real Moth Image 😭

Jerry is gonna lose his MIND

[fallen geyser]

So my players got talking about chess

And the Noble revealed that he didn't know what rooks are, because his homeworld's version of chess doesn't have rooks

This caused all three of the other team members to have a mental breakdown

"What? Do you just have thinner chess boards, or do you fill the spaces with pawns, or-"

Then it just absolutely went off the rails when he dropped this bomb:

"Fill the spaces?! Where would the fields go?! Where would you grow the wheat, the food, the most important part of your kingdom?!"

And then it turned out that on Emrys II, chess has RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

[short current]

Settlers of Chess

[fallen geyser]

Chettlers of Emrys II

[heady topaz]

You can never escape euro gaming resource management. The 4x genre has invaded chess, what next, UNO?

[rough bluff]

Uno is way better with brick, lumber and sheep.

[past agate]

that one disco elysium boardgame

in which it is learned one does not fuck with Kim Kitsuragi

[rough bluff]

I'm thinking about for ||Chapter 4||, only doing a gridless, zoneless version of the map. Take a page from Ada ||and not allow them any UI help. Obviously, the GM can still have the grid turned on in the VTT; I'd just suggest it has 0 opacity...||

[quaint pebble]

I think I'd avoid that myself, feels like a bit of an accessibility issue

[rough bluff]

that is a good point. I'm trying to figure out what to do with these maps an one idea was Photoshop post-processing effects. If I do that I'm trying not to have to do it 50 times. 🙂

[tame tide]

How easy/hard is it to save a grid less version as well?

[rough bluff]

I always have a gridlless version. I was trying to get away with ONLY because it would be a little offputting and I didn't want to have to do 50 post export processing effects in photoshop. I wanted to do 10. 🙂

[tame tide]

Ah

What's causing a 5x increase in the number of effects?

[rough bluff]

Doing different versions for every playstyle. Hex with zones, gridless with hex zones, gridless, square with zones, sqaure without zones.

[maiden ferry]

Just a heads up, Lowest Bidder Work is uploaded as a .webp file

[rough bluff]

Thanks.

[thorn hinge]

If I were doing it... I'd select random horizontal lines and offset them left or right by a few pixels. and I'd make a few different versions of that with the offsets being different. And I'd make one where the whole area outside the walls was pure monochromatic noise. And I'd make a version with the image inverted. and maybe a few other glitch effects.

Then I'd make an animated map, that stays on one 'regular' image and every few minutes flickers through one of the glitches. Webm is effecient at compression, a video like that could be an hour long and as long as it's 99% one single image it wouldn't be very big (though you gotta watch the noise, that is the death of compresson)

I did something like this for ||the ??? enemy token in [ERROR]|| I made a 'base sprite', and 16 different glitch animations. for that though I wanted the glitches to happen in random order, so I had a script running that would periodically switch the token to one of the animations, and when it was done, switch back to the base, with random delays before the next animation

[rough bluff]

Those aren't bad suggestions. I purposely didn't do the shifting offset effect because of the accessibility argument. I'm afraid it will make it too hard to read. And remember if I do this as a staged map, anything I do has to be reproduced 50 times as a post export effect. So if everyone takes two or three hours, we're looking at a map the rivals my previous record (over 100 hours on ||anti capital||.)

But I'm also considering throwing out my idea of the terrain changing in the stages and going with the glitches changing, which would allow me to embrace your ideas more.

Another thing to consider is that the size 1 and size 2 cover has to be moveable, so any effect I apply won't be effected to anything smaller than size 3 cover. I don't think that really changes anything suggested so far, I'm just getting it out there in case you have a really good idea and that causes issues with it.

[thorn hinge]

Yeah, different styles and tool processes. In my case, I could take one of the above images and make that sort of animation happen in a few hours, but it would all be cosmetic only, and the glitch effects would only be like, a second long at most, with the animation mostly being a static background broken up every few minutes. Accessibilty wise, there's still a flashing lights problem. Also that 100 hours was well spent, I'm in awe. I thought I put excessive effort in, damn. I think I got close to that with my ||Event Horizon|| map, but that was all video editing and footage capture.

actually, I don't think I really showed that off yet?

hm.

[rough bluff]

Also, because of accessibility all my maps need to be printable for someone playing IRL.

[thorn hinge]

Yeah, you've been putting in an incredible effort to make maps that the whole community can use

I just make what works for me, and then share what I did

[rough bluff]

I don't know that we've seen the actual map. We saw a video leading up to it.

And I'm pointing these out because I LOVE your ideas, and want you to keep pitching them, but it helps you to know my practical limitations.

[thorn hinge]

I basically made 5 or 6 abstract videos flickering between different effects and weird scenes, capturing images from four different game engines(three engines, four games) I set up to get some really surreal shots, along with a lot of abstract clip videos I found online. The inky black and white animation seen at the end of my one video was the "base". At the start of each round, I ran a macro that switched to one of the art house movies I made, then when that was finished it would switch back to the inkblot thing until the next round macro got run.

[rough bluff]

I LOVED what you did in that video.

[thorn hinge]

unfortunately all of those are on a server that died on me this morning, so I'm going to have to do some repairs to get them back unless I wanna to render from the project files again. and I dont wanna.

thanks ❤️

I'm loving your work too, especially all your effort to make different versions so anybody can use them in nearly any context

[rough bluff]

I might have to consider two tracks. Do the one with weird terrain changes (now there's a forest in here). That set wouldn't have any post effects. Then make one that sticks with the initial map but has a lot of post effects. That way if you have an accessibility issue that makes the glitches too hard to parse, you have an entire other set just for you and your table. Doing two versions like that is a lot less work than trying reproduce hard, time instensive effects over and over again. I have the maping, which will take a while but not TERRIBLY long, then the post effects seperately and I only have to do each iteration 5 times. That's still 50 post effects, but some of them might be really quick. (The one in my second test takes about two minutes to do).

[shell bison]

MY players are taking a certain someone's meeting quite well.

They all now have on tick.

[maiden ferry]

the end of igf act 3 is zooming out to vex writing "The End"

and winking at the camera

[thorn hinge]

god I love ||Astral Stigmata|| I love measuring ||the violation of your perspective of reality|| I love game mechanics ||bridging the fourth wall, not quite breaking it but allowing passage through it||

[past agate]

HA

[shell bison]

My players were about to strangle me through the discord call when I made references to other games, timelines, characters and even their screen names

For example

[past agate]

HA

[wispy quail]

when I get to that part on the podcast i'm going to have that character just turn to the camera and say the content warnings for that segment out loud

[frail kayak]

@heady vale you asked about using T2 NPCs in chapter 5, I ran 10 activations and 12 structure of hostiles in the first encounter for 6 players (1 was out that week), we only got through the first round before the end of session, but I did 2 structure damage to them in that round, and the Goblin is at 2 health. They've only destroyed 1 enemy so far, but they tend to be really good at turning things around in round 2, so I'll let you know after we finish it this Friday
The exact NPC composition is: ||1 Bombard, 2 Barricades, 1 Elite Titan (from suldan), 1 Veteran Archer, 1 Elite Cataphract, 1 Veteran Deluge, 1 Demolisher||

[thorn hinge]

fixed my server, here's the files. Extra points for anybody who can identify the four video games I clipped footage from. And by extra points I mean we are instantly best friends.

FLASHING LIGHTS WARNING

here's a brief glimpse of how it looked in-game, recorded at half framerate to save time because I gotta go to bed.

[light mist]

ayo ||outer wilds||?

[lunar panther]

i recgonise ||outer wilds|| and ||hl2e1|| but not anything else. maybe ||star citizen|| but i don't know what that game looks like anymore

[tight pier]

the compression makes it really fucking hard to tell but i think the lightning strikes are from arma?

[rough bluff]

These are meant for ||the first two combats in Chapter 4||, but cover tiles that can be placed on any map and moved if necessary are probably universally useful. Here's the equipment ones

Broken Mechs

[heady vale]

Ty! Keep me updated
This is really interesting

[past agate]

IGF has you one of two ways

[thorn hinge]

fuck, I'm impressed. I didn't think anybody would notice the arma 3 with the way I used it.

The white light at the end of the long tunnel is from Half Life 2, and y'all nailed all the others: Outer Wilds, HL2e1, Arma 3. That means you're all collectively my friends now.

[tight pier]

I've spent too much time in the Zeus interface 💀 block can attest to that

how'd you manage to do that, though? SQF or a second person in Zeus?

[fallen geyser]

Buddy, writing it is both of these things

[past agate]

Pendulum

[thorn hinge]

Yeah I guess those bolts are pretty dang iconic. No scripting (this time), just editor triggers with random timings linked to zeus lightning nodes, then the splendid camera and some trial and error on getting the angles and distance right, all set off the west coast of Malden.

[tight pier]

nice

I actually thought it was Stratis, but close enough

[rough bluff]

Even if I don't use these as the map background, I am absolutely building a theater of the mind scene with them for the beat before.

[signal canyon]

It's taking my utmost restraint to not repost these for my players until they get to the Icebreaker

[signal canyon]

This is something that really drew me to IGF. Because it doesn't ignore any part of the wider Lancer lore, one could almost pretend it all exists in service of Calliope as a setting.

[past agate]

i'm real

[rough bluff]

Base map for ||Pressure Point||. This one is a little unusual in 2 ways. ||1) I didn't add a deployment zone because the PCs trigger the combat while exploring the room, and I thought that GMs should decide whether to base their deployment on the triggering character or let it start with the PCs spread out. 2) the GMs will place their own S1 and S2 cover since it has to be moveable for the next fight.||

[past agate]

hoho nice

[rough bluff]

I'm going to see if I can find a|| good laser|| effect to apply to the ||drill|| that turns out to be pointed at the ||correct zone||.

I'll probably have to just make it, really, like I did with the ligtning.

[rough bluff]

You know you've been doing too much of this when you spend all night dreaming about photoshop masks.

[rough bluff]

It paid off though, I was able to really clean up some ugliness on the glow effects on Round 4 and 5, and since they are mostly masks, I can easily copy that clean-up work to other versions.

[past agate]

Nice

[warped ibex]

chapter 4 // ||snapshot of a map for event horizon i'm working on for my players with my lovely girlfriend :3c. it isn't done quite yet, the art for the cover towards the ADZ (the green) is yet to be finished (it's going to be a bunch of glass sculptures representing my party and their closest allies)||

[dim pelican]

Oh wow I love this! Very well done! 🙂 are you going to post this map in the GM resources by chance?

[warped ibex]

maybe!!! i'm worried that it might be a bit more specific to my party ||with the purple spaces serving as a special gimmick i'm implementing, and there being a Size 2 shaped crack at one point to represent the starting position of a specific enemy i've added, and also the statues are obviously going to be party-specific lol||, but i'm sure GMs could make do with those elements regardless

||oh, actually, while i'm thinking about i should give credit: the covers are mostly from Starlight Furnace, lightly edited to have that rainbow glass look. however the glass tower at the top was produced by my girlfriend||

[rough bluff]

You should put these up. I’m the only one I know of who’s specifically trying to make my maps for the community first. We’ve gotten some great works out of people posting what they did for their group alone.

[warped ibex]

||https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1I71lt3Qs9Mh4UpC4RIOF9YDOGU8F1BV6?usp=sharing||
went and added it the resource list, then!

[past agate]

Nice

[maiden ferry]

Is there any chance there’s a flat version of the map? That looks gorgeous

[past agate]

^

[warped ibex]

unfortunately a lot of changes were made directly to the isometric version itself; i'll see what i can do, i feel like i could make something that at least looks pretty darn similar, but no promises!

i also don't think i'd be able to get the cover to work topdown at all, unless you felt comfortable just slapping those covers onto a flatmap

[maiden ferry]

Oh for sure, I mainly want the flat map

[warped ibex]

@maiden ferry do these work?

oh, actually, a version i somehow forgot to make real quick

[maiden ferry]

That’s amazing!!!

Thank you so much 🙂

[warped ibex]

you're welcome!!

aaand uploaded those to the drive as well

[dim pelican]

Thank you! These are phenomenal! 🔥

[quaint pebble]

Messing around for the first time with animated stuff in Foundry, I'm making a version of the map for [ERROR] with a transparent layer and then planning on using a macro to ||toggle the visibility of a tile with a slowed down video of tv static when it's the monstrosity's turn||

otherwise I went back to making a pretty small map for this one because it's a knife fight with a single target 😅

[fallen geyser]

So we had another good month in sales for IGF

[short current]

sweet

[stable otter]

deserved

[past agate]

gonna have a maybe-rpv titan in chp3 called "Project: Real Steele"

name came to me in a vision

[rough bluff]

Ooh-rah!!!!

[maiden ferry]

Okay the pcs convinced EZmcFear to blast "its raining men" to avoid panic from a chom core power in killer sound

[rough bluff]

Hallelujah!

[tight pier]

lol

lollll

our players are too concerned about civilian injuries to try and knock enemies off

[fast parrot]

We were doing really well.
Until the engineer rolled 2, 4, 3 and finally an 11 against my storte.

Took us down by like 4 points in a round when they rolled a nat 1 or smk on flak cannon

[shell bison]

Engineer, my beloved

https://vxtwitter.com/real_hotaru/status/1763533267041485094

Jerry coded

[shell bison]

Jerry, we are trying to make life easier for you! I swear ;w;

[past agate]

;^;

Gonna have attune to the world speak of its own volition sometimes, represented by an Inland Empire tupperbot I made a while back

[tame tide]

I imagined attune to the world would be like shivers

Cos god damn I love the shivers descriptions

[shell bison]

My player has a racoon in their head constantly rotating playing tony hawk proskater 3

Every time he completes a rotation you can hear him make the tony hawk special move sound effect

[past agate]

I got that covered too

Will need to brush up ofc

I’m forgetting a lot about shivers at the moment

[balmy vigil]

I'm going to be running this module soon. Three of my players have decided that they are friends with, in debt to, and/or common patrons of GMS_GENERIC_BAR and Bartender Motherfucker in particular.

I think this is optimal.

[frail kayak]

YESSSS

[balmy vigil]

They decided this independently of one another!

[rough bluff]

It's like Cheers, in space!

One of them has to be Norm. Cliff is optional.

[past agate]

Amazing

[frail kayak]

IGF itself has as many weird coincidences as the fictional Calliope
One of my players made an NHP with an "annoying helpful robot" persona, he voices him EXACTLY like a Calliope comp/con. He (the character) got mistaken for a comp/con unit a lot, but now he's famous enough that comp/cons get mistaken for him. This is going to make some Act 2 stuff really funny
I also added an NPC named Titania to my game, she's the NHP who runs maintenance for the Icebreaker. She has a fairy godmother like personality, and her hologram turns into a pumpkin when she gets overwhelmed

[balmy vigil]

that's me...

she's just like me fr...!!!

[past agate]

Occasionally just see a holographic pumpkin in the corner

[frail kayak]

It should go without saying, but feel free to use her in your game if you want to
The only other detail I have is that she asked the players to meet her in the maintenance sector to talk about the recent Icebreaker goings on, despite being able to have to conversation remotely. When they got there, she projected a giant hologram rosebud, and had her humanoid self emerge as it bloomed. When they asked for some files, she "summoned" them with a swish of her magic wand

I literally came up with her five minutes before the relevant game, and the interactions basically wrote themselves

[thorn hinge]

that's adorable

I love when characters like that just kind of appear fully-formed, with their personality so strong in your mind you're ready to play them like that with no preptime

[shell bison]

The power of improv

[past agate]

Brilliant

Love them. Might borrow

[tame tide]

Holy shit, God the idea of an NHP just going "I'm done" and becoming a pumpkin

That's so great

[rough bluff]

I have a question. On page 231, at the end of Chapter 4,|| it suggests that Annabelle summons a giant pillar of flame with a ritual. I was rather surprised by this and don't know how to process it. Is it ever explained? It seems beyond paracausal stuff, I always see that as tech based even if it's weird, unexplained tech. But this seems like a straight up magic spell, so I'm not sure how to fit that into lancer.|| Is there more explanation somewhere? Better context? I might have missed something, I have to read around piecemeal a good bit to do the maps before people need them.

[past agate]

Either ||Feather’s power|| or explosive charges

[quaint pebble]

||Annabelle functionally has magic powers, but the source is Feather so I guess they are NHP powers||

||You could read it as sending a detectable paracausal signal to Feather who responds with fire if you want||

[warped ibex]

||if you want to be strict about the exact bounds of paracausality to things that don't "feel" like traditional magic typically (i believe that paracausality can go to that extent), it is very easy to say that such is only possible due to the deimosian they are in the presence of -- it is an Eidolon.||

[rough bluff]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[warped ibex]

||in addition to Feather being capable of great paracausal effect, the area they are in is so deeply nonlogical and steeped in paracausality that some great feats can, and have (see: the simulations that came before being so potent and 'real'), been enacted||

[rough bluff]

I actually don't mind ||it looking unexplainable as long as I have a good idea of what's going on. That way I can feel consistant in my descriptions even if it seems inexplicable to players.||

[warped ibex]

||i tend to think of Lightcasters as having a magical call button to Feather; Feather keeps constant watch on the Elect and Aurum, but when someone performs a ritual it alerts her to them and she can enact paracausal effect to their request||

[rough bluff]

These are great notes. I figured Vex had good internal consistency. I trust her with that, so I assume if I don't understand something its because I read too quickly and haven't done my deep prep on the parts that make it make sense.

Yeah, ||Aun's priesthood gets paracausal abilities of SOME sort, IIRC.||

[warped ibex]

||iirc it's unclear (and contested in canon) whether the Firmament and Paracausality are the same or different||

||i might be wrong here, though, it's been a while since i've read the Aunic Field Guide. and that's... not even technically canon, i think, given it isn't released content||

[quaint pebble]

they're different because "paracausality" just means "thing with no obvious link between cause and effect" and "firmament" is "something people use for certain kinds of paracausal effect"
one is a subtype of the other one

||(the Aun don't consider Firmament abilities to be Paracausal, they know how they work: its god doing it)||

[thorn hinge]

It's clearly ||a gift from feather, but how exactly it works is unknown, and that's part of the point; it's faith. You aren't supposed to look into it.||

[quaint pebble]

and even more unusually ||it's apparently faith from Feather in her, not the other way around||

[warped ibex]

ahh, right, this is what i was getting caught on

[warped ibex]

||with what vex has said about feather's revivals being based on... i think it was emotional connection from feather to them? this makes a lot of sense||

[rough bluff]

What is it Vex said?

[warped ibex]

hold on let me nab the messages

[thorn hinge]

Notably, my cult spy character from the remix game ||has this power too, as a re-flavoring of the bond of the Wolf's Tear Throat. She's also having those same concerns... after turning her back on the cult, she still has powers... We also justified The harlequin bond power Mercurial for her the same way.||

[warped ibex]

|| #909574961931362365 message ||

[rough bluff]

Thanks, that helped a lot. 🙂

[quaint pebble]

ive been wondering about something like that for the ex-faith pc in my game ||but maybe it will only end up coming up if they are badly wounded or killed||

[shell bison]

I think some of my best improv scenes have been just dealing with one of my players NHP daughter going into cascade and them sigdiving into their little rubix cube casket

I can share if people want to read about it

[tepid locust]

Huh, does unloaded Hyperkinetic Gauntlet still count as a Loading weapon for the purposes of, say, Roland Chamber?

My instinct says yes, but I want a more conclusive answer

[warped ibex]

it does!

wait

hm. nevermind.

[tepid locust]

Just checked and apparently Direct Fire Siege Cannon can't benefit from Roland either so

Hmm

[warped ibex]

on first glance it seems like it should, but

i don't think it does

[tepid locust]

A shame

Thanks anyways

[tepid locust]

Also sidenote, love the Disco Elysium ass Triggers, very nice

[balmy vigil]

two of my players have looked me in the eye and said 'I made a dude... who sucks.'

one of them is an IPS-N employee who was incredibly good at breaking things, except when they needed to not be broken. He got a Calliope layover.
the other is a wannabe pirate-king who was genuinely so bafflingly impossible to take seriously that MSMC refused to sign him on. He ended up in a pirate crew, which got stomped out of existence by Andros Capella.

[shell bison]

Lmao, sounds like my pirate sunlighter and my former Harrison armory catboy

[short current]

oh they're gonna fit right in

[balmy vigil]

shadow the hedgehog type beat

[tight pier]

he even has the shoes

[shell bison]

Jerry is going to have a field day with this one

[wild flame]

and by "have a field day" you mean "open a new front in the anxiety war"

[shell bison]

If I recal, one of the reason why Jerry picks a PC for "is scared what they will do left to their own devices "

[tepid locust]

I'm sure this has been reported already right?

"assault cannon"

[tight pier]

our Rain World gamer in the group drew our party as slugcats
(sent with permission)

left to right:
||Temporary, sigdiver hiding on Hell's Gate after a botched assassination attempt caused Temporary to meet the NHP that would save them||
||James Shan, ex-mercenary who turned on his outfit after they started targeting Calliopeans||
||Morgan Hyde, an Orcus militiaman, sole survivor of a Harrison Armory(?) raid on his aerostat||
||Fennel Vaunters, now a sigdiver, victim/escapee of human/NHP experimentation by the Circuit||

[lunar panther]

(swap morgan and james :p)

[rough bluff]

I've uploaded all the map versions and assets for the first Chapter 4 combat. Static and Staged ||Glitch|| versions.

[digital raven]

That doesn't really read as Shivers to me, way too direct and actionable. Shivers is a random cutaway to GMS_GENERIC_BAR with three people complaining about brownouts and Bartender Motherfucker mixing a drink no one ordered.

[balmy vigil]

god, can i just say how dense this book is with care, attention and detail? This is insane. Absolutely insane. I love it to pieces.

[tight pier]

DAMAGE BREAKDOWN - SEND IN THE CLOWNS:

Katabasis's Commencement [GMS Everest]

-12 HP (1/13)
+6 Heat (6/7)
-1 Structure (3/4)
-1 Stress (2/4)
-1 Repair (2/5)
Custom Paint Job expended
Core Power used

Mission-Kills:
Security - Squad```

Hertz's Never Meant to Know [GMS Chomolungma]

-7 HP (6/13)
3 Burn

Mission-Kills:
The Honourable Swordsman - Ronin```

Chariot Jackal's Taipan Fool [GMS Everest]

-11 HP (4/15)
+5 Heat (5/6)
2 Overcharges, to 1d6+4
-2 BB Breach/Blast charges (1/3)

Mission-Kills:
The Great Dragon - Elite Scourer
The Mighty Knight - Veteran Cataphract
The Confused Troll - Veteran Bastion
The Cunning Illusioner - Mirage```

Soundwave's Faith in Rebellion [GMS Everest]

-3 HP (8/11)
3 Burn
2 Overcharges, to 1d6

Mission-Kills:
N/A```

Richboy's The Dancer Between [Veteran Voider]

-8 HP (2/10)

Mission-Kills:
N/A```

And that's the end of Eye of Balor. Wow! Definitely played the NPC's a little too suboptimally, but I'm glad I did, that was rough. Loki extracted Nyambose on the 8th round. Due to bad positioning, basically every single player was right on the edge of taking Structure or outright being destroyed.

Players are also reflecting on the ||death of Andros Capella, and are joking that he's going to return. We just assured them that it's just like V2 in Ultrakill: There's nothing left of him ||

[lunar panther]

Summary from tonight: (Ch2 Beat 11 spoilers)
||Send In The Clowns ends, Nyambose is rescued. They talk to her and she reveals info about the laser being targeted towards Kantele, and the existence of something that gets things in and out of the Cult’s base undetected. The group returns to the Harrison enclave, where Sgt. Hemmingson yells at and threatens Loki and the PCs but ultimately can’t do anything of substance. The PCs lie to him and tell him Bondarchuk is the one that hired them. The party calls Jerry but gets Shells, who they inform of all of the current goings-on on the Icebreaker. The party get back to their hotel room to find four men in religious garb routing through their belongings, stealing their belongings. Morgan uses his Force of Will to command one of the men to stay, while the rest get beat up and flee off the balcony. The one lone man, Samuel, makes a plea for his life, saying he has nothing else left. The other men he was working with told him it would get him money and a place to stay. Morgan takes pity on him and keeps him around for Rita, who sends a guard to take him away for questioning. Rita can’t move their hotel due to Board politics (not owning other hotels) but she sets them up in a VIP room/floor and stations armed guards for them.||

up next is beat 10!

[past agate]

amazing

[heady topaz]

made some maps for C3 B17 using Ralf's MCT, from left to right ||[ERROR], Guardian Angel, and Guns At Noon||

[frail kayak]

nice!

[rough bluff]

I'm glad that tool is out.

[balmy vigil]

prepping mission 1.

i'm very funny.

[rough bluff]

That is funny. I did a similar thing with the call signs of the opfor.

[balmy vigil]

pffff

i love that

[rough bluff]

I gave their character sheets the names not in l33t so that their chat cards appear in plain English.

[shell bison]

Okay, the different flavors are very appreciated. These can all be useful to swap to if certain factors apply.

You do amazing work, Defendi

[fallen geyser]

Genuinely amused at the fact that suddenly it switches from horrible underground hellcave to "forest clearing"

[rough bluff]

I had them in a different order, but I like you interpretation based on the upload order better. 🙂

I want to see if I can find a slight less busy background for the hell cave. Part of the purpose of these is as an accessibility option.

[past agate]

My delerium drew a comparison between Jerry Masters and Peppino Spaghetti. Downward spiral imminent

For me, not him.

I mean, it was already apparent for him

I might make something

[balmy vigil]

The full crew for my IGF Adventure:

Woman who has no marketable skills outside of efficient and clean murder
Miners union/gang leader whose favored weapon is a wrench and who wants to apply it to Steele's kneecaps
The biggest fuckup to ever sign an employment contract with IPS-N
28 year old man who looks and acts like an edgy teenager in a truly exceptional case of failure to launch
a shining recruit for a Union pilots academy who was invited to attend, only to board the wrong ship and end up in Calliope with no way back
An eccentric detective who is either perpetually high on his own supply or seeing the threads of a story nobody else can recognize

jerry is gonna need more coffee for these ones.

[frail kayak]

that does sound like a fun group

[rough bluff]

A more human-readable version of the "Hell Level."

[tepid locust]

So, how does Cardcount V777 work with quick actions that are free actions? I.E. Overcharge

[willow cloak]

I'd say it works. You can only use it once per round, and it still has that limitation barring the user from taking full actions. It really doesn't break anything to allow it to work on OC, Initiative, or Asura.

You'd just choose a different quick action to take, same as normal.

[fallen geyser]

Ah, a 6-player game

[heady vale]

🤝

[balmy vigil]

One of the players has an iffy schedule so I took on a 6th

One of them went and customized their starting 'everest' (more accurately half of a Raptor-4 welded to whatever was functional for the other half and given a meteor-defense cannon that may or may not re-separate them every time it's trigger is pulled)

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/783483321328992296/1214460585480028250/Fair_Warning_2.png?ex=65f9318f&is=65e6bc8f&hm=6fd8f07b80271709d02e5c9447c8661421819a1c6c626765137d014e5479cf3f&

[wild flame]

A classic "Calliope-spec" mech

[balmy vigil]

to be clear:

the characters' name isn't Kevin.

(my favorite detail is that the missile pods are literally held on with duct tape)

[past agate]

Oh I see it now

That’s amazing

[balmy vigil]

I am having an issue though in trying to use Ada's maps, namely that

when i set it to isometric, i get these big ol' bits of empty space on the side

[willow cloak]

Speak her name, and she shall appear

[thorn hinge]

You can make the map bigger to avoid cutting off the image, but there's always "dead space", as the square image is rotated and squashed into a diamond, but ultimately put on a square canvas again. As long as the grid bits of the playable area look right to you, it should be good. I usually turn down the "padding percentage" to 0, oversize the image dimensions to make sure the whole map fits, and then set the background color to black to blend the map in (most of my maps, especially later ones, have black faded borders for that exact reason)

[thorn hinge]

Flattery.

[willow cloak]

lmao
I started to answer, saw you were typing, and deferred.

[balmy vigil]

thanks for the advice!

[thorn hinge]

Always! Seriously, "speak her name and she shall appear" is exactly the reputation I want to have. I'm open to DMs too if people have foundry setup questions, or practically anything really.

[past agate]

I aspire to pull off that blank account thing with the crone from someone else’s group

Absolutely brilliant

[balmy vigil]

blank account?

[past agate]

Hold on

#909574961931362365 message turbo spoilers but also peak fiction within peak fiction

I was rotating this sequence of events in my brain for weeks

[balmy vigil]

that's

so fucking cool?

holy shit

[past agate]

YEAH

I lost it when reading it

[wind pine]

Hello, Dear.

[balmy vigil]

[past agate]

[wind pine]

I don't see why you should be so worried, after all, you invoked me. What was that phrase? "Speak her name and she shall appear"?

In any case, I'll be going. Turbo spoilers, as you said.

[maiden ferry]

That’s such a cursed account

I’m gonna go make one for my game

I’m not even using the crone so idk what I’d do with it

[past agate]

Attune to the world, maybe?

[balmy vigil]

One of my players is going Attune to the World and Empath, and they are going to have a goat of a time when they meet the Crone.

[thorn hinge]

I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about. But it would be neat to have some sort of hidden account, if such a thing were possible, to represent more than a few entities in this game. ||Feather, if you want her to say something to the party. Mind, sending anonymous messages on unreal muse accounts.|| Act 2 will have a few options there, actually. And I've already seen someone set up Shivers from Disco Elysium and such. Attune to the World could work.

[past agate]

I have tupperbot proxies I could use for this

Though the effect is diminished by the bot tag and the fact it shows your messages for a moment beforehand

Diminishes the effect somewhat

[maiden ferry]

I've been stealing crone content by letting a player see alternate realities at the price of 1 astral stigmata per person he does it to. He's already at 3 and we just finished mission 2. The cost I've come up with is that he cant turn it off. ||Switch becomes Loki, PCs dress in faith of the one uniforms if they have an edgy backstory, Kantele becomes a phoenix on the periphery of the icebreaker||, but the reality he sits in is... normal.

Also its reducing his stress cap by 1 per point. He can fix that like a normal burden, though it doesn't fix the stigmata, just the stress

[past agate]

Random thought

Someone in calliope would use a pringles can to demonstrate some kind of philosophy

(Incomprehensible)

I thought of this because I imagined Jerry failing to reach the chip at the bottom of the can

[balmy vigil]

i think he'd cry.

[past agate]

Jerry is the manifestation of the last Pringle chip left in the can that was thrown into the garbage

Utterly devoid of happiness

[pliant ibex]

inverts can in order to fulfill the cycle of samsara

[tepid locust]

Awesome, thank you!

Now second example, what about Sekhmet-

Can I, if Sekhmet misses, replace their free action skirmish with....I mean I would say something like a grenade throw but due to the limitations they'd probably just Ram/Grapple instead

[wild flame]

replace their free action skirmish
not a quick action

[tepid locust]

I mean yeah, but what they said.

[wild flame]

also there isn't any other action you can take for that free action

[tepid locust]

Eh fair enough, that's what I was expecting

Thanks

[wild flame]

sekhmet's "skirmish as a free action" is, in my opinion, legally distinct from init/OC's "as a free action, take a quick action"

[tepid locust]

Mhm fair

[past agate]

cooking something horrible

keeping it a secret

but it involves extracting the art of jerry

[fallen geyser]

We have officially hit 500 sales

[tepid locust]

Nice!

[wild flame]

HUGE

love to see it

[past agate]

YEAAAA

[frail kayak]

NICE

[simple moon]

congrats 💜

not that far from 1000 if you include kickstarter backers

[balmy vigil]

niiiice

[crude briar]

Congratulations!

[willow cloak]

Huge milestone for a 3rd party supplement, congrats Vex.

[past agate]

Calliope rejoices

[balmy vigil]

i have only two words for this:

fucking deserved

[past agate]

[past agate]

Get this mf a monarch platter for their hard work

[fallen geyser]

Oh here's my original sprite for the Hell Hounds Deluge

[past agate]

Big

[rough bluff]

It occured to me last night I should probably upload the freighter art I'm using as tokens for ||the first two fights.||

[tight pier]

ooh! i used SS13 assets for mine. I'll send once I get back to my PC

[balmy vigil]

set smth up for my session 0

a good ol' fashion title card

[rough bluff]

Freighter art and the rest of the first chapter 4 mission uploaded. FYI

[frail kayak]

So I decided that the cult views themselves as something akin to the good guys in a Brandon Sanderson novel, so they've come up with "insulting" nicknames for the SRT appropriate to the villains of the same, casting them as a sort of spiritual rival. The players absolutely loved it when the opfor started calling them "Champion of Ruin", or "Gilt-Iron Devil" in the middle of a combat, and liked it even more when they realized the opfor has misidentified the ones who had switched frames since the last LL

[meager vine]

In mission 2 if the cult fails to get the focal array but stil has the fire gate do you run beat 12? it seems to imply that if the fire gate is stil active the cult's mission is still viable, but it isn't super clear to me how that's the case if the cult failed to get the focal array

[maiden ferry]

They can import another one from outside the system maybe?

[quaint pebble]

there's not really like any sort of time limit on completing their mission until the fire gate is destroyed because they can keep bringing stuff in from outside, so you preventing them from getting the focal array is only a temporary setback at that point

[maiden ferry]

I think the big thing is that there is a window the cult wants to hit Kantele. Dr. Nyambose tells them about it when they rescue her

[past agate]

they bring in a significantly shittier focal array

if the pcs fuck it up you can say the cracking was a partial failure because of it

[tight pier]

They have to pull strings, favors, make their presence more known, to crack Kantele.

Through the fire gate, they can whip together a shitty focal array that will break, maybe that focal array will cause more collateral damage, both to the Icebreaker and to Kantele. It'll cause some issues for the Cult, but it's still doable.

Hell, you could make that a whole thing in itself. I know the book says to run it if both teams are active, but you could run Getting Railroaded as though the Cult is trying to transport the focal array in the middle of the chaos, and only run Powerhouse if the PCs fail in Railroaded

[silent lance]

Wanna get an opinion before making this change: Doing mission 2 with a group of 4. They've finished send in the clowns/killer sound sucessfully and full repaired. Moving onto the thermopylae/anti-capital branch, would it be crazy to run getting railroaded before those 2 encounters? Narratively, it'd be them getting ambushed on the transit lines headed to the train depot where the [spoiler] is

would be a rest between railroaded and thermo, but keep the no rest between thermo and anticap

[tight pier]

Narratively, why would the Cult be ambushing them on the transit lines?

especially, what would the Cult stand to gain, other than blowing their cover even harder?

[silent lance]

they've been alerted by the first investigation branch and know the pcs have been looking for the thing

the idea being to stop them before they reach it, using the isolated transit tunnels as cover

cause i got the impression the cargo lines are not places that have people in them

[tight pier]

as long as you can recontextualize it like that then yeah it seems solid narratively

just remember that Thermopylae is balanced around the PCs going into it with everything available to them

and that Anti-Capital is going to be quite harder as a result, as well

[silent lance]

yeah

[tight pier]

if your players have been smoking every other fight in the campaign, go for it

[silent lance]

thing is, with just 2 encounters and no rest, given a full repair immediately before and after, there just is no chance to use repcap

which lancer is typically structured around

[tight pier]

I think it's fine. They exist in the book with this as a consideration, and Thermopylae/Anti-Capital is the only sequence in Act 1 without any Rest in between.

[silent lance]

yeah ik

honestly i just really like railroaded as an encounter

[tight pier]

I'm gonna be honest, if you're just looking for an excuse to use Getting Railroaded, fucking do it, it slaps

Just remember that it's gonna make Thermopylae and Anti-Capital a bit harder

[silent lance]

yeah

ive been kicking the encounters up to 5-player variant since they got ll1 and so far they've been ok, so i might just tune it back down to the 4-player version

[tight pier]

yep

also it doesnt really matter if the players fail Anti-Capital, since it has no (immediate) stakes, at least in Act 1

[silent lance]

also true

thing will be destroyed either way, and they already succeeded the other branch, so i doubt they'll get into a fail state

[wispy quail]

oh wow now that's an idea

now i'm wondering if i should bother cogwerks about which of his arts i can use for this

(which ss13 assets did you use?)

[balmy vigil]

just ran a session zero for my group, had a good time, had them all introduce their characters and describe how they're connected before giving them a bit of time in GMS_GENERIC_BAR

session ended with them choosing to go get the food sitch solved & next session, we'll have our first combat

one of the PCs is, as described by the player, 'an episode 1 Gundam antagonist who was destined to die, and somehow survived'. he's such a mook he's using a Ronin sprite. it's great.

[tight pier]

NSV 13's ships. One sec

ship sprites i used for LWYK for spitting distance (also the ships i put in hells gate)

Made a few interior maps for it too. Here's the map I made for the interior of the ship in Snack Run

the Tachyon...

...and the interior of the Dragon's Tooth

it's a pain in the ASS to make these interior maps, though

Codebase I use is here: https://github.com/BeeStation/NSV13, it's under a copyleft license. I don't recommend doing this.

[tight pier]

This sounds so fun. Who are the other PCs?

[balmy vigil]

We have:

Sidonia, a woman whose pronouns are crime based (she is either Miss Fix It, if she's being sent to fix your blender, or Mx Fix It, if it's being sent to fix the fact you're alive)
Smilin' Jay, a pillar of the community in Hell's Gate (also a gang leader, workers union representative and a former Hell Hound who left before they got evicted from the Gate)
Arden, a person who has a unique and uncanny ability to destroy anything they interact with, purposefully or not, which resulted in the IPS-N vessel they were working on mooring them here
Ilya, a high-ranking recruit who was destined for a Union military academy. Unfortunately, he got on the wrong ship by mistake while travelling to it, and instead of the Solstice Rain campaign he was born for, he ended up here.
Dietrich, a quiet loner who is mostly a quiet loner because he constantly hears peoples emotions in his head, and also because an SSC subsidiary is looking for him so they can find out how he does that. Has an uncanny ability to identify the most valuable item around him.

and the described Mook is Falcon, who is an ex-pirate, though unwillingly (the ex part is unwillingly). He has no redeeming features. He is arrogant, prideful, a bully, kinda dumb, terrible with money. His sole talent is piloting a combat mech, which is how he pays the bills to keep his mech maintained. His pirate crew got stomped by the Hell Hounda a decade ago, when he was 18. He's 28 now, and he's still convinced this is a temporary state of affairs and he's gonna be a pirate king one of these days.

[tight pier]

[balmy vigil]

Ilya's player drew their character, too...

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1212837511756517417/1215109725369143336/ilya1.png?ex=65fb8e1e&is=65e9191e&hm=1a7c2f364a8ed6ae87444d475d6ea1e6f21c1728abcfe74dc49567fba659feae&

[tight pier]

i'd kill for them

seriously this seems like the exact perfect PC to get fucked up by The Horrors

its really fun looking through the book and going "oh this is perfect" and just documenting the exact scenes that'll truly bring out the worst in different PCs

we have an ex-Circuit PC who got Fucked Up by them. chapter 4 is going to be amazing

[past agate]

they're great

[wispy quail]

oh i never even thought about using SS13 to make maps

i have some friends who are mappers, i'll see what I can do

[tight pier]

its such a pain in the ass. i can tell you my process if you want it

[wispy quail]

yeah sure, would help me decide if i need to redownload StrongDMM

[rough bluff]

On the railroaded subject from earlier when I was hell diving, I think @frail kayak ran getting railroaded before a major beat. His party trounced them but he was going to have the train engineer gratefully say that he was tranporting HA parts and they got "Destroyed" in the fight so the party could get the effects of a full repair out of position.

[tight pier]

here's the basic instructions in a pastebin link:

https://pastebin.com/M77KgfrC

it's tedious as hell but SS13 assets can feel very Lancery

[frail kayak]

This is more or less exactly how I handled it. Defendi is almost entirely correct about the HA supplies, but it was going to be 3 repair cap instead of a full repair. (edit: oh, and I did let them quick repair between Thermopylae and Anti Capital)

[wispy quail]

this seems less efficient than using an actual map editor?

[tight pier]

sorry, in step 3 you'd be using a map editor to edit the map

[wispy quail]

like. not sure why you need to take the screenshots ingame

[frail kayak]

Tedious as hell, but good results exactly describes my experience using the Brigador map editor (I know that's not exactly what you said)

[wispy quail]

although i guess if you want that real good ambience maybe you do

[tight pier]

authenticity. some shit (such as computer screens, APCs, vents, and other stuff) only render in-game

[wispy quail]

thats fair

[tight pier]

dragon's tooth in SDMM for comparison

[wispy quail]

oh right the walls

duh

my bad

i feel like there's gotta be a way to make the admin ghost invisible so you don't have to crop it out, though

[tight pier]

if there is, i haven't found it.

[rough bluff]

What is SDMM?

[wispy quail]

StrongDMM is a map editor for Space Station 13

[tight pier]

New versions may not work if you use an AMD GPU
https://github.com/SpaiR/StrongDMM

[tight pier]

lol

[wispy quail]

seems reasonable enough

just varedit yourself to not have an icon

ez

(note: that last part might not work on every codebase)

[meager vine]

This makes a lot of sense to me, thank you!

[balmy vigil]

i'm very funny.

[tame tide]

Ha!

My brain had a segmentation fault whilst reading that objective so I'm rooting for your players

[thorn hinge]

||The cult built the first focal array themselves, they just needed Nyambose to check their work and tweak things. With a functioning Fire gate and presumably printers on Djall, they should be able to reproduce their work quickly and keep their plans in operation.||

As for those two optional fights, they are cool as fuck. My players didn't have to do them, but I suggested we might play them anyway as a sort of hypothetical side story. I wouldn't penalize the players if they lost, and I would give them some sort of bonus if they won. Ultimately we didn't go for it because everybody was tired and looking forward to some downtime RP rather than more fights. Also I never got maps made for it...

[shrewd sorrel]

Gotta say, that new map maker is a godsend. My party breezed through ||lowest bidder|| way faster than I anticipated, even with a bunch of RP and random shenanigans, and ||Me taunting them with Steele like Handsome Jack fucking with the protag every 5 minutes||. turns out a party of 3 that knows that they wanna do can get through a combat really quick when they want. I didn't have any maps made for ||roadblock|| because we've been doing a single combat per session usually, but it took me about 10 minutes total to whip up a map and the opfor. (i love the lil car assets they're very cute)

[lunar panther]

everything @tight pier said also applies (as we are running the campaign together) but the extra angle I've been taking things from is the Cult pushing ||Bondarchuk|| to antagonise if not outright attack the PCs as that's really the only way they can still remain underground

additionally, if you haven't yet investigated Tarben's death (like we haven't) then Rita will still want the team to look into that, ||which should lead them into stumbling across the Fire Gate||

Ada's theory also fits there

[tight pier]

I find it really funny how our PCs never investigated the Bondarchuk and Gift-Bronze connection

[lunar panther]

they're so embarassed by speaking incorrectly in front of a posh lady that they don't dare even try

[frail kayak]

Yeah, that tool is really neat!
I was messing around with it, and made an Asphodel Wastes biome I was pretty satisfied with

[past agate]

Can I get some handsome jack examples for the big man himself

[pliant ibex]

There's the 'guy charged me with a spoon' conversation, there's the mission where he'll pay you to throw yourself off a cliff, there's the whole thing with Butt Stallion, I think there's also an actual arena combat HJ has lines for, the one vs. animals in the nature reserve?

I think the biggest thing that separates Jack and Steele is that Jack always has a clarity and ruthless purpose, whereas Steele is perfectly happy just doing the indulgent and greedy things he does

[shrewd sorrel]

I dropped "Hey, I'll pay you a billion Manna if you kill yourself" on my players

they thought it was very funni

[pliant ibex]

Like sure, ||he has an overarching goal|| as revealed in act 2, but it doesn't drive him the way Jack has his whole deals

[balmy vigil]

I intend to put up a funny little clock in the vs Steele fights, where he'll offer to pay the players money if they do as he says (I.e. don't kill this enemy, take structure damage, get off the objective)

...and then a second one for if they do the opposite of what he says

if they do the former, they get reserves, if they do the latter, they get station stability

i have no reservations that they are at all going to do the former, but it'd be very funny to constantly ramp up the absurdity of the rewards he's offering

'I WILL BUY YOU A BARBAROSSA TO FUCK OFF'

[thorn hinge]

Here's the lines I used while my players were fighting in ||Roadblock after rescuing the prisoners||. I hooked a synthesizer up to my mic to bleep myself out with actual beeps, and the horse sound effects were set up as discord sound board files. Horse1 is just a horse huff vocalization. Horse2 is a horse whinnying with heavy reverb fading into the distance. Also Pear's last name is Bradford not Bartlett. I did maybe 3 of these a round to spread them out through the fight.

[past agate]

Did not expect striga

[thorn hinge]

Neither did Steele.

[past agate]

TRUE

[wild flame]

no one ever does

[past agate]

The striga inquisition

[tight pier]

DONT LET STEELE ERADICATE ME

NOOOOOOOOOO

[past agate]

[tight pier]

[wild flame]

vents won't be harmed if the crabs become armed

[past agate]

🦐🦐🦐🦐

Shrimp attack

[heady vale]

@fallen geyser

Trying to hunt it down throughout the book but I haven't seem to find it
Is there anything written anywhere, even if it's not in the first book, that flushes out what it's like being one of the people who live on Asphodel but not In Furnace?

[fallen geyser]

It's in the Furnace City section

Beat 15: The Only City, I think

[heady vale]

Thank you!!! I wouldn't be surprised if I looked over it like two or three times and just didn't process it

[heady vale]

I've got to do some fleshing out because [wallflowers spoilers] || My friend and I are working together to establish a small Egregorian Town that's forming on the planet, that one of my players is a diplomat to, since Wallflower happened like 200 years ago in my lancer||

[fallen geyser]

Delightful

||We have had moths in Calliope before and the general consensus is that they are considered at most only slightly weirder than regular Calliopeans||

[maiden ferry]

||I want to know what excellent eg/calliope names people have come up with, considering both culture's naming conventions. William William aint got shit||

[heady vale]

||That's the general vibe I got, I feel like people on the station after living with him at for a couple of months would find the weirdest thing about him not the fact that he's an Egregorian But the fact that he acts like a eccentric eastern European grandfather||

[balmy vigil]

I'm tempted to ||have a single Egregorian in my Calliope, who escaped from an SSC blacksite and is hiding out here||

||'Forlorn Hope'||

[heady vale]

The naming of my players' dude (edited to add his context on the name choices that he put in doc)

(Spoiled for wallflower spoilers)

[light mist]

Would Jerry be open to trying to rehabilitate a captured member of the Hell Hounds' inner circle? Or would they just... get spaced?...

[fallen geyser]

As a rule, Hell's Gate does not space people

Also, yes

Consult the NPC Calamity Havok

[pliant ibex]

That does not preclude there being a) public outcry on the Gate and b) imprisonment and charges brought against a former high-ranking Hell Hound, though, at least as far as I've read

[light mist]

i see i see, makes sense

[balmy vigil]

A secondary objective for A Face to a Name, because sometimes, you just need to tell your players to do something really stupid if they want the shiny gun. I don't expect them to actually manage to pull it off, but if they try, it'll be very funny.

[past agate]

no fucking way

[balmy vigil]

if they manage to pull it off they deserve a free flamethrower

[past agate]

blurred image of jerry that i just. have

very stressed jerry going at incredible highg speed

[balmy vigil]

somebody make a vibrating Jerry .gif

[rough bluff]

||The Swarm||, Static Version (or Round 1 version)

[quaint pebble]

Got my maps up for the optional Mission 3 encounters in the folder now, will probably get to have a week or two off before I need to start making the critical path ones :p
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1zuAELkhIEPJS7e8hUdhC4cS_NuKP8qyf
Still messing around with scale but I think Guardian Angel is probably going to be a pretty good size (read: sufficient that everyone isn't necessarily always in range of a Rainmaker at all times)

[thorn hinge]

Huh. Calamity Havok achieved that in my game. Still stands as our high score, though Pear managed to tie it getting focused by two scourers and hit 4 times in one round.

[balmy vigil]

This is actually what inspired this secondary!

I saw your note that 15 Burn was your high score for that combat, and said 'this is now a secondary objective'.

[thorn hinge]

lmao, well then

[shrewd sorrel]

idk excatly what yall could use this for but its now in my Calliope playlist. that is all

https://youtu.be/WR7fwMM5ccc?si=MwvI3aizolQtvQpq

[thorn hinge]

I went a bit basic for chapter 5's ||Silence the Guns|| but I'm still rather happy with it. Once again the book says a specific terrain feature was scattered about, and I took that as "absolutely fuck the map up with it". Starlight Furnace background and tiles, generators from Shadowrun: Returns, and objectives are from starcraft.

||Every enemy in this fight has range 10 and/or sensors 10, so I made sure that the objective zones were close enough to each other to keep things interesting. I'm going to let the players decide if they split up to flank the objectives or rush one side together, with the enemy forces deploying to respond. Should be quite a bloodbath if they both come in from every angle, as opposed to the usual control sitrep where both sides deploy on opposite sides and have two objectives that are "theirs" all but in name. ||

[shell bison]

My calendula player fucking BULLIED This encounter

[tight pier]

the steele with the clown makeup

[shell bison]

Party took minimal damage but are trucking,
Clip MVP Ammo dumped on dudes and Ana guaranteed 3 crits and structures with Expose weakness for the players. :')

[frail kayak]

@heady vale
continued experiments in running 7 LL5 players through Tier 2 Mission 5: (this turned into a huge infodump, but I hope it's useful)
Although they took significant damage in round 1 of the first fight, the SRT really turned things around in round 2, and I declared that they had won after round 3, as I only had two ||barricades|| left.
total structure damage was 3: 1 each to the Goblin, Pegasus, and Oleander. I forced a repair out of the Gorgon, and two out of the Black Witch(including repairs after battle) The Orchis was barely injured, and the Blackbeard was undamaged for the first time in the campaign
so overall, this was the sweet spot for difficulty for my party, I'll probably have some extra supplies show up after the second fight at this rate, but I expect the second one to be easier. I had six players active at a time during each of the three sessions that included combat this chapter. First encounter was 10 activations, 12 structure of enemies

Second encounter is 8 activations, 11 structure + (5 activations, 6 structure as reinforcements)
I've lost the veteran ||Bastion|| after the first round, and two are in serious jeopardy. The Blackbeard, Gorgon, and Oleander are all at about half health
I'm releasing three no-template NPCs at the end of the first round, and one veteran plus one no-template at the end of the second, so next round they'll be fighting 10 activations, 10 structure (1 veteran took structure damage), which judging from the first fight should actually be fairly dangerous
I can provide the exact NPC compositions I used if that would be helpful

[heady vale]

i may reach out for that at some point

[rough bluff]

Anyone need a template for when a Wordkiller overheats with it's core ability running? I made this lava template today.

[heady vale]

that lava looks so tasty

[rough bluff]

We were joking that I just turned all the terrain around me into lava. Since you melt terrain when you DON'T overheat, that seemed justified.

Also, my worldkiller has been tech attacked 12 times without hitting. May Worldkiller. A WORLDKILLER. E-Def 8 with difficulty to system checks. They've straight missed 11 times and have a current streak of 10 misses...

They all look like this:

(That's technically a spoiler for a mech from Wallflower, I believe.)

[quiet snow]

Stupid question for Chapter 3 - what does/should ||"Dealing with the laser" do? My players rolled a 20 to convince Striga to hack it. My assumption was that just prevented the Scouts from using the system... but nothing explicitly says that.||

[balmy vigil]

||Striga needs time to deal with it, so it's still usable during the mission. However, if you look near the end, you can see the results of asking Striga to handle it.||

||'...the fuck is a felicitations?'||

||Essentially, it ensures that Steele can't use it as a tool for reprisal in the aftermath of the mission.||

[warped ibex]

||as is, i believe the implication is, yeah, striga needs time to deal with it, so it only matters at the very end when steele is going to retaliate with the laser on a very, very large scale.
however i ran it as striga got in basically instantly, and just couldn't reveal this by shutting it down, or else she'd get shut out of it. so they had a one time use card to call striga in to shut it down whenever they deemed it critical. essentially the same effect (hopefully your players won't deem any moment before that 'critical'), just let my players feel its effects more||

[shell bison]

||Along with cutting off access to units in the Steele Dome from using Orbital strike||

[light mist]

one of my PCs has begun the process of realizing ||she assassinated another PC's parents||
i need to come up with ||some other ppl she killed|| so it's not too obvious tho

[thorn hinge]

ooooh that's a spicy plot, I love it

[light mist]

oh no
the shoe dropped
man i'm gonna run out of material for chapter 4 LMAO

[light mist]

i actually am not sure how we're gonna narratively justify the party being together for mission 2 at this point lol

[rough bluff]

||The Swarm|| uploaded to the Share, BTW.

[light mist]

part of me is wondering if i'd have to skip directly to the end of act 1 / the start of act 2 to force the party to come together?...
or do some kind of insane stuck in a timeloop plot where ||the party lives through the apocalypse until they figure out how to stop the cult?||

[quaint pebble]

Not always the answer you want but "they don't and someone spins off a new PC while theirs becomes an NPC" is always an option, especially if there is an act break

[light mist]

that's the thing
we just finished mission 1 🙃

[warped ibex]

mission 4 //
||in the VORSEHUNGSMOTOR, i have unveiled to my players a cardinal sin: normal striga.||

||i personally run that Thorn is responsible for most of Striga's weirdness, and TRIPLE-POINT doesn't know anything about Thorn, so its calculations always turn up a Striga that is... normal.||

[balmy vigil]

accursed. vile.

a dark timeline.

[tight pier]

||Normal Striga: FELICITATIONS, COMRADES!

"Normal" Striga: Hello, friends.||

awful.

[light mist]

how large is the hell's gate militia again?

[tight pier]

large enough to not be obliterated by pirates and especially the Hell Hounds

likely at least a few dozen mech pilots, if not over a hundred

i dont see the amount of mech pilots exceeding 200 though

[light mist]

ah ok
i'm trying to come up with some kind of crisis that would force the station to rely on the PCs even though half of them are currently mentally unstable
and the problem i keep running into is "why couldn't they just ask some other militia pilots to do this"

[scarlet rock]

Just having the hulls and bodies doesn't mean those are all deployable off-station.

My sense is that the SRT is for when you need a small team deployed somewhere else; you send your best team, not a hundred mech chassis.

[tight pier]

the militia as i understand it is mostly a defense force with limited ability to operate outside of Hell's Gate, while the SRT has more budget and less oversight and is able to be deployed whereever for a while

[scarlet rock]

The militia already has a job! It's defending Hell's Gate.

The SRT is "do the stuff you need a mech for that isn't just defending Hell's Gate".