In Golden Flame

[soft thicket]

oh really ? Doesn't that cause problems for the games that aren't compatible with the version you're currently swaped on ?

[empty stag]

It would, if you try to run them on the version they weren’t made for. But you can’t even make the swap while a game is currently “running”. You turn off your game (go to setup) make the swap, then load up the relevant game world. This is easier than it sounds through the Forge UI.

[soft thicket]

interesting

[rare escarp]

So I'm thinking about giving Steele a secretary, someone who's voice you always hear in the background or he talks to whenever he speaks to the PCs in any way, I'd play it as very clear she is kinda afraid of the wackjob man baby she works for.

And I'm thinking of having them find her corpse after the fact.

Some might say I'm cruel.

But the more angst I can make, the better

[ebon hatch]

I don’t know if Steele is the type to kill anyone.

Have them killed, absolutely.

But I think he’d rather try to fire her in a big, humiliating way, and if that didn’t work, he’d throw her out the airlock or something.

Something mean and impersonal so he doesn’t even have to look at it.

[balmy vigil]

Steele is the type to very upsettedly fire them, and being fired from Impact Dynamics tends to be synonymous with being spaced without a suit

[rare escarp]

oh im not saying he pulled the trigger, don't misunderstand

all im saying is the party might hear him freak out on her, telling her to gtfo

and if, you know, they happen to find a body with her nametag, well

the fun part is letting the players paint their own image of what happened

bc i know my party will be incensed by it as out of the five

four of them are active and vocal criticizers and protestors who fall between DemSoc to AnarchoComm

the other one doesnt subscribe to any political ideaology but, to use his owns words

"listen man if i could guillotine a rich fuck, id do it"

so knowing the party, it will make them want blood

and thats what i want them to want

if my party doesn't desire a Steele-shaped Pinata by the time im done, i will have failed

[hard falcon]

unprompted thoguht into my brain
Jerry would absolutely have a tie that looks like a plain black and white striped tie.
Closer inspection reveals that the black stripes are words, opening with 'Have you heard of the critically acclaimed MMORPG...'

[rare escarp]

the white stripes are ALSO words, which read "please ask me about hit webcomic kill six...."

[past agate]

Horrible

Thank you

[hard falcon]

I live but for one purpose: Afflict others with curses

[rare escarp]

a goal i can get behind

btw that reminded me

all of you

every one of you

Just Lost The Game

[past agate]

FUCK

[rare escarp]

:)

[ebon hatch]

Fucking HORUS!!!!

[past agate]

[hard falcon]

'And that's when I spaced her your honour'
'Understood, you're free to go'

[ebon hatch]

https://tenor.com/view/kirk-khan-rage-angry-furious-gif-17318456

[rare escarp]

https://tenor.com/view/smirk-smile-gif-20576100

[hard falcon]

also my party keeps shifting their goals for what mechs they wanna run

luckily, the one constant is ||the Barbarossa||

[rare escarp]

oh see i decided to be funny, let everyone chose one piece of exotic equipment to start with as its their first LANCER game and i want them to enjoy it, right

[hard falcon]

which makes me happy. because of ||the mission 3 tooltip||

[rare escarp]

allow me to paint you a very funny picture

[hard falcon]

haha...hahahaha...

||one player is probably gonna mount that to their Dusk Wing||

[hard falcon]

So, correct me if im wrong

But doesn't the stress roll only happen if you try to go over the heat cap?

[rare escarp]

ive always been under the impression its once you hit it?

[hard falcon]

gimme a hot second

[rare escarp]

okay, just checked, im wrong here

[hard falcon]

ye

[rare escarp]

it's the second he takes a single point over his heat cap

which, ya know

looks at S1GN4L

:|

[hard falcon]

'Hello, I am a goblin

[rare escarp]

+GREETINGS SHITFUCK
-HAVE YOU HEARD THE GOOD WORD OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOR MONIST-1?

[hard falcon]

I always miss the N in Monist

[rare escarp]

MOIST-1

from a Lancer NSFW Parody

[hard falcon]

thanks i hate it

[rare escarp]

you thought you were the one who afflicts others with curses

unfortunately for you

[past agate]

Shut the f

[rare escarp]

i'm a HORUS-affiliated shitposter with a wooloo pfp

[hard falcon]

i handstitched my PFP

[rare escarp]

nice! i possess no art talent

hand tremors are a BITCH

but i like shoop

[hard falcon]

wooloo is honestly one of the best new pokemon

[rare escarp]

tru

round friend

[hard falcon]

me as a smaller kid: 'the best pokemons are the godzilla, angry long dragon, scizor, the rock fossil, all the big cool dragony ones!
Me as a 34-year old relic: the best pokemon are the trans pride eevee, the gremlin with a stick, scizor, and the round sheep

Translations: Tyranitar, Gyarados, Red Metal Speedy Bug, Aerodactyl
Sylveon, Mimikyu, Red Metal Speedy Bug,Wooloo

[fossil lion]

scizor is truly a universal constant

[hard falcon]

i have nostalgia for the weird red lobster

[tight pier]

shinx my beloved

[frozen talon]

So my friends got to Anti-Capital and session ended at the half way point

I think this is the first time they have felt fear since playing Lancer (IGF is their first)

Still, one of them pulled off a sick move with their Manticore Beckoner of swapping places with Sunbird-1 into a cluster of zero-g mines

[willow cloak]

Sunbird is such a good fight

[hard falcon]

Why did that work? Did something give it the mech tag?

Sick move regardless

[frozen talon]

I let it happen as GM, though told them ordinarily the system wouldn't get a lock on a ship. Yet 'somehow' this one time, it got a brief lock on Sunbird-1.

(him having been the one who messed the most with the Tachyon systems might have rubbed off on him tech)

excuses are fun

[hard falcon]

Fair and valid

[hard falcon]

Infected by the ghost ship, through the power of the mind goblin

[vagrant thicket]

What's a mind goblin? :V

[hard falcon]

[vagrant thicket]

https://tenor.com/view/anya-gif-25682853

[hard falcon]

[willow cloak]

Who's Steve Jobs?

[hard falcon]

LIGMA BALLS

[vagrant thicket]

Eh, close enough

[hard falcon]

Was diz close

[vague fog]

Wanted to share this server icon I made for my igf group lol

[hard falcon]

... I hate it

Stealing it

[vague fog]

:3

[frail kayak]

DON"T YOU MEAN STEELE-ING?

[hard falcon]

https://tenor.com/view/cat-throwing-brick-brick-cat-gif-9142560192559212520

I also just spotted Dave and Gamzee. I love and hate it

... I am finding more homestucks

[wild flame]

yeah there's a good few

[hard falcon]

I'm at 5

8

||John, Jade, and Terezi on page 77||
||Aforementioned Dave/Gamzee on 118||
||Rose, Kanaya, and Eridan on 162||

Can't find other massive people sprawls, so unless I'm blind, that seems to be them all.

[thorn hinge]

Missed one, but he's hard to notice as a human. Hint, each of those pages has three, and the hard bit is the lack of nubs.

[rare escarp]

Hey, does anyone have a version of this webm (made by the wonderful Ada) that actually ends at the right time? i cant find a decent editing software to cut it at the 18 second mark and its driving me crazy (Also replying to ada here bc they might have one)

[empty stag]

I see you encountered the issue I did. I made such an edit for the landing page. I won’t be home for awhile to share it, however.

[hard falcon]

Gonna go with a gut feeling and then say that ||the angry looking guy in front of Dave and gamzee is Karkat||

[rare escarp]

i mean assuming your home within 12 hours it'll be good for me, i got my Sesh 1 coming up at 8 PM est

[empty stag]

Kek. Yeah, I should definitely be able to toss you the file before then.

[rare escarp]

lol, much appreciated dude!

[rare escarp]

Denial Of Service Enemies have been made >:)

i couldnt think of a funny name for the rainmaker

so

P4Y 2 W1N

[hard falcon]

I hate it and love it at the same time

[rare escarp]

listen its a universal constant that Sig's crew has the most obnoxious ass names

[hard falcon]

I thought S1GN4L's crew were a ||detachment of hired hell hounds?||

[rare escarp]

also yes i did name the engi erectin' as a tf2 ref

i mean they might be but i choose to believe that even if they didnt pick the names

S1GN4L hacked them to display them as such

[hard falcon]

[rare escarp]

bc, and say it with me

S1GN4L is a shitpost of a human

man is a sentient, sapient reddit page and you cannot tell me otherwise

[hard falcon]

S1GN4L is what you see when you fail your roll against Gorgon's Basilisk

'good news, we've figured out how to download parts of the internet directly into the frontal cortex. bad news, it only grabs reddit, omegaverse tumblr, and 4chan's /b/

[quaint pebble]

my explanation was that they are indeed hell hounds but it turns out that hanging out on the gamer asteroid is more fun than tormenting each other and being tormented on fort cerberus so it transforms them into really horrible gamers

[hard falcon]

the ultimate damnation.
S1GN4L enjoys FleetComm5016

[rare escarp]

me: "damn i cant find a good printmass token for a BARRICADE producing size 2 ones"

Me: "oh wait, i have off-brand photoshop

BEHOLD, MY CRIMES I SHALL FORCE MY PLAYERS TO SEE

listen is their nicer ways to make it look? absolutely

however

get copied

[shell bison]

that's one block of blocks

[rare escarp]

sometimes your the block
sometimes you get blocked

she EXTRUDE on my BARRICADE till i SLAG_EJECT://

[hard falcon]

Extrude gunblock

[shell bison]

Two of my new players for my 2nd campaign are already thinking of having one character ask out the 8'2" tall super soldier woman

[thorn hinge]

Honestly, that looks pretty great

[fast parrot]

...who?

[shell bison]

• Kat Tatastro Phe

• Morgana Butzer

• Yue Boldwen

[fast parrot]

i vaguely recognise morgana from somewhere but huh
art is wonderful and the names are very in character
these your pcs?

[shell bison]

Yup. still need to consider the 4th player...

[hard falcon]

I just realized upon closer inspection.
||It's not Jade, it's Vriska||

[rare escarp]

i mean its literally just the Size 1 Barricade from Retrograde but i duplicated and flipped it at random

[thorn hinge]

Oh, yeah. Jade's gonna be in Act 2. June, Vriska, and Terezi are on Hell's Gate, along with Mikaela.omdf, Vex, BARTENDER MOTHERFUCKER, and a table with some of ZFJake's players.

[thorn hinge]

I mean, I just used a generic crate from Fallout 1 that I ripped out for a map once and kept reusing as a token.

[hard falcon]

Vex is the werewolf in the rafters I assume? And also just off to the side on the icebreaker

... is she in the furnace city splash too

Also what's a- oh. Omni...
...
Oh, the 'werewolf' is mikaela. Cat ears

I apologize for the spamming about the art details btw

[pliant ibex]

you are Engaging with the Content that this forum was made for

you do not need to apologize, you are allowed to take up space

[hard falcon]

[pastel tiger]

What have people used in terms of tokens for the Mission 3 fight against || the ??? outside the Crone's place ||

[fossil lion]

I've seen an image floating around here for ||something loosely resembling MISSINGNO from Pokemon||.

[quaint pebble]

I just used the Retrograde MO&S Donner mini

could probably jazz it up a bit more with some photo editing

[thorn hinge]

I made this one that RandomWizard is referring to. Some people have used it straight or as a basis for their own. But to answer your question about what I used in my game? I uh... I made a token with more effort in it than any other token I made for the whole campaign. Including ||making the entire firegate from scratch as pixel art...||
I talked about it and posted some examples a long while back in the other thread here:
[CH3 SPOILERS] #909574961931362365 message [CH3 SPOILERS]

[shell bison]

Working on cards again for some down time. Thoughts on Striga's card?

[hard falcon]

99% perfect

For memes, it should be a non-looping gif that starts as a title card for someone else and has her punch in from the side

[shell bison]

LMAO

I might do that

[hard falcon]

You're welcome

[shell bison]

Hey @thorn hinge ,

Going to work on Calamity next anything specific from that player they would like to see on her card?

[dense crescent]

nah
drop from the ceiling

[hard falcon]

Better, yes

[shell bison]

Dejean up and coming :)

[hard falcon]

Potentially stupid question.
Lancer is a universe where flashcloning is a thing.
The existence of the Hell's Gate memorial wall indicates that death sticks.
Is flashcloning unavailable in calliope, or is that something only given to licensed mech pilots

why yes I am behind on reading all the lancer lore, and it's possible the answer is just, there.

[willow cloak]

Flashcloning is rare, and very often unethical.

[rare escarp]

Flashcloning is Super Mega Illegal

[willow cloak]

Oh yeah that too.

[rare escarp]

since clones are considered their own people, well

as far as Union is concerned

you're erasing a motherfuckers brain and replacing it with a copy of someone elses

[hard falcon]

Vat cloning is probably what I meant

[willow cloak]

Nah that's still pretty fraught

You'd only take the legal and moral risk for a singularly talented individual, such as a Lancer.

[hard falcon]

(I thought flashcloning was 'we grew a human really really fast')

[rare escarp]

it is, but its also "we then force-implanted the dead ones memories and personality into it"

[willow cloak]

They both exist but both require a subjectivity override.

[hard falcon]

Ah

Jegus

I mainly bring this up because, assuming no other shifts, a player intends to go into mission 3 in a manticore

[rare escarp]

sounds like you have a perfect chance to, if worst case happens

have HORUS fuckery flash-clone them

[willow cloak]

Militia members won't usually get cloned. That would be super uncommon. But, SRT pilots? Lancers? Player characters? That could happen to them. It gives an out if they die in combat, its narratively interesting, and it can lead to some cool character moments as they grapple with their sense of self.

[hard falcon]

Fair enough!

[rare escarp]

Yeah, the important thing to note is - The clone isnt the dead character

[hard falcon]

Thank you for these insightful answers, you will be spared the next shitpost

[rare escarp]

Even a flashcloned one with the same memories

[quaint pebble]

Calliope definitely doesnt have the infrastructure to trivially clone people, also

theyre too busy using all of that infrastructure to make food and retain their air

if a PC dies and needs to be cloned though, there's a strong hsitory of clones showing up in IGF

[willow cloak]

But, there are also many dubiously ethical scientists willing to undertake such activity.

[rare escarp]

hence why im saying, HORUS fuckery might be the way to go here

esp since they're already piloting a HORUS mech

[hard falcon]

[quaint pebble]

but like the resources aren't there to flash clone every killed Hell's Gate militia member
and as already established, there also wouldn't be in any point: flash cloning someone is making a second person

[rare escarp]

so perhaps whoever gave them the licences for the Manti has a vested interested in keeping them - or a cloned version of them - alive

What that interest is? The clone probably doesn't know

But as the DM

You do

[willow cloak]

If you want more insights and are okay with ||reading the drafts, Act 2 has a major NPC who's a clone||

[quaint pebble]

If your PC has a mysterious benefactor who is cloning them it immediately raises the idea that the one they were playing as might not even have been the first, and there's no guarantee there's only one of them wandering around at a time

[hard falcon]

||I'll probably take a look after this initial campaign itself, to determine whether doing so is even in the works||

[rare escarp]

Ohhhh, maybe tie this in with a malfunctioning Comp/Con reporting that there was an error in knocking the clone out after the process was complete, so THIS clone knows, but has no clue if the last time they were kicking they were cloned as well

[hard falcon]

[rare escarp]

but also - be sure to ask the player

do they want to play a clone? or do they want to make a new chara

a militia grunt who got promoted or smtn

[rare escarp]

actually, heres an idea-

||They wake up near a destroyed, miniature firegate.||

a prototype, proof of concept or smtn

[hard falcon]

I mean, if the temp. HORUS player dies(and they are okay with new clone), then there'll be a mysterious coldstorage box that arrives mere hours before the team returns from Asphodel.

No other cargo.

Just this box

[rare escarp]

nonono, see, if you want to have it be real fucked?

have the box have arrived BEFORE they left

with a letter that just says "You're welcome"

[wild flame]

"Sorry about what happened."

[quaint pebble]

it arrives at hell's gate just as the dragon's tooth takes off and is waiting for them to come back 😌

[rare escarp]

"Lol - Your favorite Cousin"

[hard falcon]

[rare escarp]

god, reminds me of the time my flashcloned HORUS girlie flashcloned someone and they woke up with a note that said "feels weird to be on this side of things -NeroCanSuckIt"

[hard falcon]

'What's the last thing I remember?'
'Turning that switch on'

[rare escarp]

oh god you know what that line reminds me of

one sec, fuck-

[hard falcon]

I'm making all these preps when our lancer games have thus far had 0 pilots killed

[rare escarp]

https://www.badspacecomics.com/post/long-goodbye

(in general thats an amazing dark scifi comic, each one is self contained, but what you said reminded me of that one in particular)

[hard falcon]

One pilot came damn close though

[shell bison]

Not saying the game I play Charlotte in we did flash clone a player but....

Well...

We cheated™️

[hard falcon]

Rad

[shell bison]

Got Mcarthur next. Simple. Direct. No BS.

[thorn hinge]

going into mission 3 in a manticore, huh? Well, if they die and the player wants the character to come back somehow, what I'd do is ||have the dead character send a message to the living players after they finish chapter 3. The message originates in Boltzmann.||

[hard falcon]

[thorn hinge]

:3

[wild flame]

thats fucked up lmao

stealing it in case one of my players eats it during m3

[thorn hinge]

It's the perfect time for shenanigans

[hard falcon]

other things my brain is doing is trying to pick appropriate tunes for assorted combats
(yes I know there's a soundtrack someone put in the google docs)

[shell bison]

got a little extra effort and got Shelly up next.

[hard falcon]

Can I call her Cool Aunt

[shell bison]

I assume Shelly would not comment, but have one pixel eyebrow raise at that

[hard falcon]

I'll take it

[lilac tartan]

So why the first probably reason for Zinfandel's name( the second is the wine and pants one) make sense?
Didn't really understand it

[shell bison]

I'll be honest, neither did I

[past agate]

I never figured that out

[split summit]

A fun night in someone else's cabin might have involved too much wine and the removal of trousers. One might say... a de-jeaning.

[shell bison]

https://tenor.com/view/big-iron-big-gun-marty-robbins-gif-23220438

[past agate]

That’s an amazing gif

[rare escarp]

when they ask how big your big iron is

[past agate]

Outlaw’s hand optional

[heady vale]

You GOTTA put these cards in the community resource folder if you're comfortable
They're so good

[shell bison]

They are being added as we speak!

[lilac tartan]

[rare escarp]

from my group

"whoever made the Send in the Clowns mission had too much fun"

[last leaf]

I mean, there's a dragon. If I hadn't been sold from essentially the first page, that would have sealed the deal.

[shell bison]

@amber viper Once again your little pitch is a highlight

You should see the tokens for it

[shell bison]

We are cooking

[past agate]

kitchen is burning yet you still cook

the dedication of a hero

godspeed

[shell bison]

WIP for Siren

[dense crescent]

eagle-1 reference

[shell bison]

Perhaps

[shell bison]

All that remains is what to make for Switch...

And that is all chapter 1 npc cards made.

[amber viper]

What little pitch? 🤔

[shell bison]

"We're in space las vegas, we should have a fight in an amusement park or a rave" And thus send in the clowns was born

[amber viper]

Ah, yes : )

[rare escarp]

once again, quote from my friends "whoever made the Send in the Clowns mission had too much fun"

[slim mountain]

New IGF game master here. I have a player who wants to play disillusioned priest whose followers died doing the cult's work. I suggested that the cult could be the cult of the one, but in running into a creative block: what would the cult of the one be doing that evicting cause the deaths of several members and the disillusionment of one of their priests?

Any ideas welcome!

[willow cloak]

Can you clarify? Was the priest evicted or did they leave?

[shell bison]

Hmm, that's a sticky situation. The cult has various activities that are under the radar that are actively taking place during act one. For exampple they are actively undermining contract work on the breaker, secretly gathering resources towards the stopping of Steele in chapter 3. Could be cult members actively asked his flock to partake in a protest they planned to make violent to gather more support from members?

[slim mountain]

They left by choice

[rare escarp]

Important to note that the average cultist doesnt know about the violent shit afaik

thats specifically the inner cult

[shell bison]

True. The Inner portion are aware of things to that extent, the outer portion are more than likely unknowing they are aiding like the shan family's Father.

[slim mountain]

I like this idea, but it feels a little too real. Nonviolent protests turning violent, civilian casualties. I think my player is looking for a more fantastical tactic backstory

Thanks for the idea though!

[shell bison]

Hmm, could be that it was just they weren't convincing enough in their own rhetoric and someone from the inner cult could convince some to their side. Are you aware of the three different doctorines in the Faith?

Also, my b if that got a little too real.

[slim mountain]

You're referring to the different beliefs around the prophecies of the first prophet of the religion? I thought those died out or weren't present in calliope?

[shell bison]

From my reading in the parts of the book with it I personally saw it as they are different dialects people of the faith can grab from.

• Abandoners
• the Imperfect
• the Perfect Hisari

They are all of the same faith but slightly altered in their texts and how they see the prophet. Could be an interesting step to take for your character.

[shell bison]

Of course, just spitballing. Love to help out anyway I can!

[slim mountain]

Thanks- I'll read up on those sects

[shell bison]

Yeye, not much on each but there is enough to chew on.

[torpid quarry]

So I know there are zips with all the NPC mechs, but does anyone have the camo settings file for all of them?

[torpid quarry]

I was wanting to apply the color scheme to biomecha NPCs, or to replicate it for other mechs. Most seem pretty easy to manually replicate, but Faith of the One seems like a lost cause

[willow cloak]

Which specific set of tokens are you referring to? Multiple people have added tokens to the community resources.

I'd directly ask whoever made the set you're interesting in replicating.

[quaint pebble]

I'm assuming its the ones that are a big zip of "circuit NPCs" etc but unfortunately whenever I've tried to make tokens similar to those I've just had to eyeball it

these ones from vex

[willow cloak]

Hey @fallen geyser, do you happen to have those camo settings saved?

[torpid quarry]

Thanks!

[last leaf]

Is there any intended age for Gabriel Sparrow? I've managed to integrate one of my player's backstories into them having known and worked for Gabriel back when he was karrakin nobility, but I'm now trying to see if there's any hard info on his timeline or not?

[shell bison]

I believe @thorn hinge knows the player of Gabriel to get that info

[thorn hinge]

The real answer is that it's your game and that means he's your NPC, so you can choose. He could work at many ages. Also the SSC gene tweaking means he'll probably live quite a long time and look good throughout. NPC Gabriel could be anywhere from 30 to 100.

The PC version of him is in his thirties subjective, with something like an extra decade and a half of realtime debt.

I'm probably lowballing the "100 years" bit, even.

[shell bison]

Gracias Ada

[jade shell]

Just finished reading the first book, really loving it and curious where book 2 is going

[shell bison]

Some people are actively playing the draft of act2 :)

[torpid quarry]

Do you also have Faith of the One, or would it need to be recreated?

[fallen geyser]

Oh shit

[torpid quarry]

Thanks!

[hard falcon]

How did it take me several iterations of reading to remember that ||in the event the players kill Ignatius in mission 3, he's still going to be there for mission 5 because of Feather||

That would definitely make ||the conversation with Sparrow Min either real weird, or into a Who's on First sitch||

[rare escarp]

My friend playing the Ex-Hellhound is cooking ideas

[ebon hatch]

“Pups” has some funny connotations if Capella doesn’t realize what they are lmao

[rare escarp]

lmao

[rare escarp]

Hey yall, is it ever specifically said that Capella was the first Hound?

[ebon hatch]

I mean, he started the organization and based it out of his own bar, so I would assume “yes.”

[maiden ferry]

maybe "whelps" and hounds?

[ebon hatch]

I mean, considering Capella is an 8chan-level troll, I would assume he used the phrase, didn’t know what it meant, and whenever someone brought it to his attention he beat them to set an example or some shit like that.

[pliant ibex]

I don't think it's said, but they operated out of his bar and he did take leadership of the group sometime before they got kicked off the Gate afaik

[rare escarp]

yeah see thats the thing, the way thats phrased

he took leadership

which implies

he wasnt the og, just the strongest/most ruthless

[pliant ibex]

Wasn't trying to imply that so hard so much as just say he was the leader as of the Strikebreak

At least aiui

Also, they may not have formed with a leader, they may have coalesced as a group of ne'erdowells and picked a name to operate under

[rare escarp]

see the thing is

one of my players

is playing a hellhound

(ex-hellhound)

whos an OG hound

idk - any of the IGF makers wanna share their secrets

[soft thicket]

It’s half canon already innit ; Havok notably has a crossed out arm tattoo

[shell bison]

OG? As in in the Bar in the Hell's Gate under Capella OG Hell hound? :o

[light mist]

help my players unironically want to assassinate elske and take over the knights of the dark core 🙃

[quaint pebble]

I don't think you do that by assassination, you have to do it in an announced and official setting in front of several observers

[wild flame]

Yeah you don't run the show if you assassinate the Grandmistress Martial

You have to beat the Grandmistress Martial

[light mist]

is that something i should just straight up tell them? that the knights would never capitulate if elske were just assassinated?

[quaint pebble]

I'll be honest it doesn't sound like they know very much about the knights so I am not sure why they want to lead them

[light mist]

one of them is ex-karrakin and just hates elske's guts
i think her mindset right now is something like "the knights are wasting resources cosplaying an oppressive system of nobility, we can spend their resources better actually fighting the cult and impact dynamics"

[quaint pebble]

I think that like, if they want to fight Elske because they dont like her that makes sense
but the Knights are in the Knights because they like being Knights

any plan to make them stop being Knights probably isn't going to be very successful, nobody is forcing them to do this

[light mist]

yeah that makes a lot of sense

[quaint pebble]

it's really the other way around, it's quite hard to become a Knight of the Dark Core

[light mist]

i feel like i need to warn them that the knights are, like, actually really good fighters? i feel like they don't understand that yet

[quaint pebble]

mostly only people who are really into the lifestyle are going to bother
you'd probably find a few flaky ones but they're the system's elites and they are roleplaying as knights because they want to live that way

it's not top-down imposed, Elske's only one of a succession of grandmartials after all (although not all of them have been as honourable as others)

[light mist]

i think i need to flesh out elske's background if they're going to seriously pursue this goal
maybe develop her even more as a foil to the ex-karrakin PC

[quaint pebble]

Coming from the KTB and then finding out that someone else who seems suspiciously Karrakin is leading a cadre of pirate space knights is certainly a good setup for character drama
its just uh, one of those ones where a character can be pissed off about something while also being wrong about it :p

[light mist]

yeah, i definitely want to poke a bit at the PC's motivations with this one
do they really have the system's best interests in mind or are they just chasing a grudge

[quaint pebble]

correct: these people are fucking around pretending to be knights
incorrect: someone is making them be knights and they'd do something else given the chance

correct: they're dangerous pirates
incorrect: they don't want to fuck over rodericke steele

correct: Elske is very extra in a way that might be kind of insufferable if you just got away from a place where people act like that all the time
incorrect: She isn't extremely good at using every weapon she is carrying

I guess you could also argue about "pretending" to be knights, they're not pretending

[soft thicket]

hello, just checking if I'm stupid ; #1059603134504255528 message the link there says the first sheet is general and the other are specific to chapters ; but I only see one sheet, the general one

[digital raven]

I think nobody bothered to make chapter sheets

[thorn hinge]

Okay, what chapter of the campaign are the players at? For most of the story it should be clear there's more important things to deal with. As others have said, you can't take control of the Knights with assassination... I can't imagine Jerry would approve of starting a war with another pirate group, especially one that specifically isn't a problem for Hell's Gate.

Gabriel, one of my PCs, is also a Karrakin and has a similar complaints for Elske and the knights, but even if one of his teammates wasn't a former Knight I don't think he'd go so far as to attack them.

[thorn hinge]

The NPC Calamity Havok is an insert of a PC in my game, I've got stuff for you.

Vex wrote an essay on what life is like for the hell hounds, it should be good inspo for you and the player
https://www.tumblr.com/vexwerewolf/747583687457226752/felicitations-comrade-we-had-our-session-0-for?source=share

[light mist]

they're going after steele's arena as the second mission (long story short, i mixed things up slightly)
i'm encouraging them to do more research into the knights, which hopefully should make it more clear to them that simply killing elske won't necessarily achieve what they want

[thorn hinge]

Dang, plotting to assassinate ||your employer who hired you to save a bunch of people?|| Cold.

[shell bison]

wild that they went instantly to the hostile take over option

[thorn hinge]

yeah

Well, if Jerry finds out at all I can imagine he'll be pissed.

[shell bison]

The switch is flipped and they see the man that was shown during the demon winter

[light mist]

it's the ex-karrakin assassin and the young mafia heir whose parents she killed
they're.... not the most stable at the minute :P

[digital raven]

I mean, if you just want to make things worse... I did have Aurum make as a convincing offer as I could manage in that chapter.
For your game, 'I'll help you take down Steele and we can wipe out the Knights of the Core after' is an offer that wouldn't be out of Aurum's wheelhouse, especially because that means mission 3 is fighting the Knights for some reason instead of stopping the Cult on Icebreaker. You haven't done the mission that explicitly shows why the Cult is bad yet, after all.

[light mist]

i don't think that'll work either, they got some information out of a hell hound they captured during mission 1 and they know the cult took over the hell hounds' resources

[digital raven]

Shrug, Aurum can just explain to the party that the Cult is 'trying to turn the Hounds to more productive ends' or something

I don't think it's the hardest sell that 'Capella was the bad guy, we're just trying to clean up his mess'

[past agate]

Interesting

[digital raven]

But again, that's making things worse on purpose instead of giving them a clearer pathway to not ruin everything

But also I try to run Aurum as a genuinely sympathetic character who has just been driven to total despair

[light mist]

oh i forgot to mention they rolled a crit on copying the thief's data behind the blacksmith's back, so they're probably going to try to discredit the burning forge too
maybe this is what i get for switching the missions around to distract them from the cult...

[thorn hinge]

Oh. They're on the planet ? How far from the objective? It's not like they can act on this plan till the current job is done. You could do a lot of change their minds about the Knights if you have the time. At the very least support during the final assault. ||What's their plan for dealing with the laser? The knights can help there, even if they're already going to have siren do it. I had Elske take out a defense picket to clear the way for Siren's attack run. ||

[light mist]

||they spent a core power to set up remote-control missiles to destroy it when needed, so i'm not sure how i could bring the knights into that||

[rare escarp]

as per usual ada, your amazing, tysm!

[thorn hinge]

I wrote up a ton more stuff abojt how I used calamity's backstory but I went way over the character limit and then I had to go, taking my snake to the vet. When i get home I'll try and post that.

[rare escarp]

that'd be really appreciated!

(also i hope your snake is okay!)

[wild flame]

MISSION 3

||Today, my party fought a certain error and spoke with The Crone. They selected 8 as their number of choice. Of the questions asked to the players, there was only one refusal to answer. Every single PC stayed until Something Arrived.||

[thorn hinge]

(The noodle is good, 100% clean bill of health. It was an annual check up. She's a bit grumpy about the trip though and especially about getting her teeth looked at.)

Big Dump of Things I've Done with a HellHound PC

Calamity's player is a glutton for angst so we've had her past bite her several times, any of this might be usable for other ex Hell Hound PCs, or something people could use with the NPC Calamity.

• In the second session of the game, Calamity got accosted by a few people who recognized her. The crowd started to turn into a mob, and it was looking bad until Switch suddenly intervened, cameras everywhere; "Whattup switchboard, check it out! One of the Gate's brave pilots, just back from keeping us all safe and well fed! Let's see if she'll give us an interview". This was how I introduced them to the players, and Switch negotiated a ridealong that ended up taking them through the rest of chapter 1, cementing the streamer as a friend of the players.

• Calamity, as an exception to the rule about allowing pirates on the station, initially had to work with a lot of restrictions. Mostly "best behavior" and no leaving the station without at least talking to Jerry about it.

• The Hell Hounds in ||the first fight (either one)|| can and should recognize the PC. I had the Vet Cataphract from ||Snack Run|| Just add a "Hey Crim" (short for Crimson Lioness, her old pirate persona) to the pre-fight communications. He was more friendly after the fight too. He ended up being a major recurring NPC, showing up in every chapter (at least in the downtimes) and having a whole character development arc that has plans going up into act 2.

• After chapter 3, the players were very close with Jerry and he was happy enough with her that he decided to lift all her restrictions and "take off the leash". First though, he had a question... did she ever collect on Andros's Militia bounty? All those names on the memorial wall... did she put any of them there? Unfortunately, her answer was Yes.

• Jerry looked into DeeVee Dahl, the pilot that Calamity killed. Turns out she has family still on the station. A wife and kids. Calamity wanted to see them and apologize, Jerry said he's reach out to them first and see what they want to do about it before she just shows up. She offered to give them her money; basically everything she has.

• The family said they don't want anything to do with you. Keep your money.

• Calamity saw problems with the hellhounds a mile away (such as the ||sunlighter crisis of chapter 5||) She used a Get Organized downtime in chapter 3 to set up a sort of rehab, a group pirate could go to and get support for going straight. It started as food and medicine, then job placement and a sort of probation system to let pirates live on major stations and gain trust, and now it's gone big (+6,+6); Elske has a knight on the rehab board and formalized plans to help pirate "regain honor under the code", Rita and Jerry have formal legal paths to help pirate reintegrate with society, the rest of the major settlements (not including ID) recognize the program and those who have gone through it.

• Chapter 4 has a LOT of opportunities to fuck with players of any type of course. For a former hellhound ||use the whispers and simulations to torment them with their past, show them timelines where they stayed with the hounds (bonus if it ends very badly for them) or even timelines where ehy join Ignatius. If they have specific victims, this could be a good place to show them the harm they caused.||

• Post chapter 5, Calamity did a Get the Militia Into Shape downtime action. She met a young recent recruit named Ivee who was way too interested in her and her ideas. Finally Calamity asked "What do you want from me?" And Ivee responded "I want you to tell me about DeeVee Dahl, my mother". After recounting their brief and nasty battle, Ivee just... smiled and walked away. Calamity is thouroughly confused and a bit terrified. Ivee is a weird one and even I am not entirely sure what her deal is. I think she mostly likes making Calamity scared.

[rare escarp]

(poor noodle! Thank you sm ada!)

[tight pier]

We have an ||ex-Circuit|| PC. Chapter 4 is going to be Hell for them

[balmy vigil]

so:

one of my players has explicitly said they do not like Calamity Havok

as in, icly

their character thinks that she hasn't actually, like, repented for anything she's done

I might use some of these beats during downtime with them

and have them see her grow and evolve

[thorn hinge]

oh hell yeah

Please, keep me informed how that works out. I require stories about these goobers in order to survive. They are my only sustenance.

[hard falcon]

I'll provide sustenance in july

[thorn hinge]

Welp.

[balmy vigil]

pfffhahahaha

for context: sidonia is a community fixer

fixer meaning either 'mechanic' or 'murderer', depending on what needs to be fixed

she's a funny vigilante

and part of why she dislikes calamity havok, as stated, is that she doesn't have a reason to fix them

[thorn hinge]

nice

[balmy vigil]

they are someone who did bad and is currently trying to be better but them existing kind of challenges sidonia's whole Thing that she does

it'll be very fun to put them in a downtime together

and have her go to sidonia, because she has no idea sidonia hates her, and go 'hey can you-- look, i don't normally do this, but can you help me set this up, i hear you're someone people go to for help'

and have them spend a day setting up a rehab center for ex-hounds and eventually visiting deevee's family

or at least trying to.

[torpid quarry]

@warped ibex I noticed on the GM resources sheet, your CAUSTIC tokens link is just the same link as the entry above it. Not sure if it got overwritten at some point or what

[shell bison]

My players have started chapter 4 :)

My former HA Catboy is having fun with PHASE//SHIFT

and...the phrase has been uttered...

Oh the same catboy ran a fan meet up at the start of the session

[rare escarp]

He doesnt know

[warped ibex]

! hold on, let me fix that. thanks for letting me know

updated!

[hard falcon]

Oh that thing is gnarly, I love it

[rare escarp]

also shoutout to my friend, great hype man

[hard falcon]

Me: shows Roderick Steele image to coworker
Coworker: Why does that look like Featherweight Beej

[hard falcon]

This is a potentially stupid question regarding Mission 5 (And it may have even come up already)
||Andros doesn't seem to have Firebreak Shield (or a renamed version) listed in his statblock, is this an oversight or just 'yes, he's a pyro so he has it' even though the other base traits are there with fancy names||

[tame tide]

I'd assume it's that, he's a pyro so he has it

[tight pier]

^ is i think the "best" interpretation, but I ran Andros without it. He didn't need it, and the OPFOR slammed the players anyway.

[last leaf]

thanks for the info!

[fast parrot]

During mission 3
|| i just have to say that having a schedule 2 and 3 printer on asphodel at the point wehre players get size 2 and size 3 mechs is a really wonderful idea||

[vague fog]

For the combat "A Face to a Name", ||How have the grunt bastions faired for you guys?||

[ebon hatch]

They died pretty quick.

Hacking does wonders

[wild flame]

double chimmichanga core power 😔

they never even got to take a turn

[vague fog]

Yeah that's what I was worried about I have two chomus in my game lol and one still has core power

[shell bison]

I had the two and they actually ate one attack from a heavy melee just to soak up action prio

[clever cloud]

I just wanted to state how much appreciate all the setting details presented at the start of the module. Stuff like travel time between all the locations in the system elevates a module from great to perfect

[empty stag]

It makes for a fantastic player’s guide, when isolated from the spoilers and adventure details

[hard falcon]

'Hitchhiker's Guide to Calliope'
'Don't

[wild flame]

"Turn around. If that's not an option, grab a wrench and start fixing shit."

[clever cloud]

"All these parts use different protocols, we should design a consolidated standard"

• another protocol gets added to the stack

[wild flame]

once everyone in calliope passes priority on a protocol it will eventually resolve and leave the stack

this will never happen, as such the stack continues to grow

[ebon hatch]

"Motherfucker who DESIGNS A LEFT HAND SCREW WHEN I CAN'T TWIST MY WRENCH LEFT?!"

"you want nylocks? in Calliope?! best we got is Keps nuts, hope you weren't lookin to make it pretty"

[past agate]

Randall Munroe is from Calliope

[thorn hinge]

A depricated IGF speedrun strat involves creating dozens of new design standards until you reach a stack overflow and can start writing arbitrary code to jump right to the finale sequence. After the latest patch if you try it ||the crone comes and gives you a lecture on memory sanitation||

[clever cloud]

You know how its been 50+ years and we still dont have good printer drivers? Imagine that but for. Every. Single. Screw and Nail

You can hack the Icebreaker Borealis slot machine if you wiggle the airvents just right

[willow cloak]

Swapping between little-endian and big-endian dozens of times within the same database due to conflicting architectures

[shell bison]

I plan on finding some free time to start making the switch card. Blanking on background ideas. Anyone have any ideas? 🤔

[willow cloak]

Streamer overlay?

[shell bison]

....eyo hold up that's a good idea

[jade shell]

One character idea I had was an Aunic/Apollian Mind who ended up in Calliope after fleeing the Aun

Dunno how well that would work though

[shell bison]

There's a page for Aunic people in the book if I remember correctly

[dense crescent]

I have a runaway aunic mind in my party, it's been great

[shell bison]

I can imaigne Calliopeans seeing the most faintest hint of Metat Aun Space Magic and eating their printloaf sandwich like,

"Neat."

[short current]

"yeah man that's crazy. now you gonna help me fix this air filter or what"

[shell bison]

Calliope will forever be my favorite lancer location because the general populace has to deal with so much mundane to keep the lights on that the fantastical is a side grade to "Eyo, filters fucked again"

[wild flame]

"Yeah bro that's cool and all now will you get over here and fucken help?"

[shell bison]

"Oh you can mentally link to me through this whole Witness Protection Program? Neat, now we don't need to sign everything"

[wild flame]

"You mean to tell me we can mind link and not have to worry about comms shitting out? You're my favorite person."

[hard falcon]

[Wayne Letterkenney Voice]: 'Faith of the one came by the bar todaaaay.'

[thorn hinge]

The biggest barrier with the Aun is just how little there is of them in canon, but that just means you can come up with a lot on your own.

[jade shell]

Fair

[tame tide]

MMM, I need advice. I'm back making maps again

And I wanna make ||Expedited boarding||

Do I want to make it ||one MASSIVE landing pad, like airport tarmac with lots of smaller individual helipad like spots, or do I want to make 6 individual helipad like landing pads...||

[tame tide]

Mission 3: ||To ALL GM's who's players never secured transports! This one goes out for you!!!||

[tame tide]

||5 maps to go...||

[wild flame]

doing great work

[empty stag]

Big fan of your work, Imp. Solid maps

[past agate]

SICK

I’m definitely using those

[hard falcon]

yeah, im using these wherever possible, these are rad

[last leaf]

such a godsend really, great maps

[tame tide]

Thank you all :D

[heady furnace]

[rare escarp]

as per usual imp, your a legend

[tame tide]

https://tenor.com/view/youre-your-gif-22328611

[rustic night]

So, hm, what is the deal with || Anthony Callahan || ? Is he supposed to be || mysterious without having an answer to that mistery || ?

[tame tide]

He does have background, Vex has elaborated on it before... I would send a link if discord mobile search wasn't ass

[rustic night]

Ooooh, interesting

[tame tide]

||He’s from pre-fall, I think like our era||

[rustic night]

|| Okay, that's badass ||

[tame tide]

||I don't know all the basics but something like, he keeps waking up in different times or eras being chased by someone this time it's seccom peeps. And he's constantly on the run.||

||new lore dropped which i don't think is in the drafts yet where Anthony somehow knew knew to go to Calliope in another subjectivity whilst a future Callahan is there, so now there's 2 separate Callahans in Callippe simultaneously, check the gm-corner thread for in golden flame feedback, that's the spoilers version of golden flame stuff where drafts are posted. Ask further, search for Callahan in the search bar or scroll up if you wanna know more||

And anyone who knows more correct me if I'm wrong

[rustic night]

Thank you, Imp

[thorn hinge]

You're correct, and an initial form of this will likely be in the next released draft

[tame tide]

Np

[thorn hinge]

He's ||kind of a mystery in any case, and treated more as a protagonist of another story just passing through this one. His "deal" isn't going to be explicit in IGF, because this isn't his story, but there will be more details about him mostly serving to make him even more of a strange mystery. Don't expect to understand how or why he's like this exactly. There may be more insights into Cal in Vex's side project, Can You See the Doors||

[tame tide]

||What is Can you see the doors?||

[shell bison]

I've made hints of something in calliope just attracts these weird side characters like ||Anthony|| However I've also leaned heavily into the realm of spiritualism with the Faith and that magic may well be literally real cause of ||Chameleon voodoo bullshit|| or maybe it's all paracasual? Who knows :P

[pliant ibex]

Aiui it is ||going to be a side book released that includes a lot of cut or otherwise unfitting content, like a fifth valentinian sibling, that could in theory come up when you have players with Astral Stigmata||

[tame tide]

Hmmm... Do I want to export these maps at 4k or 8k 🤔

4k is good enough, but 8k is spicy

[last leaf]

I think we're all just glad they exist, regardless of resolution.

[tame tide]

True... however b i g

[last leaf]

You make a compelling argument

[daring cave]

Is Andros Capella the original founder of the Hellhounds, or did he take over at a later point?

I know the lore says the Hellhounds initially operated out of the backroom in his bar, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's the OG leader.

[rare escarp]

https://tenor.com/view/tommy-wiseau-oh-hi-mark-hey-mark-gif-17296134

(Yall remember my player who's playing an OG Hellhound? Well, he's here now. @daring cave)

[tame tide]

[last leaf]

the wording implies he wasnt the og.

If he were the original founder, it would be easier to just say so here.

[last leaf]

I love the 5 edef ngl. Just the right finishing touch

[rare escarp]

counterpoint:

[last leaf]

hmm fair

tbf given the hell hound's origins as moonlighters, its possible there wasnt necessarily one founder so much as they came together in a moment of shared hardship

and tbf, capella is certainly critical to the nature and functioning of the hounds by the time the campaign starts

[rare escarp]

Feel like the easy way to answer it would be by pinging vex or Ada but idk how OK they are with pings

[last leaf]

its kinda moot if he was technically the first or not.

idk how okay they are with pings but they are certainly willing to answer questions. Go ask in the spoiler chat ig, and they're more likely to respond.

[rare escarp]

The reason Darth wants to know is he's playing an OG hound in my game

[daring cave]

pre-exile hellhound

who hates Andros with a burning passion

[tame tide]

You inspired me

[last leaf]

i love the idea that he'd disable the firewalls to try and shout at you more

[tame tide]

And then you hack him easier and he just gets more pissed

[last leaf]

presumably overruling the confused objections of his tech team

[tame tide]

It's something incredibly dumb and the exact logic a fuming tech bro would follow

[tame tide]

If they're lucky they aren't making a swift mandatory space walk without a hardsuit

[last leaf]

all the ones with a spine already have

[tame tide]

LMAO

[rare escarp]

@daring cave From the Word of God Themself:

[last leaf]

it is a nice take

[last leaf]

ngl I cant wait until I get to the ||Steele arena missions, my plan is just to get a bunch of elon musk tweets and read them out with a few word changes here and there to make more sense in character.||

[tame tide]

HAHAHAHA

Also, watch it. use spoiler text. This channel is for players AND GM's

[tame tide]

Reminds me of the meme of Wheatley reading musk tweets

[tame tide]

"Hey Lois, remember that time I killed a Cascading Eidolon within a proto-metavault on Hercynia?"

Cut away to Hercynia

[last leaf]

oh oops ye

[past agate]

FGJDJFDGJDGFGC

tiny switch dabbing SENT me

[last leaf]

thank you

[frozen talon]

My party seemed very neutral about Loki

but after Send in the Clowns?

They are now basically begging him to ditch the Purview and become a militia member and / or adopt him in the process so they can punch his dad

[wild flame]

Gets em every time

After getting hit with Mirage Bullshit™️ from S1GN4L, my players were very excited to have some of that on their side

[tame tide]

||Loki hard carried my send in the clowns, teleporting the PC's left right and center and getting them out of tricky situations||

||Almost made a player consider sunzi, however that player is incredibly striker pilled||

[dense crescent]

that's when you go amber phantom or tokugawa
bonus damge on the warp rifle

[tame tide]

"Fuck you, I'm sending you to not right here!"

[shell bison]

In the game I play in, Loki basically all but abandoned his post after chapter 5 for obvious reasons (one PC is in a relationship with him and, if you know you know) so make it a heavy possiblity post chapter 4 and 5 that he is considering ditching the purview to stay with the party but only if they can help him deal with ||dear old dad||

[rare escarp]

"incredibly striker pilled" thats a weird way to say "entirely correct"

(/j)

[shell bison]

Counter point: drag down

[tame tide]

MAPP

[tame tide]

Want opinions, which is better

Left will be without grid

That I just left on by accident :P

[shell bison]

Personally, I'm for the first. Nice separation of each planet and all the locations you can see what locations are in each planet.

[tame tide]

I was hesitant, then I swapped back to the first and I was like "nvm"

[shell bison]

It just makes the info very clear that this planet/local has this particular settlement in it

[regal forum]

Just made a map of ||The Pillar Room at Boltzman|| in Inkarnate. I'm a little rusty with the program (I was waiting forever for the scifi update) but I think it gets the point across. If anyone needs a map for this feel free to use it.

[tame tide]

Send 👀

[tame tide]

Hell yeah

[regal forum]

sorry I was trying to figure out how to mark the picture as a spoiler lol

[tame tide]

Oooh I didn't think of using those assets for the ||Pillar||

Also, random shipping crates my beloved

[past agate]

Where can I find all of your completed maps? For both Imp and Corncob

[regal forum]

That's my first one, I've been using maps from other gms on here up til now

[tame tide]

Pins, Ada's most recent link

Click that. Lots of stuff there

There's some different map variants there, like some I add more cover on after, remove grid or now I'm adding zones. Also I remastered 2 of my mission 1 maps but haven't posted those there :P

[regal forum]

I left zones out of mine since that particular map gets used for 2 different sitreps. I'm just adding zones in owlbear

[wild flame]

Ayo, remastered maps? 👀

[tame tide]

I did these like less than a month ago

Before and after: ||Shoo the vultures||

Before and after: ||Spitting distance||

It changed the order, so more like after and before IG

These ones I did quite quick cos... I wasn't happy with the old ones since I could do better. But they aren't complex so I could do them relatively quick

[thorn hinge]

I adore the blurred out ||stygia and hell's gate|| in the background of that first one

[tame tide]

The background of ||just space|| was too empty and bland. It needed something to ground it into a location within Calliope

Especially because in the before, I had only ||Hell's Gate|| and it just didn't look as good

[dense crescent]

one of my players was talking about IGF to another group

[shell bison]

Lmao, try weird empathic religious Sunzi bunny woman

[fossil lion]

one of the players in the group i'm putting together is playing a weird religious barbarossa catgirl

[shell bison]

They will really like Chapter 3 :D

[carmine isle]

Out of curiosity, is there any news on how IGF Part 2 is going? Wanna get some friends of mine into Lancer and IGF frankly seems ideal for a first Lancer campaign, but I'm hesitant to start people on a "part one of three" storyline without really knowing what's going on with the other two thirds.

[torpid quarry]

There’s a draft of Act 2 floating around in the thread for #gm-corner, and while I don’t think there’s an Act 3 draft there are portions of it occasionally posted there

[dense crescent]

this thread specifically https://discord.com/channels/426286410496999425/909574961931362365

[carmine isle]

thanks! o7

[last leaf]

Worth noting, the current draft is quite out of date but Vex and others are quite active and happy to answer questions

[shell bison]

If I recal there is an arc currently getting an extensive rewrite.

[shell bison]

Sound board is prepared for Chapter 4 investigation >:)

[ebon hatch]

One of my players is going to be a Protogen Homunculus with an interest in Sparri culture and the Vast.

[shell bison]

we love quirky party members in this module

[ebon hatch]

I’ve also got an armchair Pankraton, a reluctant Batman figure, a streamer who’s way in over his head, and someone haunted by paracausal bullshit that results in them getting Shivers.

[shell bison]

Let's see...I got
Group 1

• Omnifans cat boy and former Armory assassin that worked for Loki's Fater
• Failed Voladore Tradeswoman and her now enlightened NHP daughter
• Unapologetic Sunlighter pirate slowly building her empire
• Psychic and Walking Disco Elysium former Doj Detective

Group 2

• Former Hell Hound unhinged mechanic
• Socially awkward assassin who is a clone and doesn't know it.
• Super soldier and therapist armory escapee
• Ancient old Union worker that came during the second wave of the Calliope initiative and got cryo'd until current day.

Oh! @thorn hinge Meet Kat Tastro Phe Calmity's new best friend in my second game. We worked out her backstory that she was there when Calamity was backstabbed and left for dead. They both got beef with Capella now. Players headcanon is they got a real sisters in lost arms vibe. (She built replacement limbs for them both )

[last leaf]

yuuuup

[shell bison]

I have a player that is a fiend for that factions rewrite

[last leaf]

Same, there's one of mine who is going to have a very fun time with it. Then again another one of mine is accidentally forcing me to rewrite part of act 2 because one of the act 2 plotlines is tantalisingly close to the backstory we made for his character before I read the act 2 draft stuff, so it all balances out.

[shell bison]

Funny how that works. My Pc in a game I play in just wants to keep Asphodel safe and marry her gf

[last leaf]

tbf I'm gonna enjoy ripping apart and stitching back together ||the SSC plotline|| but still.

[light mist]

my players continue to find new and inventive ways to fuck everything up lol
we ran guardian angel and the drug cartel heir overdosed on stims, got exposed, and took several rainmaker and assault shots to the face
his player was planning for him to die soon so it wasn't that big of a deal for him to get offed
but what happened next was that the ex-karrakin assassin who killed his parents and was in a really weird toxic co-dependent relationship with him went berserk, blamed another squadmate for his death, and tried to kill them
and then got shot by that squadmate's romantic interest and bled out after multiple botched stabilization attempts
so now half the party is dead and the other half is severely traumatized 🙃

at the very least, i think we have a decent plan for how to bring new PCs into the mission, so i shouldn't have to rebalance all the subsequent combats :P

i really tried to give as many outs to the situation as possible, but PC 4 crit on the roll to shoot PC 1 and failed two stabilization rolls, and PC 1 crit failed her roll to not immediately die
sometimes the dice tell a story

[shell bison]

Damn, wild

[dense urchin]

what the fuck

[rare escarp]

ayyy "one of my players is playing a Hell Hound" squad rise up

[shell bison]

Calliope Canon event

[rare escarp]

yeah im still dying of laughter that he's unintentionally done some foreshadowing

his pre-hound callsign was fucking

LAZARUS

he's also given me some fun strings to pull on in his backstory

such as the reason he left the hounds

(he found Capella killed his 3 kids)

and if you think for a second im not gonna use that to hurt his chara emotionally, you got another thing coming :)

[shell bison]

OOF

[balmy vigil]

one of my players was a member of the hellhounds before capella took over.

she left when she realized what kind of person he was, and never fled the gate.

[rare escarp]

Oh my player is one of those too

its why i had asked Vex if Capella was the first leader as the book was somewhat unclear

[rare escarp]

Yeah I may be planning, in Themo/Anti-Cap, to ||Target him a little bit, and when/if he dies in Thermopylae, have the Fire Gate bring him back....after giving him a vision of his dead kids running up to greet him, of course. >:)||

(Spoilers for Mission 2)

[shell bison]

Neeeat

[main scaffold]

this campaign is pretty nifty

[pastel tiger]

Do the players ever get to meet the Raleigh pilot in the "Five Minutes" story at the start? I let my players read that story at the start and am realising it would be a really cool meta moment if they met someone and realised "oh shit it's the guy from the intro story"

[worthy root]

Yes, I belive that it's written from the persepective of L-Kay, and you actully rescue her from said ambush at the start of Act 3

[last leaf]

I just finished my first session and somehow my goblin pilot managed to convince me to let them get an omnihook in the form of an oversized goblin plushie created via Horus malware, called the Gobnihook. 😂

This is going to be silly

[wild flame]

L-Kay pilots a Tortuga, not a Raleigh. Far as I can tell there's nothing in Five Minutes about the pilot other than that they're a gate militia member who runs a Raleigh.

[thorn hinge]

I'm pretty sure it's meant to be anonymous, but as a GM you can do what you want with them. I like the idea of it being Jerry, years ago on the militia, using a Raleigh while Shelly is getting cycled. That's just my headcanon though.

[fast parrot]

wait hang on

[frozen talon]

That would track. I can see Jerry's mental narrative being as "Oh fuck I'm screwed and only lived by being lucky." as depicted.

[rare escarp]

the crimes id commit to possess a Gobnihook

[last leaf]

to be fair, I did make it so the Gobnihook malware was responsible for [Session 1 spoilers]||breaking the printer (all it prints is goblin action figures and plushies)||

so yes, crimes were indeed committed

and Gobnihook irl would be the dream

[rare escarp]

do i have permission

to yoink the gobnihook for my own campaign

bc i know for a fact one of my players would love that

[last leaf]

yes but I want to hear how they respond when they get it

[rare escarp]

o7 this works great bc one of my players is friends w/ the Horus group on Hells Gate and is planning on going Goblin at LL1 and 2

[last leaf]

my goblin player got thrown out of the cousins but still 😔

[shell bison]

Wow

how bad of a skript kiddie do you got to be to be thrown out of the cousins

[tame tide]

Potentially you're too good

[last leaf]

more an issue of trying to step on Uncle's toes in regards to some stuff.

[last leaf]

yeah this is the answer.

[rare escarp]

"Sorry bro your code was actually able to run this time, we gotta kick you out, else the rest of us look bad"

"yeah, WE know we suck at coding. No one else can read it though, so they THINK were just advanced."

[regal forum]

Has anyone here read Doppelganger by Naomi Klein? I just started it today and I've been drawing so many parallels to IGF. Admittedly I'm obsessed with Lancer so I tend to connect everything to Lancer BUT I think this book is hitting some specific IGF themes that anyone would notice. I don't necessarily want to write a whole book report on here, I'm just curious if anyone else has read it and had the same thought. Also for my fellow gms ||Harris in act 2 and Ratio Salvager are obvious parallels since both of their stories have to do with cloning, and to a lesser extent ch4. of act 1 is all about the PCs confronting doppelgangers of themselves. In the forward Naomi literally used the term "hall of mirrors" to describe how we interact with our internet doppelgangers, and how our own avatars are doppelgangers of our real selves.|| I feel like this book is giving me tons of RP fuel which is really exciting.

[shell bison]

As someone currently handling the issues in ||Act 2 SSC arc|| I can tell you there is some good potential for handling the subject matter. ESPECIALLY if a player has very personal ties to said subject matter.

[regal forum]

||I have a couple PCs with SSC frames so I'm gonna try to get them roped in that way. One is a White Witch as well and the way that PC acquired her frame was by signing several ndas and contracts with lots of fine print after being confronted by a super sketchy undercover SSC agent on Icebreaker who wanted data on the fire gate so I think I'll have some decent material to work with.|| That said at our pace I think it will be at least several months until we get to act 2 lol. We're currently on beat 20 in ch 4.

[shell bison]

Ah, you're gming chapter 4 same as me

[last leaf]

I have ||two different players that are independently SSC clones||

my players love aggressively and independently doubling up

two different ||questionably more than professional relationships with their nhp buddies||, two different ||moody dilf bodyguards||, it's very funny.

the best part is that none of these players know each other, they're part of entirely different friend groups apart from this campaign, so it's not even like they're rubbing off on each other or something.

[regal forum]

@thorn hinge The audio logs for ||boltzman|| have been an incredible addition to my group's game. They really took the immersion to the next level for us. Firstly just wanted to say thanks for sharing those! I was also wondering if ||there's one I missed for McKenzie's final log with the subject: testament?|| If not I'll just have to do it myself and try to live up to your excellent renditions 😅 .

[thorn hinge]

It's with the others, named "lightcaster2.mp3". It's one of the few I did myself, since Annabelle is a major backstory character in my game, and now basically in every session.

[regal forum]

Ohhh I mixed up the label with the one from ||Aurum|| when I brought it into owlbear 🤦‍♂️ thanks!

[past agate]

oh, huh. what addon did you use to play audio in owlbear?

[regal forum]

I think its a pretty new one, it's called tracks. Works great so far. The only slightly annoying thing is that it auto loops bc it's meant for background music/ ambience so you have to be ready to pause the clip as soon as it's done.

[past agate]

ah, right

funny thing with tracks

wait hold on does it work with google drive again?

[regal forum]

sadly its not working with gdrive, I'm using dropbox since that's what they recommended in the addon instructions. It's still free like gdrive though, its just a matter of moving files over if you want to use it.

[past agate]

Ah

I think I’ll just use a discord bot, since I don’t want to download multiple large YouTube playlists

[carmine isle]

So how much of the book do y'all share with players?

[shell bison]

I try to keep it very close to the chest. ESPECIALLY With NPC Info. As some of the info on select NPC's have big spoilers for future installments but I try to drip feed a steady bit of lore and work with my players on how much they would know at a surface level to a deeper level if they actively ask questions and dig into topics.

[warped ibex]

pages 1 through 48, cut the table of contents and page 29, share the table of contents as they progress through the story.

i sometimes share the character quotes from their info blurb, too, after a session if the players are interested in a specific character

past that, i don't think i've shared any other page of the book

[shell bison]

For Example, I split up info on the Faith of the one between NPC's to represent the info they can gather.

• Abandoners get Anastasia
• Imperfects get Charlotte (Custom NPC)
• Perfect Hisari get Mikelea (kind of)

The more you interact with them the more info you get.

[thorn hinge]

Same as Sekiyo, but after we got started I shared basically every page as we got past them, sometimes with strategic censorship, sometimes skipping pages with spoilers. All my players bought / kickstarted the book so I'm happy to share, esp since they can't or shouldn't read their own copies.

[empty stag]

I slapped together a player's guide for my group before the campaign start, using a modified pdf stripped from Act 1. Opening with Five Minutes (because you just gotta). Continuing into the Welcome to Calliope Section, sans the Faith of the One info spoiler dump (for informed character creation, knowledge their characters would most likely be aware of, after living there for so long). And finally info and prominent npcs from the Gate, provided in Beat 1.

[past agate]

careful with the npc blocks

[empty stag]

I cut out a specific section from Switch's

The idea was to give them a set of possible contacts they could choose from (or make if none of the examples worked), that they'd start out knowing and be friendly with.

[past agate]

ah good

[light mist]

do we know how old howl is and when she left nestor? one of my players wants to play another nestorian refugee who considers themselves howl's mechfighting rival, so i'm trying to flesh out more details about her backstory

[empty stag]

Nestor is a great background for a PC

I ran the Pierce the Heavens one shot before this, and two of the players are bringing over their characters from it to IGF. The others are a Gate native and a SSC vunderkind with ties to Harry.

[shell bison]

One of my characters are from them.

Nestor I mean

[last leaf]

one of my players is from nestor. They're playing an amnesiac and I've yet to elaborate on what the rest of their past life was, beyond vaguely being a revolutionary ||it's going to be very fun when they meet their good friend and former colleague ignatius aurum||

[shell bison]

oh

[vital lion]

We boutta do it to em

Credit to SeerUnseeing for the intro sequence, and to Starlight Furnace and Retrograde for the assets

And big shoutout to my co-dm for helping me figure out how to do this

[shell bison]

Oh that is sick.

Love the cover and the rolling floor platform, how does it handle the moving pillar?

[last leaf]

all they remember from their past is the ||sense of a singular consuming desire to come to calliope that blotted everything else in their mind. As if the compulsion was the sun and they had mentally stared at it for too long.||

[shell bison]

Concern

[vital lion]

The moving pieces are just rotating tiles, which I thiiiiink is base Foundry functionality. But we've got like 80 Foundry modules going so it's hard to tell sometimes

Cover wise, most of the moving parts are zones of soft cover or just background detail, which the covermap will clarify once I do it today

[carmine isle]

out of curiosity, why page 29?

[warped ibex]

the "The PCs will obtain this gear at the end of Mission 4." excerpt on the Nearlight Bolt section

you could just find a way to redact that in the pdf you send out playerside, or just leave it in if you don't care too much about them knowing that

i just found it easier to cut it

[carmine isle]

👍

[shell bison]

Ooooh!

[tame tide]

Mission 4: ||I skipped a few and made event horizon, cos it's easier than making a cool mine||

[quaint pebble]

still not quite sure what I am going to do for that one yet, and I will have to start deciding in a few weeks 😅

[tame tide]

Yeah, I didn't either... Sci fi is rather limited for ||paracausal bullshit|| so I made this quickly cos I could, I can't make a super in depth city environment BUT I can ||just throw crystals together and make it look trippy||, not my proudest map, can't think of how to make itbetter

[tame tide]

I'm conflicted what I wanna do for M4's starting combats

||The first I think I will do beacon recon from LEC cos I don't like regular recon, that can use the same map layout... But I also wanna use nexus defence or holdout, but then IDK how to setup a map that is modular for that... IG I need to make a Cave only and a cover filled map then cut the cover, export that, then make the cover their own tokens, then if I wanna do nexus defence remove the ones close to the drill and add the nexus defence deployyables||

[lunar panther]

going from ch2 to ch3, and i've been disappointed in what I can do with dungeondraft

so i think i'm actually going to fully switch to blender for making maps

i made the starstrip in blender, but now i have to redo the old hell's gate maps

so here's somewhat of a before and after

(1m = 1 grid, we use square maps for narrative and hex for combat)

[tame tide]

I remember long ago trying to do blender for battlemaps and to me it just took ages to make something that looked mid (I was a blender beginner too) But both these pics look real good!

[shell bison]

Oh jeez, sucks you got to revamp the tools usage but I got faith in you Block!

[lunar panther]

i think once i get a proper workflow going, it will end up being easier to create via blender

the hardest part is absolutely going to be making sure the grids line up

[tight pier]

yeah, and a proper repository of models & stuff to use

[lunar panther]

yeah

[tight pier]

leave it to me. as long as the grid spaces are square i can work with it, itll take like 10 minutes at worst

i already have to do it with every single combat map on a hex grid so it wont be hard to get it working with your maps on squares

[lunar panther]

the other nice thing is with using blender, i can drag in assets that I know will work

[shell bison]

The dynamic duo

[lunar panther]

athena's not allowed to look too closely at the next few images (because xenoblade 3 spoilers), but i know that this is exactly what I want for furnace city

it's got the vibe i'm looking for

[shell bison]

Oh that is lovely set dressing.

I typically just take the page from the book and slap it in with some light photoshop work as a splash page to sit in roll 20 while my players do what they want to.

[lunar panther]

i'm perhaps a bit obsessed with making narrative maps

[shell bison]

Well, your dedication shows and it is more than likely valued by your players and inspires us to do as much for our games

[lunar panther]

for just narrative, there's

• 4 Hell's Gate maps (aft hab, hub 3, director's office/briefing room, docking bay)
• ||9 Icebreaker maps (the starstrip made of 6 districts, a suite in the serendipity hotel, the gift bronze casino our players never went into, and the hellfire league)||
• ||soon to be ~7 Furnace City/Asphodel maps (docking bay, ana's apartment, a marketplace, the burnfields, the pillar, terra solus, and maybe steele dome)||

[shell bison]

Any chance you can toss some of those my way for total gm reasons for my players to use their pilot tokens to look around?

[lunar panther]

sure, I've been meaning to put a lot of them in the drive

[shell bison]

Sick, you the best Block!

[lunar panther]

this is a question for @thorn hinge - some of my maps use copyrighted content (game assets) in sections. I can't exactly take those sections out, but I've left a README next to each that specifies which sections use what assets. Is that okay for the resources sheet?

[thorn hinge]

That's literally how my maps work lol, I made mine with tiles from starcraft, fallout 2, and shadowrun returns

as long as they're baked into your map and transformed in some way it should be good

I use some shadowrun props as tiles or even tokens in my maps, and I didn't feel like I should upload those directly... which is why some of my maps seem pretty empty

[orchid seal]

The coolest part about map-making in blender (IMO) is that you can render stuff isometric, although I still need to figure out a good workflow for rendering each asset individually and placing them properly in Foundry

[lunar panther]

the only issue with isometric is that it reveals all of my dastardly lies to the camera

everything that i need to see the "top" of is enclosed by a material that just exists to block light from either direction

[orchid seal]

that honestly doesnt look bad or stand out as cheaty, although clearly there's lots of occlusion issues to work through with a map this tight.

[thorn hinge]

I love iso but it does make a lot of things more complicated. The "correct" was to do this is to take all of the walls and turn them into tiles, carefully position them in foundry, set them all with the right z layering, and then use the paid pro version of the iso module to enable token occlusion and tile hiding. I still haven't gotten it to work most of the time yet. A grid of rooms like that is basically the nightmare scenario

[orchid seal]

100% agreed. I've kinda come to the conclusion that it only works for some maps and you kinda need to design and lay them out with it in mind...

[thorn hinge]

For this chapter 5 map, you can see that I made occluding terrain very slightly transparent. I then exported those pieces as separate images and made them tokens. I got occlusion to work there and it was pretty cool

[lunar panther]

isometric i feel makes the most sense for battle maps

narrative is fine top down

[thorn hinge]

and yeah, the concerns of the perspective really drives a lot of my map design choices

[lunar panther]

i do sketch all of my maps in 3d, because i "see" it like that

[thorn hinge]

I know there's some modules for actually running 3d models and cameras on the foundry canvas, I don't know how mature the module is though. Some people apparently play in full 3d. There's also tabletop simulator that can do full 3d vtt.

might be somethign to look into if you're going to model them anyway!

[orchid seal]

Nice! I ran combat 4 of OSR ||Clear the Air|| this week, and after a couple of hours of puzzling with iso I just gave up and ran it 2D because it was just gonna take soooo much time to make it work:

I'm definitely excited to do another pass at the mech hangar to re-theme it for Hells Gate/IGF though 😉

(obviously needs more vent crabs and exposed wiring)

[lunar panther]

i couldn't find the pics i had for this so i had to take new ones, but sketches for the docking bay comapred to the actual map

of course i can't draw maxwell the cat but i can totally capture the bottom half of a sherman

[shell bison]

Chapter 4 first combat potentially tonight.

Might have amped up the encounter a tiny bit with the spec ops profile >:)

[vital lion]

Cookin'

[shell bison]

My players reaction to a chapter 4 fight so far.

[empty stag]

That looks sick. How'd you get the objects to animate like that?

[vital lion]

I think it's core Foundry functionality. In the properties of any tile, there a tab for 'animation' where you can have the image scroll or rotate

But I have a LOT of modules now so its hard to keep track

[empty stag]

I imagine, yeah. I'll play around with it. Thanks.

[warped ibex]

i think that's from the Parallaxia module actually

[empty stag]

That or monk tiles. There’s nothing in the base foundry functionality that allows you to “animate” tiles

[vital lion]

I thiiink this is correct, since parallaxia is what I'm using to have the background scroll

Ah, here it is

https://foundryvtt.com/packages/tile-scroll

[empty stag]

Much appreciated

[wispy quail]

thinking of writing up a "all possible states of the Station Stability, Militia Readiness, and ||Cult Influence|| clocks" thing

[tight pier]

Wouldnt the amount of states of those number in like, the 100+ range?

[wispy quail]

probably not??? hopefully???

because when it goes up and then back down that's the same as it not moving in the first place

[tight pier]

Like, even without the ||Cult Influence clock|| you're looking at 96 possibilities JUST for Militia Readiness and Station Stability

[wispy quail]

oh this is just states you can actually reach through playing

which i'm pretty sure won't be all of the theoretically possible ones

[tight pier]

If you mean individual states of each with no regard for the other you're still looking at 32 permutations, which is... manageable, but ehh

[wispy quail]

like. i think there's only four states you can be in at the end of mission 1, before downtime

yeah, you can have anywhere from 1-4 Station Stability, and will always have 0 Militia Readiness and 0 ||Cult Influence||

unfortunately for me this explodes to 10 possible states by the end of mission 1 downtime

okay so. Mission 2 has a pretty well constrained impact on the clocks, which is good for me

oh

because of the way that the end of mission 2 works, what with revealing the new clock, all ten possible initial states have three unique end states that you can't reach any other way

what did i sign up for

[wild flame]

combinatorial explosion

[wispy quail]

yeah pretty much

i should have known

update: at the end of Downtime 2, your best possible clock status is 7/2/0 and your worst possible clock status is 0/0/4

actually, i have a question

what happens if you would untick Station Stability while it already doesn't have any?

[wild flame]

jerry cries

[wispy quail]

doing this as fast as possible does actually require effort to do, since you have to pick the 2-cost option on ||Thwart the Cult||

(after having lost every relevant combat in mission 1 and failing in mission 2)

[tight pier]

man these speedruns are getting weirder by the day

[wild flame]

abandon the timeline at that point

[wispy quail]

...can you choose ||Thwart the Cult||'s 3-cost option to gain a point of Station Stability even if ||Cult Influence|| is empty?

[tight pier]

one of our players made a thingy!!

[wispy quail]

okay i checked and luckily the book does provide an answer (the answer is "no")

[tight pier]

(you may have to open in browser)
one of our players drew another PC getting harassed by their PC's NHP

[past agate]

destroyed by facts and logic

[dusky cradle]

Somehow, an inspiration struck me, thus I prepared hundreds of words worth of corporate buzzwords for Impact Dynamics NPCs and enemies

Turns out that letting Steele talk like an over-entitled HR AND an Ayn Rand-expy evoked more hate for him than he currently does

Lieutenants and Impact Dynamic shock troops are now given names such as "Director of Involuntary Human Resources Recruitment" and "Performance Appraisal Commissioner" instead of an actual name

The Support mech was named "Manager of Employee benefits and Due Compensation", any power-ups and repairs from him requires enemies taking out an actual chunk of their paycheck to do so

I have no regrets

[past agate]

show us PLEASE

[dusky cradle]

<Commissioner! You are hereby ordered to retarget our segmentation advantages and core competences (we make weaponized electronic systems and they don't): our current forecasts demands that informational inter-exchange be enhanced between the company and downstream markets (wire tapping is an acceptable business strategy), hence you must strive to exceed the standard competitive paradigms in our upcoming deep-diving seesion, and develop further profitability insights that synergizes with modern E-War standards, in order to better comprehend how our customer travels their respective journeys, so give it your 120%, or else! (Do a better job than last time or I'd shoot you). Always remember that a free-and-unindentured future is applicable to and achievable by all men, in various degrees, BUT, ONLY according to their individual choices! (Do it right and I might forgive your debts, also Ayn Rand quote)>

It's hard to translate them into English, I'm afraid some of the charm was lost while doing so

The original quote was in Chinese and based on how the bosses of some of the most abhorred internet companies in Southern China talks

[dusky cradle]

Also, this was because one of my players discovered that the statue on Impact Plaza is literally Atlas minus the legs

[shell bison]

Steele be the type to try and recreate Art Deco and not have it symmetrical

I've just been playing him as an aggressive nepobaby that is almost Saturday morning cartoon levels of incompetent held up via his series of assistants that keep "find new opportunities". (strangled via gold chain into thrown out an airlock )

Steele's brand of evil in my version is just he's handsome jack without any charisma and all of the anger issues.

[wispy quail]

thinking about a Steele statue that was built as just legs because someone found out about ozymandias and misinterpreted it

[past agate]

Amazing

[dire cloud]

Wouldn't there also be a disembodied head too?

Steele would definitely try for a "sneer of cold command".

[shell bison]

First session of my second game and we got vent crab emotes

[floral glacier]

😮

[quaint pebble]

I've made my map for Pressure Point and its making me sad because theres only four maps left for me to make in the campaign 🥹

well until we get started on act 2 but there'll be a bit of a break

[lunar panther]

we've got two of our players wishing to be part of the Knights

I also played therapist for our SRT as Jerry, because some Stuff™️ has been happening between them and he had enough

[shell bison]

Let's be honest, if there is Anyone in Hell's Gate that could help the party with mental hang ups, it's Jerry

Which is funny because one of my new players is actually a therapist

[lunar panther]

here's the full summary that takes up 2/3rds of the page

(start of CH3 spoilers)
||2024-06-01
Morgan interrogates Tycho O’Donnell, a grunt of the Hell Hounds. Among insults towards the SRT, he blabs about the sect of the Hell Hounds that have been inducted into the Faith. A strange man appeared to preach, and with the end of Capella's patience with the man came a mutiny. Capella managed to get rid of the priest, but only with one last task at the cost of his life aboard the Tachyon. Morgan relays this to Siren, and asks for a working visa for Tycho back on the station.||

||Returning to Hell's Gate, Jerry calls the team into his office. It was pushed aside for this mission, but something has been up the whole group, and Jerry needs to know why. Not letting anyone leave, Jerry begins talking about the palpable tension among the team, ever since the group got back from the Icebreaker. With a few scratches of the head and non-answers, Jerry cuts to the point and asks what the hell has been going on. Morgan is the first to pipe up, stating that Fennel may pose a threat to the station. Asking for clarification, Jerry is told about the existence of Buzzsaw, an NHP with its casket in Fennel’s skull. This is backed up from a text message Jerry receives immediately after. Fennel throws their glasses in anger against the wall between Morgan and James, recoiling in a worry they broke. Leaning back to collect some thoughts, Jerry begins to ask more poignant questions: is Buzzsaw an immediate threat to Fennel’s safety? The safety of the team? What about the station? Querying further, Jerry wonders about the linked mental states of Fennel and Buzzsaw, and asks the team if they had any odd behavior near the end of their combat, and/or if Buzzsaw was known to have cascaded. Picking up Fennel’s glasses, Morgan says no, telling Jerry the medical incident on the Icebreaker was actually resolved with Buzzsaw’s help. A quip was made about Buzzsaw being a weapon, and Shelly chimes in to explain more about an NHP’s place with Lancers. She equates it to being a secretary, giving Jerry a knowing nod. Clarifying his opinion, Morgan says Fennel, rather, should be considered a threat with Buzzsaw at their side. He reminds Jerry about the late night power grid access cut for Fennel. Not being thrilled about having to play teacher, Jerry asks Fennel if this is the case. A shaky lie stutters out, prompting Jerry to not entirely discount the threat. But instead of getting physical and calling security, Jerry instead seems to have a sense for what’s going on.||

||He stands up from his desk, and walks over in front of Fennel. Squatting, he places a hand on Fennel’s shoulder, earnestly asking them if everything is okay. Fennel stutters a “No!” before covering their mouth, breaking into tears. Giving them a second to recuperate, Jerry tells Fennel and Buzzsaw that whatever is after them, he and the rest of the militia will protect them. Buzzsaw sends a message stating “You can’t make that promise.” Getting more comfortable, Jerry reveals almost jokingly (if the seat and whole Sherman weren’t proof enough), that he was a mech pilot. Continuing, he explains that he’s seen awful things all around the Long Rim. He’s been on the run himself, and understands the crushing fear of not knowing how long you have until you’re out of time. But there’s nearly two million people on Hell’s Gate, and he doesn’t want a single of its citizens to feel that fear. It’s a large part of why he’s put so much effort into the militia - even if life isn’t glamorous aboard the station, it should still be a life one can live without fear. To that end, he needs the militia to protect, least of all the Strategic Response Team. In a somewhat condescending tone, he asks everybody what the most important word of that last sentence was. Of course, the answer is “team.” If anyone feels like they cannot work together without issue, they are free to leave, no questions asked. Fennel makes a quip saying the team hates them anyway, to which they all say the opposite. They’re in a rough spot now, sure, but they do still care for each other as people. Fennel is overcome with this and continues crying for a bit, but Jerry eventually has to call an end to the waterworks as he’s got stuff to deal with. He orders everybody to pick up some late lunch, and sends them on their way.||

||A few hours later, an all hands alarm rings out, telling all militia members to get in their mechs and prepare to defend the station. Pirates are approaching - and fast. But curiously, they stop just before the point-defense screen, and request permission to board. Jerry’s exasperated voice rings out over the comms, but knowing that this particular individual will board whether or not Jerry wants her to, he relinquishes and grants her permission. Guns half at the ready, the craft lands and out steps a swarm of knights, and a squire? They announce the presence of one Mistress Elske, Grandmistress Martial to the Most Noble Order of Knights of the Dark Core.||

it was... A Lot

[shell bison]

Our group that has played IGF act 1 already 🤝 Your group playing IGF now
||PC with the uncertainty of NHP's in your brain is such a good plot point.||

||To be fair, ours has three in his head now.||

[lunar panther]

the Circuit is a scary place to run from

||were it not for what's transpired, of course||

[shell bison]

Mhm, question tho.
Do they also got the augmented spine?

[lunar panther]

no, but the casket is in their skull

[shell bison]

Wild how similar that is to our boy, Catch Craven

[rustic seal]

hey folks, currently prepping to run In Golden Flame to my group of first timer players as also a first time Lancer GM, anyone have any tips or tricks to running this adventure?

[ebon hatch]

First question you ask everyone at the first session (not session 0) is “how did you break the printer?”

[rustic seal]

Huh

what's the overall idea behind the question?

[wild flame]

Free characterization moment

[shell bison]

I would highly advise giving your players a chance to pick some of the characters and npcs out to be a bit of a confidant at the start and one for later.

I personally ask the players what they want to play as, who would know them and what is the reason they headed to calliope. I make sure they have both a contact for when they start chapter 1 they can instantly know and have a rapor for. Helps them get into the feel of the campaign being someone already established there and have someone to talk to on day one outside of the other player characters. Along with giving them a contact they can know later down the line so it acts as a good place for them to have an in on some of the chapter 2 and 3 plot hooks.

As they are first timers to the session, I recommend some session zero of the players doing a sim rig of combat so they can feel out the kinks of the system like how to overcharge, proper combat etc.

It is a big plot point in chapter 1 that the reason why Jerry needs your players to be his Strategic Response Team is because the printer is busted and a bunch of problems all happen at once.

[rustic seal]

Ah, gotcha

[rustic seal]

Awesome, the motivations and connections are a great tip here

The session zero combat is a pretty cool idea, I'll create some scene around that, especially with character creation being so easy it should be easy to insert that into the session zero

Are there any NPCs or factions or rumors that are interesting to give glimpses of during the first chapter? My players enjoy narrative scenes so I'm also prepping for some little worldbuilding I can insert when they're getting to know folks around

[shell bison]

Oh yeah, Make sure they have all the official content that allows for players to have a range of frames early game. Sagamartha and Chomolungma offer a lot of good early game variety.

[rustic seal]

I've share the LCPs with them, they have the full range of stuff

I'll also be helping them on session zero to give some tips regarding those inicial frames

[shell bison]

You should check out the character Stiga in chapter 1. She's completely unhinged and conspiracy posts to the point she's true and might be a good NPC to talk about some elements in IGF that sound like lies but are a lot more true than you'd think.

[rustic seal]

perfect

[shell bison]

I'd say, session zero should just be some character creation, help them pick some frames, and run a simple combat to help them understand base mechanics.

As for stories in IGF that could help world build....
Check out the pages on the "Five Minutes" and the ideas on specific events that happened prior to the campaign like the Demon Winter on Hell's gate.

Oh! And make sure to double check the community resources we got in the pinned sections. Lots of us make resources for GM's to use that you can nab and use yourself to make things easier.

Maps, Tokens. Audio Files, Character Cards, etc.
Are all there and useful for you to help get a good vibe of the local

Any other concerns?

[rustic seal]

how much of the apocalypse cult presence should I insert in the narrative scenes?

and is there something in the GM-section that I should share with the players before the game or during session zero?

(and something from the PC section they should read because you know, players and not reading, name a more iconic duo)

[shell bison]

Hmm... I'd recommend keep it a background element but something akin to a problem that hasn't been fixed yet. Chapter 1 has little to no direct interaction with the cult, but there are places you can hint someone is pulling the strings.

Chapter 2 is much more direct with their method of sabotage and their plans so make them much more active there.

Chapter 3 is more subdued and offers a chance for players to directly interact with a known member.

As for what you can tell your players they can read?
My recommend is the timeline of Calliope and how it started to where it is now. They don't need to have the entire history lesson, but a good basis on how Calliope was a sunken cost fallacy because of a categorization error would be pretty funny to show that Calliope just feels like it runs off bad luck

UNLESS, one of your players wants to be an active member of The Faith of the One, give them just a few short paragraphs of the faith as it establishes their place in the long rim and how wide spread it is.

[rustic seal]

Awesome

[shell bison]

If they are an active member of the faith, or become one (trust me, this happens a lot more than you think.) Give some hints on how the faith are trying to do good and not just some spooky cult

Anything else? Always happy to help out people shaping their own IGF timeline 😊

[rustic seal]

One of my players also wants to be one of the missing heirs of Kingdom Aniline, any tips regarding roleplaying that? (my one player that reads, my pride and joy)

[shell bison]

Ah, that portion.

[rustic seal]

||From my understanding the actual heir is an NPC and their generational ship shows up on the adventure, tips on that?||

[shell bison]

Okay, so as far as I am aware, the entire section concerning the Kingdom Aniline is ||having a massive rewrite to make them a smaller group in a big picture involving the Karrakin Trade Baronies.||

||If you want, have that player have Ratio Salvager as a contact they can talk to much later when chapter 3 kicks off. Along with maybe they are someone that helped Ratio run from the clone kingdom and both your player character and Ratio decided to seperate to keep suspicions low but in limited contact.||

||As for one of the heirs, that would involve them also being a clone descendent of the original Basil from the kingdom. Essentially making BOTH your player and Ratio heir apparent to the throne which will lead to a big plot point in act 2.||

[rustic seal]

||Is there any mention of the other heir beside Basil? Do they make an appearance at all? And would it break anything to have three heirs by just adding the PC to that?||

[shell bison]

||Given the circumstances, there is art of what the other heir looks like as that Basil is introduced mainly in the circumstances in act 2 mainly. Which involves the act 2 WIP pdf.||

Sent some things in DM's, hope that helps!

[rustic seal]

awesome, thank you very much!

[shell bison]

Hoppy to help

;D

[ebon hatch]

@wild flame is correct in that it's a free characterization moment. It also helps that the book implies that Jerry might suspect that the party had something to do with the printer breaking, and I came up with that question off the top of my head and everyone seemed to like it in the game I'm running.

[thorn hinge]

It would absolutely break things... but in a fun way. My friend is running a game with one PC who has a "mystery orphan" backstory. He was found by a salvage crew and raised on Hell's Gate with no info about his past. The GM's plan is that he's a ||Basil Clone||; someone faked his death and stole a baby.

In act 1, the only thing that this affects is || the meeting with Ratio Salvager AKA Basil [37:6:Theta]. With regards to my friend's game: Ratio wears a prosocollar at all times, but that PC doesn't have any reason to hide his face. They'll recognize him immediately, assume the worst, then relax after assessing for a moment. If he was here to kill them, it wouldn't be like this. Ratio might probe a little into their backgrounds, asking all the PCs including the Basil Clone to try and disguse his interest. Where things go from there will probably depend on how the RP shakes out. ||

In act 2, things get wild with that sort of PC. How it goes is up to you as the GM, but it's safe to assume the ||delegation knows exactly who that PC is. They're the heroes of calliope, after all. And there's no way they won't try and rope the basilPC into their clone murder plot. Up to you how they end up going about it, there's a lot of fun options there with more overt kidnapping or more subtle manipulations and traps.||

[rustic seal]

Very interesting info and ideas...

I think I'll give the Act 2 material a read and see where I go from there, but I'll 100% allow my players to go for that backstory as he does seem excited about it and it seems to be an interesting conflict

||I'm excited for whenever it all gets real and the delegation arrives, it may be interesting to see the three-way dynamic between my PC, Basil and Ratio/Basil and how that affects decisions going forward. Players are always a wild card and I think giving them that position puts them in an interesting positions as "main characters" of the plot, in a way||

Thank you all for the tips! I'll continue prepping for the adventure and I'll bring any future questions here if/when they arise

I was planning on running "No Room for a Wallflower" but was getting a little sad because it's extremely fucking depressing (as well as, you know, relatable; gestures at irl events), which I knew would be something that might hurt the enjoyment of my players.

Finding IGF was such an incredible find, it has the chaotic dystopian comical energy that I think will make for a more enjoyable escape overall, and so far the game is weirdly more feelgood in regards to the players placement on the general local society? Things keep going wrong but it feels like PCs have more energy to put them right again and feel like badass local legends and even heroic in a way.

also
vent crabs

From now on any adventure without vent crabs is lesser in my opinion

[frail kayak]

(spoilers, act 2)||IGF is based on a campaign originally run by Jazzi, wherein the PCs were IpSwitch Delacy, Howl, Basil Theta, and "Hero Harris" Bordeaux, each chapter in Act 2 corresponds to one of them, which, wow, Jazzi, that's good GMing. What we want to do as GMs of the published campaign is to get our players similarly invested in the events of Act 2, which we can do through their backstories and their connections to the NPCs and locations involved. Mine are invested because one is from the House of Moments, they all want to kick Rodericke Steele's ass, and they all really like the Valentian Family. (I'm not sure if any of mine are invested in the SSC arc just yet). It looks like you get one such connection for free!||

I was in a similar boat, and really gelled with the tone of IGF over Wallflower, I wasn't sure I could run a gritty war story without ruining the tone with inappropriate silliness, but in IGF, the stakes matter because the characters are so over-the-top and funny

[rustic seal]

||I heard on a podcast that Vex mentioned the PCs being NPCs in the game and how all of that worked into the plot, but I didn't know who each of the NPCs were - that's so fucking cool!!||

||Side and related question, and I haven't read Act 2 at all yet, but is it an option to remove Basil Theta (keep Ratio just remove that secret) and have the PC be the target of whatever happens to Ratio overall? Just weighing my options, seeing what makes more sense for my players||

[frail kayak]

||That would deflect the target of House Aniline away from Furnace City, which would change the stakes of that chapter, and deprive your players of several precious lines of Clip Magazine dialog😆, unless they had another reason to think the heir was there. Personally (and this is just my own inclination), I'd keep him in, since it would be neat to have an ally like that. As-written, Players can resolve the chapter by having both King-buds both survive by working together to abolish the Copyclanarchy, and boot the Order Xenoglossia out of control of the house||

[rustic seal]

I'm very glad I asked, this has been a gold mine of information (and very much needed spoilers), thank you very much!

[rare escarp]

Heyo, is anyone perhaps looking to join a weekly sesh of IGF? It's on Saturdays, at 8 PM EST, We've got 4 other players and are right before the Capella Combat, one of my players dropped so theres an open slot :)

[rare escarp]

Right, im gonna pass out for the night - if anyone would like to, best bet to get my attention is to drop me a message in my inbox :)

[digital raven]

I would say giving all of Act 1 a close read before you finish the first mission is worth it. I kept finding things that I need to foreshadow early so I can pay them off later over the first eight or so sessions I ran. Basically figuring out who needs screentime so they don't just show up out of nowhere in a later mission.

(Switch literally wasn't on camera until Downtime 2, I screwed up so bad)

[rustic seal]

For sure! I am currently studying the material and making notes of NPCs and groups and etc, but sometimes the material doesn't say that someone or something is very important until it suddenly is, so I thought it would be good to ask - and good thing I did, too, folks here have made good points on who I should bring up on different points (including now with Switch, lol, thank you!)

I'm a big fan of written adventures and modules, and given that this problem of not introducing some important thing or person before it becomes important happens every single time, I do feel justified in asking lol

Sure, Warhammer Fantasy, the weird guy that explicitly sits quietly and does not interact with the PCs even if they talk to him is suddenly very important and the PCs are supposed to remember him two books later, sure, that'll happen.

[shell bison]

Always a massive fear to suddenly jump one NPC to never been interacted with to massive plot relevance.

Which is why I'm glad I got to play through IGF before I GM'd it. I know to look for certain NPC's and introduce them while also giving the player favorites some love.

[digital raven]

Oh yeah, I'm saying the majority of NPCs in the book become more relevant than you would expect.

[shell bison]

Like my players adore Clip Magazine

[digital raven]

I didn't know what to do with Clip so I made him ontologically terrified of catgirls because "I just don't understand what happens to the ears. They just go away!?"

[shell bison]

lmao, how about bunny ears?

[digital raven]

I have to imagine anything that removes the base human ear canal or splices(?) into it will spark the same fear. Perfectly fine with every other type of body mod though

He just doesn't understand how ears work and is afraid to find out

It lets the PC who like terrorizing people terrorize him

[shell bison]

So far, my players adore him as I made him just the soldier from TF2.

[digital raven]

That or the guy from Portal 2 are easy pulls for him, all good choices

[shell bison]

"If a mission is to result in victory than you must skirmish! Sunzi said that, and I think he knows a bit more than you do pal because he invented the art of war core power!"

[digital raven]

I just also like giving those dudes incredibly specific hang-ups

Like a profound hatred of potted plants or something

[shell bison]

I just had him be the militia back up that "totally just a quick patrol mission" during chapter 3 in a gms everest he had stored in the back. Helped the pc's during the ||Thunderdome assault||
Vet Assault with shock armor and AP rounds with Anastasia Shan as the rookie pilot in a scout.

[rustic seal]

I played Cyberpunk once with a group and casually said one of the core NPCs didn't believe ice existed, and that became the biggest thing that my players focused on for 10+ sessions

excited to see what crazy stuff happens with this adventure, considering it's the same group of people

[thorn hinge]

I made a horrible mistake. I didn't officially introduce Clip Magazine on-camera until ||The assault on Fort Cerberus where he lights a cigar on the glowing heatsink of his laser rifle.|| I'm afraid... my players think he's... really cool.

[willow cloak]

Oh no

[carmine isle]

outta curiosity

do people modify their fights with NPCs from other books (Wallflower, SR, etc.) very often, or usually just play them straight?

[quaint pebble]

I am planning to in act 2 but havent in act 1

[shell bison]

Depends on the party really, I've bene sicking the 5 players fights against m group of four that are very well versed in LAncer mechanics.

[shell bison]

so do mine Ada, so do mine.

[frail kayak]

I have 7 players, so I need to pad out the fights a bit. I typically add some NPCs from Wallflower or Suldan (or IGF itself, ||The cult is using Parallels now||). I'm thinking I should instead use more duplicates of the NPCs as written, as that makes the NPC strategies more resilient

[thorn hinge]

I've been mostly playing it straight. It's my team's first lancer game, my own first lancer game, and when I started we were one of the early playtesting groups for Act 1. We're finishing that up now and by the end I started tweaking the fights, mostly just adding some of the 5PC adds to my 4PC fights to up the challenge a little. We're taking a little break before jumping into act 2, but when we get to that it'll almost certainly before it's finished too. I'll be running the combats per the book to help gather feedback for the book, but I might try adding some other classes / templates to spice things up at some point.

Cruye has been running a "remix game" for myself, Vex, and some other IGF GMs where she's adding a whole lot of wild stuff from just about everywhere including her own creations. It's been a treat, and sometimes a nightmare.

The book is balanced fairly well as-is, but it is a bit on the easy side so you have some wiggle room to accidentally make things harder. Plus so many of the fights allow you to fail-forward. Use your best judgement, and be wary of modifying the really important fights like ||Powerhouse|| or ||Lift the Veil|| since failure there has some heavy consequences and it'd suck if your players land there because you added in some new thing that absolutely wrecks them. ||Surprise, Surprise|| and ||Anti-capital|| are popular choices for modification because the stakes are fairly low, failure can sting but doesn't leave the team that much worse off.

I'd be careful not to go too hard in ||Surprise Surprise|| though, since the players would have just gotten to LL2 and acquired new frames. ||That fight is meant to let them cut loose and enjoy their new toys. Give them fun things to shoot, but don't throw in powerhouse NPC classes that hard-counter some part of their kit.||

[tame tide]

I plan on doing so

For Mission 3:

||For Guardian angle, I was originally gonna replace the assault with a strider but then I got another player, so realised the rainmaker + strider would make 2 artillery mechs. So I made the assault an avenger and the rainmaker a strider to see how that pans out

Sparring field I've replaced Samantha “The Coyote,” from a Vet assault to Vet Strider, it feels more thematic for an outlander to be a strider (+ I think assaults are good but kinda generic and used quite a lot compared to other NPC types)

I replaced something with legionnaires from Enhanced combat in Expedited boarding but I don't remember what...

Mission 4, I plan on replacing a controller with a morning star cos it makes sense thematically and I want to use a morning star. I also plan on replacing the 2 grunt archers with 1 legionnaire squad||

Guardian Angle

Lmao

[frozen talon]

Battle report from the Anticapital mission in the game I'm a player and not a GM:

1 Mech downed, everyone else (4) at 2 structure or less

2 Wolfhound missiles were downed, one just blown up the other hacked into slamming into the cataphract

The whole mission turned into basically a "The whole team locks down every member of Sunbird's support, and one of our players just keeps attacking it with an AP weapon and our hacker occasionally burns off its Armor and causes reactor stress"

Overall pretty good but man I wish our GM was worse at rolling - I swear every time he did the 'Javelin Missiles into getting hit with knockback missile pods' it always worked

[shell bison]

Yeah, that fight has canonically been a real test of player ability I've seen

[digital raven]

Yeah, I brought out some real weirdos for surprise, surprise but all weirdos with weak spots to one of the new frames

[heady vale]

Has anyone run IGF for 6 people, and do you have notes for those missions?

Alternatively does anyone here have enough experience WITH running for 6 you could help me figure out how to bump stuff from 5 player to 6

[tame tide]

I have ran wallflower for 6 people before, solution: don't do it again

I kinda winged it with my balance and it generally worked... But ultimately, 6 is doable and I loved everyone on the table but it was so hard to run combat well

I'd recommend updating things with elite or vet over more bodies, just because the players MELT things fast when they want to, and more activations = more time... Especiaally if doing 1.5x activations then that's like... 6 players + 9 enemies... Those turns are LONG

[frail kayak]

yeah, I basically agree with all of that. 6 players can really focus-fire

[tame tide]

Yeah, sorry it probs ain't the answer you wanna hear 🙃

It's manageable but very much on the verge

The other solution I guess could be... don't balance it or touch it up slightly... make for easier combats and have the focus be on the narrative portions and such

Or if you have time, have 2 games of 3 players. But 6 players can be fun and it will also work depending on how you manage your fights, larger maps with larger deployment zones and try to fixate multiple objectives with even splits of players, line of sight blocking terrain so enemies and players have to commit to splitting up. Treating combats as essentially 2 separate combats on the same field

And it does allow for a bit of fun for a specific fight ||I think the final boss fight will be very fun with capella as an ultra veteran and ignatius as an ultra commander >:)||

So yeah... you have choice, have smaller parties and more of a stable consistent game but not know how 6 works apart from word or mouth, or try it yourself and form your own thoughts, either way I bet your games will be fun :D

[heady vale]

I mean, this group has been actively talking about the six of them playing together and have had their characters off the table non-canon interacting for months

Because my group has already all written up with their characters

I'm just actively working on integrating all of their stuff

And also adding all of my Lancer setting changes

[heady vale]

So generally you would advise making enemies more difficult, over adding more bodies

That's actually really really useful advice and I appreciate that

That was one of those things I was very unsure on which was better

[heady vale]

||Oh this actually sounds super fucked and fun /pos ||

[digital raven]

Taking the 5 player build, making one elite and one a veteran and then adding features accordingly should be enough for a group of moderate player skill. If they're all brand new, 2 vets might be enough, if they're all hardened killers, you might have to sprinkle in some ultras

(The elite gets an extra feature and the vet gets a veteran feature)

[regal forum]

Hey ya'll, here's my inkarnate map for ||Event Horizon|| in case anyone needs a flat map. There are some extremely cool iso maps people have shared but I'm using owlbear so I decided to make my own. I borrowed the ||void holes|| idea from Sekiyo's map, seems like a fun mechanic to add.

[shell bison]

||Void Hole|| Mechanic?

[regal forum]

Well I'm going to add in some kind of terrain effect shenanigans, haven't entirely decided on the details yet, but it's always fun to add in little unique touches that players can interact with imo.

[shell bison]

Ooooooh, good point.

[rare escarp]

my party has come to the conclusion that if we ever meet evil clones of our oc's, mine's is very calm and friendly and pilots a support mech

that said

LL2 BABY CAITLINS GOT A WORLDKILLER FUCK YEAHHHH

[rare escarp]

listen you dont need support if all the enemies are molten piles of goo

goo cannot attack you (usually)

[heady vale]

https://www.tumblr.com/vexwerewolf/752645481776201728?source=share

@fallen geyser Hey silly question about this post, spoilering it just in case, I don't know if there's a joke or if this is a pride flag I don't know, what pride flag is this

[fallen geyser]

That is a deep-fried-contrast image of a Mandelbrot set

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set

The joke is multifaceted

[heady vale]

LMAOOOO ok ty

[fallen geyser]

1. Switch's sexuality and gender identity is a huge fucking complicated mess
2. Switch has meme brain poisoning from being a livestreamer
3. Switch is a huge dumbass thembo

[heady vale]

Honestly all so far

[thorn hinge]

Fractal gender, wherever you zoom in there's more self-similar constructs which decompose into even more esoteric and complex structures and the rabbit hole never ever ends

[shell bison]

I guess you can say they like to Switch things up?

[frail kayak]

eeeeeeey!

[regal forum]

My evil players completely demolished ||caustic|| I was so stoked to be Houdiniing all over the map but the white witch said nope on turn two 😭. I even threw the 5 pc version of the encounter at the 4 of them but the only dmg they took was from forcing their way through a bonus objective they made up (||rescuing McKenzie from the tower||).

[heady topaz]

i reccomeneded it lol

[regal forum]

At least I successfully inflicted severe psychic damage from the rest of ||boltzman|| so I can't complain too much.

[thorn hinge]

My team was similar. They scanned ||caustic|| first thing, read the rules for the class carefully, then proceeded to systematically dismantle the fight with essentially perfect choices and great rolls. In that case, the fun really came from the team clicking so well and kicking so much ass... even if that was at odds a little with the way ||the mine had broken their spirits and unit cohesion||

[regal forum]

Scan is such an underused (in my games) but powerful option. It was great to see my players work so well together and come into their own with each of their builds and everything...but I'm still gonna try to kick their asses a bit next chapter 😆

They also just happened to have a great match up this time around, pinning spire is the perfect answer to everything ||caustic|| wants to do and I think they all had a blast getting a chance to shine in combat.