In Golden Flame

[thorn hinge]

I did prompt them a little with something like "hey you've never seen this thing before...and by the way scan is a thing" in a more gentle way.

My team had a blackbeard pop the CP harpoons and literally every npc failed the save. They followed that up with a fat stuncrown that caught the lot and jammed most of them. The entire fight they made damn sure to destroy ||every parallel echo|| so those mechanics never got to be used. It was a brutal beatdown, but the team needed the catharsis after what they went through. Of course, the worst part for them came after the fight, muwahahah.

[wild flame]

i'm fucking cackling here because my party just switched off the double chomolungma team comp
no more free scans
they're gonna have no idea whats hitting them

we just closed out chapter 3 earlier today

[regal forum]

Chomo is so dang strong. Played one in an LL6 one shot and took nearly every invade option. Tons of fun.

[regal forum]

What did you have in store for them afterwards? I was thinking of sticking fairly closely to the book for our game. I think ||the dilemma of what to do with triple-point is going to be emotional for my group. One of them has an nhp co-pilot who was rescued from boltzman long before meeting the PCs and was meant to be in Caustic's shoes||.

[wild flame]

they both went goblin 1 for ll1
i've been suffering in an abstract hell of control effects for the last 4 months

now the party comp is
empakaii
swallowtail with a CPR
very regular lich

[regal forum]

I feel your pain, I had 2 chomos at the start of this campaign as well lol. New party sounds fun and very flashy.

[wild flame]

not as flashy as it could have been...

i didn't manage to convince the lich player to take sheavy mounting and run the ||catastrophe beam||

i didn't try very hard, admittedly

[thorn hinge]

it's a long story that I've posted a few times before (though I'm happy to DM a more complete picture) so in very brief:

• ||Annabelle McKenzie was one PC's long lost lover||
• ||The crystal prison was growing into her body ||
• ||Moira, another PC's technophile NHP and prophetic mother figure that they had been with their entire life told them to take care of CAUSTIC and promised that Annabelle would be fine||
• ||Annabelle died in her lover's arms||
• ||but hey they saved CAUSTIC?||
• ||their relationship with Moira was strained and trust broken by this, leading her to leave that PC when they got back home||
• ||the other two PCs were more effectively tortured before all this||

[regal forum]

PC: GM can we get displacer lich?
GM: we have displacer lich at home
Displacer lich at home:

[regal forum]

Now that you mention it I remember seeing some of these details before. Sadly my brain is made of cheese and I forgor. I'll scroll back and check the longer posts as well but holy crap that sounds like some top tier drama. ||I'm excited to hear what becomes of Moira down the line. What an incredible backstory. Was her departure the beginning of a villain arc? laughs in evil gm||

[thorn hinge]

||The beginning? No. >:3||

[tight pier]

It's going to be so fun for our players.

One player's ||sister, who is covertly with the Faith, is going to die during Mission 3, but be resurrected by Feather. James is going to find her dead in the crypt of stars the very next mission, under different circumstances.||

[rustic seal]

every single mention of this adventure on this channel makes me so hyped for my own game to begin lol

[shell bison]

Ahem,
||Crypt of stars was fun, and my players just made this for the meme cause they noticed the vent crab at the start as a low poly model.||

[shell bison]

1. ||The players went through the corpses of all those that were lost.||
2. ||Detective character almost cried seeing Mikaela dead defending the Gate in a metalmark. And finalized their decision to join the Faith after seeing the church ruined in Furnace city and Anastasia dead.||
3. ||Sparri former pirate respected all the dead they cared for with the spreading of gold dust on their final resting place.||
4. ||Former Armory catboy revealed the identity of the choked corpse as Odin and respected Clip for going out trying to Solid core the Aniline ship in his sherman||
5. ||Voladore tradeswoman saw her boyfriend Cerulean die like a badass being a battle bard controlling Subalterns in Hells Gates last stand. ||

[shell bison]

My second crew had this to say

[tame tide]

Thinking about Mission 4...

||So I think I'm gonna make combat 1 Beacon recon from Enhanced combat cos I don't like regular recon, and looking at Nexus defence for combat 2||

I had a DEVIOUS PLAN

||What if I make an enemy or two in combat 2 a puppeteer! Then the players rearrange destroyed mechs as cover, then the puppeteer goes "lmao" and revives their cover||

[tame tide]

M4, Very WIP... Gonna give it a break now... I dunno, If I'm still in burnout... It just doesn't hit like the other maps I made are... I am super happy with how ||All maps I made on asphodel are, HELL even the surprise surprise map||. But, I don't think I'm getting the vibe of the ||Boltzmann well...||

Individual parts look good and bad simultaneosly in my eyes... ||Kinda happy about the pillar, but then I look at it and just want to delete it...||

[fast parrot]

i think it cooks!

[tame tide]

hmmmm... I wonder if it's the ligghting... It feels somewhat more like I'm just doing a "random bullshitt go" approach rather than a calculated palet somewhat like I did with the ||Impact dynamic ones||

[quaint pebble]

maybe having more cables and things converge around the centrepiece might help

mine felt like it most came together after I'd added like a pulsing red light to it, really want that part to draw the eye

[tame tide]

Hmmm

good idea

I'm also ver hesitant cos I want to make a variant with ||No cover and all cover... Cos the swarm complicates things with cover being able to be moved...||

[quaint pebble]

can do a lot with floor detailing, cables, lighting, and other stuff which isn't cover

[regal forum]

I think it looks nice! The cables connecting everything are a cool touch. ||Boltzman|| is kind of a "random bullshit go" type of place imo. Did you make this in inkarnate? If so you can highlight hexes using the 'grid block' Mode with the brush tool instead of having to hand draw the outlines

[tame tide]

Grid what mode ._.

Oh yeah nvm

All the sketches are colour coded. I do that before I make the map so I can prioritise cover placement and layout before I make the visuals. So all the red is size 1, blue 2, green 3, purple 4+

And once I have that I then decorate everything in between

[rustic seal]

Hey folks, spoiler question perhaps:
||Are the players supposed to have access to the logs on pages 91 and 92 where DRIVETRAIN and the other sigdivers talk about what the mysterious client is looking for? The rewards mention they found some files that hadn't been deleted or encrypted, so I was wondering if that was one of them or if it was just that box on page 90 (and the data they actually came looking for lol).||

[shell bison]

I would say give it to them in an encyrpted form and they need to pass a hack or fix or give it to someone they know that can do it for them

[rustic seal]

Alright, thanks!

Not even because of the info on it, I mostly wanted them to see because it's very funny and their kind of humor lol

[shell bison]

It would be a great way that if they fail the have to interact with sTriga as a result

[orchid seal]

Does anyone have any specific suggestions for shifting IGF up two LLs? My players are coming off of OSR and are gonna be in their new frames for the first time so I don't want to go at them too hard (especially right after ||the kiros fight|| ), but they've also gotten used to the pace and difficulty set by OSR so I'm also worried I'll bore them to death if it's too easy.

[rustic seal]

They will absolutely interact with Striga, one of my players already sent a "she crazy sure, but she single?" when she saw her pic, so that'll be an easy one lol

[shell bison]

You will want to potentially adjsut encounters in terms of enemy actications and maybe even give them some templates to counter their increase in power for the ll2 start. Having instant access to the start of newer frames can throw off some balance in encoutners from what I've sen. Wouldn't recommend it but if you players want to...

[shell bison]

PFFFF

oh no

[rustic seal]

Calliope System Romance Simulator is real and will hurt all those involved

[regal forum]

Giving your npcs more options to match your player's increased versatility usually helps. You can add extra templates/ abilities and if you want to get spicy add unlocked abilities from any template/class that you think would give your players pause. It's always good to have extra reinforcements as well in case the first couple rounds are too easy.

[wild flame]

run the first combat as written and then adjust difficulty from there as needed

either by enstrongifying OPFOR or just running higher-PC opfors (eg running the 5-PC opfor for a 4 person party)

[rare escarp]

it has been ages but the Gobnihook was obtained, my player died of laughter at its existence and has decided to make it so that their chara cuddles the gobnihook whenever they go to sleep

[last leaf]

amazing, a second gobnihook cuddler

[wild flame]

...i should add a gobnihook

[last leaf]

mine is using it as their nhp casing

[rare escarp]

yeah i woke up and was like "FUCK i told Wren id update them on the Gobnihook"

[last leaf]

lul

[silver pumice]

hello igf community . is this anything

[ebon hatch]

Lmfao

I’m so mad I can’t share this with my group cuz we haven’t gotten that far

[shell bison]

[wispy quail]

LMAO

[tiny tangle]

I stumbled across mention of In Golden Flame from someone on tiktok posting art of his pilot/party (@/flowersnax if youre interested) then went down a rabbit hole looking and based off the description realized IGF was probably exactly what I was looking for as a GM. bought the pdf, and let me just say, never in my 7~ years of playing/running ttrpgs have I ever felt the need or want to read any sourcebook all the way through. I just got to page 106, just finished reading through the first mission, and I have not skipped a single word or line in this entire pdf so far. do you have any idea how exciting for my brain that craves organization it is to see neatly organized references for what planets and cities are like, population sizes, travel times, etc? I am metaphorically kicking my legs with excitement to run this game for my friends soon. uhh thats it this pdf has made me more excited to play ttrpgs than anything I have ever read from WotC ever (besides Eberron, but thats mostly Keith Baker/the community anyways). thats it, having fun, just wanted to spread positive vibes, this book fucks, etc

[silver pumice]

flowersnax is in this server btw saw him in the oc channels

[tiny tangle]

WHAT

thats crazy

I couldve sworn I checked before

[silver pumice]

anyways gonna post some more serious art here actually (spoilered for ch4 sort of?) . look at my pc boy

[shell bison]

Welcome to the club.

[wispy quail]

where's the compcon LCP for the Act I bonds?

[torpid quarry]

Should be on itch?

[wispy quail]

ahhh

[obsidian ferry]

Ayy a fellow Eberron enjoyer. Isn't it great to have internally cohesive settings that justify their own mechanics with layered lore and fluff?
I'm in the same boat as you, IGF is one of the best campaign books I've read. Check out the draft for act 2, there's some more stuff to be changed but all the linked plot threads and payoffs on foreshadowing are peak. Vex has filled a Chekov's armoury of loaded guns ready to go off.

[tiny tangle]

Eberron made me fall in love with d&d 7 years ago, and I think IGF (and by extension the Long Rim) will make me fall in love with Lancer (more than I already have)

[past agate]

I sob before peak fiction

oh wait shit yo are talking abt eberron in here

[rustic seal]

Fellow Eberron enjoyers, lets fucking go

[obsidian ferry]

Ayyyy

There are dozens of us. Dozens!

[rustic seal]

Also yeah, I enjoyed reading Lancer but IGF made me fall in love with the game for real. It's so alive and bizarre and horrifying and beautiful and playable that I had a hard time believing it. Considering the amount of content this discord has too? It's amazing to see, especially being new to the community.

(Also having my session 0 and with some luck a combat tutorial as a kind of 0.5, hopefully it works out)

[obsidian ferry]

Definitely, I think the amount of detail and the way the Calliope system feels connected to the universe at large really helps.
The combats being both tropey and dynamic is great as well. I haven't run them yet but the way each one is set up makes it really easy to visualise.

[rustic seal]

We are legion

[obsidian ferry]

Nice, I ran a combat tutorial last week for my players and framed it as a flashback to how the Dragon's Tooth got damaged while dropping them off to deal with a missile emplacement the Hell's Hounds stuck in some aesteroids to harass passing freighters with.

They got the hang of Lancer combat a lot faster than other previous systems I ran.

[rustic seal]

Oh I was going to do a combat simulation going wrong with some bizarre space-time foreshadowing, but that might be a little better

Also calling it "a Chekov's armoury of loaded guns ready to go off" was an amazing description because yeah, that's absolutely how it feels to read, especially seeing Act 2, things get amazing payoff regularly

[obsidian ferry]

Ooh that sounds fun and thematically in line with some of the weirder stuff. I'm planning to slow drip the Paracasual weirdness to them later and start with the gritty doldrum of station life, slowly adding on the weirdness once they're on the way to the Tachyon.

[obsidian ferry]

Yeah, I find myself looking back at the side boxes and boxes text to identify the important stuff I shouldn't paraphrase because there's a fair bit of those and a fair bit of arc words even when there aren't.

[rustic seal]

Also this made me legit tear up

[rustic seal]

First adventure that made me want to NOT skip content

Something that I also think is a great thing about IGF and a general pet peeve that I have with written adventures are the NPCs - they're such lovable dorks and most of them are written to be helpful and not assholes. The amount of time I've read adventures that have NPCs that could help but wouldnt is so frustrating, and it helps that these really want to be as much as they can, and when they can't it's very well justified

[obsidian ferry]

A lot of RPG writers seem to write with the assumption that players don't latch on to and adopt NPCs. The opposite is the case for this campaign book.

[rustic seal]

I just finished reading Chapter 2, and ||the way that Rita and Loki are portrayed, how much they try and help for their own reasons but they do help (loki showing up on the fight riding his mecha is so cool) as well as Doctor Nyambose that just unprompted transforms something into a fucking cannon for the PCs? ||

Also everyone is hot? Peak character design.

[obsidian ferry]

I love the bits later on where it accounts for your players bringing their favourite NPCs along with them.

[rustic seal]

YES! 🙌🏻

[obsidian ferry]

And how that might change things up with ||mission 5 when there's no one to kidnap because your players were like "these two are my friends now, who wants to go explore a haunted mine with me||

[rustic seal]

Also I had not read this before but this is the cutest and I'm adopting him now

[rustic seal]

Taking previous events into account for future developments is peak design and this book is full of stuff like this

[silver pumice]

posting more of my igf art here. ship nhp girls <3

[shell bison]

listen, Calliope just happens to attract a lot of attractive people for some reason

if offsets all the cursed energy of everything always falling apart

[shell bison]

You should See Vex's notes on preparing to add relationship clock rewards for players

[obsidian ferry]

Oooh okay time to go find that

[shell bison]

I'll dm it to you

I got word from one of my players, Thanks to events in Ch4 they are now locking the fuck in and asking the resident cat girl valley girl Micaela OmniDocument Format out on a date if they get home alive.

[rustic seal]

THEY'RE SO PRETTY ❤️

[silver pumice]

ty!!!

i agree

[rustic seal]

I do love the energy of "But. What if."

[shell bison]

Seraph, may I use tht Siren art as a headshot for Siren's profile in my character line up in my game?

[silver pumice]

!!! of course i feel honored

[silver pumice]

i love her as she is but i like designing gijinkas <3

[shell bison]

It shall be done! Siren has been a lovely background NPC for my players. Helping raise the little student class nhp into her enlightment and sig diving into her casket after the child cascaded.

[silver pumice]

siren my beloved siren my beloved siren my beloved

[crystal axle]

Hi

[shell bison]

Siren so far, from stories I've heard from other IGF Gm's, has been a mother figure, a girlfriend, a close confidant, NHP buddy in fights with a player and the sole reason someone decided to get into Ace combat

[shell bison]

Hello Wanderer, what can we do for you today?

[crystal axle]

Not much just wanted to visit this area out of curiosity

[shell bison]

Understanable, we are just talking about NPC's in the module right now

[rustic seal]

Really excited to roleplay her, I love her energy so much

[shell bison]

I personally play her as a female sergeant Johnson without the cigar and a love to show her stuff in Fleetcomm 5014U

Along with a kind soul protecting "The little bird" which is a players Techno NHP

[crystal axle]

Ye

Out of all the characters I like ratio

[shell bison]

Oh Ratio is very neat

[rustic seal]

I haven't locked a personality in yet? But I think I'll wait to see how my players react to her on session 0.5 which is when she'll get "hurt", as per @obsidian ferry's idea for a tutorial mission

[shell bison]

Oh no!

[crystal axle]

Ye

[obsidian ferry]

Siren is great. I plan to run her like concerned mission control given she's the one character who is consistently latched in ||outside of in the Boltzmann||.
My thought is that once the party is off the Dragons Tooth she disables all the safeties and assumes manual control of every weapon gimball and maneuvering thruster to pull off crazy stunts.

watches the party shenanigans with mild concern

[shell bison]

That is a good reason to have her MIA for ch1. I typically have my campaign starts with the party is called as emergency back up B team members because a mission Zinfandel leads goes so bad there are Militia KIA's that leads to the party needing to take on the mech seats

[rustic seal]

Oh they're falling in love with that NHP, this is Calliope Romance Simulator babyyyyyy~

[shell bison]

Eyyyyyyyyy

[rustic seal]

Yeah, I thought the idea was really good because it's a show-not-tell kind of situation for her to be offline

[shell bison]

So far the game I play in we have 3 confirmed romances, and two will they won't they so far.
Players in one game already are locked in with Blacksmith and Ceruelean and soon Micaela
In another one I run they are just starting but I expect some romance arcs soon

[rustic seal]

this is probably going to be the title of my adventure, honestly

[silver pumice]

every lesbian in my party is in a relationship with mikaela i think
or. almost

[marble lava]

i stand strong

#loyalty

[silver pumice]

🫵 ||FEATHER|| LIKER

[shell bison]

Mikaela in a lesbians relationship potentially in my game too

Calliope canon event?

[silver pumice]

LMAO

[rustic seal]

the PCs my players have so far are literally Shinji Ikari from Evangelion, a "fun aunt" trucker that decided to fuck around with AI, and ||a Basil clone|| that has a sign name DEADMAN.

[shell bison]

To be fair, my PC in the game I play was considering giving Jerry a try, but got put off with Shelly always being the doting mother (which is really funny considering she is also the mother/heart of our party) but then the tomboy in ch3 showed up and hit her right in the bi heart.

[rustic seal]

That actually was something I wanted to ask, what are some Calliope canon events you've seen around?

[shell bison]

Let me think...

[rustic seal]

I remember Vex mentioning something about a ||boss losing their flamethrower every time their first structure broke||

[rustic seal]

as all of us should be

[silver pumice]

(for context, marthe, void (server nickname it its)'s character, is in love with ||feather||
she's not religious, but she sure is in gay love)

[marble lava]

oh i believe that's ||capella before vex gave him the boarding leash lmao||

[rustic seal]

wlw is almost a cult, to be fair

[silver pumice]

real facts

[marble lava]

real actually

[shell bison]

We have

1. Boss in ch1 one always looses their weapon
2. One of the Cataphracts in the Spitting Distance fight is always captured as a prisoner
3. People 4/5 times decide to do the snack run over the pirate issue
4. The boss bottle in ch2 is a gutpunch in the players in terms of difficulty
5. No one does the Hail Mary Pass in Ch3

[silver pumice]

shes so fucked up i love her

[rustic seal]

I wanted to ship someone with Jerry but after reading how he had a thing with Rita, I started shipping my two NPCs and gave up on that idea

[shell bison]

My players wanted to 'parent trap' them back together upon learning of their romantic past

[rustic seal]

I... lowkey also want to

[shell bison]

One of my players rolled a nat 1 to ask Rita about it and got hit with the

Get the fuck out of my office, pendeja

The fact Rita knows Spanish is both loved and terrifies my Voladore player

[rustic seal]

The ch2 boss is ||Sunbird 1||?

[shell bison]

(Spanish speaking gang)

[shell bison]

yup

[rustic seal]

Good to know

[silver pumice]

||SUNBIRD-1|| was hell

[shell bison]

Well, the way the book is formatted you can do that before the Send in the Clowns fight but it feels way to thematic to do it before

[shell bison]

RIGHT? It's such a spike that basically says, "Okay, hot shot. Dodge this"

[rustic seal]

Rita reminds me of Loba from Apex Legends so I clocked her as Brazilian, but I am brazilian so I guess I am biased about that

[shell bison]

Jerry, at one point, had a latina around his arm. That alone is worthy of respect.

[crystal axle]

True, I was very out of place then which made it hurt a lot

[rustic seal]

Mad respect

[marble lava]

if only someone brought their ll1 AP weapon smhmh

[silver pumice]

I HAVEN'T EVEN SWITCHED TO CARMILLA THEN

[rustic seal]

In my humble experience powerful latinas do enjoy pathetics little worms so it does track actually

(I do speak from experience)

[shell bison]

...I hate the fact that you're so right on that.

[silver pumice]

I WAS USING SICKLEWINNG SMHSMH

[marble lava]

ficklewing

[crystal axle]

I mean we won still

Granted we had a lot of trauma but still

[rustic seal]

I am very excited for that fight

[marble lava]

we did but our doggy lost her legs 😔😔

[rustic seal]

I even comissioned a friend to do it's voicelines

[silver pumice]

hell of a figjt. 10/10 will never go through that again

[shell bison]

For that fight we bullied with a combo of Sagamartha With Grabber and DSAS spam, lots of heat gunning and me making the final blow with a CPR shot

[crystal axle]

Dang

[shell bison]

Gun Bun Momma did not let that thing get away. On the Flame

[tame tide]

Reading the ||sunbird 1 flavour text of specific abilities|| I loved

[shell bison]

Peak Fiction

[tame tide]

I love ||sunbird 1's flavour texts so much ❤️||

Scratch that

||I love sunbird 1||

[rustic seal]

this book is peak fiction, I laughed so hard at this

[obsidian ferry]

||Sunbird-1's flavour gives me Ace Combat and Viper from Titanfall 2 vibes and I am going to run with that||

[rustic seal]

very excited for that fight in particular, I want to see how my players react to the map changing lol

[obsidian ferry]

||Sunbird-1, bogeys in the pipe. Five by five. PCs are hit by missiles||

[shell bison]

"When you see the next cycle, tell them Sunbird Sent you. Dodge this."

[rustic seal]

it gives me a strong Titanfall titan quotes vibes

which were one of my favorite parts of that game, too

[tame tide]

||I think my players liked that fight||

||They won...||

||No characters were left in the battlefield at the end of the final round||

||You can't get any more of a definition of prhyyric victory than all allied mechs are destroyed and all hostiles are destroyed||

[obsidian ferry]

The art for Anti-Capital was what got me to look into IGF. I was it online and was like ||IS THAT A FREAKING GUNSHIP||.
Then I read the adventure and it was even better ||Missile Corvettes baby!||

[tame tide]

https://tenor.com/view/armored-core-6-armored-core-ac6-ac-fromsoft-gif-15472754745177457714

[rustic seal]

Oh I just beat this boss today!

actually yeah, that tracks really well

[obsidian ferry]

I've also decided that ||Sunbird-1s|| boss theme will be Contact with You from AC6

[rustic seal]

To me it was ||Send in the clowns|| that locked me in lol

[obsidian ferry]

Oh there he is

[tame tide]

Voodoo one, vipers on station. Your journey ends here pilot, no where to run, no where to hide

[shell bison]

I think that fight is pretty much the 'filter' of IGF in terms of mechanical difficulty. You go through hell to understand how hard the combat can get before it amps up later

[rustic seal]

They got Dark Souls First Bossed

[shell bison]

My lock in fight was ||[ERROR]||.
I've never felt more powerful controlling that movement in a Sunzi in my life

LOCKED THE FUCK IN

[tame tide]

My heart was beating so much because I prepped the entire sequence so hard

||When the fire gate shattered I literally ripped the sounds of the explosion at the end of titanfall 2 campaign when BT sacrifices himself to the sound of the firegate exploding. Then when I was narrating the gunship appearing for the first time I perfectly times contact with you so it reaches the peak/start when the fight starts or right after it says "this is designed to fight big ships, this shit ain't good"||

[silver pumice]

btw hey remember when i made those ||circuit|| designs? i made cleaner portraits for them a little while ago (also featuring my pc('s past self))

[shell bison]

Oooooh. sick

[rustic seal]

that's so fucking sick!

[shell bison]

I could have used this prior to my players going ||into the mine!||

Wait

Wait I got some emotional ammo with this. I can use them to show the faces after all is said and done! >:)

Congrats, you survived chapter 4! Now see the faces of ||those lost in the spire|| :D

[rustic seal]

Love that energy, crush their souls

[shell bison]

Oh this chapter had been nothing but

[silver pumice]

i'm so glad so many gms like the designs i pulled out from my sick brain hyperfixated on ||the circuit|| due to oc reasons

Lynk Is Extremely Normal About This.

[shell bison]

I think my hardest line so far in this chapter has been

||There is nothing here but a mountain of cold, cold forgotten corpses. They were your friends once. While you are here, you may honor your dead. If you would so please. There are more graves you need to walk over.||

[silver pumice]

oh was one of your players ||a fellow ex-circuit character||

[shell bison]

Sadly no, but each player is hyper invested in the NPC's in the game

[silver pumice]

i am on a hunt for other ||ex-circuit|| pcs

ah i see

[shell bison]

So you can imagine || The Send Offs and final moments|| hit hard

[last leaf]

oh my god that ||feather|| art is georgeous and so perfect. May I use it for token art, it's so cool?

[tame tide]

I'm jealous 😭

[silver pumice]

of course i'm so happy you like it that much!!! credit me if you can of course

[last leaf]

ofc!

[shell bison]

Oh! Another Calliope canon event I forgot about

Animal Themed Pilot/Mech

The Calliope Catgirl is a classic

You got Howl

[rustic seal]

Oh shit

[shell bison]

Then Calamity with her Lioness

[rustic seal]

one of my player's mech is the Stork

[shell bison]

see? canon event

[silver pumice]

like almost everyone in my party has some sort of animal theme

…im pretty sure everyone does actually

as for mine. look at this lynx

[tame tide]

My party themes:
Gambler
Trucker
German
Streamer

Is my team an oddity to Calliope?

[silver pumice]

is streamer party member a canon event too

[tame tide]

Tru tru

[silver pumice]

i swear

LMAO

[last leaf]

I've a defective SSC clone created in a shady off-the-books assassin program that then just came to Calliope and immediately because a capri sun drinking catgirl.

[rustic seal]

Trucker might be, I have one too

[rustic seal]

relatable, honestly

[shell bison]

An Influencer Party member is also a canon event

[tame tide]

Oh also 3/4 of my party have moonlighter or sunlight background

[shell bison]

the bond power is just too good to pass up

[tame tide]

They don't know and hopefully will find out mission 4

[shell bison]

Former pirate is also a good one and canon event

[silver pumice]

we have like

So Many. former pirates

[shell bison]

I find it that mine is a literal bunny woman/ former pirate

[tame tide]

meets character that has art

"EVERYONES A FAN!"

[last leaf]

(the capri suns are full of blood) I was fully expecting them to be edgy and mysterious about it all tbh, but they literally speedran telling the party their entire backstory in the first session, it was incredibly funny.

[rustic seal]

I'm explaining the Calliope system today to my players so I may also have a pirate lol

[silver pumice]

most of them hellhound, lynk is the outlier being uh. yeah

[shell bison]

One party member who was not biomodded saw her reveal her mods and eventually asked for advice on mods only to then go catgirl mode with shotgun hands

[shell bison]

The amount of times my players have used that on me....

Once on another PC's dad

[silver pumice]

these are the same person.

[tame tide]

HAHAHAHAHJAHAA

[last leaf]

one of my players is a former pirate captain who got his ass punked so hard by ||Baldur in his prototype Loki|| that he gave up his life of crime.

[shell bison]

Sad Wet Cat into Pastel Cat energy

[silver pumice]

ironically lynk is currently more of a wet cat than their past self

due to ||survivor's guilt and religious trauma||

but they stay silly

[shell bison]

Damn

[lilac tartan]

Have a Jerry/PC ship now and the rest of PCs are shipping madly

[rustic seal]

as they should

[tight pier]

Ooh, we have one

[silver pumice]

TELL

[tight pier]

Fennel Vaunters!

They were a part of the Circuit for a while and was straight up experimented on. They got "integrated" with an NHP now named buzzsaw :)

[silver pumice]

wonderful!

[tight pier]

they are simultaneously a sad sopping wet cat and the most violent person in the party

[silver pumice]

love that type of character

lynk can't really be effectively violent due to them being a frail hacker but they have threatened to bite aurum

[tight pier]

NICE

[silver pumice]

our team was confronting him in ch3 and lynk fucking growled at him which genuinely kind of freaked him out LMAO

[crystal axle]

Wait did we kick his ass last time?

[silver pumice]

it was an accident

[crystal axle]

Fair

[ebon hatch]

Bunny girls, cat girls, my player has got y’all beat

Dr. Octavious Ender, Homunculus and Board Member of the Icebreaker Borealis.

(my players are so fuckin cool, you guys)

(Art done by @Raw_Crayfish)

[shell bison]

I feel like they would either really hate to be hugged or really into it

[rustic night]

[SPOILER - MISSION 5]
||I've tried to do the description prior to the Lift The Veil combat, so here goes! (No matter how many times I did it, I just couldn't pronounce "spatial aperture" nor "... it as it approaches.")||

[thorn hinge]

Holy crap it's been a busy morning on this channel lmao

lots of great stuff

[thorn hinge]

The gunfire and chanting in the background is a great touch, very immersive! You went for a very cool and almost reverent vibe, I like it. I went in quite a different direction but also prerecorded the description to fit in with certain audio cues. What song was that you used?

[rustic night]

I used 115, by Elena Siegman!

[thorn hinge]

SSC clone or gene baby is also a very common canon event / PC. I have two of them (so of course I made them genetically related)

[thorn hinge]

my take on it can be found in the other board here: #909574961931362365 message (chapter 5 spoilers!)

[last leaf]

Oh I have two of them in my party, lul.

[rustic night]

That's so dope! I really loved the... synths? Brass horns? French horns? Idk what they are, but I loved them!

I can't wait until my group reaches that point

[thorn hinge]

The band did a behind the scenes on it, it's two synths, two guitars, and a bass, all heavily processed and playing in unison

[rustic night]

[SPOILERS - MISSION 1 AND MISSION 5]

|| The reason that I used 115 was cause on the first Capella fight I used "Beauty Of Annihilation", also by Elena Siegman, and I've been sporadically using another songs from her, and every single time that I do someone jokes that "Capella will be back!" ||

[thorn hinge]

Hell yes. I had isolated those opening notes you liked so much and used them in ||the first Capella fight too. But it's been 18 months and I don't think they connected it lol||

You might notice I left off the ||"you have no idea how much trouble you're in"|| bit... for two reasons. One, ||with Calamity Havok as a PC, Andros was a lot more direct. " 'AVOK! YOU'RE FUCKIN DEAD, 'AVOK!" And two... Vex played Andros for the night, yelling that out. Also, the narration continued past that point. Calamity saw the man she worked under, the boss who terrorized her, the pirate she and her team killed come back to life. He died in a pillar of flame... just like the flames that took the body of her dead lover. So she dove forward before the team could react... past Andros and into the fire gate. The team went the first round without her on the field. ||

My game's current PC ships:

• Pear is dating Rat and he's got something going on with Switch now but they aren't putting a label on it yet.
• Gabriel has been very casually dating Rita whenever they get back to icebreaker. He's mostly just giving her a chance to relax for a few hours, neither of them believes it'll go anywhere, and they're probably right. Gabriel's copilot is Stoneleigh (ASURA NHP pg 198), and she has a bit of a crush on him but hasn't done anything about it yet, partially because he's dating Rita and she's not sure what to do.
• Calamity's in a peak lesbian situationship clusterfuck that's slowly starting to work out. That mess would be a whole text limit post in itself, but in short: she's dating Aveline (Annabelle Mckenzie) and dating Siren. Harmony (SEKHMET NHP pg 198) previously swore off dating her pilots so Calamity is off limits... for as long as her resolve lasts. However, she might have something going on with Aveline.
• Kraken has nothing and wants nothing but has a big aroace friend crush on ||Mind|| (act 2 spoilers (we haven't even started act 2 yet (Kraken cannot be contained help (they're even breaking my parenthetical asides))))

[shell bison]

Ada! Hey! How you been?

[thorn hinge]

Busy, lol. Bouncing between too many projects.

[shell bison]

God, mood

[obsidian ferry]

The stars keep aligning.
I have one too.

[shell bison]

Does ||Codelia|| Also got their birth records too?

MY bun wants her birth certificate back you corpro witch

[thorn hinge]

SSC does have their birth records and DNA, but the records have been sabotaged by a conspiracy of NHPs which the players don't even know about yet. They got a hint of it through Moira, Kraken's technophile NHP who clearly had her own agenda and ended up ostracizing the party and running off. Kraken swapped the technophile levels for Iconoclast and now ||CAUSTIC|| is their NHP partner. He's also a part of the conspiracy, but he forgot about it after extended cascades... he might recall some details later thoguh as a way to dripfeed players a bit of that particular plot

The big thing that ||Cordelia Smith|| has isn't their birth records. It's Kraken's brother, the only member of their family they ever cared about. He's her assistant. Or maybe a ||midnighter||, I haven't decided yet. I'm not sure which will be more harrowing.

[shell bison]

You and Vex do such good work making such hateable villain's.

[thorn hinge]

I'd deny total responsibility there (it's very much Vex's story) but then I'm just playing into Vex's hands. Again.

[shell bison]

the fact you have that on stand by

I'm dying

Still, that character is a lovely villain roll who I can't wait to raid her jewelry box to finally get some wedding rings. (Bun gonna pop the question proper)

[orchid seal]

My groups mechs all ready to start IGF (unfortunately I didn't end up having time to do a pass at the Mech Bay to make it appropriately beat up for Hells Gate... )

[dense crescent]

Raven
armored core spotted

[orchid seal]

it's actually a Lycan (from Winter Scar) that the player and I spent waaaaayyy too much time on:

(claws out version) ^

I gotta say a huuuuuge thanks to @tame tide for sharing their maps, they saved me so much time and they're gorgeous.

[tame tide]

I have been summoned from my slumber

Oh shit thanks dude love that people love my maps :D

anyway it's 10 past midnight and I need sleep

[tame tide]

Holy shit that mech bay looks sick

[orchid seal]

In an attempt to pay it forward, here are moonlighter tokens I made for the first couple of fights (mostly recolors of Vex's Hell Hounds):
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1eqBpZt3XWE6BrTWrYxu9BuFdXw5X8Ae3?usp=drive_link

Heres's a sample:

[thorn hinge]

this is cool af and I love it. And it doesn't need to be dirtied up for Hell's Gate.. if you consider it the mech bay on the 'Tooth

[worthy root]

God Dam, was my SRT Bloodthirsty:

Granted, I think like more than Half my SRT is Ex Pirates

[shell bison]

One of them is named vent crab

[silver pumice]

@thorn hinge joy moments

[thorn hinge]

AAAH she looks great!

[silver pumice]

ghahahhh glad you like it!

again if anyone wants free art of their ex circuit pcs just hit me up i want to chew on them

[worthy root]

Lul. That's actully a Typo. Their Callsign is Vent Rab(bit)

He's a SCC uplift project that got dumped in Calliope, 50% Bunny 50% Cyborg

[rustic seal]

Just finished my session 0.5 with a tutorial fight in which they took a hell hound home to reintroduce to Hell's Gate - we'll see how that goes next session lol

[silver pumice]

dream sweet in sea major is very igfcore i have been rotating this for months

[shell bison]

A fellow bunny, you love to see it

[shell bison]

Oh boy!

[obsidian ferry]

I love how most of the NPCs in Calliope have big player character energy (because they are player characters).

[shell bison]

Funny how a small town vibe Calliope gives off can attract so many larger than life characters

[obsidian ferry]

The entire star system is a vortex of high end mech pilots and ||space time|| weirdness, masquerading as a shitty backwater. I love it.

[tame tide]

I think I threw off my players with this

Me during mission 2-3 downtime: "Oh yeah because hells gate has about a population of 2 million"

Players: "what!?!?!?"

Me: "Have I not mentioned this?"

[shell bison]

lMAO

Yeah, Calliope is small potatoes compared to a lot of other lancer settings.

Is it small by comparison? Yes.
Is it any less important? No. In fact it's more because no one is here to fix it except yourselves. Give yourself a fighting chance

[obsidian ferry]

Said population of the system contains almost all possible variations of the Hell's Gate SRT.

[tame tide]

Wait what the fuck

W H A T T H E F U C K. I just googled the population of where I live

Hells gate is massive

[shell bison]

The alternate timelines

[obsidian ferry]

It is a 7km long cigar full of apartment blocks

Orbital habitats are kind of nuts when you think about it.

[tame tide]

Yeah...

But like, I googled it it's about the population of Paris. And the city I live is about a population of 300,000

[obsidian ferry]

Wait only 300k?

[tame tide]

In the UK, is 300,000

[shell bison]

Reminds me the time my father and I had a moment looking up the population of the state I live in and the population of LA county in California.

[tame tide]

Paris is 2 million

[shell bison]

Spoilers, LA county had more than my state

[obsidian ferry]

Oh that makes sense.
Nottingham is pretty pleasant and quaint by city standards.

(from a tourist PoV)

I'm used to city meaning lots of high rise apartments of like 20+ floors and a mall at every district center.

[quaint pebble]

My city (Birmingham) has about half the population of Hell's Gate

[tame tide]

Now I need to live in a population of 2 mill city to get the hells gate experience

But it's just a fact I sleep on "how many small businesses, shops, schools, universities, offices exist in hells gate if its 2 million population"

[obsidian ferry]

London is pretty populated.
Though the Hell's Gate experience sounds more like the more shifty boroughs to me. Maybe Croydon adjacent?

[tame tide]

Like that must be so many God damn salvage teams but it also needs people running the infrastructure. It makes sense for the icebreaker cos that looks like high rise with lots of businesses and public transport and such

[quaint pebble]

really "numbers in scifi" make fools of us all (I always have a different idea than the author, or the author had a different idea than the number they wrote actually implies, or both)

[obsidian ferry]

I think it's a noted point that SRT members getting their own room and not a shared bunk is a big benefit for the high mortality job.
I expect you can look at like the more run down Hong Kong or Japanese capsule hotels and ratbox houses for how much space people have to themselves.

[shell bison]

Remember in Ch1 they give you a very brief but very fitting description of the habs you live in before you go SRT

It's crampt with all the essentials for you

[obsidian ferry]

Walled City of Kowloon is my goto example whenever I need to describe how cramped life is in a space station, hive city, or in the lower districts of Sharn

[shell bison]

My 8foot Voladore player was very happy to hear her new room would be enough for her to actually stand up

[tame tide]

In star citizen on one of the planets there's a small bathroom which is probably only half a foot wider than shoulder width. And it has a folding out toilet, shower and sink all in one spot so you can only use one at a time and that's essentially my vision of what an en suite would look like in hells gate (if at all)

It's small details like these I only find out after I start the campaign so either never mention or just spring on my players like "BTW, you had shared rooms for like 2 years lmao"

[shell bison]

Another motivating factor to be part of the SRT, leg room

[obsidian ferry]

"laughs in Orison habs having proper showers"

[tame tide]

Area 18 my beloved

[obsidian ferry]

The space station habs in Star Citizen are a pretty good example too. A bit on the roomy side even.

[tame tide]

I think a good comparison is about the size of my current room I'm living in but somehow has an ensuite and studio

No one can relate to this because it's more a cry for help how small my room is

[rustic seal]

session zero yesterday was so good I might start a second game for folks here on this Discord

[shell bison]

Oh dang 👀

[last leaf]

oh damn

[rustic seal]

anyone has a favorite soundtrack for IGF sessions? the Borderlands suggestions on the drive are awesome, just wanted some other options overall

[tame tide]

Is that the one I uploaded?

[shell bison]

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6gQj6Ko7YqGT33Jl8J3efw?si=8e203f43192b489d&nd=1

[tame tide]

I just compiled a list for sound tracks for beats cos I hate having to pull random music out last minute so I went through all the beats and got music for it... decided to make it on the drive cos might as well share... didn't know peeps used it :P

[shell bison]

It's still a good list

[digital raven]

Anyone make a map for ||the non-combat parts of Boltzmann? I'm thinking of putting together a blueprint style one for the above ground modules but am curious if anyone already did that.||

[tame tide]

Thank :D

[ebon hatch]

I always default to djent when it comes to combat. Astral Chain, Daemon X Machina, and then a little Animals as Leaders and you’re golden.

[obsidian ferry]

I've roughly planned out my opening musics for each combat as follows.

||Spitting Distance: Turanic Raiders (Homeworld OST)
Shoo The Vultures: Dosers On The Grid (AC6 OST)
Denial of Service: March of the MOAs (Warframe OST)
A Face To A Name: Broadcast Apparatus (Darktide OST)
Thermopylae: Full Frontal (MSG U OST)
Anti-Capital: Contact with you (AC6 OST)
Send in the Clowns: Entry of the Gladiators (Any rock version of the song)
Killer Sound: Semi-Sacred Geometry (Prey OST)
Getting Railroaded: Spikey Cars (Mad Max Fury Road OST)
Powerhouse: Red Sun: Instrumental (MGR OST)
Surprise, Surprise: Ambush (XCOM 2 OST)
Guardian Angel: V.A.T.s Or Die (Fallout 4 OST)
Guns at Noon: I was the Sun [Before it was Cool] (Starbound OST)
[ERROR]: Ghosts of the Void (Warframe Soundtrack)
Lowest Bidder Work: Highlands Combat (Borderlands 2 OST)
Roadblock: High Pressure (AC6 OST)
Bad Star: Heatwave (Hi-Fi Rush OST)
Expedited Boarding: Extraction Theme (Helldivers 2 OST)
Pressure Point: Typhon Voices (Prey OST)
The Swarm: Consume Us (Warframe OST)
Event Horizon: Rapid Adaptation (Warframe OST)
Silence the Guns: Prepare to Fight (Witch From Mercury OST)
Break The Line: Combat Efficiency Rating (Titanfall OST)
Lift the Veil: The Answer (AC4 For Answer OST)||

Still figuring out the background music for each location and the beats.

Hell's Gate will probably get a mix of Warframe, Disco Elysium, and Bastion music (I already use The Sole Regret from Bastion for the tutorial scenes). Icebreaker feels like the kind of high class place to use jazz and Honkai Star Rail's Penacony soundtrack has some good background music for that.
Need to put together a playlist for it.

[orchid seal]

I padded out the Borderlands Sanctuary theme "vibe" with the americana parts of the Hardspace Shipbreaker soundtrack: https://youtu.be/JxTyMVPaOXY?si=a8W-iCq4DuFAwdzJ

(for Hells Gate background music)

[rustic seal]

Thank you all very much! I'll make a playlist with your suggestions! ❤️

[tame tide]

I think Ima steal the ||Bad star one||

Also uuh, I had a vision

[obsidian ferry]

Hi-Fi Rush has a peak soundtrack which goes really well with the sillyness of the Impact Dynamic bossfights.

||I read the Harder than Steele combat and immediately pulled up Too Big to Fall for phase 1, and the Handsome Jackbot combat theme for phase 2||

[frail kayak]

Yes, I did that! I used almost entire Foundry walls and lights. It's just the ||residential hab-section, as that is the only area detailed enough to make sense for a crawl|| I can try to export it, if you're interested, as it doesn't use many art assets (just the background)

[digital raven]

Hmm, I was going to go with more of a site diagram but that gives me some ideas

[frail kayak]

I kinda did that too, with an image from the book

[tame tide]

Mmmm, I normally do this type of stuff just narrating it and havingg a background but after seeing that I think I might nick it

Yoink

[frail kayak]

I'm always very happy when someone uses a thing I made

[hard falcon]

The realization has hit that I'm 1 month from launching my own campaign of IGF.

• Next week is finale of Tuesday M&M campaign
• Week after is IGF session zero
• after that is a week off cause player going to Portugal (and Dawntrail week)
• week after that is IGF launch

[shell bison]

Welcome to the club

[tight pier]

Ooh. I'm hoping to use ||The Wasteland 3 soundtrack|| for most bossfights. ||Power in the Blood, for Lift the Veil https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEOYIwg_PG8||

And ||Power in the Union for Break the Line & Apocalypse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4RnjYwbtp4 - it just feels so fucking right||

[lilac tartan]

Always recommend Disco Elysium OST for Hell's Gate themes

[lilac tartan]

My hometown is a declined heavy industry pivot city supported by mineral resources WHAT THE FUCK
btw its population is 9 million now

Feel like home, literally

[lilac tartan]

Maybe a useful experience for GMing IGF: There was an abandoned factory on my way to school. My dad warned me don't approach that factory, because the soil around it was polluted with sulfuric acid. If you step on the soil, acid will eat your shoes.

[rustic seal]

alright, posted on #lancer-game-recruiting, let's see if anyone's is interested in playing (and also available for my weird time lol)

[rustic seal]

Something similar happened to me! I lived in an industrial zone of my city and a lot of my time was playing around essentially junkyards and abandoned buildings, and we had some that were toxic or that the soil around was too polluted to be around, and once I tried to test this and did in fact lose my shoe lol at least my child mind had the idea of throwing the shoe instead of stepping on it, but it was still spooky.

[rustic seal]

I got 5 results in less than 5 minutes

[cinder acorn]

I almost want to join but my job's schedule is a little weird from week to week.

In any case, good luck with your game!

[soft thicket]

ttrpg players are like particularly uncoordinated piranhas

[shell bison]

Ah man, I don't think someone in the EST like me can get in 😔

[lilac tartan]

Quite spooky

[oak fox]

does anyone happen to have a cut version of the PDF to give to players? fuck online PDF editors man

😭

[rustic seal]

for sure! I'll send you via dm

[oak fox]

Ty!

[rustic seal]

hey folks! who are your favorite among the additional NPCs? Is there any linking or side quests you enjoyed proposing to your players beyond what's on the book?

and how do you go about handing out additional non-license equipment?

[shell bison]

Typically, I love to offer a chance for players to get some extra gear, especially the exotics offered in IGF. Between sessions I tend to ask if players want some downtime to explore around and get a lay of the land. I'll offer hints some shops might have things that can help them out or NPCs they know can offer a price of gear if wanted.

Cerulean is a big guy because he is a fence and vendor for some goods. Mikaela for SSC gear. Zephyr NHP helps with NHP needs, etc.

Of course the named NPCs take prio but people always love samouron as a grannie

[heady vale]

Could i get that too 👀👀👀

[rustic seal]

For sure, sent you via dm

[rustic seal]

Gootcha

[tame tide]

Mission 1 map ||Denial of service|| because I NEVER ACTUALLY MADE IT

Will I personally use it?

No

Did I make it anyway

Yes

:D

[rustic seal]

Holy shit is looks awesome!

I'm stealing it for my isometric one

[tame tide]

Go ahead :D

I'll upload more copies and variants to my drive, probs will be higher res too

Wait for isometric?

[rustic seal]

Yeah, the design at least

Loved the way the stuff is distributed

Though I might skip the isometric for this one, it looks too cool

[rustic seal]

That would be awesome!

[quaint pebble]

thats a very nice looking asteroid

[shell bison]

Well, that's the next map I need to run so thanks for the last minute map

[tame tide]

Want opinions on this variant 👀

My first attempt I ttried for this map with fantasy inkarrnate assets 😩

My player: ||This is the map you fight on when your astral stigmata fills up||

[wild flame]

i like it. kinda dig the fact that the CZs aren't evenly spaced

[tame tide]

I tried making them roughly the same distance away from the spawns. But then I looked at solstice rain and was like "ok how the fuck is this fair?"

I normally use an interpoint maps PDF I have to try get specific measurements and abide to that as much as possible then I kinda just look at the book and it says "yeah just slap it roughly in this quarter and you good chief c:"

[rustic seal]

That was my vibe with Wallflower maps honestly

[rustic seal]

God I would love to fight here, this looks AMAZING

[shell bison]

||Event Horizon complete, Caustic done in with the 2 DAMAGE FROM HOUSE GUARD||

[last leaf]

||ironic really given their narrative position||

[shell bison]

Quite so

[hard falcon]

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/994979574746202163/1251523699589517364/9959baef2f56e4c56ef4bb9352a8ed6e.png?ex=666ee3c6&is=666d9246&hm=b37d6e8b77ffda444e3c0e70ce78ec681c21a07a0baf0dce165fc179df554ae1& play count has increased to five, and these are the vibes I'm getting

[shell bison]

[hard falcon]

I invited a 5th, who has never played lancer before.
She then said 'I have no idea what mech to pick, please post all those ransom note frame images and I'll go with the one that makes me crylaugh'

She picked the Iskander

[tame tide]

I... Am in agony

I looked at my map again

I didn't finish the whole border around the object ._.

[shell bison]

THEY KNOW

[rustic seal]

aw shit

[rustic seal]

she picked the correct one for that criteria lol

[obsidian ferry]

Ran my first session. The party went for air filter duty, encountered some vent crabs and all but one of the squad ended up running around trying to fight the crabs instead of doing their job.
Anyway the air filters are still full of trash, and the on site suction devices are now also clogged with live vent crabs. Someone set off a smoke alarm, and they got one out of six filters changed before sending a list of comments to Jerry (which got automatically bounced by Shelly)... All that before they ended up in his office.

I worry for the station director, these guys are going to give him an aneurysm.

[rustic seal]

pure chaos, love that for them

[obsidian ferry]

On the upside, they did their first beat/combat and managed to get ||the food at a reasonable price and the Lift With Your Knees made it through with half of its hull intact. Ignore the fact that most of the damage sustained by the freighter was from danger close blast weaponry. And that most of the damage dealt to each other was also from danger close blast weaponry.||

Chief McArthur probably regrets giving these maniacs explosives.

||>//[DXG32] has joined the channel

//[DXG32]:: AVOID TARGETING THE FREIGHTER. WE BOTH WANT THAT FOOD.
//[DXG32] has left the channel||

[rustic seal]

currently brainstorming ideas with my group, we currently have:

1. an old merc that retired to Hell's Gate and loved the community so much they picked up arms to fight for them
2. a refugee that got brainwashed into union-busting for Impact Dynamics and got recruited by Hell's Gate and now wants to get their family there to live with her (codename KITTY, safe to say we got a catgirl PC)
3. a scrapyard mechanic that made their own mech and decided to go away from the family business and fight in the Response Team

[rustic seal]

oh god 😂😂😂😂

[buoyant forge]

ran my first session of this and man it's so good, players are LOVING hell's gate so far

huge thanks to everyone that's made and shared maps and tokens and everything, it's made setting it all up so easy

[rustic seal]

absolutely

[shell bison]

gotta love the station of fuck ups and found families

[buoyant forge]

we've got one guy on the run from something, one guy stranded here after being screwed over, one elderly local celebrity, and one guy deeply invested in the station's mining operations

[shell bison]

Yup, that seems like a pretty standard crew for IGF

[rustic seal]

yeah that's... that's my PCs lol

it's been fascinating to have at least one player in each group go "Ooh, cool!" when you're talking about Hell's Gate mining union and socialist livings

[buoyant forge]

the guy playing the space trucker that got stranded randomed into "communist wokery" as a mech name on compcon and went yes, that's the one

[rustic seal]

also trucker

I mean this in the most endearing way possible, but do IGF players share the same 3-5 brain cells?

[buoyant forge]

the vibes are just that powerful

[regal forum]

Y'all I need to consult the igf gm council. ||We just wrapped up on Boltzman and my players (somewhat predictably) braved multiple heroic rolls causing 3/4 of them to break (the 4th was at 7/8 stress) in order to extract triple-points casket. They now want to help heal it and so far I've hand waved about no known precedent, highly illegal, etc., but they've got Striga on the case as well and I'm going to need to figure out a way to resolve this lol. The first idea was basically send it to a therapeutic environment and heal it with good vibes which I'm honestly down for but I wanted to see if anyone else has run into this or has any juicy legion-fork lore/ head cannon. Its definitely going to be a long term project regardless.

On another note, one PC who has an astral stigmata essentially summoned her inner darkness to help push through those prior mentioned heroic rolls. I ticked up the AS clock to 2 bc it seemed to make sense but I'm beginning to worry what happens as it fills and eventually completes since it's not really specified in the book. This part is more a question for ada/vex but again I'm curious if anyone else has run into this and what other folks did.||

[frail kayak]

||I did a skill challenge at the end of CH4 for them to get Triple Point a bit more stable, since I knew they would want to rescue it. During the downtime after chapter 4, I took the rescue as an opportunity to introduce Lyra early (using a pseudonym, they don't know who she is yet). Triple Point and Caustic were handed off to her and are on route to a Horizon safehouse for cascading NHPs elsewhere in the Long Rim, and Lyra has been sending them updates on her remote therapy work with them (they've started blaming each other for what happened, much to her frustration) ||

|| This is not normal Lancer lore, but I'd set the precedent earlier that going to the center of a metavault, and speaking to the eidolon after defeating it could return it to being a slightly weirder than normal NHP. Basically, since both NHPs this happened to in my game (Millstone and Triple Point) had become eidolons because of trauma-induced cascades (and both fairly recently), engaging with that trauma at the core of the metavault constructed from that NHP's emotions could get the NHP out of the eidolonic state, but they were still substantively changed by the experience. We also now have a bunch of clones of Triple Point from the caskets that made up the pillar, and Shelly is trying to get them to help her run Hell's Gate. They are currently being more trouble than help to her, as they have a tenuous grasp on morality, and keep suggesting things like stealing materials from the Thousand Habs||

[maiden ferry]

Wait shit this isn’t the feedback channel

||Im so happy that the party has known Lyra the entire campaign and we’re going into act 2 and they still don’t know she’s switch/loki’s mom||

[regal forum]

||That's incredible. I love the idea of bringing horizon in, idk how I didn't think of that.||

[frail kayak]

||I'm so glad I could help! Yeah, they don't have any idea! My players suggested that she visit the Gate because she sounded stressed out when talking about the progress with TP and Caustic, so she showed up in a Prosocollar after chapter 5, and we had a scene where Switch showed up and was like "Wait, YOU'RE the GodOfMiscief who keeps embarrassing me in front of chat!?", and she was very sad and apologetic, and neither Switch nor my players understand her actual reason for a sudden change of attitude on the matter 😈 ||

|| I was working from some earlier notes when I introduced Lyra, so she's the head of Horizon in Calliope, whereas the latest Act2 draft has her as a cycle-technician, which is really underutilizing her skills. I have her doing research on making Cycling less obtrusive and giving the NHPs more of a choice of how it happens. This change was to give her some common ground with one of my PCs (Promise), who is an NHP researcher||

[regal forum]

Interesting interpretation of ||Lyra||. I was picturing her as a less empathetic character but I think more nuance is always good. The players can ultimately decide the narrative direction that way.

[light mist]

i just had an evil idea (spoilers for wallflower)
one of my players is ||an egregorian pretending to be human||
so i'm thinking when they enter triplepoint's simulation, ||because triplepoint doesn't know they're egregorian, they get placed inside a human body||

[pliant ibex]

That's evil, I love it, I would make sure to run that by the player first though

[regal forum]

A lines and veils type of thing could be handy there if you want to avoid spoilers

[heady vale]

Wallflower spoilers

||🤝 egregorian players||

[carmine isle]

You'll totally put this in the resources spreadsheet right?

Cause that looks sick but I have no idea if I'll be able to find it again when the time comes to actually run that mission

[wild flame]

great news all of Imp's maps are in a folder in the spreadsheet

[tame tide]

Yeah it's already there

[tiny tangle]

uhh silly GM question involving mission 2 (spoilers ofc):
||I was originally under the impression that the gate just took a chunk out of the train depot, but this bit of text plus the art for the Sunbird fight seems to imply the gate ate the “buildings” above it too, thus sucking a whole city block into the zero-g section. Am I missing details here? The wrap up for the mission doesnt seem to mention any acknowledgment of that level of collateral damage (and/or lives lost). Was my original assumption it was just the train depot correct? Or is that whole district abandoned above and below? Or is the collateral damage and condolences side of things taken care of by Rita behind the scenes? Asking mostly because that sort of thing is definitely a topic my players would ask about||

I may very well just be misreading it though

[tight pier]

||I assume collateral damage & condolences would be something Rita handles unless the SRT chooses to do so||

[thorn hinge]

I took it mostly as ||a person exaggerating on the internet for comedic effect||, myself. As GM you can decide for your own game how much collateral damage there actually is, based on the themes and vibes you want your game to have. The vibe the book generally goes for (and what we're aiming for as we work on later acts) would be that no civilians are hurt or significantly displaced. Bad things can and do happen in IGF, but it should be a result of players failing, not a side effect of their success.

[tight pier]

^

[thorn hinge]

There's a section in Act 2 where ||the players are fighting in Impact Plaza. Urban combat as a part of a large military operation against an entrenched force. We specifically noted that collateral damage is a hazard, and something the players should take effort to avoid, but there's no specific mechanics for this. We aren't going to track the times the PCs use civilian infrastructure as cover and have some sort of consequences for it; that's not the story we want to tell. ||

[tiny tangle]

that all makes sense, thanks yall

[silver pumice]

||feather||siren yuri anyone. hello. it's so dark in here [wip]

[dense crescent]

||they are both birds. sorta||

[silver pumice]

||THEY ARE.||

ANYWAYS. I HAVE FINISHED IT

THE GAY FLAME IN QUESTION:

@thorn hinge pinging you cause you seemed especially invested in it

[rustic seal]

Let's fucking goo

[shell bison]

If I had a dollar for each time I've heard Siren in a pairing I'd have...three dollars.

[rustic seal]

knowing my players, you might get at least six by the end of the month

also, my player that found Striga hot has found her even more hot after our first session and had a crazied conversation about their favorite energy drinks for hours

we'll see where that pairing goes

[shell bison]

Calliope dating Sim let's goooo

I'm interested to see where your pairings go compared to mine

[silver pumice]

ngl ||feather||siren started as kind of a joke but now i can unironically see it

i can write an essay on it. totally

[shell bison]

The classic Enemies to lovers arc?

[silver pumice]

they can fix each other

or make each other worse

whatver. love wins <3

[shell bison]

From what little I know on Vex's plans for later down the line with Acts 2 and 3....could happen

If the party and a GM support it go ham.

[silver pumice]

fascinating.

[shell bison]

I've seen so many cute pairings in this module it's a blast.

[silver pumice]

i am but an especially obsessive player tormented by my gm (/positive)

[dense crescent]

y'know
I'm playing ||an AU shackled Feather|| in a game
not an IGF game, an otherwise unrelated Lancer game
it was mostly to mess with with one of the players there, who's also a player in my IGF game

[silver pumice]

OH SHIT YOU'RE THE FABLED ||SHACKLED FEATHER|| PLAYER

[shell bison]

Oh good heavens

[silver pumice]

IVE HEARD ABOUT YOU

[shell bison]

And I thought the game where someone was playing as ||Loki|| was a wild one

[tame tide]

My players don't even know about feather yet... idk if this is because I should have implied earlier, if my players haven't pried enough of both... or i just dont need to

[dense crescent]

...I'm the one running that game 🙂

[shell bison]

OH

How's that timeline going?

[rustic night]

Even though my players know about Feather, they are more interested in dating Jerry Master AND IGNATIUS please send help

[silver pumice]

@marble lava's character marthe is Defined by her crush on feather

[dense crescent]

fine enough
we just wrapped up mission 4
and Loki's player is beggining to... ||suspect||

[shell bison]

👀

[silver pumice]

AURUM????????

[marble lava]

crush is an understatement

[silver pumice]

holy hell, like all of my team hates that guy

IT IS.

[shell bison]

so far, one game I run has yet to meet him. Another has seen him but completely terrified of him because I made a card for him that was a vibe check and the one I play in feels mixed.

Part Sympathy part unabashed rage

[silver pumice]

due to Biases, mostly. However,

[rustic night]

I played him more like "Good Guy that got into the wrong path", and so my group pities him. At first, it was merely a facade, but my grouped like him so much that I decided to stick with that and give a "alternate" reason for why he does what he does

[silver pumice]

i am a player i don't know how spoilery that is help

[rustic night]

Oh frick

At least I was vague enough to not accidentaly spoil things for you

Mb mate

[silver pumice]

yeag

[shell bison]

the one antagonist that is doing what they think is right compared to the rest of them

[tame tide]

One of my players was ready to just straight up kill ||Ignatius|| on first contact

||It's really funny because I wouldn't have rolled, I would just say "you do so"||

[quaint pebble]

I was very suprised when my players didn't try it

[silver pumice]

our team killed him on first contact in ||mission 3||. it was an accident (it was complicated)

[shell bison]

How'd you manage that with so many people around?

[wild flame]

I figured 2 of my players might try it

One of them refused to talk with him and just walked off

The other PC got distracted debating philosophy with him

[silver pumice]

we got him to talk in some secluded alley. he was pretty cordial about it

[quaint pebble]

I think my most aggrieved player character did spit at him

[silver pumice]

lynk growled at him like some animal, which apparently genuinely perturbed him

LMAO

[quaint pebble]

but he was quite equanimious about it in a very annoying way (this PC was a former cult member Ignatius sort of mistakenly thinks he can get them back on board)

[marble lava]

tbf marthe was like, the actual killer here, since she was the only one who got actually physical with him and stuff when She was brought up

[silver pumice]

she didn't Intend to Kill him though

just Hurt Him Real Badly

[shell bison]

Jeez

[silver pumice]

(||feather, through Her connection with marthe, made her strike harder than she intended. it was to get him away from the situation, we later learned||)

[rustic seal]

all my groups, which are usually unrelated people from different places, always try to shoot my villains no matter the social/political consequences, so I always have to do the "villain behind the bulletproof glass" thing

[tame tide]

||your players are gonna be spooked when you go "here's the bad guy" and he isn't behind glass||

||somethings wrong... I can just... kill him...||

[shell bison]

it is rather spooky that he is just there

[rustic night]

[Spoiler - Overarching Plot]
|| My group doesn't stop using the phrase "That's one of the reasons that Ignatius wants to end the universe" at the slightests of inconveniences. I don't know if I should be proud, worried or both ||

[shell bison]

Both

[dire cloud]

God, I wish I could find an IGF game, and also had a working computer.

[rustic night]

After one my current groups reaches the end of act 1, I will probably do a slight hiatus for them and start DM'ing IGF for other people

But that's just a plan

[tame tide]

I need to start saying this irl

[fossil lion]

got inspired to do my own take on the way you worded that

[tight pier]

IN GAYDEN FLAME??

[rustic seal]

this is... absurdly funny, what the fuck

[rustic seal]

The only moment I forgot to protect the villain they shot him in the face and essentially TPKed, so I don't trust them to have the braincell necessary to distrust such a moment

[tame tide]

Lmao

[rustic seal]

yesterday they were planning to explode the Impact Plaza on their first mission there

and when prompted with "but then people are gonna starve" they just went "skill issue" and only got convinced when I said there was a mini-game if they didn't explode the station.

[obsidian ferry]

Good thing they don't go there ||until act 2||

[tame tide]

They'd just be shot out the sky

[thorn hinge]

There's also half a million permanent residents there, most of which have no love for Steele. And one and a half million itinerant workers, most of whom are in varying forms of debt slavery. That part probably should be more effective in stopping any such plans.

[shell bison]

I just realized

spacer salad sounds really god

[tame tide]

Yeah

[short current]

yeah i'd crush a bowl of that stuff. gotta find the vinaigrette hookup on hell's gate

[tame tide]

Actually I need to read the ingredients again

[short current]

“Spacer salad,” a staple of poorer families all over the
system, consists of soybeans, poppy seeds, sunflower
seeds, barley, kale, peanuts and sweet potatoes

[tame tide]

Mmm

I wanna make it

Better than meals of a lot of people ik tbh

If that's the cheaper poorer option what's the pricier foods in Calliope like?

[heady vale]

wait wheres this from ?

also mmm. i should make a sweet potato

[short current]

page 41 in the pdf, in the Culture of Calliope section

[heady vale]

honestly probably wouldnt even be too hard to make, have some barrels going for vinegar and some crushing for oil going

[short current]

yeah i don't think it'd be that hard compared to some other stuff

someone figures out how to reliably grow artichokes and are instantly rocketed to celebrity status

[hard falcon]

question, as I'm setting up things in compcon: If a combat doesn't explicitly say that the PCs get a rest between them (Overall structure of Mission 2, the entirety of the Mission 3's Beat: ||Battle Royale||) do they not get one? Some combats mention them, others don't.

[warped ibex]

they do not -- unless you decree otherwise, Rests only happen when explicitly stated

||this is part of what makes Anti-Capital such a hard fight||

[light mist]

also ||battle royale|| explicitly gives rests between most of the fights

[hard falcon]

oh, there they are

I missed the bold text

https://tenor.com/view/bweh-etto-aquafina-ah-ahh-gif-26792271

I guess the lack of rests throughout ||Mission 2 is bacause of the abundance of Full Repairs||

(Also my spoilering is random and liberal because I don't know what should or shouldn't be spoiled)

[warped ibex]

||well, there's only two investigations, and one of them does give you a rest between -- thermopylae to anti-capital doesn't because those combats take place literally one after another||

[hard falcon]

... Wow my reading comprehension is bad

[warped ibex]

||there is also the Fight Them Anyway! combats, but due to their nature i'm not sure if there's a lack of rest between them or not; they might deliberately lack one due to the urgency of the situation you'd use them in, or it might just be how vex formatted it given they're not traditionally there in the first place||

[hard falcon]

sitting outside of the combat sections for the ones I was raising an eyebrow at, there is mention of 'there's a rest between them'

[warped ibex]

also, most of us don't either! typically the rule of thumb is "is it something players would know at the start of the game?", i think

because this channel tends to harbor a few players that pop in and out, it's just generally safer

[hard falcon]

fair and valid

[shell bison]

god my fasting ass looking at that spacer salad like hmm

looks good.

[warped ibex]

i need to try spacer salad one day

[warped ibex]

HOWEVER act 2 spoilers -- while allowed here there's no like hard rules or whatever -- are probably best relegated to #909574961931362365 since that's where pretty much all act 2 discussion goes

[tame tide]

I'd assume as a rule of thumb, if you saw something here as a fresh player who just started mission 1 and saw it then would be disappointed for seeing it... I'd spoiler tag it

[shell bison]

One of my players is creating an idea for a Calliope culture called the MINI MEC fight

[dense crescent]

Probably depends how hard it is to grow something in space, the most pricy possible thing is probably dead cow parts

[regal forum]

Is this rockem sockem robots in a wok?

[shell bison]

Perhaps

[hard falcon]

wok'em sok'em robots

[tame tide]

Rock'em sock'em subalterns

[ebon hatch]

You know what's even funnier? My friend has been trying to come up with a 3v3 Mech Bakugan thing. I imagine it's just your MINI MEC but with a Steel Battalion controller lmao.

[shell bison]

[silver pumice]

CRYING

[last leaf]

the general practice here seems to be spoiler everything you wouldnt want a brand new player to see, and use the other IGF thread in the gm corner as a spoiler free for all (as befits it as largely an Act 2 prerelease channel). But I'm not sure if that's actually by design or just how things have ended up.

[shell bison]

The Mini Mec arena brawls are being discussed to have card game mechanics and the mini mecs are called Lanpla(Lancer + Gunpla)

[ebon hatch]

Oh my god

New supplement when

Card game + actual skill in mini mech fighting sounds super fun, where do I sign up?

[shell bison]

I joke she should take the influencer bond

[past agate]

Amazing

The masses demand mini mech content

[clever cloud]

How noob-friendly is IGF for a GM? I've been running this game for a few months but couldnt call myself all that experienced

[warped ibex]

mechanically, i think any GM could run it just fine
narratively, given it is a story-intense prewritten, it's probably ideal that you know how to improv and deviate from what is directly stated as needed

i think if you're good at portraying distinct characters and have at least some skill at storytelling/improv from your previous gming, you're perfectly fine

[last leaf]

mechanically it's very nice to run, I really like its guidance in that regard, very fun and good. But yeah, quite narratively focused really, you'd want to have your chops about you in that regard (but if you do, it is very good).

[shell bison]

It also really helps if you know which NPC's have a lot of plot relevance so you can hint at them with more emphasis in the game so the players can get excited for contacting them.

While also taking the NPC's the players like and sliding them into those little gaps in certain areas so the players can appreciate them more

[last leaf]

yup

Personally I've found it a real blast to GM, especially in deciding how and where to change things to set future stuff up, but you definitely want to be willing to do that stuff imo, if you're going to GM it.

[rustic seal]

Btw, given that we're talking about that... which NPCs have a lot of relevance? I know ||Switch|| and ||Loki|| have a big thing, but who among the non-obligatory cast I should emphasize as the DM?

[clever cloud]

Ah so "acting" heavy, got it

[last leaf]

its very much absolutely playable directly out of the box but there is stuff you can do, especially if you know who your party's backstories can be connected to, or who they get along with.

[clever cloud]

Certainly my weakest point as a GM right now but i think i can do it

[last leaf]

tbf we might be overstating the degree to which it is.

like, you absolutely could take a party that was uninterested in rp through it, it's just there's a lot of opportunities for roleplay (and roleplay sessions) to get the most out of it imo.

[rustic seal]

It's roleplay heavy compared to other Lancer games, but much lighter than other adventures for other systems, at least in my opinion and (limited) experience

[last leaf]

||Ratio Salvager is one of the biggest ones that the game leaves as optional||

[rustic seal]

Right, them too, I did know I just forgot to mention in my text.

[last leaf]

||personally I also introduced Annabelle early because I like her character and because I felt that hinting at the Circuit PHASE//SHIFT stuff early was a good idea||

[warped ibex]

||off memory, switch, loki, and ratio as previously discussed, howl, siren, BARTENDER MOTHERFUCKER||

[last leaf]

nobody else is critical imo, and most of the other important npcs are introduced mandatorily ||like Mistress Elske||

[warped ibex]

||anthony callahan if you're expecting to use Can You See the Doors||

[last leaf]

||fair point about cal.||

[warped ibex]

act 2 // ||howl's pretty important for act 2, no?||

[last leaf]

||heck forgot about that, true.||

[warped ibex]

act 2 // ||as is BTMF for the Mind arc||

[rustic seal]

||wait, bartender is important? what||

[shell bison]

||Also Clip Magazine for the act 2 build up for the Aniline story. ||

[warped ibex]

||BARTENDER MOTHERFUCKER acts as the primary vessel through which players communicate with Mind||

[rustic seal]

||Oh, true, I forgot that but I did read that||

[warped ibex]

||also she's not technically mandatory but is it even a real igf campaign if you don't have striga jumpscare your players at least once each mission [/j]||

[rustic seal]

||Ok, so Switch, Loki, Ratio, Howl, Siren (though I think she's a bit mandatory), BTMF, Clip Magazine, Anthony Callahan||

[rustic seal]

||one of my players wants to date her, so I think that's already in motion||

thanks for the help, folks!

I'll make a list and notes about them

also extremely funny to see the chat full of censor bars

[warped ibex]

||siren i listed because it's easy to not give her characterization -- she doesn't have much of an active role in the narrative, so it's easy to accidentally relegate her to the 'transport' role, instead of having her actively be a companion of the players||

||so less "make sure the players are familiar with her" and more "make sure the players know her, like, personally"||

act 2 // ||i'm also not entirely sure, but the ending narration of act 1 makes me think jón jónsson might be at least momentarily important in act 2? she isn't in any of the current drafts, though, so i dunno||

[upbeat plank]

Hi, I'm new to the system but have run dozens of RPGs in the past; I'm interested in Lancer but am trying to decide between this, Solstice Rain, and No Room for a Wallflower. Which would you all recommend and which has the best gm support?

[shell bison]

Honestly, it's hard for us to compare to the massive amount of support of official support this two modules have. There is vastly more people probably on that. However, we have a ton of community support that compares and a lot of the devs and community members are happy to discuss things in igf since we all hold it more personal on how narratively rich it can get.

If you want my personal recommendation? Look at the skill level of your party and gauge if they want a more serious story, direct military campaign or something like the first borderlands on tone where it can have jokes but when it gets serious it gets serious. Then make your choice

Military campaign for solstice rain
Heavy sorrow with wallflower
And borderlands with igf

[warped ibex]

also depends on how long they're trying to go for a campaign, if that matters -- IGF is definitely the longest of those listed

solstice rain is a short "beginner's module" so to speak (although it does have a continuation in Winter Scar, which is currently in playtest)

wallflower is similar to IGF in scale and system (both are Act 1 of a campaign that will have 3 acts), but i recall Wallflower being a bit shorter than IGF (i could definitely be wrong about this), and likely won't see its later acts released for a while, whereas Act 2 of IGF is in active development.
wallflower does have an option for ending the story short after Act 1, i'd like to note.

[hard falcon]

The hype is building, the players are prepped(mostly)

[upbeat plank]

Thanks for this, it's super helpful

[maiden ferry]

||She's just a fixer - so she's the person that HA is going through to hire hell's gate in mission 4. I don't know if its ever explicitly stated in act 2, but its assumed that literally any of the major powers that just showed up could be hiring her to get into contact, union included.||

[upbeat plank]

I was mostly looking for something with decent gm support and leaned into the "weirdness" of the setting

[warped ibex]

if you're looking for weird, IGF definitely has that in spades

calliope is kind of a... coincidence nexus -- everything here is weird, and the weirdest possibilities tend to be the ones that end up happening

[upbeat plank]

Yeah, Solstice Rain looked like it had the most gm support stuff, but least interesting premise. More 08th MS team than Evangelion or Aquarion

I think Ra and the AI/NHP stuff is really interesting both storytelling wise and philosophically

[warped ibex]

heavy spoilers for all acts // ||for some examples, calliope was settled in because of what was seemingly a typo, the main plot follows what is probably a time traveling capital ship called the tachyon that happened to immediately crash into another ship called the ardent weasel after time traveling to here -- that other ship was on the search for another ship called the persimmon, the persimmon holds a superweapon and has been missing for decades||

[shell bison]

Also, canonical cat girls with Mikaela.omnidocument format

[upbeat plank]

Sold

[shell bison]

Let's gooo

[upbeat plank]

Listen, Aisha Clan Clan was very formative

[warped ibex]

admittedly i haven't read solstice rain, but i know IGF and NRFaW are both very good in that department

act 2 spoilers // ||the main antagonist of the campaign is an NHP (and a bunch of allied characters are as well, love you Siren), and iirc RA has a chance for an appearance in Act 2 depending on what actions your players take||

[shell bison]

Trust me, a certain chapter in IGF goes deep into it

[shell bison]

You're very welcome! I'm just a bun trying to be helpful

[last leaf]

||There's one part where the party has to explore an NHP Eidelon and it is just as strange as I think you're looking for||

[obsidian ferry]

Also ||Joan and Chaac from the "Acquiring an NHP" table after Mission 3 become important in Act 2, and there's also GodOfMischief who goes from one of the names in the Muse postings to important character in the HA plot line||

[soft thicket]

I mean, tbf, Wallflower has that in spades as well

[obsidian ferry]

Solstice Rain/Winter Scar are a great pair of introductory modules with some really fun combats, but they're a bit more linear and set your players up as the heroic liberators. They're an easy onboarding onto the more mundane parts of the setting and want to lean more into fighting than talking (though there is a mix of both).
I haven't fully read through Wallflower but I've heard it's really solid as well. The pacing is a bit slower and the themes are a bit heavier, with the scars and trauma of war being a major theme.
IGF is very character focussed and is built like a fractal pattern of chekov guns and foreshadowing. There's serious themes as well but tempered with a heavy dose of humour. I'd say it's one of the best in terms of tying your players into the main plot out the gate, and the combats are very thematic and fun. Go look up ||Anti-Capital in Mission 2||

IGF plays a bit more with ||timelines and causality|| as well

[regal forum]

I'm biased towards igf, the story and setting are just so much fun. NRfaW was also great but in case you don't know, act 2 is tabled indefinitely. Even though my vote is for igf, like others have mentioned it doesn't have the same level of direct gm support as first party stuff but if you consult this discord I'm sure you'll get tons of support and resources. I feel I'd be remiss if I didn't mention dustgrave which has great gm support and gets weird ||in a cosmic horror/ existential timefuckery type of way as opposed to igf's existential timefuckery/ verisimilitude and humor||. Dustgrave is a much shorter campaign as well, although it's a little longer than solstice rain.

[shell bison]

Oh my god

Why have I never thought of this

Sunset overdrive OST fits IGF so hard

[hard falcon]

picking OSTs
Debating between Four-Sided Circle (FFXIV) or Amusement Park (Nier: Automata) for ||Send In The Clowns||

... I guess actually Four-Sided circle makes more sense for the ICebreaker as a whole?

[shell bison]

True

Some ambient persona 5 music fits well for the breaker

[hard falcon]

I do know both tunes to use for ||[Error]||
Combat: Silent Hill - My Heaven
||Crone's home||: Child of Light: Ever Wander Under Statue's Gaze (Child of Light)

[shell bison]

Summary how post ch4 has gone for a player

[orchid seal]

So one of my players started working on a || "Spectral Savorizer" for Shelly so she can taste food and I have absolutely no idea where to go with this/what to do when he finishes it. Any ideas? I was originally kind of imagining it being a wild goose chase but he's rolled extremely well on every check along the way and it's almost done (he has the design and parts and just needs to build it now)...||

[rustic night]

One of my friends and players has made an edit about Jerry Masters. Unfortunately, I can't ping her as she is not in this server, but I asked permission to post it here

[SPOILER - ACT 1 END]

[viscid charm]

Love that edit.

[digital raven]

You want to do a big payoff, you could design a custom downtime activity, going out to eat with Shelly

Say it gives a reserve and ups station stability on a 20 plus or something if they sunk previous downtime actions into it or a reflavor of 'get a damn drink' if they didn't use any resources

[fast parrot]

@shell bison

[cinder acorn]

I haven't found a game of IGF to play in but I have decided that my character, ||despite being otherwise pretty offline,|| has almost definitely ||contributed to the locked Jerry Masters Muse Thread. He was not nice.||

[thorn hinge]

might want to add a note that the spoiler is for end of act 1 content.

||Jerry being trans is a big reveal and it's his story to tell||

that said, I adore this fancam edit

[shell bison]

I love it

[glacial tundra]

I'm looking to start an IGF campaign soon, and I was wondering what other GMs chose for handling Zero-G Operation.

I'm thinking of going with "Free EVA System" and allowing it to be destroyable, but being able to easily track its destruction in COMP/CON or Foundry would require an LCP that makes it a 0 SP system. (making it destroyable to provide players with an interesting choice around zero-g operation)

[tight pier]

I can make an LCP for you.

My solution ended up being "0 SP System that means youre only Slowed in zero-G while explicitly flying. Every single mech is assumed to have it if they don't have an EVA module or other method of flight."

[short current]

you can also just override the SP limitation in compcon

and slap it on anyway as a regular system

[warped ibex]

well, on Foundry its very easy to just manually change its SP value

[short current]

hit that, flip that toggle

then just stick it on there

[glacial tundra]

ah cool, both of those (edit/copy the EVA module in Foundry or override the SP limit in COMP/CON) seem viable

@tight pier thank you for the offer, I might do it myself though, if only to learn more about LCP files

[tight pier]

👍

[torpid quarry]

I just grabbed an eva module from the foundry compendium, modified it to cost 0 SP, and manually threw it on all the mechs

[hard falcon]

decides to Google ||Siren's NHP class as a noun||
ohdear.gif

[shell bison]

uh oh

So

👏

I am Finally getting off my ass and making more character cards

Still a WIP for now

[hard falcon]

Hell yeag

[shell bison]

Adding a chat

[shell bison]

I wheezed making this

Aaaaand done

@fallen geyser Thoughts?

[past agate]

s1g did nothing wrong!!

[obsidian ferry]

I did the same thing, saying it was externally mounted maneuvering thrusters that McArcthur had jury rigged up since the prints they just put out weren't optimised for 0-G operations.
I treated it as a mission modifier, letting them fly in zero-G until they have taken their first point of structure.

[rustic night]

[SPOILER - MISSION 5]
||My players just finished Mission 4 and they are heading to Mission 5. However, I didn't found the Mission 5 maps (Silence The Guns, Break The Line, Hold The Veil) on the IGF DM Resources, at least not plains ones as I can't use Isometric Maps for not having Foundry. Has anybody made them? If you so, I thank you greatly.||

[tame tide]

I'm desperately putting off mission 4 map as long as possible cos it feels mentally like a massive undertaking 😭

Once I'm done with that I can get started on mission 5 but that's probs gonna be like a month away minimum

Scratch that potentially longer

[silk verge]

sorry if this has been asked but discord doesn't let you search threads unfortunately (as far as i can tell). has anyone made up some nice battlemaps for IGF? i'll try putting my own together if not but if someone already made some that'd be helpful

[silk verge]

oh wow i just saw ada's amazing maps in the pinned spreadsheet. sorry i didn't look as thoroughly

[tame tide]

Yeah, the pins. There's lots of cool maps

(Unbiased opinion from a map maker)

[silk verge]

oh rip. the isometric module doesn't work properly on v11 😦

not even a public project so i can't try to fix it myself easily

probably dead too since no updates from the creator for a year+

[tame tide]

💀

Can still use v10

[silk verge]

then i have to downgrade all of the other stuff...

oof. that's a bummer

oh. apparently if you do the patreon there's a v11 prerelease

[tame tide]

Iso is cool, but I personally find it tricky, it squashes everything and makes it harder to keep track what's going on and what distances are personally so I like top down

But when it DOES work it looks AMAZING!!!!

[fallen geyser]

I like it! 🙂

[shell bison]

We got Vex approval! 🥳

Alright, now I get started on Ch2 characters!

[fallen geyser]

I like to think that Switch was asking for the guy who called BARTENDER MOTHERFUCKER mid to be banned

And S1GN4L accidentally got caught up instead

[shell bison]

PFFFFF

[obsidian ferry]

At the least ||two of the three combats use the same map||.
Also I love your maps and am using them for my game, especially looking forward to the ||moving bits of scenery in Anti Capital||.

[tame tide]

That's what makes it hard tbh, ||it needs to be a good map and it needs to look good with and without cover and have cover be placeablr||

[obsidian ferry]

You've hit it out of the park with every map so far!

saying that probably doesn't help lmao, but the other maps have been great.

[quaint pebble]

mostly people are making and posting maps as they need them for their own campagins and unfortunately it seems like you have outpaced us 😅

[tame tide]

First off, I can't because I don't have access to my PC for the next 2 weeks. Second, people saying my maps are good are very good motivation but it caps at a point where I can't overcome lack of motivation or burnout :P

[obsidian ferry]

Yeah, if you're feeling burnt out, forcing yourself to work on it won't help. Take your time and I'm sure the results will be great, Jacquerel is halfway through mission 4 as well so both of you guys are getting close to the end of Act 1.

In the meantime, for the Mission 5 maps ||You can sub in a Battletech Lunar map with some equipment/guns on it for Silence the Guns, there's a few map packs for Alpha Strike VTT scenarios out in the wild. For Break The Line there's a few Hangar battlemaps which should work decently well. Lift the Veil is pretty specific though... maybe a fantasy or steampunk map with a summoning circle/portal centrepiece will work?||

[wild flame]

if all else fails I'll simply smack a hex grid into MSpaint and scribble on it

no big deal

[ebon hatch]

Just cuz no one else in here mentioned it, "stream is staring soon."

[hard falcon]

👁️ 👄 👁️

[shell bison]

oh

i'll fix that

[tight pier]

i have hired this stream to stare at you

[shell bison]

lmao

[rustic night]

[SPOILER - Mission 5]

I've made a ||Lift The Veil Battlemap|| if anybody wants to use it

First time using Inkarnate, so no idea how to make piples and cables without them looking weird

[light mist]

cursed idea
rodericke steele with a transatlantic accent but he still uses phrases like "sigma male" and "gigachad energy"

[tight pier]

Party landed in ||Furnace City|| to start mission 3, and met ||Ana! One of our PC's oldest sister. And another one of our party members immediately pointed a gun at her.||

@thorn hinge I stole your bit of ||Ana dating Siren, and her younger brother PC... I think is still processing what the fuck is going on. I think the drama is going to occur next session, if it does happen.||

||Said PC also got the idea to contact his other sister for help crossing the Terra Solus. Said sister being the Inner Cult member described in Ana's flavor text. She'll be coming along :).||

[shell bison]

We love seeing ||Ana|| become plot relevant

Tomboy Wife

💗

[silver pumice]

(eyestrain warning) i am back on my ||feather||siren agenda

[tame tide]

Pretty damn good I gotta say for a first time map!!!

Ngl I'm super excited to make that map... I won't be surprised if I finish mission 5 maps before mission 4 tbh 💀

[rustic night]

Thank you, Imp!

[rustic night]

Mission 4 maps seem to be such a hassle to make... Well, the ||Pressure Point|| and ||The Swarm|| at least

I probably have to add more and more cover... I feel like there isn't enough cover variety (mostly being Size 1 and the big ones on the back) and there's alot of empty space, but I will get the hang of it eventually

[shell bison]

Map creation/acquisition is always the hardest part of GMing any table top.

[tame tide]

Nah, I'd win /j

(It's scheduling 😭 )

[shell bison]

UGH

you so right ;v;

Hmm, now I got a weird prompt I'd like to ask GM's

How do you handle Siren being a bit "busy" to not help the players ||deeper in Boltzmann mine during ch4? I typically have her having flashbacks to her time back during the thirdcomm revolution PTSD episodes that leads her to going dormant.||

[maiden ferry]

I had her hallucinate an invasion by cult ships jumping out of bolt, taking off and engaging, snapping out of it and panicking, telling them to contact her when they’ve solved the problem

[shell bison]

Nice

[thorn hinge]

I had her describe it first as a mundane|| "sophisticated cyberattack" that progressed into language that sounded more like she was being attacked by swarms of insects before announcing she "couldn't let them in deeper" and shut down. || (ch4 spoilers)

[rustic night]

[SPOILER - MISSION 5]
||I've made a Break The Line battlemap for anybody that wants to use it||

|| HEAVY inspiration from Ada's Isometric map ||

[heady topaz]

im stealing this

also you should add these to the community folder if you haven't already

[rustic night]

I will do so when I finish ||Silence The Guns||

I will do it tomorrow, as I have to have all prepared until Saturday :>

[tame tide]

Oooh

Claustrophobic

[lilac tartan]

Me: The first person to think of In Gay Flames must be a genius
Our Sherman Guy: Why is it gay
Me: ||Feather||Siren ship
Sherman Guy: My ship now

[rustic night]

[SPOILER - MISSION 5]
||Aaand done
I've finished Silence The Guns and, with that, the Mission 5 maps. I really suck at asteroids, I had no idea where to even start this.

Anyways, I will post it on the GM Resources when I figure out how to do so.||

[warped ibex]

out of curiosity. have you perchance seen one of my players ||feather||siren posting.

[silver pumice]

thatd be me

hi :)

[warped ibex]

posting on gm resources is rather easy! you've gotta upload your stuff to a google drive (which mostly just consists of putting everything you want into a folder and uploading that folder to google drive), then you go to the sheet, paste in the drive link on a new line

and of course attach your name, the date of uploading, and a description

[rustic night]

Done, posted

[onyx tendon]

Hey y'all, I'm prepping to run igf and I had a question. How does cloning work on Hell's Gate? Sorry if this has been asked I just can't figure out how to search this one post for answers.

[pliant ibex]

For the most part, it doesn't AIUI; the Gate and Calliope in general are wayyyyy too much of a backwater to have something that convenient so readily available. That's not to say clones or cloning can't factor in, but most people in Calliope live lives trying to subsist in a place where everything is hodgepodged together and it is only through continuing miracles of ingenuity and collective support that they are able to do so.

If you want it to factor in, there's lots of different ways you can do it, each with their own narrative justifications, but from what I've read it's an incredible effort that the place has free and open omninet access and that Hell's Gate has a printer, so it's not the easiest place to put a set of cloning pods

[shell bison]

clones are very high potential for player characters as for cloning is probably not a highly likely on the Gate outside say the one small clinic in the IceBreaker

[pliant ibex]

One way to do it would be to link it to (narrative spoilers) ||Feather, thanks to the team investigating the Tachyon in Mission 1. She has the ability to bring people back from death, cloning would play in that same space and give an insurance policy without specifically needing advanced tech.||

[maiden ferry]

even better, if they use the ssc clinic you can use that to cause absolute hell for that character if your party is one that likes rp drama

[shell bison]

Truuuue!

[maiden ferry]

act 2 spoilers ||SSC is a major player, and having any amount of dirt on the players makes for a more interesting story||

[shell bison]

And as someone ina group that did the ||fire gate rebirth but we highjacked it with three NHP's and triplepoint hijinks|| that is also a thing

[lilac tartan]

Yes
We've finished mission 1

[onyx tendon]

Jerry is probably gonna be pissed about how much it takes out of the budget which will also be fun

[shell bison]

As long as you can lower it a little

[last leaf]

I see your ||feathersiren|| and I'll add you this, I'm secretly shipping one of my player's character with ||Ignatius||.

[shell bison]

We're getting all the toxic ships out today huh

[hard falcon]

Session Zero was a success!

After some character introductions, scene setting, and some introductory scenes, one of the players did this:

[shell bison]

Is that a HARO I see on the left over there?

[hard falcon]

we have:
Dr. Roselor Andreassi-Bolting, callsign: 'Alouette', born and raised in Furnace City, moved to Hell's Gate as the need for medical staff rose. While her father still lives on Furnace City, her mother is one of the Two names addeed to The Wall this year

(Mild Wallflower Spoilers) Yon Loussier, Callsign: 'Miracle', a product of Harrison Armory, in an attempt to recreate the ||Psychic Phenomena|| observed on planet ||Hercynia|| for combat use. She travels everywhere with her Handler, Alisha Daryls, who continues to make sure that this poor child barely sees things outside her room or a cockpit. Sent to Calliope as a belief that this would be an excellent testbed for some basic combat drills in this quote, "Backwater system where nothing fucking happens|

Lorelei Judge, callsign: Halcyon. Found in a cloning vat following a Circuit raid, and ultimately raised on Hell's gate in a double team of Dr. Elaine Sarvodovitch as surrogate mother, and Frita Von Aldenburg as a surrogate sister. Technically a clone of Flay, a notorious pirate from the Marasia system, gifted with tools and computers. She and her NHP Switch are surely going to bring great things to Calliope.

Farvicule Tendonitis, callsign: Cogs. A techhead that could give McArthur a run for her money, found one day as a baby in Incinerator Four (thankfully turned off) on Hell's Gate, as his mothers were ruminating about having a child. No one knows how this baby got in there. There are some genetic indications of being a botched flash clone, but of who is uncertain... ||Farvicule is a horrifically botched 'clone' of Ignatius Aurum, born from a flickered firegate inside Hell's Gate, which had opened unsynced with the others due to Feather still riding that Tachyon-Time Travel high. Since the Tachyon has properly shown up, the Mnemonic implants in Farvicule have started misfiring, giving him the same dream every night, involving Birdsong, Warzones, Despair, trees, and burning carbon||

And last but not least, FC37 'Ringabel', a flash clone from Cadeuceus Corp, when they were a small startup, and before Flash Clones were properly declared 'Turbo Illegal,' the culture she's from forces these flash clones to wear bells and paint their faces, so that others know to give them a wide berth. Her height is a designer thing, as being that tiny means you can maneuver around a cockpit that much easier. When the hammer came down on thee legality of Flash Clones, she and several of her 'sisters' were sent to Calliope with the express demand of 'Use them up, we're not sending further support for these weird psychic things.' As far as she is aware, FC37 is the last remaining clone. And yes, she has a little HARO.

The spoilered part of Farvicule's story has not beein briefed, but I was given free reign to assign things, and decided 'Alright, what could the worst possible option be'

[shell bison]

Oh now this is a crew.

Funny we don't see a lot more medical staff in SRT team line ups in IGF....I should add some medical personal in my games. Thanks for the reminder!

Love these goobers and I hope they enjoy the totally uneventful system :)

[hard falcon]

as a fun joke, I also asked each player to message me what their strike team is named

obviously, this meant i got five different answers

Strictly so I can do a running joke of 'Okay, so we've got Team... that's the name they went with? ... Okay'

The team names I was given, in no particular order:

Test Group A2
The Hellions
Janitorial Crew Omega
Builder Breakers```

[shell bison]

Lmao, love the gag.
So far from what I've seen people rock the name "Strategic Response Team" until something happens to make the new name stick.

For the game I play in, we ended with Star Fire Team on account of Rita being pissed one of us melted down mid op on the breaker.

As for the games I've ran, They are finally picking The Exceptions Because ch4 ||Triple-Point made it a point that it could not account or calculate for any of them and it wanted to know why. They are an X factor. The exceptions to its calulations.|| Plus funny JJK reference.

https://tenor.com/view/todo-jjk-jujutsu-kaisen-shibuya-arc-mahito-gif-11933159284027340768

[ebon hatch]

Oh my god, Snuffkin and Cousin It?!

[hard falcon]

the goal is to also seed a few things in these stories to latch them into certain missions;

Roselor's mother being ||an Andros victim gives her reason to hate the man in chapter 1, and sympathize with The Forge in chapter 3.||

Lorelei being found after a Circuit raid ||Means we can get especially fucky during Boltzmann||

FC37 thinks she's the last of her sisters, but a fair few will reappear. ||Actually, come to think of it, the count of them is higher, and a lot more of them have sided with the Faith...||

Farvicule.

Yon's own sheltered upbringing is tricky, but ||Considering we plan to kill the handler on the Tachyon, that should cause some problems as she seeks to find a place to belong||

Only two mech assignments are properly 'known' at this point;
FC37 plans to pilot a Metalmark
Yon wants a Barbarossa.
Everyone else is kinda more and more in flux (So I don't need to worry about an Iskander )

[shell bison]

I am exited for your barbie pilot 👀

[hard falcon]

||God I hope she does The Thing in chapter 3||

I am begging RA to let that happen

right, I think Roselor plans to hop in a Stortebeker

[shell bison]

Oh, Raleigh and Stort eat so good in IGF

[hard falcon]

also point of order, the drawing was done y Ledgem who's in this server (not @'ing her because. well)

[shell bison]

Well yeah, spoilers

[hard falcon]

oh, and the most important question to answer
Farvicule broke the printer

[shell bison]

Ah, fair

[heady vale]

Officially as far as I know there isn't.

Am far as im running it, there is someone playing a clone, but they are explicitly a clone who was part of a special lab experiment, to create a collective of super clones to market, hat purposely moved to calliope to be as hidden and backwater as possible while still having the amenities of a city.

[shell bison]

Calliope and clones go together like the ingredients of a spacer salad

[hard falcon]

which is to say 'they do'

[onyx tendon]

I'm thinking the militia has a cheap cloning facility, they make batch parts of key members to distribute for medical purposes but in an emergency they can scrape together enough of the same person.

Like, they just grow limbs and organs for medical use which is also faster, and if they have to they can put enough of the same person back together, it's just more volatile than even regular flash cloning.

(stealing hearth 7's excuse)

[shell bison]

That or cybernetic replacements

[hard falcon]

A fun exchange from last night
||Sere: [discussing the pirate factions, and brings up Circuit]
Player: Wait. Hold up. You mean there's two Cascading NHPs in the Calliope system?!
Sere: ... Yes.
Player: ah... ahah...ha... oh fuck||

[ebon hatch]

It tickles me that something silly I came up with on the fly is starting to become standard operating procedure for new IGF dms.

[onyx tendon]

What's that?

[ebon hatch]

The part where you ask every player individually how they broke they broke the printer.

The joke is that all of them broke it, it’s just that each of them found ways to make it even more brokeded.

The best kinds of responses are when people say “I dunno what you’re talking about, I fixed it.”

Great way to build characterization at the very start.

[shell bison]

So that's where that came from

I felt so bad that I broke it in our game cause I fixed a rnny pipe on a shift in hydroponics and it let to the cascade of water related problems that broke the printer ;v;

[thorn hinge]

In the remix game I broke the printer entirely by accident... which was ironic because I had been carefully damaging minor backup and tertiary systems for a while to build up a reputation of being "cursed" or a "clutz". That way if I needed to do more serious sabotage I could possibly get away with it...

[ebon hatch]

YOU

[shell bison]

MR. MASTERS PLEASE IM SORRY I DIDNT MEAN TO FIX THE STATIONS PLUMBING ISSUE

[hard falcon]

know what I'm gonna adapt that

[shell bison]

My personal favorite is to have a vent crab act as an agent of fate and be the cause for the printer malfunction

[hard falcon]

Farvicule does have a vent crab in one of his pockets at all times...

speaking of, one scene we played out in order to teach Ringabel about bartering in Calliope, we coined the phrase 'Crabob' for the guy selling vent crab on a stick

[shell bison]

Pfffff

[clever cloud]

thank you vex

[lilac tartan]

Maybe you'll see somebody name after themselves Crabob

[hard falcon]

This conversation picked back up:
||Player: It just feels wild to me that there's two cascading NHPs out there. Like. HORUS would have shut this shit down
Sere: Well, nah, this HORUS group decided to start worshipping them as gods instead
Player: Why though. WHY
Sere: Because What else is there to do in Calliope||

The rest of the answers:

Yon: Alisha continued to make ridiculous demands, stressing the hardware.

[torpid quarry]

||I like the idea of the vent crab being an agent trained by TRIPLE-POINT||
||"I assure you CAUSTIC, teaching this vent crab how to sabotage the Hell's Gate printer is vital to preventing the end of days"||

[shell bison]

It is always funny to see my players go, "This all started because of a Fucking vent crab"

[silk verge]

anyone using ada's isometric maps know how the deployment zones are drawn? i can't figure it out and they look nice

[shell bison]

Quick question, been debating in my head to introduce Siren next session for my new crew. They just did Denial of Service and thinking it might be cool to send in Calliope's Finest over to pick them up than the Lift with your Knees again.

Wondering if that seems like a good idea or not? 🤔

[tame tide]

I don't see a problem with it too much apart from "why couldn't she help with the combat"

Which can ig be explained with "she hasn't had her armaments loaded yet" or
"Shooting the battlefield could have ended in scrapping all data we needed"

[shell bison]

Or the classic, "was too far out". But could make up for it with a couple of Hell hound vessels coming in and suddenly get Assault cannon BRRRRT down to establish Siren is Calliope's Finest pilot

[tame tide]

I think I did a similar thing in mission 3: ||The players rescued L-Kay and got back to Siren, she asked if there was success and the players said it was an ambush "some got away though" siren responded "Oh I know, I shot the fuck out their escape ship but they bolted away in time with a wonky engine... probably didn't survive but if I has better guns..."||

||They then made a promise of getting her better guns||

||Then shortly were given the option for better guns||

[shell bison]

Calliope's Finest back in action

[last leaf]

they're exes 😎 (the player character is an amnesiac)

(their player doesn't know about this at all)

[tame tide]

._.

If my character was an amnesiac and ||I found out the bbeg was my ex I don't know how I'd react tbh... ic and oc||

||The ships and romance in my game is also like 0, none of my players are interested in it||

[shell bison]

It be like that

[clever cloud]

Toxic ship thats actually two ship NHPs

[thorn hinge]

...with the foundry polygon drawing tool and a steady hand. lines are white, 8px, .8 opacity, and the fill is at .2 opacity, #008141, #a10000, or #ffffff as needed for purpose.

[last leaf]

oh they were the one suggesting they didn't know their own backstory, this is only something I'd do with players I thought would be receptive to it.

[thorn hinge]

I've done this and so did Xenguin. In both cases for ....reasons.. the shuttle the players used to get to S1GN4L's platform got shot down on the way in. After the fight a freshly-cycled Siren bolted in to pick them up. For my game, I had Shelly find the sensor ping for ||the tachyon|| pretty much right away, so Jerry had Siren take the players straight from there out to ||Chameleon.||

[last leaf]

definitely not something I'd recommend doing with players in principle unless you know they'd be okay with it.

[shell bison]

_notes that down. _

Thanks Ada, I might just steal this for my session

Any chance I can learn what those reasons are other than give Siren some fan service? 👀

[thorn hinge]

Okay so I feel like giving the long version, buckle up.

In my game, the first session was maybe a bit rushed. It's everybody's first lancer game, they read the setting materials but suddenly we're in it, I didn't expect them to do much RP right away. Intro, first fight, all at once. For the second session, now that they've gotten a bit of a feel for it, I worked out a bunch of narrative scenes with my players. We fit a whole rp session in between the first two combats. One of those scenes was Calamity getting harassed by some Hell's Gate citizens for being a Hell Hound. The harassment turned into a mob, someone got a pipe... it looked like it was going to go bad. Suddenly "WHAT'S UP LANCERS, IT'S YA BOI, check it out switchboard, one of the heroes who braved the pirates to bring us food!". Switch stepped in with cameras and diffused the crowd.

In return for the save, and not so interested in an interview, Calamity agreed to take them along in her expanded compartment on their next op.

On the way to the platform, switch was streaming. Suddenly all of their coms had an obnoxious voice come in with S1GN4L's intro, starting with "str34msn1p3d LMAO", and then their comms were flooded with a special cbat / penis music mega mix. The shuttle's controls were locked out, and all they could do was get in the mechs and bail out. The shuttle crashed into the platform just before they landed.

With Jerry's choice to send them straight to ||Chameleon||, that meant Switch was along for the ||month long|| ride. Gabriel gave them quite a chewing out about op-sec.

Okay I guess that's more like the medium version, I didn't hit the character limit yet

[shell bison]

...Ada 🤝 Me
Convinving the players to bring Switch into the Signal fight to get stream sniped

I swear if another gm says they did this we are adding to the Calliope Canon Event chart

[silk verge]

thanks. i don't know if i'll be able to manage it but i'll give it a shot

your maps are awesome btw

[hard falcon]

I now realize that I accidentally made my rpg room profile a ||Feather||Siren ship

[shell bison]

Good heavens

Better yet

By the flame!

[silver pumice]

GOOD.

[hard falcon]

I DIDNT REALIZE IT WAS A SHIP WHEN I DID THAT

[silver pumice]

TOO LATE YOU'VE JOINED THE ||FEATHER||SIREN AGENDA NOW

[hard falcon]

FUCK

[shell bison]

Doomed yuri

Speaking of which, Siren now in my game got a date c:

Well, one I dm, and I get to introduce her in the other game I dm

[hard falcon]

We have a full list of mech assignments!

Yon Loisser, 'Miracle' - Barbarossa
Lorelei Judge, 'Halcyon' - Emperor
Dr. Roselor Bolting-Andreassi, 'Alouette' - Stortebeker
FC37, 'Ringabel' - Metalmark
Farvicule Tendonitis, 'Cogs' - Spooky Dave Calendula

[Discussing Eject Power Cores in this team comp]

[silver pumice]

normal pilot and their very normal copilots (ch4)

[shell bison]

Last nights session went very well.
Context: Party is having the post trauma of ch4 and pushed to have some time before ch5 kicks off. 2 players had a moment with their loved ones to talk about it and like any good gm their partners reassured them.

Mikaela OmniDocument and Cerulean are the real ones loving their pilots.

One players character is having a rough time coming to terms and having a self loathing arc each character is helping them process.

And my unapologetic sunlighter player got A Pirates of the Carribean-esque Pirate lords council meetingstarted where she finally found her pirate mom in her atlas proud as hell her daughter is this Calliopean hero. I introduced some potential act 2 npcs and she hoisted her Blacksmith bf up in front of his band to his annoyance and Elske's amusement

[shell bison]

Other party just had their session and I'm wheezing over the events

[last leaf]

lmao

I need to steal this for my party

[shell bison]

Also, one got vibe checked by Siren saying, "You marines talk a lot on the ethics of dating an NHP without actually asking if she would."

Cause one of my pcs is a terminal Lebanon

And Yes, Siren jetted in dealing critical damage to two ships coming in as backup cause S1GN4L didn't turn off the silent alarm (oopsie) and made them run off.

You know I had to play https://youtu.be/eOv5fF7maFY?si=I9q7v65ThD16L31D When she did that

[tight pier]

I can't believe I'm saying this, but for mission 3, our players ||recruited Ignatius to their team, to join them||

||(i'm realizing now I fucked up the font size on the menu splash for Ignatius. oh well)||

Block wrote about it here ||<#909574961931362365 message>||

[shell bison]

Got some intel on that,
May the Light of Light guide your path James Shan.

[quiet snow]

Waaay too late for me to ask about this but does anyone have suggestions for laying out the battlemap for the final act 1 fight? ||Sure the gate's going to be in the middle as depicted but I'm drawing a blank on the rest of the map's size and contents...||

[fossil lion]

could maybe do something neat with ||a loose "ring" of altars and gate-operation equipment around the fire gate, visually making it even more the centerpiece of the fight while also giving enemies emerging from it a bit of cover||

[rustic night]

[SPOILER - MISSION 5]

||Just finished Mission 5 with my 6 players and OH CHRIST THE BUDDHA, even though the last combat was frustating, I loved every single moment. I wish I could talk about it, but I don't know if I can (due to talking too muc)||

[warped ibex]

you definitely can talk about it!!

[lilac tartan]

Realized that it seems everyone is posting this meme so for some obvious reason this channel MUST have a Jerry one

[shell bison]

I'm sharing this