Solstice Rain Remixed

[copper mesa]

unless there's some manual way to change it thru file changes

not to derail too much, but does this imply that a player mech/npc mech can keep going if they keep succeeding the hull checks?

[nocturne basin]

Mm not without changing the Lancer System yourself

[nocturne basin]

Uh yes? They just take Brace Downside

[copper mesa]

woah

wait i may be dumb

[nocturne basin]

But like this is just if you roll double 1s

[copper mesa]

right lol

[nocturne basin]

But yeah #1062222891342647366 Can clarify more for sure

I just rec it for letting players and NPCs not just die unceremoniously

[limpid pawn]

I've been thinking of narrative challenges and other ways to beef out the beats. Some of them have a lot of things to work with. Others, not so much.

[nocturne basin]

Tbh i feel like I could pad literally all 5 combats after the first with narrative stuff

Big question is “how to do it in a way that feels different enough from the rest”

Combat 2: literally just the as-written narrative with combat as a fallback on failure
Combat 3: Sneak up on the AA emplacement for an ambush
Combat 4: track down the Jammers
Combat 5: chase scene to get to Farris’s prisoner transport in time, combat as backup
Combat 6: Find Bannerjee, get back to FOB Saber without getting hit by a Short Cycle Lance

[limpid pawn]

I was honestly thinking about doing a challenge as a means of bypassing combat 4

I was already doing the "combat as fallback" for combat 2 because that just seems organic. Meanwhile, the consequences of failing the narrative challenge that's meant to bypass combat 4 could go directly to the combat fail state.

I'd probably do a layered sort of challenge though where they can "fix" the ones they failed by creative use of other skills

Because of Winter Scar, I'm also doing a weird thing where the narritive beat happens after the combat.

Narritive play chase scene though

[rich fjord]

I love chase scenes, that sounds like a fun way to keep it fresh.

[nocturne basin]

Yeah I figured that if I had to put distinct narrative stuff on everything, and it’s gonna be a more linear structure (like I believe Isa is planning?) it would be good to transform the “oh by the way we airlift you to the harbor” between 4 and 5 into a frantic chase sequence to intercept a prison convoy

Use some chase scene rules in the process

[limpid pawn]

Basically my structure is that the combat scenes are chokepoints, but the context and circumstances surrounding them will be different (or bypassed entirely) depending on decisions made during narrative play

And, in the case of the battle with the furies, the battle will impact the narrative play.

[nocturne basin]

Nice, love it

[limpid pawn]

NGL some of it is mechanically illusion of choice or changing the color of the lights in the cutscene, but

1. players will only know that if they're aggressively attempting to derail (IE- explicitly not following orders, attempting to desert, making non sequitor suggestions)

2. it makes the roleplay different and I am a roleplay enjoyer for groups that enjoy roleplay too

[late star]

While prepping to run Solstice Rain I had some fun coming up with more internal Numeral and Code designations for VSAF mechs.

The Kerberos, Tyfonas and Nemesis gave a good idea of some of the naming convention, namely using greek names of mythological beings. Some are not the most inspired, they're more meant to imply depth.

Numerical whise I tried to keep the first number as the battlefield role: "6" = Close range line mech, "4" artillery designation, "10" special forces etc.

And that about that. I though this was the best place to share it, considering the topic.

[copper mesa]

lovely, thank you

[alpine nimbus]

This is fantastic

[covert goblet]

@late star Love it! Thank you! I was just making stuff up with no rime or reason, this is great.

Does anyone have a list of NPC tokens (Rio, Bannerjee, Kirios, etc) put together as a resource?

[copper mesa]

Based on their art?

[covert goblet]

Yes, or supplemented from other artists if other art doesn't exist.

[nocturne basin]

Hm, I’d just pull images from the PDF, personally

They’re not cut off thankfully

[late star]

I’m making a series of token with retrograde based of the vsaf color scheme

[copper mesa]

Yeah I took character art from the pdf

[late star]

Mixed in the retrograde with some from the cleaned art

Eg: mister Kirios gets his whole glorious look.

[alpine nimbus]

I used these for the mechs

[late star]

Oh these are gooood!

[olive musk]

I made a cube for the barricades actually

[copper mesa]

thanks, will use dis up in case my players go to the harbor

also! i meant to upload here my last session from last week, but my audio for the game isn't there

so, i'm gonna upload later yesterday's session

just to keep peeps up to date, but players sorted out combat 3 pretty easily, wrecked shit up, superheavy tempest blade hitting for 21 damage is owie on an elite rainmaker

and now they went to the residences to clear up the radio jam in order to help find bannerjee and farris

my idea for combat victory is the base reward of the cloak, but also an LSA sniper as an ally for the next encounter

as for clues/leads, gonna do so that when the jamming clears up, there's LSA captains and soldiers reporting on:

• farris being driven out towards the harbor
• bannerjee under fire in the hall of consuls for extraction with other diplomats

i doubt my players will be able to do both nodes, but i have a high feeling they'll go for farris rather than bannerjee

considering how winter scar will need a bridge mission to bring players up to LL3, whoever is left behind upon the clock hitting 0 or players failing the node, i'll have the remaining hostage be the focal point of the bridge mission

still, right now, combat 4 is fun, the elite assassin jumping between buildings and succesfully kicking a player off the building is funny

though poor thing got hit hard by an onslaught of bullets x_x

she's still standing at 1 structure, but she's definitely not gonna live long if she can't get the darn player off the building, love spinning kick

(kratos is the elite assassin's callsign)

[limpid pawn]

The LSA sniper could also be a moment to use Naia since I think they're a sniper when they're in their mech

[brave forum]

beautiful

I've been using some generic deployable to fill the space

[olive musk]

am I the only one who saw the LSA Snipers as teams of sniper infantry like in that shot in halo 2 during the city fight?

[limpid pawn]

Probably not, though personally it's been, uh

18 years since I played Halo 2

[nocturne basin]

I have not, though I understand where you’re coming from

I know that the reserves don’t actually call for a Sniper NPC mech, but also, fuck it, sidekicks are fun

[copper mesa]

oh yeah i did use the sniper team reserve

but as, you know, a different thing

my reward for this combat clear being an allied npc sidekick is not much of a crutch but also just as a way to help build a bit more with the lsa connection

[olive musk]

I get that, but I also like the imagery of the sniper teams on nearby roofs having to change position after a shot and the players seeing their silhouettes moving around.

[nocturne basin]

I like that too

[copper mesa]

one thing i am actually wanting tips and help about is the combat 4 and the usage of the demolisher

right now i have my size 2 player on the middle of the street

the remaining players splintered to the sides

[nocturne basin]

Demolisher is a warning, it holds a point and says “come no closer”. It needs the mirage to get where it needs to go though

[copper mesa]

i got the ace on the left on the rooftop, the witch on the middle street about to die at 1 hp and the mirage as well on the left giving invisible to the breacher

breacher on the middle, right side and assasin on rooftop of point

i'm practically ignoring the point on the top right atm, which i'm not sure if its a bad thing. i think i'm not pressuring my players much

right now its start of round 3, and points are 2-2

dunno, just thematically right now, having the vestans push to the players in the middle feels like more sense rather than have a singular one push away into the unoccupied point...

[covert goblet]

What was everyone's rewards (if modified) for the scenarios?

In particular for the remix

[covert goblet]

1st Session went well! Party of 3 that have never player Lancer, but are TTRPG vets, they wanted to have some build options so decided on LL2. Using the remix, but keeping the combats from the book at the moment as I like having the optionals, though I'll probably go @nocturne basin's route and modify the future ones to get all NPC types involved.

One player is Nelson leaning heavily into the close quarters combat with Vanguard 3, Combined arms 2 using War Pike/Thermal Pistol and Shotgun...damn this thing is fast and devastating. I'm sensing a 1 LL dip into Tortuga in the future. During Node 1, they popped the core power as they ended up being way out of position and had to book it back to the objective zone. Skirmisher procing on overwatch was annoying to deal with...the Ronin just wanted a duel, dammit!

Second player is an Orchis and leaning into the personal bodyguard with Bonded 2 (Nelson pilot is their Huckleberry), House Guard 1, Duelist 2. Between Ferrous Lash and using the perimeter control plate as a spring board, they and the Nelson pilot were damnded impossible to pin down. Lucky for me, they ended up with garbage attack rolls even with the accuracy bonus. I'll need to watch out for them as they get used to Ferrous Lash more and using it on allies. I'm guessing a 1 LL dip into Nelson for the warpike and bulwark mods.

Third player made some...questionable choices against my advice....but whatever, they play what they want. Currently Death's Head trying to build for indirect fire with Howitzer backed up by Assault Rifle and Missile Rack then loaded up on smoke, jericho, and turret drones...but didn't invest anything into Hull, once again against my advice ("shut up, your not my Dad!" XD) he learned the hard way that the Hive doesn't care about his evasion 14 and he will just quickly burn to death with almost no RepCap. It didn't help that he had shit for rolls all session with both Foundry and physical dice.

[covert goblet]

Intro went well with some good RP going on before jumping into Node 1. I introduced Naia Reynaud early here and they've taken a liking to Rio and Garcia. The fight went quite a long time just due to being new players (plus one player always...ALWAYS...has analysis paralysis not matter what game he plays. I haven't GM'd before either, but have played quite a bit so learning curves. Right off the bat, the Nelson and Orchis zoomed off South using their joint high mobility and the Perimeter control plate to bound through the buildings and the Death's Head stayed in the control zone to defend. Between garbage rolls from the Death's Head and the two fast movers being relatively far from combat, I chose not to have reinforcements show up at the start of the 2nd round. Bastion and 1 Assault went to tie up the two fast movers while the second Assault and Hive taught lessons to the Death's Head about respecting tech attacks and fear the bees. Third round reinforcements started showing up and they did start panicking, but the Nelson 1-shotting the Bastion (howitzer from Death's Head knocked out the Death Counter for the round and Nelson crit with the Warpike used a Thermal Charge) with his Assault buddy quickly dropping to the Orchis + turret drone. Overall a lot of fun, got to teach them all to respect the supports and not to neglect tech actions. Overall, party managed to win by making it impossible for me to get enough NPCs into the control zone, so the Opfor decided to deal as much damage as possible and flee. Resulted in each PC taking 1 structure, in large part due to bees, some lucky rolls on my end, and the Death's Head having basically no HP or RepCap.

[copper mesa]

tots a random question, but my players got an allied sniper for combat 6. should i add another pair of 1 grunt sentinel and 1 grunt assault?

or should i just keep it the same?

[nocturne basin]

Keep it the same

[copper mesa]

fair enuff

its my first time havin' an allied npc

[nocturne basin]

They earned the reserve, they should reap the reward without conditions

[copper mesa]

oh yeah

facts

thank ye

[limpid pawn]

Session 0 is on Saturday and the thing I'm most worried about is that this is my first time GMing through foundry

[copper mesa]

You can do it

You'll have fun too

[copper mesa]

Gonna have Kiros fight in 30 mins, have his portrait done by my friend who's gonna play as him

[rich fjord]

Love the portrait

[copper mesa]

kiros fight was done and lovely

big booms happened

im gonna see if i can upload the session and all other ones, oopsie daisy

next week is last one, they're gonna go for harbor

[limpid pawn]

My players don't quite know what's going to happen in the campaign apart from what's been disclosed as a part of player safety, and I've got a fun "team building" exercise for session 0

They all have a reasonable grasp on their characters, and there will be a little RP segment that's a "coordination meeting" for some joint ops exercises between Unit 33, some LSA members, and the PCs

They get to pick who gets to do what from

1. A "friendly" marksmanship competition where the union volunteer is supposed to take 3rd place, but make it look convincing.

2. A free-for-all combat sim where conditions are stacked against Union, but the LSAF pilot and the U33 pilot look like they have beef, so they may not leverage it

3. A presentation about electronic warfare and paracausal defenses for dignitaries. The LSA rep is knowledgeable but afraid of public speaking. The U33 rep seems disinterested.

4. A simulated search-and-rescue of a damaged nautical craft. Not everything's about fighting, after all!

[rich fjord]

Oooo that’s a fun idea for a session zero

[copper mesa]

HEY ITS BEEN A WHILE

so, i havent been posting my sessions becauseeeee: two of them had audio fucked, so it was just my mic

so, rather than not only uploading them, i waited until i had 2 more sessions done recorded properly

https://youtu.be/5AAh8GP00pU https://youtu.be/xEuSFPQcZLw

sadly both have no sound except my mic

so if you just wanna watch for gameplay reasons, feel free

and i recommend muting because it is jsut my voice BLERGH

BUT!

https://youtu.be/oLoMNPussIM https://youtu.be/re_INY_M14g

i got streamer view installed and used it for recording!

a bit wonky on session 7 since it was my first time, but session 8 was already all setup properly

also used OBS studio now, which is why everything is better

please enjoy all the combat and funtimes since i know some of y'all were interested

sawri about 5 and 6 being messed up x_x

this week will be the last session

also i am obviously very proud of the boss fight

simply because i DID make a custom effect

and it paid off well

[upper orchid]

Yeeeeees

I love your videos

[copper mesa]

You're too kind

[upper orchid]

I love your voice acting for the boss

Which voice changer did you used?

[copper mesa]

that was my friend!

they used voicemod

i think the "battlefield" filter

[upper orchid]

I love the part when Kiros Cyclelanced 4 arrogant Lancers

[copper mesa]

CONGA LINEEEE

[alpine nimbus]

ngl was satisfying af. lmao.

[copper mesa]

in my custom campaign i have an ultra scourer with short cycle lance, so i look forward to having a repeat of it

its always unfortunate i cant also stream the chat of the discord

because sometimes funny pics get posted there

[copper mesa]

today's the last session of the campaign

i intend to finish it in the same vein as how the original one ends, where players are escorted out on a dropship with farris after rescuing her from the submarine, and doing the lil epilogue finisher

unsure to keep garcia down there though, since when winter scar releases, i'll have to make a bridge mission between both campaigns

i could go with the idea that the bridge mission is assisting garcia in some assault, which is what then leads to winter scar

or perhaps i could bring garcia back up as well, do a lil tiny timeskip

[limpid pawn]

My approach (assuming they rescue Farris) is that the party is gonna come back and either get gassed up/consoled by Garcia, then they're gonna meet with Farris and she's gonna say they're pulling out.

(it's a narritive challenge to convince her to actively petition union for them to get involved in the conflict instead of getting sidelined until they get the go-ahead)

I'm gonna do at least a little timeskip

[nocturne basin]

What happens if they fail to convince her?

[copper mesa]

that's a fair approach too

i think i'll just go with that, garcia is down there, players come back home to rio grande, do lil epilogue, and leave it for the bridge mission with the debriefing, downtime and so on

[limpid pawn]

At the risk of making it seem like I'm pro interventionism if someone thinks about it too hard, the conditions on the ground once they're approved to intervene are either a stalemate or in the VSAF's favor depending on how they fare against The Furies.

Farris actively petitioning gets them back in the battle sooner and leads to the LSAF+Union strike force entering OWS with an advantage and will probably be reflected with exotic gear or other mechanical rewards to drive home that the VSAF is on the back foot.

[copper mesa]

not to be weird about it, but wouldn't farris actually prefer to intervene?

[limpid pawn]

Personally, yes. Professionally, no.

That's why she has to be convinced.

[copper mesa]

i feel like Kim would be the one to prefer to pull out, or care about diplomacy and rules, but Farris would prefer to help out

like, even in a professional sense

[limpid pawn]

If they don't rescue Farris, Kim refuses to dislodge the stick from his ass and they pull out

[copper mesa]

lmao

[limpid pawn]

No Farris: "this isn't union's battle to fight"

Farris: "this isn't union's battle to fight, however..."

(OWS Spoilers) ||the draft mentions how Rio's logistical support is lauded by allied forces in the conflict, so her abcense because nobody is trying to cut through the red tape to approve an intervention will be apparent||

It's also to drive home the distinction between Kim's total unwillingness to depart from procedure and Farris' prowess as a leader to know to push things if she's got the means.

[copper mesa]

nawh that's pretty fair

[copper mesa]

Solstice rain finished

My review of remixed: pretty good

I'll be uploading the last session tomorrow morning, then just set up a Playlist and make em all public

I'll have some thoughts written here too as well in regards to the combats for feedback

[upper orchid]

[nocturne basin]

You used my combats and remix right? If so I’m looking forward to hearing about it! (And I welcome any comments directly posted to the blog, too!

[copper mesa]

Oh yeah I should post there tio as well for posterity sake

[nocturne basin]

I think I have yet to get a direct comment on my blog and I have no clue if it’s because I misconfigured it or not 😅

[copper mesa]

I'll take a look when I get to it

[limpid pawn]

I actually have a comment if you don't mind (formatting related idk about the actual comps yet)

Do I just run the lists as-posted or so I keep the quantities from the suggested opfor from the manual and just swap in the equivalent unit for its role (IE 2x assaults becomes 2x scourers)

(I had 2 questions but realized one was caused by foundry having a tantrum so it should be okay)

[copper mesa]

run the lists as-posted, it's what i did

[nocturne basin]

Swap in as appropriate, I think I made a mistake on the Scourers in combat 1

Should be 2 Scourers initially

Most of the original fights only had like, 1 of each NPC type to start so I probably missed the exception in the first fight

[limpid pawn]

I threw my party against the 4 you deploy at the start of combat 1 and it seemed to be going well until half the party deleted their weapons

So so far so good!

(I think the third guy did it as a bit and then fifteen minutes later was like "can I get my shotgun back?")

[copper mesa]

i'm currently uploading the session, but i can type here at least my feedback on the combats, which is the main gameplay

initially, i was plenty scared that my players would get steamrolled since 4 out of 5 were entirely new to tabletops and lancer, and yet, they time and time again managed to get out of combats without major losses or damage. not to say i didn't structure them often of course, but from combat 1 to combat 2, they didn't suffer much. i think the teamwork really shined among all of them which helped keep them from taking that much damage, but there was a lot of cases where players took structure and spent time suffering from the aftereffects. it somewhat felt like the npc comp lacked damage? i'm not sure, the scourers were alright but due to the nature of combat 1 having a lot of map space, it was certanly difficult to get into position. the bombards did make the first combat hellish, but not enough turns to make them a threat for players to go out and kill (but they did kill the bombard around the end of it)

after the full rest, they went to combat 4 - combat 5 - combat 3. to sum up, combat 4 was pretty bare minimum damage, fighting for points with enemies and the assassin being the main baddie was good, but i think i messed up by not using the breacher for combat rather than point pressure, combat 5 was the real big damages, but that's just because short cycle lance hit a lot of people at once. lots of structuring that did end up exhausting repair points for nearly all players, to the point that i'm not even sure if they were gonna go for combat 3... but they did! combat 3 was okay, and it being the last one, had two core powers activated. definitely the free boost helped the players on this combat, and i think i misplayed with choosing where to move from the submarine with the barricade... also, the reinforcements got omega bombed by my hurricane player (which is good fyi, i love filling those fantasies) so my berserkers came out really weak to be much of a threat with the goliath.

aaaanddd overall, i think that's it! there was a lot of crits, lots and lots of good rolls, and there never really was some intense, stressful moments except for the kiros fight. it was honestly pretty good to run this combat lineup, but i think it can be proper deadly if the players made mistakes. for a group of new players, they really knew how to choose and pick targets, as well as managing the objective, so perhaps the fact they won all combats with minimal damage is fine in the end

as for the point crawler, yes! it's good! i dunno how to deliver feedback, but the roll tables for the encounters was good, enabled a lot of roleplay and pilot skill usage, and my players loved the random moments we all built together when travelling through nov elysia! the rewards for the nodes is good too, but i feel like the time limit imposed wasn't too stressing? players ended with at least... 5 hours to spare? not sure, it probably would have gone worse if the players didn't manage to complete combat 3 for the dropship reserve

i think that's about all that comes to mind? i did enjoy and end up using a lot of the story suggestions posted on the blog and in this channel, probs around session 6 is when winter scar's draft released, and from there i took some story cues and beats to tease (such as the actual tartarus project, what comes after solstice rain, etc)

[nocturne basin]

5 hours to spare sounds great to me tbh (if anything it may be a little tight? Time will tell)

Personally I’m okay if players steamrolled for their first 2 missions, this module is introductory and meant to onboard new players instead of scare them away

[limpid pawn]

Actually knowing what Tartarus is takes a little shine off of OSR in some ways but also kinda works because now it can be foreshadowed more clearly

So I can do things like have U33 ||be interested in finding "prime material"|| for Tartarus

Or have Farris and Bannerjee foreshadow things like ||they asked us a lot of questions about NHPs||

[nocturne basin]

Knowing what Tartarus is is certainly helpful in making SR feel more cohesive

[limpid pawn]

Also regarding OWS, a player said he wants to have his Lancaster rocketing across the water at high speeds a la Hathaway's Flash

[copper mesa]

i did finish solstice rain by doing that lil' epilogue read with my own teasing cliffhangar, since it's gonna be a while until winter scar releases

[limpid pawn]

Oh buddy. Oh buddy.

[copper mesa]

but next time when we get back to it, i'll definitely be having the mission briefing discuss about all that happened during solstice rain

when is that next time... well, whenever winter scar releases, i'm gonna focus on my homebrew campaign now

[limpid pawn]

I'm just gonna run them into the beta, assuming they're down with testing

I'm betting it'll be too late for anything I do to actually make it into the final copy, but maybe this squad is gonna be the Team Indigo that can pull this off in record time.

[copper mesa]

haha

i'll just wait until it's released, i like giving my players that premium experience

plus this downtime is for me to play with my homebrew campaign anyway

[stable thicket]

Glad to hear the point crawl and random encounters worked so well! That's the part I've been most interested in hearing about

[copper mesa]

yeaaah was fun

[limpid pawn]

I might try it once I get more familiar with GMing Lancer and using Foundry

[copper mesa]

https://youtu.be/h8i5Qfeo0Hc

heres the lasty one

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5d4ILwFuT0mZqkZ5MzK1SqmnuhPD479Q

ill make it all public now, but that should be all of it

[brave forum]

that foundry setup is just beautiful

[brave forum]

I'm much slower on the follow-through here; finally ran session 2. Players did some initial scouting, going from Kirmani Plaza to the train depot because they wanted the handle the anti-air capabilities. Opfor was:

• 2x Assault
• 2x Hive
• 2x Support
• Elite Commander Sentinel (Callsign: Tethys)
• Elite Veteran Rainmaker (Callsign: Oceanus)

Before they went, they rolled the out-of-control maglev train encounter, which was pretty much perfect. They ended up stopping it with a good hull roll & destroying some equipment, then asked to load it with explosives and send it to the depot to explode, so the Rainmaker started the fight @ half HP. Just an awesome example of the value of random encounter tables.

Definitely some inexperience, bc only one person used their core power, which made this fight so much harder than it needed to be lol. Rainmaker found some cover and hunkered down, and it was a 7-round grind with 2 destroyed mechs and another left at 1 structure, 1 hp at the end. One of the pilots had 1 HP.

The team is going to sacrifice Downtown (or at least handle it later) and head to FOB Saber for a level-up & full repair. Hopefully in the next fight they'll remember to use their fuel injectors...

[nocturne basin]

ayy love the creative interpretation of the exploding train affecting the Rainmaker

[stable thicket]

that's my shit right there

[limpid pawn]

is the maglev train encounter something from valk's thing?

I just went through the book like "wait hold on when was there a maglev train" because that sounds sick

[copper mesa]

its a random encounter in the travelling roll table

[nocturne basin]

Yup it’s one of the results I put in my civilian encounter table

[limpid pawn]

Ah. Found it. This is gonna be useful for me doing linear stuff since I've been sitting here like "tf do I do between combats 2 and 3"

thank

[stable thicket]

Ah so you're still running it linearly as written instead of using the point crawl

[limpid pawn]

Yeah. I'm operating more on a sort of soft reputation system. Not bonds exactly, but how they interact with NPCs shapes the in-between beats of the story or provides mechanical rewards.

While the order of the combats will be ostensibly the same, the circumstances surrounding them can be different.

Point crawl will happen when I'm more confident using foundry and GMing Lancer in general

[limpid pawn]

Like this. I'm sure they're wondering why I did this.

Hello naughty players. You have selected your friend and your rival.

[hearty summit]

I want to share how I accidentally made a Dead Man's Hand for my players. One of my players did a mile build and during an attack he got a crit in which it so happened that he was finishing off the enemy with damage, so I asked him to describe how he does it. He described quite colorfully that he was cutting it into two parts. And the player himself is a bit of a pushover guy (to act faster than everyone else, open doors when others say they want to take a break, etc.) in the end I described to him that from the mech that he cut into two parts, in one of his watches there is a severed hand holding the tablet, on it you see the inscription (charged) and the start button. The player, without waiting for me to fully describe it, says that he presses the button. As a result, 3 out of 4 failed the save roll, just like the one who clicked, and they received a parting gift (1d6 damage) from the dead man.

[copper mesa]

oh my lord lmao

[brave forum]

Is there a logo for the Furies?

[copper mesa]

some people have done some, but lately i saw this one

#resource-hub-archive message

@brave forum

[brave forum]

Beautiful, thank you!

[hearty summit]

Did you have by any chance LSA and Vestan Suverenity logo ? I earlier saw this two but i cant find them anymore.

[copper mesa]

#resource-hub-archive message

[hearty summit]

Thanks mate

[brave forum]

About to run Clear the Air (yay progress!) and I'm doing my prep / map review now. Does anyone know why stairs & bridges are labeled on the map?

[nocturne basin]

Mostly to allow you to easily say "you can go from ground level to elevation 5 just by moving up these stairs"

and to be clear where there's an overhang, etc

[brave forum]

gotcha

[copper mesa]

My players are already having fun waiting for winter scar now

[limpid pawn]

g-witch gave me a present in the form of a delightful laser noise with no bgm

helloooooooo short cycle lance noise

[copper mesa]

hey i can use this for myself to make a death effect

[limpid pawn]

as long as you cite that it's from g-witch episoide, uuuuuuuh

g-witch episode 9

I was listening to gundam laser noises and this one was clean so I snipped it

[copper mesa]

i mean, i was gonna end up recording the coral explosion from ac6

since im gonna recreate that effect

[limpid pawn]

and with the music cue (track is "Chaos" from the g-witch soundtrack)

[copper mesa]

i will note it down

[limpid pawn]

the g-witch soundtrack goes hard and has a diversity of vibes which are filling this campaign

also the line before that is Also the line before that is "Seems like they really do only got kinetics down there! Good for us, yeah? This bird can take a few direct hits before we're in any serious-"

[limpid pawn]

session 1 complete. chomolungma went nuts with the hacks. half the party blew core powers. sagarmatha got structured twice because they didn't take cover very often and I definitely started pulling punches

everests are very capable of violence

"I have to teach you all how scourers work somehow!"

Also gravity got involved!

Player climbs thing. Hive goes "I can force 5 movement." Player is no longer on thing (player got to do a cool thing before being forcibly removed)

[limpid pawn]

I also got a chance to do some fun emergent storytelling. Because I didn't know what to do, I had a support grapple the chomolungma and start to drag her off. She's also the party technophile. The VSF knows this already and (OWS Spoilers) ||considering the VSF wants NHPs for TARTARUS...||

[upper orchid]

Valkyrion, may i know what you used for creation of the pointcrawl city map?

[nocturne basin]

Yes, and feel free to ping me, but I used probabletrain’s city map generator: https://maps.probabletrain.com/#/

(This isn’t my thread and I don’t get notifications on it so please ping lol)

[upper orchid]

I see,I will keep that in mind. Do you also happen to have the file for Nov Elysia?

[nocturne basin]

I just scrambled it over and over until I got something I liked

Oof, the unedited one? Yes

Sec

[upper orchid]

[nocturne basin]

This is the raw map, I edited it and overlayed from there

I will admit that I also used the assorted tools and sliders and “shapes” to get what I wanted (downtown, kirmani plaza, capitol district, etc)

So yeah basically just played with the tool until I got something with the right River shape and general roadmap setup

[upper orchid]

Thanks you very much, I will make something cool with this and post here later.

[nocturne basin]

Finally refined my changes to the SR intro: https://trainlightning.com/introducing-players-solstice-rain/

Hoping to keep plugging away at the rest of the changes I'd make to the module, we'll see if I can finish it by the 1-year anniversary of SR lol

[upper orchid]

Let see if this would be completed before Winter Scar XD

[stable thicket]

This is great!

[winged bluff]

I've tried to comment on the blog and it wouldn't let me it kept popping up with an error, I tried with email, word press and Facebook log ins

[nocturne basin]

Okay! Thanks for the heads up, I’ll look into it!

[nocturne basin]

Had a thought on my “TARTARUS is a planet sized Trueblack field” interpretation: It seemed weird for the VSAF to have blink Shield tech at this point, making me question how they might’ve gotten it. I was considering “They got a hold of the project SecComm was working on before they spilt into HA”, but it seemed kinda weak.

Then I realized I could kill 2 birds with one stone: I’ve been wondering how to rope the Republic of Okasnia into this, so why not have the tech come from them? Maybe a single furtive Horus cell snuck in, or the republic has been arms dealing both sides under the table during the Cold War? Maybe they met a roaming Volador ship and traded for the tech? In any case, Okasnia they might have access to tech not found elsewhere on Cressidium since they’re practically a blank slate

[nocturne basin]

Side note, I figured out that my blog had conflicting plugins that prevented comments. Tweaked it a bit and will likely return to it later lol

[limpid pawn]

Valk you're never gonna guess what I BS'd to my scan-happy chomolungma pilot

[nocturne basin]

Oh??? Do tell haha

[limpid pawn]

I know it says edited by that's becuase I'm chronically bad at typing

[nocturne basin]

https://tenor.com/view/jack-nicholson-funny-gif-24793899

[limpid pawn]

I was sitting there like "I gotta drag Oskania into this shit somehow"

[nocturne basin]

Everything gets more intriguing when the Third Faction™️ enters the mix hahahaha

[limpid pawn]

Answer: they make the fiddly bits that go into the mechs both the Vestans and LSA use

[nocturne basin]

Love it, glad we hit upon the same idea 🤝

[limpid pawn]

I've been borrowing a lot of things from your posts so it makes sense that I wound up on a similar track

My second party might have someone who's done OSR before and I wonder what she's gonna think when scourers show up in combat 1

[upper orchid]

"Wait a minute, this was not like last time"

[limpid pawn]

The fact that the operator pilot isn't Kiros should be their first clue

But that's my twist on things more than anything else

There's other stuff too but I'd have to have someone who's

1. done OSR/OWS with me before to see these changes

2. would have to act meaningfully different from previous parties to see the changes

For example, if the current party keeps up their behavior, by the time they reach FOB Saber, they're gonna get the nickname of "Union's Mad Dogs"

[hearty summit]

I ran into a small problem here. My players went through the second battle with escort, and during it it turned out that the mech that was supposed to control the space and haras enemy mechs was not suitable for such actions when they need to push, so another player on a different mech was responsible for controlling the space. And it so happened that at the very end he lost his mech. And they still have a meeting with the rainmaker ahead, do you have any ideas what can be done?

[nocturne basin]

Are you running Solstice Rain as-written, or are you using the point crawl from my remix? If the former, if the mech is salvageable (read: didn’t meltdown) then players can pool repairs together to rebuild the mech. If the mech isn’t salvageable or the players lack repairs, you could offer Power at a Cost to arm them with another mech, maybe an NPC mech instead? Lastly, maybe the players can circumvent the Rainmaker fight or use a narrative approach for it (like an ambush), or even just avoid it altogether (automatically suffering consequences for failing the sitrep)

If you’re using the remix, players can just go straight to FOB Saber with no problem if they need to take an early break

[limpid pawn]

Pooling repairs is a good option since it's the final combat before a long rest.

[hearty summit]

Repair thing sound more logical for me, taking into account the fact that the mech didn’t meltdown, is it worth doing some kind of disadvantages for the pilot/mech after repair or let it be as it will (he has like 3 repair kits left)

Oh and just to clarify, other pilot can they share repair parts among themselves?

[nocturne basin]

Yeah by default lancer rules pilots can share repairs specifically for un-destroying a mech, otherwise they have to use their own

[clear obsidian]

It's the other way around

They can't share unless it's to repair a dead mech

[nocturne basin]

That’s what I said

“…specifically for un-destroying a mech” = “Repairing a destroyed mech is the only time…

[limpid pawn]

"otherwise they have to use their own" seems to drive the point home too

[limpid pawn]

I was struggling to figure out things I could give as rewards for completing challenges and exploring, but with Enchanced Combat, I'm now swimming with ideas for things that I can give them for stuff

[nocturne basin]

writing the next post has been a little slow, but I have my basic "outline" done for Nodes 2, 3, and FOB Saber (picking a post title is hard)

[copper mesa]

"Points of Interest"

i dunno lol

[limpid pawn]

When in doubt, song reference

[nocturne basin]

I have my post title now lol

[limpid pawn]

Pilot did not understand he was being given the bunny. He gave it the rank of being an honorary pilot.

So now I'm gonna dig for a different reserve to give him, I guess

"she was trying to give you it but that was the cutest shit I've seen this week so I'm gonna figure out something else to reward you all with"

[nocturne basin]

my remix of Node 2 is all done; gonna continue on with Node 3 and FOB Saber. If the post is too long with all 3 sections, I'll break it up some

[brave forum]

what are you thinking of changing re: saber?

I got hit with unexpected wedding plans and delayed the saber session, so we're running thursday--only change I'm making right now is not giving them any exotics (I am mean)

[nocturne basin]

FOB Saber? Nothing much really. They'll get their Exotics based upon how many nodes they successfully cleared, I encourage the GM to let players decide how PCs respond to FOB Saber encounters, and I'll probably include some clues from my Revelation List post

oh, and if they successfully completed Combat 2, Garcia makes it back to FOB Saber (he's holed up in Node 2: Downtown in my remix)

[nocturne basin]

https://trainlightning.com/taking-reins-nov-elysia/ Hell yeah we're on a roll

[nocturne basin]

Next post is gonna wrap up the nodes, then I’ll probably have an epilogue post and maybe one or two addendums

[upper orchid]

Then we move on to WinterScar Remixes!!!/j

Ahem, I really love your blogs

Definitely will take a lot from it for my upcoming OSR game

[nocturne basin]

Thank you! I have no idea if I’ll do more remixes beyond this one tbh

I’m not gonna remix Winter Scar until it’s properly released, I know that much

[copper mesa]

lovely work like always, valk!

i gave it a quick skim, but still very well-written and good ideas implemented

[limpid pawn]

What did you have in mind for the node 3 skill challenge?

At the moment, I was thinking about baking in the random encounter with the downed dropship being probed by vestan forces and having a mysterious HORNET-class chassis that my PCs encountered during the bus escort to join that scuffle.

The session ended with them successfully getting the bus to the shelter and the next one was going to start with the rainmaker shooting down the ship above (but obviously if they ignore the ship and go straight for the rainmaker, that's life)

[nocturne basin]

Basically just “use a skill challenge to approach the depot with stealth”

I was divorcing the “ambush PDZ” from Node 2, though tbf the divorce is just to taste

But if you’re running SR linearly you could use the skill challenge as a fallback to throw PCs a bone if they failed to save the bus

[limpid pawn]

They crushed the bus challenge

[nocturne basin]

Nice nice, then basically I’d just have the skill challenge in the back pocket as a go-to and ask “okay players how do you approach the rainmaker”

Then roll the skills and see how the bones fall to interpret the scene

[limpid pawn]

The only thing that happened was they got a 10 on the escort being risky (which is how they encountered HORNET) but the player was so quick thinking on how to give it the slip that I handed it to them

At the moment they need to

1. be made aware of the rainmaker (set up in session 1 with "We need to drop ASAP. The longer we wait, the more chances they have to install AA systems.")

2. find the rainmaker

3. engage the rainmaker

Original idea was "Allied dropship gets shot down. They choose to either help the dropship or pursue where the missiles came from"

[nocturne basin]

That’s pretty damn cool tbh

[limpid pawn]

Reward for helping the ship is intel, clues, and reputation. Going after the rainmaker just means violence, but violence happens sometimes

[nocturne basin]

Honestly helping the downed dropship sounds great; I thought about that when rereading the beat before combat 3 but was dog tired and glossed over it

[limpid pawn]

Also meeting HORNET, who I was expecting to say hello last session, but they gave it the slip too well for me to justify the encounter

[nocturne basin]

Just like “hm players may want to go help them huh” but yeah. That said I think it would be straightforward to lift the one random encounter and improv it, like you said

[limpid pawn]

(HORNET is one of The Furies as far as I could interpret from the remix lineup)

[nocturne basin]

Yeah, I figured that’s what you were going for!

[limpid pawn]

I did a funny where they've met all the furies (outside of their mechs) and Tisiphone/HORNET didn't talk at all and was on her phone the entire time

But when she's in her mech, she's gonna be a chatterbox

[upper orchid]

👀

[limpid pawn]

She may have been doing some espionage

So they don't know what "Tai" sounds like. They just know they've got a messed up hornet pursuing them.

[limpid pawn]

I also rolled the table and got the least tech inclined player to look at the "RA SEES ALL" nanospray.

Unfortunately she whiffed the investigate check so

https://tenor.com/view/surprise-tool-mickey-mouse-mickey-clubhouse-gif-18764497

And by help I mean "cause problems"

[nocturne basin]

Oof

That one was intended to be generally detectable but I getcha if you gated it behind a check if it made more sense

[limpid pawn]

She wanted to flex that +2 in Investigate and who am I to say no

Anyways she's got a DEEP DARK SECRET and someone is gonna have a chat with her about it at FOB Saber

[limpid pawn]

Oh wait I see what you mean. She saw it and wanted to use the investigate skill to see what's up with it.

[nocturne basin]

Ah okok

[limpid pawn]

There's this whole sublayer to the plot where I've repeatedly told the party "cressidium doesn't have plasma weapons" and then they got shot down by a plasma weapon.

Apparently they're thinking it's Horus antics

[nocturne basin]

Oh hey that could be a fun twist

[limpid pawn]

Kiros definitely got some stuff from a HORUS element on Cressidium (this is the 3rd expedition to the place after all. That's 3 opportunities for someone who's HORUS aligned to go AWOL from a union ship and cause problems) but that comes up later ||in OWS||.

It's been foreshadowed that Kiros went nuts and shut himself in the VSF Skunkworks to churn out a bunch of resource-wasting military tech

In my continued cribbing of 00, I guess the HORUS element is gonna be a Wang Liu Mei type character who's similarly impotent due to unclear objectives

[limpid pawn]

Also, I used this image to represent Nov Elysia https://chesher.artstation.com/projects/RDwRe

[nocturne basin]

Yo that art fucks

But yeah I 100% want to introduce a HORUS-ish element to Okasnia (sic?) as a way to rope in that faction and explain how some factions got their tech

[limpid pawn]

I said it wrong so now it's permanently Oskania

Their involvement (for me) is mostly "Vestan industrial capacity is diminishing as their hegemony decays. LSA's industrial capacity isn't robust becuase the nation is young and disorganized. Okasnia has tech to spare and thinks money is cool."

[olive musk]

I just ran with the idea that the LSA's civillian space program was eating alot of it's resources. And I feel kind of vindicated in that now with draft knowledge for the sequel. I didn't plan it that way, it was mostly just taking that line that some of the nations were beginning a kind of space race while hardline nations like the vestans were against reaching out.

[limpid pawn]

The OWS draft was very validating overall

And helped generate a lot of ideas that I could loop back into OSR (the obvious stuff ||TARTARUS|| aside)

[limpid pawn]

Oh. Looks like the book has a mechanical reward.

Good on me for rereading, I suppose

[nocturne basin]

Yup yup, I basically moved that from the Combat 2 rewards to a Skill Challenge associated with Combat 3

[limpid pawn]

I'll probably do the same since I already technically gave them the fireteam reserve from LEC, but I also didn't write anything down and the unit working on the bus was explicitly one where the lead said "We're not warfighters. Most of us, at least."

They hacked a map from an enemy and merged it with data from the malfunctioning compcon event. While I don't want to butter the pilots up too much, I could see the LSAF people telling them about "a shortcut" and that being The alternate deployment zone

With fireteam support being the reserve reward if they successfully protect the downed dropship

Doesn't make much sense for the unit of people who aren't fighters suddenly going "lol we're fireteam support now"

[nocturne basin]

I’m always down for aggressively rewarding my players for engaging with the RP segments

[limpid pawn]

I gave them all a reserve from enhanced combat for stuff they did at the first Plaza during their rest

But they were mobility things expecting they might need it for daisy chaining in an escort sitrep that they bypassed entirely

[nocturne basin]

I’m sure there will be other opportunities to use them, the Combat 5 Gauntlet in particular (or even just blitzing the Rainmaker in combat 3)

[limpid pawn]

Technically they expire at the end of the mission but if nobody uses them, I may allow them to keep it for this one jump

[hearty summit]

One of my player called her new mech white bunny, after she got it.

[limpid pawn]

Yeah he didn't even get that far.

He commended Barry the Bunny for his bravery and gave him a badge.

Didn't even realize she was trying to give him the bunny for good luck, so I rolled with it.

[hearty summit]

@limpid pawn You were saying earlier about Enchanced Combat, to person who only saw front page of it but nothing more, what is it basically ?

[limpid pawn]

Just a lot of stuff that can be added to Lancer combats, be it mechanics, altered/new sitreps, reserves, NPCs, etc

It says everything that it contains on the itch.io page.

[nocturne basin]

Sneak peak at what I'm cooking for Node 6 with Kiros and Bannerjee:

For this remix, I make drastic additions to Beat 4 and Combat 6. In terms of location, Node 6 covers the entire capitol district surrounding the Hall of Consuls. The region has the following features:

- Government buildings of varying sizes, with the Hall of Consuls being the largest. The buildings are tall and imposing, making frequent use of Doric columns and bas-relief sculptures.

- Monuments, memorials, and statues of historical figures long dead heavily populate the area.

PCs searching for Ambassador Bannerjee in the area need to engage in an extended skill challenge. Similar to Node 2 - Downtown, they must succeed at a skill challenge for each of the following steps:

1. Locate and secure Ambassador Bannerjee. Success means that the PCs find Bannerjee, but are locked down in the capitol district, unable to travel to other nodes until they complete Step 2.

2. Escape the capitol district. Success means the PCs can once again travel to different nodes. 

If the PCs fail at either, the Furies catch them, and Combat 6 begins. Its victory and defeat conditions are modified as follows:

#### Victory

- If the PCs defeat the Furies, the rest of the Vestan strike forces remain in force at their respective nodes until the end of Solstice Rain. If the Furies captured Captain Farris and/or Ambassador Bannerjee, the PCs rescue them. The PCs still gain Exotic Gear from their victory.

#### Defeat

- If the PCs have Captain Farris or Ambassador Bannerjee with them, the Furies capture them and flee. If the PCs can repair their mechs, they can track down the Furies and retry the combat by taking 1 hour and succeeding at a skill challenge. Each hour that passes after the combat, the Furies can perform a repair (see Escaping the Furies).```

### Escaping the Furies

Besides completing the typical objective of the fight (defeating Kiros and his lieutenants), the PCs can choose to mount a retreat instead. A PC can retreat from the fight as a free action while Hidden and at the edge of the battlemap; if they do so, they are removed from the combat unless they choose to rejoin it. Once all PCs retreat, the combat ends without triggering victory or defeat conditions. To resume the extended challenge, they need to re-attempt the skill challenge at the step they failed; each failure once again triggers Combat 6. The PCs can rest between skill challenge attempts, but each hour they do so allows Kiros and his lieutenants to perform a repair: They restore all lost HP, clear all heat, reload all weapons, and regain 1 Structure and 1 Stress each. If the PCs won Combat 5, the Furies may no longer repair.

### Hunted!

If the PCs escape with Ambassador Bannerjee, the Furies continue to chase them across Nov Elysia for as long as they can, even if Bannerjee is secured at FOB Saber. As a result, all subsequent random Military Encounters become Combat 6 - Wake the Furies. If the default battlemap for Combat 6 doesn't thematically fit the PCs' current location, feel free to use one of the other battlemaps instead. If the Furies are still alive by 6 PM on the second day and don't have either Farris or Bannerjee, they mount an attack on FOB Saber. They raze it to the ground until the PCs stop them by initiating and completing Combat 6 one last time.

[nocturne basin]

right now I'm trying to figure out how to best order all the information for Node 6 to make sure I'm not missing anything lol

[nocturne basin]

Node 5 (Leviathan) is basically unchanged except for framing (you're not rushed there, you get there when you get there), stakes (only Farris is at risk) and victory benefits (Vestan NPCs can't repair or stabilize anymore, Farris gives advice on how to find/avoid Kiros).

Node 4 (Clear the Air) is still a WIP, but I can say that 1) Failure Actually Is An Option Now and 2) I'm meaning to add a skill challenge to find the damn fight

[upper orchid]

I LOVE THE CHASE SEQUENCE

[nocturne basin]

Here's what I'm thinking for Node 4:
Skill challenge to find the jamming transmitter, takes 1 hour. On a fail, get lost, turned around, need to try again. All the skill checks are Difficult, but each failed Skill Challenge gives a cumulative +1 Accuracy on skill checks for subsequent challenges

[nocturne basin]

hell yeah, glad to hear it

[upper orchid]

how about giving some cool incentive to escape?

like “if you are in Fob Saber, you will be assisted by LSA Npc against The Furies”

[nocturne basin]

Valid on FOB Saber and the LSA NPC

Because then that can incentivize putting off the fight/taking it on in better conditions

which is a little more interesting than "escape just means you don't get clobbered right now"

[upper orchid]

Maybe we can sprinkle stuff like that across the entire map, so we incentivise decision making like “which route should we go to minimize chance of fighting while gathering the maximum amount of helps under the timelimit”

[nocturne basin]

one nice thing too is that nodes 2 and 3 can result in safe travels and avoiding the RNG

[upper orchid]

like put down a 8 segment clock, something like “for every won node you passed through, collect allied LSA force (by ticking (1 to 3, determined by skill check to convince allies) on the clock), FOB Saber grant 4 segment. For every segment, you gain 1 allied NPC to fight against the Furies.”

and we can have some cool rp moment like encouraging (understandbly) scared soldiers to help against The Furies

[nocturne basin]

yeah that could work! I think I'm trying to avoid outright using clocks at this point though, since SR doesn't use them by default

I added the bonus allied Sniper though, good idea

I'm pretty content with what I have now for Node 6, though it may change between now and publishing

but I was excited about it and wanted to share! So glad it's sparking ideas haha

(also I make a special note that the allied Sniper does not increase the number of Ultra turns Kiros gets, because that would be counterproductive as a "bonus for playing defensively")

[limpid pawn]

Balancing Combat 3 to be a bit more bloodthirsty since the party dodged Combat 2 and I need to put the fear of god into them.

(read as: adding 2 grunts)

[nocturne basin]

Can't stop, won't stop: https://trainlightning.com/completing-operation-finding-vips/

All that's left is an Epilogue and maybe an addendum or two

[upper orchid]

YAYYYYYYYY

[covert goblet]

Any particular reason for the hesitation? You already basically have clocks with the time (3 12-segment clocks), clocks would work really well for the extended skill challenges.

[nocturne basin]

Mostly because I didn’t want to explain progress clocks Yet Again (I’ve done it multiple times on other projects) but also because I wanted to keep it close to basic Lancer in terms of toolkit

Is that fallacious given that I set up a whole point crawl procedure? Maybe, maybe

But mostly I didn’t feel the need to use them in most cases

Keeping things in a binary (you got this resource or you didn’t) or using group skill challenges seemed good enough to me, I feel like I flexed them well enough for this remix

That said, clocks deffo wouldn’t be out of place and could be worthwhile , especially in your own games

I will always recommend GMs take what they like, strip away what they don’t, and add what will help them be comfy with their own games

[limpid pawn]

I've definitely been looking at the plot and challenge stuff. That's for sure.

Especially the latter stuff where the beat portion in the book amounts to a cutscene

[upper orchid]

I just done my first session of OSR:Remixes

Shaking in my seat right now

The modified stake is soooooo goooood

My players did not wanted to lose their friendly transport pilot

[nocturne basin]

Heck yes, that’s the shit I wanna hear

[upper orchid]

They came out of it battered and bruise and win by barely 1 point

Logistically, they are alright

Overcharge like twice and lose 1 structure and 1 stress

Total of like 5 rep cap

But emotionally

It was a rollercoaster

[nocturne basin]

Perfect, that’s what I wanna get out of most all combats: Dramatic Emotional Stakes

[upper orchid]

I just present them with the map, and it seems like they will bee line to FOB Saber, drop off their pilot, and continue without the full repair

[nocturne basin]

Valid, 100%

[upper orchid]

They also took a liking to the various NPCs, which is VERY GOOD, because that is room for more ✨emotional tension✨

So excited for next session, this is the most fun I got as a GM

[nocturne basin]

I’m excited to hear how it goes!!

[upper orchid]

They are not comfortable with being recorded so we are not having any video lol but I will do my best retelling

[nocturne basin]

Also totally valid

I prefer the retelling anyway, easier for me to know what your personal highlights were

[upper orchid]

Oh, wait. Remember that time I asked about the map? Let me present you something. It is still WIP though

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1148115504259674204/1195351438369501214/0001-0300.mp4?ex=65b3acc7&is=65a137c7&hm=492f6c6677c1bb9495b3c26d75cdc7189b3476934252bfe6281c9f07b200efb3&

[nocturne basin]

Oh yeah thanks for reminding me to add the blank maps to the remix, too

[nocturne basin]

Oh hohoho

Excellent hahahahaha

[upper orchid]

My ideal goal is to complete this as I goes and hopefully be able to get it to a quality where I can share with others. With like, Acecombat style briefing, haha

[limpid pawn]

advice requested for combat 3 (the rainmaker one)

Players have access to deployment zone B and I'm using Valk's revised lineup. I have no idea where to deploy the Ronin, Specter, and Seeder

Any thoughts?

[stable thicket]

I think it's hard to make a wrong choice (other than inside the player deployment zones), without a lot of though put into it I'd probably place them 2-6 hexes away from the rainmaker

Or maybe treat the rainmaker as, like, a blast-4 area and pretend that's the enemy deployment zone

[nocturne basin]

When I ran it for some folks, I put the Specter and Ronin in flanking positions, and the Sentinel and Seeder close to each other standing in the way of the main PC force

Dodgepong's blast-4 approach sounds like a good method to try, too

[limpid pawn]

I was definitely thinking specter on the flank because they gotta learn how Hunt works somehow

but also that seems like bullying

[nocturne basin]

eh, the NPCs should know what they're doing tbf

though this does speak to the larger issue of SR presenting New NPCs in every fight (which my initial lineup is complicit with)

[limpid pawn]

Okay. I'm thinking maybe

Specter: Left of PDZ A, intends to come up behind players and give them a bonk, but they'll have allies nearby for cover from then on since it'll be in the central area between the crates.

Seeder: In between the crates to the right of PDZ A. They'll drop a mine on their first turn as a lesson to someone trying to go between the crates to go to the control zone. (allows for a tag-team with specter if they use the immob mine too)

Ronin: Hanging out near PDZ B

Seeder's obvious position may bait an aggressive player forward and would allow for a sneaky lil stabby stab from the specter off of move+boost

[nocturne basin]

this sounds reasonable; the "mean play" would be putting the Specter next to PDZ B after all, so instead having the Specter off to the left gives a chance at counterplay

pretty sure that's what I did in my run

[limpid pawn]

That was the thought.

PDZ B may have infantry support if they helped the downed lander and that seems like a handy soft target to demonstrate Hunt on, but I also don't want to splat the reserve they just got

"here's your good noodle award LOL JK GET MONOWIRED"

Actually because it has resistance, it'll only half splat the reserve they just got, but still

[limpid pawn]

Me: "I'm doing a more linear version of OSR"

Also Me: (pre-writing seven different outcomes that can happen from this one session alone)

[stable thicket]

Yikes

I hope that prep turns out to be useful

[brave forum]

the classic contingency prep trap

good luck to you

[hearty summit]

Well i guess my player have a cat now

[limpid pawn]

Ah, but see, I have this magical knowledge known as "writing large amounts of text to be ending-agnostic so all I need to cover most of them are parentheticals and an additional sentence or two."

There's only so many ways that I can describe "the party arrives at FOB Saber" and that happens in every ending

[hearty summit]

Now he has his own mech

https://cdn.discordapp.com/emojis/1054664721007136829.webp?size=48&name=Dracthyr_lullmao&quality=lossless

[upper orchid]

[limpid pawn]

Mission 1 Combat 3 went wild today.

In short, local rainmaker viciously brutalized by party DPS deploying at PDZ B and could do nothing to stop her as she violently ripped it to shreds over several turns.

Meanwhile, off at PDZ A, Local Overcharge Enjoyer and Holder of the Omnihook accidently reactor stressed his way into an uncontrollable meltdown (eliciting an "OH FUCK OH NO" from me).

Thanks to the quick thinking of another player who got the "fastball" reserve from LEC, the pilot ejected, yanked off the Omnihook, and the aforementioned melting down mech was subsequently yeeted at an unsuspecting Ronin and Seeder, who then took 4d6 explosive damage because they couldn't get away and promptly fucking died.

The sequencing to resolve that took literally 30 minutes with the three players at PDZ A arguing how to execute the maneuver for maximum carnage. I feel sorry for the one who was beating the shit out of the rainmaker but I didn't know how to help them move it along. They were (rightfully) concerned about getting exploded on.

Also they couldn't get a single hit in on the specter and had to slowly chip it to death with reliable

[limpid pawn]

So as a way to get Rio involved in the story, I opted to put a shard/facsimile of her in the omnihook that would help the players if they were stuck, but they'd have to turn it on to find that out.

The person carrying the hook never bothered turning it on (I asked "is he gonna turn it on" a couple times in relevant scenarios and he said no).

And now I find out that the character really liked chatting with Rio and wants to talk to her about (plot event that'll be too long to explain).

And I'm sitting here like

"oh buddy"

"oh buddy"

I don't want to say "he should be around when they turn the omnihook on" but I think that would be funny as hell

[nocturne basin]

I updated all my existing posts to use my "TARTARUS is a planetsize blinkshield" approach, while making note of my original approach in the Nodes and Clues post

[hearty summit]

So my players got combat 5 and my player running mele build and he got runing firs sooo, he constantly was geting jamed by hornet. So that what he did after game https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1186613923059880017/1198037197845180466/image.png?ex=65bd7216&is=65aafd16&hm=4dd1d921aca7c602938a9900053e1cfba09b9a8dd1c3b1d276912796da28db5e&

[nocturne basin]

Well that bites, glad they seem to be taking it in stride at least?

[hearty summit]

Yep, we was laughthing about this, while one player on sherman got main character vibe, slicing thro enemy with solid core the melee guy got that one clumsy friend vibe

So this penguin was how he described what his pilot doing right now

[nocturne basin]

Cooking up an epilogue post:

If Farris is among the captured, 1st Lieutenant Alex Kim continues to (shakily) lead in her stead. Non-PC Union operations under Kim’s command aren’t as clean as they would be under Farris. Any Vestan forces in the next mission benefit from one random Tactical Advantages reserve (Lancer, p. 52); interpret the result in a reasonable way to add complications during both narrative and combat scenes.

If the PCs saved Bannerjee, they continue to negotiate with the LSA and any other factions not aligned with the new Vestan regime. Next mission, grant the PCs a Resources reserve of their choice to reflect Bannerjee’s diplomatic outreach. If Kiros instead captured Bannerjee, on the next mission, grant the Vestan forces a random Resources reserve to reflect the VSAF’s diplomatic victories. Again, interpret this result appropriately to generate interesting complications during play.```

[nocturne basin]

full post is on the way, estimating like 10 more minutes

[upper orchid]

Oooooooooh

I love the idea of NPC reserves

That is brilliant!

Excellent way to do consequences and stakes

[nocturne basin]

It is done: https://trainlightning.com/epilogue-after-the-solstice-rain/

I have like, 1 addendum I wanna add, but for the purposes of everything else? It's done

[latent blade]

In the combat section of Solstice Rain Remixed, there are several NPCs with the Veteran template, but only a few of them clarify what Mech Skill their Veterancy applies to. Is that intentional?

[limpid pawn]

I'm not Valk but that is likely intentional?

Just making something a vet baseline gives them a bonus stress, structure, and accuracy on a skill

[nocturne basin]

If it’s not listed as different in the remix, it’s unchanged from the book

That said, I’m not so secretly planning to revisit the SR combat roster

Not sure on your game timeline but I hope to have it out before month’s end

[unborn forge]

I just roll which stat the veterancy applies to tbh

[stable thicket]

The real pro move is to forget that feature exists entirely

[nocturne basin]

You’re not wrong tbh. I kinda almost wish Veterancy just gave a flat bonus to a HASE

that would be a lot easier to program for in Compcon and foundry both

Like 99% sure flat bonuses to HASE work right now in compcon and foundry

[limpid pawn]

Giving a vet the +1 in engineering to counter burn only for them to get grappled

[limpid pawn]

I got a question for the remixing gang on how to approach something (even though I'm going more linear)

[nocturne basin]

linear is valid, I'm all ears

[limpid pawn]

The stuff between Combat 4 and Combat 5 in the book is basically "Rio tells the party 'IT'S TIME FOR NEXT LOCATION'" and they get a dropship that just takes them there

The current setup I have is that the VS has set up a defensive line and is maintaining control of The Hall of Consuls (where Farris and Bannerjee are kept) as well as a route to the harbor.

The harbor is the main staging ground of VS forces in Nov Elysia.

I'm thinking about having a narritive session between C4 and C5 to bridge those two gaps that will involve a rescue attempt of the VIPs.

If they pass it, C5 becomes optional (Aid LSA forces as they drive the sovereignty out of Nov Elysia). If they fail, it's mandatory (Primary objective is to save the VIPs). Mechanically, the fight is the same regardless of what they do.

[nocturne basin]

this all sounds reasonable to me

[limpid pawn]

So my main thing is:

1. what ideas to folks have as a challenge to bridge that gap of a rescue attempt

2. how can I get the Veteran Pyro from the furies involved in it

[nocturne basin]

I'd say that there should still be some benefit to fighting C5 if they do it optionally (or rather, a benefit for "winning" the narrative segment beyond being able to skip it)

[limpid pawn]

Engaging in C5 when it's optional gives them reserves for C6 and clues/intelligence

Plus it makes the LSA like them

[nocturne basin]

1. so they're trying to rescue the VIPs, and they're both in Hall of Consuls. I'd imagine though that maybe they're en route to the harbor instead, in like a prisoner transport? I know I suggested a "chase scene" for a transition from 4 to 5 to preserve the "urgency"
2. The pyro can start fires to obstruct easy chasing/approaching/put civvies in danger to issue a Hard Choice

[limpid pawn]

I like that 2nd one becuase they love being goodie goodie two shoes and helping people out at expense do the objective

[nocturne basin]

for 2), you can really sell how much assholish the Furies are by doing legit terrorist activities, just absolute villains

as long as the players consented to that topic in Session 0 of course

[limpid pawn]

I'm struggling how to handle a chase scene as a challenge instead of "I use 'get somewhere quickly'"

[nocturne basin]

So chase scenes involve more than just going quickly, they also involve Routing and Obstructing

[limpid pawn]

The city is mostly evacuated or in shelters for this reason, but infrastructure gore (exploding buildings, knocking things over) is permitted

[nocturne basin]

figuring out shortcuts in unfamiliar territory is huge, as well as finding ways to corral the PCs' mark into a corner

like maybe the PCs can't stop the convoy outright, but they can take out that bridge up ahead to make them take a detour

[limpid pawn]

Also, they have a highly detailed map from scanning, but it's not updated to reflect changes that may have happened in the city. Them relying on it will lead them to buildings that aren't anymore, or roads that are obstructed even to a mech

So I guess the question now is:

How can I have two chassis pilots (Pyro mostly but also the Operator) mess with the players without them being like "I wanna engage in chassis combat with them"/"I want to directly engage them" and not make it seem like a hard no

The main idea I have is "you can engage them in narritive" and consequences of the rolls will reflect on the PC immediately (damage is damage) but the furies might enter C6 already dinged up

[nocturne basin]

Honestly yes, that

like that's exactly what I'd do

[limpid pawn]

Thinking on it more, yeah

[nocturne basin]

like, I even have a random encounter in my remix that has Kiros show up and start hunting PCs from the shadows, but that's still a strictly narrative scene

[limpid pawn]

Someone uses "take someone out" on the Pyro. They roll well, they get a shot in and hit it for a few damage that gets reflected in the final battle. The Pyro goes "fuck this noise this is a 4v1" and bails

But if they fail, the Pyro gets a shot in on them and then goes "fuck this noise this is-" you get the idea

My main issue is explaining how it gets away without it seeming like bullshit, apart from my go-to of "fires a sensor disrupting flare"

[nocturne basin]

yeah absolutely

just have them depart, and if the PCs wanna chase just emphasize that "ok but the VIPs are in the other direction" and that chasing may not help the immediate objective, even if it solves a long-term objective

[limpid pawn]

Maybe I'll set up a clock for this

"yeah you can pursue, but that's gonna burn (X) slices off the clock"

[nocturne basin]

clocks are excellent, this should 100% be a clockfest

[sick harbor]

I made a portrait for Glamdring for people adding rescuing her after the crash as an objective

[limpid pawn]

I ended the session with the furies Pyro blowing a hole out of the side of The Hall of Consuls and the convoy containing the VIPs implied to be going to the harbor ("45 kph, heading west" (the harbor is west)).

I'm wondering if I need to prompt my players more with info from Rio to get them having ideas on how to handle the scenario

And also how many clock slices to give them for the task

[nocturne basin]

Well if the comms are back up, it should be possible to relay additional info on the route the convoy is heading?

Might be possible on the fly; I’d prep some “features of the area” to latch onto and set the stage for the theater or the mind

[nocturne basin]

Solstice Rain will have been out for a year once tomorrow hits; wonder if I’ll have my updated faction roster out by tomorrow, too

[limpid pawn]

Today in OSR, I did the bus chase in narritive play. Things were going kinda weird until one of the players suggested I put the map up as a scene so they didn't have to go between tabs in the browser.

After that happened, I was like "hey what if I put their mech sprites down on the map to give them a visual reference of their location? I'll put the prisoner transports and its escort down too. They should know that... Should I put other enemies in too? Yeah. Fuck it. Here come The Furies."

Apparently they really liked it, and got to have some sick moments of interaction as they crossed paths with the furies that tied to stop them.

All done narritive style, but allowing them to use weapons and skills and such as flavor and light mechanical stuff

IE- Lanny cables needing a hull save, evoking the Atlas movement system to allow someone to zip around the city quickly, Pyro being immune to burning, etc.

[bold granite]

still wip, but my take on OSR combat 1's official map in isometric

[nocturne basin]

Hell yeah, this all sounds great!!

[limpid pawn]

ended up looking like this

The purple is the path the bus was taking. Blue dot is where they started (jammers). Black dot is the Hall of Consuls. Pink dots are places where obstructions happened through various means (only one evacuated office building was exploded and it was an accident)

Not pictured: The Furies

They had a neat moment after the bus was disabled from moving forward where the 4 members of the team stood off against the The Furies, separated by a gigantic fire.

Also someone made the remark like "Wow. A lot of these rolls are risky."

Sir you are engaging enemy ace pilots. It's gonna be risky.

[stable thicket]

the best argument I've heard for making risky rolls the default

[limpid pawn]

Oh. I also did a thing where players had "turns" per clock slice. Basically said "the clock strikes (time) who's doing what?"

They could take a movement and an action (or move as an action and go farther/faster than they would while trying to do other things at the same time), but if they just wanted to do a regular move and couldn't think of anything else, I let them "bank an accuracy" to give to someone else if they could explain how they're helping the other person.

[nocturne basin]

Nice! I basically did something similar for Pierce the Heavens’ narrative segment, with a time clock that only allowed 1 “turn action” from each player at a time. Worked well to get players thinking about how they were spending their time

[limpid pawn]

I wonder if I unconsciously got it from PTH

That or you found an intuitive system that makes a lot of sense for a clock-based system

[nocturne basin]

Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s convergent evolution, or just using regular “combat rules” but expanding to exploration/social situations

Because this is also a thing in OSR/NSR systems for tracking dungeoncrawling actions over time

[stable thicket]

Having per-turn actions seems extremely natural, I like it

[limpid pawn]

Accidentally justified a reason why Kiros isn't at the final battle between my PCs and The Furies (I wanted Kiros to be a separate entity for "BBEG" purposes so I made up a forth member)

During the bus escort, he told the other 3 members to get personnel away and escort them to the harbor as he held off the PC team and his mech took a couple hits including losing its arm (self-inflicted so he could escape)

So he could easily be like "Yeah I can't engage them because my mech is down an arm. You three hold them off."

[sick harbor]

It's not quite done, but I've been converting Kiros's nemesis picture from the book into a sprite in the style of the Retrograde mini sprites

Leg and clean up still to do, but I think it fits in a lot better then just resizing the drawing

[brave forum]

looks very cool

tho I think someone else may have also done this

https://www.reddit.com/r/LancerRPG/comments/120bvtf/solstice_rain_spoilers_custom_sprite_for_sr_final/||

[frosty elm]

any ideas on improving this map I have for the players

[upper orchid]

I think it is perfect

[nocturne basin]

Oh ho ho what’s this? I guess my mail question is “do you have a legend” so the icons are clear?

[limpid pawn]

Yeah. Looking at that and my first thought is "I didn't go to basic so idk what these lines mean"

[upper orchid]

I made this and pretty much shared it everywhere, might as well do it here

[nocturne basin]

Oh hell yeah

[limpid pawn]

It's him. Jon Lancer.

[upper orchid]

G Lancer

Guncer

George Lancer

I think I will work on Bulldog or Nemesis next

[smoky wedge]

@sick harbor I cleaned up the edges a bit. I wasn't too sure if the bit above the gun is supposed to be a holographic sight, or just left overs from the painting process. I hope you don't mind to much that I removed them. 😄

[nocturne basin]

Looking dope, nice

[limpid pawn]

I have destroyed 2 mechs now

[nocturne basin]

Taking the combat roster from the top, one last time: https://trainlightning.com/revisiting-solstice-rains-fights/

[limpid pawn]

I will say the old C5 lineup proved to be remarkably bloodthirsty and had my players winning by the skin of their teeth

[nocturne basin]

noted, yeah zerkers and goliaths was definitely sweat-inducing (though when I ran it the amaDlozi solo'd the 3 of them without a sweat lol)

This new one has an Aegis with Blackwall though, so uh, we'll see how scary that becomes 😅

[limpid pawn]

It was the zerkers in particular that caused problems

The goliath was mostly just A Big Fella that ended up camping the point and trying to beat everyone back

[copper mesa]

my players used aoe on the zerkers as they spwaned in and caused a loooooot of damage

[limpid pawn]

Even after getting a scan on the zerker, they didn't do anything except continually knock them prone

I came out of fight 1 thinking "man I didn't do a lot of damage to them" and now I'm going into fight 3 thinking "are they gonna be able to survive this "

[limpid pawn]

What are some good pieces of hidden info to give to players who are just about to have their fight against the furies

They got a little scan happy so I owe them some stuff and am struggling to think of stuff

[nocturne basin]

What is the goal of the info you want to provide? Combat edge, narrative clues, something else?

For combat edges I'd probably give them NPC scans ahead of time, or even better, how you plan to play as them

if they know Kiros tends to overextend, they can prepare for it

[limpid pawn]

They've been meeting the furies over the course of the module so they know what's up with their capabilities generally

One of my players said something like "I'm surprised we couldn't detect The Operator (didn't know who was piloting at the time) with Rio scanning the city" and idk if they were trying to point out what felt like a plot contrivence when it was really just

[nocturne basin]

Well, it's as good a time as any to start seeding TARTARUS imo

bunch of weird encrypted files that are just now starting to look like puzzle pieces

[limpid pawn]

I was thinking that. Two of them are actually just data chips. I guess I could say that they'd need a lot of effort (downtime) to fully crack

[nocturne basin]

yeah tell them they need to get a third or something in order to get complete info

that could be an interesting little side objective?

[limpid pawn]

So I ended up not going the Tartarus route for the chips. Made one foreshadowing for The Furies still being around for the final combat, a hint at why The Vestans attacked, and a reserve I forgot to give them.

They then proceeded to only get enough scans in on the furies to get their statblocks and literally nothing else

Because the only one that survived past round 3 was the operator

So the party that's usually quite scan-happy didn't learn about Tartarus

OWS has a fallback, thankfully, and I've foreshadowed Tartarus as a thing in the cressidium cultural consciousness as "a bad idea that shouldn't be done" but still

Also because I was sick and dazed from meds I didn't prewrite. As a result one of the PCs didn't realize that it was just an ally's mech that got short-cycled and thought the ally was in it and was very upset.

He got the finishing blow on the operator and made a quip about the shot being for the assumed-dead ally who responded after an awkward silence and said "I'm alive. Good shot though."

[bold granite]

did my session 0 yesterday and my players got to know the crew aboard the Rio Grande and each other a little bit. one of my players offered to help Rio build a Kapkat deck to try and finally beat 1st Lieutenant Kim. gave them the fake sitrep regarding their assignment per valk's remix, next week they're getting shot down >:)

so far my players love the crew, especially Rio!

[stable thicket]

@nocturne basin does your remix have a landing page? i.e. a link to all the posts in the series

Oh right there it is

[nocturne basin]

I tried to maintain a ToC On each page yeah

[limpid pawn]

Now that I've formally finished OSR, my players had a review of them liking it. They didn't have any specific things they pointed out apart from stuff that was emergent storytelling

So I guess in that vein, the hook of "Cressidium doesn't have portable plasma weapons" and then immediately encountering someone with a portable plasma weapon was a good choice

And who'd have thought the "Ra Sees All" nanospray that I rolled into completely on chance would warp the plot so much

Tl;dr- this lead to a subplot of Unnamed Horus Cell that slipped on-world in between the second and third diplomatic expeditions putting their thumbs on various scales around Cressidium

They also seemed to like the characters I made for the furies enough to try and "rescue" (take as prisoner but not leave to die) them after the final battle.

(In this version, Kiros is not one of the furies. He's their boss and they will encounter him later™)

That said, I have my usual twists lined up ||The Operator pilot hid, handed control to her compcon, and bailed at 1 structure. She's going to be a member of The Resistance in OWS. Players would have learned she bailed had they scanned The Operator after the handoff, but they didn't, so||

I've been leaving little flags about this since session zero and I hope the twist lands.

[nocturne basin]

Hell yeah, super happy to hear how the emergent storytelling came into play

[latent blade]

I'm running the addendum version of the fights, and for combat 4, I initially had things prepped for 4 players, but one of them had to cancel on us. I'm having Naia be an assault Veteran NPC to act as a substitute for whenever we have a player missing, but I'm wondering if I should also lower the difficulty of the encounter to 3 players or keep it as is

[latent blade]

Welp too late for this. In other words, I recently finished combat 4 of OSR Remixed Remixed (yes that's what I'm calling it), and it felt like one of those combats where, if I had played a little smarter and the players had been a bit unluckier, they would've lost that sitrep.

All without being completely curbstomped or being, ya know, stunned. So overall went pretty well :D Proved to me that sometimes doing dumb plays is a good thing

[limpid pawn]

The mirage in combat 4 getting clapped at 1 structure really changed the dynamics of that fight

If you're using the original lineup valk made, your stomp will happen in combat 5 when the zerkers hit the table (unless they play around them effectively)

[latent blade]

Oh no I’m using the Faction Roster combats

[latent blade]

Tbh I think the pressure of the fight was pretty constant because half the fight the NPCs just had to exist in the right place at the right time to be a threat.

The Mirage didn’t have a real reason to leave her objective zone so she just kept supporting, same with the hive. Meanwhile the elite Sentinel really got everyone panicking as it got teleported right to the objective zone and got turned invisible thanks to the Mirage.

In the end the Mirage got away with not a scratch (save some fall damage), but until the very last round the players were actually losing in terms of points

Controls may be one of my new favorite sitreps, it really spreads the players thin and allows NPCs to do something while doing nothing

[limpid pawn]

My players really only had issues with control because they kept playing TDM instead of the objective

My players have generally had issues because they keep playing TDM instead of the objective

[brave forum]

video game brain

me see robot me kill robot

[smoky wedge]

Just finished up WAKE THE FURIES with the re-remixed combat lineup. 3 players. One got exposed and crit for 24 damage. He dropped to 1 hp on his last structure. Another overcharged while his reactor was already in meltdown to reach Kiros and kill him with two blast of his Krakatoa.

[nocturne basin]

hell yes

[limpid pawn]

Mission Status: SICK

[cerulean cobalt]

how does one play with an iso map

[bold granite]

foundry + grape juice isometric module + starlight furnace isometric assets

takes a lot of fiddling

your mileage may vary

it's worth it to me for immersion's sake but it takes a lot longer than other mapping programs in my experience

[limpid pawn]

I didn't do it because I had enough issues with hexagons

I can't imagine iso+hex and the nightmares that would loose upon the table

[bold granite]

it's not so bad in my experience since that's all I've been running lancer with personally, but I only have my and my 2 tables experience so far lol

making sure things are readable is a challenge though, I do admit

again it helps me with immersion

<- aphantasiac, not a shape rotator

[cerulean cobalt]

respect tho for making it 3d with aphantasia

it looks very good

[latent blade]

Recently did the faction combat of Solstice Rain Remixed combat 4. Spoilers; ||While it did go down really well, especially with it coming down to the wire with my players getting 1 point ahead in the very last round, the lack of artillery in that map was really felt. There wasn’t many good options to have control the enemy side zones and apply pressure to the player size zones, so the Mirage and Hive just kinda laid back and did nothing for most of combat.||

||Still, that did simplify action economy on my side so that wasn’t necessarily the worst thing. Plus it showed the advantage of the control Sitrep where even enemies that aren’t doing anything can still apply pressure.||

This isn’t necessarily feedback or something I’m asking to change, it’s just an observation I had about that combat

||The maze like nature of the map and the nature of being a control sitrep means anything that’s artillery has a massive advantage compared to other roles. Without active artillery on opfor it made enemy choices a little awkward as there weren’t any good options for opfor to hold the backline||

[nocturne basin]

Yeah that’s fair; ||baseline SR has an Ace, but even that isn’t a proper artillery unit. I think I considered putting a Bombard on Combat 4 at one point but decided it would be too much of a difficulty spike, since it would fit very well for the reasons you mentioned. Still, I could see a GM introducing it as a surprise reinforcement to keep things interesting ||

[versed hollow]

in regarding making Rio more important (and endearing), in final map, I have Rio Grande make a risky atmospheric entry and loiter over the map (and risk eating vector annihilator cannon because D R A M A T I C) to help shooting.

Beginning of round, player mark a spot, end of round, a blast2 explosive damage hits at designated spot.

It usually does not hit anything, but it helps convey the urgency of the situation, desperate measures, etc. And I mean if someone do the grabby it might actually force the boss to get hit by it.

[nocturne basin]

Oo, could be fun

[versed hollow]

also, image of clumsy glasses girl shooting cannon wildly is always a plus.

[limpid pawn]

The existence of Winter Scar aside, how would people here approach make a sort of third act/campaign extension that involves Okasnia?

My current angle is that Okasnia, being in the same geopolitical sphere as the LSA/VS is not directly involved in the conflict, but has a hand in it.

In short, they're playing both sides of the conflict by making the components that end up in Vestan mechs, but are also a trade partner with the LSA.

I'm trying to think of how to indicate that and make it a part of the story without it feeling like a plot cul-de-sac or a weird side story

[nocturne basin]

yup yup I'm of the same mind. I'd probably have a little stealth/intrigue with a HORUS cell, to find information or disrupt further tech trafficking to VSAF

[limpid pawn]

So funny story about that Horus cell...

||I rolled into the Ra Sees All dataspray event and that ended up introducing a Horus Agent character that's bringing paracausality back to Cressidium||

||They fucked with one of the PCs a little as an excuse for them to get a bit of a pushed exotic weapon and dropped the line of "I'm here to support the winners!" but it seems like they're kinda just supporting everyone and causing problems||

||and my rationale for why they're on Cressidium is because OSR takes place during the third expedition to the world. Horus's presence began being felt on the world between the second and third because they hitched a ride on the second expedition and have been causing problems ever since||

At the end of the day, the conflict is fundamentally the same, but there's little oddities here and there between OSR and OWS that can have some continuity with an active Horus presence planting a seed or two

[rich fjord]

Yeah thats a solid way to add some spice to the module or even make a continuation for a home game.

I know when I ran OSR I had no idea OWS was being worked on so I ended up making Okasnia a bit of tertiary power were the people who moved their wanted no part in the LSA/VS conflict meanwhile the local government was doing research for both sides.

At the time I used it to introduce the players to more paracausaul stuff which is a good chance to introduce players to more of that. Especially because some of them are likely to have NHPs from LL3 and onward.

[limpid pawn]

I mean (OWS) ||there's NHPs on Cressidium in OWS and I'm not sure how they could have gotten there unless they were planted through some later exchange of tech or were successfully maintained throughout the isolation period||

So my continuity bridge ATM is that ||the Horus cell seeded the paracausal tech onto this part of Cressidium and then gently encouraged the major players to start throwing hands||

The attack on Nov Elysia in OSR was Kiros disposing of dignitaries he didn't like, trying to reduce the LSA's industrial capacity, and (OWS) ||finding an NHP that was seeded by Horus for the purposes of managing Typhon||

[rich fjord]

Thats a solid idea.

I am saying that a lot but yeh good plans here.

[cerulean cobalt]

has anyone played osr in a more political intrigue way?

i was thinking of doing so

any suggestions for that

[nocturne basin]

In what way were you thinking? There’s certainly room for it given the factions at play

[limpid pawn]

Arguably me? It depends on the angle you're trying to shoot with it

[nocturne basin]

like first off: Make it unclear who shot the dropship down and who might be interested in taking the Captain and Ambassador hostage

The LSA and VSAF could just erupt in war, look to get the upper hand by taking the VIPs as leverage

Okasnia could be a covert faction in this take, also looking to kidnap the VIPs

The entirety of the city then becomes potentially hostile to the PCs unless they barter with the opponent, and each party wants the PCs on their side

Like the reason they wanna kidnap the VIPs would be to say “hey we’ll give em back if you lend us your firepower”

I’d say give the LSA a secret to make them more morally grey to make players think twice before allying with them, for added intrigue

[limpid pawn]

My secret for the LSA has been ||experimentation with paracausal entities and denial of the personhood of NHPs||, obfuscated by the LSA being generally decentralized

As well as Okasnia double-dealing in the conflict and not being entirely down with joining union because it means altering their economic model, which an interim mission between OSR and OWS explored

[nocturne basin]

Nice nice! I think this “playing the factions against each other” is reminding me of the Salvage Union module “False Flag” too; if you have that or are interested in it, it might be insightful for a job board style of competing factions even. Just released on DriveThruRPG and Itch yesterday

[nocturne basin]

Oh shit oh shit, set it up so that OSR was sparked by Okasnia saboteurs and both LSA and VSAF think the other did it

Then you get a good “wait who do we trust here” situation because both think they’re in the right for fighting back

VSAF thinks they’re trapped in a hostile city and LSA thinks they’re invaded from a hostile force

[limpid pawn]

I'm not entirely down with Okasnia doing it, but let's just say someone wouldn't have gotten their hands on a LinAc without the help of another country's advanced manufacturing capabilities

"hey VSAF? where's you get this technology that hasn't been seen on this world in centuries?"

Okasnia: (innocent whistling)

[nocturne basin]

The reason why I’d be down with Okasnia doing it is it prevents their economic model from changing, PLUS it heightens it because there’s a hot war now

Just your take on Okasnia made me think about how they’d like to stick with the status quo a little bit more, or at least break from the status quo in a way that benefits them more

[limpid pawn]

In this case, it's because the LSA was becoming a bit too stable and coordinated.

Oh no! A local belligerent who resents the LSA suddenly found themself with the means to enact tremendous destruction! How unfortunate!

Okasnia:

[cerulean cobalt]

i was thinking of making them actually originally be developing storm

like storm wasnt typphon but they were developing orbital kill weapons

[cerulean cobalt]

ah link?

[nocturne basin]

https://leyline-press.itch.io/false-flag-digital-edition

[cerulean cobalt]

tyty

[cerulean cobalt]

what is okasnia economic model

i guess also what do they get out of the war

[nocturne basin]

no one knows, so you have to make up your own. Isa and I both run with the interpretation that they have secret special tech and are arms dealers to both the LSA and VSAF

so like, "Technocratic Capitalist" tends to work alright

[cerulean cobalt]

i see

[olive musk]

Ay salvage union

[upper orchid]

anyone of you seen this anime?

[copper mesa]

sheeeeesh what you gonna do with that

[upper orchid]

idk, make an animated book trailer, shrugged

¯_(ツ)_/¯

[cerulean cobalt]

made some flags for the countries of cressidium

LSA, Vestan Soverignty, and RoO

i think the okasnian flag looks a little too tech logo-y so probably will change that soon

[upper orchid]

i love these

[copper mesa]

very good

[finite sinew]

Then vestan Sovereignty has a flag BUT THESE are great and I will get some use out of them thank you

[cerulean cobalt]

oh wait really

wheremst

[nocturne basin]

Hmmmm I remember someone made some but I need to dig them up

[nocturne basin]

#resource-hub-archive message

[latent blade]

Combat 6 and Ending Spoilers: ||My players absolutely TRASHED Kiros. It was great, but a combination of bad luck and strategy just made him crumple like paper||

||I really should’ve singled out our melee who was all alone with the enemies instead of trying to attack literally all the ranged PCs||

[latent blade]

||Anyway the toned down version felt a little... too weak? If you catch me? But overall a good intro to what an Ultra is supposed to be, just made the fight feel a bit anticlimactic||

[nocturne basin]

Sure, I get that; could be worth putting 1 Operator optional back on or swapping Telefrag for something like Fade Generator

[latent blade]

Well the operator is designed to be as reckless as possible, so maybe working Limitless back in, despite how overtuned a trait it is, isn’t a bad idea?

Because the main issue I was encountering was that it was an artillery unit that didn’t have enough actions to either fire away or get out of dodge, so having a trait like Limitless felt really sorely missed

[nocturne basin]

Nova Missiles may be a worthwhile option then? I don’t have a lot of love for overcharging and limitless so maybe that’s just me

[limpid pawn]

I ran it with limitless and nova missiles and the operator was the only thing that posed a challenge to the party in the slightest

And even then it wasn't much

[latent blade]

Tbh Nova Missiles feels... unhelpful. Considering the map's bombs and the threat of a Hive and Short Cycle Lance, clustering together is already something the players aren't really doing

Fade Generator isn't the worst idea though

[limpid pawn]

I got someone good with the missiles because of those bombs

[latent blade]

Ah right, hitting both a PC and a bomb, I actually forgot about that

Tbh the only time someone got caught in one of those explosions, it dealt a whopping 2 explosive damage

Honestly I think my strategy was half the issue with how easy that battle ended up being

[limpid pawn]

It was a moment of "Hey (player). You see what you're standing next to?"

Player: "...oh no."

[latent blade]

Which is only really something I can fix with time

The PCs artillery of the group was doing half the fight while their melee was on the other side of the map dealing with the bastion and hive, plus I was waiting to deploy grunts to after the first enemy structure was taken, and was only doing it one at a time

Should've telefragged the artillery and/or grapple kidnapped them

and/or singled out the melee

[limpid pawn]

A limitless operator has absurd mobility and I bullied the party hacker so hard with a grapple kidnap that her downtime project became making a facsimile.

[cerulean cobalt]

so ive been doing osr as a political intrigue thing

lots of non mech sessions

and so uh

i made it so that lsa is making storm

and roo is helping make it

and sharing that tech w vs

and so my pcs were investigating the research labs of lsa and decided to kill everyone there, so i was thinking of turning that into a false flag attack by vs

[limpid pawn]

Stupid discord typeface making me read these messages and go "I'm making what now?"

[nocturne basin]

Tbf I thought the same thing for a sec haha

[cerulean cobalt]

to be fair they were getting paid to steal tech but still

[latent blade]

who's roo again?

[limpid pawn]

Republic of Okasnia

[latent blade]

Oh right

I read "roo" and thought of a kangaroo

[sly cove]

I want to make LSA and Vestan forces feel more prominent in battles, especially infantry.

I mostly get why enemy and/or allied squad NPCs aren't included but for some reason just having infantry as working exclusively in the background feels weird to me...

Is there anything I can do here without accidentally breaking the balance and/or flow of the combats?

I'm thinking of adding them maybe in combat 4 because the operation is especially important for the LSA in particular

[unborn forge]

Combat 4-5 is usually pretty easy for PCs I've heard (and experienced), and the PCs are coming off their full repair with all their new toys from levelling up, so it could depend on how you handle it. Perhaps there's some non-mechs there like tanks or vehicles with squads guarding and assaulting the control zones.

[limpid pawn]

As far as LSA visibility is concerned, I did two things

1. have LSA infintry be present in narrative play as a faction the players regularly interact with during the beats between combat and downtime

2. have an LSA mech pilot corp who criss-crosses paths with the party as they handle other objectives throughout the city

For Vestan forces, while I think the intention was for them and The Furies to be unglamorous type goons, I had the furies be a rival team that also crossed paths with the party during narrative beats and being a foreshadowed thing that the party sees bits and pieces of over the two missions

IE) Hearing the LinAc firing in the distance during mission 1. Evading/getting harassed by the hive's drones during the bus escort. Seeing the Pyro while scouting in beat 2.

But generally, the reason the LSA wouldn't show up is that "they're off completing other objectives"

[olive musk]

you can replace most strikers with a squad if you really want to. And if your players are having an "easy" time, you can always add one here and there for spice

[sly cove]

Tempted to swap out the "Limitless" Ultra option on Kiros with "Hover Propulsion" because...

https://tenor.com/view/viper-titanfall2goodbye-chat-gif-24003554

"Your journey ends here, Lancer - the skies belong to me."

I'm just getting serious Viper energy from Kiros

[bleak lark]

Combat 5 question, can you shoot to B from A, or would it be impossible due to height difference

[nocturne basin]

I'd say "yes you can" because it's far enough away and there's no other intervening cover. Your call as GM though

[copper mesa]

Always take the greatest length if you take height into account

[bleak lark]

Oh, I didn't think about that, that sounds like a good rule of thumb

[copper mesa]

If chsracter X at height 5 and character Y at range 3 and height 0, but the weapon is range 3...

You'd use 5 as the distance between the two since that's the greatest distance between the two

[bleak lark]

The question was more about line of sight

[nocturne basin]

same dealeo

[copper mesa]

Yeye

[bleak lark]

in the previous combat there were some tall buildings, it seemed logical to me that even if you have range 20 rifle you wouldn't be able to shoot the person in the center from below

unless you have arcing or seeking of course

[nocturne basin]

yeah that makes good sense, since the person is directly at the base of the building while the building is super high. So the distance to the building horizontally is smaller than the height being targeted

[bleak lark]

Ight, but if he was 5 spaces away from 5 height building you would rule it as if he had los, right?

[nocturne basin]

Maybe? I'd probably do that yeah

go with your gut and then try to be consistent

there's more detailed cover/LOS methods out there but they'll have their own idiosyncrasies

[bleak lark]

I will stick with that for the time being, I just wanna give my players some basis to work with and then if there are some edge cases we will probably work them out on the spot

[limpid pawn]

It's vibes based. If you as a GM look at a shot and go "yeah that'll work" then it works

There's specific rules when cover gets involved but when dealing with distance+elevation, a lot of vibes-based calls get made

[limpid pawn]

While not entirely OSR related, the Horus agent characters interacted with during OSR re-appeared during OWS and because a PC asked for their name, I had to hastily make one up.

Anyways, their name is how Harmakhis, which is an archaic name for Mars. The connection to Ra/Deimis/Moon Shit was accidental.

[crude terrace]

I'm running OSR for the first time and half my players are Gundam nerds consumed by details of the antagonists & their mechs, and I wanted to build up Kiros more throughout the second mission.

I settled on Kiros having some subordinate aces in his unit, and making one of the elites in each preceding combat one of them.

The assassin (elite at 5 PCs) in combat 4 is now in the custom Fury-03 'Megaera', the Barricade (elite at 4 PCs) in combat 5 is in Fury-02 'Alecto', and Kiros's mech is the Fury-01 'Tisiphone'

[limpid pawn]

Hell yeah Megaera/Alecto/Tisiphone useage gang

I had them be The Furies for obvious reasons and 2/3 survived to be characters later

[crude terrace]

they captured an enemy pilot (the Specter in combat 3) so I think they'll run their mouth, in exchange for jumping to the top of the list in a prisoner swap with LSA POWs. If they kill Kiros by the end of combat 6, I'll have that specter pilot be (Winter Scar spoilers) ||Captain Batea Rezmira, who succeeds Kiros in Winter Scar||, a lower-ranking Fury who leaked the information to knock out her competition for leadership of SOU33/the Furies

[crude terrace]

curious which encounters you put them in?

[limpid pawn]

Literally combat 6

[crude terrace]

I'm still on the fence between doing that and spreading them out

[limpid pawn]

I did a bit of reshuffling where Kiros is just A Guy ||who pilots a catapharact|| because of OWS and The Furies are the ace pilots of Unit 33, which is why they're in combat 6

But all four of them showed up outside of combat at various points throughout OSR to give fighting them in combat 6 some punch.

One for overkilled very much so she didn't make it. One had members of the party coming to aid her ASAP so she lived and was able to provide some intelligence in between OSR and OWS. The third (the operator) bailed on her mech and sent it into a grapple death charge against the party hacker, using the fact that it melted on death as a way to make it so people would think she was KIA

She comes back later in OWS as a member of the resistance because

https://tenor.com/view/char-aznable-gundam-gif-18160949

||She's angling for the same thing it seems like you're having Rezmira do||

[crude terrace]

I kinda messed up a foreshadowing opportunity because I riffed too hard in our pre-mission session 1. They wanted to make friends around the ship, and befriended a random, more experienced NPC pilot that they jokingly named (Sgt) Major Tom, so I just ran with it. Put him on their dropship as their squad leader in mission 1, he gets his Sherman sliced in half and gets his legs Lieutenant Danned off when the dropship is shot down.

Well, I read ahead and what do you know, there's a character ||Lt. Naia "Ringer" Reynaud|| in a very similar role in OWS. So I guess when I get there that'll be (Sgt) Major Tom instead, who earns a promotion to Warrant Officer Tom, ruining the joke.

[crude terrace]

truly inspired maneuver, Char would be proud

[limpid pawn]

I don't want to evoke comparisons to something better than what I can reasonably achieve but yeah

I also don't know if I can do the CCA equivalent where she suddenly becomes the ascendent leader of the Vestan military post-Kiros/OWS and starts Causing Problems but it would be a funny coda

[crude terrace]

I'm also reflavoring the exotics from FOB Saber as Cressidium-developed tech

except for the Comp/Con probably? undecided.

[finite sinew]

My Players did it the went through the whole book 🥳

[sly cove]

Player: Fails the skill check for the bus escort encounter
Kiros showing up 4 combats early:

https://tenor.com/view/transitions-kinemaster-black-guy-suit-tiktok-gif-25279479

[gentle bone]

Fails it how badly?

[sly cove]

I don't remember at this point but the player was replacing another in the campaign so they were coming in with a fresh mech. Wanted to make sure they were about on par with everyone else when it came to mech damage and repairs ;3

Kiros didn't stay all that long anyways he pretty much just fired the short cycle lance and then dipped

Wanted to make sure Kiros would be a reoccurring antagonist throughout the campaign to give the final combat a bit more weight

[nocturne basin]

Good shit, love some sudden foreshadowing

[limpid pawn]

Now that I've fully digested the OSR/OWS wombo combo model, I'm kinda kicking around the idea of a writeup of how to stick the two of them together

OWS makes the case for itself on its own so it doesn't really need it, but it'd be like "Here's what I did to up the continuity"

"stuff from OWS to port back into OSR to give more threads for players to explore" etc

[nocturne basin]

Sounds like an excellent idea tbh

[muted glacier]

Mmm, I’ve been thinking of using the interlude between the two modules as a chance to flesh things about the Vestans out a bit more for post-Winter Scar.

||Like introducing an ambassador who was part of the delegation to the LSA at the time of Solstice Rain and was genuinely just as blindsided by the attack as everyone else… and assuming that he survives past the end of the first mission of WS, he becomes the party’s foot in the door to get them in contact with a group of generals who recognize that the war is lost and want to bring it to an end||

[clear obsidian]

ah man, i've been running the remixed combats version for SR, and i've got to say. using the side deployment area from beat 2, to get right up close to the rainmaker. they killed him on the second PC turn haha. he did explode on his first structure check.

[stable thicket]

classic

[limpid pawn]

Oh hey, since I'm about to drag another party through Nov Elysia, I'm back in the OSR mindset and thinking about Narrative Beat 2/Combat 2 in particular and if there's a way where the two can exist in harmony instead of being a bypass/failstate

Mostly because of the way I run my games and wall off narrative and combat sessions, though this may not be as much of an issue if New Party doesn't luxuriate in their ability to coordinate as much

[nocturne basin]

you may already be thinking this but my brain just went to "proportion of successes to failures translates to initial distance the players start at across the map"

[limpid pawn]

I was in fact not thinking of that at all

[nocturne basin]

get half the successes, start halfway across the map

how does this work with initial enemy deployments? hell if I know

I didn't say this was fully cooked 😛

[limpid pawn]

My new party caught on to trying to kidnap someone's NHP almost instantly

[limpid pawn]

Thoughts on the bus escort narrative bit.

1. Three clocks for "LSA Nerves (5?)," "VS Awareness (3)," and "Distance to Shelter (3)." LSA Nerves fills with each failed attempt to progress towards the shelter in a round. Distance to Shelter fills with each successful attempt. VS Awareness fills when players do something conspicuous or...

2. Variable state of bus repair. The bus repair is Risky. Full success is a repaired bus. Part success is a bus that can move but is damaged. Failure means you gotta try fixing the bus again. Damaged bus has a table to roll against where it's fine, there's minor trouble, it backfires (draws VS attention), or it breaks down again.

3. Finishing VS attention has an NPC assail the party and a little narrative combat occurs, resets the clock, and fills a slice of LSA Nerves.

4. Success is filling Distance to Shelter before LSA Nerves fills. Failure is the reverse.

[nocturne basin]

okokok, I can dig all this

[limpid pawn]

I'm thinking the table for a partial repair is a d6.

Main Table
1- breakdown (Progresses LSA Nerves if scouting and escort rolls fail)
2- backfire (+1 VS Awareness)
3, 4- minor trouble (next roll is on the minor table)
5, 6- free

Minor Table (resets to major table after rolled)
1- breakdown
2- backfire
3- free

Next I gotta figure out mechanics for escorters. Scouter events are fixed (ish) based on Distance to Shelter filled.

[limpid pawn]

Update: bus rolled two 6s and a 5 after a partial repair. System works, but should probably have something on the ground for scouts and escorts to do to give rolls meaning

I rolled the escorters against the civilian/military event tables from Valk's blog. The scouters got their own thing that I had planned already.

[crude terrace]

running Wake the Furies tonight, my players have asked for punishment so I'll be using the 5+ PC tuning against 4 PCs

[nocturne basin]

Godspeed

[crude terrace]

They've done inordinately well in the second mission due to our melee striker (Nelson) balling too hard, so she's going in with no structures to spare while the others are at 3 or 4. Should be interesting

[winged bluff]

How did it go? Sounds like you are already at a higher LL than suggested if they are in the Nelson frame, that's how I ran it, gave the players LL2 to get their new frames at FOB saber, we also ran the 5 player encounters for the whole mission with 4 players. The Furies fight was great fun

[limpid pawn]

Labeled maps were talked about earlier today in #gm-corner but this is more relevant here than there now

[unborn forge]

nice

[limpid pawn]

Update on the hybrid roster: players seem to be enjoying it! They're liking the blend of units the recognize alongside units they've yet to encounter

It's also making units like the mirage from C4 really stand out because that's something they've not seen out of the sovereignty.

I don't think I'm at a point where it differentiates itself from the faction roster very much though

[upper orchid]

Guys, I am nearing the end of Winter Scar but I sense my players still wanna stay on this planets (they made lot of good friends here and there are relationship plots)

I am wondering what I can do with this planet after the war

My no1 idea right now is some kinda post-war-recovery and aid mission from Union, delivering foods and medicare for victims of war, both LSA and Vestan as well as helping reconstruction

I got some plot idea like “meeting family of Lt Kiros” which I am sure to introduce interesting social interactions and stuff

I do not know how to make this a full on mission with combat and all
(or maybe I shouldnt? Idk)

[unborn forge]

"Somehow, Kiros returned"

Have you asked them what they might want to do?

[upper orchid]

nah, I am aiming for a more sombre, down to earth tone. Like meeting his (I made up) wife and childrens. Trying to reconcile and help with establishing peace and mending relationships between people would be an unique challenge I think

[upper orchid]

Some of them told me they want to stay on the planet as their character have romantic relationship and tie with native Cressedian in the 6 month timeskip

[unborn forge]

I mean specifically what they want to do that could lead to missions

But if you don't think you want a combat mission it feels like you should just run a narrative session closing up the campaign

[limpid pawn]

An after-action session may be worthwhile. I know I plan on doing that for Wallflower

As for extending the mission on Cressidium out further, the sovereignty hardliners aren't gone after OWS. Just heavily discredited/deranged. There's always room for them to try and make a return of some sort, but that's more for the OWS Spoilers thread

I've accidentally very intentionally because I'm a creative mastermind set up a thread for "what can you do after OWS," but I don't think it can be done without setup from OSR

I mean, I guess it could?

[upper orchid]

ooh, can i hear?

[limpid pawn]

Removing some context, it's a return to the "Tartarus is a prison" concept some people were kicking around in here before OWS.

Vestan Hardliners went covert/decentralized and continued to spread anti-union sentiment/disinformation. They leverage that to get material support for another swing at planetary political dominance.

In my attempts to develop this, the primary antagonist is a character who's appeared since OSR as a jilted political rival to Kiros/Rezmira

[upper orchid]

[nocturne smelt]

Having run solstice rain twice, my biggest tweak was turning the marines you land with into both (1) the wounded people you need to evacuate via bus and (2) the people who launch artillery strikes / etc for reserves on your behalf. This ties the narrative in tighter, and makes the players seem cool in relation to space marines (who are usually the coolest in other settings).

[unborn forge]

Yup, I always slapped Garcia in after the first combat as a bit of a narrative scene where he's had some limb bandaged up and there's someone in the squad who can work the omnihook

[limpid pawn]

I have a second deployment getting shot down by the rainmaker as the party makes their way south.

At that point, they must decide if they're going to investigate the crash site (which has marines that will join them as an NPC ally in the next combat if rescued)

Also allows for a moment of being able to provide exposition as the marines are part of the second deployment. Some word has gotten back up to The Rio, so these rescued soldiers can provide a little more context to what's happening.

[quaint goblet]

So have them in another drop ship and meet up during the bus encounter, and there the ones on the busses?

[quaint goblet]

Garcia?

[unborn forge]

yes

[nocturne smelt]

The one ship the players are (holding onto the outside of) also has a squad of marines on the inside. In the crash landing, many marines are injured. The first fight has the players hold the position while the marines apply first aid and get ready to leave. The bombardment reserve the players earn is the marines with a mortar. Then there's a question of "how do we transport the more injured marines to the base?" and the players look around, see the bus, have an idea.

[limpid pawn]

On the one hand, I like giving the players a chance to interact with the citizens/the city with locals for the bus escort. On the other, it's a very solid carrot for them to go to FOB saber.

I question if maybe it's a bit too much of a carrot, but I'm sure most players wouldn't protest

[quaint goblet]

Maybe both, the Marines survive there drop ship geting shot down. Found some people and took them with them to try to get them to safety

[quaint goblet]

I should proably make a fighter pilot character, since that will come up in winter scar

not to mention the Rio Grande is a light carrier, it would have figherpilots

[olive musk]

If you absolutely need to continue missions, I will say this: Just because the sovereignty fails doesn't mean you couldn't have a hardline "we can still win" terrorist group. You could go a bit grim and have Members of the LSA split off and decide the sovereignty "doesn't get to get off easy."

There will always be issues during a power vacuum or upheaval

[upper orchid]

Yeah, I will prefer that idea for extra drama rather than "Vestan attack 2 Electric Boogalu

[limpid pawn]

PC: "I'm going to use my bond power to look like Sorvan Kiros since we have a headshot of him from the dossiers we received"

Kiros, encountering that PC later that session:

[upper orchid]

lovely

[limpid pawn]

https://tenor.com/view/dracula-flow-i'm-him-i-been-him-i-will-continue-to-be-him-gif-11190399534092412874

Chase scene between C4 and C5 seemed to go well once everyone figured out the verbs and how to creatively use their abilities to catch up

[unborn forge]

What's the chase scene?

[limpid pawn]

In regular OSR, going between combats 4 and 5 is Rio going "hello pilots it is now time for NEXT LOCATION" (I'm guessing it's one part keeping things simple/straightforward and one part showing the control Rio can have over a theater of combat once the jammers drop but I wanted to inflect the latter in a different way)

So instead, combat 4 ends, and reports come on about an explosion and a transport gunning it away from the main government building on the south (where PCs learn through scanning and other clues that the hostages are/were being kept)

From there, Rio gives them the location of the transport. The party starts at the now-deactivated jammers and need to catch it via narrative play before it reaches the harbor.

Because players have allies in Nov Elysia and have contact with every allied force through Rio, they can call for assistance to get a very limited number of artillery strikes from the armaments at FOB saber, have Union marines deploy roadblocks to reroute the transport off of fast roads, or flag down allied LSA chassis pilots to intervene with a specialized request.

Each have a "lag" where, when players call for it, time to respond will vary. Artillery happens at "end of round" as Union and LSA verify the area is clear of civilians. Marine roadblocks at "end of next round." LSA Pilot support response time depends on what you're asking for and how much they like the party.

Last, all of The Furies show up and harass the players as they attempt to stop the transport

The end result is something that looks like this (using Valk's Nov Elysia map)

Spotlight effects added for the purposes of visibility.

[unborn forge]

How does it play out?

[limpid pawn]

Narrative with a turn structure

Transport always moves at the top of the round, prioritizing the shortest possible path to the harbor and, ideally, using the yellow roads.

Then the players can take two "actions" on their turns, being moving, calling for backup, or a narrative action with triggers/bond powers/modified rolling, etc.

When The Furies arrive, it ends up like combat with tradeoffs between players and NPCs taking actions

Movement is vibes based and massaged with some good-ol-fashioned GM handwaving so they can't just dead sprint to the transport and catch it. They need to call for support or they will not catch it.

[unborn forge]

I see, I really like it, something cool to put between the combats. At the start of mission 2 I had the PCs investigate a bunker and do some narrative combat on a big lift which was awesome.

What's the win/lose conditions?

Like what happens if they do or don't catch up?

[limpid pawn]

Win: LSA/Union joint forces drive the Vestans to a full retreat at the harbor. Team secures their VIPs and thus, their mission is technically complete. C5 becomes optional, but they cannot escape The Furies and they jump right to C6 if they opt to skip C5.

Lose: OSR as-written. They gotta do C5 and stop The Leviathan before it leaves and takes the VIPs away.

[unborn forge]

Did they skip C5? Why would you not skip it?

[limpid pawn]

I dunno. They haven't made that decision yet.

But so far, nobody has skipped C5

[unborn forge]

Fair enough

[limpid pawn]

You're all going to hate what I'm titling the section about Kiros/Rezmira in my essay(?) about how to fully conjoin OSR and OWS

||To BBEG, or not to BBEG||

[quaint goblet]

@limpid pawn that’s a great idea to make the adventure more interesting

[quaint goblet]

I still am new to lancer and haven’t run a game yet. I got solstice rain for first premade, and see all these addition people made are cool, and adding stress to the learning process.

[limpid pawn]

There are some people who run OSR straight from the book and have a great time, both as player and GM. Don't stress yourself out because I'm a gremlin with too much time on my hands to bastardize change it

[quaint goblet]

yeah im just overthinking

[limpid pawn]

My players seem to be enjoying the "something old something new" faction-ish roster so far

Combat 5 for 5 players was

• elite bombard
• commander aegis
• veteran goliath (reserve)
• 2x archer
• 2x scourer (reserve)

They'd seen the bombard before from combat 1 and immediately started spreading out as the approached the sub. It was nice to see them remembering.

But then the Goliath showed up and spooked them all

[quaint goblet]

so some of the chassis frame are a mix of old early SecCom chassis and new Cressidium designs?

[olive musk]

So, because I love stuff like general grievous, I was going to have a 90% android of kiros be the end baddie of OWS. However. I realized my players might have different taste so I just straight asked them if they would like that. They declined because my kiros had managed to kill one of their pilots in a hard battle. They felt like android kiros might narratively cheapen their hard fought victory.

Moral of the story: bring your players in on your planned narrative beats. It doesn't hurt anything.

[limpid pawn]

Over time, I've softened on my idea of kiros as bbeg mostly because I realized that that's a vestige of my before-we-knew-about-OWS extension of OSR

I think either Kiros or Rezmira could serve as the overarching antagionist of the conjoined story arc if that's the way you want to do the story. The key is that you have to introduce them in OSR as a threat and treat the other like a midboss

And given that the final mech fight in OWS isn't an operator, you can just stick whoever beefs it at the end of OSR in the operator and have the other appearing as a catapharact

[quaint goblet]

I was thinking they could run into them during a diplomatic Summit. Just to have a face to the name, but no sure how to swing that.

I was thinking a a enemy taunt in a opening battle would be
“Ha your great union tech looks like a joke, 500 years are you still using those museum pieces?” (referring to the Everest)

[olive musk]

I had a unique opportunity there. My current group had 2 new players so I ran a simulation that several ambassadors where allowed to watch. An LSA intelligence officer, an okasnian mech merchant, and kiros pretending to be a secretary of state

[limpid pawn]

Note: Ultra Operator does not need limitless when facing off against 5 players

If I didn't pull my punches, I would have done a TPK

[quaint goblet]

Good to know, (limitless is two turns a round?)

I’m worry about the finally fight in solstice rain with a ultra operator and endless grunt being added to the field.

[limpid pawn]

Limitless is NPC overcharge

When you've got 5 players, ultras go 3 times per round. Limitless just allows you to fish for better angles in the LinAc or raptor rifle shots.

When going against 4, I think it's people probably safe enough

But the heat accumulation and occasional turns to stabilize weren't much of a sacrifice when it had 3 turns a round.

Let's just say the party went in at 4/4 structure across the board and walked out with only 2 mechs.

[limpid pawn]

Keep it to 2x structure and 1.5x activations. You'll probably be fine.

But round down.

My fight had zero reinforcements and it was a nail-biter

[quaint goblet]

Ouch

[quaint goblet]

So half health and skill around when it uses limitless

[clear obsidian]

woooooffff

i have a karakin noble played aptly named "out of nowhere" who's headed into this fight at 1 structure.

[limpid pawn]

They're probably gonna be finding themselves hoofing it out of nowhere lookin like that

[clear obsidian]

they're orignited with call sign "glass blower" but i do think that after this wrap-up and the three seperate mech detonations they've had

it will be glass breaker

[quaint goblet]

First time DM Worry that I will kill new LL0 player with the first few combats in this adventure.

[nocturne basin]

then I'd suggest trying my Solstice Rain Remix? It might have more manageable fights: https://trainlightning.com/revisiting-solstice-rains-fights/

[quaint goblet]

Ok, thanks

What’s a Scourer, I can’t find that NPC

[nocturne basin]

it's in the Lancer corebook, it's a striker

[chilly silo]

Trying to make Col. Kiros more sympathetic: does it make sense for him to want to repel the party/sieze the city and halt the peace talks because he feels thirdcomm is just history repeating itself? Instead of being a bitter secomm supporter, I was thinking he would actually be strongly against falling in line with any iteration of union ever again, since seccom failed so spectacularly and he'd want to keep cressidium free of its successors influence, lest this planet fall to yet another union Civil War in the future too

So his motivations for the invasion are still in line with what Valk suggested in their remix blog in so far as capturing both sides diplomats and ambassadors, but instead of it being a show of force/military might display, it's more a "protecting the people from themselves" and "they don't know what they want, not really"

[limpid pawn]

That is how I play him, to an extent

His MO is that Cressidium must belong to Cressidium's people and that ascension to Union member status would mean they're now subject to whatever 3rdcom says they have to do

The arrival+intervention of the PCs/Task Force Indigo only reinforces this in his and the hardliners' minds. If Cressidium steps out of line, Union sends a bunch of marines and pilots and escalates it.

In the PCs minds, they ended The Battle of Nov Elysia quickly. In the eyes of the hardliners, they're a foreign power intervening and escalating the conflict

[nocturne basin]

Was reading through an urban crawl post and realized that a more visually pleasing way to render my pointcrawl may be to instead make it a district crawl. Example image here: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWjLo4xHcwOwgRrhx1pzNn1sz6izpEI6Yen1ODYMfThVJVdA6iF_TvkhMjekX3c8UaZMf5UJUbUleolDI40nIthDDapX1RPTedjmt_i2Klx_NpL79tNyxO30DU9WUCmrqh0XC0icpEyB8/s2047/1abce944-438f-4080-ac17-5d252078ddbf_rw_1920.jpg

The pointcrawl image might work fine though, since it’s clearer how many hours it takes to get from one district to another