LANCER One-Shot Module Jam

[idle cedar]

lol

[idle cedar]

just be like "just kidding everyone, the theme is Jam"

i think if i said the theme was something like, Deception or Change Of Plans
i can probably sell it
-# (i won't though, just to be clear)

[neon hearth]

Change of Jams, even?

[onyx fractal]

BTW, RPGs on Itch are typically categorized as Physical Games, right? not Books

[honest pawn]

Yes

All the official Lancer is categorized as Physical Game so most modules should follow suit imo

Always tag your projects!!!!!

[onyx fractal]

This page is a gold mine of information https://riengray.medium.com/a-beginners-guide-to-publishing-books-on-itch-io-dea0446f3f5f

[honest pawn]

Yup save that one for later

[idle cedar]

idk all the conditions in dnd but can it be charmed

[neon hearth]

if the #oc-cantina is any guide, mech pilots are extremely vulnerable to charm

[honest pawn]

Also, check this out: https://hedgiespresso.itch.io/itch-page-image-templates

[idle cedar]

i thought pilot and mech were separate for this project

[neon hearth]

yeah this is one of those square pegs round holes things

[idle cedar]

fair fair

since the pilot can't be targeted right

[neon hearth]

yep

[unborn arch]

Oh wow the jam is super soon huh

Snuck up on me there

[onyx fractal]

meanwhile I have never been spinning my wheels harder

[unborn arch]

Yeah I've just been busy with travel and holidays and work that it just didn't register in my head how soon it was

Either way, if someone winds up rolling with a Karrakin(esque) idea for a module and I vibe with the idea, my art is very much drawing from medieval influences and I'd like to help along (since I unfortunately lack the time to head anything myself)

[tepid pecan]

Oh these are really nice!!!

I'm not sure what the theme will be just yet but these are incredible yeah

I think the centaur and balor are our favorites out of this

Just something about the way they're composed

[unborn arch]

Thank you!! The first is a take on the Tagetes that evokes the idea of a cavalryman, the second is a friend's Boar Balor, the third needs no explanation, the last is my own Orchis

[tepid pecan]

Nice!!!!

I like that take on a targetes actually, yeah

[unborn arch]

Very much borrowing from the both of these (the pose from the second being the key inspiration that got me rolling) along with the base Tagetes itself; either way, I'm very much open to doing an art piece or two for any project that catches my eye, just that the style very definitively lends itself best to something involving Karrakin shenanigans

[onyx fractal]

whoa these are sick

[unborn arch]

Thank ya! Only started drawing mechs back in July, feelin pretty happy with my style

Thinkin of doing either a pro-bono or pay what ya want slot for the jam if I vibe with a project and the other folks involved think the art fits the vibe for what they want

[tepid pecan]

oh yeah i totally see the inspiration!

[neon hearth]

just casually dropping that they're new at this but still making gorgeous art
cavalierly you might even say

[hasty tartan]

This is crazy good!

[hollow turtle]

2 days

[unborn arch]

Lmaaaao

[unborn arch]

Thank you!!

[onyx fractal]

The ironic thing about this dropping dec 22 is that I probably will barely have any time to actually start working on this until after Christmas

Maybe I can get some stuff done on the 22nd or 23rd, maybe some brainstorming on the 24th

But actually putting words to page, 26th at the earliest I feel

christmas break being full of free time is not a thing that is true of all demographics T_T

[unborn arch]

Yeah I've got free time... for only the first week of the jam

Second week, I'm in Japan

[ornate mist]

There is free time and then there is free free time, 😅 we all gotta prioritise family for chrismast afterall

[idle cedar]

perhaps sometime with less holidays next time

[neon hearth]

yeah like
I will say the timing is
not amazing in a lot of ways
like my ability to collaborate with friends is basically nil because of the season

[idle cedar]

I'm mostly free during this time bc I don't really have family obligations but obviously that's not the case for everyone

[onyx fractal]

Dammit, I got so close to having a workable solution to printing PC sheets from compcon and then I ran into another bug

[honest pawn]

It’s fine, just run with it anyway

Worst case, it gets extended to a month or something for those January lulls

[onyx fractal]

I'm making it work

[neon hearth]

MAY BE MORE THAN 24 HOURS REMAINING

[idle cedar]

there's like 36 hours remaining

for folks in different time zones

[fierce sedge]

It may even be as much as 48h I've heard.

[honest pawn]

The jam itself starts in 1 day 6 hours, as of about now

No time zone nonsense

[idle cedar]

my profile has how much time remaining btw

<t:1734894000:R>

[onyx fractal]

Fun fact: Dec 22 is my birthday

[idle cedar]

happy birthday!

[onyx fractal]

Thanks!

[neon hearth]

OKAY THIS TIME FOR REAL

[idle cedar]

my mic died so I think that means no announcement stream

I'll just post it when the day comes

also the poll should be closed now

as a teaser: 3 themes had more than 50% vote

[hollow turtle]

https://tenor.com/view/crying-emoji-gif-21922016

[onyx fractal]

Which one had the most vote?

...

👀

[idle cedar]

we'll find out, won't we

[neon hearth]

rude

[idle cedar]

:3

I think this is fully safe to share

[idle cedar]

one of them definitely stood out
two more barely beat 50%

[upper loom]

im so interested

[ornate mist]

so excited

it will be totally fine going in the event with NO preparation before the first day!!!!!

[delicate geode]

お誕生日おめでとうございます！
Happy birthday, from Japan!

[onyx fractal]

Some more inspiration for you all https://200proof.games/manifesto/

[ornate mist]

Haha i really need this. I have a habit of being a perfectionist sometime...

[onyx fractal]

My issue is that I have a chronic issue of setting way too high a bar for myself

The upside is that it means I tend to do good work

The downside is that I am never happy with that work

[fierce sedge]

That does explain your colourful prose.

Nah but I feel you, it's difficult to assess when enough is truly enough.

The most difficult part of an iterative process is knowing when one iteration ends and another begins.

[onyx fractal]

It's one thing to know when enough is enough, it's another thing to be comfortable releasing something I think is shitty

But, the only way I get better is by getting in reps

making bad stuff first

The ol' taste-talent gap

[fierce sedge]

Yeah, it's a lot.

[idle cedar]

i think i have high enough standard to make something look decent and low enough standard to be able to publish it before it's perfect in my eyes

[hollow turtle]

https://tenor.com/view/finding-nemo-todays-the-day-happy-excited-gif-5173796

[idle cedar]

i should do like a little writeup about what the theme could represent

so the 40% who didn't vote for it have something to go off of

[idle cedar]

11 hours remain

[frail moon]

My dork ass forgot about doing this until just now lmao

Heck... I don't even know where theme voting is but I might be too late for that now... I'll check when I wake up I guess

[idle cedar]

theme vote is closed now

[neon hearth]

the testing is the hard part in game jam time

especially this time of year

pretty much everyone I'd rope in for a playtest is busy

or unavailable for some other reason

[idle cedar]

i should set up a jam feedback form soon

i an getting a lot of negative experiences regarding when this is taking place

which is heard and I'll try to change that in the next one (which is probably going to happen)
and we'll see if people wanna do a whole mission next time, and ask about desired duration

[honest pawn]

Playtests are optional, I will say

And you can even playtest on your own as a sanity check

Don’t let it get in the way of being Done

That said: how many people signed up for the jam? Theoretically that’s a pool of folks also looking for some testing, so testing exchanges could be performed

“I’ll play in yours if you play in mine”

(This is notably what the LFG community thread in the jam is for)

FWIW Suji I’m glad you’re sticking to your guns

It’s all part of the process

[onyx fractal]

I'm glad it's happening, it's the little kick I needed

[onyx fractal]

Also for what it's worth, I thought all of the themes were good, but I only voted for my favorites. If one of my favorites doesn't win, I'll still be happy with another theme. That is, the act of not voting for a theme didn't mean I didn't want to do it, just that it wasn't at the top of my list

[ornate mist]

excited

4 hours!!!

[onyx fractal]

Can't wait to see what everyone comes up with

[hollow turtle]

I know Suji doesn’t have a mic, but when time comes around I might just be chilling in chat to vibe/excitedly discuss the theme

[idle cedar]

i am awake

less than 2 hours remain

i will also probably hang out in vc

[final maple]

Nice. I'm looking forward to brainstorming right away, and have convinced a friend to join in as well. We might end up collaborating officially as a team- we're not sure yet, depends whether we end up with ideas we want to independently pursue.

I'm still considering the idea of a single endless increasingly hard sitrep. I think it'd be a good framework for replayability, allowing players to try it multiple times for a 'highscore'.

[idle cedar]

that reminds me of that time when ralf fielded like, 47 grunt ronins or something like that

[frail moon]

quickly, dispatch the orochi drones, and fire off the drone pulse!

[idle cedar]

i also started working on a completely unrelated project yesterday lmao

Hopefully i will be able to focus on this project and use that as a learning moment for all the other projects

[idle cedar]

https://discord.gg/akTkHg3 hanging out in here :3

[idle cedar]

The theme of LANCER One-Shot Module Jam is Leviathan!

This could be something literal, like a giant creature in deep sea or deep space. Where is this creature, and what do people want from it?
It could be something Hobbesian, referring to a powerful government enforcing social contracts. What is the contract in question? How do people react?
It could be something metaphorical, like a gigantic spaceship, fleet, or machine. What is its mission? What happens to it?
It could be about an organization or person named Leviathan. Why are they called that? What is their cause, and who opposes them?

Or... it could be something completely different. What will you create?

[last frigate]

excited, thanks again for organizing all of this suji

[idle cedar]

time to get cooking

[final maple]

Immediately I am opening the wikipedia article for "Leviathan". I like this bit:

The Leviathan is often an embodiment of chaos, threatening to eat the damned when their lives are over.

[prime harness]

Hell yeah, whadda theme — can’t wait to get crackin and thanks for organizing

[ornate mist]

Let have a nice Jam!!!

[onyx fractal]

Thanks @idle cedar! Looking forward to making something rad

[tepid pecan]

oh 😔

is there any data on the full breakdown of which themes got how much?

[idle cedar]

short answer is yes but it'll take some time for a proper chart

[hollow turtle]

BOOM

got my narrative justifications out

[final maple]

Leviathan one shot: everyone pilots a Drake with a Leviathan Heavy Assault Cannon.

[tepid pecan]

huh

not what i was expecting at all, wild

[hollow turtle]

I expected Train to be higher mostly because Train Heist does sound fun but

I think a lot of people realized that that would happen

[tepid pecan]

im surprised train got as high as it did tbh

[hollow turtle]

So they selected against it enough to push it down the vote list

[idle cedar]

I'm surprised trophy was at the bottom

[final maple]

I thought "train" was a neat pun since it could imply a train heist, or, a training exercise.

[pastel thunder]

dbz type oneshot

[final maple]

You get me.

[tepid pecan]

i think most people probably just looked at the title and went with "how interesting does the word feel"

[final maple]

I'm surprised Crime is so high though, since with the space opera politics of Lancer's setting, every dramatic action PCs take in any campaign is likely to already be a crime under one jurisdiction or another.

"What is law and who dictates it" is a big thing. Which I certainly wouldn't have been averse to exploring in more detail.

[pastel thunder]

crime gives off a vibe though, when we hear crime the setting changes to a 1970 mafia show

[final maple]

Fair point.

[pastel thunder]

imagine: mafioso lancer

[honest pawn]

Crime is broad yeah; Mothership Month’s 21 projects were all themed off of “crime”

[hollow turtle]

Crime is also sure easy to use

[honest pawn]

And they cover stuff from bounty hunters to smugglers to prison adventures to illicit science

[split flame]

Ironically, my Friday night game is presently "fighting" a leviathan.

[hollow turtle]

like I know Suji tried to get the best selection of broad themes but Crime is so broad you could justify about anything

[south fern]

leviathan makes me think of an In Golden Flame spin off but i cant say much without spoilers xD

[final maple]

I'll be honest I'm beginning to seriously consider various spins on this.

[pastel thunder]

do you mean the varius spins of the AC or the topic

(joke^^)

[final maple]

Potentially including Crew Served Drake: a group of players collectively pilots one LeviCan Drake.

[split flame]

Megamorphin' Power Drake: Leviathan edition

[final maple]

If we're doing an experimental quick oneshot module, I wanna do something GOOFY.

[idle cedar]

i had a thought for doing that therapy session oneshot
but I'm not sure if I'll still do that one

but that's very goofy

[unborn bridge]

Then Gandalf the Grey and Gandalf the White
And Monty Python and the Holy Grail's black knight
And Benito Mussolini and the Blue Meanie
And Cowboy Curtis and Jambi the Genie
Robocop, The Terminator, Captain Kirk, and Darth Vader
Lo-pan, Superman, every single Power Ranger
Bill S. Preston and Theodore Logan
Spock, The Rock, Doc Ock, and Hulk Hogan

they all come together to defeat the leviethan which is not a copy of godzilla

[hollow turtle]

now you gotta make all these NPCs in Lancer

sorry, I don't make the rules

[idle cedar]

interstitial

[charred crow]

how are folks thinking about doing maps for the one-shot? mostly using the map tool?

[hollow turtle]

I got DungeonDraft so I'm gonna do that

[charred crow]

oooh

I have it, but it's all fantasy assets

are there scifi packs I should get

[hollow turtle]

Cartography Assets has a very good selection of stuff, but if you intend to sell this one shot, you need to make sure your stuff can be used commerically

[idle cedar]

i might go harder than usual on the map, depending on time

[hollow turtle]

if not then I suppose you don't have to worry

[idle cedar]

i should set out my primary mission objectives and bonus objectives

[hollow turtle]

I am personally going to use mostly PeaPu assets which has a wonderful selection of scifi and cyberpunk

[lost heron]

PeaPu a goated source of art for sci fi stuff

[robust ledge]

So. It's jamming time?

[hollow turtle]

It is in fact

Jammin Time ™️

[honest pawn]

I’m thinking of just using a simple square grid map that can be easily printed in a trifold (though I’ll likely be a late submission if anything)

[robust ledge]

Hell ye

[honest pawn]

I’ll probably still use ddraft for it though

[pastel thunder]

we're going to try and knock this out this afternyan

[charred crow]

Leviathan makes me think big enemy mech, but probably a lot of people are going to do that. How else are people interpreting the theme?

[pastel thunder]

fishing

[hollow turtle]

This is my take

[pastel thunder]

you could do a really fun take where the one shot is about rebelling against a leviathan of an organization

[robust ledge]

The legendary Lancer fishing minigame...

[idle cedar]

I'm probably going with one of:

• giant enemy battleship
• big evil corprostate
• something big failing and people trying to survive and/or thrive in the chaos

[hollow turtle]

Just boot up Webfishing and whoever gets the largest fish gets to go first every round

[pastel thunder]

you could also take inspiration from the religious implications of a leviathan

[idle cedar]

webfishing x lancer

leviathan also apparently represents envy, biblically? idk how to use that but

[hollow turtle]

Other than the giant ass ship my one shot has to kill, Theres also the name of my enemy group

[pastel thunder]

leviathan is also like
a primodial beast allegedly sealed in purgatory iwrc

[hollow turtle]

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

[pastel thunder]

but you could do the really funny thing and try to relate it to the ship of theseus

[hollow turtle]

fallen angel that apparently gave birth to a couple sons that killed Leviathan

Very fun wikipedia rabbit holing here

[charred crow]

that's a great tie-in

[idle cedar]

there's also the leviathan cannon which is a thing that exists in lancer canon

[idle cedar]

as someone brought up earlier

[pastel thunder]

final boss is 3 size 3 ultra drakes

[hollow turtle]

Quick someone make a mech named the Leviathan purely for the one shot

[robust ledge]

Sabotage the IPS-N/HA cooperation on the LHAC ammo teleporter

[charred crow]

I was eyeing Enhanced Combat's Behemoth

though it's sitrep-specific

[pastel thunder]

we have leviathan mountain kraken locked and loaded

[idle cedar]

you totally could design a HORUS Leviathan and ship it with the one shot

[pastel thunder]

oh we could use field guide to B.E.A.S.T. for this oneshot thats cute

[idle cedar]

what would horus Levi be about? Feels like a size 3 tech platform

[robust ledge]

Already have too many HORUS frames lol

[idle cedar]

you could do ipsn leviathan

[robust ledge]

7/20 of my mechs are HORUS

Insanity

[idle cedar]

caliban alt seems appropriate but idk how to make it big with that

[hollow turtle]

HA Leviathan, because someone in Think Tank got too creative with the name and HA couldn't backtrack

[idle cedar]

or drake alt leviathan... so you can run levican leviathan

is there a leviathan moth

[robust ledge]

Leviathan Drake Alt that can mount double sheavy

[hollow turtle]

probably

[robust ledge]

Double LHAC Leviathan

[idle cedar]

there's... behe moth

[pastel thunder]

horus leviathan (it has goblin core power but it turns into a gun when used)

[idle cedar]

3 sheavy mounts

you don't need to sacrifice a mount to put a weapon on it, and you can put any one weapon

wait that allows for double heavy barrage

jk sheavy only, fuck it

ipsn said "oh harrison you think you have the big guns? fuck you"

... you know, if you have 3 levican
you can actually barrage with two superheavies
which is just silly and probably impossible to abuse

[final maple]

I think there's a lot of room, in goofy one-shot module land, for strange bespoke premade PC loadouts. I'm here for it.

[idle cedar]

I'm aiming for mostly premade LL3 build

[last frigate]

elite monstrosity that will be causing havoc for both the players and the opfor

[idle cedar]

i see your elite monstrosity pitch and raise you environmental effect
moving dangerous terrain, forced save every round end, etc

[last frigate]

getting eaten by the ground is pretty funny ngl

i will probably include the dangerous flora thing from the environmental effect table in the core book

[final maple]

I'm tossing around the idea of Leviathan as a blackwash swarmship descending towards a planet. Though I'm also reading a lot in to the wikipedia article sentence "The Leviathan is often an embodiment of chaos, threatening to eat the damned when their lives are over." and thinking about an organization or virus eating through an archive of posthumous Homunculi.

[pastel thunder]

we're thinking of having multiple resources at the end of our book to allow gms who wish to continue playing with the general setting/premise to have the resources to do so; and to give those who really dont care more resources aswell

but our current premise is a union team being deployed to assist in the escorting of a giant megafauna hatefully known as 'the leviathan' as local religious cults want to get rid of it, and thats like, bad

[last frigate]

i'm kind of doing the same thing but letting the gm/players choose which side they want to be on. they can either be anti-poachers trying to drive off karrakin nobles from capturing an endangered species, or mercs hired by a noble to capture said species. all while the angry parent xenofauna is rampaging for obvious reasons

[pastel thunder]

oh we're having the combat take place on the back of the leviathan

because thats like, awesome

[last frigate]

hell yeah

[crystal wigeon]

Giant Whale-backed cities are big at the moment 🤔

[pastel thunder]

fuck yeah

[final maple]

Now that's cooking with gas.

[last frigate]

what about fighting on the inside of a space whale mouth

[pastel thunder]

we're excited to see how many people take the leviathan concept as "save the leviathan"

we love comments about preserving wildlife

wanting to also note: please dont let us dissuade you from making an epic leviathan bossfight, those are epic

[final maple]

Reading wikipedia more; I did not know about all this judaic writing about the serving of the flesh of Leviathan as a banquet in heaven.

"Grand banquet" would be a great take on the Leviathan theme IMO.

[pastel thunder]

would be funny if the next one-shot jam theme was "banquet" or "feast"

alot of people would already be halfway done a module!

[final maple]

Leviathan became associated with, and may originally have been referred to by, the visual motif of the Hellmouth, a monstrous animal into whose mouth the damned disappear at the Last Judgment, found in Anglo-Saxon art from about 800, and later all over Europe.

"Hellmouth" is a banger name for just about anything. A weapon, a place, an operation...

[idle cedar]

same map but you could play it as gauntlet or holdout, depending on which side you're on

[last frigate]

yeahhhh

[idle cedar]

you're sent to destroy project hellmouth, whatever it is

[south fern]

we should get a #lancer-news post about this perhaps

maybe the itch notification is announcement enough

[idle cedar]

i kinda wanna save it for when it's done

bc i think you're allowed two news posts per thing, right

or did I fabricate that memory

[pastel thunder]

no no youre right, but its 2 per module/release of content, we're unsure how the jam would count

so it may be good to discuss it with a moderator

even if the answer is the same, knowing is better than guessing

[final maple]

What's hidden there
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_Patera

[idle cedar]

with the most literal interpretation of that rule, we'd be allowed up to 100 news posts just for the jam and I think that's just not right

i think treating the jam like one thing is fair? I could touch base with a mod though

[pastel thunder]

it sure is something, but it would also be weird for the people who produce the books to not get the server boost an announcement like that would give them, jam aside

[robust ledge]

All rules are tempered by "the mods are people and not automatons, and thus can slap you with pool noodles for asking for 100 news posts"

[idle cedar]

but i also don't wanna be like "since your module was published through a jam, you can't get a news post about it" bc that's also unfair

[pastel thunder]

would thoroughly suggest discussing it with a mod tbh

maybe we could try to organize something like, a bundle? where all of our works can be packaged together in a codex of sorts so they can be announced all together

[honest pawn]

I mean doesn’t the jam already do that to a degree

You could make a bundle out of the jam though, that’s common

[idle cedar]

yeah I'll talk to someone about it

we have two mods participating too so that's neat

or at least, two watching the channel

i know eld has said he's doing something, not sure about ikiryo

[pastel thunder]

we may also get more!

[sharp summit]

Just seen the theme and it has set me thinking

[hollow turtle]

Realized that one of my failstates is gonna be a banger campaign start

[sharp summit]

Excited to see the results!

[pastel thunder]

ours would be "presumed dead in an otherwise successful mission, how do you feel about that"

[idle cedar]

we love to see fail states still providing positive outcome

[tepid pecan]

You know, it's weird, we've had Leviathan be a consistent and running theme in our campaign even if all of the options were strange

[idle cedar]

would it make sense at all to adapt one of the campaigns into a oneshot?

[tepid pecan]

Hm ? Oh its just a long running one that has the theme come up a lot. I want to talk a bit with others but it's just funny

[hollow turtle]

Mines: the pilots get taken prisoner by the mystery faction they’re fighting and now have to work their way back up to LL12 after breaking out’

[tepid pecan]

There's a creature generally mistaken as an archipelago who's respiration is why there are seasons, there's the armory secret project series, there's a computer powerful enough to be unable to distinguish the world it was built in from its simulated scenarios, etc

[spare jolt]

Please do not make jokes about things like that. Less out of 'moral outrage' and more 'that is going against the discord TOS and we would like this server to keep existing'.

[idle cedar]

ah yeah fair enough

I'll delete that

[neon hearth]

I do wonder how many will be doing underwater stuff

[spare jolt]

What was the themes we ended up with?

[fierce sedge]

Leviathan

Which does mean I have an excuse to put some flesh on the skeleton of an old scrapped setting of mine.

Would be fun to do that and potentially also try a smaller adventure set in it, though the adventure will be of secondary concern.

[onyx fractal]

I'm repurposing the first Lancer session I ever ran, which just so happened to work as a one shot

[onyx fractal]

Monster hunter vibes

[left mirage]

YES
YEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAS!

[lucid remnant]

(Sorry for deleting my first two posts, trying to phrase this well)

Excited to start on mine!
I feel I have a strong basic concept and good interpretation of the theme(Levithan, but pitched as Levithan Prince Of Envy)

Of Peter Binsfelds seven princes of hell

[left mirage]

Absolutely hype for Leviathan, this is probably the one I need to do the least work on.

SPOILERS FOR WINTER SCAR
||I willl follow the theme of Leviathan and redo the mission to destroy the Typhon at the end of Operation Winter Scar as a point crawl. Instead of following a close railroad, players will have the option of focusing different portions of the ship to fill up clocks the PCs can use to call in reserves or potentially disable the typhon for them, all while trying to minimize friendly casualties or desperate measures. The module will be timed, with some bad-result clocks ticking up as the session goes on.||

[idle cedar]

Isn't there a ||submarine|| in winter scar?

or is that solstice rain

[left mirage]

solstice rain! but the boarding action I'm desperate for (as a player) lies in OWS ;)

[idle cedar]

i see i see

[idle cedar]

hmm struggling a bit too fit my original idea into the theme
i don't really like the idea of "invade this diasporan world tyrant" if i can't also present the moral complexity of "well what are you gonna do after you're done" and i don't think i can fit both

i might aim for instead of a trained squad, it's a bunch of civilians using random assortment of items to resist some sort of threat

I've thought of something like "we're going to mine out the core of this world because nobody lives here" bc there's only a small colony who set up without the proper procedures, who will be forced to relocate without the core

[fierce sedge]

Think I got the structure I want to aim for and everything along those lines in place, but if anyone wants to brainstorm a novel idea together as well feel free to ping me about it.

Jams are a good excuse to deliberate on ideas you may not otherwise try out, and whilst I'm expecting to get to flesh out about two or three new concepts should everything go well, it could be fun to see what there is that one doesn't think about at first.

[hidden locust]

FUCKYEAH

[spare jolt]

...I've also realized something...heheheh

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dAaECU5vm_yKp-fSpHw9wAsBM2oJb63C95fosa3yIgs/edit?usp=sharing I made this ages ago. Though I do need to finish it up.

[meager juniper]

Hey, how long is the jam supposed to last? When are the modules supposed to be submitted?

[final maple]

Two weeks, with an additional month(?) grace period, iirc.

[spare jolt]

nods
As the 'christmas' timing is going to be a little annoying to work around (I'm going to be out of state for a few days) but I'll work with what I have.

[final maple]

I'm increasingly taking seriously "3 players pilot a single Levican Drake" as a concept. I'm thinking only one player can actually see the map, and the other players dictate their actions based on relayed descriptions and grid coordinates. I expect this to shake out to no real difference in tactical information and decisions, but, I suspect the goofery and roleplay of "Enemy Witch at G7!" "Fire the Assault Cannon at G7!" might be fun in itself.

[steel fog]

This'll call for more finesse than I'm used to but I'm tempted to write my submission in a way that you can read along as you play, kinda like how RIG does its thing

That aside though, I'm chewing on the idea of my leviathan being the product of momentum, an avalanche you can only stop by butting in before it has a chance to get going (perhaps I'll take this literally, I've always fancied how people sometimes shot at mountains & triggered avalanches on their own to deny the inevitable natural ones bulk)

[idle cedar]

i had an idea for a "you are a tank crew" rpg from long long time ago, i would love to see this

[idle cedar]

i think technically it's within guidance to just write a whole new system set in Lancer universe too so if you think regular lancer mechanics doesn't deliver on the goofiness...

[neon hearth]

so
could the conceptual leviathan
be D&D?

[steel fog]

Send them again

The people need the context
The statblocks

[final maple]

Hell yeah. This is absolutely building on the fantasy of a Tank Crew game.

[steel fog]

Madness perfected

[idle cedar]

lancers taking on dnd

[neon hearth]

my actual group is talking about doing a group of Lancers salvaging a Michael Ney that accidentally blinkspace'd itself to the bottom of the ocean

but the Light of Yoo-yun D&D* module has officially infested my brain

[ornate mist]

The idea I am rolling in my head right now is of a megacorp's colony world discovered by Union.

The world as is is a capitalist hellscape. The Leviathan refer to the whole system and megacorps that control the world and its government.

10 years after the contact, a new
president is elected who in a suprising twist, is not corrupted or controlled by the corp, all citizen love them, they are honest, reliable, and speech like a shonen protagonist. (Thinly veiled Metal Wolf Chaos reference)
He want to demolish the corp and secure alliance with Union.

The oneshot take place when the president was attacked by corp's PMC disguising as terrorist in one of their public speaking session.
The sitrep is an Escort.

The PCs can either be Union, or local soldiers who were protecting the venue using mechanized cavalry.

From the player perspective, the attack is initially simply caused by terrorist unhappy with their president allying with literal aliens. But they will discover that the attack is funded by the megacorp in a (not so) shocking twist.

The star of the show is the combat itself, which is an escort sitrep where the players have to escort the president and the citizen onsite to safety in a vehicle.

After a successful escort, the sitrep become a holdout, taking place on the same map.

[pastel thunder]

we've finished our module basically

we're going to do some playtesting and get some art for it but its practically finished

[spare jolt]

Nice. I...just started today.

[pastel thunder]

same hahaha

we're excited to hopefully put our work out soon so people can use it as inspiration of sorts

[steel fog]

Huh

[steel fog]

Fastest gun in the west

Had to do a double take there, I'm still pondering about mine

[pastel thunder]

we still have art and graphic design to do, so it really isnt that big of a thing we feel

[idle cedar]

that's wild lol
good job!

[pastel thunder]

we've forever cursed our friends by showing them how we do graphic design hahahahah

(they helped us optimize it)

[grim yarrow]

I'll start working on it in my language first, and then consider the possibility of translating it into English when it's all finished.

(I mean, if my one year old daughter is willing to give me enough time to work😭 )

[left mirage]

YEAH BABYYYY

[steel fog]

Technically

Whalefall falls under Leviathan

The one session constraint won't let me tackle the topics I wanted to (specifically, the scale of the aftereffects that stem from interacting with the fallen whale) but

More food for thought (pun intended)

[delicate geode]

Oh boy
Leviathan you say
Uh huhuh

We gonna get freaky with this

[unborn bridge]

Kill leviathan

flirt

[delicate geode]

Not that kinda freaky
Just
Expect obscure references

[buoyant snow]

So the theme is Leviathan?

[pastel thunder]

yeah

[buoyant snow]

ok, so how "long" should the document be? I know this is a super vague idea , but I wonder how much content goes in a oneshot?

[pastel thunder]

a oneshot is a game that ideally finishes in one session

the content that goes into it should generally be the content you go through in that one session

our oneshot is 2 combats and a downtime long but thats because we can run those games within 2hr and 30m

[delicate geode]

As much as you think it needs.
For a one shot.

[sweet gale]

Oh hey a theme

I had an idea about this that happened during a session a couple weeks back so I get to mess with it more

I'm reaching the horrifying realization that I'm gonna have to make an LCP for the idea I have though

[fierce sedge]

Oh no!

I feel ya though; considering sitting down to write a thing inspired by the style of Pound of Flesh and maybe Heart.

[sweet gale]

NPC is going to have too many mechanics for me to tell GMs "yeah boss idk just write the shit in manually"

[fierce sedge]

Which is going to require learning how to communicate that style lol.

[fierce sedge]

Just keep the novel mechanics to out of combat stuff ;).

[sweet gale]

Okay but consider the following. Mechanic that makes players have to involuntarily move their allies

I'm doing ye olde fashioned raid boss port

[fierce sedge]

...isn't that extremely common?

[sweet gale]

I've never had my players do it a single time

Even after suggesting it as a solution because they're in the tank

[fierce sedge]

I'm guessing you mean in some way that's distinct from like, Ferrous or Puppet.

Or grapples for that matter

[sweet gale]

At LL0, they won't have ferrous or puppet

[fierce sedge]

Mm that's fair. I did not too long ago end up having to use Balance Lockout from Chomolungma to get someone in position for an escort, but that's quite niche.

[sweet gale]

The point of the mechanic is to teach players you can involuntarily move allies via grapple+move/ram/BCL so I should hope the chungus players use it on their allies

[sweet gale]

I know the purpose of the jam is to do it within the timespan so I'm only doing rough concepts, but at the moment it's (spoiling for thalassophobia and themes therein):

||The party, for whatever reason, is deployed to confirm the status of and support an undersea facility of some sort. They've gone dark and lost communication with their support team, so mechs are being sent down to assess the situation. They find the base is intact, but something knocked out the power. Priority 1 is re-enabling defenses, which is a narrative challenge on a tight clock. At the end of the clock, The Jam Theme emerges and kicks off a holdout sitrep where whatever defenses the party enabled can be used in the combat.||

Some narrative gimmicks and little combat to put a bow on top of it.

I'm gonna spend the time until it starts scoping, gathering assets, and figuring out how to actually make a deliverable first

[south fern]

my main inspo is Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)

[sweet gale]

Mechanically, mine is (GW2 spoilers) ||Soo-won, The Elder Dragon of Water and Life.||

[sweet gale]

Related

[buoyant snow]

does anyone have that LaTeX Lancer template for documents?

[honest pawn]

https://tetragramm.itch.io/lancer-field-guide-to-field-guides

[buoyant snow]

thank you so much

[buoyant snow]

are there any artists who are looking to join a team?

[neon hearth]

idk Heart, but A Pound of Flesh is my favorite Mothership thing
so

👀

[idle cedar]

you can check lfg but it's pretty sparse
I think a lot of people are going solo

[buoyant snow]

are we assuming that we can only use the lancer core rulebook? If so, does this mean that the players will not be able to use the Sagamartha and or Cholomugna?

[pastel thunder]

we're personally using crb and OWS since we dont remember there being any definitive rules against using more than CRB

[south fern]

modules dont dictate anything about player builds. they dont tend to use NPC classes from other modules, for example, because it raises the barrier of entry for this one. E.g., say you make a module that references Lurker NPCs, now, people that want to run your module need to also purchase Wallflower to gain access to the Lurker NPC class

[pastel thunder]

plus its a leviathan theme, itd kinda feel bad if we couldnt use marine templates

[south fern]

player content is free, so it doesnt increase the barrier of entry

[honest pawn]

Yeah, though including even free stuff outside of CRB does run the risk of “will the GM allow it” as well as any Download Fatigue

That said at least it’s not a monetary barrier to entry

It’s just nonzero in my personal opinion

[idle cedar]

don't use things that you have to pay for
freely available lcp are fair game

[pastel thunder]

is this something we have to keep in mind for our module

because we will note again;
not having access to gm tools is kind of a feelsbad

[idle cedar]

the goal is that

if someone wants to run the module, they shouldn't need to buy anything other than crb

[south fern]

3rd party license i think allows modules depending on others, but i think it breaks the spirit of the jam

[honest pawn]

“Playable with only the CRB” is a good goal for any project imo

[idle cedar]

if there's free 3p content, that's fair too

[pastel thunder]

we'd just generally disagree with that notion entirely but we suppose if its something we have to do for the jam we'll note it

we should say this should very likely be announced

[hollow turtle]

okay I need some formatting help yall:

I got a boss Ultra Specter with 20 HP. Ultra Template gives Specter an extra 5HP and normally I use Foundry drag and drop to just shove the Bonus HP from RPV onto enemies I wanna give more health to. How should I represent this random +5HP in the document?

[neon hearth]

If you're not hard up on space, you might throw in alternate comps/things using other stuff

like

[idle cedar]

it's in the itch post under requirements

[pastel thunder]

understood

we havent been keeping up with the itch page so it makes sense we missed it

[neon hearth]

I'm going to have a few sidebars on Bonds

because while the module is playable without Bonds

Stress mechanics add a lot to what I'm trying to do

[idle cedar]

I'm so bad at handing out stress

[south fern]

it's sad i cant use Disney's art for this xD

[charred crow]

In case you need

[charred crow]

I would give it an additional system that grants +5 hp just so it's explicit

[hollow turtle]

Yeah i did that in my initial notes but i might change it so its Resilient (x2) instead if diving into RPV

[ornate mist]

I think I am aiming for like 8 pages ish

First 2 are introduction, foreword and stuff
2 more for setting and narrative challenge
2 for combat sitrep
1 more for aftermath
1 more as a reference compendium for quick checking

This is probably the bare minimum page count

Might increase it to 10 for comfort, maybe 12 if content creep happen

[onyx fractal]

I'm targeting 16-18 but A5 paper so less content per page

Also I think 18 is the minimum for lulu printing if I do that

[hollow turtle]

Me: gives artist guidelines
Artist: can I do more?
Me: pls I don't wanna burn you out.
Artist: :3 but art tho
Me: theres only like two weeks
Artist: pls
Me: folds under the massive pressure

(Very joking rendition of the convo I just had with my artist)

[idle cedar]

very very exciting

[hollow turtle]

Me and my artist

[idle cedar]

don't make me tap the sign
Don't work too hard
👆

[unborn arch]

Alrighty so! I'm properly putting myself out there if a project could use an additional artist (pro-bono/pay want you want)! I can commit myself to one piece of mech art, along with two headshots/busts; I would do more but I am gonna be out of town for the second week of the jam. For reference on my artstyle:

[hollow turtle]

while I wait for my cover art to magically appear, placeholder cover go

[idle cedar]

these look great

love that angled layout

[ornate mist]

mfw i am my own artist and still go throught the same convo

[unborn bridge]

but what if more

[hollow turtle]

Ikiryo coming in clutch with the Pin

[idle cedar]

Priority 0: Don't work too hard
Priority 1: Finish something
Priority 2: Make it cool
Priority 3: Make it cool as heck

[ornate mist]

3 LAW OF ROBOTIC jam?

[idle cedar]

I'm stuck between the protagonists being: a bunch of retired combat veterans (+ a new guy), or a trained strike team (including a new guy) who gets stuck behind enemy lines

if going with retired vet route, it'll be about getting their cozy little colony attacked by someone and trying to protect the stuff they care about
if going with strike team route, it'll be about trying to complete the mission, even after taking heavy losses (like the squad leader's death)

[ornate mist]

I will say strike team

There is more room for diverse set of characters than retired old vets (as least in term of age)

[idle cedar]

it's like, expendables type vibe

but now that you mention it, it would be kinda funny to have a retired veteran be like, pretty young bc they've been fighting since preteen (it's not child soldier, it's """internship""")

25 year old veteran who had been in service for 10 years

is that too cursed? perhaps

[ornate mist]

I am stealing that haha

[idle cedar]

feel free!

i also had thoughts about one old veteran training townsfolk how to fight against an invader and leading them into battle, in which case everyone's a civilian who just received a bit of training

which could also be pretty fun

just trying to come up with justification for why a little colony gets invaded is kinda tough

thought about "paperwork got messed up and their colony was never registered, so their world got sold to someone who wants to destroy the biosphere and also wipe out the evidence that there was anyone ever here"

which kinda feel cartoonishly evil

but maybe that's okay

[ornate mist]

Yeah, being cartoonishly evil is perfectly acceptable for oneshot

Aint got time to consider moral quanadrum yet lol

[neon hearth]

Pirates / local warlord doing some extortion?

"you didn't pay the Not Being Invaded tax, so guess what happens now"

[ornate mist]

Protection racket

[neon hearth]

also:
while not strictly one-shot module jam related
I completed my pre-jam one-shot module
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bqh0QJ5QGFwQhnVKCKYba5BccVsqLpBRKggcEP2Q7_c/edit?tab=t.0
with thanks to folks here for the feedback

I plan on doing one or two playtests, incorporating the feedback, and calling it done
but its now content-complete

[idle cedar]

nice! happy for you

[serene canyon]

yo @idle cedar what do prefer
Suji, Nimoos, or something else
I'm putting you in the special thanks category

[idle cedar]

uhh Suji is fine

i don't think I'm changing the name for a long time

[serene canyon]

sick

[onyx fractal]

Congrats!

[spare jolt]

Anyone have any suggestions on getting formatting done for someone with no experience or skill at it?

[honest pawn]

Are you looking to do something bespoke or something close to the “Lancer trade dress”?

[spare jolt]

More the latter due to limited skill

[honest pawn]

I’d rec Explorer’s Design for the former and my Lancer RPG Template for the latter

There’s a free style guide in the demo: https://valkyrion.itch.io/lancer-rpg-template

It’s on sale, but it’s cc-by so you can legally bum it off a friend for free

[onyx fractal]

Valk's template is pretty great for that yeah

[torn charm]

snagged that myself since I'd been meaning to

[spare jolt]

Thanks.

[onyx fractal]

Man. Naming things is super hard.

[idle cedar]

placeholder names!

[onyx fractal]

Oh I have placeholder names. I'm trying to unplacehold them!

[hollow turtle]

Me when in my notes I put: the planet of (why the fuck doesn’t this have a name)

[south fern]

Project Placeholder™️

[idle cedar]

{{planetname}} so I can Ctrl+F all the {{ to see which ones still use placeholder names

[south fern]

^ handlebars user

[idle cedar]

I use those because specifically I never use the curly braces anywhere else

I use () these pretty often, and I sometimes use []

but {}, I hate how they look

[onyx fractal]

Most of mine are <TBD>

[hollow turtle]

Remember if ur making a map in DungeonDraft to check if you have commercial rights ti the assets!

[idle cedar]

thinking about making the main antagonist a pathetic middle manager instead of some mustache twirling villain

[hollow turtle]

Give em a mustache worth twirling tho

Itll be funny

[idle cedar]

some sort of "hey... that's company property... please don't touch it? My promotion depends on this and I really don't want to do the paperwork for escalating the situation"

Please let me extract all the freshwater from your little cozy planet? 🥺

[idle cedar]

https://jazzybee.itch.io/sdvcharactercreator
https://jazzybee.itch.io/sdv-creator-masc
Found stardew valley themed portrait creator

might go all in on the "your cozy town gets invaded by a company" vibe by using these portraits
Uses CC-BY-SA 4.0 which allows commercial use as long as I attribute the original creator and maintain same license

so it also needs to be cc-by-sa 4.0 I guess? oh I guess that means no commercial use

• As the user, you agree to waive all rights and claim no ownership over any image created through the use of the "Tool." All rights to the materials and images and the Copyright therein remain with the License holders of the “Tool”.
• You are prohibited from selling or distributing materials and images created through using the "Tool" with the aim of obtaining profits directly or indirectly through third parties.
• You are allowed to share and adapt images created through the use of the "Tool" for non-commercial purposes and with appropriate attribution and credit to the License holders.
• Any action that obfuscates or misattributes the ownership of the Copyright of the materials or images is prohibited.

yep I can't use it if I wanna make it pwyw or paid w/ community copies

[honest pawn]

CC-BY-SA on its own doesn’t preclude commercial use; CC-BY-NC-SA does though

However, if there’s parts of the licensor’s terms that forbids commercial use (like mentioned), it’s likely best to adhere to them

[idle cedar]

yeah those bullet points were on the itch page

[honest pawn]

Yup yup

[idle cedar]

I'll figure something else out, no problem

[honest pawn]

I merely wanted to clarify CC-BY-SA terms, that’s all

[idle cedar]

I think the pregen team is going to be: Everest, Drake, Swallowtail, Goblin, Sherman
represents every manufacturer and every class
and if the characters are chosen in the order they were presented, there's a decent bit of balance and synergy there too

oh I wonder if I can I use lancer tactics character generator for this

[hollow turtle]

Desperately trying to resist putting a cat on my map

[idle cedar]

cat how

[hollow turtle]

like an actual cat asset

Its not the time nor the place

[idle cedar]

you can have a cat elsewhere maybe?

[hollow turtle]

I can be professional and place a cat on my other maps

not these

on a side note, First map done (reactor Token is a separate item)

[hollow turtle]

signs up for Jam

actually has to write lore for the idea thats been floating in their head all this time

Who could of foreseen this complication

[fierce sedge]

As someone who hides cats in all maps I make if possible, I say do it.

[idle cedar]

escort a cat to safety

[charred crow]

I'm dreading working on a real map, but I'm putting together a narrative section right now and made a (much easier) narrative map for an on-site mine & refinery

I know we're not supposed to include non-core content, but I'd ideally like to use a clock to represent growing enemy awareness. Is there a non-Wallflower way to include a basic clock system?

[idle cedar]

yeah clock is used like, everywhere

[spare jolt]

Clocks don't come from wallflower, they're a broader RPG thing

[idle cedar]

earliest i know comes from bitd but it might be older

[charred crow]

BitD is the best use of them, but it seems odd to say "use a 4-segment clock (see the rules for BitD)"

[idle cedar]

you can explain it again in your book

and if you want, add a section about "hey check out bitd or wallflower if you want"

[split flame]

Concept maps are dope!

[crystal wigeon]

Yeah, get me to do it 😁 I still have some collab bandwidth for this jam

My lfg post with my info: https://itch.io/t/4268119/graphic-designer-for-layout

[honest pawn]

Consider phrasing it in a different way then, or briefly describing what a clock is in your appendix

Consider if it’s easier to express the clock diegetically, like if it’s actually time passing then just use time instead

[onyx fractal]

You could describe clocks without using the terminology. Just say something like

"To track enemy awareness, draw a circle and divide it into X pie segments. Each time Y happens, fill in a segment. When the circle is full, Z happens."

[charred crow]

that sounds very doable

[honest pawn]

Can do it with dice too, or tallies or other “counters”

[idle cedar]

started writing up questionnaires and it's hard lol

will still go through with it though

[hollow turtle]

I think I got all foreword stuff down except the content warning

That's always been difficult to parse at times, espically with how little narrative is involved

its mostly just 'Lancer typical violence' and uh... maybe background threat to a civilian population?

[fierce sedge]

From my own point of view, a content warning is mainly useful when it reflects the author's thoughts and intent about their works; being closer to a manifesto than it would a product label.

In so doing there tends to be an awareness of not only what the work contains, but how it portrays those subjects.

[hollow turtle]

Huh that’s a cool way of putting it

thinks

Then I suppose warning about the frantic and critical nature of the one shots overall narrative and the stuff listed above might do

Thanks

[left mirage]

RESOURCE FOR THOSE OF YOU WORKING WITH A TEAM

I highly recommend task apps with support for nested tasks and sharing like tick tick

[ornate mist]

yeah, like if you are running something gritty where the nature of urban combat and civilian casualties are touched on deeply, is completly different than if you are running a corny overthetop campaign where villain want to blow up a planet (with all the fridge logic conveniently ignored)
completly different tone, and only one of the two need content warning

[hollow turtle]

Yeah my confusion in this case is because while the one shot doesn't have a lot of space for narrative... the fact the whole set up is throwing LL12s into a combat so the Big Bad's huge warship doesn't get to do bad things before the Union Fleet arrives, does feel like it needs a little bit of something

Its not jokey, its actually quite dire even if there's little time explore those the PCs are protecting

[hollow turtle]

Yall my artist just hit me with the hardest cover concept for my idea i could never have thought of and I am shook

[crystal wigeon]

Things that need doing

Process

• Production - timeline, deadlines and progress tracking (can each do this for your own tasks but still should be done for best chance of success)
• team check-ins (important for morale)
• (optional) itch.io blog / PilotNET progress updates

Concept

• premise/outline
• structure / beat planning
  Content
• narrative writing
• combat
  • SitRep
  • OpFor
  • success/failure conditions and outcomes
• book layout +design
  Iteration
• proof-reading
• playtesting (if possible)
• edits, esp. in response to player feedback
  Delivery
• pdf export
• itch.io page setup
  • promo copy
  • promo images
  • team credits
• project upload

Optional extras that would add a lot:

• art (characters, location environment, enemy/friendly mechs, scene illustrations (expensive))
• GM tips and tools
• pre-made characters +builds
• combat map

[hollow turtle]

Good breakdown!

Very organized

[fierce sedge]

Not quite the point I was making, since in both you can write what your intention is with the work and that will serve well as a content warning for both.

[idle cedar]

having some fun with it

[idle cedar]

omg I should give her a cat, to honor this

when the players first encounter her, it's gonna be like
she's sitting in her rotating chair, turns around and facing the camera, with her cat on her lap
and tries to give a whole monologue but the cat jumps off and that just throws her off the flow

[ornate mist]

fantastic

[idle cedar]

I was going to make all the player character questionnaires first, but then I realized it's eating up all my time so I'm just gonna scrap that for now

Just gonna write up a plot and opfor, and if I have time, I'll add some characters

[hollow turtle]

Me: calls her one shot 'Bleed the heart'
Me: yeah I'm cooking with my names

This is so exciting I am having so much fun working on thissss

[thorny sand]

this is my first time messing with making a pdf at all, let alone in lancers style and im having fun messing around with design ideas

[hollow turtle]

Very nice

[thorny sand]

valks lancer template has been a life saver because i have no experience in design in word processors so im way out of my depth atm. wouldnt have been able to make anything more than a color coated essay without it

[idle cedar]

hell yeah

[idle cedar]

man I feel like I was in over my head, struggling with my own timeline haha

[ornate mist]

for the setting of my oneshot, I am considering a more fantastical planet concept. A skyborn civilisation ontop of a gas planet, with floating modular city that conveniently setup a point crawl

something like this http://mkettingtonbooks.com/exploring-solar-system.html

[honest pawn]

I’m glad the template is helping! That said, I honestly regret using the big red banner that blocks part of the art on my template. I might suggest something different with your title page though:

top left corner is mostly dark space, you could put a text box with no background up there with your title and tagline?

Top right corner could have the powered by Lancer logo, then

[charred crow]

Does anyone know how the lancer size icons get made for frames/NPC classes, or does anyone have a Size 5 icon they'd be willing to share?

I'd like to make my leviathan npc sufficiently leviathan-y

[onyx fractal]

Meaning, you don't know what a size 5 should look like, or you are wondering if someone has already made a size 5 template?

[charred crow]

I want a pretty graphic to put in my one-shot

I know at least Interpoint has done it in the past with their behemoth npc, but idk how that was achieved

I checked valk's lancer fonts, but that only covers sizes 1/2 - 4

[onyx fractal]

Oh, that

So, you want a size 5 version of that icon

[charred crow]

yeah, idk what to call that thing

"size icon" I guess?

[onyx fractal]

Size Indicator?

[charred crow]

I did some searching in discord but the terms are very generic

I think I can hack something ungodly together between foundry's polygon tool and ms paint

in case anyone needs it

[onyx fractal]

ayy

Did you make that or did you find that?

[charred crow]

I made it

not the cleanest thing

[onyx fractal]

It works

[charred crow]

used the polygon tool in foundry, screengrabbed & cropped in ms paint, overlayed with text in google drawing

bodge life

[idle cedar]

it looks good

[hollow turtle]

Oh damn that’s right I have New Years Day off 🤔

Might playtest my one shot that day

[eternal dagger]

I wanted to ask in here first, would anyone like to test out the sitrep I've got cooking?

I think an LL 3-4 team would be appropriate

[hollow turtle]

I wish I had more time because I would love to contribute to the playtest pot but I can’t

[eternal dagger]

I understand the grind

[hollow turtle]

Full time night job will kill that for ya

[onyx fractal]

I don't have time to test it but I can probably give some high level thoughts

[idle cedar]

put something in #lancer-game-recruiting and specify that this is a playtest and you'd like some constructive feedback

[hollow turtle]

My currently best thing for myself is that while my job crimps my playtest time, I am using the LL12 one shot I’ve ran twice as a basis for the enemies I use

So I have experience with the NPCs getting dunked on

Just not on this exact set of maps

[onyx fractal]

I'm liking how my layout is coming along

Typst makes it so damn easy to write in layout

[honest pawn]

I know I'm gonna be a late submission, but this is the quick and dirty introduction pitch I just hammered out:

Kill the Noise

Jörmungandr-5 speaks with one voice. Every forum post, omninet drama, and song conform to a shared vision of society, empowering the planetary government's autocratic agenda.

This voice is a lie, and all citizens know it.

Botnet nodes created and maintained by state media Vox Vulpis regurgitate jingoistic sentiments and suppress countercultural media, a propaganda engine manufacturing the citizenry's consent to be governed.

It's high time for Jörmungandr-5 to change its tune. It's time to Kill the Noise.

[hollow turtle]

https://tenor.com/view/lets-go-johnny-silverhand-keanu-reeves-cyberpunk2077-shades-off-gif-26950453

Looks great!

[honest pawn]

Thank you! The theme really helped me pull the concept together

[hollow turtle]

We still got a week!

[honest pawn]

I will be hosting friends next week lol, I know what time I have haha

[hollow turtle]

Rip

[charred crow]

I think I've got mine done

[onyx fractal]

A couple WIP spreads

[charred crow]

sans playtesting, which is not gonna happen before the deadline, but also definitely needs to be done because I asspulled some NPCs

[charred crow]

wow typst looks clean

[onyx fractal]

Taking a lot of cues from the Explorer's Design Classic Template

[onyx fractal]

thanks!

[charred crow]

submitted! yay!

time to panickingly pack for my flight

[hollow turtle]

I want to pet the Borehulk

[onyx fractal]

CAUTION: DO NOT PET THE BOREHULK

[hollow turtle]

I AM GOING TO PET THE LONG DOGGO

[honest pawn]

already found some open clipart for a logo for the villain faction: https://openclipart.org/detail/299779/fox-head

[onyx fractal]

You win the prize for first submission of the jam!

[charred crow]

it was totally worth putting off all my other chores

[honest pawn]

Basic Attrition in Narrative Play guidelines I'm using:

Through narrative play, PCs explore the city of Edda to disrupt Vox Vulpis operations.

During Disruption, make all narrative skill checks should be Heroic and Difficult by default. However, PCs may use their mechs to improve their chances of success or efficacy, if usage makes sense in context. Risk decreases from Auto-Fail > Heroic > Risky > Normal > Auto-Success:
• +1 Accuracy for each: Declare use of Pilot Talent, Pilot Gear, Mech Equipment, or some other factor.
• Reduce Risk by 1: Destroy a Weapon or System, increase Overcharge by 1.
• Reduce Risk by 2: Reduce Structure or Stress by 1, Expend an Efficient Core Power.
• Reduce Risk by 3: Expend a Core Power.

1/session, when a PC makes a skill check for an action that follows the ideal of their hype track, they may roll the check twice and take either result.

[onyx fractal]

Haha nice

[idle cedar]

thoughts on ticking overcharge for this?

oh jk I'm blind

i like this a lot, great structure, and very flexible

[honest pawn]

Thank you!

and of course a lot of this is heckin fast and loose

[thorny sand]

Already fixed part of this! Wanted as much of the art visible at first but figured there was a lot of blank space so I put the Powered by Lancer and Made by Humans tags on the cover. Also might try the first party book style of a black bar with the title at the top or bottom rather than over the art

[honest pawn]

I think I originally got the red banner idea from the third party Field Guide to the Short Rim but yeah just kinda regret using it lol

[thorny sand]

Fair. I've seen multiple books and media use the red banner through the center as well so I think it's just something we're used to rather than an artistic choice

first cover revision using the same style. gonna try actually making other styles next. your template does make it easy to change too. just drage the red down to whicever page end and make it black

I also chose classical/traditional art for the cover because a good few third party works use that approach as well so it felt fitting

[split flame]

I.. have an idea.

[honest pawn]

Yeah no no problem there, classic public domain art is good shit

[idle cedar]

could you do a line break like THAT WHICH//LURKS WITHIN

[fierce sedge]

Yeah, though I do want to tr to see if I can't throw something simple together for a cover in Affinity.

Thinking of a simple vector mix of the layers of a gas giant in an abstract composition reminiscent of an eye, and if need be some teeth to evoke Jaws vibes.

[thorny sand]

Yeah I was debating how to split up the title. I'll add it in the revisions

[fierce sedge]

Think that what I'm making will take a good deal longer than the two weeks of the jam, as I'm going to have a jab at a multi-layer thing, but I should be able to cordon off a sinking research lab as a Oneshot and potential jumping off point for further misadventures within the setting.

[fierce sedge]

Essentially just fleshing out the old idea I described in this particular conversation, in the forwarded message and a few below it. Should work out fine for experimentation since it's nothing particularly fancy, yet evocative enough to function as a foundation.

[honest pawn]

Super cool hard scifi concept, nice

[fierce sedge]

Oh haha, no no it's extremely soft sci-fi in the end as I'm mainly concerned with the setting as a vehicle and thematic tool.

This one is an old setting that's a technical piece I can make work without too much issue, but didn't find myself wanting to run for an extend period of time. So this is where it'll find its home.

[honest pawn]

That’s fair I just liked the idea of “hey this is a natural phenomenon so what would life be like there”

[fierce sedge]

Which is something I'll be exploring here; one of the events ongoing is tensions rising as the settlement of the Old Buoy prepares to be plunged into the depths of the abyss.

It's something which happens every few years to decades, but to have it coincide with already fraught relations turns the place into a literal powderkeg.

Just going to have to flesh out some of the locations within the three primary layers, occurrences and locations there within, and from there the three primary conflicts and how they may develop.

But yeah for this particular module it'll probably just be a snapshot of one of those three conflicts.

[sweet gale]

Alright. We're cooking.

Turns out making an LCP isn't as spooky as I thought

[honest pawn]

Designing city district maps I don’t hate will be the death of me

I think I have some decent options drawn up now though

At least on a conceptual level

[fierce sedge]

I feel ya. I'm planning on cheating a little by doing a metro-style map, either true 2d or slightly isometric, of the different sectors of the main hub.

Twas one of the things I wanted to check out most in Pound of Flesh actually, as well as their approach to location information.

[spare jolt]

A friend of mine is working on our map and it's going to be a bit of an odd one. Basicly: A whole heap of ships in a ship graveyard, with water in between them.

[sweet gale]

Getting silly with some abilities here

Though organic and lacking a heat cap, FEESH is vulnerable to electronic warfare systems interfering with its means of perceiving the world around it. As a result, it is vulnerable to tech actions. Any heat these actions deal are applied as an equivalent amount of AP energy damage. Talents and Systems that would trigger upon exceeding an enemy's heat cap trigger if FEESH is structured by this damage instead.```

[spare jolt]

So you need to jump, fly or swim to get from ship to ship.

[fierce sedge]

On a related note, here's a particularly cursed reference image I've collected: https://www.reddit.com/r/LondonUnderground/comments/zs4xmn/isometric_tube_map/

Tis so cursed I couldn't even post it here at first.

[fierce sedge]

Oh that's a fun one, had a metavault-turned-bar like that once which was quite something. It's a neat way to give some character to a place.

Believe it's Gargantia of the Verdant Planet which does something similar, though with functional-ish ships instead. I've never actually watched the show, but I remembered the ship-cities.

[hollow turtle]

Finished my Spacescape for my oneshot

[idle cedar]

I wanna create a new sitrep but idk if the name is taken, with so many 3p sitreps around

might just call it "modified control" and call it a day

thinking of something where you can disable water pumps either as a protocol or as a full action
so if you control the area and you've held the point for a while, you can do it as a free action instead of spending a full action
but you can do a full action if round is running out and you just gotta finish the objective

[split flame]

I love sit reps where it's a QA for manipulation objs but where manipulators make it a free action (or requiring dismounting mech or manipulators).

[idle cedar]

yeah i can totally make it QA if you have manipulators

[idle cedar]

i do wanna keep it at full action bc there's the protocol option though

[onyx fractal]

Current draft of my spread explaining how to run high-impact narrative scenes and skill checks

[spare jolt]

Pondering putting the players in a D&D 4e style skill challenge for the narrative scene for mine.

[onyx fractal]

Nice, read a long post on Knight at the Opera recently on skill challenges https://knightattheopera.blogspot.com/2021/12/a-thorough-look-at-skill-challenges_11.html

I don't think a skill challenge works exactly for what I have in mind for my module but it probably works well for others

[spare jolt]

In this case it's tracking down an underwater threat.

So basicly the two levers here are: Tracking and Time.

If you run out of time, you have to go into the fight blind.

If you track it down while you've still got time left, you can use that for prep to make the fight easier

[sweet gale]

I thought there was a chance that the image I grabbed for the cover may have been AI generated after looking at the creator's profile and seeing it was almost all AI, but ithe image I'm using was published in 2016 so it's probably safe

[hollow turtle]

Can i take a look at it? I like to think my AI spotting skills are pretty sharp

[sweet gale]

Do you mind if I take the conversation to DMs to not clog the channel?

[hollow turtle]

Course not! DM away!

[last frigate]

can i get a sanity check on the combat i've planned for the module?

Initial:
- Giant Capybara (hostile to PCs and NPCs)
  - Size 2 Elite Monstrosity (Rampage, Aggression)
- For 3 PCs
  - Sniper (Moving Target)
  - Priest (Empowered Shield)
  - x2 Grunt Sentinel (Fearless Defender, Bodyguard/Reflexive Blow)
- For 4 PCs
  - Add Veteran to Sniper, gains Selective Loader, +AGI
- For 5 PCs
  - Add Veteran to Priest, gains Sanctuary, +SYS

Reinforcements:
- For 3 PCs
  - Veteran Assassin (Spinning Kick, Acrobat, +AGI)
  - x2 Grunt Archer (Hail of Fire)
- For 4 PCs
  - Engineer (Extrudite)
- For 5 PCs
  - Add Scout (Spotter)```

i'm worried that with the capybara it might be too much outgoing damage

[idle cedar]

how will the capybara behave?

[last frigate]

i was thinking some kind of "behavior die"

where you roll a d6 on a table which determines its behavior

can be an attack, can be some kind of environmental effect, etc

[idle cedar]

Could you swap out the sniper for a different artillery maybe? I think you have a lot of single target damage maybe

also sniper+priest is kind of a weird combo right

[last frigate]

guess i could do a bombard?

i just wanted the sniper cause it was thematic

[idle cedar]

idk what's a good support for sniper

maybe aegis? or someone to pull people out of cover

[onyx fractal]

Prototyping intensifies

[onyx fractal]

Mirage

[last frigate]

aegis is a good one or mirage

beat me to it lol

idk i kinda like the priest's empowered shield giving overshield to the grunts

but aegis is a better overall fit

[fierce sedge]

Considering that the Capybara is hostile to both sides, it's difficult to evaluate. I do think it looks fine overall for the 3 PC version.

For 4 and 5 respectively, the additional structure in the initial deployment and one NPC in the reinforcements are on the lighter side, leading me to suspect this will be a very easy combat for a 5 player group.

[sweet gale]

A NPC with a "size matters" gimmick isn't a bad homebrew trope, right

[fierce sedge]

If it's something that can be meaningfully interacted with it should be fine.

But difficult to comment on without more detail

[sweet gale]

https://tenor.com/view/well-yes-but-actually-no-meme-aardman-the-pirates-pirate-gif-26563702

The "size matters" gimmick is that it has AoE abilities (NOT WEAPONS) which scale by NPC size+1 to represent Big Fish

And some of these abilities leave an area of it exposed. The bigger the fish, the bigger the exposed area

Weapons are weapons. They do not scale.

[last frigate]

appreciate the advice. my playtest group only has 4 players so i can't test it, but i'll go back to the drawing board for it

[onyx fractal]

Uh

Not sure if this submission is... legit? https://itch.io/jam/lancer-one-shot-module-jam/rate/3208090

no way in hell am I installing that on my phone

No offense to anyone here

[sweet gale]

Certainly seems to be a submission that doesn't meet the guidelines

[honest pawn]

Worth a report

[last frigate]

reported

[idle cedar]

there's some people who joined jams without any ttrpg history

I didn't look at everyone who joined bc I'm just, not gonna investigate 100+ people

[onyx fractal]

It's giving big spam energy

[idle cedar]

but like... it was pretty clear what this jam is

[onyx fractal]

People submit their garbo knowing it will have a nonzero number of eyes

[idle cedar]

oh I can disqualify it

sick

[fierce sedge]

Mm, if so I do think it in terms of difficulty is looking like it is tuned highest for 3 players and lowest for 5. 3 players I suspect is pretty common for combats to not always be balanced with in mind, since it tends to also be heavily affected by map design and objectives.

[last frigate]

Initial:
- Giant Capybara (hostile to PCs and NPCs)
  - Size 2 Elite Monstrosity (Rampage, Aggression)
- For 3 PCs
  - Sniper (Moving Target)
  - Aegis (Adaptive Shielding)
  - x2 Grunt Sentinel (Fearless Defender, Bodyguard/Reflexive Blow)
- For 4 PCs
  - Add Veteran to Sniper, gains Selective Loader, +AGI
  - Mirage (Metafold Shove)
- For 5 PCs
  - Add Veteran to Aegis, gains Ring of Fire, +SYS

Reinforcements:
- For 3 PCs
  - Veteran Assassin (Spinning Kick, Acrobat, +AGI)
  - x2 Grunt Archer (Hail of Fire)
- For 4 PCs
  - Barricade (Extrudite)
  - x2 Grunt Sentinel (Fearless Defender, Bodyguard/Reflexive Blow)
- For 5 PCs
  - Add Scout (Spotter)
  - x2 Grunt Hornet (Lock/Hold Javelin)```

this is what i've updated it with so far

4 players feels better but 5 still feels off

[idle cedar]

thinking about using ultra cataphract with short cycle lance

gotta do some structure damage

[honest pawn]

made in Dungeondraft, using line assets from Santy's RPG Condundrum. Little symmetric district map using everyone's best friend, the tetrominos

[fierce sedge]

Throwing in some asymmetry does make it more visually interesting.

[honest pawn]

I like it also because the outline is nicely symmetric and fits a svelte profile on a trifold (I could rotate it 90 degrees, too)

[sweet gale]

So I noticed that some 3rd party stuff has copyright info specific to the document on it and some doesn't. Is that a thing I/we need to worry about?

[honest pawn]

By default, you’re assumed to have all rights reserved to your document, but it can’t hurt to explicitly include copyright

Do you have a particular example of what you’re worried about?

Like screenshot or something

[sweet gale]

I'm mostly confused because I've seen it done a couple different ways (and also I don't know if it's a thing I can just write or if there's something more formal)

But as some of the ways I've seen it

[thorny sand]

i was curious about this as well. not sure if its just a formality or something necessary

[onyx fractal]

That's a mandatory disclosure required by the lancer third party license

https://massifpress.com/legal

I would follow that link

[thorny sand]

oh i know about the disclosure. already included necessary legalities. i was wondering if we needed to make our work subject of our own copywrite

[onyx fractal]

So you more mean the ©️ Derpy 2025 part

[thorny sand]

yeah

is that necessary?

[onyx fractal]

Technically the copyright is implied but it doesn't hurt to make it explicit

[thorny sand]

gotcha

also got a semi-final cover layout decided. art and title are subject to possible change but other than that its good (ive had little else to work on while my friend working with me does most of the narrative writing)

cant wait to start work on mechanics and combat structure

[sweet gale]

so for formality's sake, it should be like

[onyx fractal]

That works

[sweet gale]

I wish I could put a little extra on my cover, but can't find an image like what I'm looking for in any of the databases

[onyx fractal]

Just posted two local playtest sessions

for the 1st and 2nd

Got a lot to do before then

Including printing pregens...

And also doing, like, the rest of the adventure

I think I have the NPCs sorted, except for some optionals. I might wing the map on playtest day. Not too worried about the map TBH but maybe I should be

It's the hexcrawl I need to do the most work on

[charred crow]

Ooh hex crawl in a one shot?

[thorny sand]

me and my friend are planning a multi-path option as well. tho were just planning for 3 different semi-linear routes rather than a full on point-and-crawl

[sweet gale]

My player expression happens during the setup

Re: #gm-corner message

I kinda want to have one more verb, but with players realistically only taking 2 actions before combat starts, I want to strike a balance between "you can't do everything (tension)" and "you can't do everything (frustration)"

[honest pawn]

To expand on what I said in GM corner, you can adjust the “cost” of the action to match a bigger effect too

Search 1 container as 1 action, or seal one ingress zone as 3 actions

Difficult choices are the lifeblood of the hobby, as you’ve surmised, so it’s good to add some texture to those choices and make them orthogonal to each other like you’ve largely done

[onyx fractal]

It's going to be very small and I intend to run it pretty tightly. It's sort of nominally a hex crawl. Basically each area has a terrain type and a single POI that isn't easy to get to for some reason. Each POI contains a hint/clue the PCs can use to contextualize the upcoming combat, but if they take too long, the fight comes to them instead of taking the fight to the enemy

I expect players to go through 3-4 hexes tops

Hopefully spending no more than 20 minutes of real time per hex

I'm going to have an IRL timer going instead of a clock-based timer, just to brute force the pacing of the session properly

[idle shale]

prepping for a playtest for my one-shot tonight, very excited

[silent plover]

Looks tight 👍 What did you use to make the map?

[idle shale]

interpoint's map creation tool! The height stuff is a separate addition using a Foundry module for height tools, I can dig it up

Aha! here it is; https://foundryvtt.com/packages/terrain-height-tools

[silent plover]

Ah, thank you very much. It looks useful.

[idle shale]

its great, the measure/line of sight tool in particular has been really handy

[onyx fractal]

I DMed Ralf to ask about licensing maps from the Map Creation Tool

[idle shale]

oh cool, perfect! (plus Ive been meaning to ask that about commercial specifically for another project of mine tbh)

[idle cedar]

nice nice

[hollow turtle]

Title font is a WIP the art isn't.
Artist MVP @north mango providing me baller art in the world's shortest timeframe

[north mango]

[north mango]

I'm open to praise

[sweet gale]

If I knew how much production time would be devoted to understanding why libreoffice does all the strange things it does when I so much as even think about editing the formatting, I'd have started this before christmas

[onyx fractal]

That looks great! I like it a lot

[idle shale]

Glad to report we crushed it btw 😌 custom sitrep and map seemed to go off without a hitch

(The PCs have to wrestle a keycard from the enemies via grappling or seizing control of one and then quick action slam it into the objective)

[onyx fractal]

My plan was originally to make a map using DungeonDraft but the act of sourcing, licensing, and attributing all the assets sounds like such a burden that I'll probably end up just doing this for the sake of expediency as much as it's not my ideal vision

[idle shale]

Extremely wise and valid, the polish can come after in these sorts of things anyways after all

[idle shale]

Also this fucks immensely

[onyx fractal]

live footage of me beating the compcon print function into submission

(I am cataloging every bug that I encounter)

(There are many)

[spare jolt]

Sadly I think what I'm doing can't be represented in Compcon easily.

[onyx fractal]

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, I got the COMPCON pregens printable and organized in a way I like (namely, talents on the mech spread, in addition to a myriad of other bugs)

Feel free to print these and use them in your IRL playtests

Now to find an action reference sheet that is organized the way I want it

[weak nacelle]

Starting Bar random encounter table for my submission, WiP

[onyx fractal]

Love a good encounter table

This is my favorite resource for really punching up encounters to make them grabby and evocative https://www.prismaticwasteland.com/blog/encounter-checklist

Hmm. I don't hate this for what I have in mind. Gonna call this good enough for now for a placeholder

[onyx fractal]

Proud of this NPC stat block

[hollow turtle]

Well looks like I’m gonna be playtesting my sitreps New Year’s Day

I was thinking I might do three separate ones, one for the Reactor sitrep, and two for the extraction

One extraction test for a win and one for a lose on the reactor sitrep

Just to make sure it works the way I’m imagining it

Now its how I want to manage it is the problem I suppose, since this shit takes time

[last frigate]

i like that the tactics are listed with the actual unit and not bundled with the others in a big paragraph

[onyx fractal]

Thanks! Having some fun with formatting still

[onyx fractal]

Man. Creative writing is hard.

Another fun one though

[sweet gale]

Kinda had to make this joke

(it's an optional)

[hollow turtle]

C R A B

[idle shale]

Love this layout tons, it’s slick

[sweet gale]

My playtesters are gonna be in for something tonight. That's for sure. of course I see the typo after I post it

[idle shale]

👁️ goddamn

[jolly hornet]

Hey derp, where did you get the made by humans icon?

[sweet gale]

https://lonearchivist.itch.io/made-by-humans

[hollow turtle]

Sniped

[sweet gale]

legally speaking, I cannot help myself

[hollow turtle]

But yeah thats the pack. The colors are lovely

[jolly hornet]

thank you, folks

[onyx fractal]

Reasonably happy with how this has come out so far. Some of them are better than others but I think this page more or less accomplishes what I set out to do in terms of space and wordcount efficiency

[sweet gale]

I'd include it and I'm fairly certain the art I'm using for the cover isn't AI since it's old, but the artist dabbles in AI so I'm wary

If I make a 1.1 version with a custom cover, I'll add it because then I'll know for sure.

[jolly hornet]

The cover art we're using comes from an art museum that states it is public domain, and I know the two artists I've commissioned well enough to know neither of them use AI to any capacity with their work

[hollow turtle]

Now how should I do the recruitment for my tests? 🤔

[honest pawn]

Recruit from people you trust first imo

[hollow turtle]

I intend to

[honest pawn]

Who will give you good faith tests I mean, and have rapport with

But it sounds like you have that in mind already haha

[hollow turtle]

But i gotta schedule it on New Years Day and not everyone in USA like me

I have a lot of Australian players in my roster for an EST person

Not to mention i want to purely run the combats and idk how long that'll take so I'm just

[thorny sand]

just as Isa said below! just make sure to mention MBH and link them in the accreditation section. heres what i have in my accreditation section as an example if anyone needs it

you dont need to use both logos i just couldnt decide which i liked more so i used both

[hollow turtle]

Offered my usual players a sign up sheet for playtest and they attacked it like starving sharks

I love the dedication

[sweet gale]

I'm severely tempted to make a trait like "it's underwater you dingus" and have the effect be "sea serpent is immune to burning"

[weak nacelle]

I can practically hear the Ghengis Pilots gathering to make a seafood boil

[sweet gale]

It's LL0 so I'd only be tilting the chomolungmas

[idle cedar]

accuracy on burn checks perhaps

so it's not a total immunity

[meager juniper]

Not all burn is fire, though

Sometimes it's acid, or nanites, or paracausal wotsits

[hollow turtle]

If mechanically after you strip away the narrative flavor its Burn, then its Burn

If ya wanna make your sea monster immune/resistance/ehatever to something while underwater, then you gotta choose the damage types we have.

[sweet gale]

Playtest complete

They really liked the NPC but weren't entirely sure about the setup for it combat-wise, which is fair because I threw it together in 15 minutes

[spare jolt]

Mind if I get people thoughts on a Big Boss NPC I'm working on for this?

[unborn arch]

I've just about finished most of the art for the project I'm attached to, which I'm feelin pretty good about, was worried I'd run out of time before my trip 😌

[sweet gale]

I might be able to give feedback as another big boss maker, but I'm not entirely confident on my design chops yet

apparently I could have made my shit meaner

[spare jolt]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dAaECU5vm_yKp-fSpHw9wAsBM2oJb63C95fosa3yIgs/edit?usp=sharing It's basicly 'build a big boss for the entire team to fight'.

[sweet gale]

Same hat

I made a real freak

Man. Size 5. And here I thought I was wildin out with a size 3

Initially mine was just called "sea serpent" but it had to be one word and "serpent" didn't feel right so leviathan it is

Does that mean you can get a size 1 named leviathan? Yes.

[spare jolt]

To be fair, it's because it's basicly Several Units In A Trenchcoat. XD

[hollow turtle]

idk about balance but it looks like it's be so much fun

and so far everything looks pretty okay, nothing is standing out as abusable or anything

[idle cedar]

holy shit

9 optional features

[hollow turtle]

Finished my battlemaps!

[spare jolt]

Yep. It's a single big bugger boss fight/you blow up components individually.

I'm really proud of Godslayer

Though I do need to think up 1-2 more phase 2 and phase 3 components.

Phase 3 is very lean right now

[hollow turtle]

How about a component that generates bursts of difficult terrain? 🤔

To match with the Gravity Well one that sticks you to the ground

[spare jolt]

Could be fun. Maybe a laser that sets ground on fire.

[spare jolt]

I should likely look up some Big Bosses from video games for 'what would be cool extra weapons to be able to stick on this thing'

[buoyant snow]

wasnt there a website that allowed you to make LCP files for things like homebrew licenses and systems?

[delicate geode]

Yes there was, check the pins on #homebrew-design

[sweet gale]

I didn't know that worked for custom stuff because there was a warning about it needing an update

I reverse engineered mine

I know some people don't like the idea, but given what I've had set up at the moment and my leviathan's absurd capacity for friendly fire I'm highly considering a little bit of a grunt swarm

[fierce sedge]

General rules are made for special exceptions.

[sweet gale]

a bunch of grunts are in the CZ
GM has to decide whether to grief gathered players or clear the point with-

[weak nacelle]

Also, if you want a dissenting opinion, I'm personally quite partial to grunt swarms, so go nuts* :v

(* Grunt Swarms are really quite different depending on what type of enemy you gruntify, and what your party brings)

[last frigate]

currently bumbling my way throught layout but i think this looks okay so far

[idle cedar]

yooo it looks gorgeous!!

[onyx fractal]

Oh man, I think I have my exploration crawl structure worked out

This has been the hardest part of me to nail down

[sweet gale]

"I need to keep this brief and vague. I don't want to accidentally make up bad lore or anything like that"

writes an entire page about this backwater system in the cascade line that union gave so little of a shit about that they sold a development charter for it

[weak nacelle]

this jam is going to single handedly populate the entire long rim isn't it

[hollow turtle]

Maybe!

I put my Monsoon System in the Altai Line, it’s supposed to be a system that’s fairly close to a gate but generally overlooked until the Ten Ship residing there makes itself known

[idle cedar]

I'm not placing it anywhere specific, but it probably wouldn't work in long rim due to it being set in an ocean planet

[last frigate]

progress for today, need to figure out pointcrawl structure and map, but thats for the new year

[idle cedar]

there's some really cool public domain art (still citing it in sources bc I want more people to know about this amazing resource)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/11292565783/in/album-72157638850077096

[idle cedar]

being a little silly
I'm adding pronouns next to NPC names, but thought it would be funny if I also did that for like, objects that people pack bond with

[sweet gale]

I'm having fun with these two.

[idle cedar]

hell yeah

did i share about my stacys mom

[onyx fractal]

Pregens printed and ready for today's playtest

@honest pawn Do you have your playtester feedback google form heady by any chance? I want to put something together for my players today, would be nice to have a reference

[meager juniper]

do submissions have to be in on the fifth? I believe it was being extended, right? Sorry, I think I asked this question befor ealready, but the FAQ still says two weeks

[honest pawn]

Lemme see

[honest pawn]

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1mn8wU9Bdj5HUT3OkGSkxT5NoLiW9RZwknSdJThtjRjQ/edit

Pulled mostly from Pesto’s guide to testing

Don’t edit it, make a copy instead

[idle cedar]

deadline is 5th but you can get up to a month in extension for late submission

[onyx fractal]

Thanks!

[idle cedar]

yooo thank you for sharing

[meager juniper]

What would it take to get an extension? The team I'm on has one person who works public service so hasn't had time off over the holidays and another who's come down with a bad illness.

[idle cedar]

ping me here or message me for extension and I'll send you a submission link

probably should have written it down somewhere

[meager juniper]

I'd edit the FAQ to include it?

[idle cedar]

mmmmaybe when the deadline comes I'll put something up
i gotta work on my own things or else it'll be embarrassing to not have a submission myself

not because I'm supposed to or whatever, but bc the whole point of doing the jam was to get myself to do this lol

[jolly hornet]

the most official version of peer pressure ever

[idle cedar]

lmao

i channel my sense of guilt and use them to be productive

[hollow turtle]

One test down!

3 players against a sitrep which admittedly was set up for four. I played a couple of the units meant for removal for 3 players as a bit less optimal and they still fucked it up

So I feel I have a good grasp on the balance needed

Two more tests to go!

[sweet gale]

I had a playtest that yielded a neat result of "you could make this more dangerous"

"It's a cool ability but it wasn't scary"

[hollow turtle]

Feedback I got from my guys was 💯

They had fun, got a few tweaks beyond my own stuff

Very excited

[honest pawn]

rough-and-ready sitrep that likely will need some tuning:

[idle cedar]

oh hell yeah

is this the everyone getting music

[honest pawn]

yup yup

since this is a one-shot I'm instituting a hard cutoff after 4 hours of play

so if the combat doesn't end in time, that's failure

[idle cedar]

oh hey my custom sitrep is pretty similar
I'm doing protocol to capture instead of QA which might be more awkward but potentially cheaper

[honest pawn]

I'm justifying the quick action with extra potency

the only thing is I'm not sure how the tower activation will play out

I was thinking 4 towers, but feel like there should probably be.... a repeatable effect?

[fierce sedge]

Y'know, one of the nice things of having ran feasibility tests for stuff like that is that I get to say that it works with examples to back it up lol.

[honest pawn]

like players can flip 1 tower but enemies can flip it back or it only lasts for that round

[idle cedar]

I'm making my capture permanent
also it's thematically more of permanently disabling than capturing

[fierce sedge]

FWIW that is an aspect of my own stuff I have debated, and where I landed was that I am fine with enemies being able to flip back if session time isn't my primary concern, but when I run with the timer in mind I want the combat to always be progressing forwards.

[honest pawn]

that's what I was thinking yeah

then maybe I have each player's hype track deploy once

hmmmm or have it easy to use once but harder to use a second time

part of the benefit of the hype track is that it encourages players to move fast to maintain the benefit

and like, it's not gonna be Dvorak's New World Symphony, it'll only last 5 minutes tops

[idle cedar]

🤓 my hype track is "Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" but the edit from Kill Bill that lasts for 15 minutes

(but also, it's an unironically good hype track)

[torn charm]

On the topic of battlemap creation for this, I've noticed that Inkarnate (if you have the Pro tier for that) automatically has a commercial-use license for its maps, as opposed to Dungeondraft necessitating that you ensure your map assets used are commercial-use license assets.

[honest pawn]

To my knowledge, Inkarnate’s assets are all in-house, so you can get away with that. Ddraft in comparison has third party assets that yes use their own license

[torn charm]

yeah

[honest pawn]

This does however mean that for the longest time, inkarnate couldn’t make a lot of scifi maps since it didn’t have scifi assets in house

Times have changed thankfully

[idle cedar]

sending a clear message to the GM that this is not just any 13m tall mech

[honest pawn]

I think you can make it clearer tbf?

“GM note: This isn’t any old 13-meter mech. Lincoln is piloting a repurposed Barbarossa. [other relevant context on why that matters here]”

[idle cedar]

I was gonna put more when the PCs actually see it, where they'll realize it's undeniably a disarmed barbarossa

I also have this at the beginning of gm section

but also yeah, maybe add an explicit note too, like you suggested

[honest pawn]

Yeah “this is actually a Barbarossa, see p. xx” is helpful for GMs so they know the context and implications immediately

[idle cedar]

thanks for recommendation

[sweet gale]

"I just have to make LCPs for the NPC and exotic" I said to myself before creating something that seems like it necessitates a template

[idle cedar]

curse of scope creep

[sweet gale]

Eh. After the NPC, this is easy.

easy