Shadow of the Wolf Hype!!!

[obsidian oasis]

Yasmin is locked in to kill

[maiden sundial]

d a m n

This rolls like Yasmin's been waiting for this for a long time, goddamn

[obsidian oasis]

At the last moment, Yasmin chose to knock her mother out instead of going for the kill

Alexa this is so sad please play Undertale from the Undertale OST

[pearl knot]

😔

[obsidian oasis]

Thus far Keros and Yasmin have been making the good choices when they were slated to Really Fuck Up today

Whereas Effendi

[pearl knot]

i mean

she is talking to a khayradi beefcake

seems like a good idea to me

[indigo field]

is it really the good choice to deny my mother the right to an honorable death

[spare hatch]

update: Marisol just agreed to stay her hand when Argo and Praya do something

the sane people of the party are bein' a LIL SILLY

[indigo field]

im starting to think keros and yasmin are the normal ones now

[wise kite]

to summarize:

• effendi played into praya's hands
• marisol played into ajax's hands
• yasmin's mom played into yasmin's hands
• keros killed a dead space marker
  average day in mech high school

[late cobalt]

Okay in Marisol’s defence she just learned about a MAJOR DEATH for the first time and started bawling

[maiden sundial]

wait who died?

[late cobalt]

|| Lady Achilea|| one of Marisol’s teachers that she had a rapport with and saved her from getting blasted when she was outside of her mech

Marisol was unaware of her status

[maiden sundial]

holy shit

[late cobalt]

And like she was very shaken up and also felt extremely betrayed because LARGE SPOILER WARNING for later in the campaign || she also felt extremely betrayed because she took Ajax at his word that Rawan was the inside person at the KCC and like Marisol took a punt to the chest from Praya’s boot because she jumped in front of Rawan getting the shit kicked out of her and she was like oh she also helped people sabotage the ship my brother is in command of??? So very big anime tears. Marisol doesn’t want anyone to die and is just trusting this asshole who she thinks loves her and that she loves bc she is so naive||

[kindred spear]

(maria please do not click spoilers in here on my behalffff)

[maiden sundial]

goddamn 👁️👁️

[late cobalt]

They absolutely are

[pearl knot]

good news from sotd:

the Two unmedicated Eyaleti murder dolls with evil mothers are having Yuri dinner together!

now you might ask: why does your game have two Eyaleti murder dolls with evil mothers? the answer is fate

[pearl knot]

they are besties and one (my pilot) is visiting the other (another pc) at night to feed them soup and strawberries and pomegranates to make sure she keeps eating

[maiden sundial]

||As a resident dedicated audience member, I'm really hoping for a thing where Argo/Ajax sees how hurt Marisol gets and then actually has a moment of empathy, but I'm also not holding my breath 💀. I really want to see this ship make it to port but I know it's gonna go down in the storm, lmao||

[pearl knot]

and they are letting each other see their maladaptive coping mechanisms they hide from others 🥺

normal eyaleti friendship

[maiden sundial]

like, idk ||Ajax can maybe see that he's causing like the one unilaterally positive figure in his life genuine anguish and then maybe not do what he's doing 💀||

[late cobalt]

ALSO PRAYING FOR THIS 😭😭😭😭

[flint island]

Hey do we know if there are any canonical colors associated with Baronic Intelligence? Thinking abt throwing together some tokens for them for narrative maps

[kindred spear]

I figured it was the goons on the House of Sand section of the KTB field guide

these guys

[flint island]

Oh that's sand-men I think, there might be some overlap but Baronic Intelligence is more of a spy org affiliated with the Baronic Council than a specific house org

[north lake]

There's not much on Baronic Intelligence in the field guide, they don't even get their own section which is a shame

The only idea I could have color-wise would be to change the BUC green/white/gold for /black/white/gold for that CIA agent feel

[kindred spear]

how i rationalize them operating and looking is very similar to the US' 3-letter security agencies, english mi6, french DGSE, german BND, etc etc

[random sapphire]

One of my players is actively sharpening knives as a fidget

https://tenor.com/view/pedro-monkey-puppet-meme-awkward-gif-7230416695831822604

[maiden sundial]

Method acting

[urban canyon]

Sharing since it's relevant; a commission from our KTB game finished!

We had attendance issues from one of the players, so they were a team-controlled npc. A House of Order scion who the party convinced to help them aid the Ungratefuls.

[flint island]

https://www.tumblr.com/nekogirltwink/783359101311778816/the-prince-has-begun-practicing-curtseying-in-the?source=share

Tomas Alfaroz

[late cobalt]

I love our egg 😭

[pearl knot]

today in SotD: rebounds are happening, ex's are being spoken to, explanations odf what death threats occured, and Our pilot caved and told a dormmate its a smart weapon

it was clearly obvious to everyone in the dorm it's dead inside since the club night (our pilot had an RSD crashout and passed out)

went to talk to the dormate

tried to put on a brave front

unfortunately, the dormmate is a beautiful butch so our pilot caved and went full soggy immediately

put on her best crying routine (can't actually cry so she has to consciously perform a routine that simulates the effects of crying on a loop)

and just explained about how selish it feels for wanting to exist and that it's running out of time and ruined eeverything on day one and etc then caved further and revealed its just a homunculus actually and also kind of doesntlike, have a real, "full" self awareness, etc. and had to plug into the machine to think properly,

Oh and just prior to that it looked over and saw some scruffy 19 year old handling maintenence on her mech (her body, as far as she views it)

And just grilled the shit out of them inspecting the oils, grabbed them by the jaw to inspect their face, checked their hands, and said tell me the average Capacity charge for the 90mm. 20 C, 70% humidity at sea level 8km even elevation 70% confidence. I will give you 7 seconds."

failed the test so She told the mechanic to shave his beard and go get an older and more experienced mechanic

[frigid ravine]

What does the D stand for 👀😳

[maiden sundial]

Dolf, duh

[pearl knot]

dogs

[kindred spear]

im dogs

(i am maria's GM)

[torpid kelp]

My group finished SoTW on Sunday after a total of 14 sessions! Very fun module, thanks Kat! 😄

We were 5 players. None of us had played Lancer before, though some of us had been interested in playing for...years. It was a bit of a learning curve, but by the end we were extremely effective. Was very interesting to go from struggling to breezing through combats.

[ivory dock]

woooo

[flint island]

hey had 14 sessions in my first run too!

[jaunty beacon]

congratulations, and glad to hear it!

[torpid kelp]

Thank you!! It was a blast. I think my fave NPC was probably Castor Eyros but the whole cast was phenomenal.

[obsidian oasis]

No SotW this week owing to work schedules

[pearl knot]

😔

[maiden sundial]

https://tenor.com/view/napoleon-nothing-we-can-do-nothing-we-can-do-there-is-gif-17017334091191129728

[dusty tendon]

What did everyone do for their "sponsor says you have to do this mission" thing?

Maybe there's a list somewhere as well?

[obsidian oasis]

Slight lore moment about my twink since we didn't play this week: their aunt is actually another old PC of mine. IC they were supposed to be piloting an Orchis, but uh, their aunt kinda went ahead and stole it for her own purposes, hence why they're in a Tagetes instead

Plus Orchis makes more thematic sense for them, given they, on a personal level, are inclined towards a defender sort of role

In another life they would've been piloting this (sans that inscription upon the shoulder- that was a touch added by their aunt)

(Art by the same friend as this!)

[pearl knot]

The Goth Yurislop Friendsituationship girldinner in heliotrope continues

[maiden sundial]

Those are certainly some of the words of all time

[pearl knot]

its true!

[cold whale]

As in, story hook at the very beginning of the story, or?

[dusty tendon]

yeah

[cold whale]

I have run Shadow twice (started, neither is done yet), and as far as those hooks go, my first game was a lot more "non-ktb" persons stepping into the college, and it was kinda used like, just to give them a "reason" to be there, and I let the players pick if they had some specific mission (which mostly they didn't just follow the story). Technically I flavored that team (which started at LL 4) as "external expertise" being brought in to help expand KTB tactics and show off alternative methods that might not be taught by the college in the first place.

Second game started with three noble heirs, so we didn't really bother with sponsors.. it was pretty obvious who they were serving.

I think they're really only something you need to mess around with if you are straining to fit the party together, OR once you're a bit more familiar with the story so you can weave in little extras into the story and expand on it a bit.

[flint island]

So SOTW has been a really good onboarding tool for getting some different playgroups into Lancer, and I'm currently wrapping up my second run

I have a third group lined up (I tend to get confused when running the same game for multiple people at the same time), and after that I mayyy try more remixing stuff to keep it fresh on the GM side

I've also contemplated the idea of a parallel campaign to SOTW that takes place in a Harrison Armory piloting school with a tone that's largely meant to feel like psychological horror

[dusty tendon]

I had the opposite experience: the lore is a little complex even for me. Is there a strategy or method I'm missing?

[flint island]

Was the lore a sticking point more for you or your players?

[wise kite]

We are returning to our weekly SOTW game (before another break, I cry) and hoping to wrap up and move onto the 2nd mission for next sesh. Absolutely insane "school break" for the party members and they've been away for like... 2-3 days. Worst week ever for higher lancer education.

But it's felt very worth it to break up the missions a bit and extend the downtime (although we haven't even gone through downtime actions mechanically yet!!) It's basically been endless vignettes and character studies so it'll be good to finally make the party be a party again.

Buuuuuut it will be interesting since one PC's attached herself to Argo, one's under Praya's thumb, and the other two || suspect their involvement in the Harlequin's Knife attack || and are directly planning to uh. Take matters directly into their hands.

[indigo field]

im taking direct action in securing the future of the KCC

[spare hatch]

exactly !!!

[obsidian oasis]

Unfortunately the siren song of one of my partners visiting me means absolutely no games at all that week

But Effendi's not under Praya's thumb! Not at all!

[spare hatch]

definitely not!!

she definitely didn't give your family, like, a small moon out in the Dawnline Shore to get leverage over Effendi and the DiJons!!!

[obsidian oasis]

Hey now!

Hey

Shush

[spare hatch]

heehee

[indigo field]

selling effendi one of those buy-a-star certificates for the low price of their life

[spare hatch]

Effendi didn't even get the title either 😭

their sister does

[hybrid bluff]

In SOTW is there a wolf mech?

[ruby oriole]

Ironically the wolf mech comes in Winter Scar

[ivory dock]

Yeah, the Lycan

In OWS

SotW has the shrimp blimp

[flint island]

Any mech can be a wolf

but yeah thematically I think Enkidu and Lycan fit that vibe the best

[hybrid bluff]

😦

that is not what I wrote

it was a :

then a (

[alpine sluice]

you can go to settings>chat> turn off automatically convert emoticons

[hybrid bluff]

thank

:)

[topaz field]

I don't think there's a wolf anything in SOTW. I looked through the whole book awhile back wondering who or what the wolf in question was. The only thing I could find was Argo's epithet "the Wolf's Blade", but I couldn't find any reference to what the wolf in question was or how he got that nickname. I honestly have no idea why it's even called Shadow of the Wolf.

[hybrid bluff]

sounds cool

[maiden sundial]

the real wolf was the friends they made along the way

[wispy walrus]

I mean it's the Passion the Wolf and the associated package of symbolisms right, it's not referring to a literal wolf

[flint island]

Yeah, within Karrakin bond symbolism, The Wolf is generally the sign of quick action and violence. I don't wanna spoil too much, but the general theme here is ||the threat of war on the horizon. Also its specifically 50% orchestrated by Argo, who seems to lean in on the Bond of the Wolf||

[maiden sundial]

also come to think of it but as much as I was joking here, there is a wolflike element to the KCC: the environment is so brutal and unforgiving that any one of the friends you make could secretly be dangerous and stab you in the back because it might be their own shot at accomplishing their own ends; you have to guess who's a wolf in sheep's clothing and who's a sheep in wolf's clothing so you can play your cards right and successfully graduate

[late cobalt]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-ex4wK0tBU
getting into the headspace for marisol before lancer today 😂

[spare hatch]

SOTW TIMMMMEEEE >:)

session 13,,,

[spare hatch]

Marisol has gone to a fifth location with Argo, this time it's underground (on Tilimsan) and it's filled with poisonous plants and other fauna that has been cultivated on the world lmao

[maiden sundial]

garden date 💀

[obsidian oasis]

She is getting so male manipulated right now good lord

[spare hatch]

its so bad

[obsidian oasis]

"Oh hahaha even Praya's never been down here before, I just adore you that much (:"

[late cobalt]

It's so over for Marisol 🥲

[spare hatch]

now i've got to calm down a religious mob i accidentally incited

[maiden sundial]

as you do

[spare hatch]

convincing my people that we don't need Evil God anymore

[spare hatch]

we've got three people radically changing the trajectory of their houses for good or ill, and then we've got marisol's ajax adventure

[obsidian oasis]

Praya: "Effendi, I'm impressed: you spent a lot of words to say nothing. You would marvel in politics."

[spare hatch]

literally got cooked alive by Praya

[obsidian oasis]

Okay now she's trying to appeal to their Neo-Passacaglian politics 💀

[maiden sundial]

quadruple skull react, that's a doozy

[spare hatch]

she went on a whole anti-republican TurningPointKarrakis speech to Effendi too 😭

[pearl knot]

praya, bbg, this is negatively affecting the relationship

[spare hatch]

LMAO

[pearl knot]

like I forgive her of course she's beautiful

[kindred spear]

yeah dont ask me the color of nothing or what she said

[obsidian oasis]

Now Effendi and Praya are engaging in the most dangerous game of hunting each other out in the wilderness (but not lethally)

[pearl knot]

📝

[kindred spear]

important

enrichment

[pearl knot]

that wouldnt fix my pilot but she'd love to do that

[spare hatch]

lord

[pearl knot]

listen we've already floated the idea of our pilot hunting another student for sport (romantic) this isn't all that far a stretch

[obsidian oasis]

Essentially: they took her out hunting, employing a weapon that plugs you into the target's subjectivity for a little under two seconds (e.g. plug into an eagle? You feel like you're flying- from your perspective that might feel like an eternity, but it's objectively just a couple of seconds)

As soon as she experienced it for the first time she went "okay does it work on people though? "

God

[pearl knot]

rational

[obsidian oasis]

Marisol

Marisol just told Ajax "in a perfect world I'd rather be your wife"

Honey

[pearl knot]

we loooooooove homewrecking

do it

do it girl

marry that annoying twink

[obsidian oasis]

See the funny thing

[maiden sundial]

uh oh, lmfao

[obsidian oasis]

She said this in response to him going "hey I can ask Praya if she's chill with you being a mistress"

[pearl knot]

beautiful

[maiden sundial]

absolutely wild

[late cobalt]

Marisol is just big feelings girl who feels shit with her whole chest and in this case its to her detriment

[pearl knot]

yeah

same for our pilot

actually it not being to georgie's detriment is the rarity

[maiden sundial]

I can't believe the purehearted princess is the side chick and not the psychopathic subjectivity eagle people hunter

[pearl knot]

our game is soon approaching a critical point (end of the fifth day said with the cadence and importance of the moon being 6 hours from crashing into Termina)

[maiden sundial]

My life goal is for someone to talk about me in this way, lmfao

[kindred spear]

i've ground the pace of the game to a fucking screeching halt for the first mission because i'm trying to show off the sorts of routine the PCs are in

[pearl knot]

just emulate the charming son of tilimson

its great we love it

[kindred spear]

they're having fun playing with their dolls

[pearl knot]

the moon, as it turns out, Georgie's Maman

[kindred spear]

evil fucking crone

[pearl knot]

shes so beautiful, everyone,

like, yes, her family is powerful, and her legacy a wretched canyon of misery carved into the weeping flesh of history

but she's so beautiful

unspeakably evil woman who i will never hold accountable because i have no morals. She has to die but i'll feel sad if she dies.

[spare hatch]

after three or four sessions away from the KCC, we're finally going back and the party has done so much:

• Keros killed a God/Paracausal Being
• Yasmin overthrew her mother and became the new ruler of her House
• Effendi got their family a moon in the Interest
• Marisol continued her homewrecker arc

[pearl knot]

😌

[wise kite]

so how was your winter break

[indigo field]

assassination plot is at 100% full steam ahead

[late cobalt]

It’s gonna be soooo fun coming back to school!!!

[wispy walrus]

Good to hear that the player-led assassination plot is also a regular feature of this module tbh

[flint island]

Who's getting assassinated? 👀

[spare hatch]

Praya and Argo, probably

[wispy walrus]

Tbf that was not the target of the assassination plot in our game

[pearl knot]

i think our stonelord party member talked about having a second assassination against her (OOC) The first was by my pilot and has already occured, within the first week. Aside from that, our group has only thought of like, 3 Assassination plots, though none of them got as far off the ground (yet) as our pilot's attempt on the Stonelord PC

the stonelord learned a very important lesson from the attempt: Lesbian relationships are dangerous

[kindred spear]

the girls are all very fucking unwell

[pearl knot]

As much as we'd all like to Blame Eligos for putting them all together, I know our pilot lied on the psych eval and im p sure one of the other Void-infused Oblivionette Dolls in the party also lied about their mental wellness

[obsidian oasis]

Right as Marisol finally got that relationship clock up to seven too- lol, lmao

[kindred spear]

lol, lmao. they got in on recommendation, they didn't do any mental health evaluations.

[pearl knot]

LMFAO

AHAHAHAHAHHAA

[indigo field]

cal's character gets to kill argo and my character gets to kill praya

we've divvied up the honors

[pearl knot]

not doing psych checks on the reccomendations makes so much sense now

[wispy walrus]

ftr my character had an assassination plot against ||Kiriona, for logical reasons like "the goal here is actually to make the staff look incompetent/frame Argo + she's extremely well liked," and "we already have several ins to here" but the actual, emotionally true reason is a combination of extremely toxic yuri and deep burning jealousy||
it was unsuccessful at killing her despite succeeding on the other goals ||(framing Argo, making the school look bad))|| and she didn't know how to feel about that

[pearl knot]

cant believe they accidently constructed a 3 stage Thermonuclear super bomb in heliotrope

[kindred spear]

I'm working on fixing that

[pearl knot]

eligos at the mandatory group meeting like how the hell did i miss this freakshow

[kindred spear]

lmfao

it likes Cecily at least

[pearl knot]

oh wait kauffman is going to be at the dinner....

what the hell did cecily do to get it to like her

[kindred spear]

be charming and get through some of the exterior hatred by having some respect for how much it manages at the school

[pearl knot]

📝

i think georgie might eventually think to talk to eligos now that it recognizes that eligos isn't just like, the thing that sometimes signs on official administration things

actually in retrospect i feel like eligos is the one georgie is talking to when it puts in all the food requests

[kindred spear]

yeah pretty much

[pearl knot]

why is vanderay doing all the cooking and food management it knows we have staff right

why is vanderay doing all of this at 2 am when the fuck are you sleeping did you set up a botnet for fucking meal prep

[kindred spear]

lmao

anyways, very looking forward to the gang's first formal dinner. baby's first court intrigue

[pearl knot]

😌

the truth is going to hit like a truck maybe possibly

[kindred spear]

we shall see

[pearl knot]

i think it will go fine unless irena shows up to that too

[kindred spear]

I'll need to see how things shake out between now and then

[late cobalt]

Marisol is probably also gonna die in an attempt to save Argo 🥲 depending if she is still drinking the “I love this man” juice

Cal and I literally talked about how that would go down if it happens 😂😭😭😂

I’m also excited to hear how yalls first court intrigue goes!!!!

[kindred spear]

thank u I'm trying to work out what all these NPCs have been up to off screen and what all the nobles are gunning for while the ignobles stand by like:

[late cobalt]

I BELIEVE IN YOU

GM’ING IS HARD BUT U GOT THIS

[kindred spear]

https://tenor.com/view/likeabadpenny-breaking-bad-breaking-bad-jesse-breaking-bad-jesse-pinkman-jesse-pinkman-gif-26204575

very fun playing around with all the ignoble students being thrust into what court is like for likely their very first time.

[late cobalt]

Hell yeah!!!

[kindred spear]

anywho thank u, I'll be sure to apprise the thread of how things progress. many plot threads and knives Soon™ probably

[late cobalt]

Listen I’m also forever basking in the light of knowing it was the “in a perfect world I would be your wife” line from Marisol that did the job. Now Keros and Yasmin can display his head on a pike yolo swag. As a player I am fulfilled

[pearl knot]

georgie has been to court many times however it was in brain off mode being maman's human-sized purse dog

[late cobalt]

YES WE LOVE KNIVES

[kindred spear]

that I should be so lucky to have these players, they've all given me a veritable arsenal of knives

shit Maria has progressively adding to a now 15? page document of things for me to stab her with

[pearl knot]

😇

i went back and read some of the early things i said about irena

"She's a benign freak" _me when i didnt know better

[kindred spear]

anyways. great fun. love the baronies

[harsh coral]

Hey odd question

for parties and gm's running SOTW, how have the combats been in terms of challenge?

[obsidian oasis]

I'd say decently challenging, but not overwhelmingly so!

HOWEVER, my group started at LL2- so while my GM's done some modifications to make it more difficult, there are tools we have that don't exist at LL0

[harsh coral]

ngl, ll2 is a major powerspike imho

frames allow you access to knocking around goliaths/demolishers, shred, smart weapons that aren't the gms nexi and solid guns

also core powers that do damage

[harsh coral]

ngl, i am starting them with an item of rented gear as long as they give me backstory for the item. so this should be fine?

[jaunty beacon]

that should be fine. honestly the biggest challenge for groups that we've seen from testing is not with mechanical power level but strategy and teamwork

rented gear can help but doesn't score you points in a control sitrep by itself

[harsh coral]

honestly, i think this is harder than the last thing i put them through (IGF by the wonderful Vex Werewolf, you should play it and give her money)

but i think they'll work together. they were p good at it when push came to shove

[wispy walrus]

yeah, ime the issues in the combats i've had so far are less the combats themselves (they've been doing great) but rather some broader strategic choices being made that mean that like, overall some people were down way more structure than i'd like post-combat 2 while others seem untouched
its been easy enough to adjust around but yeah, no problems with any individual combat, some stuff with attrition that's mostly downstream of how they've strategized in each combat

[ivory dock]

mhm, in the three IGF combats i played we played really well and didnt find them too challenging

[haughty finch]

we had a pretty experienced group and found them challenging, a lot of that being due to the attrition

[harsh coral]

hey kat, mind i bother you about the design philosophy behind SOTW combats? they significantly differer from other modules and i'm curious

[jaunty beacon]

sure, happy to answer questions

[harsh coral]

First would be about general design philosophy? Like how did you start your sitrep ideas?

Some wallflower combats just feel like oops strikes but this always feels like a blend?

[jaunty beacon]

My experience with combats is that they're more interesting and dynamic with a mix of NPC roles. Defenders and controllers are important to make sure that a combat doesn't just turn into a DPS race. Plus, with the right combinations you can test the PCs on particular aspects of their team comp and mech builds. A good example of this is Combat 2, where ||the opfor is highly mobile and has movement-control options, which tests the PCs' agility and sense of positioning||.

I tend to approach sitrep design from a narrative-first perspective. I have story beats I need to hit and the combats need to support those. For example, in Combat 6 ||the opfor needs to be as scary as possible, but just making them powerful would lead to an unfun fight. The choice to use pirate systems to target the PCs directly supports the narrative of assassins who are in theory trying to kill the PCs - but in practice those systems are not actually very threatening which makes the encounter much more survivable||.

Particularly in Mission 1, a lot of the combats are pulling double duty. Alongside furthering the narrative, they're also used to ||showcase and characterise the NPCs: the other students and the faculty have their character and narrative role reinforced through their mechanical capabilities. A lot of the combats throughout are pulling double or even triple duty with various needs and pressures: the design of the encounters almost becomes easier once all the constraints are factored in.||

I think where SOTW contrasts Wallflower is that Wallflower combats are always uncompromisingly fiction-first, which can lead to some combats that are less challenging and more theatrical. My preference is to highlight the challenge of tactical combat (particularly with SOTW's narrative premise, which is one where the PCs are frequently being tested and trained), and given the space constraints of a two-mission module I wanted to make sure every combat stood on its own merits.

[flint island]

Yeah! I think a good tactics system helps to tell the story pretty directly!

Also idk if it was intentional, but I felt like the first mission was really well designed to slowly encourage teamwork amongst the PCs, like how ||Combat 1 requires a bit of teamwork, but can overall work without full coordination, then combat 2 requires a fair amount more teamwork to cover all of the different points, and combat 3 straight up won't function without the players coordinating their route through to the endzone||

[harsh coral]

honestly that waas something i noticed. theoretically 3/4 of the first 3 combats can be lost/failed with no loss other than social standing but in exchange , they're definitely meaner than some other corebook stuff.

admittedly though when it matters... sweet cheesecake it matters

|| limitless rpv operators... i fear. it fear much ||

[jaunty beacon]

they're not really that much meaner than the CRB guidelines once you take into account sitrep budgets. Some combats are even easier than the CRB would suggest they should be

It's also worth noting that the CRB's encounter building guidelines are a very rough outline designed as guidance for new GMs. Experienced GMs can treat them as a useful baseline, but experience with the system will quickly show you where the guidelines break down and which confounding factors you need to account for. Lancer's combat balance is impacted by a ton of different factors that the CRB guidance doesn't have the space to cover (NPC choice, optional choices, player skill, GM skill), which is why most GMs end up developing their own heuristics based on their group's capabilities and experience.

This is why the modules go through such extensive testing, with a variety of groups. If I can be allowed to throw some gratuitous shade for a moment, I suspect these combats get more rigorously tested than most D&D products I've seen

[harsh coral]

oh to clarify, i mean they're meaner than wallflower. definitely within CRB

[harsh coral]

that's not shade, that's fact. I genuinely believe some of 2014 5e just was not tested

[jaunty beacon]

oh yeah without question they're meaner than Wallflower

[maiden sundial]

the shambling mound at like level 2 in Curse of Strahd still gives me nightmares

[flint island]

God shoutout to the time a DM decided to run that combat for my group even though we were down a player

had to absolutely cheese that fight to survive

[ivory dock]

oh dearrr

[maiden sundial]

I played in that combat once and our party spellcaster had exclusively lightning spells, so he just resorted to trying to beat it over the head with his staff. It obviously didn't go well

It was a couple years ago but I think the campaign fizzled out after that fight, just cause it was so fucking long and brutal and it kind of bled dry any interest we still had in that campaign by the end of it. It wasn't even fun for the DM

Just goes to show that for as much as well-constructed fights can accomplish great things, poorly-constructed fights can have horrific results

[flint island]

listen I have a whole take I could go into about this, but I really just don't think that Curse of Strahd is a very good adventure module overall

[maiden sundial]

yeah. It doesn't understand the story it's trying to tell

in SoTW, the combats and the narrative beats work together extremely cohesively to tell a great story, and well in Strahd, there's kinda just monster fighting for monster fighting's sake as the story just unfolds in the background with no agency from the players

[flint island]

Yeahh, like if we're gonna make comparisons I'd say that they are both unconventional narratives for the systems they're in, but SOTW works with things in a much smarter way

which does also partially come down to Lancer promoting better campaign structure than 5e

Running SOTW bit I've really been enjoying doing with one PC who managed to pull off romancing Kiriona and Elsa at the same time is something happening, and her PC getting a long flowery letter from Elsa via messages, then a text from Kiriona that's like "Dam, that's crazy" in response to the same situation

[maiden sundial]

lmao

lowkey reminds me of this screenshot for some reason

except the first text is Elsa and the second is Kirona

[obsidian oasis]

Is. Is a Kiriona/Elsa poly situation a thing in a lot of other folks' games?

Because my char did in fact do that

And the vibe isn't too far off from what you just said

[pearl knot]

probably not in ours but only because while elsa did like kiriona in our game, our party played pre-emptive homewrecking to drive them apart from each other and towards specific party members

[flint island]

It's a thing in my current game, but wasn't in my last run. Kinda comes down to player choice I think

I do think that if any characters are gonna be in a polycule situation with a PC, it's probably those two since their intro scene feels pretty flirtatious (towards eachother) and Kiriona is generally played as being flirty with PCs

[gentle girder]

God these both feel like messages I send

[pearl knot]

Georgie s husbandmaxxing with her man she is being sweet with Hedros she has Voluntarily told him she is a homunculus/smart weapon meant for the frame,

[spare hatch]

yessssss

[frigid ravine]

On the topic of romance, anyone had lord Tomas be romanced?

[pearl knot]

yeah our game has tomas as one!

she doesnt know that shes entered into a praying mantis courtship yet but yeah tomas is romancing a fellow player character, it actually caused a fair bit of drama

[frigid ravine]

I've got a player that, out of character was just thristing for his long hair and look, and ended up spending soooo much time with him 😂. I didn't intend for a romance angle there much more friendly and platonic but it felt like the signs were pointing there and I was like "welp! Lord Tomas would like to take her out on a date if she's available" 🤣

[pearl knot]

understandable yeah

[frigid ravine]

On a sidenote, the angle for no-tomas romance was, well, I kinda look like him IRL 😭💀

It's a bit weird but really funny that all of this is transpiring rn 😂

[pearl knot]

the drama was that our pilot, georgie, also had an affectionate attachment to the player character, ands while normal people would just talk this out or maybe have a brief disucssion about it the only normal person in that entire situation was Tomas and she isn't aware of how truly either PC is yet

[pearl knot]

oh i should provide more info for the knowers: Hedros is fine with it he understands and it hasnt changed his opinion of Georgie, just provided some context for some things georgie had done 🥺

[frigid ravine]

Just to clarify, player didn't know I looked until recently (we play online with no video on). But we chatted and both of us are very much ok going down this route for the characters 😅

[pearl knot]

it be like that sometimes

[frigid ravine]

What are some other students that could work as romantic interests? Elsa and Kiriona have their angle and there's a possibility for the polycule but I'm curious how others incorporated the others?

Also, how often do people end up removing/killing off Aloysius? I'm contemplating that cuz the party are at wits end with him and that's added some splendid moments but idk how much more scene time I'd see for him going into mission 2

[kindred spear]

truthfully everyone's hot in the module. with the right spirit they're all fair game

[pearl knot]

our pilot has just kind of been making 😍 at most of the npc's we've met, really. Part of it being trauam related part of it being because she's just like that its in their nature

[pale sail]

im pushing aloysius off a cliff im sorry.

aspup ↩️

[Reply to:](#1329532613186027651 message) truthfully everyone's hot in the module. with the right spirit they're all fair game

[kindred spear]

look he's cute in his own insufferable way to me

[frigid ravine]

Honestly, I needed to hear that. Taking notes 🤲🙏

[pale sail]

i think its the pencil mustache for me its funny i somehow hate him more than i hate praya's twink and bro doesn't even warrant it he just looks throwable or something

[kindred spear]

ofc, every table is different, every party will attach themselves to different NPCs

so it's best to kinda play it by ear and see who they get the hots for

I run a table that encourages romance personally, but I can understand trepidation in a more combat focused table

[pale sail]

sometimes its cute (hedros) sometimes its a a shame and doomed from the start and you can't even pretend to entertain the idea and it makes your heart weep that they are the way they are and you cannot imagine charming, beautiful romantic dates with them (Iphianassa 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 )

[ivory dock]

iphianassa is Not one i was expecting yeah

[kindred spear]

iphi is hot what can I say. love a silver fox.

[pale sail]

me putting on my makeup for my date with the Hero of the Ludran Fields (i have no morals)

[kindred spear]

just have to. y'know. not pay terribly close attention to the elephant in the room (titles, family)

[frigid ravine]

Honestly, same! I had Aloysius make a deal with my party cause he was looking for dependable muscle for something and he'll owe them appropriately. This is before C1 so this makes him automatically despised 😂😂😂.

[pale sail]

Thankfully when it comes to beautiful women I will ignore all their sins and red flags until it is far too late.

aspup ↩️

[Reply to:](#1329532613186027651 message) just have to. y'know. not pay terribly close attention to the elephant in the room (titles, family)

[frigid ravine]

My players had this weird take about lord Castor cuz I played him as being a bit of a charmer and they were like we need to stay away from that man as much as possible 😭

Idk he looks so hot 🥵. He's gonna be someone that a player character I have mind would be enamored with (when I eventually get to play as a player 😭😭😭)

[pearl knot]

😭

[kindred spear]

https://tenor.com/view/tradfi-real-users-meet-crypto-gif-24004753

[ivory dock]

apologies if this has been asked before; what are some of the major narrative inspirations for SOTW? @jaunty beacon

[solid vortex]

I heard top gun was one of them

[ivory dock]

makes sense, it's quoted in the PDF iirc

[median sluice]

So hey, quick question: What the hell is Kapkat in terms of being a game?

[kindred spear]

collectable trading card game

think pokemon, yu-gi-oh, magic

or triple triad for a video game based tcg

[pearl knot]

yeah

[median sluice]

Thank you.

[jaunty beacon]

honestly an absolute ton of things. key among them were Top Gun and Dune, obviously

but there was a bunch of inspiration from all over the place. One other major influence that wasn't a piece of media, was me drawing from my own time and experiences at Oxford

[gentle girder]

How many assassins did you have to deal with there?

[flint island]

Oh interesting! The main pieces of media that SoTW made me think of were Fire Emblem Three Houses and Gundam Witch from Mercury

[maiden sundial]

actually I think this is a reference to how she majored in mechanized chassis combat /j

[jaunty beacon]

I did watch G-Witch when it came out, and it was enough of a touchstone for me to reference it on here before realising that people were getting the wrong idea

I've not played Fire Emblem

though apparently everyone makes the same reference so I guess it resonates with people

[wraith condor]

Three Houses is in a Military Academy and has alot of the aspects of being a microcosm of the world around it is why.

[flint island]

Yeah, the central mechanical concept of "Bond with these NPCs to get more powerful!" also does feel a bit JRPG-ish, granted SOTW handles it in a unique way

[chilly epoch]

Will say, player in Ailyn's first SotW game here, we did end up playing Danger Zone via soundboard to accentuate a player romance that was deeply homoerotic in a pointedly Top Gun way, and this player IS also a known Dune fan, so we may just have contained all our Dune and Top Gun elements in Our Boy Aleksander.

[wispy walrus]

shoutout Aleksander gotta be the one of the guys of all time

[wispy walrus]

sorry every time Aleksander comes up I feel the need to send this actually

[drowsy aspen]

In today's session, one player got in bed with Rawan and got Argo found guilty in court of stolen valor

[split dust]

I'm one player

[maiden sundial]

lmfao

[flint island]

Hell yeah

[harsh coral]

Wonderful

[split dust]

Also Atreyu had a wonderful conversation with their cousin ||Praya|| in which nothing bad happened and nothing ominous was foreshadowed

||Hey Praya, what the fuck did you mean when you said "I desire absolute certainty" and a Union official warned us that the probability space around Karrakis was abruptly collapsing?||

[maiden sundial]

👁️ 👁️

[wispy walrus]

I am normal and can be trusted with objective icons for my combats

[pearl knot]

hi chat another evil parent has hit the dormitory (this time its georgie's! my baby girl's mother of the century is showing up)

they have landed on the tip of the iceberg of what's deeply, horribly wrong with this family

first Georgie's mom shows up, who has the distinction of being the largest npc, as far as we're all aware

the top of the doorframe is where her chest is, georgie is literally waist height, and all the other party members just

they watch the familiar georgie they've all come to know seemingly vanish into thin air as our pilot's personality just completely shifts into something they've never really seen before

just goes in for the hug and georgie is suddenly struggling to use self-referential terms, is using this hyperbolic, "Wah Wah" sound to show that shes crying (because aforemtnioned mom, georgie's creator, did not give georgie the ability to cry) and georgie is ending most of its sentences with Maman" while speaking to her

and it started saying its inner monologue outloud because georgie can't not voice her inner monologue around this woman

[obsidian oasis]

We resume today!

[spare hatch]

:)

[maiden sundial]

https://tenor.com/view/hype-get-turn-up-lit-gif-15908191

[obsidian oasis]

So Effendi was given a datashard by Praya to hand over to Kay as a signal of trust- they immediately pried into it and found it was a trojan horse that'd cause a piece of equipment to enter immediate and prolonged shut down. Against odds, they actually managed to modify it in such a way that Praya wouldn't suspect that they sabotaged the code

[obsidian oasis]

Rawan just showed up while Marisol and Tomas were having a conversation and

So she kinda blew off the poetry club that Marisol and Tomas formed

Rawan apologized for that as she showed up

Marisol immediately blew up going "YOU WANNA APOLOGIZE FOR TRYING TO BLOW UP MY BROTHER'S SHIP?"

[spare hatch]

missing context: argo told Marisol that Rawan was involved/tangentially aware of an ungrateful attack against the ship of Marisol's brother

[obsidian oasis]

Yeeee

[maiden sundial]

I feel so bad for Rawan but that's also simultaneously really fucking funny

[obsidian oasis]

So (spoilers for inbetween mission 1 and 2): || Augur Kahin's here and he's reading our bonds. He got to Marisol and talked about how she possessed the bond of the Builder, prattling on about "oh yeah you've effectively cultivated a garden for yourself and others, but you've let a wolf into the garden- either thorn up or cast it out" so yeah even the xenoglossia is going "yeah Argo's vibes are rancid get rid of him girl" ||

Our GM lost power before || we could finish reading all of our bonds ||

[maiden sundial]

Damn, if that isn't ominous as hell

[fiery rune]

@jaunty beacon now aint that familiar

[jaunty beacon]

same character

[maiden sundial]

"nightmares are limited by the imagination of the dreamer" goes so fucking hard as a quote, holy shit

[jaunty beacon]

proud of that one

[warped hollow]

I’m so curious as to what could have happened to her to have her go through that. She was so laid back and just wanted to chill in our campaign

[maiden sundial]

ate gas station sushi /j

[jaunty beacon]

Deployed to the Dawnline Shore. Legionnaire's narrative present is 5022u

[maiden sundial]

yeah jokes aside, that'll do it

[late cobalt]

I love Kiriona so much and I just want the best for her 😭

[flint island]

I love her a lot but I also think it's really fun when bad things happen to my faves tbh

[warped hollow]

Do most of the SotW characters end up in Legionnaire?

[flint island]

I believe Kiriona is the only one I've seen referenced?

Though my friends and I have clocked a few references to family names shared between SOTW and other works

[hushed copper]

player just posted this lmaon

[dark sluice]

Omfg

[hushed copper]

this is because she was taking a divination class and she did divination on a couple

and also she accidentally did divination on herself with a drop of her own blood

it did not went well

[fiery rune]

tagetes token is now in the works from retrograde

[flint island]

Ayy!!!

[hushed copper]

so

doing a class for one of the PCs

and have to explainwhy exactly a mech overheat and explode since that isn't really written in the lore

So i did this:

"Correct, but let me expand your answer further. It's not totally accurate to say a mech will immediately explode. In fact, for most mechs on the field, it would be impossible for them to detonate from an overheated reactor. This is due to the excellent design of the tokamaks made by our old rivals in Union; a single tokamak reactor will not cause an explosion, it will simply overheat and expose itself dangerously to vent that heat.

"Of course," there's a smile on her face, "this also means that a mech's performance and longevity would be relatively low. This is why all of you here have dual, triple, or even quadruple reactor designs! They act as failsafes when your mech overheats, but in turn they can become extremely dangerous. With more and more overheating, the internal wirings and electronics in the reactor would melt, and that can cause it to become a runaway reactor.

"When that happens, you'll have an actual mini sun beneath your cockpit! Of course, its detonation is nowhere near as powerful as a weapon-grade nuclear bomb, but it'll certainly be devastating for you who's sitting atop it.

"That's not to say it's not useful! Like I've said before, a detonating mech can..."

And on and on it goes.

[ivory dock]

ooh

[flint island]

IT BEGINS

[frigid ravine]

Glorious 🤩

[strong lintel]

just joined a campaign of Shadow of the Wolf!

[ivory dock]

yippee!

[flint island]

heck yeah!

[maiden sundial]

you're gonna love the mission where you find the wolf and they go "it's shadowin time" and then they shadow all over the place

[sick spruce]

that does happen
you get an achievement

[cold whale]

https://tenor.com/view/dante-morb-morbius-gif-25894011

I was so shocked the first time I heard a WOLF of all things was piloting that mech!

[maiden sundial]

and the secret boss where the party has to fight the wolf's shadow is incredible

[harsh coral]

Ok but when do we get to see the wolf

[warped hollow]

Spoilers for shadow of the wolf, you never see the wolf, just its shadow ☹️

[strong lintel]

Might be a silly question but like, what is the age range of characters at the calvary college

[kindred spear]

someone's asked this before lemme hunt down the response from Kat

.

[flint island]

New squad for the college

[warped hollow]

Sagarmatha is slaying as always

[flint island]

It was really funny watching another player arrive at giving it that base frame and that head independantly

[warped hollow]

I think it just looks good! we’re both styling.

What’s that sagarmatha’s vibes and the pilot in it?

[flint island]

House of Glass kid who's leaning in a bit more on being a controller/defender type!

Going into the Black Witch liscence for some control options, so kinda going for a "get behind me team, I'll provide cover" kinda vibe

[strong lintel]

which house would you guys say fits the best for like a high society mean "princess" type

[drowsy aspen]

House of Stone is the easy answer, but House of Glass also works well

[strong lintel]

okay cool I was leaning towards House of Stone

sweeeet

[flint island]

Depends on how disconnected you want them to be from the bloodshed that got their family rich basically

The only houses that wouldn't really fit that archetype are Water, Dust, and especially Promise generally

[frigid ravine]

House of glass and maybe even house of order tbh. Political maneuvering, the connections and the sheer amount prestige are what I think of for these two houses.

[cold whale]

My current party has a House of Stone 3rd born who is looking to do right by their family, but doubtful of the conditions of things (Not entirely sure the ungratefuls should be so despised); A house of sand 2nd who is in the works of plotting to kill their elder sister so they are 1st in line to take their house's control; a House of Glass eldest born who is just trying to hold the mantle that has been placed on them, and is interested in Pankrati.

My last group had a noble from house of Smoke progressive.

I don't think there is a "this house is best", it's definitely about how you want to tell that story, or what story.

The house of stone 3rd born is definitely going to be a fun reform, where as the house of sand PC might end up just being antagonistic or problematic by the end of things, but they are both neat stories.

The house of stone player actually was connecting with Hedros most recently, about how awful war can be and the conditions of such, and how many of the students at the academy are going to be in for a shock when they actually get into a real problem, or passions forbid, have to be on the front lines of a combat some time.

[obsidian oasis]

My group's shadow of the wolf returns this week....

[autumn coyote]

we finished our campaign with toxic yuri

this is very important

[warped hollow]

Always a good choice

[flint island]

Nice

Also the new Retrograde Tagetes looks great! I was gonna recreate the mech hangar art for Hedros, but I am tempted to give him something like this now

[warped hollow]

Hedros always looks so clean 😮‍💨

[pale sail]

he really does

[hushed copper]

so

one of my players finished a class and is able to pick a set of reserves

well

one form a set

and for one of them, i offered a modification to the alternative meltdown rules mentioned in the book

Gangway: 1/Mission -- Instead of a Burst 2 explosion, when you suffer from Reactor Meltdown or Self-Destruct, you may launch your reactor in a Blast 3 Range 5. This effect gains +1d6 Burn, +5 Range, and 10 AP to all objects and terrain for every Stress you have remaining, in addition to the normal effects. After launching the reactor, your mech becomes a wreck and your pilot becomes Down and Out.

[flint island]

Just finished GMing my second group through the module btw! It was nice doing a full session of just character wrap-up stuff

[warped hollow]

Omg so how was the group

[random sapphire]

There are three kinds of players...

[obsidian oasis]

Shadow of the Wolf today 😌

[spare hatch]

WOOOOO !!

bond readings 😌

[wise kite]

reading my PCs to filth with the power of the blue blood of pangloss

[late cobalt]

marisol finding out argo has been lying a bunch to her FML

[pearl knot]

😔

oh its been a while but my pilot's creator/mom has showed up to have dinner with the party and literally everyone is having a mental breakdown after like 5 minutes (except my pilot)

all the other player characters are nobility (and one of them still thought/thinks my pilot is a noble) and after getting to know them as one of the other students and other personal shit, and after knowing my pilot has like, money issues and shit affecting their life

they're greeted with the realization that my pilot's mother-creator has the surname "Shimano"

shes directly related to both founding dynasties (her younger cousin is a Smith, even, also a baron)

[spare hatch]

sotw spoilers
||when your emotional muted partially paracausal friend goes "marisol. we might have to fight your boyfriend." with the whimsy of a fae after making a deal||

[obsidian oasis]

Yasmin in Mission 2, Combat 1 rn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stbzW5Sf1Ks&ab_channel=CashMayo

[indigo field]

I AM THE WALLRUNNER

[obsidian oasis]

Just. GOOD LORD (Combat 1, Mission 2):

[indigo field]

5600 HOURS IN CS:GO SURF

[obsidian oasis]

This was a fucking turn

[spare hatch]

this fight started off rough for us but has quickly turned around lmao

[obsidian oasis]

|| Keros' mech was left stunned in a horrific position, so Effendi slapped on a protocol for crackshot, overcharged, tossed a blink grenade to lasso it back into cover; stabilized to end Kero's stun, used the overcharge action to blow up an entire field of opponents with a daisy cutter that proc'd overkill enough times to instantly kill two enemy mechs and blow off Rawan's gun ||

[obsidian oasis]

End of combat 1, mission 2:

|| Marisol's still under the assumption/misinformation from Argo that Rawan helped bomb her brother's ship, yeah? At the end of the combat, as we were mopping up, Marisol just repeatedly unloaded on Rawan's mech to a degree that left everybody just a bit unnerved, including notable stoic Yasmin ||

[jaunty beacon]

delicious drama

[indigo field]

i loved doing a bunch of backflips in the background in the atlas while everyone else exploded the battlefield

this is what peak LL3 gameplay looks like

also made this to commemorate ||the newfound lethality of our live-fire exercises||

[late cobalt]

Marisol had a come to jesus moment with Tomas about what she did was fucking unhinged as hell

and it was very sweet and also 😭 but Marisol is losing her fucking mind rn

[tidal veldt]

I hope this is okay to share here, player was doodling their SoTW character and I wanted to give her her kuirasser regalia

[jaunty beacon]

This is very cool

[obsidian oasis]

Oooo I adore this

[flint island]

Love this design!

[tidal veldt]

Have another from one of the other players! The brainworms in the party are real, it's tough being in the middle of one campaign book and getting hyped for the next one already haha

[maiden sundial]

This looks like if Solid Snake was European instead of American (complimentary)

bro has a good vibe 😤👍

[tidal veldt]

Wanted to share something one of my played made that made me chuckle

[tidal veldt]

alright last of these for a while, two other player's characters, big time utena vibes followed by the grandson of the disgraced fleet admiral that led the second wave against Ras Shamra

[cold whale]

gd I love those house of rememberance shoes 😭

[low pasture]

im like almost 2 months late but huge missed opportunity to say Katherine Bark instead of Katherine Stark

[obsidian oasis]

Our GM hit us with this after Mission 2, Combat 1 and

Guess we'll figure out what that means today!

[jaunty beacon]

have fun!

[obsidian oasis]

Kiriona just did this to Effendi and went || "my dearest, you 100% fucked up by putting yourself into Praya's debt" ||

[chilly creek]

Currently in the middle of Mission 2
||Me and my fellow players have decided that actually Harrison Armory is definitely behind everything and evidence should be altered to make this fact more evident. We'll see how this goes.||

Just remember - WWSWPD
What Would Solo Wing Pixy Do

[obsidian oasis]

Oh boy! Effendi's getting pinned for embezelment

[pearl knot]

noble culture

[spare hatch]

Beat 9 spoilers
||Effendi got pinned for embezzlement, Keros is getting called a religious extremist, Yasmin is getting accused of sabotage and an attempted assassination of Aloysius, and I think Marisol is getting accused of being an ungrateful||

[indigo field]

||Aloysius did message Yasmin to let her know he did not take it personally and believes in the good in her which he definitely shouldnt||

[spare hatch]

||Marisol has been taken by Khayradin Elite||

[obsidian oasis]

|| They're planting drugs in Keros' room lmao ||

[maiden sundial]

https://tenor.com/view/skeleton-guy-turns-into-skeleton-tweaking-guy-tweaking-tweaking-skeleton-gif-16909206125173021250

[spare hatch]

||don't worry! the two killing machines in the party are on their way to help her lmao||

[maiden sundial]

https://tenor.com/view/sesame-street-jbtzxclsv-take-al-lost-loser-gif-14425635

[late cobalt]

||Marisol is a wreck and going through it because also before getting abducted she confronted Ajax about lying and being scared of what he's planning and she got yelled at by him ;_; and she still loves him, but is deeply, deeply hurt... this is gonna be real fun when she finds out that it was probably Ajax and Praya behind all of them being framed... so yeah girl is in custody and on her way to having her heart shattered||

[obsidian oasis]

Oh yeah a thing I forgot to mention:

|| Effendi got a call from Ilsa as she was crashing out over the whole affair, fully believing that they had gone ahead and seduced her as a power play to facilitate said embezzlement ||

Which, oop

[indigo field]

||its okay, our murder of Karrakin officials and military personnel will clear this right up and she'll come running back||

[jaunty beacon]

I see things are going ||well||

[maiden sundial]

You know it's wild when even adjectives are a spoiler

[wheat spire]

In the shadow of the wolf where I'm a player, we probably hit the 2 standard deviations below average performance for ||enter sand-men|| and I can't speak for the rest of my party, but my "house of stone miner" is severely contemplating posting a message that starts with ||TYRANNOCLEAVE MASS FLYER #???? - FOR FUCK'S SAKE IT WASN'T US THIS TIME||

[harsh coral]

my party is already halfway

oh man, this has been fun

[tidal veldt]

Another of my group settled on a character for SoTW, because no good Lancer campaign is complete without its very own Char clone

[obsidian oasis]

Mission 2, Combat 2: || Well rest in peace Kahin, oop ||

[late cobalt]

LMAOOOOOO OH GOD SHIT IS GETTING REAL FOR MARISOL RIPERONI

nothing like ||being poisoned by the person you were in love with!!!!||

[obsidian oasis]

|| Yasmin just got ripped out of her Atlas oop ||

[indigo field]

||its okay im course-correcting, this next turn is gonna pop off||

||house of sand assassin and the evil and intimidating sparri about to get back in her mech and kick his fucking ass||

[obsidian oasis]

Presented with no context

Context: ||Effendi grabbed Keros' size 1/2 mech and removed the coreworm rocket from it ||

[late cobalt]

mission 2, combat 2: ||ajax has entered the fight, marisol is going to have a berserker moment and i am afraid for this man's life||

[jaunty beacon]

😈

[maiden sundial]

https://tenor.com/view/spongebob-you-what-what-did-you-do-spongebob-meme-spongebob-squarepants-gif-19389913

[maiden sundial]

https://tenor.com/view/sesame-street-jbtzxclsv-take-al-lost-loser-gif-14425635

[wheat spire]

🤝 because I had a similar experience

[spare hatch]

Mission 2, Combat 2 BIG SPOILERS
||keros killed argo||

[ivory dock]

oooh

[maiden sundial]

||What happened to Marisol???||

[obsidian oasis]

|| Marisol is presently weeping over that dude's body lmao ||

[spare hatch]

||yep||

[indigo field]

||RIP BOZO||

[late cobalt]

||she was trying to stop the bleeding even tho it was useless also, because even tho she pissed as hell she still loved him||

[maiden sundial]

||smh, lmao. I was shipping Marisol and Argo for the longest time but like after the poisoning I was like "girl you need to move on, this guy sucks ass unilaterally"||

[wise kite]

I LOVE THE KARRAKIN TRADE BARONIES

[spare hatch]

||keros agreed lmao||

[wise kite]

thank Kat for Kat and all these bountiful building blocks for horrible college drama spanning multiple solar systems

[maiden sundial]

you know it's well-written when the HA fanboy agrees, lol

[late cobalt]

||in time she'll move on but like also he was her first love, like she is not entirely rational||

[maiden sundial]

||fair enough tbh! that shit will mess with people||

[indigo field]

||the real loss is kahin, i miss grandpa they crucified him in our warehouse with a big metal pole||

[late cobalt]

I also think that marisol just doesn't have the correct mentality for live combat where people can actually die. She's at the KCC because she's from a military family, but really she shouldn't be there

so like even just killing not ||ajax|| was traumatizing to her

so part of the ||begging not to kill him and trying to save him ties into that as well, once the adrenaline berserker mode wore off||

[maiden sundial]

oh this reminds me, I have a really funny story about one of my exes that I'm gonna share here cause it's like peak Karrakin BS

[late cobalt]

||and she was going to crush ajax to death but chickened out/ didn't want to give in to his goading||

[obsidian oasis]

|| they fr end of evangelion'd him ||

[maiden sundial]

So, I do a lot of acting stuff, and a couple of years ago, I was in a play where I ended up dating this guy who was in the play with me, and we got along well for a while before we just both kinda agreed it wasn't working. However, the funny and sorta Karrakin part is that due to how the casting in the play went, they played the character who brutally stabs my character to death, and we broke up like a week before the show. So cue like me having to get mock stabbed to death by my ex while screaming bloody murder in front of a crowd of like 100 people on seven separate occasions cause we did like seven shows, lmfao

[late cobalt]

OH MY GOD

[maiden sundial]

They were really professional about it but it was still absolutely funny as fuck

[wise kite]

Oh my god that is actually insane timing

Method acting

[late cobalt]

fr

[maiden sundial]

but yeah that's how I ended up being sorta Karrakin-coded IRL, lmao

[late cobalt]

incredible

[maiden sundial]

It would have been more Karrakin if I had actually gotten stabbed but then I probably wouldn't be telling the story

[warped hollow]

Spoilers along the same line ||I wish we killed our Argo. My PC almost did bc she was possessed by her mom but her judgement got the better of her and now that little rat is out free somewhere 😔||

[wispy walrus]

haha jokes on you ||we didn't kill our Argo but he is in a endless tangle of blackmail and favors from which he will never escape||

[warped hollow]

WE WANTED TO DO THAT TO HIM TOO

But at least she anesthetized him and threw him in the storage compartment of their getaway vehicle

That was after ||she threatened to kill him with the same weapon he used to kill the Augur|| We should have let that dog out in her

[wise kite]

I'm just saying in the wake of what happened they got the most humane ending.

[late cobalt]

Honestly yeah

[jaunty beacon]

Thank you all for playing! Hearing these stories makes me so happy

[obsidian oasis]

More Shadow of the Doggy soon....

[wheat spire]

My GM said it's probably gonna be the finale for us this week (or the final combat this week and a closure narrative session the week after).

I'm not expecting my guy to make it out alive

[obsidian oasis]

Oh boy!

We're all also in our final stretch

Surely Discord wouldn't have issues the day of one of our last sessions, right?

[obsidian oasis]

I'm now literally the only person in our group who can't connect

Funny thing

I was the one to point out the issue

[late cobalt]

we managed to get connected thank god

[maiden sundial]

Paul Revere behavior

[obsidian oasis]

Mission 2: || Yeah Ajax just admitted that he didn't really love Marisol and that there's a bomb on campus lmao ||

[maiden sundial]

wait I thought he was dead, lmao

[late cobalt]

keros has a speak with dead custom trigger

[obsidian oasis]

Oh yeah needed to clarify that lmao

[spare hatch]

||becoming partially paracausal in play will give powers that many would consider unnatural.||

[maiden sundial]

Ah I gotcha. Legit tho I was thinking that the weasel somehow faked his own death just to make Marisol sad lmfao

[spare hatch]

that IS something he would do though tbh

[maiden sundial]

"Did you ever hear the tale of Keros the Wise? It is not a tale the Kavaliers would tell you"

[spare hatch]

Mission 2 spoilers
||Marisol is over there having a crisis while Keros was having last words™ with Hedros and was like "I love you." while Effendi is explaining everything to Kiriona lmao||

[obsidian oasis]

|| Effendi told Kiriona that Argo was dead and she went OH FUCK YEAH, causing Marisol to mald a bit ||

[late cobalt]

||Marisol is crashing out real hard rn and having massive relationship envy that everyone else has partners that a) actually love them and b) are not dead ||

[maiden sundial]

wait Keros is dead? fuck

[spare hatch]

||oh no no, he just THINKs he's gonna die||

he is preparing for the worst lmao

[maiden sundial]

yeah she really got done dirty lmfao. I hope she has standards after this

[late cobalt]

she definitely will if she ever decides to date ever again

[maiden sundial]

ah gotcha. maybe I should have spoilered my earlier message but I wasn't thinking cause I was like 👁️👁️

[maiden sundial]

I'm just picturing that bit from Gravity Falls where Soos and Melody are sitting in the ruins of a burnt-out restaurant with dead robot parts everywhere and Melody is like, "you know, amazingly this isn't the worst date I've ever been on"

10 years later Marisol's like floating in the wreck of a spaceship on a decaying orbit towards a black hole and she's like "oh yeah I've been on worse dates"

[late cobalt]

honestly so real

[pearl knot]

today dinner with my pilot's black hole of a mother-creator has finally started to implode because two of the guests were vocal about not liking her at the dinner

[kindred spear]

i got into an sotw game recently and i am angling to have the character i'm playing romance Argo cos she has a hero complex from reading too many romance novels.

she can fix him

[pale sail]

she's correct she can fix him

[kindred spear]

23 year old naive faildaughter who's been insulated from any possible pain or struggle her entire life takes one look at that snake fuck and says "oh poor boy. he's so handsome. i can fix him if i try hard enough."

[kindred spear]

https://tenor.com/view/truth-impact-third-impact-3rd-impact-truth-nuke-anime-meme-gif-9672669363915948084

[maiden sundial]

Oh Lord lmao

[maiden sundial]

https://tenor.com/view/interesting-speculation-the-terror-republic-of-play-gif-14806095

[kindred spear]

Dame-Kuirasser Fia Mailyss Nemesia-Devericks IV of Remembrance can do it. i believe in her. there is no possible outcome that could be bad

[jaunty beacon]

https://tenor.com/view/bold-strategy-cotton-dodgeball-cotton-pepper-espn-the-ocho-jason-bateman-gif-5533366060954481945

[late cobalt]

https://tenor.com/view/kermit-not-funny-annoyed-scared-gif-14676014

please let me know how your argo-romance goes as a fellow argo romancer

[kindred spear]

will do

[maiden sundial]

I love how regardless of timeline Praya keeps getting her man stolen

[kindred spear]

look, being the other woman is part of the fantasy from her romance novels

[maiden sundial]

It's like a really funny version of the canon event thing, it's a constant across all timelines

[kindred spear]

she's also fucking. insanely competitive so.

yknow

[late cobalt]

i mean pre mission 2 marisol would say its because she treats her betrothed like a dog

[maiden sundial]

wait this is just the mecha anime adaptation of Dolly Parton's Jolene

[late cobalt]

here for this

[pearl knot]

could be worse,

i've bene entertaining the idea of having our pilot somehow feel 💗 precisely because it knows he would hate it

[maiden sundial]

Praya boutta be like:
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene...
I'm beggin of ya please don't take my man
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene...
It'll interfere with my whole evil plan...

[kindred spear]

alright im sold

HAHAHAHHA

[pearl knot]

second time Jolene has come up as a reference in SOTW....

[maiden sundial]

Your mecha build's beyond compare
You truly are a Kuraissaire
I cannot compete with you Jolene

The sitrep's lost, because of you
And that HA Enkidu
Curse that goddamn Armament Redundancy.

[obsidian oasis]

Oh Marisol's crashing out hard right now

[wheat spire]

All these characters romancing characters in the campaign. Meanwhile if it wasn't for the ||jamming that was keeping comms from reaching people on campus after Enter Sand-men|| the only romancing happening for my guy would have been making ||Lord Flyte|| the Garma to his Char.

[wise kite]

last combat next week 😭

[late cobalt]

😭 end of an era

[wise kite]

player used this talent and i had all their fwiends show up to nascar-style pit crew their mechs

[obsidian oasis]

(That's me! I'm the player!)

Did so Mission 2, Combat 3 || as we were about to enter the hall to face off against Praya ||

I've got 4 daisy cutter shots primed and ready to go for this final combat

So fellas

What if I overcharged, stabilized, and fired my daisy cutters two rounds in a row

[wise kite]

players don't look here

|| Let's see those daisy cutter shots do their thing when the BOMB is sitting right there ||

[random sapphire]

These maps are getting increasingly larger and more complicated.
I'm gonna have to print even more tiles to keep up

[jaunty beacon]

oh yeah I remember when we playtested these, we mostly just used terrain to outline building walls and for individual bits of cover, as we were also pretty stretched

this rocks though :3

when you get to it you should definitely share your version of ||Combat 7 with the destructible terrain, the water, and the terrace||, I'd be fascinated with how you handle that one

[lusty plinth]

Does anyone know the significance of all of the patches on Rawan's character art? I know one of them is a Union flag but I don't know what the others are

[sick spruce]

top: Pride flag 2018
bottom: Anarchist flag, Estonian flag

[lusty plinth]

maybe the ufos just for fun

I think I maybe thought the Estonia flag was the union flag because of a meme hehe

[flint island]

Oh the UFO looking design is for the Horizon group! Basically an NHP rights front in setting

[maiden sundial]

It still tickles me pink that the Union flag is the Estonia flag

[maiden sundial]

IIRC think Kat said it was supposed to be the Union flag but it happens to look like the Estonia flag

https://tenor.com/view/scream-if-you-love-estonia-estonia-i-love-estonia-baltics-gif-11060661396553315107

[sick spruce]

https://tenor.com/view/estonia-flag-of-estonia-flag-flag-waver-gif-27144474

[lusty plinth]

ah okay thanks

Horizon Group is very interesting

[wheat spire]

Over the run of the entire campaign we didn't defeat Argo once.

Ruthlessly bully in combat, sometimes to the point of irrelevance? Yes. Wreck the mech?

[wheat spire]

He's alive though! Technically! He may be slightly ||embedded in the firmament||. After ||putting out a Tyrannocleave Mass Media Statement and going full Sanjak partisan|| he felt like the only valid option after the fighting ended was to ||yeet himself into a void rend and let god sort out what happens next||.

[wheat spire]

I need a character for the final session and I've arrived on the head of his sponsoring house, who is Definitely Not Dulcinea Septimus Who's Absolutely Not Cytherea Loveday from TLT.

Don't worry about why this frail and silly noblewoman has Tear Throat. It's fine.

[obsidian oasis]

Y'know, it's been a sec since I've read TLT and I needed to refresh myself and. Concerning!

[wheat spire]

I was the only one at the table who read TLT stuff so when I started saying a bunch of character names that were literally just ||The Lyctors||, nobody noticed

[obsidian oasis]

rip

[wheat spire]

Meanwhile I've threatened a group with running SotW for them and already got told by a friend that she's playing "Not Coronabeth" so I'm looking forward to that.

Already working on my Moira Quirk Ianthe impression tbh.

[obsidian oasis]

Ianthe

F E A R

[wheat spire]

Legally I'm obligated to get her with that slimy, purring Oh, coROnaaaaa.

Who's Ianthe gonna be? Unsure.

but I gotta do it

[obsidian oasis]

Just two more days until we hit our final combat...

[spare hatch]

today >:)

[obsidian oasis]

Ran nearly a whole fuckin hour late because of car issues, but I'm there

[spare hatch]

here we gooooo! final combat >:)

[maiden sundial]

girl really rolled a 1 on the structure table IRL

[indigo field]

Praya has activated Crush Targeting on Yasmin, the metal gear rising soundtrack has started in my mind

[spare hatch]

Mission 2, final combat spoilers

LMAOOO

[random sapphire]

https://tenor.com/view/raiden-metal-gear-metal-gear-rising-revengeance-blade-rules-of-nature-gif-17361138170178789066

[indigo field]

||yasmin of all people defused the fucking bomb||

[spare hatch]

||THATS OUR HERO!!!||

[obsidian oasis]

Last combat: || Effendi was the one to kill Praya after her soldiers abandoned her when the bomb was defused ||

|| Every single one of her men was going "yeah you should run away Praya, don't be a dumbass. "||

[obsidian oasis]

Can I look at this now

[wise kite]

Sure

[obsidian oasis]

Oh lmao

We're doing narrative wrap-up next session and god

What a rride

[maiden sundial]

https://tenor.com/view/transformers-credits-movie-hasbro-ending-gif-4095300824521747557

[tidal veldt]

Last two players of our party!

[alpine sluice]

HELL YES

HELL YES A ROBOT OF SOME KIND (FULL CONVERSION CYBORG? NHP?)

[tidal veldt]

Basically a Cogent Mind Pilot Model from the House of Water, this particular deviation intended to be able to compete on a technical level with advanced pilot programs/compcon dummy systems

If my lore memory serves me correctly anyway that the House of Water actually pursues Cogent Mind development in lieu of NHP research (otherwise outlawed by Union, right?) so it felt like the best way to do it

[alpine sluice]

swag as hell

[wheat spire]

Fellow nanowhip haver 🤝

But you actually were able to hit something so you're making better use of it than I did

[flint island]

Oh I love these designs!

[tender crow]

missions 1-2 spoilers, my group has been having a ton of fun and they have solidly sold me on continuing this campaign after we hit the end of the module

• ||the player who's secretly a Sanjak ungrateful refugee adopted by a sympathetic Umaran noble, Melchiorre, intentionally melted himself down in mission 1-combat 3 not expecting it to keep going (long story) so he got picked up by his good friend Rawan Azar and rode along in her mech during combat 4. He tried making contact with the attackers to stand down using old ungrateful codes while in her mech, which led to them having a tense conversation later where they both revealed their backstories and he effectively adopted Rawan as a sixth party member||
• ||LeFleur's debriefing was super tense with both a Harrison exchange student (Angelie) and an ungrateful sympathizer to interrogate, both of them bad at keeping their mouths shut,. Angelie was needling LeFleur by being perfectly cooperative but annoyingly precise and noncommittal in her wording, leading LeFleur to take her frustrations out by threatening to throw Rawan under the bus, and the law school dropout PC (Curd) ended up threatening LeFleur with legal action to get her to back off||
• ||I had Iphianassa die in the attack, because Melchiorre had a grudge over her involvement on Sanjak and made an intentional decision to leave her for last, and everyone understood fairly quickly that the stakes had been raised once LeFleur finally told them||
• ||Angelie ended up making a phone call to her Purview intelligence handler asking if they really did blow up the college which was a fun conversation (he didn't think so, but he also admitted they would not have told him if they did) ||
• ||Melchiorre is absolutely terrified of Augur Kahin's prophecy, realizing that Sanjak is going to get caught in the crossfire of any major conflict and at this point is increasingly prepared to do whatever it takes to stop the wheel from crushing Sanjak||

• ||everyone was extremely tense after mission 2 - combat 1 when it became apparent that the college was going to a war footing, with the general consensus being that the ungratefuls were responsible for the attack and harrison had armed them||
• ||i also let them believe for quite a while that they were going to be forced to take a turn piloting unfamiliar npc mechs in the next combat as part of the legally-distinct-Ungratefuls opfor like Rawan and Thomas had been, which was fun||
• ||I had a false alarm lockdown on campus to ratchet the tension up; they were all extremely spooked, but no one caught on to the potential sigificance of a large number of House of Sand chassis being mislabeled and delivered to the college loading docks||
• ||the party member who received Augur Kahin's note delivered it to the rest of the party by holding a barbeque, framing the note, and placing it at the head of the table with no further elaboration||
• ||the party spent quite a while deciding how to approach the false accusations and almost ended up going straight to the dean's office to defend themselves. They did not decide to do this, but the delay meant that four of them ended up trapped on campus while one of them had gone on ahead to check out the stables. Melchiorre convinced the guards that he was one of them using a stealth hardsuit and prosocollar but almost got dragged on patrol with them, Angelie ended up tossing a frag grenade into the next alleyway to distract them, and they managed to escape through the sewers but Melchiorre stumbled into a BUC trooper while scouting ahead and got shot. ||

• ||They eventually made it to the industrial district to meet up with Augur Kahin and their other party member, but had to explain to a very skeptical police officer why they had emerged from the sewers with Angelie in an assault hardsuit, and Melchiorre disguised as a fireman and bleeding. One of the other party members (Jimmy) salvaged the situation by throwing up at the officer's feet and convincingly faking being drunk, allowing Angelie to convince him that Jimmy was part of her metal band and they were trying to sell 'power armor power metal' as a gimmick but she had to leave the show to run after him when he got wasted, wandered off, and fell into the sewers, requiring them to call the fire department to rescue him||
• ||we left off directly as Augur Kahin got impaled by a Lock/Hold Javelin and Armored Core boss music kicked in, so they'll be confronting Argo next session||

[low pasture]

my sotw game is like 2-3 weeks away from starting and i come to thee for aid, lancer community

i am shit at finding good ambient music and even more shit at finding good combat music

i humbly request your personal favorite tracks n stuff to play during the game

[tidal veldt]

FE3H album and Witch From Mercury are really comprehensive collections with a lot of great themes and leimotifs the party can get used to as the game goes on, FE3H offering a more classical/fantasy feel with WfM being more future/scifi

[wise kite]

I used the ost from suzerain for most of my ambient/narrative tracks. the rizia dlc ones have a good feudal vibe to them

[hot flax]

My combat music is primarily Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans, with a smattering of Full-Metal Alchemist Brotherhood and a hint of Ace Combat Zero ||for instance, I'm using AC0's CONTACT for Combat 4|| while I use WFM tracks for ||the final two combats, 'cause of the ticking clock motif||
For narrative tracks I'm using the rest of the FMA:B OST and Violet Evergarden

Some people like making playlists for each combat, but I like to keep a basic combat playlist (two, actually, depending on stakes) and start each combat off with a different "needledrop" to set the tone

[median sluice]

Whispered to Elsa by one of my players: "My mom is actually proud of me, unlike yours."

[rare nebula]

minus 4 to the relationship clock and an everlasting vendetta

[median sluice]

And one of my players is doing Spy vs. Spy flirting with Count Argo.

[median sluice]

Also used The Ledger bond power on Count Argo (Started at a higher LL, gave them access to Bond Powers earlier than normal.)

So I get to figure out what he'd ask for.

[rare nebula]

A small favor, to be redeemed at the most inconvenient time possible (but Argo's not telling the PC that)

Maybe this favor is to ||plant the bombs the V's usually do. Of course, Argo wouldn't tell the PC they're bombs.||

[kindred spear]

IT BEGINS.
Fia has been feigning not knowing who Praya and Argo are, which infuriated Praya. in combat 1, she was crush targeted by an exposed Praya, to which she responded by saying "Oh, the nobody is provoking me? Ha! I will accept your apology by way of a kiss on my signet ring." and then she dealt 26 damage after exposed doubling, immediately dealing a crushing hit to Praya and destroying her frame.
upon completion of the duel, Fia demanded Argo and Praya kiss her ring. She didn't react when Praya seethingly kissed her ring, and then blushed when Argo kissed it, dropping the facade of not knowing who he was and saying "Thank you, Count Argo." which has earned a point on the Argo clock.

Fia is not immune to snakes. it's bad. also her ego is at an all time high. she scored a total of 4/10 structure in that combat and dealt 75 damage without being hit once.

fia is the passions' favorite princess

[jaunty beacon]

Let's go Fia

[kindred spear]

she's also acted upon her noblesse oblige to cover for Rawan and take the blame for the unofficial duel by not revealing that Praya and Argo were the offending parties, receiving academic probation as punishment. she's gonna be hearing about this from her sponsor very soon (papa is not going to be very happy about this at all. their minor house's reputation is on the line, after all.)

[maiden sundial]

lmao went from The Godfather to Pride and Prejudice in 2 seconds flat

[gentle girder]

The cycle begins anew

[kindred spear]

(oh, @late cobalt progress update on Argo romance as requested.)

[late cobalt]

HEHEHE IT BEGINS

[kindred spear]

I'm so excited, I can't wait for this bastard to get his claws into her

[hot flax]

After three (3) weeks of waiting, Session 01 is finally tonight!
Dramatis Personae:

• Lady Alessandra di Lionett-Dellamar ("Cybele"): A "club circuit" pankrati champion from the House of Glass, given the vaguest of hints that something may be up with things
• Lady Reva Setrum-Ethellia ("Ivory"): A clone of a famous House of Moments doctor, who discovered that mechs are her passion. She's also been asked to knock Lady Kiriona down a peg ('cause I'm evil like that)
• Lady Rowena Udo Gebir-Douri ("Beaker"): A House of Smoke noble with a phd on nanite weaponry, a Republican streak a mile wide, and a secret mission to figure out who's behind this "Hecatoncheires" thing (Y'know, cause nanites is her thing)
• Clementa Agnor ("Quasar"): A House of Dust smart artillery specialist who has been making munitions for Sanjak Ungratefuls on the sly. Also has a secret mission to figure out who's behind the Hecatoncheires, since nanites are dangerous.
  I expect Quasar and Beaker to butt heads over the nanites thing, but they don't know that both of their secret tasks are coming from Union Intelligence

[hot flax]

Having fun with Kay on the omninet forum

[dim beacon]

Ed Balls

[drowsy aspen]

SotW campaign completed! 🎊

[drowsy aspen]

The players ||stopped the bomb from going off, fought another monstrosity in the Firmament, and saw off Praya to the Boundary Garden in Aunic territory where she can be the hero of her own story for once instead of a villain and pawn||

[maiden sundial]

||Daft Punk origins...||

[wheat spire]

Your party upon ||stopping the plan to blow up the campus and foiling Praya's machinations||

My party ||when they did the same thing||

|| "wait hold on it's better if she's alive to attone for her-" ||

[flint island]

So generally when I run ||her getting de-meched in the fight, I'll have her eject to challenge one of the players to a one-on-one physical duel hand to hand. Both times I've had a Titan player accept and essentially ask "how hard can I swing while still having her survive this"||

I do think there's a really funny followup adventure to be had in ||Praya and maybe Argo being needed for testimony against their respective houses, so now their houses are trying to assassinate them and the players have to temporarily protect/work with them||

[jaunty beacon]

I've seen this happen a couple of times and I strongly advocate for it

[harsh coral]

My team is now on the final combat. ||We got a house of stone spare fighting a house of stone heir. We got a house of water engineering prodigy looking for his mother's killer. We have the schmoozing game seeker putting his desire for glory aside to help people. And we got the one guy who's technically a noble but was mainly sent to the college to stop being a mooch, who's just been doing damn good work.||

||Because despite all their flaws, when they heard about the bomb they all went "we have to stop this"||

It's wonderful stuff

[kindred spear]

(please tag your spoilers i have players that browse this channel)

(last sentence 🙏 )

[kindred spear]

would you mind spoilering the last sentence please 😭

[wheat spire]

Shadow of the wolf RP finale tonight went places

House of Stone infighting at its finest

[kindred spear]

excellent LMAO

[harsh coral]

👍

Sorry thought this was a gm channel

[pearl knot]

The things we come up with in the middle of the night...

[obsidian oasis]

Shadow of the Dog finale today...

[maiden sundial]

https://tenor.com/view/me-atrapaste-es-cine-its-cinema-cinema-esto-es-cine-gif-17729711691959966457

[obsidian oasis]

(Not a lot of commentary yet, been lost in the sauce of the final session)

[spare hatch]

||keros' people are gonna be settling on the homeworld of one of the players and no longer have to live in a ship for eternity :]||

[obsidian oasis]

Finale: || Yasmin's shunting Praya's sword into a dusty and forgotten corner of her trophy room, along with going "yeah the nameplate's gonna be empty- the foe it came from isn't worth remembering" ||

[indigo field]

||its going right next to the framed diploma from the college||

[obsidian oasis]

|| Effendi and their weed smoking girlfriends are forming a house company together ||

[maiden sundial]

https://tenor.com/view/transformers-credits-movie-hasbro-ending-gif-4095300824521747557

https://tenor.com/view/me-atrapaste-es-cine-its-cinema-cinema-esto-es-cine-gif-17729711691959966457

wait @late cobalt what happens to marisol?

[late cobalt]

LMAO okay so
|| So Marisol takes time at home to heal from everything that happened, she has a beautiful heart to heart with her brother Rafael where she reflects on what happened and is slowly learning to love herself again... also trying to help Tomas transition||

[maiden sundial]

nice lmao. Having the love interest / lover character learn to prioritize their wellbeing and take time to work on themselves is such an underrated trope

also yeah I kinda saw that coming with Tomas lol

[late cobalt]

ahahahaha

and yeah 😭 i think it's an underrated trope too

[kindred spear]

https://tenor.com/view/tradfi-real-users-meet-crypto-gif-24004753

||one of my players in my game is helping crack his egg||

[maiden sundial]

||If there's an alternate universe out there where Tomas is actually a guy they have to be afab so the multiverse trans yin yang balance can be complete||

[pearl knot]

scp foundation...

[wise kite]

pro GM tip: end your campaign as a cliffhanger. that way the players are always craving more. and then never run a module in the same plotline again.

[random sapphire]

We doin combat 7 now. Maybe combat 8 if we get through 7 quickly enough.
|| The destructible terrain just got marked with a starburst. The water was going to be complicated until I noticed that it's all on the same level, so I didn't have to rig up any bridges or platforms. ||
Wet erase markers are truly wonderful for in-person maps since they can draw on pretty much any hard surface and not leave a residue behind while also not smudging.

[pearl knot]

social scene exploded today

Party had the first monthly gala and our group managed to completely torpedo a relationship with Kiriona

its like the cold war in here

[kindred spear]

it's fucking bad

LMAO

[pearl knot]

lorelia (PC) getting jealous of kiriona talking to else and so she just started trash talking her to drive her away from elsa and this like spikes kiriona's clock and she's pissed and also just accidently lets the deal she made with Georgie and she threw a glass of wine onto lorelia's dress and stormed off and then duen (PC) tried to salvage the situation but it ended up coming across as white-knighting because he didn't actually know what lorelia and this just pissed off kiriona even more

and georgie's just like "why is everyone being mean to my casual situationship" and she goes over ot try and talk (and flirt again) with kiriona and georgie brings its best friend (Lalah, homunculus) over to talk to kiriona and georgie ends up just gossiping all about heliotrope

[kindred spear]

heliotrope is the dormitory I've put all the PCs into. PCs and NPCs are all arranged in a number of dormitories that will serve as de facto squads, etc etc

[pearl knot]

all of this happening after elsa invited our dorm to do like, team building exercises 😭

did get to bother argo about his maid homunculi though

[maiden sundial]

lmaoooooo

[obsidian oasis]

Oh my god

Literally everything went wrong with that interaction 😭

[pearl knot]

it went so bad

we lost so much relationship eith her and and rawan but my pilot did at least manage to salvage a reasonable relationship with kiriona (going back to being her arm candy) by just drinking and doing normal gossip and also acknowledging how weird it was doing all the cooking for people it barely knew for a week

[kindred spear]

yes i was aghast, kiriona is like. the easiest person in the module to get along with and every possible thing that could go wrong did LMFAO

[pearl knot]

the sudden out of nowhere of it all too....

[harsh coral]

Does it mention the name of Praya/Argo's mechs anywhere in the book?

[flint island]

No mech or model names no

[harsh coral]

i think i might need to come up with names for them then

[flint island]

Are you looking for mech names or model names?

[wheat spire]

I think my GM called Praya's Titan

I don't recall Argo's because we just referred to him as "this (expletive)"

[dim beacon]

Praya's is named Titan and Argo's is named Sandman

[halcyon sluice]

their callsigns are mentioned in the first combat, where they both appear together, and are listed under Enemy Forces

(pg 52 if you're looking)

[harsh coral]

Sorry, to clarify I didn't mean callsign.

I mean the actual names of the mechs

[wheat spire]

Goliath and Assassin?

If you mean flavor names, I don't know if those are specified

[kindred spear]

there are no listed names for the chassis' themselves in the book. that would have to be legwork from you as the gm

all that's provided is npc type and callsign

[harsh coral]

Ah darn. Was hoping folks already had ideas I could purloin.
I suppose I'll do it myself

[flint island]

So for Argo's mech, I did actually have a theme I went with for the Sand-men mechs, namely using the scientific names of different venemous insects (modified a bit to sound cool) for the generic NPC mech types

so Argo's mech could have something in that vein

(This is mainly because I don't like revealing NPC class names until a scan has been performed)

[kindred spear]

@late cobalt
Fia's homewrecking adventures continued last night, there was an important ball that everyone was attending and when Praya was busy handling other things (speaking to her father and being embarrassed by two other PCs) Fia swooped in to take advantage of Argo's fiance's absence.

Fia apologized for not having her sword at hand to have humbled Praya herself at the matriculation ball, and for making him degrade himself in front of her by kissing her ring. but she did say, while blushing, "the gesture of kissing my hand was not unwelcome" while she was placing her hand on his shoulder and arm and complimenting his outfit. then she asked if they could spar sometime and he accepted. (she's having cuteness aggression and wants to hit him with a sword)

from all outward appearances, it appears there is mutual interest(!!!!!!!) given he didn't push her hands off him or show any disgust towards her advances. go fia you're romancing the worst guy ever

[late cobalt]

OH MAN I LOVE THIS AND I AM ALSO SO NERVOUS FOR FIA

LIKE GO GET THAT TOXIC ASS MAN

[kindred spear]

YESSSSS

i'm so excited to see how messy it all gets

[pearl knot]

relevant image

(ignore the typo)

[late cobalt]

oh my god 😂

[pale sail]

it took everything in my power to make it

[kindred spear]

one of my players made this feat. Argo and a few PCs and NPCs

(cred @pearl knot )

[obsidian oasis]

Effendi's honse...

[maiden sundial]

https://tenor.com/view/it-is-what-it-is-art-screaming-yelling-gif-22076784

[kindred spear]

ok update: fia won the sparring match against him, they had a little chat about how they're both pretty faces and how they're better than everyone else. (immediate onetap to fia's brain getting compliments in return after seeing him vulnerable on the floor at the tip of her rapier.) (maria no lookie) ||he was very obviously manipulating her, fia is too malleable and smitten with the idea of stealing him from praya and fixing him, and has been talked into helping the twins plant the bombs to sabotage her party.||

[velvet torrent]

ok not sure how to explain what happened in my life to lead me here but as a bit for my sotw character i did end up making a kiriona sock puppet in my living room tonight so uh here you go enjoy

[maiden sundial]

I fucking love that thing

Amazing

[gentle girder]

Outstanding

[jaunty beacon]

I have questions

[velvet torrent]

please ask away i hope i can answer 💀

[jaunty beacon]

I am fascinated to know what the context was for making this

[velvet torrent]

ok so my best friend's dnd character used bigby's hand and we made a joke about the hand looking like sock puppets of the party. so we got together to drink and make sock puppets as just a stupid bit. i spent the time catching my bestie up on my sotw campaign and how it's going and telling them about my character and we kinda realized that my character's brand of weird is definitely making sock puppets of real people she knows and acting out scenes with them and since she's obsessed with Kiriona the joke got made that they have sock puppets of themself and kiriona and they make them kiss each other so i decided to make a sock puppet of kiriona with a pom pom mohawk as a slightly drunken bit

[maiden sundial]

Mabel Pines, is that you?

[pearl knot]

it's okay our SOTD character makes hand made yarn dolls of people ans she's definitely making one of Kiriona

[jaunty beacon]

That's amazing

[pearl knot]

Kiriona is shit-talking us to lebron

[flint island]

Rawan:

[hushed copper]

https://www.tumblr.com/brattytenshi/796438510168162304/

eligos oh eligos...

[jaunty beacon]

Are those evil robot maid subalterns? Hell yeah

[hushed copper]

eligos' presence at the campus is overbearing

[magic tundra]

Yoink 🫴

Been looking for ways to make her and Argo somehow get Even Worse

[hallow ginkgo]

So we just broke Argo's arm

[flint island]

https://64.media.tumblr.com/465479fcc4b050163a8b7e9656a59ea7/840ad01b8bec4c18-61/s640x960/2a514d246cc1c732e65c63eeb21d89735c98c3d7.gif

Argo's knife in every single run of this campaign for some reason

[maiden sundial]

Canon event - it holds the timelines together

[wheat spire]

If he's not getting tear off: weapon on every structure roll, what is he even doing

[harsh coral]

At least praya can functional without it

[harsh coral]

In my campaign he had a terashima blade as well (flavoured his mech as an atlas)

[jaunty beacon]

posting this since it came around again

[pearl knot]

still wild our group managed to piss her off so much

[frosty gyro]

Has anyone tried romancing Praya?

[wheat spire]

My PC tried but her clock was already at 0 so it went nowhere.

[pearl knot]

😭

[frosty gyro]

How long do the events of the adventure take? 1 year? How long is a regular academic "degree" in the college?

[kindred spear]

it's left intentionally vague by the author. I'm running a game where it's one year, and think of it less in terms of an academic degree and more in terms of a sort of TOPGUN program. the best of the best of the best pilots in Baronic space have been hand selected to go through this rigorous training program to become the finest officers of a generation

[frosty gyro]

How would you expand it by increasing the ll and time?

[kindred spear]

I've kept it one year narratively and added two extra missions to represent the density of social and training expectations on the player characters. but I'm hacking the module apart to suit my needs. if you're planning on running the module https://discord.com/channels/426286410496999425/1335142849754169447 will be more help

[gray ridge]

so after playing in @tender crow's SOTW game, I ended up deciding to run it for some other friends. Given how everyone at that party accidentally rolled up with some secrets of their own, I decided it would be funny as hell to ask people to decide on a secret/ulterior motive to bring to the table. I had no idea what was in store for me. The party so far is:

• House of Glass Sponsee/pity case that is incredibly toxic exes with Praya
• Lower House of Stone noble desperate to achieve some form of standing so her minor house doesn't get fucked
• Sand-man deep cover agent from/in the House of Promise
• nobody twin sister of an engineering prodigy who got invited and then died in a tragic accident, so she took her sister's place. She is not an engineering prodigy, but she does have a Comp/Con modeled after her twin. Picture if you crossed like Viktor from Arcane with the Tridentarii sisters
• baby faced butch combat medic who's secret is they're actually fairly normal aside from all the horrific trauma

[tender crow]

yeah on the subject of ulterior motives @gray ridge is the absolute madwoman who arrived at the opening ball in a Harrison Armory dress uniform in my game lol

[jaunty beacon]

that's one way to make an entrance

[gray ridge]

It seemed like a good idea at the time

[gleaming bison]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1356490699792580659/1449297687714336901/image.png?ex=693e6327&is=693d11a7&hm=3c92d0207a1b741a90231af4b7cf1674e644d1c12c60e057bcfc54d22b916e53&

out of context art I drew during session

[gray ridge]

Just ran a session 0 for this party with a test combat since none of them have played lancer before. Did it as a sim type thing to explain it and things are already getting juicy.

• they were very excited to get their dorm assignments (tbf, I had been teasing about those for a minute)
• The players met and (after brief delay) adopted the sand-man deep cover agent before I planned to plant him within the party
• House of Glass sponsee had a mild crashout over Praya being engaged to Argo
• The House of Glass sponsee is also posting different memes/spam texts for every tech attack she does
• The twin sister has chosen the callsign horizon so I can't not reference them at some point
• The entire party has decided than an essential component of every build is the ability to whack a motherfucker with a big stick.

the first proper session should be in about three weeks and I'm super hyped

[jaunty beacon]

that's awesome, I hope it goes well!

[sinful viper]

About how long is SotW in terms of sessions?

[harsh coral]

depends on what pace you set.
Yoiu can run 1 combat a session, you can run 1 combat session, 1 roleplay session etc

I got through it with usually 1 combat a session and moved quickly (long sessions + shorter rp)

[wheat spire]

Mine as a player was 15 sessions

1 prologue, 8 combats, 4 narrative, 1 downtime, 1 finale

[flint island]

Yeah I'd say about 13-15 sessions, barring any major modifications

[sinful viper]

2-3 hour sessions?

[flint island]

Yeah just about!

Generally I'd break it down by giving combats their own full session each, then resolving any immediate aftermath before moving to a purely narrative session, which should mostly end at the start of the next combat

[sinful viper]

My group are maniacs that like to do 4-6 hour sessions (Yes I know we are insane) So I was wondering how things normally break down. Sounds like we can pretty easily keep to our usual flow of doing some RP, having a combat maybe two and then some more rp

[magic tundra]

That's how I'm doing it too

Seems to be working

[gray ridge]

Just ran the matriculation ball, everyone had a blast despite suddenly being down a PC. I think I might need to work on moving things along faster though, this was still a 3.5 h session

• Sandman was given orders to make friends with the other PCs but the player couldn't attend sadly
• House of Glass sponsee decided it was good and cool to eavesdrop on the faculty, and then got a 20
• Lord Casto-Eyros has endeared the entire party, and I have had a ton of fun channeling Nathan Fillion for him
• twin sister made friends with Rawan over a glass of Sanjak Whiskey
• House of glass sponsee danced with the baby faced butch to make Praya jealous
• this backfired and she fell into Praya
• Rawan accidentally almost outed the sandman plant without even intending to
• No one was happy with Praya for beating up Rawan
• Praya and Argo were forced to back down by the house of glass sponsee revealing that she'd slept with Praya. This was done because the house of stone noble PC was basically about to spark a duel between her and Praya, and since the player had mentioned having a power at a cost at hand, I allowed it to go through.
• Things are getting complicated with the Praya deal, the PCs are not going to be pleased to wake up to a duel tomorrow
• Twin sister returned to her dorm to find a note declaring that her sister's sponsors know she isn't her and the real twin is dead.

[hushed copper]

I have now finished Shadow of the Wolf

after a year

[jaunty beacon]

congratulations!!