#Shadow of the Wolf GM/Spoiler Thread

1 messages · Page 3 of 1

rancid coral
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second bombard might be a bit spicy, but otherwise it looks good! What are the assets from, this looks great?

faint panther
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Inkarnate!

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the Sci-fi pack

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i also want to kind of write a potential "reward" or a relationship interaction with the primors in case players lose. A consolation prize if you will

faint panther
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what do y'all think of the orange/red sand for the rest of the scene? I think i do have a chance of making both the asphalt and sand a lighter tone with this example but

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something like this (the patches are of a higher layer that im painting over the map to add slight degradation )

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after i get that, I'll just sort out the finer details of shading, adding some light sources for it, and labeling all the height of stuff

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soooo.... lighter floor or darker floor?

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Forgot to mention that this would be between Combat 2 and 3

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Im also thinking of some small changes for an M2 version, but that one is gonna be a mostly personal case

TL;DR Im doing this whole mission to help a new late player get accustomed to LANCER before throwing them to Combat 3. I mentioned this to another group who is still on Combat 5 and they said they would like to have that combat as well. Kind of to get comfortable on their LL1 powers

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kind of also why I thought of x2 uses of that homebrew reserve

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Combat 5 would give them Repair Cap and pre combat 3 most of my players are pretty healthy overall (3 structure 3 stress is the worse state)

charred hollow
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so my players got through combat 5 pretty easily and destroyed combat 6 but somehow met their match against the Bastion + Squad combo of combat 7.
4 rounds in and the orchis player is trying to ferrous lash the hound missile into one of the bastions to finally get rid of it which i find very funny, they also considered just walking into the hound missile to explode it when its near a bastion, potentially sacrificing their mech in the process because they are on the last structure

faint panther
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i mean

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Self Destruct is a Quick Action

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we may be out of structure, but not out of options

dark tusk
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I gotta ask how did you do this with the character portraits? Just rip em from the book? I'm having trouble getting the white background off of them, I'm just impressed frankly

quartz sentinel
lilac dust
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Not sure if this is the place to ask, but are the Baronies like... weird? about NHPs? I get that the thing running the school/the building that hates you is one, but on a more person-sized level - i've got someone planning on playing an NHP pilot, which is why the concern

empty flame
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Okay so there's a few interesting lil tidbits with that! Notably

  • The baronies are restricted from using military-scale NHPs for the most part by Union, and the House of Water is working on developing Cogent Minds (essentially just really strong AI that can compete with them)
  • Eligos being able to get away with being kind of abrasive seems to imply a decent amount of personal freedom for NHPs in the baronies, at least for the little stuff.
  • I have a bit of a HC that NHPs actually kinda fit within the Baronic view of things, leading to an idea that NHPs can be trusted with a lot of autonomy if they do a good job of fulfilling their general assigned role. Kinda parallel to minor noble houses.
lilac dust
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coolness

dark tusk
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I personally like the idea of Eligor being kind of von neumann machine for smoothly processed paperwork that still wants to do admin for a school/military base. so if it had it's way or cascaded would absolutely start cloning students en masse to speed up and flatten the inputs/outputs

quartz sentinel
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Probably the most obviously "weird" part of an NHP from a Baronic perspective is that they don't neatly fit the social categories of nobility and ignobility. In that sense they're a lot like Augurs - they are rare, set apart from traditional social structures, and tend to be given a lot of responsibility and respect concomitant with their roles

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Ultimately the continuance and effective running of the KCC as an institution is far more important than any individual student or their feelings, and Eligos has been around for a long time - it ran the place before everyone aside from maybe Iphianassa was born, and it's going to be running the place long after all of the current crop of students are dead

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ultimately Eligos gets a pass for rebuking students in part because it's literally always been like this, and in part because the KCC is functionally run like a minor house of the House of Order (who are nothing if not sticklers for tradition and appropriate social behaviour)

faint panther
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I have a very interesting case where one of my players are an NHP

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and they nearly cascaded in Combat 4

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So, at first, they were presented as "babysitters" for another player and were constantly given odd looks, as well as catch curious conversation with Lord Castor. (TL;DR, they DO have parameters and a 'past' being a babysitter, but house of glass lady found it when HA basically tried to attack one of the 'resorts' the family visited in Creighton as she was escaping. Something something something, crossfire hurt them and lady decided to get them out of there)

but once they cascaded BOY OH BOY

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now the character is under high surveillance, given odd looks, even with positive relationships some NPCs have acted uncomfortable with them

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less the generic aspect of potential... "racism"? prejudice? general bigotry?

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more the "this is a ticking time bomb and EVERYONE's rear sphincters get a little tighter if they hear their voice glitch even just a little"

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NHPs really are fascinating lancer stuff

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and I'm having a blast

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once again Katherine, love your books and stories. Legionnaire is a banger of a book

faint panther
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few more details and it should be ready to go !

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I'll be sure to publish a link were y'all can access and download it fully rendered ^_^

split bobcat
faint panther
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eh, nothing to thank really

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Will sound prideful/selfish but I kinda did it for myself xD

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All things I do for myself are free for public stuff

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commissions and other things do become a case-by-case

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but if i did it for myself and my needs, I dont need to sell it or restrict it in any way

rancid coral
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people who use scene art: are there any particular images you used for the great hall and lykeon? I'm putting some together

empty flame
glass prism
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these are great!

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I ended up making my own narrative map for the great hall. It's not super fancy or grandiose but it's what I was able to get done on short notice. Maybe it'll be useful for someone:

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dark tusk
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Did a session zero yesterday and I am so excited. My players near unanimously said "I want this to be a mech pilot dating sim".

We have a fop from the house of glass now turned into a die hard republican cause she squired with a HC of the house of water (lesbian) who is going for mourning cloak licenses

We have an absolutely feral and repressed girl who joined the military to escape the burden of her family (either house of moments or smoke), and is surprisingly good at science and engineering (lesbian). They are going for artillery and heavy rifles.

We have a bushy tailed girl, naive and fed on dreams of being a hero that are liable to be crushed under the horrors of the system (lesbian). They are going for Zheng

And an ignoble street orphan from Karrakis who killed an incoming student from the house of Stone or Sand and is now impersonating them after some back alley plastic surgery-- she does have to crossdress to maintain kayfabe. Argo knows exactly what happened and is functionally her sponsor. He altered the gene data on file so she isnt caught after her first medical scan and hopes to use her as a pawn/scapegoat in the end game. Hoping to take Metalmark /Hecatoncheries (Probably queer?)

faint panther
faint panther
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finally getting to handle the shading plus now doing the size marking

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faint panther
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i think its done!

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full res here!

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still slightly working out the kinks of the general description and what not but feel free to use the map!

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this was all done on Inkarnate

pearl inlet
dark tusk
faint panther
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yup

reef steeple
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I wrapped up SoTW with my group two weeks ago. And Lady LeFleur managed to manipulate all of them into becoming an Intelligence Task Force thatll appear again in my larger campaign. She played to all of their personality traits to entice and draw them in :^)

quartz sentinel
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excellent >:D

dark tusk
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So for the first combat what should I be shooting for in terms of the number of gridsquares for the size of the CZ? I'm using Owl Bear and trying to squeeze it all so it looks right

proper bobcat
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It's 6×7

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I got a screencap of the Cz from fight 1 somewhere

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Don't know how that'll line up with squares

novel musk
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running pankrati, charge
score at the end of round 2 is 2-5, the opfor's favor
the players literally went silent for like 5 minutes to furiously strategize
i have never felt more powerful as a GM 😌

dark tusk
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That sitrep was so tight when I played-- it came down to like one ram that I was able to get off to cinch it

novel musk
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oh my god the mourning cloak used the fourth duat gate on elsa, which flipped a CZ and let them eat her restock drone
that has to be one of the most giga brain turns i've ever seen

graceful turtle
novel musk
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only got through 3 rounds tonight but damn this has been a super fun combat so far
kiriona's been making various friendly quips at the party the whole time, which has been very fun to roleplay

novel musk
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so technically the turn where the mourning cloak used hurl into the duat 3 times in a row shouldn't have been possible 💀
but it was so cool i'd rather not retcon it :P

faint panther
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i did the first three rounds and.... honestly, I might've undershot the enemies

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I did it for a 3 player group and one of the everests decided "fuck it I ball" and is fighting the enemy to spawn camp them

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xD

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i've had to add more enemies despite them being just 3 because they are just killing mercillessly

mild leaf
dark tusk
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I see that hotline miami music in there...

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I put together a playlist with a lot of contemporary Hurdy Gurdy Music, Arabic EDM, Mongolian/Siberian indigenous pop and metal, and a little bit of Perturbator/Webcore :p

rancid coral
dark tusk
proper bobcat
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Do you have Foundry VTT?

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if so, Spotimate.io to rip playlists
Load them onto your music bar in Foundry
add-on something like 'rhym' to give you an in-program music browser

dark tusk
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I tried running foundry and my computer screamed and cried, real in-browser chugging to move the map

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I'm using owlbear.rodeo because it is less gpu intensive

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If I can get it working in the future I will keep that in mind

dense pendant
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Needed some Major House cantons for my PCs as well as for the Faceless Questgivers, so Canva + @tardy badger's banners = these

House_of_Dust_Canton.png House_of_Glass_Canton.png House_of_Moments_Canton.png House_of_Order_Canton.png House_of_Promise_Canton.png House_of_Remembrance_Canton.png House_of_Sand_Canton.png House_of_Smoke_Canton.png House_of_Stone_Canton.png House_of_Water_Canton.png
dark tusk
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Gorgeous omg

marsh terrace
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Maybe it's just me but it bothers me that the House of Remembrance and the House of Dust share very similar color schemes, and on the top of that the official colors of the BUC are green and gold xD

sleek ether
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Anyone here have any recommendations for running Combat 2: Pankrati, Charge? I am tempted to add in Kay and or keep a Opfor unit in reserve to keep up the heat a bit during the fight. My 4 players stomped a bit too hard on the last fight and would like to keep up the tension a little.

glass prism
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With my 4 player LL7 party, I've been running the combats with the 5 player opfors. So yeah, adding Kay is probably a good idea to start. (I've also been adding more optionals to the enemy mechs, but that's more due to the LL disparity) You can probably deploy her from the start.

rancid coral
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if i'm running 5 players starting at ll2, do you think i'd need to tune up the combats?

empty flame
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So that's been something that's come up a few times, and the common advice is that the lack of Replaceable Parts tends to counterbalance the LL2 stuff since this module is kinda big on resource attrition

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That said, a few extra optionals here and there can be a fun way to buff up some major NPCs, common tweak is giving Argo the Devil's Cough shotgun, but it isn't super neccesary

pearl inlet
dark tusk
rancid coral
rancid coral
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also, this is pretty unlikely to come up, but just in case -- what do you suppose the college's policy on jockeying after a destruction is? in the context of a duel, i have to imagine it's disqualifying, and even in the context of a simulated combat i would still call it reckless endangerment?

quartz sentinel
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instant ticket to getting chewed out by Iphianassa

dark tusk
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Question: How should I go about running Pankration Mekani matches if it's not involving all the players? I dont want to make it a 1 v 1 fight as that still might take a while and eat up time. so I was thinking of having it be just based on narrative triggers and backgrounds for something punchy to make it feel more like "sports".

wanton sphinx
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There is a dueling system in Field Guide to Suldan that might fit your purposes well

dark tusk
wanton sphinx
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Basically more complicated and flavourful rock-paper-scissors

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Select one of three approaches, roll to resolve if necessary, repeat

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There are a few stages to it

dark tusk
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This looks cute ! I'll show it to my pcs and ask if it is too complicated

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Otherwise I'll strip it down a bit

rancid coral
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the gang's all here

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pearl inlet
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My game's gonna be on pause for atleast 2 weeks 😔. I'm so sad I was having fun with some really cool ideas but players got IRL stuff going on and I ended up having to call in a break. Feels bad but I might need to remove a few players too 😭.

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In the meantime, anyone got ideas for a remix of SoTW?

rancid coral
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is Kiriona's cultural background supposed to scan as Sparri btw?

She has a Māori name, but Moulin-Noel does not and i don't see anything that implies that Moments have a particular background with Sparri immigrants like Smoke do.

glass prism
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I don't think so, but it could be fun if you wanted to lean into that interpretation

dark tusk
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dumb question: can you tie in Combat 1 ? How do you adjudicate it if there are 3 people in the center on round 6?

rancid coral
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ties in a gauntlet go to the opfor, which you could explain as hebriyah making a bullshit ruling for political reasons?

empty flame
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I think Kiriona is at least a little bit of a nod to Gideon/Kiriona from the Locked tomb design wise

glass prism
dark tusk
final frigate
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Meme made for the campaign

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(for context: The first guy is a homebrew NPC. Member of faculty who is blatantly only there to keep an eye on the scions of the minor house he is a part of. Ignoble. Known murderer and assassin. Is known as 'the house slayer' and is arguably one of the most hated men in the KtB. The other man? Argo Laurent.)

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(Both of them like Sybill, but for very different reasons.)

faint panther
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lmao

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one of my players will betray the party for Combat 6 and there were rumors earlier by the primors that they and Argo hooked up

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so one plan is when Argo comes around combat 6, he will tease the PC by calling them their 'dear sweetheart' and then laugh at the other players for buying it

dense pendant
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Does anyone know where to find the KirionaHeckYeah as an image? I'm making a KCC omninet chat for my players to interact with the NPCs and need a profile pic for her

faint panther
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i already felt bad for doing combat 4, i know these guys will HATE me for what im gonna do to them on Combat 6

quartz sentinel
tame mauve
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|| Argo immediately ate shit though. Classic Argo ||

faint panther
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I'm going to remove one of the pirates I think (I still have to plan that but thankfully players have just started combat 5 so I have time)

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but basically they are going to have their tanky, innocent girl from House of Order with this mech

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Post up with this Spec Ops Veteran Specter.

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They're even the ones that are going to "kill the Augur"

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it was their task since session 0, nothing against the party per se

faint panther
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They tried poisoning begi incense so the smoke would kill them on M1 but I played it off as her successfully planting the incense, but somehow not being able to get them killed. on Beat 10, I will present with Soto the full idea that THAT was the reason why the augur there is a remotely piloted subaltern

graceful turtle
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Augur be like

faint panther
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yup, p much

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i talked with the traitor player (this was all a plan from the start with them) and explained the situation to the them, so it became a thing of

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"hm, I've task failed succesfully my task, but I can still be of use and disappearing would raise too many questions"

Downtime 1 happens and while everyone is off to their own devices, she reaches out to Argo after getting some connections that would clue her of him and praya being behind the attack at the hounds teeth range

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so it became then "i get another shot and I get powerful allies in the process, good"

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(their bg is that they are the sole survivor of a minor house of House of Sand and its doing their damn hardest to not be snuffed out)

silver vault
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Okay so I have one player who used to run anti-ungrateful counterterrorism ops in the dawnline shore (spent ten years doing that, started at 18, was recently recalled to be shipped off to the KCC on the thinnest justification imaginable by their deeply-entrenched ex-kavaliere parents who now work for the Sandmen)

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Now this character basically organized the assassinations of Ungratefuls and their supporters, doing the intel legwork, operating as a handler for the Sandmen in the field

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And I'm gonna have them recognize Argo, having read his file during their two tours as an assassin wrangler

faint panther
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the other players: oh you guys know each other right?

player: hey, not every sandmen knows each other!

others: yeah but bitch recognizes bitch no?

silver vault
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the kicker is that Lucille (the PC) only ever operated from proxies, dead drops, and voice changers

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Argo has no idea who Lucille is, but Lucille has read Argo's dossier and knows him uncomfortably well

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Argo's association with the Sandmen is an open secret, but Lucille's career has been considerably more under the radar, having been operating in the Dawnline Shore their entire two tour term

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As far as the party (and Argo) knows IC, Lucille is just some 4th child of a no-reputation Sand house looking for glory and status

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Kicker number two is that Lucille has been completely disillusioned by a decade of making Ungratefuls disappear and has been radicalized to the Ungrateful cause in secret. Lucille even went so far as to forge death reports of certain Ungratefuls they were sure they could save, and then helping them disappear

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So I think they and Argo will be excellent foils

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The other really great hook I had is that one of my other PCs backstory is that they're at the KCC to avoid a highly politically disadvantageous arranged marriage that would have allowed a powerful Minor House of Stone direct access to the Arrudyen Grand Archive

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I'm making their ex-betrothed Praya's younger brother

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so Praya will recognize the Remembrance PC as the conniving Arrudyen scion who screwed House Cannamos out of the ability to literally make their mark on history

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So we have 1 PC with a recipe for immediate conflict with Praya, and one who knows Argo too well to trust him whatsoever

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which should make for good drama

dark tusk
silver vault
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I know, right? My players are great. The game might not be for a while yet since everyone's so busy, but we've got three really excellent character concepts so far and one more to be created

dark tusk
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Okay for my next session I'm wrapping up the first combat, and then after the common room conversations I plan to have the pcs model some of the classes for some more interactions before the semester really starts and they choose whether to slack off or not. Curious whether this works as good drama for everyone:

Technical syllabus the pcs into groups to do a skill check to repair an arm joist, they titter with NPCs while they get to know Kay who is a floating T.A. for Imani, but she gets bullied by some no name from the House of Sand prompting the PCs response.

In the Tac. Syllabys they go through the armory and dueling fields and do a relay race for SPORTS. Praya will absolutely try and cheat with a stuck out foot and a bad attitude.

For the Noble syllabus I was going to have them walk through the garden and appraise flowers and have poetry happen in the background. I mostly plan on people messing with each other as the source of conflict rather than interrupting a mechanical challenge/task with drama as I can't think of how to model "roll dice to critically analyze a poem" in a way that doesnt feel shallow

drowsy yarrow
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The stuff for the tactical and technical syllabus both sound great. I know I had issues trying to express the noble syllabus in gameplay mechanics too but making it more about interpersonal drama sounds perfect honestly.

sonic storm
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For classes and other social beats I've set up I've preferred more of a "tell me how you're engaging with this" kind of way of setting the scene for my players in honesty, and I think that this kind of scene with flower appraisal or poetry interpretation could be fun when approached through a model where how the players are engaging the challenge isn't predetermined (there are only so many ways to repair an arm joist, whereas "how does my character engage with a class on flower language" is far more of an interesting character building question on the PC end, and I think might be a good framework for a challenge, because even if the answer is "i'm checked out and doing something else" you can then kind of like, assess what else they're doing and model off of that) but instead you offer the opportunity and use this for establishing character, like how do you feel about the noble syllabus classes in this context, are you taking it seriously and if not what are you doing instead (maybe if they aren't taking it seriously use it as an opportunity to make that have a social effect)

dark tusk
sonic storm
# dark tusk I'll definitely try this method of asking for engagement. I guess part of my ret...

That's fair! I've actually kind of erred away from poetry (outside of a specific case where a PC decided to ask Castor-Eyros for tutoring on it so she could write a love poem to Kiriona, shoutout) for this kind of stuff- might be easier to talk about visual art, horticulture, or film instead, because that lets you kind of broad strokes an idea without actually needing to follow up on the "but what is the poem?" question.
(I also had a great time describing a piece of Karrakin performance art for a date the same PC went on later, 10/10 recommend on that one)

dark tusk
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Mostly cause then I can dedicate more time to it if a PC takes active interest in the liberal arts courses or prepared poems for some key scenes. I really want Argos to be in the poetry course and recite Lewis Carrol's "Little Crocodile" from one of the Alice in Wonderland stories.

Gives me grounds to turn Tomas into a general otaku/art kid since that would include other arts practices and make Tomas the firm helmsman of the Karrakin Cavalry Cinema Club: The Search for some Karra-Kino

sleek ether
dark tusk
sleek ether
dark tusk
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I remember playing through fight 2 felt tough because of how quickly they hunkered down on the point and would just find a bit of cover and hunker down/prepare actions for when we came into clear LoS and got shot for traversing between cover.

sleek ether
dark tusk
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On the player end I didnt have to deal with Hedros, I'm excited to see how he performs.

The elite/veteran double turns are fucking brutal at least for my players, 3/4 are new-ish to combat.

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The hornet got our Sagarmatha player with the lock hold javelin and then immediately died so now she's just stuck and has to spend her whole next turn ripping it out and then dealing with the post-Ram prone condition from Praya they got inflicted with in Round 2.

Which is when I will immediately follow up and power knuckle her out of the arena and down the stairs.

rancid coral
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sotw departs significantly enough from the traditional mission structure that I'm comfortable getting rid of the downtime/uptime distinction altogether tbh

graceful turtle
rancid coral
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That would be one way, yeah!

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Or just translate something. Or whatever. Point is it's gonna be player led

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There's also gonna be some player les, I cannot lie to you

graceful turtle
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Fair, I'll admit I was kinda being nitpicky, but I just think it's kinda funny seeing the players like, "wait how am I supposed to recite this if it's lost to history"

sonic storm
rancid coral
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Also a good idea! I need to start thinking about sponsor stuff in earnest, I don't have anything concrete in mind besides 'study hard and Excel at the program' so far

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But, as always, the easiest thing to do would be to simply ask the players a session or two in since they have an idea of what their sponsors' interests are too

dark tusk
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I love this idea of players coming up with long term semester projects! After Combat 2 I'm planning to basically let the rp spin out for as long as people want it.

My players described their desire as being Dating Sim adjacent so I'm planning for chances for them to get closer to npcs, even Praya and Argo, with some time dedication culminating in a cute project they help them do like Viv and Val want to fill the Archchancellors office with white wash nanites to seal it shut and fill it with, functionally, plaster

dark tusk
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How big is the pankrati charge map supposed to be? I figure this square leading into control zone 4 leading in is supposed to be 1 square

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cosmic blaze
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Yes
The module comes with gridded versions of the maps (square and hex), you can use that as a guide if you're resizing the maps (is that owlbear you're using?)

dark tusk
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Yeah I'm using owlbear

cosmic blaze
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I also use the orange grid to resize maps lol
I personally use the grid maps and try to overlap it with Owlbear's grid, turning the opacity down once they match

dark tusk
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I'll try that ! I get finnicky cause I want all the angles to line up very neat lmao

smoky drift
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When the module lists an NPC in a combat, like "Count Argo 'Sandman'" is Sandman his callsign or the name of his mech?

quartz sentinel
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names in quotes are the characters' callsigns

smoky drift
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I’m adding a combat to the beginning of the module in large part because I want to throw my players into a really easy low stress combat to figure things out. But I’m also using this as an opportunity to introduce and flesh out some of the other NPCs- so I want to include them in the fight. Because I’ve not run Lancer before I was hoping someone could provide feedback on the Opfor I’ve created by using existing NPCs from the book.

Sitrep: Escort; Opfor for 4 players:

Rawan in a Veteran Pirate Specter (Fortress, Veterancy [hull], Splinter Rounds)
Kay in a Veteran Barricade (Titan-Snare Drone, Veterancy [Engineering], Self Repair)
Imani in a Veteran Witch (Chain, Veterancy [Hull], Self Repair)
4x Grunt Archers, 4x Grunt Bastions

2 archers, 2 bastions and Kay would initially be deployed in a lot of cover. They all play defensively with archers covering the approach while bastions using friendly interdiction on Kay. Round 2 Imani comes in and harasses from sensors range. Round 3 more grunts deploy up to 2/2 archers/bastions, round 4 Rawan comes in and attacks anyone isolated or in the backline. Round 5 any leftover grunts come in.

I could consider switching out Imani’s witch for Lord Tomas’ Elite Scout (Spotter, Expose Weakness). Anyway, how does this sound for a combat for four fresh LL0 never-played-befores?

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rancid coral
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that being said, if this is an introductory combat i assume the attrition isn't going to carry over?

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nothing wrong with kicking the players a bit in that context imo

smoky drift
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Yeah one of my concerns is Rawan rolling hot and insta structuring someone the round she deploys. The combat is part of me splitting up the first mission into 2 so the module goes to LL3 so I will probably make them keep the damage but I will just give them extra repair reserves if they get the heck beat out of them.

rancid coral
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splinter rounds and deadly make for a really fucking swingy enemy, yeah

smoky drift
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I might drop splinter rounds altogether or replace it with headshot

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I like headshot cause its scary but in this situation it seems like anyone who gets crit is probably braced and having a half turn anyway, so its maybe not as bad as an extra 3 dmg. On the other hand I could just drop the splinter rounds and add nothing.

rancid coral
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if you're that worried about it (and it's not an unreasonable worry) why not drop pirate altogether?

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replace it with something like, idk, exotic or marine if you have winter scar

smoky drift
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I want to keep pirate as a template mostly because its a big clue into her background. Also it kind of works because there's a combat with pirates later so I like that they'll be familiar with the template being scary.

quartz sentinel
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I wasn't going to comment on this but it is true that Rawan's actual mech is not designed to be fought by PCs

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Not at this stage, anyway

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And especially not if the players have never played before

lavish apex
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my players beat the hell out of Rawan but that was mostly because one of my PC's is a crit focused grapple brawler who is the luckiest MF ive ever frigin seen

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im talkin at least one crit every round w/ brutal

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im hoping combat 4 manages to finally take them down but like, they've also been landing their custom paintjobs...

quartz sentinel
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why did your players fight Rawan in her mech?

lavish apex
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oh wait hold on i got mixed up

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my dumbass got them confused with kiriona just now

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shes designed to be fought lol

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the two characters my PC's have currently interacted with the most

smoky drift
#

I might just drop the pirate template then - this is just supposed to be a pretty low key opening training exercise so maybe she's not really that into it like Lord Aloysius in the regularly scheduled combat 1

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she's still pretty dangerous though but at least with Hunt the players can do something to avoid the extra damage

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The point of me adding this combat to the beginning of the module was initially just to have a less stressful intro to the mechanics so I do want to keep it from face stomping them. However this expanded into me basically reworking the opening and spot lighting particular NPCs like Rawan that the players are gonna meet a little earlier. So I feel kind of married to keeping Rawan in particular in the combat

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I just need to make sure she doesn't instantly murder one of my pcs and make them hate the game 😛

rancid coral
#

session 1 done! I think I might have the only table with 0 out-and-out Republican characters at the start, everyone is playing things very close to the chest

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which ended up disappointing Rawan quite a bit since she believes her saviours are doing it mostly out of decorum rather than any sympathy with ignobles or ungratefuls. interesting to see how that develops

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the players also did not decide to rat out Praya and Argo as the people who kicked Rawan's shit in so two of them have decided to formally take the blame for it, which i need to figure out how to handle

rancid coral
rancid coral
#

also it just now landed how funny it is that rawan spends the whole module walking around like

102116682_untasdf33tled-1.png
rancid coral
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other bits:

  • Praya was literally on the verge of leaving the scene cause a player hacked her comms when the Arrudyen social dilettante pretended not to know who she was and incensed her into challenging them right then and there
  • lord castor has played polo on said arrudyen's summer estate before
  • the sparri player loves karrakin anime slop
  • the glass player sportingly handed praya her rapier back even after she sucker punched him, which earned a miniscule amount of respect from her
autumn nexus
#

re: the other sotw thread

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

dark tusk
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I posted my spotify playlist of music I use but I dont see an option to search the thread

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https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0tbjLroTP0ynisBPVl7Zr2?si=uAHeRFkHQwCSLVSzFwsKsw&pi=CI_51FHMQIqys

I use a lot of Mongolian overthroat singing that's gotten popular in heavy metal and edm subgenres, a couple hurdy gurdy players particularly Guillhem Desq cause he modernizes the sound with synths, some evangelion tracks, and some Arabic EDM. Sprinkle in some Dune tracks with clear melodic motiffs, and you can put in some like fucked up webcore for the "I'm in the danger zone and flying at the speed of light to punch you in the stomach." Energy

Spotify
Karrakin trade baronies Vibes
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I also splash in some Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance instrumentals

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During battle debuts I found that on spotify they have the jojo pillar men theme, "awake", it really hit with Praya, Argo, and Al getting fielded in the first combat as their villainous debut track

final frigate
#

Tonights session went well

a PC and praya were both forced to run ten laps around the entire college for cheating in the duel
that same PC rolled a 1d4; that many female NPCs thought he was cute for winning
One of the other NPCs made them all mad by taking his arm and dragging him away before he could flirt
Eligos threatened to murder the twins if they tried to set off a glitterbomb under Toma's ass while in the library, only for tomas to help another PC find the rest of a cool book series.

novel musk
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PCs lost combat 2
the opfor got a strong lead early on and then the PCs just kept rolling badly so they never managed to catch up
in hindsight swapping electric bola for charge on kiriona made much more of a difference than i anticipated, it let her get away with lots of cheeky and disruptive plays
didn't help that she recharged it practically every turn

final frigate
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If all the clones in lancer are allowed to develope different personalities and such owing to being given 'bespoke upbringings' to a certain extent, does that mean that all the clones in the endless company of the house of moments are all vaguely different, or are they all mostly like Kirionia herself, or each one is very much their own distinct person?

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I ask because I'm wondering if it could be fun to throw a squad of Kirionias from the endless company at my group at some point later on down the line, where they're all just like the one they know at the college.

dense pendant
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The way that I'm doing clones is that despite a uniformity of physical ability and natural talent, there really is no accounting for personality or passion.
This is important for one of my players, a clone in the process of rejecting her upbringing (read: "no mom, I don't want to be a doctor, I want to be a mech pilot!")

charred hollow
#

Now that my players are in the last combat of the book. I've been thinking of making Argo a revolver ocelot style double-crosser that actually has his own plans beyond Praya's to tear down the baronies from within and will be the main antagonist in the next story arc
I think it would be pretty fun to run

final frigate
# charred hollow Now that my players are in the last combat of the book. I've been thinking of ma...

The way I've run him thus far is the secret mastermind behind Praya, playing off of her existing beliefs, built in biases and her insecurities to convince her to blow up the college. His logic being that he wants the KtB to be strong, and, in typical house sand fashion, intends to do this by spurring it to action via subterfuge; a false flag operation is very much within his playbook after all.

I can't ever see him wanting to bring down the baronies, since he's heliographic in ideology, rancidly noble and born into the most privileged of noble sand houses, where he enjoyed the luxuries of his birth, saturating him in the entitlement that it brings. If he were to come up again, I'd be moreso tempted to have him instead become BUC intelligence or something, assuming he didn't get proven to be what is, effectively, a terrorist due to the books events.

if he were stripped of his privileges, heritage and so on?
yeah I could see him flipping and becoming anti-baronies, and very hypocritical (working with ungratefuls to further his own plans kinda thing), either that, or he goes off o try and recreate the luxurious life he once had elsewhere, with his desperation and ego varying up how far he'd be willing to sink to return to that.

charred hollow
# final frigate The way I've run him thus far is the secret mastermind behind Praya, playing off...

yeah, ive been giving it some thought and I think I figured a good thread to follow

So basically in my game, while Praya wants to reform the baronies through action and erase the armory and ungratefuls from the map, Argo knows how to stay out of sight, play politics and play the long game. his ultimate goal would be to control the other houses by quietly destabilizing them and installing puppet leaders, eventually taking control over the entirety of the baronies in secret.

rancid coral
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(players no read pls)
we're just about to launch into C1 next session. I'm using maria's alt structure and the rebake NPCs so quite a few of the optionals on NPCs are going to be replaced.

question - ||would Self Repair on Praya be excessively rude?||

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Argo gets|| Lightning Reflexes instead, which i'm happy with tbh||

dark tusk
quartz sentinel
#

writing a thing, thought folks here might appreciate it

image.png
rancid coral
quartz sentinel
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yes, I could definitely imagine that. But it's probably impossible to get recognition without full control of the moon

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any "Independent Sanjak Monarchist" who succeeded could probably expect to be ennobled/enrolled

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inasmuch as those people actually exist and aren't a euphemism for outside actors a la the Contras

rancid coral
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yeah exactly i always got the impression it was a front ideology; i'm planning a followup game around sanjak after sotw so this is very useful to me, thank you

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my original plan was for the monarchist front group to be Ludran restorationists but it sounds like even the Hagiographers despise them in the narrative present

quartz sentinel
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the thing about House Ludra is that they're primarily known for being gigantic losers who endangered the entire House of Stone and were scapegoated for the failure of Baronic forces to contain the revolution, and there's nothing that conservatives hate more than people who jeopardise their power and social standing

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I could very much see revivalists working but they'd have to succeed to have any chance of being respected

rancid coral
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i imagine that the republican houses' preferred solution would also involve the creation of a democratic House Sanjak in line with Water or Dust

quartz sentinel
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yes, and that's where they differ from some of the more radical Ungratefuls who aren't interested in joining under the federal monarchy

rancid coral
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yeah, i remember the bit from the ktb field guide which notes that Umara and Bo have emerging class societies

empty flame
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Yeah it's noteable that even the Republican houses are still aligned with broader karrakin political and economic interests

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Like the House of Dust is one of the houses doing the most to go after ungratefuls, the House of Water develops cogent minds in battlegroup, and the house of promise would be the baronies' first explicitly military house

clear nymph
mild leaf
rancid coral
#

just confirming here - C1 is supposed to be scored like a Gauntlet, right? NPCs count for 1 score per structure?

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otherwise winning it seems like it would be fairly trivial - blow up a hornet or two and it's locked

empty flame
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I believe they count for a point each regardless of NPC type

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The big advantage the NPCs have is being so heavily built for area control between Argo's kick moves, Praya being able to lock people down outside of the ring, and Aloysius' teleportation stuff

glass prism
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yep, that's right, it's 1 point per NPC, regardless of structure. So yes, knocking a minor NPC out does cinch the win numerically, but as mentioned, the opponents do have a lot of tools to fight back. Praya can grapple someone and walk em out, the hornets can immobilize mechs outside the zone, etc.

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if you're concerned about lethality, you can bump up the opfor to the next player count amount (it's what I did and the players still won)

rancid coral
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tbh i'm already running it for 5 so there's not much room to enhance it further. i checked with 2 other people i know who are running the module and they both used gauntlet-style scoring without issue, so i'll run it that way

dark tusk
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Yeah my players knocked down the hornet, made the saves against the spin kick, and a mid game power knuckle never recharged so there wasnt any last minute push tech. Then when argo goes down to some focus fire and an hmg after someone actually hits the hornet's 16 evasion with a tac melee for 8 damage it was over

charred hollow
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Just finished combat 8A and it was AWESOME
after my PCs suffered through combat 7 they were ready to kick Praya's ass and get it over with. After planning a pretty good strategy to get 2/3 players in range to deactivate the bomb and the one left holding up Praya from disturbing them they were set to win pretty nicely.
After deactivating all 3 cores, I started Praya's meltdown by making her just try to kill the PCs while her bodyguards leave through the rifts, In the end it was just Praya and the 3 PCs fighting alone with Praya cursing them with every shotgun blast and they ALL MISS for 3 rounds straight (it was not intentional, the dice literally never landed on anything better than a 6).
In the end, after Praya's meltdown speech, one of the PCs stabbed their energy blade straight through Praya's cockpit, killing her. (i gave her feign death for a cool scene after it all but it wasnt necessary)
Absolutely amazing and we all had the time of our lives with SOTW, I cannot thank you enough for writing this Kat o7

quartz sentinel
rancid coral
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argo is not having a good time folks

image.png
sonic storm
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i think argo getting bullied in this combat is a canon event

rancid coral
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they're forcing argo and praya to kiss a player's ring after the victory

rancid coral
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they fucking wiped the field by round 4 lol, i was so worried about scoring this gauntlet-style

rancid coral
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one of my players managed to mildly impress praya by remaining respectful and sportsmanlike in the face of their blatant cheating, and another one is outright hitting on argo btw. this game is going places maybe

reef steeple
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Argo getting bullied has probably happened in nearly every game of SoTW I think.

graceful turtle
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He's very bullyable

reef steeple
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The only time in my run of it he didn't get bullied was Enter the Sandmen, they did something MUCH worse to him right after that combat

silver vault
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care to elaborate?

reef steeple
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My players are not sane people, I figured that they would question Argo then turn him over to the authorities, no they just did some light torture then killed him, took his head and used it to enrage Prya.

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And then tortured the rest of the living Sandmen for information, suffice it to say when the authorities later arrived on scene there was uh, no survivors.

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It went 0 to 100 REAL fast

proper bobcat
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opening fight Argo has multiple structure and only one weapon
he probably loses his sword in every universe

marsh tinsel
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Unless I use rebake npcs…

pearl inlet
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the horrors

empty flame
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I've run this module twice, first time around he lost it in the first fight, second time he lost it in combat 6

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it's not even that statistically likely is the crazy thing

quartz sentinel
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it's decently likely (by comparison) due to legendary and having three structure, it was part of the design

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You effectively fight a legendary three structure enemy four times across the module. Assume they take two structure in each combat (this won't always happen, but from playtesting it does seem to happen in most games). You have a 20% chance on the first structure to get a weapon destroyed result, and if I remember correctly - I can't find my notes - a slightly higher chance on the second structure. The odds of one of those eight structure rolls giving a weapon destroyed result is greater than 80%

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I know there are some actual mathematicians on the server who could calculate the odds properly, the above is all back-of-the-envelope calcs

rich adder
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Hello idk if this is the right place to ask but how do we know which tier to use for the npc enemies? Because all that it tells me about the enemies is this:
" Lord Praya-Cannamos, "Titan". Elite
Veteran Goliath (Power Knuckle, Pin,
Veterancy [+Hull], Legendary"
What part of this tells me which tier to use?

bold musk
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Tier is based on player LL

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As written the module is Tier 1 enemies

rich adder
bold musk
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It's in the core rulebook, but basically Tier 1 is for LL0-4 iirc

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Tier 2 5-9

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Tier 3 onwards after that

rich adder
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Sorry for the dumb questions lol but this my first time running lancer

rich adder
quartz sentinel
#

and folks are happy to help 🙂

faint panther
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...................................................... ok i am

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legit

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worried for my players

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they are about to enter Combat 6 and one player will finally reveal they have been an agent from the start

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Quinn is the traitor

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I genuinely have brute forced several hooks and clues for players to note there's something out of place with Quinn, even if given in a slightly misleading way

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  • Last of her house
  • Her house's shield doesn't match House of Order usual insignia (her's a Monarch Butterfly)
  • Count Argo continues to make "advances" on her
  • There's the rumor that the two had drinks between M1 and M2
  • She's seemingly a crackshot
  • She has the Harlequin Bond
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I have gone and taken a backlog of screenshots of almost every conversation or PM we've ('Quinn' and I) had regarding plans and just moments of "they are so going to hate us"

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they havent, they can't, and they will NOT stop trusting this face

image.png
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with ALL OF THAT SAID.... I do come here for advice

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I have added a tough Spec Op Veteran Specter that they will control for Combat 6. I'm trying to see which of the forces I'll replace for it, as they are not only 1 player down but also had an extra combat prior to combat 6 (most of them are at 3 structure 4 stress)

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part of me is thinking of removing the other Specters, another is telling me to remove the grunt scouts

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Queen Bee (the Veteran Specter Quinn will control) is there for damage and being very hard to hit with Fortress

empty flame
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So I do think that removing the other specters is the best, just because the point of the scouts & priests is to act as a cheering section for the damage dealers

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And having this new, presumably story important, character and Argo get a bunch of spotlight thanks to the array of buffs hitting them seems fun

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You're also essentially adding a specter with 2 turns and 2 structure (effectively an Elite), so that's about equivalent to 2 standard ones

faint panther
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We have a whole tagline of their comms being hacked or bypassed as Quinn would connect Argo in as he gloats "thanks for taking me up on that date~" with extreme sarcastic tone

faint panther
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we even had a scene right before the delivery of the Augur's warning of one player finding them talking, and then realizing

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so they switched into "predatory flirting"

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the players bought it IMMEDIATELY.

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and I am definitely going to hell for this but at least I'll have someone to come with

faint panther
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i thought it would kind of work best like that, even if the idea of Data Viel being super interesting

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Players are armed to dish out some damage though, as they have an early chassis despite being LL1 still

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(we got an Enkidu, a Lycan, a Goblin, and a Couatl)

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Giving the Specter Fortress feels like a massive "Fuck You" to the players but I think it will still work out because she knows all of their weaknesses

empty flame
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Tbh tech attacks are (comparatively) reliable enough that I don't even think it'll be that much of a wall against hackers

faint panther
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well, Fortress makes it so tech attacks are done with +3 Difficulty and sys saves are +3 Acc

empty flame
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Just recently I got to hack./slash my GMs big scary ultra hacker boss despite boosted E-defense and 3 difficulty

faint panther
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that plus being perma invisible and being able to hide and move as a quick action

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I do believe that if the players hit, they will deal some massive damage

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Enkidu with Nuclear Cavalier and the Shock Claws of Lycan is mad damage

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and Goblin will probably get a good tech here and there but still gonna be a generally tough time to hit

rancid coral
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hey, i'd like some advice re: rawan's cover. The players are already at 8/10 with her after combat 1 (stood up for her, helped her get medical attention afterwards, convinced her to play the long game and not rat out praya since that would just paint a target on her back)

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at this point, rawan is grateful towards the players but only particularly trusts 1-2 of them (since the rest are still quite noble in manner). what i'm struggling with is what would be an appropriate point for her to break cover about her mission.

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just after combat 1 is way too early, but i do think i'll have her pass some agitprop along to the group as 'something to think about' at this point

sonic storm
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That sounds correct to me
At high enough approval I've honestly had her trying to figure out the politics of party members via coded conversations. The sort of thing where she will bring up pro-Ungrateful sentiments in a way that is veiled in symbolism or plausible deniability enough that it's hard to outright accuse her of having those politics, mostly to probe the people she's talking to in order to figure out in what capacity she can trust them. This has led to some deeply funny conclusions (one ex-Centimane party member managed to give the correct responses to some of the probing despite meaning something entirely different from Rawan, resulting in both of them thinking they're fellow undercover members of diametrically opposed organizations) but I think that like. Even at very high approval she probably isn't going to entirely blow her cover without indication that the players are not going to respond badly given how quickly being perceived as pro-Ungrateful went bad for her at first

rancid coral
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yeah i had her confront the wishy-washy remembrance player with 'hopefully you understand what it means to confront someone who never needs to apologise for their actions' and i think that left a mark.

yknow what, she seems like a Theory Reader so she'll probably start a pro-republican reading group or something, that's a great way to put out feelers

dense pendant
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None of my players can fly; should I swap Kiriona's Electrified Bola for something else?

novel musk
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i replaced it with charge when i ran combat 2, but in hindsight it did add a lot more value than i was expecting
it's possible my players would've won if kiriona hadn't been able to do all the bullshit she pulled off with that optional :P

dense pendant
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I'm thinking of replacing it with Capacitor Discharge, which shouldn't be too crazy since my melee player is built around knocking my NPCs over

quartz sentinel
#

she had Capacitor Discharge in playtesting, it was removed for Electrified Bola for a couple of reasons

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partially GMs were not picking up on the antisynergy with Elsa's Latch Drone

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and also it was part of an effort to tweak down the combat difficulty

pearl inlet
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I could use some advice on how to move forward with my campaign. I had to take a bit of a break as I was burning out and unhappy with how things felt running an interconnected story for 2 groups, 4 players each. I have reorganised things and cut some people out, bringing the numbers down to 5 players at a single table. When they were still 2 groups, the 2nd group ended on a very tense moment as they had actually gone had and killed someone in cold blood! Their group of players have all survived the cuts, as it was mostly the group that was tough to play with. So now, I'm contemplating picking up right after those events. I'm not sure if that's the best idea for two reasons - theres one player that has no connections to these actions (they were part of the 1st group till this time) and if the tension has died out given it is a fresh moment for anybody. That's why I was thinking about running a festivity scene or something similar, possibly to build back a connection to the story.

glass prism
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Why not a bit of both? Maybe have the odd-player out become a "witness" of the previous murder/assassination, but have them confront the other group with information (that you, the GM, can brief them on) that they are willing to part with that moves the plot forward (they may or may not be aligned with the rest of the group/agree with the actions, but can act for their own safety/goals). This information could involve said festivity scene as well, haha (either the confrontation or the end result takes place at one).

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In regards to tension, just because there's been a break doesn't mean that it's gone. Sometimes you just need to have a refresher/"Last Time in Lancer..." at the start of the session to get people's blood pumping again

final frigate
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in todays session: Lord Aloynious seduces two of the PCs,

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One of the PCs tries to figure out what is Argos deal, as he has flip flopped from uncomfortable interest to disgusted apathy with her, now settling on mild interest

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And finally, Kiriona is being portrayed as if she were justice from helltaker.

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Oh, and praya is forced to help one of the PCs tend to a garden because both of them are in the same horticulture class.

velvet cedar
#

Finished combat 2 and it went perfectly. the PCs won by exactly 1 point and with only one core battery. A PC sniper got some great shots, combined with Hedros losing his only mount, brought them from losing fairly hard to just scraping by. It was such a well-designed combat!

pearl inlet
faint panther
#

a WIP of Count Argo's "Sandman"

image.png
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had just plain Assassin NPC sprite from retrograde for combat 1

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but now for combat 6

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im giving him ✨ Bling™ ✨

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there's also a layer of smoke cloud around him but Im gonna focus on making the base look good then work out the smoke

velvet cedar
#

I made a custom ambience for my campaign, just uploaded it here in case anyone else might like to use it!

faint panther
#

chat

#

is the Cunt Argo dressed to the nines or not

Sandman_-_Argo.png
placid nest
#

Whoa

final frigate
#

yes sandman, slay! 🗡️

clear nymph
#

So just got my group together for the module. We have a corpo state test pilot being sponsored to get their company on the map, an illicit pankration mekani champ whose being sponsored by a House of Glass noble that made a bet they could get a "nobody" through the KCC program, a BUC regular thats been caught up in the same semi-unwanted hype train as Captain Hedros, an ignoble thats been scouted and sponsored by the Chassis Errant Free Company (and is way in over his head on the noble arts stuff), and an undercover Ungrateful partisan who has no idea that Rawan is also a covert agent (I'm planning on having them try to recruit eachother)

autumn nexus
#

i wonder which scene this could be referencing :P

image.png
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figured i'd throw in more on my "fun player-facing visuals" thing for RP scenes by making some location cards

pearl inlet
#

The setup looks really beautiful

autumn nexus
#

I also have this one for when we're somewhere i didn't prep a card for lol

601.jpg
rancid coral
#

i can see why so many parties straight up lose combat 2, damn

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this is also where ll2 and the reduced repcap actually hurts, party's gonna go into combat 3 with at least 3 players suboptimal on structure/stress

rancid coral
#

party's gonna rooooll combat 3 if they do the smart thing and let the mourning cloak teleport the objective though

clear nymph
dense pendant
#

Took Captain Hedros' Origins bit and shaped it into a story for when my players get to rank 10 with him

image.png
final frigate
#

I think I may be running the module a little poorly.

#

Not majorly, just....in a minor way.

#

I've got a basic format going for:

  • free time: they go wherever they want within the college and interact with students in that area
  • lesson time: they pick one of 4 syllabui to focus on for a few weeks, with an introduction scene with students and teachers
  • focus time: They get to pick whom they meet and hang out with, be it specific NPCs and/or other PCs, usually a day or two before the next major fight
  • fight time: run through the next mech fight
    repeat

The problem I have is that while this format allows for players to go virtually anywhere on their own and interact with the entire cast at their own liberty, which can make for some very fun and engaging scenes...the first time I went through this little loop, all the players went off on their own and it meant I was effectively doing a lot of 'GM and one player' scenes while others watched, and while this was an ok stumble for a single session, I don't wanna make this too common, lest I lose my players attention and murder their fun.

I'm thinking of asking them to at least pair up or start doing things as a group, with some allowance for side interactions, but I'm not sure how to best implement it.

#

(also pls ping so I can read responses 😅 )

charred lynx
#

In fact, one of my favorite scenes in this module is inherently a one-on-one scene, when the investigator comes post-final to interrogate them over the events.

The PCs aren't all in a room together (that would be silly for a high level security details interrogation they're trying to catch people in dirty secrets).

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So when I run that scene, I ask questions once, point at a player and ask how they're responding, and "pan the camera" over the interrogator's shoulder to reveal one of the other characters answering the same question in their one-on-one meeting, but no one is in the room at the same time.

final frigate
#

🤔

#

So pause a scene part way, jump to someone else, then return back in a bit?

charred lynx
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You just have to think of the game like you watch shows.

One character is talking to another in their house and says "Well don't lose your head over it!" at the end of the argument, then smash-cut to a scene where another character is leaning down next to a headless body as they are investigating a scene.. etc etc.

north knot
#

pause at places that seem like natural lulls in a scene to pop over to another player's perspective

charred lynx
#

Segue into scenes with appropriate or funny interludes that don't have to be connected directly, but lead to other things happening in other places, and bounce around to give everyone a chance to interact every 10-15 minutes at least, quicker if the pacing is smooth.

north knot
#

you'll get the hang of shifting the spotlight around

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it's hard but I think of it best as like. stage directing

charred lynx
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Or just pause whenever you need a moment to think about things!

When players ask a question and you're stumped how to respond immediately, back burner it, and move on, round the table and then deliver the answer after you've had time to think, and other players could respond to their events a bit.

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Granted this advice is intrinsically ADHD of me to state like it's the most normal thing in the world.

Some people might not think the same way, I suppose. But you can practice and work towards it.

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But the converse, that other people think is natural or normal, preping for games and being overly prepared and knowing whats going to happen ahead of time, is something I can't do for the life of me.

But I lean into what I can do, or what is easy for me.

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I will never sit down and actually work something out ahead of time. I have fleeting thoughts between sessions, that are kinda like prep, but I don't document them or go further than the funny lil thought takes me.

So everyone is different.

#

Players are different too! Some groups want to watch everyone else do stuff and then get their turn, some players disengage if they aren't the center of attention or actively interacting with things constantly, and that's not.. intrinsically bad, but it can mean certain styles clash and don't enjoy each other.

final frigate
#

I fully grok what you're putting down.

#

It's worthwhile advice though, not something my Linear Brain would have really come up with.

#

Thank you, I'll definitely give it a shot next session.

#

I really wanna end up running the two separate dates two PCs will be going on with Lord Aloynius, neither of whom are aware he has asked the other out, simultaneously

#

That, and depending on how things go, one of the other PCs may end up routinely sparring with Praya, and I have a gut feeling another is going to end up in a bitchy, sassy dynamic with Argos, so running two scenes with their seperate foes at the same time would also be neat.

autumn nexus
#

this DOES use paid assets from the book so if kat/one of the mods wants to strike me down they may but here is my collection

📎 SOTW_Stuff.zip
clear nymph
#

Thanks! 🙏

clear nymph
#

Idea for mine is that an Ungrateful cell out of the Long Rim struck a House of Stone facility, kidnapping a noble and stealing a bunch of terra forming nanites. Galanthus of the Khayradin Elites coordinates for a three pronged assault. Elites make a lot of noise and draw out the attention. Hedros' team rescues the hostage, and the players are to recapture the nanites.

#

Except the noble was on board with stealing the nanites to terraform someplace to livable in the Rim and isn't happy about the "rescue".

pearl inlet
# final frigate I've got a basic format going for: + free time: they go wherever they want with...

If you find that keeping it open ended results in people going and doing singular, personal things then you can definitely over the table ask them to go together as a group/duos/trios, etc. But you can even make that ruling having a narrative impact by asking the players the reason "why" their characters are going along with this. Atleast on my table, I have characters that have differing political opinions,upbringing and views of the Baronies. So naturally, certain scenes would mean very different reasons to go along with what's happening. Heck, maybe some scenes might cause active conflict amongst the party members and that can result in some very interesting moments to revisit.

rancid coral
#

@quartz sentinel are the npc origins available together in a single place by any chance please?

quartz sentinel
#

Not yet, I'm still working on them

rich swallow
#

Playing the faculty battle as an infiltration mission. It's relatively down to the wire, now at the sixth round of the Faculty battle. If the NPCs get one more scan off on either Firefly or Master Builder, then the PCs will lose the battle. Also, they have failed the Bonus Objective of the battle: Shoot down a scout craft. Hence, they will not have a short rest before the last battle against the RPVs (giving em a hidden chance to avoid it via that)

Either way, next session we'll wrap up the battle, have repairs and some roleplay, and move on to the RPV battle

image-78.png
rancid coral
#

hey question, is lady kiriona technically a member of House Moulin, given her provenance? or are the clones treated as direct members of the major house at this point? i ask because she doesn't have a family name

quartz sentinel
#

yes, the Endless Company is House Moulin's house company

#

family names (and names in general) are a more complicated concept when it comes to mass-produced fax clones though, because having thousands of people claiming the heritage of Underbaron Moulin-Noel running about would strain the power structure of noble inheritance and titles. "Lady Kiriona" is more of a courtesy name/title, one that marks her with the appropriate level of respect for a pankrati who is on track to be a commander in a banner company

glass prism
#

I'd imagined it as:
Kiriona, while a Noble by genetics and by training, is essentially an "applicant" to the House. She would gain her full heritage/name from the House proper upon graduating from the College.

final frigate
#

Tonights session:

One of the PCs now has the smug satisfaction of knowing lady praya would have failed the horticulture course of the artistic syllabus if they hadn't intervened without praya knowing, and they were able to help someone else steal Argos knife while she talked to them.

Another player expressed interest in running Commander Lancer as a form of tactical training, so...i may be setting up Commander format fights in the future.

And one of the PCs sponsors unironically gave him the advice of 'whatever you do in life, be it saving lives or fighting hard, you gotta do it balls out (maximum effort)."

#

playing the pink panther theme was not on my GMing bingo card for a stealth section, but i'm ticking it anyway.

#

@charred lynx also, your advice worked great, running the session with how you suggested, bouncing between scenes at low points and keeping the momentum going was exactly what I needed to make the format work.

charred lynx
#

Nailed it

final frigate
#

Mhm

#

Still, I find it really damn funny that someone in my group singled out Praya and Argo to hang out with

#

well, moreso argo than praya.

#

The dynamic between the clone of a war hero and the sandman, both sassy, both jabbing with veiled comments while begrudgingly enjoying each others company, trying to get an edge over each other, its fun!

faint panther
#

the hornet, priest, and scout from combat 6

soft elbow
#

Looking at doing SOTW over Dustgrave in the future as the character focus is looking neat, though I am wondering if there’d be any excuse to throw the Horror template in anywhere

rancid coral
#

uhhhh, replace some of the Stone / Sand goons with Centimane mercenaries, give them Assimilation Maw, Abhorrent Redundancies, or Phase Shift Generator to represent blackwash tech?

soft elbow
#

yea that's a neat idea to throw in some spooky mechs

soft elbow
#

I guess it could maybe spice up the combat 7 goons + maybe lean into them like infiltrating the academy for the attack?

rancid coral
#

plausible, but be careful with spec ops imo

#

they can get a bit swingy with the extra crit damage

soft elbow
#

tho I'd prob up the starting level anyway as the players I'd run for are a familiar/experienced table

#

that and more frame variety is neat for lore stuff like getting a fitting frame for your sponsor

soft elbow
#

that and the last module we ran was our usual GM's OWS game and besides the very last fight we basically blew right through it

rancid coral
#

fair! we just finished combat 2, we started at LL2. I'm running generally as-written from the book except I'm using rebake NPCs

#

combat 1 was a bit on the easier side, but 2 was a legitimate struggle, there was a serious risk of overall player loss and i think we came away with.....6 structure/stress lost from 5 players

soft elbow
#

ll3 feels like a bit much maybe but it’s just a fun level tbh, and it means a lot of stuff is put together and online

#

But certainly a power jump to prob account for

soft elbow
#

It’s how it goes sometimes

#

How’s the rebake stuff though?

rancid coral
#

strong recommend! to be clear combat 2 just seems quite difficult in general, I've heard a few other GMs in this channel talk about their parties straight up failed that combat

soft elbow
#

Interesting

empty flame
#

So I don't know that Centimane would be working for this particular house of sand operation, since they're more of a baronic council asset, but I do think that the villains here would realistically have some nanite stuff going on

#

I could see some real unstable maw type stuff being deployed for combat 4 or combat 7, or the House of Sand using some hecatoncheries-adjacent models for combat 6

rancid coral
#

hey, remind me, were there pilot tokens that someone made for the extraction targets in combat 4? I remember seeing it somewhere but can't find them now

rancid coral
pearl inlet
pearl inlet
soft elbow
#

Being a free company they’re also like mercs right?

#

With the Baronic council as like a primary client

glass prism
#

yeah, they're basically PMCs. They must answer to the BUC but are regulated by the Ignoble House and can sell their services to any entity, including those outside the Baronies

empty flame
#

Yeah, that's broadly true of most free companies, Centimane specifically is only semi-private. The Baronic Council is implied to keep them on a shorter leash than most, but classifies them as a Free Company so that whenever they do something really fucked up, it's not a whole diplomatic thing

#

Centimane's signature frame, the Hecatoncheires was developed by Baronic Intelligence, and in exchange they handle suppression operations against ungratefuls that the more official parts of the Baronic government might not be allowed to do otherwise

dark tusk
# final frigate I've got a basic format going for: + free time: they go wherever they want with...

One thing I want to add even though this is a bit old, I'm heading into sesh 3 right now facing a similar issue: my plan is to try and weave character drama with npcs to force players together or in conflict.

During a syllabus scene in the technical college for "first day of class" stuff I am splitting them into pairs and putting 2 under served npcs with them to drip feed tone, story, and force new drama.

On the other side I plan on forcing drama by way of how the pcs relate to npcs. One player is for example, a street rat disguised as a student he killed, unknowingly, from the house of sand. That student was sponsoring Aloysius Flyte with his advocacy for the hagiographic cause. Another player is from the house of smoke is Aloysius's cousin, and wants to "fix him" somehow because she is more meritocratic and chill.

That same player from the HoSand is trying to make friends/flirt with the Primors who are going to, independently, badger another PC. This PC is an ignoble merchant's daughter who squired for a HoWater company. The primors see her family, by making Water House allies, is obviously angling to get out from under the thumb of the house of glass, who sponsor her family's trading charter and rake taxes on her family's business which is how the Primors afford their garish tiaras.

#

This should force the PCs into natural conversation because they leverage each other as a part of these relationships

rancid coral
#

Hey I'm curious, have any other GMs run with the side plot about the Twins running their own conspiracy to undermine the College's leadership? I have the cadenze coming up tomorrow and I feel like it'd be a good opportunity for them to pursue it, but I'm not sure what that would entail besides deliberately taking a dive or putting on a substandard show as a way of damaging its reputation

pearl inlet
#

Maybe the mechs during the cadenze get sabotaged???

#

And the blame is placed on Elsa cuz she's involved in hosting the event

pearl inlet
# rancid coral Hey I'm curious, have any other GMs run with the side plot about the Twins runni...

In my game she's part of a club that plans social events (she's using this to courier favour with other families/houses) and I have like 2 players who are involved in that club too. If I'd do this subplot, which I might just go ahead with now that you remind me, I'd do something that brings down her reputation. Which by extension, maybe starts a jeering of her house and of the archchancellor on Karrakin social media ( the twins are involved in using burner accounts to spread this hate as well lol)

rancid coral
#

well the other problem is i'm planning a ||separate disruption where one of the landscaping subalterns gets hacked to smuggle a grenade into the event||, riffing off someone else's suggestion on here

#

it would be very funny to have two independent plots of varying severity affect the event however

pearl inlet
pearl inlet
#

I was straight up also contemplating having enemies from C4 show up, sort of gate crashing the event. This could be a rewrite to the ending of M1, where, in the fiction, the Cadenze is happening after the final exam, everyone's mechs were just starting to get their chassis slowly repaired as the college year is all but over. Maybe the Cadenze, this year around, is also a graduation ceremony for the students and then bam! these renegade mechs show up, teleporting into the very heart of the college and are trying to kidnap/kill select targets at the festival.

rancid coral
#

it would definitely be amore dramatic ending to the mission, but teleporting the mechs into the middle of the college would be harder to justify than getting them into the mountains i feel

rancid coral
#

ok chat here's my cooked idea for how this can be played for laughs while still being a close miss from a potential international incident:
||>The college briefly hires a massive subaltern workforce to oversee alterations to the Gardens and general preparations ahead of the Cadenze

Praya and Argo's conspiracy ensures that it comes from a front company (working through their person on the inside, Hebriyah). They build a bomb into the chassis of a specific subaltern with instructions to run into the gardens and detonate, ideally killing several people
The Reis twins independently mess with subaltersn' programming, instructing them to go to the kitchens and poison the food while the staff and faculty are all busy to cause a painful and embarrassing, but ultimately harmless, incident for House Calyx
the collision of these two plans results in the kitchen being exploded but no damage to anyone, the College passes it off as an unrelated accident to save face, investigation points to the Reis twins, and Hebriyah, who authorised renting the subalterns from a fly-by-night operator that literally didn't exist two months ago||

And even if the players manage to piece any of this together, they'll have a hard time getting anyone in power to take it seriously, the College being what it is.

sonic storm
# rancid coral Hey I'm curious, have any other GMs run with the side plot about the Twins runni...

The primary time I've seen it come up is when the GM for when I played the module actually roped my PC into the conspiracy, which resulted in a ton of back half shenanigans because the general play seemed to be that the Twins were mostly directionless on how to enact the plot but the PC ended up providing the direction.
IMO I think maybe it serves as a pretty good back explanation for ||why they were so into doing the bomb thing|| and in my experience was a great fit for the sort of thing you get the players involved with, or maybe as the sort of thing to complicate investigations into Praya and Argo ||(so in this case, maybe those two actually don't plan on disrupting the Cadenze specifically, but the twins are, and you just run their disruption and let player pattern recognition work against them)|| imo

rancid coral
dark tusk
#

Has anyone here found a way to make Tomas an interesting/active character in their attempts or have had any PCs that click with him? I have ways to work everyone else together into plot beats and farm drama in this web of conversations but can't figure out yet how to give him a hook to draw people in, even if he is supposed to be chiller than everyone else.

pearl inlet
pearl inlet
pearl inlet
# dark tusk Has anyone here found a way to make Tomas an interesting/active character in the...

I have a character who ended up developing her relationship on more romantic lines gradually - genuine curiosity, leading to playful flirting, with me writing a small scene where Tomas is gonna ask the party members for help on asking her to the Cadenze dance😳 😂 . (the player was just really enamored with his hair, said he looked like eren yeager and I can see that haha). I played alot into his passion for literature and the arts + the whole "if it were upto me, I'd be doing something else" bit which drew 2 other PCs, who were wanting to roleplay bits with him and get to know him better.

dark tusk
#

Okay yeah I need to describe them as even bishi-er, I understand the assignment 😛

dark tusk
pearl inlet
# dark tusk I had a plan with him to make him a big movie guy also, leading the "Kavaliere C...

I made a Onimé club and it was gonna be this place for Aloysius and maybe Lord Tomas to hang out in, engage in some heated, literal generations-old power scaling debates from the bonds universe, about whether Passacaglia or Tyranus would be the stronger servant 😅. (Yes, it's based off of fate fans, cuz I have 3 at the table). Idk if I've just made the other clubs more interesting and if that's a good thing, but none of the players joined this club 🤔. So now I'm relegated to making a remark here and there as gossip coming from some feud or drama happening with its other sweaty fans...

smoky drift
#

I did my intro tutorial combat 1 I set up as an alternate intro to the module. It was Rawan, Kay, and Imani with some grunts against the players in an escort mission. On the good advice I got here I removed Rawan's pirate template to make her a bit let dangerous.

Hilariously, Rawan got one shot off before my big damn hero player nuked her in a single volley of HMG fire, dealing 11 dmg, succeeding against invis, with inaccuracy and soft cover- and then she rolls a 1 and blows up. 😆 Sparky then rolls a 1 on the next round on her structure roll (!) and the players basically ace their first assignment.

graceful turtle
#

lmao

dark tusk
rancid shore
#

would folks like to peep the speech i wrote that Praya gives when she becomes the acting head of the House of Stone in my SotW continuation homebrew?

rancid coral
rancid shore
# 

“I, Praya Passacaglia, Acting Stonelord of the House of Stone, address you now in light of the recent rumors and misgivings.”

“First: concerning my father, Stonelord Hyderad-Cannamos. It is true that his health has worsened. He has, for the moment, ceded the practical burdens of leadership to me, though his wisdom and counsel remain ever my guide. As is proper within our House, I have assumed the duties of Acting Stonelord until such time as he may recover his full strength. My father has not fallen. He endures.”

“Second: concerning the so-called incident at the Cavalry College. My statement on this matter is brief. The College has received apology, the House has declared its intent to handle matters internally, and I have cooperated as expected. Nothing further need be said. Those who press this matter, who demand contrition beyond what has already been offered, seek not justice but spectacle. I will not indulge them.”

“I remind all who hear these words: I acted not as a representative of my House, but as an individual. Those who would twist this into a slander against the House of Stone will find only futility. The House stands unbroken.”

“But permit me to say this: the Baronies are in a time of fracture and peril. In such times, we must remember not only who we are, but who we were. I take the name Passacaglia, not by whim, but by right. It is the name of the first Emperor of the Baronies, the founder who bound our Houses together under law and duty. To carry that name is not a boast, but a charge. And I will not falter in that charge, no matter who whispers otherwise.”

“Those who look to me will find a leader unbowed. Those who look to diminish me will find themselves remembered only as obstacles to be overcome. And those who look to the Baronies will find a people who endure, as we always have, as we always will.”```
#

yes her ass took the name Passacaglia.

#

i also had the party meet the embodiment of the Harlequin passion! Though they dont know that

#

they did ask who he was but he was a little shit about it

# 

“Entity? Mm, that’s such a heavy word. I much prefer lighter ones—guest, wanderer, entertainer, thorn in the paw. You’d be surprised how far one can get in life simply by refusing to sit still long enough to be categorized.”

“Some would call me a friend, others a nuisance. Some might say I’m a mirror, though not the kind that flatters. And if you really must give me a title, then let it be this: I am the question mark at the end of a sentence you thought you understood. That’s not so bad, is it?”```
#

i enjoy writing paracasual fuckery

#

they WILL be meeting other embodied passions in the future

rancid coral
#

i have a uh, situation developing with Argo btw:

||a PC is romantically interested in Argo for Reasons. His reciprocated interest is largely going to be a way to inveigle himself into the party as a means of manipulating them; should I actually track the clock increasing in this instance? He does legitimately hate the PC's guts the whole while but is using her for his own ends.||

final frigate
#

TBH, this is why I'm having fun with my version of Argo and Praya. Dude is only married to her for political reasons and is making the most of the relationship by manipulating her in various ways she's too blunt to notice.

TL:DR: She's determined to prove herself at every opportunity, feels like she has much to live up to, feels that while she is respected it's because of her relations and not her own achievements and that worries her because it means she doesn't have a strong power base, and loathes the idea of anything other than 'might makes right' being a valid tactic because that is most of what she has known throughout her upbringing.
Argo sees all of this as stuff to manipulate and exploit in order to achieve his political ambitions, because while she's a totalitarian, he's a fascist who seeks to return the baronies to its rightful position of superiority.

#

They're both terrible people, neither are being woobified, it's just that Argos goals in life require far more people dying.

#

..there is also genuine affection between them, mind you.

#

They are married, but it's a tepid kind of attraction; She does love him because he helps her see things from angles she hasn't considered, and he does love her because she is the blunt brick who can, and will stand up to people in ways he can't.

#

Argo may be an assassin who could kill people whenever he pleases, but if he's dealing with someone he can't kill for whatever reason (political, more skilled than him, etc), he's a little toothless, because everyone knows the dude is a snake.

Praya hits these people in the face. She makes people do what she wants, without killing them, because that is what POWER is to her.

#

Strength is being the most influential and powerful person in the room and not having to do what you don't want to, while forcing those weaker than you to submit.

#

So, they complement each other well.

#

Think Light Yagami and a rule 63 baki character, and you're 90% of the way towards how my iteration operate.

#

(ramble over, sorry 😅 )

clear nymph
# final frigate TBH, this is why I'm having fun with my version of Argo and Praya. Dude is only ...

I'm doing something similar with my versions of Praya and Argo. One of the reasons they are being such outright assholes is so that they make no friends or connections in the college. Their plan will kill most or all these people, so they don't want to get attached. Argo is a bit of a sociopath, but Praya truly believes in might makes right so she can't help but respect those that stand up to her like Rawan or the players.

final frigate
#

makes sense.

mild spindle
#

God I'm prepping for SoTW and this is so fucking funny bc we just got off a karrakin game where Lord Hydrad Cannimous was the secondary antagonist (he survived because he's a slippery son a bitch who's impossible to reach), now we're doing SoTW where hes obviously also the major driving force (and will escape any justice for the same reasons), which is a shorter game to fill out till the end of the year where afterwards I'm starting my proper homebrew campaign in which he is also, get this, primary antagonist

#

Hopefully they can get him that time. Third times the charm

#

Our lancer metaplot is the increasing scale of this bitches ridiculous evil plans

#

-kill every other candidate to ensure hes elected prime Baron
-attack Karrakiz and frame ungratefuls/HA to start a war in the DS and grab power
-commit genocide on the entire house of dust in well fell swoop to do the same (this one will probably work)

clear nymph
#

Obviously ending in Stonelord Hydrad-Cannamos losing his marbles over being constantly foiled and building a paracausal blink space bomb for the purpose of eliminating the very concept of toast from existence

mild spindle
#

Hes gonna die in my homebrew he has to

#

I'm sorry THREE GAMES IN A ROW

#

He has to die

#

Non zero chance he dies in the exact way Barob Harkonnen does in Dune (being thrown into space by magic baby)

#

Anyway, I'm thinking of maybe padding out the module with a few sessions of more "school stuff"; anyone have experience doing the same?

north knot
# mild spindle Anyway, I'm thinking of maybe padding out the module with a few sessions of more...

I don't know if you've peeked at the tables on page 47, but there's a few rollable tables of classes for each of the syllabi that you could probably manage to extend into nearly full sessions of RP with some prep ahead of time.

personally, I've been handling my classes via text RP but if you've a knack for handling academic classes in voice and players motivated to play out the events of the class sessions then I don't anticipate you having any difficulties at all.

mild spindle
#

I've taken a look at the syllabi but it's more integrating them into the larger module flow

#

Bc it seems like once things pick up it might be abit hard

north knot
#

I'd recommend placing them between beat 4 and 5

#

perhaps another between 7 and combat 5 to demonstrate the marked change in the atmosphere on the college grounds as well

final frigate
# mild spindle Anyway, I'm thinking of maybe padding out the module with a few sessions of more...

I've got the campaign structured using this handy dandy step process:

  • free time: players look at a map of the college, with different NPCs being present in key locations, and they decide where to go. Once all players have made their choice, I play out all the scenes, bouncing between them as I go to maintain a good pace.
  • Lesson time: we go to a 'class selection screen', and each player picks which of the 4 syllabus (I split arts and politics) they want to focus on, then run through scenes involving them, NPCs, and a quick skill challenge or activity of some kind.
  • personal time: Players get to pick NPCs or PCs they wanna do stuff with, and we then collectively figure out what that is, then run the scenes as before, bouncing between them, or trying to make as many happen in the same area as once for max drama
  • mech combat: self explanatory

I then return to the free time section and intend to repeat this until roughly after the first sitrep of the final mission

its worth noting I added an entire extra mission in, the college pankrati.

mild spindle
#

I'm running on abit of a time limit so idk if I'll add a mission but I'm just keen to get a bit more rp in with the setting

#

Got like 13 sessions which is aaages

#

That structure looks good tho- I've been making my own map to do the exact same thing with

#

I'm going relatively low prep on art bc this is the we're all busy someone run a module game so I'm just making a rlly detailed map which'll have foundry journal entries for all the diff areas and scenes.

#

Drag the npcs around so you can see where they are

#

Have any active clocks there too so players can see what they're working on

final frigate
#

So, Praya is in line to become the next stone lord.

#

Where does Argo fall on the totem pole of the house of sand?

#

I've been portraying him as a count of the house who is respectable in his accomplishments, training, breeding, etc...but he's nothing compared to more influential house of sand members, who have sandmen at their beck and call, and/or manage some significant aspect of the houses workings.

clear nymph
#

Direct heirs typically don't marry each other unless it's intended to be a dynastic union to formally dissolve both houses for a combined one. I would say Argo is mid-high level. Probably has a couple dozen people in front of him for succession to the Baron of Sand and no realistic chance of inheriting it but still a potentially powerful man politically in his house and Karrakis at large. And as we see in combat 6, he does actually have Sandmen at his call.

final frigate
#

true.

rich swallow
#

so, i split the two missions into three, and players are currently on the last battle of the second mission (HA mechs battle)

#

I had an ultra in there, a special Morningstar. Then there were two Morningstar RPVs. Due to luck, all three were near eachother so the ultra morningstar destroyed the other two, creating multiple nuclear explosions, and destroying one of the player's mech. The other one is still standing strong.

So now, the pllayer is going to control both their on-foot pilot as well as the NPC friend that just arrived

rancid coral
#

i'm trying to think of some appropriate reserves for the classes my PCs have selected if they do well at them. The ones they've picked are:

  • Standard Adversary Chassis: Spoiled for choice here as far as 'standard' tactical reserves go, not overly worried about this one.
  • Zero-G Combat: There's no 0g combats in the game, but I might give them a flight/movement-related reserved from Enhanced Combat to represent pushing their movement systems in a terrestrial environment?
  • Ontologies of Personhood: Stumped on this one tbh. The player in question doesn't have an NHP (they might get one next LL), but even if they do, I'm not sure what an appropriate reward would be. Maybe a bonus on interactions with Eligos?
sturdy gorge
#

Hey guys
Im running SotW, and the first combat against 4pcs has the same number of enemies as pcs?
Only vs 5ppcs that the bullies use one extra?

quartz sentinel
#

yes that's correct

sturdy gorge
#

thanks

clear nymph
rich swallow
pearl inlet
#

It'd be easier to prep rewards then 😭

#

And even then into the narrative, like an NPC giving it to them or they finding it there

rancid shore
#

Naturally in my homebrew continuation, a LOT happens, but shhh

rancid coral
#

cause it's hard to yap about the Yemenova Problem for 400 words or so on a dime if someone selects 0G combat

mild spindle
#

dropping this setup stuff here as well

image.png
#

I love my lil map....

empty flame
#

Oooh where's that base image from?

mild spindle
#

me!

#

u can use it for games if u want, just credit

kcc.png
#

when I finish the game and have all my resources I plan to drop it somewhere

#

(maybe just pwyw on itch but idk the ethics of doing stuff like that based off an existing module)

#

gonna fill in the portraits for missing npcs and redo the battle maps

#

might get a few enviros out aswell

#

for areas without one

quartz sentinel
#

(disclaimer: neither legal advice nor the official opinion of Massif, email Tom if you have any questions)

mild spindle
quartz sentinel
#

if the art is all your own, I would say you're probably fine - using locations and concepts is explicitly called out as allowed. Maybe credit Conner Fawcett for the design of the Cavalry College as a courtesy, as that was all him!

mild spindle
#

yea it's the extra designer credit I'd be concerned abt, just making it rlly clear where the source comes from

pearl inlet
#

Might have to give it a try with my group ☺️

dark tusk
#

Omg session ran session 3 this weekend and it was fantastic ! One of my PCs is crushing on Elsa, and during their intro to Noble Arts scene I had castor-eyros tell them to make flower arrangements and they just improvised some of the most inspired and personally evocative choices for their own little arcs they could think of.

One PC had a private lunch with Argo and at the first chance immediately stole his knife

Found a way to bring in Tomas that I really like: He's crushing on a PC (who is a lesbian), told another femme PC to give her a flower he picked as a token of affection. The handing off PC said she has a "secret admirer" and the recipient immediately went to herself "Oh, the secret admirer is you, you're hitting on me, clearly I should accept the flower." And she plans to wear it on her shirt after the 2nd combat like a victorian girl courting suitors, opening up the doors for some absolute shenanigans.

final frigate
#

everyone steals Argos knife XDDDD

dark tusk
#

I'm thinking of having him steal it back and leaving a little note in the players desk about playing cat and mouse with wolves

novel musk
#

so one of my PCs spent their beat 4 downtime action on flirting with Argo in order to destabilize his relationship with Praya
and i'm not sure how to operationalize the consequences

#

argh i was gonna type more but i hit enter accidentally

#

i don't think i want to allow them to straight up convince Argo to abandon the plan entirely bc then i'd have to come up with a replacement for the Sandmen fight
but i do feel like a successful enough roll should influence his actions somehow...

silver vault
#

Maybe the sandmen purposefully leave the flirter alive, knowing that they cannot stop the plan on their own

#

and just get rid of everyone else

clear nymph
#

When Argo bursts in he puts out an open channel that the flirter should not be killed, and if they do the interrogation of him, he gives up the plan without a roll needed

dark tusk
#

Gonna give Aloysius a gross little hagiographic omni-net podcast show called "Flyte of Fancy", can't wait to spring this joke on my players

silver vault
dark tusk
#

Yes yes yes yes

silver vault
#

I'm imagining one part Evil NPR, one part Lib Ownage Factory, one part Baronic Andrew Tate

dark tusk
#

Giant cigars, imported boxes of ishpasalari whiskey, talking about "sick BI hecaton blackwash shit" during the more casual subscriber streams

#

Aloysius does really give ben shapiro

rancid coral
empty flame
final frigate
#

Of the people in the module, he is, to me, the 3rd most dangerous.

#

If only because he knows how to walk the walk, talk the talk, and is in a position where he can't afford to make nasty with potential allies, but is more than willing to drag those in his way down.

#

He's the textbook aristocrat.

#

He'd probably look at Shapiro and see a very unskilled orator who plays to the masses.

#

...and then try to appeal to them himself, but is just disconnected enough to fumble the ball.

#

I could see him hosting charity balls, social events and so on though.

#

Dude seems like the type to invite a bunch of people over to his manor to host a dinner party, just to try and court favour with as many as possible.

#

But...I also think he'd probably be incapable of the diplomatic skill required to court as many people as he needs to succeed in his goals.

#

if anything, he reminds me of a more charismatic jacob rees mogg

#

(depicted above; the stereotypical British aristocrat who has no connection to the general public)

dark tusk
final frigate
#

wonderful!

dark tusk
#

But yeah this is all well put, I played al so far a little more mean and petulant than I should because he can "open up" to the party a smidge as he is a cousin of a player character but after the clap back he's gotten for being a snivelling weasel I'll cool him down, especially with his more genteel public facing show

final frigate
#

ooooooh.

#

thats a neat connection.

#

Right now, I'm having lord Aloynius try to invite two of the PCs out on dates, which, one has accepted, and the other is waiting to see how her date with him went before she agrees XD

#

It's kinda easy to see why the first agreed; she's house of stone, a bit of an ice queen, looks like stella from hellva boss and is a little ostracised. No one else wants to hang out with her, except this handsome gentleman who randomly started backing her up in conversation during a ball, and he seems...acceptable.

#

it's exploiting her isolation for his benefit to gain a social connection.

#

meanwhile the other PC, Eleni?
She's way more capable of forming social connections, but he doesn't know that yet, and is treating her like another wallflower

#

this is camille in a nutshell.

#

I love her.

pearl inlet
#

I am aware that Aloysius doesn't likely have a similar bend as Feuntes but I can see Al holding Neo-passacagalian beliefs.

final frigate
#

I can definitely see him holding those beliefs.

#

especially as he holds a minority opinion within his own house.

#

It's just a question of how he expresses them, and to whom.

dark tusk
#

If things played out differently his family could have contested for the first throne, that has to build up a lot of resentment for someone with nothing else in their life

dark tusk
final frigate
#

I definitely have him as anti-sanjak though, purely because, quote.
"They chose to defy the order of things, and look at the price they paid for it; they are worse off than ever before, when they were slowly being brought into the fold at a pace deemed appropriate by their betters. Now they are actively making their plight everyone elses problem and stubbornly refuse to accept their place on the totem pole. It's pitiable, really, like a poorly trained dog that slipped its leash. If only they had been taught better..."*sips tea*

dark tusk
#

This is the shit I've basically been having argo say I might just rip this whole cloth

final frigate
#

go ahead.

#

Argo, for me, has been a bit more subtle, if only because everyone else knows what he believes and he has no need to retell what others know.

#

he'd be more like....

#

"Oh them? Hardly worth a thought. It if weren't for Unions pesky conventions it could have been brought to heel with some nanite graywash ages ago. But, no, we have to kill them the old fashioned way, and risk so many good soldiers who's blood would be better spilled on more preeminent battlefronts. Even if they did bend the knee and bow their head, well, an example would need to be made, and my beloved, she doesn't practice wood chopping for the sake of her forearms alone..."

#

and then we have praya
"My first decree will be bold and nuclear; I will have my coronation on Ludra's glassed beaches.

pearl inlet
#

Scary stuff 😨

final frigate
#

This is Praya we're talking about XDDD

#

That said, as I've said before in this channel, I like how my Argo is worse than my Praya.

dark tusk
#

It's the difference between cold indifferent calculus and the boldness of someone without anything to hide

final frigate
#

Mhm.

#

And the scale of their dreams, with differing amounts of blood being spilled.

#

To me, Praya 100% wants sanjak back, and wants to more or less cement her rulership as the stone lord by any means.

Argo? Argo wants to return to the days when Karrakis was unmatched in the universe, and not beholden to anything.

#

They are both equally terrible people, but one just wants genocide, the other wants to plunge all of Union into chaos.

#

There's a reason why I'm waiting for the right moment for Argo to say "I want to make the Baronies great again."

graceful turtle
#

COUNT ARGO ON THE PASSACAGLIA BLINKGATE LOGS????

marsh tinsel
final frigate
# marsh tinsel Seems like Praya is all about the Ungratefuls vs Argo who would be against HA - ...

Not entirely on point, but close.

Praya views sanjak as a stepping stone (heh) on her long career as stonelord. She wishes to go from glory to glory, deed to deed, strength to strength. If she has her way, she would become prime baron, but would be just as happy cementing her authority within the baronies as the undisputedly greatest major house, who could overthrow the others, once her successor comes to power.
Taking sanjak is the first step, because it not only crushes republican beliefs, it also allows her to say she did something her predecessors could not.

Argos first step isn't so much HA as it is the dawnline, but they are functionally one in the same; take back lost territories from foreign 'colonizers', throw off the burdens placed upon the baronies by Union, who brought it to heel, take over the blink gates to re-establish strong supply lines and trade routes, kill anyone who can oppose the baronies, establish more major houses to replace the authority of its major foes once overthrown, etc.

#

This is why Argo and Praya want to blow up the cavalry college as a false flag attack on the baronies; for Praya, it opens up an opportunity to prove herself as a military commander and earn prestige, allowing her to cement herself as a rightful successor no one will ever question ever again. For Argo, it means his dream of a orion arm spanning karrakian empire has begun to unfold, the first step has been taken.

Pair this with both of them viewing every single member of the student body as wastes, sent to the college to be coddled and given false honours for the sake of keeping up appearances, and they've little reason to not view their plan as 'right'.

#

Tomas, Kay, Azer, the primor twins. All of them draw their intense ire...ignore the fact that in my run of shadow wolf, Kirionia is more accomplished than both of them, Elsa beat Praya in a duel giving her a scar, and Nadeer is a literal war hero.

#

Both argo and praya dream big, believe they can achieve it, and are skilled...but vastly overestimate themselves.

leaden elbow
#

Any suggestions on what extra enemies to add to combat 6 with 6 players?

final frigate
dense pendant
#

Awright so this is fun:

  • One of my PCs is from the House of Smoke and is very interested in nano-tech (her player was set on taking the Hec at LL2).
  • So she attached herself to Aloysius pretty quick as a fellow Smonk Noble, and a few dates later she gets rewarded with a test run of a bleeding edge Hec.
  • She doesn't know (though her player strongly suspects) that Aloysius is offering her the chance to pilot it since he's been tasked by Centimane to find and recruit College pilots for the task.
  • She's a Republican, and her minor house is on the forefront of reforming Smoke.
    I need to find a way to set this thing off in a way that integrates well with the story, but until then I have a tidy little barrel of gunpowder
rancid coral
#

i still need to decide exactly what i'm going to do with aloysius. I have a diasporan player who's been sponsored by a radical Smoke noble, so I'm certain he''d be interested in discrediting or removing them, but I'm struggling to think of a plot that isn't just him independently doing the same shit praya and argo do lol

final frigate
# rancid coral i still need to decide exactly what i'm going to do with aloysius. I have a dias...

socialize and gain allies; he needs as many allies as he can get for when he inevitably tries to course correct his house, and rather than do so violently, he wishes to do so via soft power and political weight.

Have him become a mean girl, a bad bitch, someone who gossips, lies and subtly manoeuvres. So he talks shit about the PC to other NPCs, and they all dislike them immediately, both from their sponsor and their origins, but seem ok with others, and have the PC slowly uncover he's the one behind the rumours and such.

quartz sentinel
#

specifically I'd consider adding in another hornet or another hive, both if your party have been handling the module well so far

leaden elbow
#

That's what I was leaning to as well. Thank you!

rancid coral
#

two questions please:
about c3: has anyone tried this one with the EC variant Escort rules (you can daisy standard moves to move the payload)? How'd it go?
about the narrative premise going into C4: Are multiple groups of students being evaluated at the same time? How come they can show up as allies in the combat?

#

also would appreciate any funny example of bullshit for the twins to spout about other characters; i'm drawing a bit of a blank rn

cosmic blaze
#

I haven't tried c3 with the variant Escort rules, but I plan to after using them a few times.
The main thing to be wary of is the fact that PCs can more easily "chain" move the objective to complete it faster. A slow PC can move the objective on their turn, then a much faster PC can Boost, start their standard move next to the objective and then move it. This would be harder in the standard escort rules because PCs would need to start their turn next to the objective in order to move it, meaning they'd need to set up the chain a turn in advance.
I don't think chaining is much of an issue if you keep it in mind, and the opfor has the tools to counter it (archers and Imani's "Chain"). If you want a safe middle-ground, you can keep the standard rule of needing to start next to the objective to move it, and the variant rule for how the objective moves (you pick it up and then place it at the end of the move). I find the fact in the standard rules the objective mirrors your movement to be very clunky especially when trying to maneuver around terrain

#

For C4, I don't think the module explains what the other students are doing while you fight the faculty. You can either have the students in the field doing their own exams with other faculty members, or have them waiting their turn to be evaluated in a nearby base. (I went for the former)

rancid coral
cosmic blaze
#

The funny thing about C3 is that it really doesn't matter how well the PCs perform. The GM's real goal is to gaslight the players into thinking it's the mission's last combat so they use up all of their resources and take unnecessary damage. That way when C4 comes it'll hit them like a truck

rancid coral
#

the main thing i appreciate about the EC rules is specifyuing that the payload is invulnerable tbh. but i feel like Extraction is a bit contrived for C4 since the attackers are specifically trying to destroy the targets. but i get that letting the operator chain-shoot each target would end up being pretty unfun

glass prism
#

the module does say that the enemy will prioritize the players' mechs first where possible

#

but I get your point about extraction as a whole

rancid coral
#

they are still vulnerable to things like AoEs and reactor meltdowns; i have had both of those come up for me in payload combats before

#

one thing i want to have a crack at myself is that instead of a health value the payload 'resists x number of hits' regardless of the amount of damage

cosmic blaze
#

The problem is that if the opfor wants to destroy the payload, there's really no way for the PCs to prevent that beyond having expanded compartments. At most they can make it difficulty through utility systems and engagement, but the opfor will always prioritize engaging with the target.
It's also not very interactive for the players, since the NPCs will be focusing on engaging the objective rather than them.
My usual justification is that the NPCs target the PCs out of survival instincts, cause there's no reason for NPCs to put their lives in danger for the sake of getting one shot off at the objective. Though ofc that doesn't work with C4 cause there are no pilots.
My justification for C4 is that the faculty and any NPC pilots are "presumed dead" by the opfor. And the reason the opfor doesn't kill the PCs is because they don't have to, the plan is already to frame them for the attack. Targeting the PCs would only harm that plan.

#

The attack before and after the PCs jump in takes place over a very short amount of time, the enemies don't have much time time to search through the wreckage to find the faculty hiding

soft elbow
#

Maybe even Mercenary template on something for Bounty Hunter to have them hire them on like “get this motherfucker in particular”

rancid coral
#

the party rolled combat 3, as expected, but they also rolled c4 super hard lol

#

3 agimaxxed flying players kinda eat extraction for lunch, i literally didn't have time to deploy more than 2 rounds of npcs before they already locked their victory in

#

(these maps were definitely not designed for the daisy chain rules, for anyone considering them)

rancid coral
#

hey, are the preinstalled systems on the exotic frame rewards meant to be modular? like, can the players remove the mule harness or hive drone from their mechs? I'm leaning no but wanted to see what others said

sonic storm
#

I've ruled yes, they can take it off, but once they uninstall it they lose it if that makes sense

quartz sentinel
#

Variant Frames are granted as Exotic Gear (see p. 97) and characters who receive them gain them permanently. Each comes with one system from its license, also granted as Exotic Gear. This system is “preinstalled” when the PC receives the mech (it still costs SP), but can be removed.

rancid coral
quartz sentinel
#

I feel like I should have made that more clear somehow, it's been a recurring point of confusion

#

I guess it's a novel way of granting gear so people aren't used to how it should work, like they are with exotics more generally

rancid coral
#

yeah, it's also the only instance of getting an alt frame mid-mission that i've seen

quartz sentinel
#

that is also true

rancid coral
#

anyway, i'm at an interesting situation where the players have (illegally) acquired material evidence linking praya to the attack; a player planted a bug on Titan before heading out to the evaluation and I ruled that the activation message for the false flag attack could be partially traced back to it

#

given that they failed a risky roll and were seen in the area by a college engineer, I imagine Diana LeFleur might have had time to hear about it, which would definitely change the tenor of the interrogation

cosmic blaze
rancid coral
#

tbh c3 was touch and go for a little bit, but you cannot stop a mourning cloak core battery on an escort. c4 though, i've always disagreed with the 'free turn before deployment' idea on that sitrep

cosmic blaze
#

wdy mean by 'free turn' before deployment?

rancid coral
#

enemies don't deploy on the first round of an extraction

image.png
cosmic blaze
#

There's no rule for when reinforcements have to come in, you can choose to deploy reinforcements at the start of the round after the PCs have done their deployment. That's actually how you do the first round in c4

image.png
rancid coral
#

oh huh

#

well that'd do it

empty flame
#

Yeah I've generally deployed them 2 at a time starting from the beginning of combat

#

Usually with the aegises and operators as duos when possible since the grapple/teleport combo is just real nice

cosmic blaze
#

I'm currently planning C3 and C4, and I've just accepted the faculty are going to be bullied by the chomolungma player with Goblin 3 pushing them into the minefield. On the other hand, I'm excited to get my revenge by using grind maniple and driving swarm to push them into the mines.
I've decided if the faculty takes more than 20 damage from mines I'm making the Hives veterans with limitless

dense pendant
#

Wrapped up two sessions of rp only before a 4(!) week hiatus. In sum:

  • Lady Alessandra (Glass) won the school Pankrati tourney and became a celebrity, easily wooing Elsa for the Cadenza, but had to turn down an invite from Lord Tomas (who asked her with a hand-written poem) since he was too slow
  • Lady Rowena (Smoke) has been training on the Hecatoncheires with Lord Aloysius and they're all but officially an item at this point. But. Stablemaster Imani has found out about the Secret Hec and is Paying Attention
  • Lady Reva (Moments) got asked to the Cadenza by Kiriona, who showed up in a red suit with Ray Bans
  • Clementa (Dust) asked Kay to the Cadenza, which worked incredibly well as they just sat back and made remarks about the dancing mechs

I did the subaltern poison/bomb deal at the end of the night, and the rest of the session was the PCs sneaking around, investigating, and trying to find the Twins. They put the pieces together and exonerated the Twins from the bomb plot but have no clues pointing towards the actual perp

Combat 3-4 is happening in a month 🥲

quartz sentinel
#

That sounds like it went extremely well

faint panther
#

and

#

somehow

#

even though they all have Custom Chasis

#

they only wrecked one enemy

#

And it was Count Argo

#

I still do not understand these players and the enigma that is their brain

#

One of the playeres is even an Enkidu and I told them all the grunt scouts were at half health from the beginning of the combat, plus they looked robotic in action, plus they all moved together

#

they NEVER POINTED THEIR WEAPONS AT THEM

#

it was god damn hilarious because after session i fully crashed out on them like

#

DUDES, HOW THE FUCK DID YALL KILL THE HEALTHIEST ENEMY IN THAT COMBAT, BUT NONE OF THE SQUISHIES

#

two hornets were at like... 4hp on their first turn they spawned and then the players never touched them again

proper bobcat
#

well,

#

you have to account for the global taunt

#

that is this face:

silver vault
#

"clearly you don't own an air fryer" headass

north knot
#

he's just misunderstood I can fix him

final frigate
#

I love Argo.

#

He's such a bitch.

dark tusk
#

I'm trying to figure out how to make Argo into a full tumblr sexyman type

dark tusk
rancid coral
#

hmmm, i missed my chance to run a pankrati tourney in semester 1 (i was waiting for my pankrati players to lean into it but tbh i should have taken the initiative as the GM); running it in semester 2 would be cool but i feel like the tone shift at the college would make it feel a bit out of place at this point

dense pendant
graceful turtle
soft elbow
faint panther
#

i also am finishing combat 4 with another group

#

They are fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine

image.png
#

we cliffhangered start of round 7 where the two players n the left braced and are thinking of ditching last minute, while the one on the right (which is actually to the left of the hive, they just moved to check LoS on a later turn) is holding iphianassa

#

but he got a hive in front of him, and a slowly approaching pyro

#

that will 100% rock their shit

#

also, the remainin operator doesnt have its rifle and its trying to grapple the player above him

dark tusk
# soft elbow Which rules?

Someone posted some homebrew, "Field Guide to Suldan" has some duelling rules which is rock-paper-scissors to modify die rolls. Gonna use it for pankrati rounds

novel musk
#

so i know combat 4 says allied NPCs can't move objectives, but 2 out of the 3 PCs are at low HP at 2 or less structure and i think there's a good chance both of them get destroyed
should i throw my players a bone and let their NPC allies also move objectives? maybe with a restriction, like only one of them can move an objective each round? or does that have too much potential to trivialize the fight

empty flame
#

Suldan's dueling rules are pretty in-depth, but seem solid yeah

quartz sentinel
#

certain allies are much, much better at moving objectives

#

but it's a fair adjustment if you want to give them a better shot at rescuing someone, the opfor can always focus fire on their ally in any case

dark tusk
#

Just ran combat 2, the pcs got kind of annoyed at the action economy of the vets/elites getting 2 turns in a round in a 5 v 4 fight with 4 control points. But they forced it to a draw after getting run up 3 - 1, then 2-1, 2-0, 1-1, 0-2, 0-3.

Took 2 of them burning their Core Powers for maximum boosting

The dramatic final stand involved our chomolungma player control locking elsa off the green objective with a full tech that she had to overcharge to do and already got herself to using 1d6+4 for oc after the praya fight. She had no stress so if she hit a 3-6 she goes nuclear immediately. Hits a 1! 5 heat and control locks twice leaving Elsa immobilized one space from the control zone and prone so she has to burn her movement and full action to stabilize and stand.

This also happened after Hedros structured our teams sniper on this ultimate turn. With her in the cz w/ elsa they would have gotten the win after the control lock maneuver but she exploded so it went to a draw.

rancid coral
#

I'm looking at ways of enhancing the combats for mission 2; the players are ll3 at this point so they have some pretty tweaked builds between the exotic rewards and core bonuses coming online.

My first thought is naking Praya and Argo Ultras for the rematch fights but idk if 2 in one mission would be excessive

soft elbow
#

Ultras are pretty nuts

#

You could maybe add Commander template if you want to beef them up

silver vault
#

I've never seen 2 Ultras in one mission and I think the book recommends against it

#

or is that two ultras in one combat

#

either way

soft elbow
#

Yea 2 ultras facing 1 full repair is nuts

#

You’d also have to really retool their fights

#

Since ultras don’t really get a lot of backup because they’re just so cracked

pearl inlet
soft elbow
#

Like adding some stuff to the C7 goons or something

reef steeple
rancid coral
#

Hmmm, the players are definitely experienced and well built, and Praya isn't designed to necessarily be destroyed

reef steeple
#

In SotW I wouldn't do it personally

#

Cause when I did it, it was 3 Tier 3 Ultra Horror Exotic with two being Pirates

#

It was the best that I could do to facitate the simulation of my players fighting a Lycan, Balor, and Gorgon

#

We'll ignore the fact that there was also a Tempest in play

final frigate
#

quotes from tonights session

"You're instincts fail you again, Lady Arint. I am where I want to be, am doing as I wish, and am living as true to myself as I can be...I hide nothing from you in this moment, save my want to taste your heart..."

"I can't tell you any of my fun stories, then I'd have to kill you, company policy."

"I want azeriel to shoot me out of the sky some time..."

"I heard through the grape vine that prayas muscles are all natural." all four men at the table take a deep drink at feeling so emasculated by her strength.

rancid coral
#

btw, just confirming - the Federal Karrakin Army and the BUC are the same entity, correct?

image.png
quartz sentinel
#

they are a subdivision of the BUC

image.png
novel musk
#

so one of the twins got taken out in combat 4 sweating
i feel like i don't wanna confirm whether they died or not until the whole combat is resolved, but this could get very spicy

dark tusk
#

Ohhhhh fuck

silver vault
#

I feel like killing one of the twins could be a really interesting plot beat, because of the effects it would have on the survivor

#

also it's a great player gut punch that hammers home the callousness of Praya and Argo's plan

dark tusk
#

Yeah just have the other twin be emotionally barren

#

I've been doing an affectation where they speak as one unit / trading off lines / between each other / like mind readers and if I couldn't do that bit for her after the first part of the sentence I think the remaining twin would just break down and cry

graceful turtle
pearl inlet
final frigate
dark tusk
#

On a less tragically heart breaking note I couldnt make enough clocks in owlbear to track all the npcs easily, it seemed to have a hard cap.
So instead I made the handy dandy relationship thermometer

image-8.png
drowsy yarrow
#

That’s a great idea

dark tusk
#

The fact it looks so cheap and shit only enhances the appeal imo

glass prism
#

mild criticism: I think your thermometer is filling in reverse
You could easily handwave that by just calling it a meter though

dark tusk
#

Big number on big end, smaller number on smaller end nods sagely

final frigate
#

How normal is it for players to want to try and assassinate NPCs?

#

I'm trying to think of ways to dissuade assassination beyond the teachers saying 'you did this, you're kicked from the college'.

#

...I probably should talk with them OOC about it to, but still.

quartz sentinel
#

If your players want to assassinate an NPC, let them. Congrats, you're now playing an entirely different campaign where the PCs are the most wanted criminals on Karrakis in the middle of a city the size of Germany with no allies, mechs, or way offworld

#

It's a different kind of game but there are definitely ways to make that fun

final frigate
#

Definitely going to use that as the stick-threat-consequence to that course of action 😅

#

Mason Piraka may be one of the most hated men in the KtB, but he's still a citizen with rights and such.

#

Plus I can't imagine getting away with such action is easy when the xenoglossian monks can read the future and potentially the past.

empty flame
#

Okay so I do think it depends a bit on which NPC they're gunning for as well

final frigate
# empty flame Okay so I do think it depends a bit on which NPC they're gunning for as well

homebrew NPC I included into the campaign, guy called Mason Piraka.

Blatant political appointee in a teaching position, oversees all lessons regarding gardening and martial arts.
Pretty much everyone knows he's there to act as a bodyguard to the two other NPCs I included, the first and second sons of a minor house of glass.

He's a well known assassin, soldier and saboteur who is hated by most KtB nobility for being an ignoble who has proven to be superior to most of them in combat. He is, in a word, a bastard, and most people refer to him as 'it' or 'that thing' or 'the beast', refusing to treat him as a person.

He's honest, open about the fact he enjoys combat and killing, and while he does enjoy watching people squirm due to his reputation, is, all things considered, a nice person considering he'll treat people the same way he wants to be treated, and will also treat others like shit if they give him shit.

I added him to the campaign to add an extra foil alongside Rawan Azer to the whole KtB polito-sphere; she stands in contrast to their politics and ways of thinking, Mason exists to highlight the inherent contradiction in what the KtB claims to value at times, as well as draw attention to how decorum and such are things no one is entitled to, just what the collective agrees you should have so long as you have social standing.

The one PC he was bonding with until now made a bet with him, and his prize was to have the opportunity to fight the PCs xenoglossian monk bodyguard. He told her to give the monk anything that might give them an advantage over him...so the PC poisoned him with a heart stopping toxin and then attacked him with Argos wolf blade they had stolen together, right after they had just had a heartfelt conversation and he was going to take his leave.

For this, the PC immediately gained a burden, not realizing Mason is the equivalent of an ultra assassin even without his atlas armour, and she now plots to assassinate him by making nice with argo.

empty flame
#

And roughly where in the campaign's pacing are you?

final frigate
#

we've not even gotten into the second combat encounter.

#

that starts next session.

#

I haven't even had the time to introduce all the NPCs at the college to the group yet 😅

empty flame
#

So I do think introducing more NPCs is a good way to distract the PCs a bit, but you do have a kinda funny opportunity

#

Since they've contacted Argo about this, and Argo is most likely still salty about the duel, I'd have him sort of string the PCs along like "Oh it's not a good opening yet, we need to plan this carefully" etc and draw more information out of them bit by bit

#

That way, all the way at the end of the campaign when he wants to frame them as ungratefuls/harrison assets, he'll have a stack of VERY real evidence of a criminal plot to do it with

final frigate
#

oooooh.

#

I like that a lot.

#

Lets me frame them for a potential crime they were legitimately considering.

#

Thanks, this is great stuff actually, and kills multiple birds with one stone.

#

Mason shall live!

Mason_Piraka.jpg
empty flame
#

And of course even if they do succeed on bonding with Argo in a more genuine capacity, he'll probably still have told Praya about it

final frigate
#

True; I'm keeping Argo as a fascist lil shit, so even if they do make friends with him, genuine friends, I'll have him follow through on this betrayal, but in a way that'll at least soften the blow.

#

"Oh I'm not going to let the bucs get you, oh no no, I came to take you out myself, as a kindness."

#

"I'll give you the dignity of dying by the hand of a sandman, no shame in losing against someone you couldn't beat."

sleek ether
#

Anyone here already go do the work to strip the Mission 2: Combat 7 maps of UX overlays?

Thinking about using it for a narrative map in Mission 1: Beat 4, but don't want to hint that its a combat field yet by showing the map as provided.

silver oracle
#

Havent yet, been at Mission 1 so far. Might check it out though

#

Speaking of Mission 1, anyone using the rebaked npcs? I heard Combat 4 needs to be tweaked, what changes did you guys make?

novel musk
#

i swapped out one of the aegises for a commander RPV mirage to make up for the operators not being able to teleport the aegises anymore

rancid coral
#

anyway, i'm gonna add about 1 structure/activation per fight for mission 2 i think since they have core bonuses now. step 1 is making argo an ultra

#

and rawan an elite vet i guess

silver oracle
#

notereid ill take note of both of those, thank you!

silver oracle
dark tusk
#

Okay question: I've basically treated the archchancellor like the dean as a job title and aura so far, what does the dean do that she doesn't?

#

And vice versa

marsh tinsel
#

I see her as upholding more traditional Karrakin cultural norms - like having her hand be forced by the Stonelord at times

dark tusk
#

So she's more like a political representative to/of the school and the Dean does more day to day admin work?

dark tusk
silver oracle
#

i think the operators are definitely needed for damage yeah looking at the comp

novel musk
#

yeah
I guess if your players are beat up enough you could swap an operator out to make things a little easier
I also forgot to mention I'm running the rebake aegis veteran optional that lets them move while defense net is up, just for additional flexibility

dark tusk
# novel musk yeah I guess if your players are beat up enough you could swap an operator out t...

I was thinking of keeping ring of fire since they have limitless from the vet template in rebake iirc, that or go for the range 5 defense net as that gives the operator a little more room to teleport around.

Maybe give the rebake vet operator the no invis/hide in 3 ability? Doubt how useful it'll be but the rebake specific operator option with the nhp undermines the point of the rpv template

silver oracle
#

oooooooo thanks for the tip ill add

silver oracle
#

i did the range 5 defense but i do like the flexibility of a movable defense net

dark tusk
#

Oh so while we are on the subject of the NPC rebake and modulating fights to account for changed systems.
I'm thinking of giving the Underbaron Shocktrooper over Rank Discipline, as other than the ronin (depending on pc count) no one wants to join her on flanking runs to circumvent cover.

dark tusk
#

Also how have bpc rebake users for this module messed around with grunts? For Combat 3 I'm unsure what to do re: grunt archer/bastion units in the shadow of the grunt rebake

empty flame
#

Honestly the defender and artillery grunts feel like a good enough pick for that combat

#

They're not quite as good at control as archer grunts, but they really aren't the centerpiece of the combat

#

I will also say: There's nothing to say that you have to only use the rebake versions. If it fits the sitrep better, you can pick and choose elements to retain from the original book

dark tusk
#

Yeah I'm thinking of using the core grunt template on new archers- my thought being looking at the rebake controller grunt it doesnt have a supression ability which feels to me like the point for the archers in C3, and having 3 armor grunts in the form of the bastion just feels really funny if a little rude to the knife lovers in my party

rancid coral
#

alright, that's mission 1 done at 6 sessions in. switching to hybrid pbp has been so good for keeping the game's momentum

#

mission 1 was mostly about the players proactively approaching NPCs, I definitely want the NPCs to be more proactive with the players at this point though, since there's been enough time for everyone to know where they stand with each other

final frigate
#

In todays session, Eligos almost killed someone by turning off their flight suit, while they were attempting to fly up through the centre of a stair well to get to a lesson on time.

#

"No flying in the stair way." he said calmly, enveloping the student in a wave of viral code to fry the suit, making it look like walls of burned meat were enclosing around them mid flight.

marsh tinsel
#

Do you have Rawan play in the first battle to join the team? I feel like it’d be a bit hard to organise/balance

final frigate
# marsh tinsel Do you have Rawan play in the first battle to join the team? I feel like it’d be...

TBH, you could, but you'd probably need an additional enemy NPC to balance out the activations and such.

Probably either another controller type NPC that can't deal too much damage, or a defender like a bastion or something. No strikers though, and only select artillery NPCs, because otherwise it's a bit hard for the group in later combat encounters within that mission (especially considering sitrep 4)

#

I'd probably advocate for a sentinel, or maybe an elite scout, something that dies fast but is annoying if left alive.

marsh tinsel
#

Mostly I'm wondering about narrative justifications for her to not partake :3

final frigate
#

alternatively, it could be praya challenges only the players to the duel, excluding rawan.

#

she has already 'proven her superiority' over her, as it were.

#

now she needs to dominate those who dare interfere with her posturing.

dark tusk
#

I'm curious how people feel about the number of Elite units in some of the combats and action economy balance.

Mostly because I had a player who was a little annoyed in combat 2 about Kir and Hedros getting to reposition/react to the PCs plan at the end of the round with little room to mess with them before the next round start.

final frigate
#

I personally enjoy it as the GM, because it allows me to throw a wrench into carefully curated schemes and apply serious pressure in ways I might not otherwise.

quartz sentinel
final frigate
#

Kiriona alone has allowed me to pressure the opposite side of the map in a single turn just by move boosting two turns back to back, putting them on the back foot immediately, which will thus force them into coming at the primors in ways that they may not want to, since valantine and vivian want people to enter their zones so they can be overwatched.

quartz sentinel
#

specifically combat 1 is Praya and Argo picking on the PCs in order to assert dominance

#

they already kicked the shit out of Rawan, they don't need to also challenge her to a duel

final frigate
#

It may annoy players since there's less counterplay, but...my response to that would be they aren't putting the GM in the position where they feel like they need to make Kirionia move at the start of the round, and then take her second turn later.

#

she's only a cataphract (who usually has a latch drone attached :) ), letting it come to you is often a bad idea.

#

if you let them, they'll kidnap a PC and drag them across the map.

rancid coral
#

elite snipers are no joke

dark tusk
# rancid coral elite snipers are no joke

Yeah he was a monster- I literally took a player going sniper everest from 4 structure to destroyed in 6 turns. Didnt even need to get the bypass hp to deal structure effect all the time. just 10HP and they pop.

dark tusk
dark tusk
dark tusk
final frigate
#

It's a really well tuned encounter IMO.
It looks way more simple than it actually is.

#

Like the primors being able to teleport through terrain on a map with lots of cover + rapid response makes them seem way more mobile.

dark tusk
#

The rebake makes them size 2 which I admit was a little tricky, it did the same for Elsa but I kept her size 1 because otherwise the encounter just wouldnt work as designed lmao

dark tusk
final frigate
#

I need to read the rebake at some point 😔

dark tusk
dark tusk
#

I think part of it is our most mobile player, who is slightly redoing her kit, is a sagarmatha player with Ace and Type 3 flight so she was scared of getting heat so she was a little congested getting onto the point, when she could have moved 10 spaces for 3 heat and just camped it.

final frigate
# dark tusk I guess the lesson I'll try to pass on is instead of trying to do play counter p...

Might be worth having the baroness pull them all to one side to review how the lesson went.

I did that after the duel as well, basically told the players "hey maybe don't leave the squishy flying striker grappled by Praya for 5 rounds straight and use your vastly superior mobility to your advantage by hit and run tactic-ing her so she couldn't take a collective 4 structure off the entire group?"

final frigate
#

I approached it as 'I'm giving you constructive feedback and highlighting what you did well alongside this, so you don't think of this as you being brow beaten for winning in a way I consider less than perfect."

dark tusk
final frigate
#

oooof.

#

I run 3 hour sessions each week, precisely so I don't burn out too much.

#

my campaign is paced like yuigoh; one episode is the preamble, the first half of the duel, then an ad break (we stop for a week), then next episode is the rest of the fight and the episode winding down.

dark tusk
#

This makes sense, I've been trying to firmly pivot between full RP and full Combat sessions because I was worried my players wouldnt feel motivated to finish a half done fight two weeks later, (especially if they are on the backfoot lol)

dark tusk
rancid coral
#

my group's gotten much, much faster at running combats though, we ran an hour long prelude to c3, c3, and c4 in one about 4.5 hour session

dark tusk
cosmic blaze
#

My players just completed combat 3 in 2 turns ;-;
First turn: Atlas activates blinkspace tunneler and their core power, then proceeds to move 25+ hexes all the way to the objective zone using boost + jager kunst. Then they overcharge to Hide.
Second turn: a PC picks up the payload, goes through the blinkspace tunnel into the objective zone. Sitrep is over

dark tusk
#

Lmaooooo what LL is your group at that whips

cosmic blaze
#

LL2
I gave my players access to licensed equipment if they completed secondary objectives during a tournament arc. They completed every signle one, so now they have access to a bunch of stuff they normally shouldn't

#

The worst part was that they were like "hey we know you worked really hard to prep this sitrep, do you want us to just play this out and not put the payload in?"

#

So now I'm adding an Ultra Assault to C4 just to put the fear of god back into them

dark tusk
#

A proper divine mandate

graceful turtle
cosmic blaze
rancid coral
novel musk
#

holy shit
my players started combat 4 with two out of three players on low HP, 1 structure
i let them summon all three of their allies (technically four since they were friends with the twins)
all of their friends lost their mechs
and they still managed to bring everyone home safely
by far the most insane lancer combat i've ever seen

graceful turtle
rancid coral
#

a player of mine has been fairly serious about following up on her suspicions of praya's links to the attack (bugging her mech before the hound's teeth attack, breaking into her room during the college shutdown).

I'm putting as much bureaucratic disbelief and inaccessibility as I think is realistic in her way, but I am definitely stumped as to what direction I'd take the game in if she reliably gets material evidence of the plot before The Shadow Looms Long

#

several points in the book note that the smokescreens they use are kinda inept (the false flagging of the c4 mechs, the fabricated evidence brought against the players) and i've definitely been running with that in mind

silver vault
#

Perhaps if she nails Praya, Argo accelerates the timetable or vice versa

#

maybe whoever doesn't get implicated changes the plan to more suit their tastes, altering the final missions

rancid coral
#

could work! her operating theory right now is that praya is in league with harrison armory to frame the ungratefuls, which, lol

rancid coral
silver vault
#

Maybe if they get praya arrested instead of false accusations that forces them out of the college, it's a summons by the Xenoglossary monk, make them an offer too juicy to refuse

#

a pull instead of a push

#

and then Enter Sandmen happens anyway

dark tusk
#

If the PCs have another personal reason to be off campus make it a 2 in 1 kind of deal. You're going out for a little down time and before you leave you receive an urgent, cryptic note and they go cause they were in the area anyway and it seems urgent.

clear nymph
#

Players finished combat 1. I feel I misplayed Argo a little since he went ahead after seeing someone vulnerable. Ended with Praya as the last one standing, holding her own against the entire team. Knocked some structure off of people and crushed a couple of their weapons in Titan's fists before she finally went down to our Agi focused flying Sagarmatha's tactical knife lunge.

#

I had Argo seething as he got ganged up on after a lucky structure hit made him impaired and slowed and then get surrounded. Praya was more at peace on the surface magnanimously apologizing and conceding the point of honor as properly settled. One of the players later caught her choke slamming the other assassin pilot for reporting the incident to her Father and thus him interfering in her fight.

#

One of the players bonded with Lord Hesketh about being a flash clone.

rancid coral
marsh tinsel
#

I feel like this is something that a clock would be really handy at portraying. Name it like "Stonelord's influence" to demonstrate the clout spent to deflect from Praya + Argo. At half way maybe they change tactics or become even more aggressive to silence to PCs quickly, or even offer them some sort of deal, but if they can fill the clock before a certain point, maybe they get to skip getting arrested or gain some kind of bonus/reserve for the last couple combats

pearl inlet
#

That's an awesome idea

rancid coral
marsh tinsel
#

I think which member of faculty they choose would be important in how the clock moves too, like the head of tactics being from house of stone probably wouldn’t be a good choice 🤭

#

Maybe she needs it to be like totally full before she moves, though maybe Lord Castor would be more aligned, and the stablemaster literally won’t care unless their relationship clock is high enough

rancid coral
#

yeah there's no way this party member in particular is gonna approach iphianassa. She personally likes imani and she is house smoke, so i could see her going either way between those two.

rancid coral
#

my interpretation of iphianassa is that she resents praya and argo for being nepo babies, but she's not stupid enough to commit political and probably literal suicide by implicating house stone like that

final frigate
# rancid coral my interpretation of iphianassa is that she resents praya and argo for being nep...

Same.
I have it so that she respects Prayas father, but views the girl as a poor replacement owing to her lack of tact and strategical knowledge; if praya was anyone elses daughter, she'd be disgraced and be doomed to a life of obscurity, sent to the front lines to die or prove herself, or exiled to some foreign post to serve the house without ever really threatening its reputation and resources.

#

Meanwhile, argo?
She doesn't like him because of that look in his eye.

#

Right now in my game, I'm still letting the players get a feel for everyone else in the college.

One of the PCs is somehow making friends with virtually everyone, and is having a real 'mean girls' arc right now.
Meanwhile another PC is the mean girl, and is only making enemies of everyone except Argo and the other PCs XDDD

rancid coral
#

i made up a fake grand strategy game called Annorum Eterane that Praya is secretly addicted to

final frigate
#

Thats amazing 👏

dark tusk
quartz sentinel
#

I like to imagine that Praya plays the original game, which is this huge play-by-post affair with physical game pieces played over a period of years and requires a member of household staff to coordinate with counterparts in other houses, while Argo plays the streamlined omninet version which has the most toxic playerbase imaginable, and he has killed at least one opponent in real life after getting caught out by an extremely clever play

final frigate
#

Argo being a kriegspiel sweat is so good

quartz sentinel
#

"Try betraying me now, PashasBlade96"

#

Meanwhile, Aloysius, losing a perfectly good body double: videogames

dark tusk
# quartz sentinel I like to imagine that Praya plays the original game, which is this huge play-by...

A letter arrives from a handmaiden- the vellum is faintly perfumed of tobacco and rosewood

"Dearest Praya,

May this letter find you as quickly as my Operator Squadron- now repositioned to Grid Square A5'0. If my estimates are correct I should be pointing them at your logistical center. Please unveil the fog of war with my sight lines extending 1500m in your next reply. If you adjust pieces insincerely to unsanctioned advantage again I will have to provide a notarized statement to our mutually nominated judge who will visit to inspect your game board, and the records for the past 30 moves you studiously keep, within the fortnight.

Cheers,
-- Argo Laurent, Last Son of Tilimsan"

graceful turtle
rancid coral
#

in my game Rawan runs a Republican reading group and i like posting little excerpts from the texts she gives the players:

THE BLOOM PERENNIAL: TRADITION AND TRANSFORMATION IN THE HAGIOGRAPHIC MOVEMENT
(excerpt)

Tagetes was not a Hagiograph, though he bore that title. Even the heirs and officers who fought under him were not Hagiographic in the contemporary sense of the word. The origins of the movement did not exist until almost a millennium later - until the First Union-Karrakin War.

None of this has stopped the contemporary movement from building a rich, heavily mythologised alternate history around Tyrannus and his children. In their telling, Tyannus was a worthy heir and true successor of the Annorum Passacaglia who was deceived into committing Dynasticlade by the wicked and duplicitous Calendula. These alternate histories often feature an apocryphal third child of Tyrannus, the lost daughter Tithonia, who supposedly acted as a foil to Calendula and saved the Concern from falling into total anarchy. Observant readers will note that most such theories were only created well after the rise of the Republican houses, and the metaphor here should not be difficult to connect...
pearl inlet
final frigate
#

I need some help regarding rawan

#

Im not entirely sure how to get the players to interact with her.

#

Due to how ive structured the campaign, the players more or less get to decide how they spend their downtime in a relatively carefree manner, following a 3 step process before the next combat encounter

1: college campus exploration (go to a part of the college where a preset cluster of NPCs are and interact with them, or just use the facility in that area).
2: lesson time (go to 1 of 4 potential classes with 3 other NPCs and other PCs to engage in a brief activity and learn something about the KTC, war, politics, art, etc).
3: personal time (they invite other npcs to do things with them, or visa versa, and get more bespoke scenes furthering relationships with characters they like, or plot lines regarding their sponsors.)

#

I want rawan more involved, and im wondering how best to achieve it within my framework.

My gut instinct is to have her approach them after combat encounter 2 which they are currently in, or have her be a "free roamer" who appears in scenes, rather than waits for the PCs come to her.

#

That and...I need to figure out what kinda personality she has.

#

I want her to be political, very much a needler of baronic politics, but i dont want that to be her entire personality, lest she comes off as annoying.

quartz sentinel
#

Depends how task-focused you want to make her. Has she identified any of the PCs as someone she could potentially talk round or ally with? She could approach them with an invite to a social activity to build trust ("hey you seem solid and I owe you a drink after helping me out, wanna go to an underground rave/free climb the statue of Tagetes/go get some street food and head to a Karrioke bar?")

final frigate
#

Damn thats a good angle.

#

Especially the social activities they'd normally never consider, nor engage in without being offered. Acts as a good way to see the world from a new perspective.

#

I can work with this, thanks kat!

#

I think ill have her start by testing the waters, seeing what each of them is like, then consider which of them has budding ungrateful sympathies that could bloom.

#

...definitely doing the rave tho

pearl inlet
final frigate
# pearl inlet I'm curious about your setup, is this just for the timeskip space (beat 4)

Nah, it's for the entire campaign until mission 3 (I added an additional mission to it and shifted some sitreps around.)

Mission 1: the duel, the first training skirmish, two extra training skirmishes (one themed on sanjak, the other ras shimera)
Mission 2: a pankrati tourney (3 fights), the exam and "the scary fight"
mission 3: same as mission 2 for the original module with some very minor changes

The idea is to give the players a lot of freedom as to how they spend their free time, lesson time and social obligation time. Making room for a lot of character interaction, politicking, etc. Since I feel that if you're going to officer school on the capital planet of an empire, you're going there to make political connections as much as you are to socialize and actually learn how to be an officer.

#

I'm using my set up right the way up until the start of mission 3, after the first fight of that mission, this structure goes out the window.

pearl inlet
final frigate
#

I'm still thinking of big social events to run alongside this as well, the main ones being:

The ball mentioned in the book where people go mech dancing.
A 'teacher-parent meeting ball' except its between sponsors and staff with the PC in attendance.
A formal introduction to the baronic courts in the capital where they get to meet some of the house barons
The auger reading with Khan

I'm not sure what else I wanna include, probably two curveball events.

final frigate
#

The module lends itself well to expansion in various ways, hell, I know some people made fake social media platforms for the PCs to interact with the NPCs on while in character.

#

Which is fucking wild and impressive.

rancid coral
pearl inlet
final frigate
#

Hmmmm...could work, certainly!

dark tusk
# final frigate Im not entirely sure how to get the players to interact with her.

I've structuted my game similarly but probably with less time on the free form downtime rp, I made rawan more willing to hang out with the crew and invite them out since they had her back in the first mission vs Praya.

I've also been rping her as less contained as she would like to be- hiding your power level around a bunch of smug rich kids you kind of hate must feel hard. I hope by doing that players are drawn into her concerns and get them curious about what she's barely holding back.

final frigate
#

I'm having a similiar experience with a homebrew NPC I added to the campaign, except its...different in a fair few ways due to the nature of the NPC.

#

I think, with Rawan, as per Kat's idea, I wanna play her as more in tune with herself but good at keeping 'certain beliefs' hidden until she thinks the time is right to open up?

So being a bit rebellious, a bit punk, a bit underground scene, and pretty outspoken. The kinda person who'd know stuff about what's happening on the ground because of her connections and interests, among the lower classes and in the more fringe places.

#

I think I wanna avoid the student activism angle though; she knows exactly where she is, and how the KtB will react to such overt anti-ktb belief action.

#

And she has already killed people on warfronts for her beliefs.

#

plus she's a spy.

#

If anything, she'd wanna appear as none-suspect as possible to potentially get herself into better positions of info gathering and political power.

#

but being a little rebellious is fine, as a treat.

#

besides, Kirionia exists.

#

That girl is a wild party animal and a cheeky one, and she's not in trouble (often)

#

so there's a window of tolerance.

rancid coral
dark tusk
pearl inlet
final frigate
#

I am so happy I decided to make Elsa unaware of 'low class' sexual innuendos.

#

Everyone but her is either wincing or holding in a laugh around some of the metaphors she uses, and its usually because of the twins.

#

also, party agreed to go to a rave with rawan, lets goooo!

#

they're also going to have an all girls night with elsa another day to!

#

And the only male PC has no idea what to do to occupy his time 😅

#

dude needs guy friends.

silver vault
#

beers with Hedron? he seems like the kind of guy to crack open a cold one and Vibe

dark tusk
final frigate
#

Honestly kirionia might be the best option because the two are on the same wavelength.

Hedron is kinda too stoic and no nonsense for Azerial and their antics. They could get along but its more a friendship of proximity than like mindedness.

Tomas could work, the moon to azerials sun.

Might toss him at the twins to.

Its tough though, because azerial is a guy who believes on trad knighthood, and that nobles should be like they are in pulp fantasy novels and stuff.

marsh tinsel
#

Sounds like they'd have a lot to talk about with Elsa

final frigate
#

There was a window for that, but uh...he made a right ass of himself in front of her at one point and while she thinks hes handsome, knows that the other PC, eleni has called dibs.

#

I should probably give him another opportunity, but we'll see.

#

Its like....he has one thing in common with a lot of npcs, but struggles to capitalise on it, and has traits that make him less desirable companionship than others.

mild spindle
#

quick foundry landing page art, first sesh Saturday!

landing.png
marsh tinsel
final frigate
#

She and tomas are both in a book club...

#

This could work.

pearl inlet
dark tusk
#

I'm waiting to do my next session in a couple weeks because there is some real Oscar Wilde shit happening with Tomas.

He has a crush on our Sagarmatha pilot because she's heroic and bold on the battlefield and has this beautiful red hair, and during a flower arrangement class reached out to our Chomolungma pilot in private in the garden while picking flowers, asking for info about the Sag pilot and reached for a nearby poinsetta to have passed along by way of the lungma pilot as a token of his affection for her.

The sag pilot is told by the other PC "Hey, you have a secret admirer, they wanted me to give you this" and the recipient PC thinks "Ohhhhh, you're nervous and can't say you like me, but you like like me, isn't that cute" and says "A secret admirer? Tell them I humbly accept their offer" and she is going to be wearing the flower in a little shoulder holster mini-bouquet thing like they did in Victorian England for all to see.

pearl inlet
#

When sag Chomo pilot ride off into the sunset together

graceful turtle
#

Ah yes. Baronieshead Revisitied

novel musk
#

player is asking if their PC can find any mercenary work (legal or illegal) around Throne Karrakis in between missions
not sure how to handle this, i was under the impression that the core Karrakin worlds had high enough standards of living and/or strict enough governance that large organized crime groups wouldn't really be a thing
i guess it would be really funny if he got himself involved with a local Ungrateful cell actually

marsh tinsel
#

Just because it doesn't exist doesn't mean people aren't afraid of it!

#

But I would think the people who would hire mercs (nobles) generally have their own house companies already? Or that they would enlist a free company?

novel musk
#

i guess my question is what on earth would you need to hire mercs for on Karrakis

#

security i guess?

marsh tinsel
#

Maybe they need to get an in first, then get the work/mission

marsh tinsel
novel musk
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ah... right
i guess my imagination is failing me rn LOL

soft elbow
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Not exactly sure what the PC would be doing tho

pearl inlet
pearl inlet
clear nymph
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Delivery of large shipping containers to the middle of the mountains

final frigate
pearl inlet
marsh terrace
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Hi, I would like apologize in advance because I don't want to criticize anything from SotW which is my favourite first-party module but I have a stupid question.

Why it's called Shadow of the Wolf ?

Spoiler ||I mean the Wolf refers to Aro-Laurent, right ? So why he's not the final boss of the module ?||

final frigate
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Good question.

quartz sentinel
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the wolf refers to many different things

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The titular wolf is not really one thing but several. Most directly it refers to the Passion, which is reflected a number of times across the module literally and metaphorically. It is the coming war that Kahin prophesies and references using that metaphor in Beat 7. It is also the drive of the module's antagonists to destroy in order to achieve their aims - to tear out the heart of Karrakis to institute their new empire. It is also Argo, both in reference to his title and reflected back as the Passion he is bonded to. As a point of curiosity the pirate that the blades once belonged to is also bonded to the Wolf, though that's not relevant to the module itself at this point in time (the knives are part easter egg and part a plot hook for future adventures). You are very much encouraged to develop this as far as you want to take it, there are a lot of overlapping metaphors here that are unclear by design.

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it's not a "this one thing is the wolf" thing, it's more of a recurrent motif across the whole module

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in a sense the final boss of the storyline isn't really Praya at all, it's the cycle of violence that the PCs are caught up in, it's Karrakin xenophobia and paranoia, it's the entire social mechanism that institutionalises, perpetuates, and legitimises war. The PCs can beat Praya and save the city and still lose if they aren't able to stop the hagiographic houses as they push for war on Sanjak or in the DLS

#

ultimately the PCs are fighting against complex social and political movements expressed through the acts of violent authoritarian extremism we see in the module. The metaphor personifies those forces in the archetypal Karrakin figure of the Wolf: a figure whose first solution to a problem is violence, who sees itself as under attack, who becomes embittered by pain and unable to acknowledge its own weakness, who believes the world to be ugly and cruel and believes that the only way to achieve its goals is to exhibit that same nihilistic and fearful cruelty

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Kahin's prophecy alludes to this:

“I see a great wheel, turning across the sky. Its name is Dis, and it is the cycle of power, and of empires, and of violence – the snake that bites its own tail.”

“The wheel is a promise whispered to the ruthless and the wicked, those who seize cities and destroy lands and are a law to themselves. Woe to those in their path, for the wheel would crush all before it, and righteousness must struggle to prevail.”

“I see a shadow that looms long before an ever-setting sun, and the shadow prowls amongst the people, and its ravening teeth bring destruction upon the innocent and the guilty alike. The shadow is war, and it is death, and it would take us all into the night if we allow it.”

rancid coral
quartz sentinel
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that's a story for another time 🙂

clear nymph
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Praya in the last combat: "I have been expecting you. It would have been a disappointment if you did not come to battle with my ideals. It is only through this conflict that we can assure the future greatness of Karrakis! On my name as Praya Cannamos, the Great Wheel of Dis must turn!"

final frigate
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The only thing the my players know about that thing is the pirate he took it from liked to say "no point thinking about ifs, buts or coconuts."

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Which...sort of undercuts its importance.

rancid coral
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anyway, Argo is definitely more of a Broker than a Wolf in my game, considering all the efforts he's taking to play the PCs off against each other

rancid coral
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btw, i have the bond reading coming up, 2 things please:

  • does anyone have the artwork of the bond cards? I could have sworn I saw them posted on here before, but I can't hunt them down now
  • i have a few people who are using the IGF bonds, anyone else run into that? I'm not sure if i should play the Influencer 'straight' in the reading or not
marsh terrace
pearl inlet
foggy wing
rancid coral
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yeah i was thinking of the same trick lol. doing the 'full reading' (past-present-future) i have 1 influencer and 2 technicians so i need to figure something out for that. Thank you!

foggy wing
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yw!

rancid coral
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here's some very dirty cutouts i've made for influencer and technician should anyone need those btw

influencer.png technician.png
pearl inlet
rancid coral
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same deal, he's gonna chastise Soto for messing up his deck and then go 'but the cards seem to speak true nonetheless' or some shit