#Shadow of the Wolf GM/Spoiler Thread

1 messages · Page 5 of 1

cosmic blaze
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After another power at a cost 2dd6 + 10 damage to reroll damage rolls

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the truck destroyed Praya and then blew up in a blaze of glory

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graceful turtle
faint panther
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Ive had them be snobbing tea makers.... and yet the players love them

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like

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back at the bombs, one team had enough positive relationship to have them give them the bombs

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the other found out, made it a hostage situation, and still became friends after

dark tusk
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My strat was to play up initially the haughtiness and passive aggression- paired with Kir she sees herself as a queen bee of sorts who loves matchmaking and a tasteful amount of gossip. I've been having her repress her inner romantic a lot because of her need to be presentable. Kind of like Glenda the good witch from Wicked, like just the song "Popular". She's there to improve and fix people because she is the one who knows best and stands by her own competence. I let her lose some composure during the training fight vs the PCs as her teammates were whittled down but not much.

The big thing I did was make her project onto our Sagarmatha pilot who duelled Kiriona on the north CZ all of the heroism and sapphic brigadier attitude but without the sluttiness and boorishness. Someone who is both brave, strong, and receptive to the norms of society.

I had her also tell this player to pull aside her friends and try to fix them as they have made a series of faux pas, she'd be direct to them but they aren't her friends so it's not her place nor her reputation impinged by their behavior.

After the pankrati tournament she respects 2 of them, but our disguised house of sand player is a mess and needs a talking to so I'll keep leveraging that.

She's focused on image a lot even if she is competent and capable.

clear nymph
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One of my pilots has bonded with Elsa after discovering a mutual love of trashy historical romance fiction novels. Elsa threatened to socially eviscerate the pilot if one word leaks

graceful turtle
# clear nymph One of my pilots has bonded with Elsa after discovering a mutual love of trashy ...

~ A Dance on Deimos ~
When the mysterious, nefarious RA took the fabled moon of Mars as its own vessel, the Union scientist Generica Whitegirl lost her beloved husband, Stocky McBillionaire. Years later, the moon returns in the orbit of Generica's new home planet in Karrakin space, but by this time, Generica has a new husband. Read to find out what happens in this steamy novel written by hit author Alias Penname

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(I had to cook something up for that concept, it was too good to ignore)

full turret
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I was thinking about how to have my players gain the Champion's Favor from Kiriona (who they are besties with atp) and I've come up with a tradition where the Favor is granted to the current Brightstar Rising upon graduation from the Academy; the Brightstars, being a fiery bunch, have as such created a tradition where they steal the Favor from the museum it's normally held in at some point prior to their graduation like some kind of fraternity ritual, so Kiriona's enlisting the party in her museum-heisting shenanigans

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Lord Castor-Eyros thinks it's the funniest thing and will tacitly help them out while Eligos is on a mission to shut them down at any and all costs

final frigate
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Making a literal lesson worksheet for my students (PCs) 😌

dark tusk
willow frigate
final frigate
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Naaaah, it's way more simple

rustic peak
willow frigate
rustic peak
rancid shore
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I'll send them once I'm at my PC

final frigate
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I need help!

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I've got two balls coming up, the 'meet the sponsor' ball, which'll be happening as the narrative climax of year 1 at the college, and a second one, which is the Cadenze de l’ Pavilios. I also have a pankrati tourney, which will dominate much of year 2, leading into the final exam.

One of my PCs, a clone who thinks they are the original and was never led to believe otherwise by the noble house she is a part of, is going to be introduced to her bitchier, sassier, more sophisticated, yas queeeen original at some point during all this.

The problem is I'm not sure exactly where.

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Too soon, and it means the PCs time to grow and be themselves gets cut short before having the identity be built, so shattering it feels weak.

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Too late, and then the original and her impact is lessened because of time constraints.

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I'm thinking of introducing her during the Cadenze de l’ Pavilios, which is set to take place about half way through the pankrati tourney, so there's 2 fights before the final exam takes place?

final frigate
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ONE OF THE PCS CHALLENGED PRAYA TO A BOXING MATCH!

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Lets gooooo

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Theyre fighting over Argo to, because the PC flirted with him at a bar XD

mild spindle
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A truly awful poster one of my players @/Termitedust made

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Also, just asking early. Anyone got any advice on running the doctored evidence in beat 9?

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what kinda things ppl have done with it etc

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All my pcs are kinda prissy nobles without any super incriminating ties to throw in for a nugget of truth

rancid coral
dark tusk
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So they substantiate it and lend credence to the lies for at least long enough for the bomb to go off and seal it in the public consciousness.

mild spindle
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I'm thinking of having it so them buddy up further with Rawan, then have Rawan get exposed as an Ungrateful and them all tied in as "co-conspirators"

dark tusk
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Oh yeah if they have been at all nice to Rawan it's very easy to pull that

mild spindle
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one of my players is currently being investigated by security crackdowns and is working thru it with her

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and they're one of the only other ppl to be calling bullshit and are actively trying to investigate with the party

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so it'd work

dark tusk
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Sounds like a solid throughline as it stands ! Maybe push Rawan to lean on them for a low risk high visibility favor or intervention of some kind to make the group aligned with her more publically.

graceful turtle
rancid coral
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shadow of the wolf denouement is DONE. the players refused to back up argo's assertion that harrison armory was involved in the plot (Except for one of them), and one player is planning on starting an ungrateful-sympathetic free company, which is a perfect dovetail to the sanjak game

rancid coral
# mild spindle Also, just asking early. Anyone got any advice on running the doctored evidence ...

i had:

  • footage from the BUC troopers at the hound's teeth that was doctored to make it look like the attacking mechs were very deliberately missing their shots around the players
  • A photo of a PC with an ungrateful associate of Rawan's who was arrested earlier in the game
  • There was a separate attack on the cadenze that involved a doctored subaltern that was set to run out in the middle of the festivities and explode. One of the workers from the cutout company that imported them gave an interview accusing one of the players' houses of setting up the deal.
  • The player who spent the whole game sucking up to House Cannamos and the Stonelord was very publicly censured and accused of distrustworthy behaviour - which was significant enough to be evidence in and of itself
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but a lot of this stuff was kinda made up on the fly based on the events of the game. i think iut works better as a way to twist the players' actual actions rather than makming too much stuff up whole cloth tbh

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anyway, closing thoughts on SOTW: It's interesting that it doesn't really do much to make the players feel like a cohesive 'unit' the way most other campaigns do. There was a bit of suspension of disbelief needed for PCs who clearly did not like each other but kept being assigned to the same combats/classes. but that's fairly minor

mild spindle
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importiant session doodles

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mild spindle
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really enjoying pissing my players off with the most fashistic downtime ever

mild spindle
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yeah this'll work

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gonna drop that on them

quartz sentinel
quartz sentinel
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it's extraordinarily hard to force players to make characters who are willing to be part of a group without literally sitting them down and saying "hey please make characters who are part of a group"

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at the end of the day it's the players' responsibility to actually be prosocial with their characters, the GM and writer can only do so much

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(at least, when the premise isn't literally "you're a military unit")

willow frigate
# mild spindle All my pcs are kinda prissy nobles without any super incriminating ties to throw...

I was lucky to have a player who was being really shady already but heres the stuff i used

  • doctored footage to make it look like the players attacked the twins after their prank before hounds teeth (it was a honor duel but one of my players decided to cut viv’s hand off), argo and the swndmen later killed them using info skin of the player’s faces

  • shady player attempted to hack prayas mech during the Cadenze de l’ Pavilios to make her tip over and praya and argo spun that as an assassination attempt by making her mech fall on other students

  • shady player knew he couldn’t send a message to his employer about the hounds teeth attack so he went to dive bars on the planet and spread rumors of the attack, argo followed him and house cannamos framed a random guy as a member of the ungreatfuls

  • footage from hounds teeth of a player shooting his howitzer into ispinassa (it was a funny moment where he only hit her over 3 other targets

Basically if your players did anything that could be slightly altered to make them look bad, argo and praya used that against them

mild spindle
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My players have been ANNOYINGLY well behaved

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My ass has tried but all their chars are too stupid/smart/prissy to do anything real easy to use

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The way I'm gonna spin it is that they're Rawans associates

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Gonna coax them to doing some sus stuff with rawan while investigating the attack over the next couple sessions

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Use all that

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Next year we have a big Dawnline Shore game I'm running and SoTW is filling space for and being kinda a prequal too so I'm really playing up just how much the karrakin war machine is spinning

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Esp bc in our timeline its already very close

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I'm thinking of not having the party be able to clear their names and take the houses to justice at the end bc I'm an evil bitch. Theres no chance you just gotta get out and flee to Union or Sanjak or somewhere that's gonna shelter you the concern is blazing on full speed

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Tbh. Probably a better ending seeing the whole state of things, leaving isnt a bad idea.

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Esp bc a lot of my parties stories have been like, coming of age and coming to terms with how kinda fucked up a lot of their privilege is I like the idea of that emotional climax just being leaving it all behind

rancid coral
dark tusk
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Funny enough there's been enough instances of bullying that they collectively say "fuck this" to with their fists that I think that spirit keeps them together.

quartz sentinel
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that's the idea

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I know enough about roleplayers to know that groups typically won't run the session zero fully as written, there has to be social pressure somewhere as a backup

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I am glad to see that most groups are thinking about sponsors though

cosmic blaze
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Ig the players could refuse to get together for Praya's duel, but that's them actively ignoring a prompt from the GM to follow a questline. The players should want their characters to be in a party and go on a quest together because they're playing in a game together. If it's not "in character", the player/s should develop their character to make it "in character"

final frigate
# quartz sentinel it's extraordinarily hard to force players to make characters who are willing to...

The way i achieved this with my group was the college more or less lumping all the "bad eggs" together. Pretty much every PC had some kind of reason to earn the label of "abnormal student", so they were bundled up, forced to fight alongside each other and the end result was they forged good bonds.

It also helps that them all being late to the college, as per the book, forces them to all be stuck together for an extended initial period. It really helped me give them roleplay prompts.

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Sponsor play has also been very fun.

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Haven't had much opportunity to really flex them, but their presence has been felt even when they arent there.

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A fact thats going to change two sessions from now during the "masked ball" where sponsors get to meet other sponsors and their sponsees

bold musk
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I'm planning to try and run SoTW for one of my groups next year (having discussed it with them in passing and now played through it once myself as a player) and I totally look forward to the sponsors aspect

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planning on having a very robust session zero/character creation day to iron out a lot of that in detail when I do; make extra sure there's some interesting stuff pulling on or weighing on each PC

glass prism
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I am running SOTW as a continuation of a previous campaign, so thankfully the party (now LL7) already has ties to keep them together (mostly). Notably, they are undercover students with extensively and meticulously faked IDs (a fun session 0) who are, as a side project, looking for a missing important person from the previous campaign who was last seen at the College. So instead of "Sponsors", it's "Are you keeping up appearances as a so-called Noble?" and "How many lies deep are you, and can you untangle yourself before others make connections?"

cosmic blaze
glass prism
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The tier up helps a lot.
It's a party of 4. They've only recently been building their mechs with party synergy in mind, so you could call them not super optimized.
Otherwise I've been running the 5-person opfors with an additional optional of my choice for all enemies.
So far it's been close in terms of feeling and score, but still victories for them.

dense pendant
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Three of my players got one RPV kill each during Combat 4, so I'm adding (via a few friendly NPCs) a HA trefoil-shaped kill mark to each of their mechs, in a relatively out-of-the-way location (e.g., the back of the shield for my Orchis player)

Now they've got "hidden HA badges" for when Beat 9 comes around...

ember raven
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So on a scale of 1 to 5 how hard/scary is the 1st fight in SotW. As long as my players keep the actual objective in mind and merc Aloysius quickly are they good? Or is this a pretty zesty one

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A little worried theyre gonna get shook by seeing 2 Vet Elites in fight one and go full panic mode lol

north knot
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it's fairly balanced, I'd call it a 3. Praya is mostly there to bully things on the point and set up Argo. so long as they're playing with each other and they recognize what the NPC gameplan is (and manage to get Flyte out of the picture) then it really shouldn't be too much of an issue for them imo. are you running the campaign at LL0 or higher?

ember raven
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LL0

north knot
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yeah don't worry at all. they've got a lot of leeway with repairs because of replaceable parts on GMS frames. what are your PCs running as far as builds?

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broad strokes I don't need full pastes

ember raven
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Tech attacker Chomo, wannabe Swallowtail Chomo, melee everest, shotgun vanguard Everest, and artillery sagarmatha

north knot
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they're gonna be completely fine

ember raven
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I figured just getting a vibe on how hard they gotta lock in

north knot
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plenty of scans going out. are they new to the game?

ember raven
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No we've played a bit but we've all recently realized the previous GM was unintentionally softballing us

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(Including the previous gm who's now one of my players)

north knot
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gotcha! yeah alright so with 2 chomolungmas you're basically gonna be playing with open information on enemy stats and such so as long as they're being cognizant of things like evasion vs edef and utilizing smart weapons against the hornets if they have them it's gonna be A-OK

ember raven
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Cool. In other words if they panic it's a skill issue at this point lol

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One of them (the wannabe swallowtail) already managed some clever spying and knows about the hornets' javelins so im confident they'll catch the vibe

north knot
weary mesa
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Is there a place that helps with the pronunciation of everything because holy shit these names for me stumbling

quartz sentinel
dark tusk
empty flame
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Yeah, I'd say that combat 1 is intimidating at first, but tends to soften up after a couple rounds

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Players just need to be able to learn on their feet a bit, but most of the times I've run it or seen it run, I've seen people stress out at first because of the turn imbalance, then realize they can take out Aloysius and the no-name NPCs fast, and that once he's pinned down Argo has a lot of trouble

quartz sentinel
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in testing the groups that had the most trouble with Combat 1 were the groups who went in with striker brain and tried to treat the encounter as a DPS-race. The groups who went in with a strategy for picking apart the opfor with control abilities had a much, much easier time

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also worth noting that the published version of Combat 1 is easier than the versions we tested with because I wanted to minimise the chances of people accidentally running into a wall due to dice luck, which also played a significant part in outcomes

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I would say it's a relatively easy combat, all things considered

final frigate
clear nymph
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I've made after action debriefs by the faculty standard whether the players win or lose for that reason

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They are supposed to be the best of the best to be here. But this is still a school. And that means learning from mistakes

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I also try to play the opfor students slightly sub optimal. Kiriona in my game is a bit of a thrill seeker, so in combat 2 she surprised the players by rushing out of position and blitzing. Grabbed one of them and rammed them all the way back to the player deployment zone.

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She was, therefore, the first of the opfor to get wrecked because she went way out of position. I had Elsa berating her over the comms the entire time

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I'm going to play the teachers a lot tighter to emphasize that it's an exam. Misplays on my part can be excused as them adjusting the difficulty of said exam because it's still against 1st term students

willow frigate
empty flame
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I'd say a good rule of thumb is that if someone in your group is playing a Chomolungma, they'll be fine.

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and if you have two chomolungma...

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quartz sentinel
# willow frigate how were the testing version different?

if you're interested in the specifics you can go check out the older public drafts in #new-content-resources, but broadly it was a mix of switching up NPC classes and numbers, and also optional selection (Praya had Retribution, for example)

mild spindle
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My players had more trouble with and choked combat 2, mainly thanks to the sniper and how none of them had any stats in speed and couldn't reach him so Hedros just kept chipping off structure

empty flame
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Okay so I've got an interesting situation coming down the line to ask about

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One of my players is thinking about using a fake connection with Praya to visit her at her house, and I cannot pass up the chance to run a scene with Praya's family

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And i have a pretty strong idea of Lord Cannamos, but what are we thinking for the rest of her family situation?

graceful turtle
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This might just be headcanon but to me she's always reeked of forgotten middle child syndrome. I can totally see her pulling all the shit she does in the module because she wants to be recognized/respected by her family

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Granted, take my thought with a grain of salt, cause I mostly just skimmed the module when I read it and I might have very well missed a bit talking about her home/family life in detail

empty flame
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One thought I did have was maybe a dead older sibling who had been on an ungrateful suppression operation at the time

solar bough
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this isnt a spoiler but it is like half about sotw
should i purchase the karrakin book before running a campaign starting with sotw?
would it enhance the two missions to own it?
and is it a good idea simply for after the two missions?

empty flame
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I do personally recommend it if you can afford it! Having a broader narrative context for the module is nice, the bond power rules really enhance the narrative-heavy campaign and all of the character options in it are very fitting. It's also just an excellent book in general.

solar bough
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LEGALLY

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the rules wiki has them

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unless that wiki is piracy for some reason which i assume they got the blessing

empty flame
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Oh yeah you can get the basics from the free KTB LCP, there's just more of an explanation of some stuff in the pdf. Main reason I like it is for the lore and art personally

solar bough
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fair

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im just saying that the bonds arent a selling point at this moment
the rules are on the wiki and the bonds themselves are available in the lcp

north knot
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it would do you well to have a pretty good understanding of the shape of Karrakis and the Baronies if you're running the game imho

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sotw does a good job as a crash course but there's a lot you can draw from in the field guide

quiet river
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There is a lot more material about the world in the field guide, giving a deeper picture of the shenanigans in SOTW. Personally I'm going to try to know it back to front since my players have gotten so invested in SOTW I think it will be worth my time to be able to offer that depth

quartz sentinel
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there's no official rules wiki

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if the rules are on a wiki, then someone has copied paid content from the books

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I'm not Tom and I can't give direct insight into why the license is the way it is, but your reaction here is a perfect illustration of why third party licenses like Lancer's say you can't use text, because copying text from the books and publishing it elsewhere means that people don't bother buying the books, and that's not sustainable for an indie RPG company.

cosmic blaze
# solar bough this isnt a spoiler but it is like half about sotw should i purchase the karraki...

  1. You don't need the field guide to run Sotw, most of the setting context important for Sotw is already in the module (and is honestly easier to digest than the field guide). The main use of the field guide would be for background flavour, which isn't anything you can't homebrew with enough time and effort. And for Bond powers, which are optional and nothing game-changing.

  2. I can honestly say the field guide lore did enhance my game, cause I had a lot of info to draw on for PC and NPC backgrounds and setting specifics (like Baronic political landscape) that I'd otherwise have to spend time writing myself from scratch, and it was nice for everyone to have a common point of reference. Bonds were hit or miss, some bond powers can break your game so much that you need to plan around them (Tear Throat has been dicussed here before, I've had issues with Clarion), others have been the highlight of sessions (Durendal, Spider and Plunder my beloveds), most were never used. So overall they've mostly been just okay. Stress hasn't come up much, simply because there aren't that many ways for the GM to threaten stress outside of combat.

  3. If you're planning to continue playing in the Baronies or in a setting that can use the faction rules then I'd say it's worth it. My group got so little use out of the bond system I can't recommend it for that alone.

solar bough
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(that is to say that you guys gave your blessing and allat)

final frigate
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Good news.

Tomas tongue kissed one of the PCs during ballroom dance practice.

Praya and one of the pcs will be fist fighting in public next week.

Argo has his eyes permanently turned blue because he drank some overly strong wormblood wine

dark tusk
# cosmic blaze 1. You don't *need* the field guide to run Sotw, most of the setting context imp...

On the subject funny enough I'm playing SotW with a good number of first time Lancer players and there havent been even a lot of big dice rolls for narrative play because it's all been emotional flirting, a couple instances of stealth or sussing out hidden agendas but otherwise as a result I didnt wanna make my players have to get the bond rules to intervene for the consequences emotionally of narrative beats or learn another sub-system when the core Lancer combat is already a lot to swallow and a ball of complexity separate from the narrative mechanics in a lot of ways.

If I was running this for a different group I'd want to try them but I didnt feel a need to here and the friction there wouldnt have been helpful so far.

cosmic blaze
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It's been similar for me, you'd think bonds have a lot of use for social scenes but most bonds aren't that good if there aren't risky rolls involved. If you're running sotw as written, the only scenes where that could come up are when you meet Praya for the first time and if the players fail to get to the warehouse b4 they're accused for the attack.

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You could also frame the encounters with the twins and Kiriona in beat 3 to deal some stress if the players try to engage with their games and fail

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But a lot of RP in sotw is low stakes

cosmic blaze
dark tusk
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If I run this module again (which I very well might I really love it) I would includr Bonds from the top

mild spindle
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It'll enhance the missions alot if you can bring in the wider politics and culture as a backdrop for sure

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also just a good read

mild spindle
# empty flame And i have a pretty strong idea of Lord Cannamos, but what are we thinking for t...

Oh boy this is my special little thing (horrible)

In our continuity, Praya had an elder (step)sister. As a kid ungratefuls stormed her estate and held her and her mother hostage to get the Stonelords attention, but he just didnt gaf and had a new wife/backup heir- oh I mean kid (Praya) so just didnt do anything. Her mother was killed, she survived her wounds (to the stonelords annoyance), and years later he threw her in an Enkidu and enlisted her to get rid of the kid. She defected but is officially dead, killed by Ungratefuls (this has been spun into a bit of a sob story)

Hyderad Cannamos is like the weird multi campaign meta villain we've ended up having. He acts overly friendly and extroverted, your overenthusiastic uncle trying to engage with you at a family reunion core, but is the most horribly evil mfer who just gets away with EVERYTHING. His good mood is in contrast to the mountains of suffering this man has caused and the more he'll create if he gets his way (which he almost definitely will) Flip a switch and he goes from incessantly jolly to some booming prophet of war and authoritarianism. I'm altering the ending of the module to make sure the Stonelord just isnt punished (and is also more involved in the plot) so I can just make them hate him more 💀 he's the worst he's so nasty he makes my skin crawl.

The stonelord doesn't rlly give a fuck about his family. Got a lot of wives through the years, got a lot of kids. Praya gets a little bit extra attention bc shes the current heir but the moment she stops being useful he'll drop her just like he dropped her elder sister. Really, she's doing all this to impress him.

Anyway 💀 idk if that helps but thats our horrible stonelord lore

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the stonelord

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north knot
# mild spindle It'll enhance the missions alot if you can bring in the wider politics and cultu...

yea the history sections of the KTB field guide alone can help quite a lot with making the narrative beats between combat much more robust once you have a fuller understanding of the culture in the baronic milieu and what the stakes of the narrative being presented would look like for the PCs who are assumedly representing the major houses interests at the college. also being able to pull on information about like. Tyran, Tagetes, Calendula, or any number of other major characters in baronic history will make your game feel more lived-in.

in my game my players have all introduced facts in one way or another about calendula being a lesbian that wasn't documented as such other than from secondhand historical accounts. it's fun

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one player brought it up, everyone thought it was funny and then it culminated in Calendula and her Secret Besties

mild spindle
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I love doing the classic fantasy namedrop

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also just bringing in the wider political climate as context is rlly nice. The way I've framed the whole plot is as a desperate grab to throw Karrakis enthusiasticly into a war so the Hagiographs can halt any and all social progress being made in Karrakis and drag back the republicans

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Polls low? Invade the Dawnline Shore!

north knot
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lmao

mild spindle
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bc Im running a DS game next year and modding SoTW into abit of a prequal its almost defenitly 100% gonna work I love manufacturing consent I love having the Stonelord get away with literally everything <3

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next year they can finally kill him

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but until that time comes no punishment will touch that man 🗿

rustic peak
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Praya being the latest of a line of his heirs is just the icing on the cake

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My mental image of Praya is basically Azula ATLA riiiight before she has her breakdown towards the end of the series

mild spindle
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yea exactly

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Have it so that the Stonelord is PISSED at her at the end of the module

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and screams at her then tosses her away like a wet rag

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he has a bunch of backups but thats his name shes desecrating

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Prayas elder sister was in in our previous game, and I have a whole spheal written to have her say during the final combat

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how she was secretly happy when the attack happened bc it meant she was finally important and her father would look her way instead of that selfish bitch who was hoarding all the familial attention to herself

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the stonelord, humanities worst father

rustic peak
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(this convo has inspired me to make a previous ignoble NPC be secretly related to one of my PCs 😈, unknown to either of them )

clear nymph
# mild spindle the stonelord, humanities worst father

I'm stealing a bunch of this characterization for myself. Stonelord is going to make an appearance next session at the pre-exam Passion Masquerade Ball. He's going to be all nice and friendly meeting the players and not so subtly putting down Praya for losing to them.

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Planning on having him dress as the Builder.

mild spindle
# clear nymph I'm stealing a bunch of this characterization for myself. Stonelord is going to ...

part of why I like the uncle characterization so much is that like, if you chatted to him he'd be a little annoying but you might get on in passing. A bit brazen but nothing offensive. But then, oh no, he's the stonelord. This guy is the "1000 ships to the Sanjak blockade" guy and he's just kind of normal. And then you piss him off and suddenly all that darkness comes through and he becomes this threatening figure.

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Like its a big facade

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I hate him I love playing him

quartz sentinel
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I want to drop in Praya's narrative prelude scene from SOTW Origins which should help underscore some of this evil:

||Scene: Praya has been summoned to meet with her father, Stonelord Hyderad-Cannamos, during one of his hunting trips in the Cannamos family estate on Khayradin. He is accompanied by his bodyguards and the corpse of a gigantic rock tiger on an automated sled. He is furious with Praya’s failure to pass the grueling survival and combat trials of the Khayradin Elites (notorious for their brutality, and receiving many applicants, the success rate is less than one percent) on the first attempt. A Stonelord, he says, must be at least as strong as the soldiers surrounding them, and emphasises this by demonstrating the rock tiger killed by his hand.||

||Challenge: Praya must attempt to justify her failure as she continues to be berated and belittled by her father. In truth, appeasing the Stonelord is impossible no matter how well Praya justifies herself. He orders his bodyguards to take her into custody and have her executed, insisting that the next mirror creche clone must perform better or meet the same fate. Success at least means that Praya’s most recent memories are copied so they can be transferred to the new clone. Failure means that the clone is overridden by an older subjectivity backup, and memory of her failure is erased.||

(not 100% finalised yet but the vibe is absolutely remaining)

mild spindle
#

😭 oh my god thats amazing

#

thats going in next session

quartz sentinel
#

the ||House Cannamos mirror creche|| is a monstrous thing abused to its worst possible extent by truly evil people, and will continue to cause problems

#

it's this sort of behaviour that got the process outlawed

mild spindle
#

we've just had the stonelord have a bunch of bio kids lined up in a row bc that image is so awful and so him

#

you know what. it can be both.

#

the stonelord is a ||mirror creche|| guy and also one of those birth rate guys

rustic peak
#

am I right that || a mirror creche is essentially copying someone's consciousness into a new clone body? ||

quartz sentinel
#

it's not firmly defined in canon, but my version of it is ||a universal medical treatment facility that includes perfected cloning techniques, and in the case of the noble houses a subjectivity override process. Clones are cycled through growth stages and they just perform subjectivity override on the most developed clone when needed.||

#

there is an ignoble version of it that is basically a ||fancy medical facility||, which they use both as a sop to the ignobles and also to misdirect Union inspectors

#

this is basically tech developed during the earky Annorate era, they've been around for at least 8000 years at this point

graceful turtle
# quartz sentinel I want to drop in Praya's narrative prelude scene from SOTW Origins which should...

||Wait so is the new clone even aware that she failed? Cause if so, that would be absolutely devastating; knowing that your life is on the line over some downright silly criteria and you're inherently disposable if you're not good enough right from the get-go has gotta be beyond brutal. Especially when you know that you did something wrong but you don't know what and nobody will tell you, so you're truly stuck there figuring it out on your own.||

#

||That feeling of knowing you're in a minefield but not knowing where any of the mines are.||

quartz sentinel
#

horrifying, right?

mild spindle
#

starting to think this "stonelord" guy might not be great....

graceful turtle
#

Minus the repeated cloning part obviously lol

graceful turtle
mild spindle
#

cloning is one of those things I just always forget about :p bc running a sci-fi setting is tough but I should utilize more

#

do you know how much fucking space politics is in my head when I sit down to run theres no room for all the details

graceful turtle
mild spindle
#

who let those bitches into the massif vaults... get that guy outta here

quiet river
graceful turtle
# graceful turtle Well yeah, in a lot of ways I feel like I've lived it, lmao

||It is kind of funny and fascinating though in a twisted sort of way, like, obviously I haven't been through that in the same extreme dystopian sci fi hellscape way as Praya, but I really really relate to that general feeling of everything being on the line over very minor criteria that's completely unknown to you other than just a general and all-encompassing terror of doing something wrong and getting destroyed for it, and like, I really don't think I turned out anything like Praya herself (at least I hope I didn't), so her being an asshole really is her own fault. Sure, other people may have contributed to it, but ultimately the only thing that cemented her status as a monster was her, and honestly that's such a cool writing thing. For as sympathetic as Praya can be, she still sucks and needs to go down.||

#

TLDR: SoTW writing is absolutely peak

mild spindle
#

anyway I need 2 use it more with Karrakins

#

honestly even like, the standard nobility and the PCs

#

are probably all tube babies. Nobody in noble karrakis is doing it the old fashioned way

burnt iris
ember raven
#

OK so what, loosely, does the rank structure of the BUC most resemble? I've got a BUC guy in my group and if Hedros is a Captain (probably only bc he's the BUC Golden Boy), I wanna figure out where to place this player

#

Like 100% the College=West Point, so this is essentially the officer school they need to complete if they wanna go higher, but I wanna figure out where they are now

#

Like, should they both be Captains, or is Hedros sort of an unusual case, where he's coming in a little ahead bc he's the literal poster boy

final frigate
rancid coral
#

i got my own plans with clones for the followup game, ||the stonelord is gonna die and there's gonna be a succession crisis between a biological child and Hyderad's eldest clone||

final frigate
#

still trying to find good art for him, and honestly I kinda like this piece for hyderad

kiros.jpg
dark tusk
dark tusk
# mild spindle cloning is one of those things I just always forget about :p bc running a sci-fi...

One of my players has been disguised as a student they killed and is likely running out of leeway and will be killed by his father for being a spy, and I talked it over with her is that the plan is to have her revived during the down time as the original student and play from his perspective and she described the feeling he'll have as "What if a demon possessed your body for 3 months and ruined your life"

ember raven
final frigate
#

I'm not 100% set on how I want him to look tbh.

ember raven
#

Though i might yoink that for ||when I reveal Aloysius as a secret Neo Passacaglian||

final frigate
#

I want him to look fucking evil, just...not sure how best to do it.

rancid coral
#

this is the one i used

hyderad.png
final frigate
#

Ooooh, shit, that's a really good pull.

#

endless space 2 emperor.

clear nymph
#

Isn't he also supposed to be a genetically engineered "superior" human as well? Definitely fits

empty flame
#

Oh isn't there official art of the stone lord kinda?

#

Like his face is obscured, but I was under the impression that the armored house of stone guy in the ktb book was him

#

This guy

Screenshot_20251217-095022.Moto_App_Launcher.png
#

I just pictured him as being enough of a weirdo to insist on always wearing a full hard suit and carrying 3 guns

graceful turtle
#

"I OWN A HARDSUIT FOR HOME DEFENSE BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT PASSACAGLIA INTENDED!!!"

dark tusk
empty flame
empty flame
empty flame
#

Any thoughts on what the rest of House Cannamos is like?

rustic peak
#

Majorly fucked up is a given. I have it that any of Praya's younger siblings are absolutely terrified of both Hyder-bad-dad and Praya herself

#

Everyone competing for the Stonelord's praise

dark tusk
#

Honestly I was thinking about Praya's hobbies and hunting felt very in her wheelhouse as a butch activity if you like murder or "testing your strength" without necessary athleticism

#

I was going to run her as an eldest daughter type with all the weight on her shoulders and the pressure from scheming siblings beneath her

final frigate
#

The reason being is that it's what'd be expected, and it'd only serve to reinforce aspects of her personality that are already well established

#

hell, having her go hunting anyway but express some boredom with it could work, she used to, or only kinda enjoys it.

#

I've had Praya get into hobbies that were traditionally seen as means for nobility to 'project power', but also are things she enjoys. Gardening for example, or horse breaking, or games of strategy (someone in this very thread posted the idea she likes grand strategy and I ran with it), etc.

#

Anything that fits the template of "not expected, in character, but provides an opportunity to showcase a different aspect of it.

graceful turtle
# final frigate I've had Praya get into hobbies that were traditionally seen as means for nobili...

As someone who does a lot of gardening, I've found there's a type of gardener you can encounter that's like, weirdly vicious for lack of a better term? Like, the kind to just absolutely nuke their lawns with pesticides and herbicides so they can get that perfect, cookie-cutter golf course look. I feel like you could maybe do something like that to get across that brutal, uncompromising aspect of her personality, especially when gardening is a hobby that is done best with compromises and gentleness. I'm kind of envisioning her keeping a rose garden or something that's too perfect almost, like to the point where the shrubs are struggling a bit and she just keeps getting angrier because she can't fix it with fertilizers or soil pH adjustments or mulching, when in reality she's blind to the fact that sometimes to fix something you just have to let it be

quiet river
#

ooh that is an excellent fit for her, I feel

graceful turtle
#

Like an early sign that she's stubborn and goal-focused to the point of destructiveness, especially since gardening is a hobby that can't really be ruled by human will. It can certainly be shaped by human will, but ultimately there's an element of loss of agency that a gardener has to accept, and I can easily see Praya stubbornly trying to deny that and then just making her garden look worse. Like all those plants that we consider to be weeds and stuff are usually native plants that are more healthy for the soil than whatever exotic, invasive species you've got planted there

dark tusk
dark tusk
graceful turtle
#

I'm happy to help! There's a lot of different ways to do gardening, and I've found you can tell a lot about a person by how they actually go about doing it, which is an aspect about the hobby that I feel like a lot of non-hobbyists don't understand. Everyone kinda just pictures a chill hippie type with a vegetable garden and not much else tbh

#

Ironically you can even get some people who are almost sadistic about it? I think that angle might be interesting to play into with Praya. Like, for example, one thing I run into a lot is the problem of wildlife eating and/or infesting plants, and usually there's easy ways to go about fixing that but you get some folks who'll do stuff like spray caterpillars with insecticide instead of just moving them elsewhere or put up barbed wire to screw over deer instead of just putting up netting

dark tusk
#

Honestly I'm thinking about beats for Act 2 because given my players they'll want a lot of time to mill around and feel out the emotional consequences of the shadow of war and having all this terror and fear that Praya is instigating and still likely dealing with her through the gardening syllabus and torching the shit out of her plot sounds good.

Hoping Castor survives Combat 4 so one of my players can keep doing transgenic flowers with him to give some grip to the whole affair

#

Okay I'm not sure if I asked this before- I am setting up some stakes to winning the dance competition at the Cadenza. Honor, reputation, your place in the school's history books- shit like that.
I have some NPCs set up their dance sequences but I don't know how to run the dance as I dont know yet if my players care about winning yet. (Next sesh after the holidays I'm giving them the breakdown so they can announce their intent).
How would you do the dance contest independent of "highest # wins" on a die roll

#

Maybe make it like a montage skill challenge thing but it just stretches out to the same kind of thing, idk

velvet cedar
final frigate
#

My groups major reintroduction to castor recently was him more or less using the ignoble student as an example of how not to look, act, speak or move during a ball event.

#

It was probably the most brutal I've ever attacked a PC without causing HP loss 😅

mild spindle
#

Ive just been using that first portrait tbh bc I havent had the time to do my own lol

#

for sure will b4 the end of the game

final frigate
#

Ooooooh

#

Thank you big muchly

mild spindle
#

new stonelord content

stonelord_2.png
mild spindle
final frigate
willow frigate
#

yeah this guy has strong Harrison / Stonelord vibes

1200.png
graceful turtle
#

This is just making me think of that one meme about how opposing factions should just be making out sloppy style

#

"No, Karrakins and Purview residents shouldn't be enemies, in fact they should be kissing, sloppy style, piloting mechs together, etc."

#

It's what Big Sal would want for all of us

#

I want my Karrakin prince x HA junior officer-in-training yaoi drama goddamnit

#

The Summer Harrison Died

willow frigate
graceful turtle
#

This could unironically make a fascinating romantic drama. I love the idea of two people who grown up surrounded by propaganda meant to demonize the other actually seeing each other for the first time in-person and falling in love instead of hating each other and neither of them know how to deal with it

#

Alternatively, there's the comedy angle, which could be equally great. Like on the eve of the Dawnline Shore offensive, both head commanders disappear and at the same time there's a suspiciously unmarked shuttle just blasting away from the system at nearlight with a giant "just married" banner trailing behind, and it's never explained where they got it

#

Call them Brokemech Mountain and Planetside Story

full turret
#

Thinking about jumping straight to LL2 from the current LL0 after the Harlequin’s Knife, does this break the game? Kind of a “you passed the finals AND didn’t die to these probable terrorists, here are some frames you can pilot now” vibe

#

This is my first time running Lancer so I’m not as familiar with balance and such

willow frigate
#

decided to make another cutscene for the final battle of mission 2

(they're most likely gonna do ballroom)

cosmic blaze
# full turret Thinking about jumping straight to LL2 from the current LL0 after the Harlequin’...

Short answer, no

Long answer, attrition now becomes harder because they no longer have replacable parts, every structure damage now costs them 2 repairs. Some frames don't care, others can only afford one or two structure losses before running out of repairs. It's very possible for your players to run out of repairs after the first couple combats if they're too reckless. However with their new toys they'll have more options to get through the combats unscathed, so it balances out (assuming they know how to use them).

If they run out of repairs you can always offer them extra repairs with Power at a Cost

final frigate
#

letting my players decide what new weapon tomas gets.
letting them pick between the slug pistol, devils cough shotgun, the snipers rifle, and the berserkers nail gun

#

boy needs some way to defend himself

#

THEY PUT THE SNIPER RIFLE ON THE SCOUT!

#

No moving target yet, mind you, but, if they keep training with him, that optional is getting added.

manic timber
#

Hey, about to run this and I'm looking at the first combat map and can't quite understand some of the height signs. More specifically the white and blue walls with a 3 on them on the central platform. Looking at all the other height stuff, at first I thought they were just size 1 taller than the height 2 terrain, it just felt strange that these say 3 when the smaller blue containers say 1 on them, even on the height 2 platforms. I want to know if those walls are size 3 tall or just size 1 height.

#

This is mostly just important for Praya's mech as it would give her an actual piece of cover on the top platform.

honest holly
#

Given that the height 2 terrain level has terrain labeled sizes 3, 2, and 1, and they're all represented as boxes rather than say, flush with the ground or as pit, yeah, they're additive.

willow frigate
#

yeah its a size 3 cover on a bit of terrain with height 2. praya can use those as heavy cover

manic timber
quartz sentinel
#

the distinction is potentially important in very niche circumstances because those pieces of cover can be targeted and destroyed, whereas the ground can't

#

I don't think I've ever seen it come up in SOTW testing or play but in theory it could

#

(I suppose it's possible you might want to handle it like Lancer Tactics does, which I could see being cool but a pain to keep track of)

graceful turtle
#

he was playing Minecraft while the rest of us were playing Lancer

clear nymph
graceful turtle
# clear nymph

funnily enough he did all of those things and had all of those feats except Leader, lmao. Instead of Leader he took Technophile

willow frigate
#

i have a player whos playing a bligh from enhanced combat with drone commander 3

he gives everyone including his swabbers 4 overshield every turn as a quick action

cloud obsidian
#

My group has been playing wrong for a while...

quartz sentinel
#

there's almost no reason you'd ever need to

#

empty spaces are valid targets, as is terrain

#

it's probably fine if you want to model the ground as a series of destructible objects, so long as you don't mind the major administrative burden of tracking damage dealt to any ground space and you ignore the weird edge cases and unintended results it'll throw up

cloud obsidian
#

I suppose we've been avoiding that via laziness/oversight; ground terrain is only destroyed/damaged when directly targeted and nothing has ever been targeted that wasn't destroyed by what it was targeted by

#

i.e. dirt by a jackhammer

#

yeah, i suppose we've been just doing exactly that; modeling each tile as an individual destructible, without thinking and without running into complex consequences

final frigate
#

I made so many NPC notes at the start of this campaign, and while I don't often re-read them since the act of typing them down made it easier to remember them, I'm still happy at how they turned out.

image.png
graceful turtle
#

These are the most organized notes I have ever seen, holy shit

final frigate
mellow valve
#

has anyone ran the Cadenze de l' Pavilios in beat 4? if so, do tell! I am in need of some inspiration

empty flame
#

Oh I have! What kinda stuff are you looking for?

#

Well I've run it as part of a modified beat 7, but still

mellow valve
empty flame
#

Okay so I kinda treated the Cadenze as an opportunity for my players to formalize any romance subplots they were particularly invested in (Or create something to shake up a bit later), granted that was when using it as a beat 7 thing. In general I mentioned it was gonna be a thing a bit before it came up in game so players would have a chance to plan

#

In terms of actually running it, I

  • Took the time to describe the scene and the gardens here, probably advisable to write something up beforehand, but I was personally just winging it a bit
  • Much like the opening ball, I let the players describe their outfit/entrance, this time without being late and messy, and with the opportunity to coordinate with a date potentially
  • In general I let each player get one interaction/"turn" in chatting with NPCs or doing some of the more normal dancing before an interruption occured (In my game it was the Augur calling them over for the prophecy since I'd moved the bond reading up a few scenes, but you could skip this beat or replace the interruption with something else. Maybe an NPC giving a speech or someone from a backstory crashing the party)
  • When that wrapped up, it came time for the mech dancing aspect of the scene! I described what a few NPCs were doing, and allowed players to make a skill check using their mech skills rather than pilot triggers. The exact nature of the check varied based on their approach, but Agility was a good default. I also let them add an accuracy if they used their mech's unique systems or traits in a creative way here, especially in sync with a partner!
  • If players succeeded on this mech skill check, I'd generally reward them with NPC approval advancement or let them bank an accuracy that could be used on a future social skill check with almost any student.
#

I do also think you can have fun with making the dance skill checks risky, if someone bombs hard enough on the dancefloor it would be kinda stressful socially speaking. I had a pilot break from that once and the resulting character crashout was so fun for the narrative

dark tusk
#

scribbles scribbles

#

My one choke point is figuring out if anyone wants to basically run for prom king/queen, I think I'll just demarcate it from the rest of the dance competition

#

Make it a background radiation that if they dont want to win it's just about showing off, but if they want to win I'll set it to a higher dc

final frigate
#

So....

#

The campaign has been completely derailed in an amazing way.

#

Praya and a PC called Hestia razumovsky were supposed to have a sword duel shirtless, in nothing but combat durable girdles, mansur masks and trousers in the lykeon in full public view while everyone else watched on and enjoyed the experience. It was supposed to be a fixed fight, a chance for praya to get a win off in public and for Hestia to get into her good graces. They were to duel for satisfaction, owing to rumours circulating regarding Hestia and Argo having relations that bersmerched his and prayas marriage. Praya knew they were bullshit, but wanted to keep up appearances, to have a fun duel, and finally get a win.

Then the house moments clone PC, sybill Arint the 2nd, noticed that Argo Laurent had blue eyes instead of his usual kelly green.

Right as the dean commander was announcing the reasons for the duel (accusations of infidelity on argos part), sybill pushed argo against a banister, knife to his chest, face right against his, and had a very tense argument with him while whispering. To everyone else, this looked like they were making out.

Turns out argo had been drugged the other day when some strange bartender spiked his drink with the blood of pangloss. Causing him to have on and off visions and his eyes to turn blue. he had yet to realize this.

As a result, Praya, believing her husband had all but shunned and shamed her in public, wanted to duel Sybill instead....who volunteered Hestia as her champion. She proceeded to humiliate Praya in public further, leaving her covered in bloody sword wounds before disarming her.

Suffice to say, that praya knew daddy canammos would want her replaced with a better version of herself. after all, he had done this 47 times, what's 48 tries with Praya?

The group then proceeded to try and comfort her, learn she was an illegal clone, then talked her into trying to seek a new life for herself instead of dying like a dog, smuggling her to her titan mech so it could use the void rend and escape the campus.

#

So now Praya the 47th is going to be a returning NPC at the end of the campaign, and Praya the 48th is going to be her replacement.

#

I should add that:

#

Sybill Arint is a vanity clone line made by the heads of the arint house who wanted their daughter back after she died a war hero, and want all subsequent sybills to live up to the legacy she, and every other sybill, leave behind.

Hestia doesn't know she's also a clone of the original, and is a gene-modded soldier prototype that went rogue, joined HA, was sent back after being found out, and is at the college because her family is waiting for the real hestia to return from her private training with relatives.

Talia, an ignoble assassin of house sand who has been told over and over and over that this mission will be her last before she attains minor nobility...is also a clone of the original talia who already achieved this, and uses younger clones of herself to conduct missions on behalf of the house to maintain her position.

#

Then there's Eleni, who isn't a clone, but has forced to be everything her mother wanted to become at her age and has had to struggle with being rigidly defined by her for over two decades.

#

It's clones all the way down, all dealing with the themes of the burden of legacy

rustic peak
placid nest
#

WHOA..

quartz sentinel
final frigate
#

This whole campaign is the very height of noble melodrama and I wouldnt have it any other way.

graceful turtle
final frigate
# graceful turtle Now I'm just picturing some kinda power struggle between Praya the 47th and the ...

All the others are dead 😛
There were 48 of them because hydrad kept killing praya and replacing her with a better version over and over. Modifying the next clones genes and memories until he had one that could actually meet his expectations.

The 47th praya was thought to be "good enough", as she was allowed to live for 10 years and even choose her husband from among the suitors on offer (although Argo did aggressively woe her). But alas, she is but a failure to, and will be replaced by a Praya twice as cruel.

#

Im not sure what to do with the 47th, since she stepped through a void rend and went into hiding.

I need to figure out what she actually wants, and would enjoy in life...she did spend the entire first year at the college mainlining the artistic syllabus, so maybe something involving history, art, or something. Hard to say rn.

graceful turtle
graceful turtle
rustic peak
#

Next session is gonna be a narrative based one to set up the exam gauntlet that I'm doing for combat 3, so I have a lot of setup to do

final frigate
rustic peak
#

Some beats I have planned:

  • Aloysius and Kay having their argument about the Heca bc I forgot about it last time
  • Argo threatening some people with death because he's a petty bitch
  • a (mostly legit) TO YOU ABOVE blasted across the Karrakis omninet
  • the twins doing some blackmail to try and get access to details on the AGNI NHP
empty flame
#

Old praya post that's more relevant than ever knowing abt the origin bit for her

image.png
final frigate
#

Amazing.

final frigate
#

I love the twins.

dark tusk
#

The twins have been some of my favorites to play hands down

#

I do a thing / where I have them continue / each others / sentences / alternating / with a flow / of pitch / and variance / (in unison) to be a little uncanny

And I save all my best puns for them to make them quirky

#

One PC in my squad is a merchant's daughter there to romance Kay so they can renegotiate their charter under the house of water cause the house of glass treats them like shit

#

Turns out they kick up to a guy who kicks up to the twins

#

So they confront this PC in a dive bar bathroom and mock her for the romantic little scenes she set up at every opportunity with Kay and pointed out how manipulative she is for doing all this just for money and to run away from the people who supported her family so. It would be such a shame if she heard about this, so maybe don't take her to the cadenza- you can even make out still we don't mind, and just slip out of the bathroom like it wasn't anything

final frigate
#

Amazing.

#

I had something like that in a prior campaign with two sisters, Tatiana and Brianna, they did the sentence finishing thing, but they both had thick valley girl accents, were computer code geniuses and also just...really fun to play.

#

Twin characters are always fun to have kicking around.

#

right now the worst the twins have done in the campaign is successfully convince the entire campus that the only Ace PC of the group is in multiple romantic affairs with other male students, including argo.

#

This...unintentionally was made worse by the player when they pressed argo against a balcony and put a knife to him, but from most angles it looked like they were kissing. This was at the lykeon, at mid day, with a duel going on below.

#

The twins saw they weren't.

#

They fed the rumours they spread.

#

in the far flung future of lancer, photoshop still exists.

silver vault
#

now imagining omninet arguments about the ethics of NHP generated images

final frigate
#

I lightly touched upon that in my upcoming supplement. Not in any meaningful depth mind you, but I posited the idea that because of their infinite capacity for novel content creation on par with humans, at a rate far faster than them, that NHP made media would completely dominate the omni-net unless regulated, as it's impossible to tell the difference between NHP and human made material.

civic snow
#

Hi everyone, first message here, quick question: what's the consensus on objective HP in C4? Regular objective hp or, well, human HP?

clear nymph
#

I am planning on giving them HP and other stats as if they had hard suits but no weapons. Also they can move on their own. But would be extremely cautious about it.

empty flame
#

Yeah, I think I gave them a total of 10HP a piece, though I haven't had that come up in any runs

#

actually wait it did come up once when Imani got caught in an AOE, but they made it out

north knot
#

i'd recommend you keep them as a regular objective. not retrieving one of them is enough for serious narrative consequences imho, i don't necessarily think you need to introduce the possibility of them being blown up by aoe attacks

final frigate
#

(context: the PC wants the blood of pangloss. She has been close to Khan since before coming to the college owing to her moments minor being close to the order. They are meeting in private to chit chat and play chess.)

image.png
final frigate
#

It is really fun tempting the player to kill the potential love interest of another PC, especially when khan is giving her all the reasons doing so is good actually and why she'd be able to do it easily, only to watch the normally ruthless, cold, calculating PC argue "no actually, I'll make him a chad baron who'll make his house great, watch me disprove your future reading."

#

(Also, made tokens (using art found online) for the sponsors of most of the students attending college. behold, Tomas's dad, Evic Alfarnoz.)

token_1_3.png
dark tusk
#

Would

final frigate
# dark tusk Would

He lost his penis in a hunting accident, hence why he is pressuring tomas so much to have kids

#

the player facing summery I provided the group:
Marquiss Evic Alfaroz (He/Him): The Ink Lord. Famous for having taken his houses mediocre stationary company and revolutionizing it with some assistance from SSC, making it a net exporter of high quality products that are shipped across Union. Famously lost his testicles in a hunting accident, rendering him infertile, even with a cloned replacement. Only has one child, Tomas.

graceful turtle
final frigate
final frigate
#

My grand masterplan has succeeded.
Tomas will have 2 danger lesbians, a toxic ace and a disaster bi all conglomerating to make sure he becomes the best he can be. If this goes well, House Rememberence will have a new baron once he is in his prime 😌

mild spindle
#

they love him so much <3

mild spindle
#

Players got framed, ran beat 9. Went really good

quartz sentinel
final frigate
#

one of my players fumbled the ball on getting Elsa to accompany them to the first major ball 😔
So close, yet, at the critical moment, with both women sharing the bath house on campus at night, the PC accidentally gave the impression they were nothing more than a mildly right leaning political agitator without any kind of actual political philosophy or plan. Functionally a 'things suck now, we should change things' impression.

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and it was all going so well right up until the point Elsa asked them about their politics to!
not the right time to give a none-committal answer.

quartz sentinel
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RIP

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I hope that haunts them lmao

final frigate
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Forever haunted by that critical fumble 😔

final frigate
dark tusk
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Slowly shrinks into a corncob

mild spindle
# mild spindle Players got framed, ran beat 9. Went really good

Update on a few other session deets I wanna share bc this one went quite well.

-I've had the Stonelord come in and take over the college from the Headmaster as part of the Boulder Companies temporary security measures. He gave a really awful fashy speech to commemorate the reopening, which I think I played really well.

-this was a sesh with a lot of Argo action, because he'll be showing up in combat soon and I hadn't done enough to distinguish him as an individual from Praya. He was watching Sanjak liveleak footage on max volume with his gang of boys, then kept ragebaiting the pcs with sore spots from their backstories. They hate him appropriately now.

-players were thorougherly disgusted by the fo Ungratefuls training combat

-for time I merged the combat and beat 9 into a single sort of beat, cutting the combat halfway as the news suddenly broke and the players had to make a break for it.

-May have gone a little bit overboard with beat 9 as opposed to what's in the book lol, but its went well. By this point theres actually a decent amount of evidence to frame them as collaborators, but I went a bit further and had the Sandmen assassinate one of their parents and frame the PC for patricide 💀. Only did this to one player but it ended up with all the others left hanging of if their own had also been killed, which was a fun bit of suspense. Generally I had the framing be less of a hapdash effort and more of an engineered Sand information dump they'd been working on for months.

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I've def ended up running SoTW in a bit of a different direction bc of our whole multi game karrakin continuity, but my players are really loving the grim space politic-ing of it all and it's going really well

quartz sentinel
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oh that sounds awesome

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good job

final frigate
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Player who got shot down by Elsa is going on a biker ride date with Nadeer instead, intending on asking him to the ball 😌
Two gym bros hanging out after making a bet to get something from the other if they won a race around the gyms track field. Wholesome stuff.

civic snow
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I ran an intense post-NY session last week that went from beat 3 to the start of C4, lol, it was a lot of fun. The House of Sand player concocted an elaborate plan to smooth over the (0) relationship with Argo despite my warning on how unlikely that was to work. They locked them together in a toilet, and, after a while, they did talk for a bit. Unfortunately, the dice were against that player the whole day, so the only real consequence of that was Eligos quietly getting even more hateful towards the group. It will be all too sad to learn in C6 which house is responsible for the assassination of the player's parents all those years back...

Oh yeah, and in C3 the mostly-disarmed Iphianassa caused a meltdown for one of the PC mechs (who was low on stress because the mech was torn to ribbons by the usual two in C1), which caused a bit of a game of thermonuclear chicken on the field, which most of the staff lost (Iphianassa's mech had to be finished before she deigned to eject out of danger), and the flashing-red mech delivered the drone into the zone, boosted a bit away as to not to destroy it, and then the pilot, who is a natural-ish-born Moments noble and a pankrati adrenaline junkie, ejected herself to right next to Iphianassa right before the reactor went critical. The Underbaron crossed her arms and informed her that she could fail them on a technicality (the sitrep technically needs them to extract with the objective at the end of the turn, but that forgoes the ejection), but won't. The player gets to pilot Achillea's Ronin in C4, with a lot of fangirly emotions on that.

final frigate
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Player who fumbled seducing Elsa managed to bag Nadeer after a 200km bike ride ||(i did admittedly have to make him more interested in her than he might otherwise be to make it work, but hey, gym buddies to ballroom buddies works.))||

ivory salmon
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Wadafac running the module for my homies as our first foray into Lancer, and so far, the feedback I’ve received is that it feels way too slow. Not sure if that’s specifically for the first combat bc that’s seven structure across three enemies—two of which are elites— or if it’s because we’re all brand new, or if it’s a mix of both

final frigate
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I will argue that lancers rules can take a bit of getting used to, and it helps to have a cheat sheet of actions one can perform.

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oh, wait, big Q: VTT, or in person?

ivory salmon
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VTT

final frigate
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foundry?

ivory salmon
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We’re running it on foundry

final frigate
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ah, ok, best option on that front then.

ivory salmon
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The drone guy is swapping out some of his stuff bc he wanted to do flying and found out it’s not great

final frigate
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Flying to.

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Early on it's handy as an accent to movement (helps avoid terrain types), but, yeah it's not major on its own.

ivory salmon
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Okok

final frigate
# ivory salmon One of them is a hacking focused chomolungma, one is a melee focused TCB everest...

To circle back to this, I'd recommend getting them all a cheat sheet of all of lancers actions PCs can take during combat, and consider doing what I've had decent success with, which is not playing out every single round of combat, just playing until it becomes very clear the PCs are going to win and nothing stops them from doing so.

An example with that combat would be if the PCs killed most of the NPCs on the map and they can now soundly contest the objective without the NPCs being able to do much other than attack them and drain HP. I've found this saves about 1 to 2 rounds of combat being slogged out after victory is assured, and players, I've found, feel like they've 'won' more.

Another time saving element I've found is to just learn the foundry module, which, yeah, might sound insulting, but I don't mean it. the VTT has a macro for the scan action, which lets the GM add entries into the VTT journal for NPCs so the players can look them over, as one example. It also helps to use the snip tool on your PC to cut out the sitreps mechanics from the core book, and post them in your discord or something so it's easier to reference.

ivory salmon
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Yea I used the foundry system import thing it’s really nice

final frigate
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I will note that Shadow of the wolf features tougher single units than all the other modules (barring wallflower, but wallflower is 6 missions and also really long), so it's a bit skewed in that regard.

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Typical lancers NPCs die faster, and more often.

ivory salmon
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They tried to whittle down the goliath while sitting behind cover Dancin

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Also bad TCB rolls didn’t help

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But the hacker player read some more and knows how they wanna play

final frigate
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yeah that'll make things feel slow.

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Maybe let them know that winning the objective is way more important than killing everyone? It's one of the big adaptations players need to make with lancers combat.

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...until they become really good at making builds, at which point they can do both.

ivory salmon
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Yea I did just now, session 2 is next Tuesday

final frigate
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hope it goes well 😌

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if ya need any advice on the module, ping here again, I'm running it, Kat is god, swampwolf gives great advice, almightyzote is the goat, etc.

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It's a module that benefits a lot from GM collusion with other GMs to compile the cool ideas they've come up with.

ivory salmon
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SCsquishy this is what they’re at for relationship clocks rn

IMG_0574.png
final frigate
clear nymph
quartz sentinel
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in terms of encounter budget SOTW's fights aren't really any different to any other first party content with the exception of Wallflower (which doesn't count because Wallflower is built different). Some people who aren't used to templates freak out when they see them but mathematically they're actually faster to fight than their equivalent budget in regular NPCs

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a bunch of players new to a tactics game are probably going to have a slow time of it whichever module they play

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in particular the speed of Lancer gameplay is tied quite extensively to player knowledge - both in knowing your own builds, and also in knowing how NPCs work

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combats speed up when you get more practice with the game and scanning enemies is always a good idea when you're new

final frigate
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I've found of the modules I've ran, the fastest was solstice rain, followed by dustgrave, then winter scar, and finally shadow of the wolf, even after my alterations. Though i think a slower pace (outside of combat) is to its benefit.

quartz sentinel
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I'm confused now, are you talking about combat or roleplaying here?

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because yes, there's more meat outside of combat by design

final frigate
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Roleplaying

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In combat it is the same pace as everything else, perhaps a little faster, if only because one of my players is good at single target DPS, and the others are really good at single target control.

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Though, things are set to slow down a bit in my own game since we're gonna be chewing through wholly original content I've made, diverging from the module itself for the 2nd year at the college, before getting 'back on track' with the third and final one.

quartz sentinel
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oh okay that makes sense

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I shouldn't be trying to follow conversations after midnight 😅

final frigate
pearl inlet
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How do we feel about using the faction system from the KTB book for SoTW? Might be really interesting having various factions backing some of the NPCs/PCs. I was also thinking of “Get organised” helping get favours from them as well during downtime.

dark tusk
dark tusk
# pearl inlet How do we feel about using the faction system from the KTB book for SoTW? Might ...

My instinct is to use factions for hagiographic/federalist/republican power splits.
Like iirc on base political house allegiance this puts like Elsa, The Twins, and Tomas for ex in the same kinda cluster of political interests which would be interesting.

Even this tripartite structure + BUC so there is some fun tension. Give players the opportunity to get NPCs to change factions with enough appeal or pressure.

Either way spend some time figuring out what assets these students and professors might share within/without the campus that they administer or access together as that seems to be a central part of the faction rules.

Maybe build out their sponsors more and do more Witch from Mercury kinda coding for how the students relate to their sponsors so campus actions are allowed to have wider geopolitical impact.

Have individual relationship trackers influence the overall faction status or be conditionally useful for certain interactions.

empty flame
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I tend to save the faction system for post-sotw campaigns because the players are already watching a lot of clocks with the NPC approval system, that said you could do something with the concept of assigned squads that I've played with in the past

final frigate
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The sponsor ball is gonna be exciting next week.

One of the players has done just enough to fill the "disownment" clock ive been keeping track of ever since they joined the campaign..

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So not only are they gonna be shamed in front of the entire school for their awful dance skills, their dad and sponsor is going to disown them and revoke his sponsorship.

Thankfully, I have several plans on how to keep the PC in play, just not as a student.

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Alternative ideas would be welcome, but the below are what I have in mind:

She becomes the bodyguard to the original version of the character, as the PC is a combat clone implanted with some of the originals memories. The original joins the college as a first year student.

She gets sponsored by someone worse than her dad, with the promise of helping to blow up the college in the third act.

She gets "sold off" to an NPC her combat genes stem from, as a peace offering of sorts, and he agrees to take her in. He then more or less remolds what is his "daughter" into his own image and makes the PC even worse as a person.

College rules mean that she still has to finish her time at the college, but has no house backing and is functionally an ignoble.

quartz sentinel
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solid options

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#3 is super gross

final frigate
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It does sound it without context

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The hyper murder assassin man that has more dna in common with her, than the man she thinks is her dad, isnt a good person...but he isnt an awful one either. He'd probably treat her better than her dad, but only because he feels pity for the brat who had everything taken away.

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Its like being sold off to rash al ghul, except he enjoys his job way too much.

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It is, however, made significantly worse when factoring in that the man's current apprentice and favourite student at the college, is the now disowned PCs ex.

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Will definitely let the player choose what theyre most comfortable with though.

rustic peak
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One of my PC's uncles has sold them out to the Stonelord as a patsy, and now they're going to wind up face to face at the sponsors ball

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Whoever it was here who put the idea of the sponsors ball in my head, kudos to you

So much drama

empty flame
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God it's looking like I'll be running one more Shadow of the Wolf group after my current one

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This has been such a good intro tool for Lancer and I've generally been working to get as many people as I can into this game (the SOTW parties and 2 groups through Solstice Rain/Winter Scar) that I've just repeatedly had people get interested when I mention it

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When I'm done with this run I'll probably put the module down for a while, but I'm considering writing up a little guide with some of the GM tips and little modifications I've messed with over time.

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One tidbit I've really enjoyed doing has been lifting the "rumors" mechanic from Dimension 20's cloudward ho season, where I have my players each choose a true element of their backstory that might be circulating as a rumor, then either I or the player make up 2 lies about said character.
Once everyone has done this, I'll hand out the rumors to the rest of the party with each person ending up with a truth about another PC, and 2 lies about the others (not knowing which is which), until it happens to get sorted out through interactions

random mirage
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For combat 2, do you guys treat the high ground areas within the control zones as part of the control zone?

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I'm not sure if it would normally be that significant but my group's players specifically ended up being 4 melee attackers and 1 tech attacker, so it ends up benefitting their enemies (Captain Hedros especially) quite significantly compared to them

quartz sentinel
quartz sentinel
clear nymph
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I have Elsa near by on the ground to support Hedros for just that reason

random mirage
random mirage
# clear nymph I have Elsa near by on the ground to support Hedros for just that reason

that's very similar to what i ended up doing (we paused halfway through it last night); she was just positioned on the height 2 terrain instead of inside the control zone. i'll probably place her further inside the zone when we resume so she was properly contesting; it'll be a significant loss for her and Hedros since they were planning on abandoning the zone to focus on holding two zones for the remainder of the fight to hold their lead, and it'll take a lot more of her movement to get out so i think it'll make up for the mistake i made in the first few rounds

final frigate
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Look what the PCs are trying to make Tomas into 😔

quartz sentinel
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nooo

rustic peak
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Nooo this will kill the patient! He needs estrogen to live

clear nymph
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He knows what he has to do, but he doesn't know if he has the strength to do it.

plush yew
rich swallow
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just finished the last battle of my lancer campaign shadow of the wolf

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the PC decided to be big damn heros about it

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and they won

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3 of them got their mech destroyed, one pilot got down and out and the other almost killed, and there literally was only one big damage allied mech on the field as a raleigh and the other was just a taraxacum

Praya I had upgraded to an ultra with armour and reistance but shit heatcap. 120 health total, 4 armour

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the raleigh clutched a hack exposed at impaired -1, then landed a skirmish and overcharge skirmish for a total of 80+ damage on Praya, structuring her three times in a single turn

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then she was finished off by a couple of drones

quartz sentinel
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that rocks

final frigate
rich swallow
# quartz sentinel that rocks

they defused the bomb by round 2 cus the hecatoncheires player rolled double stressed into an immediate meltdown, so they ejected and let the mech destroy the 3 enemies around them

they somehow all survived against praya either inflicting a deadly full action save or her melee barrages.

tgis is all also spurred on due to the Ungrateful kobold player (the one who got down and outed) taunting praya about killing her husband who she has tied up captive in the expanded compartment

final frigate
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(Also everyone say hi to Eos, one of my players, they are wonderful.)

clear nymph
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So I've expanded the exams into their own mission to be an expansion of the Under Baron's maxim for the mindset she want to teach that 'Kuirssairs (sp?) follow orders, Kavalliers accomplish objectives'. Namely, the exam is to be dropped off in the mountains with the objective of presenting a VIP to the College hunting lodge within 48 hours while being hunted by the faculty and BUC (who are using this as counter-insurgency exercises)

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Said VIPs (Very cranky Eligos Sub-alterns in fancy noble outfits) are currently being held in small BUC bases scattered in the mountains. Trying to think of a suitable Op-for for an Extraction sitrep for the players.

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5 players. So I'm thinking of anchoring the defense with an MBT, then having Scouts, Archers, and Bastions. Maybe a Strider on patrol as reinforcements along with one of the archers. And have the players roll a d6 to see which faculty member shows up or if they luck out on a 6

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Thoughts?

dark tusk
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Ooooh maybe use a specter so you can have them feel like they are coming out of the environment and enforce more grouping up- harrying stragglers

clear nymph
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I don't feel like a Specter would fit the feel of this sitrep, but looking at them I'm tempted to replace the reinforcement with Aces to be a kind of rapid reaction response force

final frigate
clear nymph
# final frigate how many fights in total?

4

They are in the middle of the first now: Gauntlet with some Bombards and Bastions with a Commander Priest and Aegis. Archers coming in as reinforcement. It's the characters breaking their encirclement from their drop off.

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Fights 3 and 4 are the same as the module

final frigate
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As for NPC options, the Lurker is always great if you want something annoying and difficult to deal with. I'd also be tempted to toss in an Aegis with an allied Bombard for that classic combo. I'm also a sucker for veteran (acrobat) demolishers with concussion missiles and a few other optionals, if only because they can both block an advance, and reposition faster than players might expect.

Though, I'll admit, I'd be tempted to recommend some 3rd party material to you as well, but, I wont unless you consent

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maybe barricades with titan snare drones, if you want something classic.

clear nymph
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It's the first campaign for a few of my players so im keeping it mostly to 1st party, though I am also using Rebake

final frigate
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good idea.

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In which case, maybe nothing too high DPS centric then.

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Maybe a rainmaker with that optional that lets it shoot more missiles than usual, but, that's the most extreme I'd go.

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if these are freshies, just getting them to come to grips with the fundamentals, then comfortably exploring the mechanics in a 2nd mission is all that's needed for now.

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your opfor sounds reasonable enough.

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also gives them something to beat the crap out of after having to deal with some tougher nuts earlier on in the module.

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which'd likely make for a pleasent change of pace for them.

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as in, no extra structure NPCs.

clear nymph
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That was my thought. Keep extra structure and most templates on the faculty, students and elite enemies they will face to give them the feeling of being elite pilots

final frigate
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Mhm, wise.

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wielding the turret template against them could be neat.

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no one uses the turret template.

clear nymph
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The Gauntlet has been a little difficult as it was their first encounter with the Bombard, but they've adjusted well

clear nymph
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Where is the Turret template? Not seeing it in the core book

final frigate
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...did I hallucinate the turret template existing?

quartz sentinel
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there is no turret template anywhere in first party

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which is probably why nobody uses it

final frigate
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....I am a moron.

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There is, however, a turret template in maximum threat, according to my comp/con.

quartz sentinel
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(there are like five or six different attempts that I've seen to create turret-like enemies, I'm sure you could pick whichever one you vibe with the most by searching #homebrew-design)

final frigate
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The maximum threat one is pretty nice, reading it over rn.
Not ideal in all scenerios, but, it's nifty, even comes with fixed, hovering, and on set rails variants.

quartz sentinel
pearl inlet
# dark tusk My instinct is to use factions for hagiographic/federalist/republican power spli...

Exactly what I’ve been envisioning! There’s a helluva lot of potential here and it also seems like Ms.Kat did take some inspiration from them a lil bit here and there. Each of our main cast of students and teachers seem to have relatively strong connections to groups that can totally be factions. The only part that doesn’t quite match is the MIGHT tag - like how would one represent a might based faction in SoTW. Currently only got them providing ground support during mission 2.

final frigate
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It's happening, two of the PCs are pursuing a relationship with Tomas!

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One of them is Ace, but finds the idea of a sexless political marriage with him tolerable because of how understanding and pleasant he is. The other loves him for his poets soul, honesty and thoughtfulness, and is weighing him up against Aloynious (who is crit fumbling on a date she's on with him), and a homebrew NPC I Introduced at the start of the campaign.

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I ended up accidentally characterising Aloynious into a bit of a self-conscious inadvertent incel, so in other words, my inspirations for him are taking full effect. Dude is as awkward as any Tory politican

graceful turtle
final frigate
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God, I need to have him say that when he sees the actual gay PC couple....

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Just really drive the point home Eleni dodged a bullet.

native merlin
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The second round of commissioned artwork from @jolly swallow for art of the Minor NPCs in Shadow of the Wolf. So excited to share these with the community I hope they really make your games come to life!
Here's the descriptions we worked up based on their descriptions in the book and how I played them. Termite Dust is far and away more creative and talented than I, they took these vague descriptions and spun gold out of them

So the next one is Dean Commander Hebriyah Doleros of the college, not sure what that title means, but I'm guessing it means Dean but with military stuff stuck on it. They're retired from a prestigious military career and it says that they are trying to balance their honors with the comforts of a noble lifestyle. So I'm thinking somewhere in between Hekseth and Achilleia in dress; military honors on display, but comfortable noble clothes, perhaps an extravagant hat or headdress. Your classic noble, kind of stuck up and proud, House of Stone so extremely proud of her military experience. I'm playing around with maybe she's extremely uncomfortable in her noble garb? Like she's not really settled into the comforts of nobility and would much rather be wearing a uniform. Just thoughts and ideas for it, I think I'd best leave it to your vision from there.

So the last one is Eligos, the school's NHP. It is pretty haughty and more concerned with the school itself than with actual students. For its appearance, since it completely separates itself from human form, I was thinking something really elegant and artistic, clothing that is completely impractical but cool looking like a fashion model, a little of the uniform look as the base of it. A plain mirror face or some other sort of filigree adorning it.
I like the mix of noble and magical in it. I'd like it to be faintly purple, it matches the House of Order and NHPs do be glowing different colors. I'm happy with pretty much anything on the design honestly, but I don't think it would have a human face. Maybe 1 eye or something for people to focus on, but I get the vibe that it generally sees humans as a lot of hassle, so I don't think it would try to emulate them.

SOTW_NPC_DEAN_COMMANDER_HEBRIYAH_DOLEROS.png SOTW_NPC_ELIGOS.png
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Any chance we could pin this one and the other one as well? I'm not sure who to ask, but I'd like everyone to be able to find these and use them in their games. 😅

rustic peak
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yooooooooo

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I love them

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Despite having no expression, ELIGOS looks like it's about to call me a slur. 11/10

rancid coral
native merlin
clear nymph
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Love them!

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My interpretation of ELIGOS is that it mostly interacts virtually, not bothering to make a humanoid avatar and presenting as complex chains of fractal shards when it must. But I'm definitely using this for its sub alterns when it is forced to use them

graceful turtle
rustic peak
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Fdfdhgshdhssfhh

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Yes

native merlin
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All props on Eligos design go to Termite Dust. The description in the book and what I posted above is all that had to go on and they made THAT! 🤩
That goes for all of the art in fact. For my monster designs I usually sketch something or make some abomination like this, but TermiteDust really has an artist's eye for design and I intend to do lots more commissions from them!

manticore_example.jpg
final frigate
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This was the art I went with for Eligos

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I definitely prefer candlemoths rendition though. A true look of signature superiority.

dark tusk
final frigate
# dark tusk Oh thanks I hate it, this haunts my nightmares

I routinely describe him in terms of burnt flesh manifesting out of reflective surfaces to scold students.

Best moment was the arts syllabus class where the party member made the mistake of looking up at the ceiling to see nothing but him in the reflection, a titan of scorched meat, wires, barely bridled contempt and smoke.

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Dude made himself big as a size 3 on the other side of the mirror ceiling just to scowl at everyone and remind them not to scratch the mosaic floor tiles.

opal chasm
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I'm about to start running SoTW and absolutely love my PCs characters. They've got some great parallels to established NPCs. We've got:

Bukk Guntt, last son of House Guntt (or as it is colloquially known on Begum, the House of Meat), a kind-hearted and frankly very stupid factory manager who has become his families final attempt at digging themselves out of the bottom of the political ladder of the House of Moments and to become more then just the family that manages the cow corpses that the higher up houses use for experiments before moving on to human bodies. Sponsored by IPS-N.

Nepheline Syenite, a clone of her mother who was crafted with the express purpose of piloting a mech. Her mother, too busy to find anyone she cared to have children with, has made a variety of clones of herself specifically crafted to excel in the areas that her and the rest of House Syenite lack, mech piloting, engineering, diplomacy, etc. Sponsored by SSC with promises of lab space and expansion into the Dawnline Shore should the Baronies succeed in their military campaign.

Brett and Billie (short for Billions) Hosner, the Sharpay and Ryan of Space, a set of twins from the House of Glass who are part of a family owning a variety of luxury motels in the House of Glass. Admitted to the KCC based on some yet to be discovered into Billie's former school record, making her seem like a much better candidate then she was. Billie refused to be let in without Brett and so, they were both accepted together. Brett is a pretty good Pankrati and owns a line of energy drinks and protein bars called MAVERICK, based off of his callsign while fighting. He is the worst. I love him.

Unnamed Squire of the Graveborn is an orphan raised by the Stygos Grammarian until she was offered a more in-depth membership into their order. Upon declining, she was shipped out to the House of Dust, joining up with a squiring program in the Graveborn. She has spent her entire life around people older and more experienced then her and does not know how to act around people her age. Her player is determined to play her as a mean girl who uses people because she does not know any better, but eventually gets better over time.

I'm so excited! If anyone has specific ideas to mess with players in the module based on this, please let me know.

rustic peak
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I need some ideas for how to make Argo seem more threatening, so far he's been at worst a nuisance despite explicitly threatening to murder Tomas if the players get in his way. I think I need to build him up a bit more before Combat #4 happens

I think the players have a good sense of Praya as Daddy Issues Supreme™

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also - while the Praya (SOTW origins spoiler: #1335142849754169447 message) || mirror creche horrors with Papa Stonelord || is 100% canon for me , I don't know how to convey it to players if they're not interested in digging deeper into her relationship with the Stonelord

native merlin
# rustic peak I need some ideas for how to make Argo seem more threatening, so far he's been a...

For my most recent game I've been running him as very helpful and informative. He told the players that it was 'just how things were done' when it came to the duel challenge in the beginning and regretted watching Praya in that scene. ||Then I run it that he's the mastermind behind it all, obviously Praya and the House of Stone want to do it, but he's basically just using her as a knight on the board; rushing in and taking out who he needs while he gets of scott free. Master Manipulator stuff. ||
The time before that I just ran him as an arrogant noble that blended into the shadows. ||Praya did all the talking and got all of the hate, but in the end they didn't really find out that she was pressured into all of this by someone higher above her. I think I'll do better this time around||

final frigate
rustic peak
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as it happens I do have the twins being used unwittingly to prepare for combat #4

rustic peak
final frigate
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He's there to amass political influence via connections and alliances, if that makes sense.

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an opportunist and a dangerous one at that.

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which kinda pairs well with him being part of a minority right wing faction within his own house.

rustic peak
dark tusk
# rustic peak I need some ideas for how to make Argo seem more threatening, so far he's been a...

One thing I did is make Argo good at speaking in code kind of. I had after the duel and first big training fight a set up with him and Praya doing a podcast interview decrying the state of the college and stoking the fire of a stochastic bullying campaign against other students.

He is one of the Dulles brother's kids essentially and every word he says moves and signals to others what they do. So if he wants people to be threatened it doesn't take much.

He offered a chance at reconcilliation and peace implicitly to the players as part of that interview by offering a chance to get with the program. Showing that he has a clear agenda.

I then had Tomas get ganged up on by a nobody from the House of Stone I made up and her cadre of snot nosed ghouls.

final frigate
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the first Sponsor ball is close upon my group.

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I just need everyone to appreciate that everyone on campus except Aloynious has a date.

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(two of my players are going with one of the twins)

burnt iris
final frigate
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Holy shit XDDDD

burnt iris
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it doesn't seem like his plan to gather allies for that is working very well

quartz sentinel
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now imagining them doing that thing where they're both dancing with someone else but looking at each other 💃

final frigate
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To keep it brief:

Nadeer initially wasn't going to even attend because he actually has no sponsor, and earned his way in on merit alone.
One of the PCs asked him to go with them, because he's their gym buddy, and he has a mild crush on her.
She then got asked to the dance by one of the Primors, and immediately dumped him for them, cos they are a noble, he isn't.
He then decided to ask Kirionia, whom has feelings for him, but never wanted to ask cos she'd feel it was an abuse of the power dynamics of nobility/ignobility, because now he was already committed, knew his brother was coming, has a suit for it which was expensive, and...he does also like Kirionia but wont admit it.
The PC effectively forced Nadeer into the worst position possible due to their selfishness.

Meanwhile, Elsa and Rawan publicly aren't friends, but, they enjoy discussing and debating politics, as Elsa isn't a bitch about her stances and Rawan enjoys having someone to try arguing left leaning politics against who wont dismiss it outright and is articulate enough to be well worth debating.
For the sheer shock value, they decided to go together, dressed exactly as each other, because they look similar enough that if they wear the right makeup, hair style and so on, it's hard to tell them apart. They learned this trick from the twins, and want to just have fun at the expense of everyone else there.

It also helps that Elsa isn't sponsored by her own mother in my game, as the arch chancellor didn't want her daughter attending, as she believed she'd be far better off becoming a diplomat or a merchant or some such.
Instead she was sponsored by an 'anonymous knight of some renown' (It's her father, but no one knows that, not even Elsa)

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Kirionia is in such an odd position to, cos she's crushing on Nadeer, Elsa, and on a PC who sadly had to leave the game due to scheduling conflicts, and one or two others. The poor dear is struggling with all the drama and romance and it's wonderful.

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(ok this wasn't brief at all....)

cloud obsidian
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finished running the module the other day. Ended up running late into the morning with long roleplay sessions of the hearings before Karra-Bem that happened.

House of Stone is neutered, they spent multiple risky rolls and bond powers to invoke archaic rules before the court that even if the Stonelord is not responsible for his wayward child, he is responsible for the presence of the Khayradin and managed to get him jailed for life and deposed.

House of Sand walks away scot free; the only person of Sand they could pin at the end was Argo...and he was shot by Praya in a failed hostage gambit to get her to stand down.
She said that he meant nothing now that he'd failed, and I told the Harlequin player with Masquerade that she was lying.

They sent their fellow students to go attempted 8B while they attempted 8A. They only barely got the shield up before the bomb would've gone off, and suffered heavy losses. Kiriona will be spending months healing her radiation burns, Valentine needed heavy cybernetic surgery on her organs from chemical weapons exposure, and Tomas lost a leg. All the players and NPCs that suffered grievous injuries are forgoing clone transplants in solidarity with the ex-Harrison Armory iterative clone soldier and Kiriona.

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I'd like to go into more detail about my campaign at some point for any randos who are interested, but before I get too far along I just want to say this is genuinely one of the best put together modules for any system I've ever run. You're (Kat, the author) right to boast on bsky that these maps are the best you've seen. They're the best I've seen too. They flow incredibly well, and every combat was exciting and well depicted by the maps given.

The character cast is so easy to play and elaborate on for whatever themes you want to play up for your group. Each one is enough of a character that they feel 3d on their own with nothing added, but with enough blank space that they can be played to suit a specific angle you want to play at. Kiriona and the Twins might be my favorite for this particular aspect.

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The overarching political ideas and critique made by the LANCER setting as a whole live fully and thrive in this module. I can't think of any other game, let alone module, I've played where 5 hours of overtime political roleplay about the consequences of a battle could threaten to upstage the final battle itself.

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Fuck, I love this module

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I'm going full autistic write-a-review-in-the-thread I love this module so much

quartz sentinel
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💜

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I'm so glad you like it

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ah this is making me happy-cry 🥲

remote mulch
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just dropping in to talk a bit about the third session i just had with my players- i love this module so much, but the combats are kicking my players' ASSES lmao. we don't play objective heavy sitreps often so i think its a matter of my group still trying to find their footing. three players (sniper, two melee builds) and even though they deal crazy damage every turn they're using up so many resources and playing so recklessly. worried about the examination combat and then extraction right after that's still coming up... no cores, no repairs... it'll be a rough one :)

lavish apex
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just wanted to say, i ran combat 5 and it wen't pretty well. a little easier for my players then i would have wanted but uh... thats cause i didn't roll above a 10 on any attacks i made.

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it probably would have been more difficult if i didn't do uh, this like 12 times.

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lmao

final frigate
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My players are just now discovering Eligos can be befriended.

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I am not surprised it took them this long to realise it.

final frigate
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working on custom bond powers for my players as a reward for how well they've done in the campaign thus far


At the start of each session, you may name an NPC you have personally met during the campaign and ask the GM one of these questions relating to them.

What do they admire in a person?
What do they think of Sybil?
How may I best alter their opinion of Sybil to make them view her more positively?
What kind of arguments are they most receptive to?```

``` Rake

Whenever you engage in behaviour unbecoming of a KtB noble, or actions that would bring shame upon your house, it does not negatively impact your houses reputation or your own, as it is expected of you.

In addition, 1/session, you may select an NPC within the scene and lower their opinion of you in exchange for getting them to take a course of action they otherwise wouldn't. This action must relate to how they dislike you in some manner, such as declaring a duel against you, telling you something so long as you leave them alone, make them leave the scene because they can't stand being around you, etc.```

```Golden Girl

You make fast friends with other people. Whenever you first interact with an NPC, they are inclined to view you in the best possible light unless they have been led to believe otherwise. In addition, 1/session, you may call upon any NPC you are friendly with and ask them for one of two things.

If you ask them a question, they'll answer it truthfully to the best of their ability so long as it wont compromise them in some form or fashion.
If you ask a favour of them, they will do it, but only in exchange for a favour of equal value```
# 

1/session, so long as you are dressed in suitably expensive or otherwise fashionable attire, all NPCs within the current scene will treat you as if you are a KtB noble. Any NPC who tries to treat you like an ignoble during this scene will lose social standing with all other NPCs physically present in the scene.

In addition, at the start of each session, you may choose from one of the following to be in your possession:

- One of Masons knives, which others will acknowledge as a sign you are under his protection, making them hesitant to hurt or insult you
- A signet ring of House Sand, which allows you to spy on scenes you are not present in via hidden cameras
- A House Kristal broach, which allows you to move about campus without Eligos knowing where you are unless you or an NPC in the same scene as you call his name
- A house regas-valaria pendent, which lets you bring Eleni Regas-Valaria into any scene you are present in, or visa versa.```
mild spindle
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Just got home so session tonight! Sand men combat >:)

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I've got some funny stuff planned. Gonna have the auger drop some abstract foreshadowing for future next campaign things about APEP lore 2 freak my players out. Also bc we're going up 2 ll2 for the final 2 fights, its finally time for the sparri player to earn the hand of Kauri which he's been ranting about all game

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As soon as it shows up I'm gonna do like a ridiculous montage of it being forged in the heart of a star or something stupid

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They hate Argo appropriately now after last sessions liveleak incident so they're gonna get a kick out of beating him up I imagine

final frigate
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Im buzzing. In two days the sponsor ball happens.

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The ignoble who has been treated like shit for most of act 1 will finally catch a break and be pseudo adopted by the Princess of a different house.

The hard nosed, ambitious heiress will finally have her mothers approval after the arch Chancellor quietly speaks nothing but praise while she dominates the dance floor.

The social butterfly will finally, for the first time in her life, live up to her helicopter parents expectations...barring bringing a good man to the ball.

And the heiress to the baron throne of a order house...will be publically disowned and shot by her own father, revealing that she isnt a normal human when the gunshot does much less to harm her than it should have. With every shame she has brought upon the house being thrown back at her...

God, this is either going to make the campaign, or prematurely end it.

empty flame
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Argo Laurent

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mild spindle
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Finding it really really tough with how big/spread out these maps are- any advice with managing enemies on these? Finding my forces are spread pretty thin and have to spend a whole lotta time running up.

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When I run they're generally much smaller

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on enter sand men atm and very surprised with how its going lol

mild spindle
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the worms r coming in clutch for me :p

opal chasm
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Gotta say, I love that this module makes stuff like Manipulators and Expanded Cockpit matter. Some of my players took them to be silly and I can’t wait for the reveal that they’re intrinsically important to key combats.

empty flame
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Oh yeah, I always love it when niche systems like that get to come in clutch, though funnily enough I've always seen players ditch the Manipulators before the final combat in favor of fancy exotic gear and liscence equipment

empty flame
# mild spindle Finding it really really tough with how big/spread out these maps are- any advic...

Generally I'd say it's good to take the first round for a lot of setup/positioning, then adapt a strategy of like

  • Melee enemies take priority and rush in to engage the PCs
  • Hackers and backliners hang out behind some cover to bait PCs into moving away from the group to deal with them
  • Reinforcements get pushed to the back of the turn order so they can spend their turns getting into position without much pressure from the party
empty flame
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Yknow one thing I really appreciate about Shadow of the Wolf is that it's one of the few modules where it's really feasable to run a character who's gonna feel fucked up about killing people

quartz sentinel
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and the KCC's job is to beat that out of you as quickly as possible! let's go military institutions!

cosmic blaze
cosmic blaze
# quartz sentinel and the KCC's job is to beat that out of you as quickly as possible! let's go mi...

It felt so weird to me when my players started killing the enemies and I had to force myself to remember these were actually experienced and trained soldiers expected to go to war for the glory of Karrakis and not just silly goobers
It's a fun inversion of the experience I had in other campaigns where players start off as the tough mercenary that only cares about money or glory, and then downtime hits and they go on the goofiest side quests ever

quartz sentinel
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I think there's a certain angle to this that's based in Karrakin society, as well, where sending assassins after a rival or killing them in a duel is a slightly more culturally expected outcome

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not necessarily something that's super common or widely permitted, but if you're noble (especially a powerful one) it's a risk you have to genuinely consider and guard against

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players seem more willing to accept death in that kind of setting context

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In another campaign, PCs might be expected to capture someone like Argo and turn him in to the authorities; murdering him even after he attacks them might be considered villainous behaviour. In a Karrakin cultural context they can get away with straight up killing him, and everyone will say "well he had it coming/he must have sucked as a Sandman"

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not that killing Argo is suddenly any more morally permissible, but there are likely to be fewer repercussions

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one of the aspects of Karrakin society that's more corrosive and harder to confront

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both society at large and the social context of a military training facility create the permission structure necessary for young, impressionable people to kill their enemies

rustic peak
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I decided to pad out Combat #3 into a full 3 (secretly 4 😈 ) part mission, and I just had the players do the first one which boiled down to "you're going to assassinate this enemy noble"

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It got the appropriate "wow this is fucked" reaction

cosmic blaze
# quartz sentinel In another campaign, PCs might be expected to capture someone like Argo and turn...

This is interesting because in my game I interpreted this differently, players couldn't kill Argo even when they knew something was up because of the social and political repercussions. They could've maybe challenged him to a duel to the death but he could just turn that down. They could've hired an assassin to kill him probably, but that gets away from their fantasy of being medieval knights in mechs. If my PCs didn't have ties to the major houses and weren't students they would've probably just killed him or have been ordered to do so by a noble

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In neither scenario would my players feel particularly bad about it though, maybe that says something abut my players' moral compass lol

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Only one of my PCs was reluctant to kill Argo but he was outvoted when the time came

quartz sentinel
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I think that's a totally valid way to run it fwiw

clear nymph
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I pitched noble society to my players as similar to Altered Carbon. Mirror-creches and flash clones mean for Karrakin nobles killing a rival is more akin to destruction of property. A potentially expensive inconvenience and disruption to plans, and a criminal act but more of a thing for fines. This leads to a rather laissez-faire approach to their own and other's lives.

empty flame
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Funny thing is that while there are def nobles doing that stuff, the legal issues surrounding cloning do mean that those nobles can probably never appear in public again

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Also the whole bit with this part of the module was that I ran combat 6, which was the entire party's first time actually killing anyone, which was already kinda rough on the party. They captured Argo and got information about the entire city being in danger which was also rough, but where things got REALLY fucked up was one PC's sponsor essentially blackmailing him into killing Argo.

Despite the fact that the party really didn't like Argo (as per usual), and had even joked about killing him before, this just felt a lot more like an actual murder than anything before, and it really stressed people out, further enhanced by one PC having taken the Blue Blood of Pangloss (as a joke before shit got serious), who ended up seeing a thousand different ways the death could play out.

Overall, the session was stressful enough that two different PCs left it with some shiny new burdens going in to the final two fights!

quartz sentinel
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okay that rocks, that's 100% the kind of traumatic dissonance I wanted to evoke

final frigate
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🚬

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I did the sponsor ball.

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My main take away was not one of satisfaction, but immense disappointment in myself.

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Which is a shame, because I executed everything the way I wanted it to, some great scenes were had, one of the PCs has been stripped of nobility and been disowned. Someone else got their arm shot off.

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Just, lots of good stuff.

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But post-session, we did a temprature check I was informed that one of the players felt frustrated with certain plot points being brought up too soon, and them not being aware of certain info regarding their PC (a clock tracking their reputation over time), and another expressing how stressed the sessions sometimes made them (good stress normally, fun stress, but still stress), and the fact that one of the consistent problems the group brings up, their PCs having little reason to routinely hang out together and such, is still present.

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spent 2 extra hours after the session discussing what happened as well as meta-stuff regarding player, PC, and mechanical knowledge along with the concept of player action impact, 'spotlighting' and players acting in different ways based on information they might otherwise not know.

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Just...gah...

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I'll list out the narrative stuff my players loved later, because it was a successful session, but, I'm mostly coming away from what was likely going to be a make or break big important session feeling like I failed along the way as a GM.

quartz sentinel
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that sounds pretty tough. I hope you get the chance to use it as a learning opportunity rather than getting too discouraged

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it sounds like there were plenty of positive takeaways as well

graceful turtle
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I've been GMing for years and honestly, everyone has those moments where it all goes to shit. I'm sure even the best GMs to ever walk this earth had sessions where they walked away feeling awful, and like, for better or for worse it comes with the hobby. Not every session can be a banger unfortunately. The mark of a good GM however, is to pick yourself back up, learn from your mistakes, and move on, and given that you've already listed what you feel the trouble was, I would say with confidence that you've already learned, and now you just gotta apply it to future sessions. Remember, for every mistake that you've made and learned from, there's a GM out there for some ttrpg who made a similar mistake and didn't learn from it

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To use an analogy, if you're an olympian track runner, and you stumble, that just means you've stumbled. That doesn't mean you've automatically stopped being an olympian track runner. The real test is in picking yourself up and keeping going

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I would still be proud of yourself for what you've done so far and how far you've come, cause even if this was a stumbling block, it doesn't erase the good you've already done ^^

final frigate
# quartz sentinel it sounds like there were plenty of positive takeaways as well

Mhm. It was a lot of high concept ttrpg elements that got brought up to, interesting to discuss, and even better to be more aware of for the future. It's the kind of thing almost no easily accessable ttrpg resource I'm aware of discusses or debriefs much.

I've thankfully still got enough good will, interest and desire to continue the campaign, but, I just need to do so with more situational awareness and appreciation fo the potential long term impacts of OOC actions upon player enjoyment and motivation.

final frigate
graceful turtle
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😤 👍 ✨

rich swallow
rancid coral
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this isn't strictly related to SOTW but it's adjacent so:

for my sotw followup game, I'm making some alternate halo styles for non-karrakin characters. here's the Union and Ungrateful ones

callista.png reformist_burning.png
mild spindle
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one session left!

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combat 7 went really well, good after combat 6 went abit sideways

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gave the players an hour and a half to just yap in a fo-downtime bc I dont normally do that and wanted to go hands off to let them have it b4 we wrap up

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next sesh is just final combat, epilogue, then pulling a real downer ending by killing harrison III, getting the stonelord into prime baron and sending the galaxy to war for next campaign :p

opal chasm
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Might get to start my campaign early due to snow :) the bright side of nasty weather

random mirage
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one of my players is "85% certain" that Rawan is "an Ungrateful infiltrating the college" after describing a scene in a tactical syllabus class where she instinctively positioned allied units on a map further away than necessary from the Sherman opfor

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he immediately caught on that she was instinctively treating them as Tagetes rather than Shermans due to their ability to outrange them, which Ungratefuls in the Concern would be more used to fighting compared to those in the Interest facing Harrison, but he thinks his character wouldn't realize it so he has not said anything yet

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but i am lowkey shocked that he caught that; my players aren't huge lore readers. that said i did include him in the scene because i thought he would have the best chance of catching that lol

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i thought i was being sneaky

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may have given Rawan's identity away a bit too early, but in general my philosophy with gming around hidden information is i would rather have too much setup and clues than not have enough and leave my players feeling like i'm just revealing stuff out of nowhere, or have them never learn anything, so i'm happy with the outcome

graceful turtle
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That or Columbo

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Columbo voice "Ya know, I couldn't help but notice, out of all the students in the class, you put your allied units further back." Points with bent cigar "Now, you seem like a really headstrong, courageous kind of gal. So why play it so safe here, all of a sudden?" scratches head, coughs "Unless you were working from experience, ma'am."

random mirage
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beautiful

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i will forward this to him in a month or something when it is finally confirmed

graceful turtle
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lmao, thank you!

final frigate
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I've been pretty upfront with Rawans seditious intentions from the start, but not clued the group in on what that means exactly.

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Got beat up by Praya cos she called the planet Sanjak and argued for the blockade to be ended.

has admitted she is actually from Bo and not San Simeon, but was able to get papers forged easily, subtly implying she has done this more than once.

Had a heart to heart chat with one of the PCs at an illegal rave where she admitted she wants the baronies to change, for the betterment of everyone, and wonders if such things can be achieved within the system, ultimately deciding that she needs friends in the right places at the right times to be the allies within the power structure to make it happen as she herself is ignoble, and needs noble support in dismantling the systems of oppression.

asked the house sand ignoble PC of the group if she has anything she fights for, then asked if she'd like some suggestions when the answer was no...then, when she said no to that, simply asked if, when she finally does run away to start a new life, she'd defend wherever she called home, so long as it provided for her in turn, then provided her with a list of places to go to, including places in the long rim, among others.

She's scarily good in strategy combat scenerios when it comes to using certain mech patterns (IE, ones she is used to killing, and used to piloting, cos she knows their strengths and weaknesses)

She was the commanding unit of the final sitrep of mission 1, which was on an island map, where waves of explosive wielding soldiers were trying to below up baronic infrastructure, and she was the unit responsible for keeping them safe and mobile.

random mirage
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i see, sounds interesting

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my group has two players from House Altia from the House of Stone (who picked it out of the KTB book completely blind of the historical legacy behind it), and i've been having their house be quite hagiographic specifically in a way that mythologizes the Khayradin Rebellion and the Antiannorum

Argo has been trying to force them to publicly choose between defending Rawan and embarrassing their house, or caving in to social/political pressure from their house and throwing Rawan under the bus, and while they've barely managed to deflect and avoid doing either, Rawan largely sees them as cowards for not standing up for her and isn't as trusting of the group as a whole because of it

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my players' characters are almost entirely nobility (4/5) and mostly see themselves as "apolitical" in the way that those who benefit from systems of oppression can ignore the systems and continue to benefit from them

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but we are quite early in the campaign, so it will be fun to see where they go

rancid coral
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rawan spent most of my game under the impression that players only stood up for her out of a sense of decorum and noblesse oblige rather than any genuine ideological sympathy. That wasn't entirely inaccurate considering my whole party's attitude at the time was to keep their noses out of trouble

random mirage
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that seems very similar to what my players have been doing so far

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especially the two from House Altia

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i'm excited to continue putting them into situations where they have to navigate conflicts between their house's political standing and their personal morals

final frigate
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My campaign started with the group doing so out of humanitarian reasons, rather than ideological, and that was enough for her to want to probe further and see what they actually believed.

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I mentioned it ages ago, but I was struggling to wield her in such a way as to not make her a caricature of 'the outspoken left leaning student on campus', and didn't know what to do with her, so I avoided bringing her up much.

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Then Kat had the baller suggestion of inviting the PCs to an illegal rave.

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Now I've got a much better grasp on her and I'm having a lot of fun with Rawan, who acts as a subtle counterbalance to everyone else on campus without being overt about it so as to avoid drawing too much attention.

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That, and making her friends with Elsa has led to a few good moments.

For example, Elsa Zenova went to the ball....with Elsa Zenova.
Because she and Rawan thought it'd be hysterical if they tried to look almost exactly like each other during the sponsor ball, to confuse the crap out of everyone.

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Also a great play for Elsa since she got to avoid showing any favouritism to any one or any thing without taking the copout answer of dancing with a sub-altern of Eligos, meanwhile Rawan got to talk to high powered nobles and learn stuff under the guise.

carmine trench
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My players are now scheming to stage a danceoff at "the restaurant" (the mess hall) where one player will purposefully throw to make the other look better... in an attempt to make Elsa like the winner? And go to the Cadenze with them?

carmine trench
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"Care to Cadance to de l’ Pavilios with me?"

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incredible work by one of the PCs

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silver vault
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did wenceslaus make this or was it another player

carmine trench
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Wenceslaus made it

silver vault
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awesome

rancid coral
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Obermeyer impeccable taste spotted

rich swallow
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and thus, ended my campaign of terror

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after a year

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we have finished Shadow of the Wolf

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  • Stonelord Hyderadad-Cannamos threw Praya under the bus. He blames it all on her and said that she had Harrison backing as well as manipulated the Khayradin Elites (House Stone's private army) to act with her. House Laurent of House Sand also threw Argo under the bus, giving little reason other than he should own his actions.
  • Stonelord is absolutely lying about not being involved, and Lady le Fleur's expert testimony also dispels any notion that it was a joint-Harrison operation and instead it was simply done by Praya. Stonelord reneges that while Harrison was not involved in the attack, Praya still acted independently of House Stone.
  • Guilty verdict is given to Praya and Argo. Both are stripped of their noble titles and is handed to Union for further investigation and trial since their attempt would've cause mass deaths. House Laurent received the brunt of official sanctions as many of their seats are refused and instead given to burgeoning Republican houses. House Stone does not get hit with official sanctions but still took massive hit in the political scene; it's clear that the Prime Baron has spared them the worst of it, and thinks of them guilty personally. Prime Baron has also pledged a search mission for Eligos and Iphianassa as they are prime witness/suspects in the case.
  • During transport of Praya and Argo by Union ships, the ship was attacked by pirates, and Argo and Praya was slain in the conflict.
  • While they were being transported, the Twins was having dinner with their uncle on their private boat before suddenly their boat was caught on fire, killing all three.
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as context

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the Twins had a hand for Lady Kiriona's death after the exam attack

silver vault
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that sounds like loose ends got tied up

empty flame
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Got the finale (or at least final fight) lined up for SOTW next week and I'm excited for this one. Party is generally down for a bunch of NPCs on the field and a longer session, so I've gone ham with reinforcement pools on both sides as a treat

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got this lil system sorted out for simplifying the NPCs if needed, basically players can choose to take a "support option" instead of putting a mech on the field. Probably wanna clear up some wording and balance tweaks, but I do think this should be good to keep things moving if needed

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opal chasm
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locked and loaded for session 1! provided my players don't roleplay for 3+ hours at the ball, which is a real possibility.

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willow frigate
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got lucky enough to run shadow of the wolf a second time with a larger group of players (6, 1 person who i played with in wallflower as a PC before but dropped out and 5 people who have never played lancer before) and this is the landing page i got for them

quartz sentinel
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these both rock!

willow frigate
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little worried since ive never balanced lancer for new people before and the campaign only goes up to 5 PC's in combat.

probably gonna keep it at the recomendation for 5 people and see how it goes from there if i need to add a grunt or 2

quartz sentinel
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Lancer with six players is definitely rough. I assume you don't have the opportunity to break into two smaller groups?

willow frigate
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In not too worried about the combat balance more just combat taking too long, hopefully me and the 1 experienced player can help with the learning curve of lancer combat

quartz sentinel
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yeah, six player fights take quite a while. With a majority of newbies it's likely to be a lot

final frigate
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🚬

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Depending on how things shake out, my campaign may end prematurely

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Fundamental player playstyle mis-alignments, characters being semi-incompatible, a sense of mild stress between weeks. Etc.

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Its hard to really resolve, and I hope I can.

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If nothing else, ive learned some valuable lessons.

opal chasm
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where we're at after a round and a half...finishing up next session. any tactical advice on the GM side of things for this combat?

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willow frigate
opal chasm
#

i had a player with chomolungma/orator tech attack/scan/use whatever the orator ability is called at the beginning of round 2, so they've got all praya's stats now!

I do need to remember Pilgrim's reactions. I'll make a note to myself! Players want to try and do the same as yours and pick off all the smaller mechs to outnumber Praya/Argo at the end.

willow frigate
opal chasm
#

oh we did, the player was pissed at getting woken up early for another duel after her twin brother beat praya last night (and then sucker punched him) and so shit talking 100% ensued

#

my players hate praya/argo already and want to try and break them up lmao

cosmic blaze
willow frigate
quiet canopy
#

having the same dilemma as some people above, got a party of all newbies and theres 6 of 'em. they're all experienced ttrpg players but new to the system, i've played up to ll12 but this is my first time gm'ing lancer. if anyone has any advice for running for 6 people, it'd be appreciated. AND if possible i'm looking for a way for them to reach ll2 before the last series of combats so they can have a chance to use their shiny new frames, so any advice for speeding up the ll progression / fitting those combats to ll2 mechs would be great :] thanks in advance!

cosmic blaze
#

I ran for 5, which is kinda close. Same advice as above, elite and veteran enemies means less board clutter and less decisions to make on the player side. It also kind of makes combats less tactically complicated because you don’t have to choose between as many targets. For sotw this can be easily done thematically by framing combats as a 6v6 team match, which for balance would mean you just need like 3 double activation enemies (though I’d do just Praya and Argo on their first combat)

Also, it’s useful to present your players with a couple options of what they can do when their turn comes up in the first couple combats, but phrasing it vaguely so you’re not backseating. This is especially useful if you know your players are slotting themselves into a certain niche (like the hacker Chomolungma or sniper), you can guide them towards the actions they’re already going to want to take.

Sort of like “Okay, it’s your turn. What do you do? Do you wish to hack the enemies?” And if they say yes then you can ask them if they’re doing single quick tech or double full tech invades, explaining the difference

It helps cut down on the huge list of actions players can do, most of which are situational.

But other than that you just have to be patient and hold your punches until they’re comfortable with the system (at which point you deploy the ultra vet ronin)

cosmic blaze
# quiet canopy having the same dilemma as some people above, got a party of all newbies and the...

You don’t need to make any changes if you make them ll2 because it’s the same tier of enemies. Just watch out for attrition since their structure repairs now cost double

Your main worry would be making them balanced for 6 players lol. I’d make Argo and Praya ultras in the second mission so they don’t get pummeled in 2 turns
I made them ultras for my party of 4 LL3s and they turned out fine. You can make other NPCs weaker to compensate if you want to

quiet canopy
cosmic blaze
#

You generally want 2x structure (either on the board or in reserves) and 1.5x activations (active on the board) relative to the number of players for a balanced counter, so for 6 players that'd be 12 combined structure and 9 activations. Rather than adding more enemies to the encounters, you'd add elite or veteran templates to enemies that don't have these until you reach these numbers.

So for the first combat for example (taking the 5 player template as a base), by making Aloysius an elite and the extra assassin a veteran you reach 12 structure and 9 activations total, which should be a balanced encounter.

Though I'd personally keep the first combat on the easy side and just run it as if for 5 players (while playing optimally with dataveil).

#

For my Praya and Argo thing ultra would replace the templates they already have. The reason I'd do this is because it keep the bbeg of the scene as the scariest threat, rather than pulling up the other NPCs to even the balance. Facing an ultra BBEG with a couple veteran minions is narratively cooler than if they were all elite veterans

quiet canopy
#

yeah i was just gonna keep the first combat as if it was 5 players and adjust from there. it'll take them a bit to adjust to a crunchy combat system but they're all very good players and i will NOT be surprised if they find some bullshit strat to handle the combat much easier than i anticipate lol

willow frigate
graceful turtle
opal chasm
#

my crew is currently:

Blackbeard
Goblin
Saladin
Metalmark
Swallowtail

tiny rain
#

It was especially egreigious because it was in a one-scene one-shot so we all had our cores

carmine trench
#

One member is still finalizing rn, but currently it's Goblin, Vlad, Nelson, Dusk Wing, Tagetes (Balor/Saladin), and (unfinalized defender, probably White Witch)

#

I helped the Tagetes player with their build, I'm actually super happy with it. It's effectively an Artillery/Defender role, which is pretty unique

silver vault
#

6 player party starting at higher LL

carmine trench
#

Not quite

silver vault
#

good luck friend, I mean it

carmine trench
#

Started at LL0 and then for the second mission we skipped LL1

silver vault
#

interesting

carmine trench
#

Last Lancer game I ran was 6 players and we got up to like LL10 💀

#

I skipped LL1 because we're running a rather short 1-year game, and I wanted to let the new players get more into the buildcrafting side of the game

#

So we like might get a mission at the end w/ LL3/4 but probably not

full turret
#

My players just finished Mission 1 and got a rude awakening in Harlequin’s Knife after stomping most of the training/school content, 3 of them got blowed the fuck up cause they were FAR too cocky and split up to try and get all 3 objectives out

#

Onwards to Mission 2 at LL2!

quartz sentinel
#

love to see it. how many did they get out in the end

full turret
#

They actually managed to get 2, only cause they had Kiriona’s help halfway through though

#

Unfortunately Iphianassa got blown up when one of my player’s mech self-destructed (the video of which will be shown later on, of course)

silver vault
#

they self-destructed Iphianassa? oh they're so cooked

willow frigate
cosmic blaze
dark tusk
#

Okay just had a real big dumb session and we HAVENT EVEN DONE PROM YET.
One of my players was getting told off by Argo for being a moron after a series of very complex layers of sexual tension before stabbing him in their bedroom and Eligor being called in as security by Argo. She has already done layers and layers of crimes and criminal conspiracy and will likely be shot in the face before the cadenza by military police.

#

And we still haven't even gotten to exams yet.

graceful turtle
#

#whoisthisdiva

dark tusk
#

One of my favorite players I've talked about here before:
Bex is a street rat who mugged and killed ZOFRADES ACQUITAR of the House of Sand. Seeing in his locket a promise of a "great treasure" at the campus to be won, she was a close enough image to Zof before a little plastic surgery sealed the deal. She has managed, with the help of Argo (Zof's best friend in life) to make a back door in the computer system at the campus for one of her hacker buddies to replace the gene data on file from Zof to Bex.

She masquerades as him (poorly) on the campus, a gilded prison she can now not leave or exist in. She has sabotaged her credibility as the true Zofrades by not caring about any social rules. She is in a huge amount of gambling debt to the twins after a pankrati tournament. She has stolen Argo's knife once, he's gotten it back, after a heartbreaking monologue about Argo's abusive father he gave it back to her, only for her to stab him with it after their most recent argument.

#

The treasure, the opal of calendula, is the prom tiara of the Cadenza so to speak. Not a prize you keep, but a prize of proximity to an ostrich egg sized jewel to prove to everyone that you are cool and institutionally privileged. She wants to steal it. She will not survive the attempt.

Especially now that Eligor has been called after she stabbed Argo, and Zof's father is inbound to campus as a storied alumni, and Cadenza winner in his time at the campus, to supervise the dance as a guest of honor. So she will likely be taken into a backroom, shot, and cloned with a full subjectivity sync to make sure that the public doesn't realize Zof was killed all those months ago, or compromised by an impostor now. All in time for prom as her player will now play an absolutely dysphoric Zofrades who lives in the wreck she made of his life.

graceful turtle
#

👁️ 👁️

willow frigate
civic snow
# civic snow I ran an intense post-NY session last week that went from beat 3 to the start of...

After a month-long break (one player had finals, the other on a vacation) we're finally back and we jumped from the start of C4 back into a social flashback (Beat 4 was very long but not long enough), which ended up being about a player-organized dorm party in which the Moments Pankrati and the Sand Player tried to manufacture a romantic scandal between Praya and the war-scarred novice from San Simeon who really lacked a spotlight before (and wasn't fully aware of his part in the plot). They wanted to drive a wedge between Praya and Argo. What they did not expect is the novice genuinely flattering himself into seducing Praya, if only on the most surface layer. At the end of the evening of rigged games and manipulation, when Argo finally noticed the subterfuge and discreetly let her know, she was about to invite the guy to her room... And, at the end of the day, her clock with the party went from 1 to 2 (she had fun at the end of the day) and to 4 with the guy himself (she has just noticed him as a person that exists, he was just the right kind of competent and sycophantic, and she does not believe in his capacity for fully lying to her). Argo's clock can't really go lower than 0, and the plot won't change much, but the players had a lot of fun with 0 mechs involved. Oh, and the Primors approved immensely, naturally, which thankfully did not make me change anything about the bombs that already happened after the flashback).

(The Sand player has also started a budding romance with Kay, which, funnily enough, gave them her reserve retroactively, but it won't do much between C3 and C4, and the Moments player and the fourth player (an imperious Order guy who played along) resolved their own subplot about knowing each other before the plot as anonymous gardening enthusiasts and also started something right before the exams).

And, with the swing music still playing in the background (and their heads), we get back to deployment of C4... But that's next session.

quartz sentinel
#

sounds like it's going well!

final frigate
#

welp, my laptop got stolen alongside all of my campaign notes (also my entire lancer supplement I worked 3 years on, among other things).

Hopefully I'll be able to get what I need back together to continue the campaign, since I only have back ups from october of last year...

digital sierra
#

sorry to hear that, hopefully you can remember enough to fill the gaps in a timely manner

final frigate
#

fingers crossed.

#

I'm missing everything from sitrep 2 til the end of act 1, plus notes on act 2.

#

I'm glad I backed up most of this...but it was back in october.

lethal blaze
#

I was wondering if other GMs might have some ideas for how to balance combat 2 - I really want to also include Hedros because I feel like he was such a great critical piece of the fight when I was player-side, but have a table of 3 (one of each GMS, this is the first time they've played lancer) and given how strong he is, I'm not sure I can adequately balance it out by putting an NPC on their side. I'm wondering whether it's worth altering systems a little or just committing to suboptimal play for a couple of the bolder NPCs...

quartz sentinel
#

If I really wanted to try to make that combat work for three but still include Hedros, I would probably drop the Elite template and drop Selective Loader along with it (Moving Target is more important for controlling movement, which is what the sitrep is ultimately designed around), and give them a regular NPC ally - probably something from the Support list

rustic peak
#

I may have written myself into a pickle in regards to Aloysius and his schemes with the Hecatoncheires

At the moment I have him trying to use the plans for it as a honeypot to attract dissidents for Baronic Intelligence to arrest, with the other House of Smoke PC as his main target (but Rawan and others like her as secondary targets)

But my issue is that this seems to make him very passive and not as involved in the scheming as I'd like

#

I know his motivation is to get blackmail and influence in order to become leader of House Smoke, but I'm not quite sure how to make that work

clear nymph
#

I think it's OK if he seems a bit passive. I would concentrate on the npcs the group is interested in. If they decide not to dig deeper into Aloysius then that's just what happens.

ivory salmon
#

cheemskeeper I’m scared for my players next combat

#

We just finished combat 3 and I was looking at the next combat

#

“Not supposed to be fair” dread

rustic peak
#

I think it should be fine to do if the players are aware that they're outmatched, plus the encounter does allow for them to win in theory by extracting all the faculty

willow frigate
random mirage
#

My players just started combat 4; they are quite terrified

#

one is confident they will all die but she also says that every combat

#

they do have two extended compartments though, so i think they'll probably be ok? we'll see when we finish it; it'll still be tough

quartz sentinel
#

good luck to them, hopefully cassandra isn't correct on this one

silver oracle
#

does anyone have foundry grid settings for combat 7 (dynamic entry), including the scene dimensions? it's not sweatingguilt working for me sweatingguilt

#

i tried so many edits....... im calling for help 😂

random mirage
#

yes! this worked perfectly for me; i'm on foundry 12

nqwrIOI.png
random mirage
#

she doesn't know about combat 8b 😭

Od2S4Q2.png
silver oracle
random mirage
civic snow
# civic snow After a month-long break (one player had finals, the other on a vacation) we're ...

We've been catching up after the break and somehow had three sessions in the last 7 days (god Lancer maps are so easy to prep), so, here's the highlight:

  1. I allowed grappling objectives in C4 via usual rules, and even with that, an extremely fortunate Prospector tunnel that forced me to delay the Op-Aeg reinforcement in favor of the Hi-Pyro duo that did nothing, even with Rawan murdering the original Operator... the pankrati girl failed her grapple against Iphianassa and had a choice between running and having to face 4+ enemy machines alone, on Achillea's 1-structure Ronin. The rest urged her to run, and she did, and even then she had to eject from her second wreck in an hour and finish the extraction on foot. I didn't have it in me to kill Iphianassa for real, but she did spend a few weeks in critical (suspense) condition. They blamed HA rather readily.
  2. The Order noble invitied the gang to stay at his family's place, it's literally 20 minutes away (for no particular C8-related reason), they had a lot of fun, the pankrati girl failed a moon heist with Tomas and he learned that sometimes "and what's are you going to do about that?" is the only thing you need to get out of trouble. Fun!
#
  1. Bonds! The Order noble naturally chose Titan, the stealth-obsessed pankrati girl chose Harlequin, the half-disposessed Sand guy is Broker and, naturally, the fish-out-of-water war orphan from San Simeon is a Fool. Classic gang.
  2. C5 was so against them - I rolled the last zone, Aegis blackwalled all entrances to the bottom aside from all the way around (where Rawan waited), Tomas was having fun on the roof, the Harlequin pilot Valiant Charged the wall and left the map... But that made them realize that they can just spring-launch themselves into the last zone, and that's where OpFor started panicking, but it was too late - Aegis got shot mid-transit, letting the Broker out of the wall early, Rawan was too far away, chased from the real objective by Fool's infinite swarms, and on Round 6 the Dataveiled Pyro (who got to shoot 3 burning players, twice) was just rammed out of the zone by 3 players. Almost lost, so much fun!
  3. When you have somebody local, not recognizing a string of coordinates an hour of driving away would be strange - they cracked the message immediately and spent the drive looking at the memes parodying the slander campaign.
#
  1. In C6, Argo jumped 3 mechs at the same time and openly gloated that he didn't know whom to kill first - the whelp who was getting in over his head (the one with bizzarely succesful charm offensive against Praya), or the fellow Sandboy who they should have killed along with his parents (dun dun dun!). Somehow, he survived this - Opfor looks scary, but has surprisingly few sources of good damage. The Broker got 1 Coreworm but got better, the Harlequin got 3 Coreworms, a spin-kick into the wall... and then was pried out of the cockpit by a very disoriented Hornet, after which she promptly went invisible and gave the mech over to the CC Rig (can it do that? I got argued into yes). 2 brave Priests had to rush into the fray and explode, but Investiture+Shield+Fractal Assault is enoush of a discouragement to attack Argo that eventually, when his only weapon blew up, he said something snarky and was able to retreat with his last 8 hp in Round 6, along with a surviving Hornet and 3 (!) Grunt Scouts (so much Lock On, so little impact). And that's where we are - with a captured Spectre pilot (tried to stab the invisible Harlequin pilot, missed, ran and burned down), background mysteries answered and the players joking that Kahin wasn't a very good augur to get merced like this (he-he-he)
#

Which brings me to an actual GM question - I have encountered a very fun and not strictly-predicted outcome where the players escape and C6 happens, but Argo escapes with his mech still functional. Do I bring him into C8, maybe ordering a fresh copy of his Assassin printed from captured facilities while he's en route? How badly will that affect C8 (I expect them to be on a very good time, they have Bought Time, good instincts and a few extra reserves they can convert into more time)? Do I just give them a second ally to compensate (everyone but the poor Aloysius meets the criteria)? The players suffered really badly against Praya+Argo in C1, but it would be very book-endy to allow them to beat the same duo again. Alternatively, I can have him live another day, perphaps for a mission 3 - but, then again, that may still happen if he's this slippery, even if I bring him back here.

quartz sentinel
#

Both approaches could be fun. There's something very satisfying about having him show up to the final combat, but also you've been handed an absolutely golden opportunity to keep him as a recurring villain later on down the line. What are your plans after you're done with the module?

civic snow
#

I'm seeing how long it will go, I'll definitely take a bit of a break to write things out after M2 ends, but the players have expressed the desire to stay in the College at least for a little while longer, so I think I'll give them just that - the repairs necessary will give them enough time for a full mission somewhere else in the Concern for whoever calls on them to unravel the rest of the conspiracy (many options - the Titan's family has connections both to BI and DoJ/HR, the Alfarozes have noticed the party as well, etc), mission 4 might honestly be just a final hoorahh for the College with relatively few twists, as they see the next generation of students come in and look up to them, while the Primors/Aloysius/Rawan begin to actually play their cards, and then we either follow that or Blink 1 finally gets finished and I begin mining Battlegroup for further plot developments. So a lot of plans, honestly, and the players seem receptive.

willow frigate
#

Im halfway through c1 with my group of 6 and they are slowly learning the ropes of the game

rustic peak
#

A complication has arisen.
My players have sold out Rawan's identity of being an Ungrateful agent to the Primors, and therefore to the entire rest of the college and now I'm sitting trying to plan this week's session going "oh no why did I give them the option to do this"

#

Rawan is absolutely going to have to flee and go underground

bright topaz
#

hey its better than a player selling her out to baronic intelligence and her disappearing halfway through the module only to return later with no memory of anyone she met before

rustic peak
#

oh gods that's horrifying
Takes notes

empty flame
#

Well I don't know that the twins would spread that to everyone right away. They need to hold a few things close to the chest for blackmail purposes

clear nymph
#

They also want to discredit the Chancellor. I could see them holding onto that and either trying to induce or frame Rawan for something

tame mauve
#

Alright, I'm wanting to pick y'all's brains on what to do with Argo post SotW. Praya got executed and her mirror creche wiped, but Argo slipped away thanks to Seneschal's Forbearance power.
Currently, I'm thinking of having him join up with the Maw and raid the Voladore's Bajamesa, and later show up as an ally when the Dawnline Shore inevitably goes hot. I'm not sure on if he ought to join with the Maw, since how sane it is seems to vary a lot by source. What'd be some other solid groups for him to link up with? Passacaglians perhaps? I've ran him as a True Believer in the KTB, so it's not likely that he'd defect to Harrison.

#

He could run solo, but I also want to justify him using an Ultra Ronin or Assassin, and that jump in power needs a reason.

empty flame
#

So I think the big question is whether or not you think the House of Sand would want him back with where he ended up

#

I do think The Maw is probably a bit out there as an option for a few reasons, and Neo Passacaglian ideology might have some tension with Argo's specific deal, but there's also no shortage of Hagiographic Karrakin detachments and cynical mercenary groups in Lancer's setting that would love a skilled pilot and assassin

honest holly
#

"Rightwinger forced to rub shoulders with people he thinks are idiots because he's in too deep to go anywhere but down" is a good vibe

#

Something adjacent to Andrew Wakefield going from a licensed-if-deeply-immoral doctor hocking his own vaccine to having to peddle his wares to people who think all vaccines have satanic microchips

tame mauve
#

Yeah, the trick with alternate groups is finding one that could reasonably jump a Voladore ship without getting pasted by sparri espadas.

rustic peak
#

So: Rawan is on the run but not before telling the players about the Hecatoncheires and threatening them to not trust anyone. And now the players are going to be fighting a buttload of Sanjak-named mechs

#

I doubt the PCs will blame Rawan for this but it would be interesting

tame mauve
#

I got it -
When Argo escaped, he grabbed one of the Khayradin mechs equipped with Void Rend, using that to evade capture during the immediate fallout of the attack. He then trades the mech to the Blinkwalkers, who are looking into expanding operations into the Firmament, in exchange for taking him in and letting him reestablish himself.
The Blinkwalkers then attack the Voladore's Bajamesa mid-Blink, stranding it in the middle of The Long Rim, setting up the conflict for the upcoming mission.

bold musk
#

Apologies for the ping out of the blue, but I actually had a question about a piece of art from SotW for @quartz sentinel- are these two in the splash piece of a pankrati match supposed to be House of Moments folks? I know in the other half of the image this is snipped from there's a Moments banner alongside a Glass one on the arena wall
(mainly asking for the sake of trying to note down some potential palettes for doing custom art for SoTW stuff)

image.png
quartz sentinel
#

I didn't specify, you could ask EM Fields who did the piece if you want to be sure

bold musk
#

gotcha, apologies for bothering then

empty flame
#

Oh I had assumed they were House of Stone given the uniform-like style and red/black/gold color palette

final frigate
#

House stone doesn't wear that much black, I think, and has a different shade of red?

#

Honestly it could be a pair of pro ha nobles.

#

Or just ha reps

random mirage
#

With the use of two expanded compartments and a hyperspec fuel injector, my players were able to save all three faculty members in combat 4—at the cost of 2/5 mechs (with one pilot literally running Iphianassa and Castor to the extraction zone on foot from the wreckage of his mech), and Lady Kiriona, who went out grappling an operator to prevent him from teleporting across the map to ram the player getting Iphianassa and Castor to the finish

honest holly
#

Oh God I just realized my last message was in the wrong thread

silver vault
random mirage
#

she's in the hospital in critical condition, and will probably be there for a while

#

i didn't even expect them to ask for help from Kiriona in this fight over Tomas or Rawan, so i'm not prepared yet for how it's going to affect the rest of the campaign, but i have ideas and i will make this matter

mild spindle
mild spindle
#

Praya and a player are having a fist fight in the final combat bc she lost all her weapons and his mech blew up

image.png
#

so shes like "lets settle this the way it started" and challanged them to a brawl 💀

random mirage
#

beautiful

mild spindle
#

so she just ended up stuck there in the epilogue with a lot of baggage to process

rustic peak
#

In my notes I've called it the "Hi, I'm framing Rawan!" mech

willow frigate
#

hey idk if its been brough up but im prepping combat 3 and saw this?

the scout's weapon doesnt do any damage so where does the 1d6 bonus damage on a crit from deadly do?

image.png
empty flame
#

I'd assume it's just kinetic?

willow frigate
#

lock on and shredded damage

north knot
#

scout marker rifle still rolls to attack and apply the lock-on and shred. if hesketh crits with the marker rifle he deals 1d6 damage

silver vault
#

pointing at someone so hard their mech explodes

glass prism
#

I imagined him as a deft marksman with exceptional fire discipline who only shoots when he knows he can land the shot on a weakpoint

north knot
#

yeah, I think you could envision it as there being a tracking dart the marker rifle hits a chassis with, and then when it crits it manages to hit a soft spot that can actually do damage. that's how I usually handle it

graceful turtle
soft elbow
#

that or kinetic for some dart

empty flame
#

Yeah I usually envision the marker rifle as a tracking dart but either could work

mild spindle
#

Prayas wonderful younger brother who has never betrayed anyone ever and his wonderful boyfriend who have never betrayed anyone ever <3

faceoff_karrakin.png
#

showed up in the last session just to call her a disappointment and become daddys new favorite heir

#

hes building a house of cards of really trustworthy people

quartz sentinel
#

I love them 😍

mild spindle
#

One of the things I kinda changed was Prayas motive, just bc of how we've ran the stonelord and the house in the past I didnt think blowing up half of throne karrakiz was really something theyd do. All they need is one ungrateful attack to spin the narrative.

#

So I had the whole attack thing be a bit of a test the stonelord had set for a few of his many kids to see who was worthy of heirdom

#

And bc Praya left enough loose ends to get picked up by the PCs he showed up and went "I'm cutting you out from the will, heres your younger brother you've never met who's better than you, goodbye we'll never speak again"

#

So then the whole final act was her legendary crashout/attempt at a mutany trying to either win his favor back or kill him or whatever idk if she really had a plan

#

Made my players feel really bad for her avakabaka. I had one play as her with that origins scene posted earlier (instead of being a clone and getting offed Stoney was like "be thankful your not a clone and I dont just kill me dont you see how much effort I've put into you arent I great father") and reprise the role to do another scene at the start of the finals sesh.

#

Shes processing it all on Sanjak now tho 💀

#

Officially her and Argo both died preventing an ungrateful attack on throne karrakiz.

graceful turtle
rustic peak
#

my players saved everyone in Combat 4! just barely, and with some minor rule shenaniganery, but they did way better than I expected them to

#

I need to learn to stop underestimating them lol

wheat dove
#

I'm bursting at the seams after our session yesterday.

We just got to Combat 4, which is where we stopped in our original run when our original GM dropped and I picked up the reigns. Not just because I'm interested to see how many if any staff members they can rescue, but also this is another domino falling in Lord Tomas' slow radicalization.

One of the PCs is a refugee from DS-11 and resents her House of Rememberance keeper. They've developed feelings for each other and she's been enflaming his own frustrations with the Baronies' conservatism.

#

Honestly, yesterday's session was so good I could've run for like five more hours if that was a possibility.

quartz sentinel
clear nymph
#

Delicious

trim heath
#

Finished mission 1 last night. Nearly killed Kiriona bc one of my pcs is dating her but they gave up one of their activations to evacuate her. One of my pcs attempted to vomit on Lady Diana to avoid admitting that he thought Ungratefuls did it and now his dad is pulling him out of school bc it's too dangerous. Meanwhile our Horus dogboy's handler has secretly tasked him with stealing another player's NHP just as he was starting to fit in. Mid-season point so the trauma can begin, yay!

#

Oh, and not a one made it out of that combat with a mech. They got Imani and thought "well we have a few extra rounds, we can save everyone" 💀

trim heath
#

And one detonated their mech to give the remaining instructors a quick death rather than whatever was coming so Praya's upcoming speech just got a whole lot more convincing. I love this book.

random mirage
#

that's incredible

crisp grotto
#

I'm coming up to Combat 3 tomorrow! The team has two Begum designer babies, one of whom is casually involved with Kiriona, and a massive golden retriever himbo who is somehow great friends with the twins (he thinks the pranks are genuinely random happenstance and helps clean up after them unknowingly).

#

Set up the map in advance.

IMG_20260220_181553.jpg
final frigate
#

Holy shit, that rocks.

#

You even have a relationship clock chart?!?!?!

#

Duuuude

graceful turtle
#

If people keep putting this much effort and talent into making their Lancer games more immersive, it's only going to be a matter of time until we just start getting mechs IRL lmao

tame mauve
#

The player-facing monitor is a really good idea

crisp grotto
crisp grotto
# tame mauve The player-facing monitor is a really good idea

It's super useful. I also use it for clocks and anything else players need tracking for like objectives, player stress, and important things to take note of. (I'm thinking of sneaking in Augur Kahin's forecasts there in a slightly different shade from the background).

civic snow
# civic snow 6) In C6, Argo jumped 3 mechs at the same time and openly gloated that he didn't...

Just cleared B10 and C7 with my team. B10 went near-perfectly, except they missed the Blue Blood Reserve, but they spent their bought time to do a quick prep for bomb defusal, so they're definitely getting accuracy anyway (instead of a "maybe" that module gives by default). Then they converted the twins' blackmail into more time via forcing some of the checkpoints to just let them go straight to the College. C7... Well, there are very few ways to lose C7 unless you start badly damaged, Harlequin's striker mech got cut off after diving to the objective before the bottom Squad+Bastion cut that option off for the rest of them, and she finished the fight with two structures (two Hound Missiles, one on Exposed, but she passed the save there thankfully). I gave them a fun scene where they enter the Great Hall and face several squads + LockOns on their faces telling them to surrender, but then said squads get demolished by all of their friends (minus Eliza, who temporarily stole the newly-organized Student Coucil Councilor position and is organizing the evac of the non-combat personnell, and Vivian, who got hit for drama's sake, forcing Valentine to finally look like they care, for once, and go berserk). They spent their last Bought Time to do a bit more repairs, and I'm allowing them to do a mech swap here, so the Harlequin player is stuck deciding between having a 3/3 Everest with 0 Repairs that fits her build or a 4/4 Taraxacum/Tagetes with 1 Repair that really doesn't. They could really cheat the system if they built Manipulators into one of the latter, but I'm not telling them that, they have enough pieces to figure it out anyway. They also have to choose TWO allies for the next combat, because I did make it a plot point that the attackers temporarily seized the printers and printed something (Sandman v.2) there, and Argo WILL be there for the final fight (I do expect him to run again, placing his survival over whatever he has with Praya). The final hour approaches.

carmine trench
#

One of my players made another House Bo press release after the events of Meat For The Meat Grinder

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silver vault
#

Glad to see someone's in the party's corner somewhere, even if it is off-world

lethal blaze
#

Update - combat 2 did work with 3 players and Hedros by removing Selective Loader and giving them Tomas as an ally. They scraped out a well fought victory by 1 point.

odd kayak
#

After a thousand thousand years, our main table finished and Im free enough in my day to day to run Shadow of the Wolf

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yippie

clear nymph
#

Extraction that I inserted into the exam went very well. The players punched through the MBT, Archers, and Rainmakers but got slowed down enough for reinforcements of Aces and a Scout to arrive. One of my players put a secondary compartment on their mech so I allowed them to carry out ELIGOS's subaltern that is playing the VIP to be rescued. But they got caught by the Demolisher I had guarding the base and got stunned on the other end of the field from the extraction zone. The Sagarmatha player proceeded to cook their mech boosting and fireman carrying their fellow to the extraction. The Stablemaster arrived as reinforcement at the very end and proceeded to predatory logic the group sniper to fire their Andromeda laser at our techie character, structuring them. But thanks to great team work and creative use of grappling and dragging other players everyone was able to get out in the nick of time.

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The party is out of repairs, all their mechs are beat up, and they are looking forward to delivering ELIGOS to the college hunting lodge and ending the exam. They have no clue the Harlequin's Knife is about to descend

#

One of our players is a clone that isn't aware his original self survived and has signed up with Praya's faction. So when their mech shut down during the rest after detecting the player appearing to have two mechs active, the player thought it was because they were trying to reinforce their IFF to guard against the Stablemaster's tech attacks. But now Praya has video footage of that player opening the teleport for the enemy to ambush the exam

odd kayak
#

To those who ran the campaign from beginning to end: How many sessions did it took yall?

crisp grotto
#

My players managed to get everyone out in the Harlequin's Knife, though it was close. They almost lost Underbaron Iphianissa and Lord Castor. No repairs, two mechs destroyed and one other on one structure.
The man shaped golden retriever from Tilisman ran the last two turns on foot with the unconscious Underbaron in a princess carry, shielding her with his body.
I decided to let the players shield the faculty with their mechs when any AoEs overlap them, which came in useful once the Pyros showed up and the Aegises started self-destructing.

final frigate
#

alright, it has been a while since my last campaign update, so, may as well pull off the bandaid.

#

we had the sponsor ball, where students at the end of their first year got to showcase how much they've grown in a high society fashion, as well as begin to make political connections.

Highlights include:

= Rawan and Elsa dressing up exactly like each other, makeup and all, before going out onto the dance floor, confusing everyone for the fun of it since no one could tell them apart
= The toxic ace PC, who had been a bit alienated by the other students, found that if they were forced to marry anyone, Tomas would be their first and only choice. He not only stood up for her, but sought her out to ask for her hand during the ball, during which the two were the single most impressive performance
= Three NPCs played wingman for a 4th, all to get a PC into his arms so they could have a romantic dance in front of everyone.
= Aloynious didn't have anyone to dance with him (hence the meme, thank you lxcoco), cos he's a cuck chud ||and because i ran out of NPCs to pair up.||

They all got to hobknob with the other sponsors of other students, as well as get the impression from their own sponsors on how they've been doing. Foreshadowed how house sand, stone, and even a prick from house glass (who sponsored the twins so he can spy on the arch chancellor) are working together for some grand scheme.

Then, the big moment, where I think I fucked up.

aloysius_alone.png
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So, one of the PCs is a gene-spliced clone of the original Hestia Razumovsky, an illegally made one, because they have the imprinted memories of the original up to a certain point to. She was already on thin ice politically, owing to how she spent time in the HA colonial legion before coming back to the KtB, and I made it clear that she'd need to behave a little to stay in the good graces of her sponsor, the father and mother of the original Hestia.

She...was ok, for the most part, but, then she went ahead and destroyed Prayas reputation publicly in a duel in the lykeon, mere moments after another PC (the toxic Ace one) managed to accidentally convince the entire campus she and Argo were having an affair by pinning him to a balcony railing with a knife at his throat...but most people didn't see the knife, so they assumed they were kissing, including Praya.

This then had Argo set the twins onto her, who seduced the PC, made them engage in sexually softcore activities in public (groping, tongue on tongue kissing, etc), and all but ruined their standing all that much more by bring dishonor onto the house name. As a result, her dad and mother disowned her during the sponsor ball and let slip that she was a clone.

#

This led to Hestia almost shooting them, but blah blah blah, she didn't, got sent to a jail for a bit to cool off, and for the revelations now made public to be resolved.

End result, she's now under SSCs thumb, as they created her, and the contract stated she reverted back to their care as a constellar citizen if there was any question of the legal status of her citizenship.

#

It's a neat plot point, and I enjoyed it in the moment, since I've been building up to it, but, in the aftermath?
The player and I have been struggling to find a plot thread for the PC to follow now.

They're back on campus as an SSC sponsored student, she still has her PC friends, although most NPCs wanna keep her at arms length (except like, rawan and a few others). But they don't feel like they've got much they can pursue independently any more as opposed to everyone else.

It also meant the sponsor ball got cut a little short, so they couldn't all speak to other sponsors.

#

So now, after the time skip summer break they all took, a pankrati tourney will be starting up on campus, where each squad needs to be sponsored by a teacher, and the conspiracy will begin to ramp up in the process to. The plot is moving forward and group OOC cohesion is way stronger than It was a few weeks ago since everyone is on the same page and working together now, but....idk

carmine trench
#

For the Enter Sandmen combat, is the expectation that the players start outside of their mechs?

clear nymph
#

No idea, but that's what I'm doing

carmine trench
#

I think I will prob have each player roll get somewhere quickly, fail is like stunned turn one

quartz sentinel
carmine trench
#

okay thank you!

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straight up wormin' it

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RFK type beat

civic snow
#

By the way, did anybody actually run the popular headcanon of "Tomas is egg/repressing"? If so, how did it go, what did it amount to? The post-module plot is taking the party pretty close to Tomas, whom they already like, and I'm lowkey wondering if I should. Each table is different, obviously, but I do want to compare notes.

final frigate
#

I know a few here have, but I cant remember whom.

rustic peak
#

I was thinking of doing it but in the end I decided to focus more on his wanderlust because it opened up conflict with the PC who's romancing him

final frigate
#

Ive been running him more as a "tortured poet" type, straight out of the pages of a book like "the sorrows of young werther"

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Hes like...too tender souled to be a pilot, and too sensitive to be the ruthless baron of his house, but he is slowly being traumatised by the college into being what is demanded of him.

Meanwhile the girl squad all love him except one pc, and they wanna try and make him become a potent diplomat and orator in preparation for the interest war, since they saw in a pangloss blood reading that he'd be a key figure in dictating post conflict terms in some potential timelines.

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From Last Scion to the Green Willow.

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If they didnt intervine I was planning on having him die a pathetic death in the interest war, ending his house line. So them messing with the lad is only for the better.

rustic peak
final frigate
#

A lot of npcs just kinda die in it unless the PCs intervine XD

Im planning on killing off maybe 5 or six students in the wolfs teeth mountain range exam as well.

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Rn, kirionia, one of the twins, elsa and two other are likely to go. Not sure who the other two should be, but im drawn towards nadeer and kay.

quartz sentinel
#

are you sure that's a good idea? I know it adds drama but I would expect it to be quite hard to carry Mission 2 narratively speaking

#

unless your players are just not interested in the NPCs I suppose

clear nymph
#

One death is a tragedy, the more you add the less narrative weight I feel.

final frigate
# quartz sentinel unless your players are just not interested in the NPCs I suppose

Thats the main thrust tbh.
Ive added a mission in-between 1 and 2, a pankrati tourney, with the wolfs teeth exam on top. By that point it'll be clear who the group care about, and whom I can kill for the purposes of raising stakes, thinning the cast and getting use out of NPCs who have hitherto barely been relevant throughout the narrative thus far.

I wanna go into mission 3 (the modules original mission 2) with a suitably dour tone, and so I can highlight the relationships the squad has with NPCs they've already invested time into. The excess student body is narrative fat.

I may only kill 2 or 3 in wolfs teeth, and then another 2 or 3 during the campus assault, rather than all in one go, to spread it out and reinforce the tone, but, I dont think I can do much more with them besides this

final frigate
#

Id like to do more with kay, nadeer, kirionia and Elsa, but the prior 3 have sorta formed their own friendship clique, and Elsa is only really friends with one PC because they go to the same book club.

Ill probably have them all as a squad in the tourney, but I am not sure what else is worth pursuing with them.

#

Elsa is the only one thats semi important, but only in the sense that she has hobknobed a lot with the group.

cosmic blaze
# final frigate Thats the main thrust tbh. Ive added a mission in-between 1 and 2, a pankrati t...

I killed off Hedros and one of the twins in wolfs teeth for the same purpose, and from my experience the shock wears off fast and the deaths ended up being very forgettable. Although it'll set the tone initially, it won't keep the players invested for long, and you're throwing away NPCs you could use later. Perhaps instead of killing NPCs in the background, you can instead put them in danger in a way that the PCs can intervene (perhaps as allies during C3 and C5?). Or injure ones that they care about and make them unavailable during downtime (can still talk to them but can't bring them along for the downtime actions). Which would give you opportunities to develop the other npcs.

cosmic blaze
# clear nymph One death is a tragedy, the more you add the less narrative weight I feel.

To add onto this, it's why Kahin's death sorta works even though it shouldn't. It's a scripted "death" that the players can't do anything about and just sort of happens for the sake of advancing the plot and setting the tone. He gets just enough set up to appear important, but not enough for the party to get attatched to him in any level. But even though his death is cheap it's kind of the only death that can happen in the module as written that the players can't control. So it sort of feels earned by that point.

If you're killing off named NPCs before Kahin's death then I'd rework that section to have more of an impact. It's what I did, in my campaign it was an NPC the players cared about that lured them into the warehouse to tell them about the bomb.

rustic peak
#

It's almost time for the Sandmen to make their appearance

#

I'm very curious to see if this shakes my noble player's beliefs at all

quiet canopy
civic snow
#

@odd kayak @quiet canopy

I pulled up my records and, assuming that tomorrow's session will be the end of the written content (last combat + denouement), my SotW took 8 sessions. One of them was a full-day session that took us from the start of Beat 2 to the start of C4, but the session after that was a full flashback because the players didn't have enough RP in beat 4, so it probably evens out.

Actually, since I'm already here, let's do it in full.
(Session 0)
Session 1: Up to the end of C1
Session 2 (big): Beat 2 - C3 inclusive
Session 3 (extra): Beat 4 flashback
Session 4: C4 + Downtime
Session 5: Start of M2 to C5 inclusive
Session 6: Beat 8, Beat 9, C6
Session 7: Beat 10, C7
Session 8 (presumably): C8a, finale

quartz sentinel
#

I've seen groups take anywhere from about 8 sessions to around 16 depending on session length and the amount of extra/expanded content the GM runs with

#

I would say that 12 is a reasonable average

rustic peak
#

Combat #6 for me is roughly session 10 I think

civic snow
#

Just scrolled up long enough and found out that Mission 1 used to be split in the drafts. That checks out, my players did feel that M1 is somewhat scuffed in the middle, we go Day 1 (Beat 1-2) - Day 2 (C1, Beat 3) - Day 3 (C2) - THE REST OF THE YEAR/SEMESTER (Beat 4) - Exam Day (Beat 5 onwards). Worked out in the end, I'll be fullfilling the urge for More College in M4. I get why the trimming was done, but my table specifically would have loved the 3-mission module anyway.

final frigate
#

Or at least close to that.

quartz sentinel
#

I still wish I could have written the original three-mission pitch, but such are the exigencies of producing a publishable module

#

we already had to raise the price on this one due to increased costs related to word/pagecount and a third mission would have been untenable

final frigate
# cosmic blaze I killed off Hedros and one of the twins in wolfs teeth for the same purpose, an...

Right now, theyre trying to minimise casualties and prevent the conspiracy from gettinf what they want out of the wolfs teeth exam attack. They know about it because they took the blue blood of pangloss and had hazy visions.

So they've got until the end of the pankrati tourney to do just that, and also do some scheme-y political maneuvering. Im not sure if I should bulk out the mission further than I already have, but I def do want some npcs being put in harms way during the false ungrateful attack.

final frigate
quartz sentinel
#

the original pitch had a Pankration tourney acting as the high point of Mission 1, with the Cadenze and the Hounds Teeth Range stuff taking place during a Mission 2, and Mission 3 running largely as-written. Essentially this was all compressed down into what became Beat 4, with those things noted as options for GMs looking to expand the module

#

While I say that I wish I could have written the longer version, I do think the final version is punchier and potentially a better product as a result

#

as a GM it's much, much easier to extend a module than to cut things out so I would always rather cut more stuff as the writer and provide hooks for extending things, than produce something that's too long

#

my desire stems purely from my vanity as a writer, not with my module production hat on

final frigate
#

As is, i found it easy to cut and shift things around, as well as expand where I felt appropriate, but what I truly appreciate is that how one chooses to expand the module can lead to wildly different iterations of it.

#

Some of my favourite modules have this more firmly defined, where the GM is given bits and pieces to assemble into various configurations, but the set up of shadow wolf allows for something similar.

split bobcat
# quartz sentinel my desire stems purely from my vanity as a writer, not with my module production...

It's always so interesting to me to read these insights from you guys as authors, as I heard similar remakes from Kai about osr and ows, what gets left on the cutting room floor and what makes it, etc.

If you don't mind me asking, is it possible you'd ever write up something on your own time (imaginary world where your time is infinite and not demanded elsewhere of course) of the adventure as you originally imagined it? Or is that so entirely different, and as a part of the process it's seen enough changes/edits/rewrites that you could scarcely imagine it any other way now?

#

I just think it's really neat to read about the intended vision and I always want to get in that headspace as a GM who, more often than not, ends up fleshing x and y out and expanding things to better fit each group

quartz sentinel
#

Honestly at this point probably not unless I were writing a novelization or something. For my own sake I have to be able to leave work to stand on its own merits at some point, endlessly tinkering with something is a mindkiller

#

plus I have a bunch of other stories to tell and I wouldn't want to pigeonhole myself as a writer

odd kayak
#

so I guess I was right

quartz sentinel
#

I remember when Tom sent me the first email inviting me to pitch SOTW he told me that Massif weren't looking for more stories involving NHPs since they'd featured heavily in the previous round, but he was willing to make an exception for me. At that point though I was ready to move on and work on other stuff so I turned down that particular offer

odd kayak
#

btw do Y'all think its alright if we just start on LL1 or do y'all think I should make some adjustment for that? they are veterans (we have another table where we started 0 and are LL6) so they begged me to start at 1

quartz sentinel
#

ELIGOS sort of exists as a nod to wanting to move on from Legionnaire, since it intentionally exists as a background character with a personality that isn't immediately agreeable or personable

#

LL1 should be fine, just be wary of the balance shift in Mission 2 since if they're no longer in GMS frames they'll lose access to Replaceable Parts

#

I think it's quite interesting to look at the different narrative positions the module NHPs occupy

#

there's probably an essay in there somewhere

civic snow
odd kayak
#

and honestly seeing your message about the pankrati tournament Im very tempted to run it

civic snow
odd kayak
#

even if I'd have to homebrew some stuff

civic snow
#

Like, we started at ll0 and my group entered M2 with 2 non-GMS frames, could have been all 4 if the playstyles matched

odd kayak
civic snow
#

fair

odd kayak
#

which is a shame

#

I love em

#

I was thinking on starting at LL0 and skip to LL2 after the range missions to raise the stakes, but there is a new player there and maybe that'd be bad for them

civic snow
#

The option to keep exotics in reserve and switch to them when needed is still a powerful tool, right now one of my players is doing a switch to a Taraxacum before 8a (there was narrative and reserve allowing for a more proper rest), and she figured out that Manipulators could be useful, which will be a huge help when they hear the sitrep proper tomorrow.

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I expect the Valiant Charge Taraxacum to be absolutely glorious, if short-lived

civic snow
final frigate
#

Eligos has been a fun mainstay of the game.

#

Having his eternally scowling, burnt visage appear in reflective surfaces and manifest out of them as a hardlight construct to make sure students behave is fun.

clear nymph
#

My group managed to get Hedros's Tagetes friendship bonus. The sniper character using it in the my mission 2 exam is definitely missing Replaceable Parts

civic snow
#

Yup. Even with 4 extra repairs that you can get in M2 (first combat + Kay), my Hecatoncheires player is down a mount and either a stress or a structure before the last combat. The poor boy's RepCap is 3 by default, after all.

odd kayak
#

Do yall think 6 players is too much

civic snow
#

Tends to be, yeah, worse so in an online game where there is only one audio channel, worse so if some players are new/shy and tend to be on the outside of a baseline social interaction unless continuously prompted to engage. Longer sessions, longer combats, more work for the dm, more time not actively doing things for every player involved. I've had decent 5 player games with experienced gms and pre-established player relations, 6 is very often not attempted.

north knot
#

6 players is doable, you've just gotta be aware that lancer isn't built for it so there's some additional balancing you're going to have to do and like anadyn said, a fair amount of extra legwork to make sure everyone is feeling involved and such

ivory salmon
#

My group's relationship clocks after the last battle in mission 1

SPOILER_Screenshot_20260303_185517.png
carmine trench
# quartz sentinel I've seen groups take anywhere from about 8 sessions to around 16 depending on s...

I am just through with Combat #6, I believe it's taken 14 sessions. Looking like 18 to finish the campaign. Sessions usually have like 3.5h of gameplay, so around 60h total. My group is a bit slow with combat, and I have generally added the extra RP content where possible, particularly about two sessions-worth of Cadenze content.

iirc my session breakdown so far is

  • B1-2
  • C1
  • B3-C2
  • C2-B4
  • B5
  • C3
  • C4
  • B6-DT
  • B7 and getting Cadenze dates
  • C5
  • B8 (classes)
  • Cadenze-B8
  • Cadenze-B9
  • C6.

With the group's current pace, I expect the remaining sessions to be B10, D7, C8A/B, B11.

Really enjoying the module so far! LANCER campaigns tend to be very combat-heavy, so I appreciate the more narrative focus in SotW.

civic snow
civic snow
#

Quick question: Does the tear caused by Void Rend disappear if its creator is destroyed/the system is destroyed via System Trauma as normal, or does it persist until the end of the scene?

quartz sentinel
#

it lasts until the end of the scene

tame mauve
#

One of my players has started writing up the party's experience with SotW. They're about 80k words in intensifeyes

civic snow
# civic snow Just cleared B10 and C7 with my team. B10 went near-perfectly, except they misse...

So, we're officially done with the module! Turns out that 2 Agi Pankrati 2 Taraxacum with Manipulators is exactly what this sitrep needed! The balance with adding one extra ally to compensate for 1 full Argo (I did have the attackers briefly take the Stables for the express purpose of restoring his chassis) worked out pretty well, the players took Kiriona and Rawan. The Harlequin player got pinned + Heated-Bladed (again), then flew straight to the bomb only to get spin-kicked (again) and shelled by the drones (for the first time), and none of that stopped her from getting right back to the bomb and doing Defuse-Overcharge-Defuse. That turned every remaining head on the field. Argo, by then disarmed (again) kicked her off of the bomb one activation and dealt her 1->0 damage to her 1 remaining hp with Improvised Attack on the next. That caused Praya to cause half the battlefield in two activations and pin her, and then Hemlock caused a Direct Hit that exploded the unfortunate Taraxacum. The Harlequin wasn't going to use it anyway at this point - she just ejected past the bomb and defused the last core directly. Praya (also disarmed) tried to basically step on her for that and missed. Galanthus blatantly ignored her orders and attacked a different mech. By the end of the 5th round, no Opfor pilots remained on the field - the somewhat heartbroken Fool did try to stab into Praya's now-defunt cockpit, but she ejected into the tear as well.

At the end of the day, the party had a very limited amount of direct evidence, and Lady Diana quickly convinced them that being physically present in front of the Stonelord, the Prime Baron and the rest of the Baronic Council wasn't the best idea for their well-being. Which is why over the course of the downtime they're going to find one reason or the other to end up on Arrudye, and, with no official sanctions and all kinds of unofficial support, continue the investigation while attending the rebuilding College remotely.

#

Kat, thank you so much for your work! This is one of the best modules I ever played or DMed, Lancer or not, and I have everything I need to do a full-fledged campaign on my own going forward.

#

Obviously, the rest of it is past the scope of this thread, but I'll allow myself to be self-indulgent one last time:

image.png
rustic peak
tame mauve
odd kayak
quartz sentinel
#

hell yes, that rocks

#

thank you so much for sharing that with us, it sounds like an awesome final fight

burnt iris
rustic peak
civic snow
rancid coral
odd kayak
#

Hello I have a dumb question that probably is somewhere in the book

#

How long do they study at the college?

#

like, normally

#

when it isnt exploded or almost exploded

honest holly
#

Deliberately left ambiguous

civic snow
#

The way I look at it after running, Mission 1 is one semester and mission 2 is at the beginning of the second one. I ended up running M1 as a year and currently debating completing M3 as either rest of the semester or rest of the year, because I want M4 to be their final tour of the college and 2 years feels sort of short

quartz sentinel
odd kayak
odd kayak
# quartz sentinel

thank you Miss Kat, I was just wondering in case my players want to keep the college stuff in case they want to keep playing past the module

rustic peak
#

So uh. My players fuckin executed Argo

#

A size 3 Tortuga stood on him

odd kayak
#

F

quartz sentinel
#

rip bozo
couldn't happen to a worse guy

rustic peak
#

He didn't even get time to beg

#

and he broke his sword in the Sandman fight because of course he did

north knot
clear nymph
#

I like how there's a lot of nuance to Praya's motivation and antagonism that while not justifying her does evoke sympathy. But that Argo is nearly universally just an asshole

north knot
#

he's my meowmeow I love him so dearly. I need to stab him to death because he gives me cuteness aggression

#

what a colossal prick he is