by Zhjake
I've heard really good things about Lancer. I've wandered in from /all and would be curious if anyone would be willing to give me their elevator pitch.
this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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Lancer
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LANCER is the tabletop role playing game of mech combat created by Tom Parkinson-Morgan and Miguel Lopez.
Each player takes the role of an upcoming mech pilot in the tumultuous year of 5016u. The game features robust mech customization and deadly tactical combat.
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Do you like mechs? Do you like tactical combat? Do you like highly modular loadouts and builds? Do you like being able to change out your build each and every mission just to try out something new? More than all that, do you want to fight for a utopia? A true utopia. A union of people that have faced such harship that they finally overcame greed and scarcity to provide the greatest life possible to all within their borders. A utopia that grows not through military power or force, but instead through diplomacy and peaceful integration. A utopia that must protect itself against external threats that deny its message. A utopia that needs lancers to fight for it.
That's a heck of a sales pitch. I do like all those things.
Might be worth a look then! The player-side materials are all free and can be found on COMP/CON.
11Dragonkid is a great Youtuber that has a rundown on pretty much everything on Lancer, from mechanics, to mechs, to builds, and even lore. They're a great starting point to learn the ropes of the system and setting.
The YouTube channel sounds perfect. I'll check it out, thanks.
I really want to like lancer, but it feels like the lore as presented in the core book is built to remove stakes altogether. The fact that cloning/overwriting (I forgot the actual word for it) is there as a get-out-of-death-free-card feels bad. Not having to tape my mech together after a fight because printers feels bad. The ability to just build a new mech entirely from scratch at no cost to the pilot takes the bite out of building a mech.
All of these things are addressed in the core book, but in whole other places in the book. I acknowledge that the lore is influenced by the writers' political beliefs (which I agree with for the most part), but the whole reason any fictional worlds are interesting is purely because of their flaws, and the book says "yeah shit sucks out in the frontier, but we're not gonna provide the gm with any mechanics to reflect that and just tell you how Union is".
I fundamentally disagreed with that approach, and trying to create mechanics that reflect a shitty frontier was way more up-front work than I could handle when I wanted to run it. I got burnt out before my campaign even started.
Comp/con is the bee's knees tho.