Scriptorium

(This is an article that's been sitting in my notes bin for over half a year. I think I imagined I might add more to it, but I guess not. I wrote it, I haven't posted anything on here in a while, so what the hell..)

he surface of the planet is sleek, white ice without terrain as far as the eye can see, but for the snow dunes which rise and fall, moving over time as waves with the wind. Even in the insulated safety of your cockpit and hard-suit, you can feel the cold taunting your extremities- like an icy god playing with you on the tip of his knife. The only thing that lives here is the brutal and vast howling wind.

As your Mech carries you on the trek across this ghost-world, your mind wanders to the ice. You wonder how deep it goes, and remember that your briefing had no mention of that.

Suddenly the white-blue canvas of nothingness is pierced by a small black beetle crawling over the horizon- or it reminds you of one as it approaches from a great distance. But as it approaches, it is clear that these are no beetles. Hulking, almost waddling metal beings, holding close to the chest giant assault rifles and glaring back at you with a piercing red, glowing eye.

Nonno and Nonna's house was truly a portal to another place in time- homemade lasagna, a smell I had yet to learn was homemade wine, and so on. One thing was for certain though, Nonna would sit us down at the television and put on the channel that only plays 80's cartoons. It would become fairly obvious that she just wanted an excuse to watch Looney Tunes- but there was always one sound in particular that I was waiting for. Ever since then, myself and countless other idiot kids have been hooked on giant robots ever since.

There's a lot of reasons that the impossible mecha fantasy is attractive- It is something that is made by humans but is not human. The mecha robot is transcendent, an idealized form that we can assume. The mecha symbolizes more than any vehicle or weapon can on it's own; it is a projection of identity and a visual of raw titanic power. The psychology of mecha is a blogpost for another time, but the important thing is that it is a visceral genre that plays with expressions of self, power fantasies, and fascinations with machines- just all the stuff we're addicted to.

At some other indeterminate point in time, brother Noah sent me in the direction of LANCER, a tabletop game not unlike, and yet very unlike some dungeons and dragons you may be familiar with. Of course, I was enchanted by the artwork at first, which is brilliant. By Miguel Lopez and Tom Parkinson Morgan, (aka, Abbadon,) Lancer is a game where your players will be taking on the role of elite mechanized cavalry pilots, rivalled in skill by few, and taking on a galaxy of deadly machinery. In this post I'll mostly rave about the game, and share some snippets from our recently wrapped campaign, which spanned about a total 18 sessions, (or, by my crude estimation somewhere around 70 hours, give or take).

It started as a one-shot, just a short little adventure to try out the system and see if it would stick. I wrote up an intro mission called “OLD_DOG”, but there was a problem- we were going to need a team. A group of specially assembled psychos who were up to the challenge of the most nerdy shit known to all mankind...

You are aboard the Starship UNS Marigold, a small sized freighter ship that runs the edge of Union space, the outskirts of governed territory. When you had boarded the Marigold, you noted the bizarre asymmetry of the geometric craft- it seemed a miracle that this frankensteins starship could lift off the ground at all, though for that it gives no small thanks to an army of retractable stabilizing fins and growling blue thrusters. The only hint of elegance on this monstrous ship are the bright yellow and orange flowers painted along sections of the hull, seemingly having grown over the ship's previous markings.

Three realtime days have passed since takeoff. You knew that you had not been put aboard the most luxurious type of craft (in fact, this is probably as cheap as it gets,) but this had been torture- with no windows on the entire ship, and only a tiny crewman's quarter to call your own, what had only a few days earlier seemed a dauntingly large vessel quickly shrank into a cramped, claustrophobic box in the middle of outer space, with no exits. More than that, if you have never experienced zero-G environments before, you're probably only now getting used to your own weightlessness.

The setting of Lancer is one of the most unique pre-written settings I've seen for a game. Set in the impossibly distant future of 5016u, humanity has spread across the stars and become a vast, scattered and diasporan race. The only real galactic government is an organization called Union; a collection of worlds dedicated to equity and human rights. Recently reformed and re-consolidating its power, Union looks to turn a new leaf for the galaxy, and from its own checkered past.

Union and much of the galaxy at large exist in a state of post-capitalist, post-scarcity; thanks to the invention of 'printers', and an endless supply of resources thanks to space-travel, there is no need for such primitive class struggles. The revolution has happened, and it happened a millennium ago. For many, the barbarism of capitalist society is not even a memory. But not all the galaxy is so enlightened, or free. This is the Union's great project, and where our heroes come in.

The dystopian science fiction has become deeply engrained in the greater genre, and is not entirely without it's merits. A dystopian fiction has much to say about real life issues, reflecting on a dark future that when done well, is the consequence of the poor choices humanity makes today. Indeed there is much value in the cautionary tale- but we also need fictions to aspire to, fictions that give us hope for a brighter day. While Lancer's galaxy is far from perfect, it is a fiction built around a hopeful future.

A 'lancer' is essentially a term for an ace pilot, a mecha pilot whose skills are a cut above the rest by virtue of raw talent or special training. Imagine a galaxy populated with human life- how many more geniuses, incredible talents and wunderkinds would be produced. Some of these wunderkinds become Lancers.

First in no particular order, was Sebastian Silverago, a farmboy from the deep-union world Karthas who likes to set things on fire. In his pee-paw's old mech, he signed up with Union to improve his skills in the mech-tourneys. Then there was Cordelia Darlington, a pale-haired princess and a deadly markswoman from the serene world of Vernado, accompanied by her retinue of protective royal mechanics. In order to earn her birthright, she took to the battlefield. Finally, Mercury Callaghan: The man from the edge of the galaxy. An experienced killer and an ex-pirate looking to make good with the law, you can always count on Callaghan to do something unconventional, or potentially insane.

The game system itself though, could fit right into whatever type of world you can think to make it work in, with minimal tweaking.

 
THE GALAXY OF "LANCER, The 1984 Original Series"
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1. Cradle     4. Vernado
2. Karrakis   5. Nebula Terminal
3. Karthas    6. Ichor

Building Lancer characters is based more around the horizontal progression than slowly powering up over time. Each frame (essentially your robot's class,) has three levels you can put into it. Mixing and matching parts from different machine archetypes to create something nasty and effective is the fun of Lancer characters, taking all the options in the book and making a sheet that feels truly unique to your character.

Like a shower-curtain, the goliath pushes aside brick, splintering wood and shattering glass. The goliath's red eye scans the battlefield, assessing. Even now, you know that the UNS Marigold has begun its descent from above the clouds. The clock is ticking now.

The Goliath points this giant's shotgun, bearing a giant shield mounted on the upper arm which is inscribed with the names of the dead of the city guard. A resounding BROOOOOMP! erupts from the black barrel of this sonic weapon.

Let's face it, when it comes to D&D combat mechanics, it is what it is. There are some times that rolls simply need to be fudged on the other side of that screen, and that's just a necessity for extracting narrative tension from those mechanics. After your turn is over, you begin a new quest to find the bottom of the pretzel bowl, because you will be doing nothing at all for the next 20 minutes. In Lancer, it never felt necessary to do any of that, and while I don't have an exact answer why, I have to imagine it's because the combat feels so interactive as it is.

I would joke that I had successfully tricked everyone into just playing a wargame with me, but it is true in a lot of ways. In Lancer, you're going to be thinking about things like line of sight, range, cover, terrain, and team tactics. More-so, as the GM, setting traps for players has never felt so devious and evil.

The most interesting, and interactive part of the whole game is the way Lancer handles initiative. You wont be rolling or adding any agility bonuses. Instead, each team decides their own turn order as the round progresses. This leads to some seriously interesting strategic decisions. Should Callaghan go first, trying and take down the big opponent with his melee attacks, or allow Cordelia to try her smartgun on the invisible assassins, but meanwhile risking a big attack on himself from the enemy demolisher? There were plenty of moments where the difference in the decision of which party member would go first was palpably the difference between life and death- and watching the party seriously discuss the merits of their options is one of the true joys of GMing.

Likewise, as a GM you will begin to think tactically as well. Player characters in Lancer are powerful from the start, and this really enables a DM to stop pulling punches- making things deadly in this game rewards the experience greatly. Of course, you don't do this by padding npc stats (usually,) but by fielding considered teams of NPCs that have their own strategies and can compensate for each other's weaknesses. Want to add some snipers to the next fight to really force the players to use cover?– better add some defenders to protect against a straight charge, or a controller to provide an additional distraction. As aforementioned, Lancer is kind of a game for when the GM wants to play killteam, but the players want a roleplaying game, and in my opinion, it fuses the best of both worlds.

Lancer is clearly though not explicitly inspired by battletech, but takes advantage of the recent and gushing influx of D&D roleplayers by taking that tactical, interactive combat and making it player-sided and diverse enough to work with the 'new crowd'.

Let me put it this way, it's like battletech, except not for old geezers. This is the young folks' battletech, a battletech for blue-haired baristas, for graphic-tee loving anarcho-communists, and for tumblr girlies- which is deeply to its credit. (battletech also rules btw)

Towering mechs bearing waving banners have turned the sky into a patchwork quilt of many colours. Knights, Union Soldiers, and freelancers have formed the united army that now marches on enemy ground. Above your own heads a black banner flies, on which a coiling red dragon holds an orange flower between its fangs.

Your band marches past smoking craters, destroyed homes, and a large but deliberately placed metal slate, painted with obscenities and most prolifically; “UNION DOGS, FUCK OFF AND GO HOME!” The heavy rain has made alliance with the blistering winds which bombard your company.

Your skin yet stings from the kiss of the tattoo artist's laser brush, but by now you are built of tougher stuff and it is barely a fleeting nuisance to your senses. You are running on little sleep, but you've gone with less. Ahead may be your greatest battle yet- a siege that may end the war on the planet called Ichor.

If you can get an enthusiastic group together to play Lancer, I highly recommend. We probably got lucky, because any rpg group is a unique and singular dynamic, and everybody just really understood the vibe of the game. Sometimes the rules can get a little crunchy and you might have to crack open and check the rules on something now and again, but it's not overbearing on the overall experience.

LANCER, The 1984 Original Series (a story only four people will ever know): PART ONE 1. Pilot(s) 2. Trial By Fire 3. Beer Pong 4. Goodbye, Centurion 5. Dragonslayers 6. Left Behind 7. Rescue Part I 8. Rescue Part II 9. The LANCER Halloween Special PART TWO 1. Time-Bomb 2. The LANCER Holiday Special 3. Red Wire 4. Glass Throne 5. The Phantom Centurion 6. One Last Night on Ichor 7. Tombworld 8. He said, “I guess I'm just homesick.”

further reading: – massif press – transformers, the movie – Neon Genesis Evangelion – zeroranger

~ Your friend,