Lancer: Ghost Protocol

You are a lancer… Not by any official measure, at least not anymore. Now for whatever reason you find yourself in the company of Rel Randles, his crew, and 4 other Lancers you’re familiar with one reason or another. Rel Is technically a Khan but he either does/doesn’t have the stones to not kill/kill his way up the food chain. Either way you’re broke and without respect a lancer deserves, how fortune a distress signal just came online on an imperial colony. In the immortal worlds of Rel Randles: “Alllllways answer distress calls, it’s 50/50 whether we get there in time but a 100% of payday either way”

Introduction

Hi I’m Tarrot and I’m running a system called lancer. It’s about mechs in case you just clicked on this out of curiosity. I’ve had a bit over 4 years gm experiencing now. Although this is my first time with the system outside of a one-shot, I ran it to see if I liked it. I made plenty of mistakes but it was a blast either way and I fully expect to keep making mistakes because the system does have a lot going on but I have already learnt a lot so maybe not as many.

My players often describe me and my games quite kindly. The most common complement is that I put a lot of effort into my games and I’m happy that its noticeable because normally it gets pretty complicated on my end. I try and portray npc’s as people with their own stuff going on, that’s normally more important than the plot in my eyes since it enables a very strong suspension of disbelief when people act like people when compared to what a plot can do in the moment.

For communication we will be using discord and although the system wants to be done on a hex grid I’m doing it on a square grid because hexes on roll20 don’t play nice with large tokens and maps without fiddling. The game will run for about 3.5-4.5 hours a session.

What is a lancer?

A Lancer is a reallllllly good mech pilot. Its also the name of the mechs in cannon. It’s a little confusing now I’m thinking about it because not all mech pilots are lancers. Or I misread something on the 400 page odd book. Anyway, it is assumed like most rpg’s that the player characters are exceptional people with exceptional ability’s, a player character is capable of not only shooting stuff but is also a competent engineer and coder. Pretty much the game assumes that even level 0 players are kind of badasses compared to the common solder.

What you can expect from the game

A story about being on the wrong side of right. You’re a bunch of outlaws that get caught up in events that could shape the Pharos Sector as you know it. The main theme is meant to be: The human condition and to a lesser degree the Philosophy of Kung Fu (Not necessarily as a marshal art) hopefully its more of a vehicle that explains the human condition. That’s the hope anyway, I don’t know If I’m smart enough to pull that off.

A more linear mission-based campaign, it’s sort of how the system is written, it highly encourages this because of some mechanical stuff. E.g. before a mission the game gives players an opportunity to switch out gear based on what they might encounter. This is actually a new thing for me outside of my first gming experience, normally my games lean closer to being non-linear so it’s a nice change to try something new. If people are reading this section and thinking that Its going to be a railroady campaign, it’s not. Think of the game closer to being like a rpg like mass effect over something like skyrim.

Challenging combat, I messed up a lot in my one-shot and mostly what I learnt is that I was going way to easy on the players and I can feel the stroke my one-shot players are getting having read those words. That said now that I’m aware of that I’m just going to tone down things by 30% instead of 15%. The aim is still to make combat challenging.

Highly customisable characters. Mechs being modular and having to switch stuff out and make your own sort of playstyle is a large part of the campaign, if you’re the kind of person that likes to spend hours thinking up build ideas you are going to love this game, on the flip side if you don’t like doing that you will most likely hate this game because that is probably what makes this system so special.

2:3 roleplay to combat split. I can’t guaranty that is the ratio for evert session it might be all combat or all roleplay in a session once in a while but given that the game separates itself into something called narrative play and mech combat The lack of narrative mechanics makes me think that we are going to be spending slightly more time in combat than not. Not that roleplay and combat need to be mutually exclusive but if they were that 2:3 is what I expect the ratio to be.

Anime moment things, it’s a mech game I can’t help it even if I wanted to. Also, the game practically enables me to do stuff since every frame has its own ultimate badass move thing. This also fits into rule of cool pretty nicely, in narrative play I rule of cool might come up a lot since there isn’t much in the way of consequences.
Factions. You will be asked to make choices about which factions win or lose conflicts and live with the consequences of your action or inaction.

Mature themes. This isn’t meant to be a game about the horrors of war, I’m already doing that. But the universe isn’t in a good place right now. There are slavers and people that think killing slaves is an effective way of combating slavery. The only things that I really don’t want to touch is rape and torture. I can deal with implied but I’m not planning it. Everything else is on the table.

What I expect from you

Make a character that wants to do exciting/dangerous stuff and wants to work with the party. The game is going to be about those two things for the most part.
If you have issues with other players or how I run the game to pm me after the session or during a break. I’ll try my best to resolve the issue.

Common sense things that don’t need stating but I’ll do it anyway: show up on time, don’t be nasty to other players or the gm, and don’t forget other people at the table.

To be patient with everyone at the table, Lancer as a system has a lot going on and people (Mostly me) will make mistakes until we (I) move past the growing pains.

Lore

Feel safe in ignoring any of the setting lore in the book, we won’t be using it. Mostly because world building is some of the more enjoyable things I do as a gm and because I don’t like reading. Because I’m dyslexic. It’s faster for me to build a universe than it is to memorise someone else’s.

The Wipe
In the year 0 an event occurred referred to as “The Wipe” an interstellar EMP was set off with such ferocity that it destroyed all electronic data. Including a lot of people’s cybernetic implants, internets, omninet, blink gates and the coding essential for a life support system to function while in space. Beaten but not broken humanity clawed its way out of the ashes and began an age of empires followed by war. Humanity slowly forgot its past over the 367 years since the wipe.

Notable Factions

Sovran Star Empire: The largest faction comprised of 4 houses one of them being the house of Sovran the ruling house. The empire scuffles amongst itself and is run by an immortal emperor that you shouldn’t question. Still most likely the best space you could live in in Pharos.

Conclave: A bunch of anarchic communist pirates that follow no set laws other than those between other conclave members. The Conclave has no set ruler or means of acquiring leadership, it’s mostly about who holds the biggest gun. Big boy gun holders are called Khans and serve as captains of ships or fleets. Oh look at that your boss is a Khan. Guess you know where you stand. Although each Khan treats their crew differently, Rel Mostly treats you like an uncle that cares but gives bad advice. Closer to a family than any other hierarchy.

Legion of Avo: Religious nut jobs that are the second largest faction, although you could call them the largest since the Sovran empire is made up of 4 members. They also belive cloning and AI are sinful so don’t use that kind of tech unless you want to face divine punishment form the purifiers and 7 seraphs.

Harrison Corp (HC): Operating in spaces of the above factions selling weapons so they can more effectively kill one another. Always read the fine print with HC contracts indentured servitude is a common form of collateral.

Horus: Hacker collective behind the Horus frames. No one knows what they want or where they are located but they most likely aliens or consume a lot of drugs if their tech and actions are anything to go by.

Order of The Zodiac: Once upon a time the battle of 5 nations made 5 become 4. 12 lancers from opposing sides combined their efforts to make sure another world isn’t lost. After which they went their own ways performing humanitarian handing their Lancer down to a successor after successor over the years.

Edit 1: Session 1 is done, it ended on the players agreeing to deliver some meds. But inside one of the crates they discovered a robot a mysterious AI with massive memory corruption after it was infected by something it called the ghost signal. Its self preservation protocols are also 300 times higher than standard factory setting and it pleads to the crew not to be delivered to its destination but to instead destroy them.