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Next week’s Wednesday, I’ll finally be home and I’ll run Blood Money (Lancer 3rd party supplement). Actually super excited for it since I think it solves a ton of issues I have with the game and whatever campaigns they put out.

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so, why does Lancers setting trigger a hornets nest of chuds every time the game is even mentioned in passing?

there are countless mecha settings of right wing, fascist, corporate, monarchal, imperial, dynastic etc utopias and dystopias and you bring up any one of them and generally just get a bunch of people nodding in agreement and admiring the mechs

then you bring up this one game that veers left instead of right and an absolute swarm descends to endlessly shitpost it to death. its not even that extreme with its politics. totalitarian empire overthrown? new government trying to do the right thing but stretched impossibly thin? rogue AI and reality warping anomaies? baronies and serfs? this is all really boilerplate scifi stuff you'd find in star wars, star trek, dune, etc. there's nothing really crazy here at all.

i just dont get why this IP provokes such an insane overreaction on this board for how mild it is.

>>97612033
The only critique I've seen about lancer is just that its boring. I dunno much about lancer beyond that.

>>97612033
It has a heavy handed foreword.
If you read it, it creates the impression that the thing is going to be political commentary first and system second.

I think the system is fine, but it shoots itself in the foot because its foreword puts some people off, and then those people (who often don't read further) clash with the people who are drawn in rather than put off by it.

I don't think think the actual content of the setting is even a consideration when those kinds of discussions happen.

It's just the result of a divisive introduction before the actual content. In my humble opinion, anyway.

>>97612037
It's a pretty fun system, actually. It works well for groups that like wargames. It's a bit inflexible if you prefer more freeform RP and player agency, though.

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>>97612033
Beats me. It's meme community is phenomenal

>>97612033
Because the community is really fucking annoying about it. The actual setting is fine

Battletech has a similar thing going on

>>97612450
>It has a heavy handed foreword.

?

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>>97612635
The foreword is the part at the front of the book.
As I said, it's just my opinion.

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>>97612861
oh weird, in mine thats 2/3s of the way through the book

idk, this is a pretty tame "dont be a cunt about pronouns, the story has nazis but isnt pro-nazi, if shit gets too heavy for the players let them tap out" kind of page.

gotta be a weak individual that gets triggered by this. the way people drone on about it i thought it was something much more overtly political like a page on karl marx or something

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>>97612635
It's soipozzed corpospeak for "please don't reem our assholes with a mountain of cancellations for being two straight white men and including """"problematic""" content like normal-ass villainy instead of being a comfycore dicksuckhugbox. We swear we're not doing it for cryptofascist dogwhistle reasons like Ernest Gygax, we just think it's important to actually engage with the idea that somebody somewhere might get the notion to do something mean and you might have a civic duty to put on your big girl panties and do something about that, instead of bury our heads in the sand of quicoticly pandersome, milquetoast cozymaxx escapism. If your players are such fucking overcoddled manchild princesses that they really truly can't handle that, consider instigating the TTRPG equivalent of a safe word."

>>97612861
That part there at the end presupposes that the prospective player must accept that they are being oppressed.

It's irrelevant to the system from a mechanical prespective, and I just think it's a little unfortunate.

>>97612905
So you're faulting the author for assuming the reader is on the side opposing fascism and hate, he wasn't being inclusive enough for your own political leanings?

>>97612883
>>97612883
Interesting, must be a different book. The one I linked from is from the free player book.

>>97612934
No, I just don't care for the kind of division you are trying to instigate here. I assume that I am being baited, so I will bid you good night.

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Not going to spam the thread, but we got gameplay and product info about Gundam:
>>97577143

>>97612895
lololol nothing that uses the phrases "radical antifacism" and "in solidarity" is corpospeak

im pretty sure if you actually printed out "in solidarity" and put it up in a corporate office the amazon union buster emergency hotline would be ringing off the hook immediately.

also im not 100% sure on the timeline but didnt this book come out during trump 1.0? an era famous for all sorts of public fascist dogwhistles. i could see why they would want to take an aside to distance themselves from that given the subject nature and the modern political climate.

>>97613022
i saw that the models were mono-pose easy builds and was very disappointed by what could have been. the quality is good, i just wish they had some flexibility, especially given how famous gunpla is for its posability and customization

the game looks okay though. i;ve been playing a lot of age of sigmar spearhead the last year and i've really come to like these smaller skirmish on a board cage match type games. im not the biggest fan of hexes, but i get it, those are a fan trope of mecha games, so i'll give that a pass. i like that it uses hero scape style elevation hexes

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Grrrr
Argh

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Obsidian Protocol looks cool. Is there a starter set?

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>>97616867
From what it seems they only got 2 army boxes. No starter.

>>97612033
I think the fact that it's the one mecha game (besides that lesbian fetish mecha game, ofc) that leans leftwards is what draws their ire. It's at odds with the usual political stance they've come to expect from mecha (and military sci-fi more broadly), so it must seem pretty jarring.

>>97612033
Certain people here don't like the the creators so they pretend to ignore all the other factions in the setting
They simultaneously say it's all gay communism and then say "uuuh corporate cyberpunk states? dune space feudalism? starship troopers imperialist dictatorships? star trek post-scarcity federation? tribespeople with old mechs???? it doesn't know what it wants to be!!!" The creators themselves said shit like Harrison Armory not being inherently evil, the fans just paint them that way.
I personally really like the variety, it's like the sci-fi version of a kitchen sink setting. But to each their own.

>>97613400
>lololol nothing that uses the phrases "radical antifacism" and "in solidarity" is corpospeak
He's just using it as a shorthand for anything gay, so he see anti-union walmart and some pro-union guy are both the same because gay.

>>97612515
Yeah that's definitely true, it's system for stuff that isn't mech stuff is pretty bare bones. I've heard of people swapping out the skill trigger and bonds system for Starwars/Genesys or SWN.

>>97613400
There are multiple kinds of corpo.
There's 1800s robber baron bald-faced corpo.
And then there's the post-OCCUPY meta performative ""woke"" """""ally""""" but only culture war not class war, "rainbow flags in June but only june," "we made Thor an overweight black Muslim lesbian, give us money" "why is startrek announcing their 'first nonbinary character's when it's more like their 23rd, and why is the 32nd century suspiciously less post-scarcity brotherhood of sentients commie and more patronizing colonizers pretending benevolence" corpo.

Make no mistake, both are still corpo. The latter has just learned how to virtue signal to hide its power level in ways that win it brownie points with liberals without actually conceding anything that would affect profits.

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>>97612033

>>97613400
>also im not 100% sure on the timeline but didnt this book come out during trump 1.0? an era famous for all sorts of public fascist dogwhistles. i could see why they would want to take an aside to distance themselves from that given the subject nature and the modern political climate.
Yes, and as also mentioned Ernie Gygax had just rereleased Star Frontiers with NuTSR, which was written flagrantly racially and anti-lgbt charged. Like literally had a race called "negroes" that had int locked at 10, and were explicitly subhumans separate from human aryan Nordics.

Not to mention WotC had just been back to back to back drug for the Vistani and Chult, for Drow and Orcs as inherently villainous, and within a couple years were about to capitulate to the cancelling so hard as to remove alignment and any mention of slavery from their books, to the point of rewriting goblinoids, duergar, and neogi entirely. That's right fucking NEOGI are no longer slavers, literally their one trait being such slaver assholes that even in Spelljammer where mindflayers and beholders are factions and can be halfway reasoned with at least as much as like the TNG romulans or cardassians, that nobody will or even can negotiate with them because they exclusively see the world in terms of master-and-slave hierarchy and anything not a Neogi is inherently "slave." Or food, but that's just a subcategory of slave. It's like saying the Borg no longer assimilate, like what the fuck are we doing here? What even are the eel spiders now that their Grox-esque "bad news common enemy no one can bargain with" purpose for existing in setting has been removed?
I think White Wolf got cancelled somewhere in there too.

So between the literal white supremacist... I can't even call it dog whistling more like air raid sirening in the hobby, and a hypercritical, insatiably bloodthirsty twitter mob at the time, I can see why they'd want to do their best to preempt the almost inevitable accusations.

>>97620759
Gundam is antifa as fuck, what are you talking about.

>>97609348
What does it solve?

>>97624056
https://pigsriot.itch.io/blood-money
In a word, greed. Economy, jobs for hire, shops, base building, etc.

>>97623591
None of those complaints have anything to do with the game itself other than maybe the third one but
>not using your own setting
lmao

>>97624459
It's kind of baked in, since nothing costs money.

You HAVE to be from a post-scarcity society. But also for there to be any conflicts to fight you HAVE to then be venturing somewhere that isn't post-scarcity.

You are an extremely privileged twat simply by virtue of having a personally customized mech exactly to your specifications whose parts you can hotswap at your leisure between deployments. ESPECIALLY because you also can rebuild the thing from scratch between missions and even replace yourself, scanned and copied mind into cloned body. You are so privileged even death has no consequences for you.

You are literally, LITERALLY an E.V.E. capsuleer, but mecha instead of ship, and without the need for any of the rigorous training or voluntary euthanasia into brain in a jar.

>>97624056
Biggest thing is linearity since the GM makes a job board and the players get to pick missions for different factions and pay.
And like >>97624441 said, there’s actual currency to earn and a lot of stuff to spend it on.
Plus it’s not the typical “Union jerkoff sesh”, you can make your mercenaries and the factions they work for as good or heartless as you want.

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>>97612033
Lancer is unironically one of the worst settings I've ever read and the politics have very little to do with it honestly. In fact I prefer to NOT bring up the politics when talking about the game because that just allows shills to divert it into a political shitshow when there's far worse to talk about.

>eyerolling purple prose (WE'LL CHOKE THE GALAXY WITH OUR MASSES)
>terrible book organization
>it constantly feels like the writers thought mechs were stupid and didn't want to write about them
>It's idea of "cool" is 50/50 mix of terribly uncool shit (OIH MATE, GOT A LOISCENSCE TO 3d PRINT THAT MECH??) to incredibly reddit onions shit that feels like out of a HFY thread from 2015 "AND THEN THE EPIC RELATIVISTIC OORT KILL CLOUD SUPER HACKED THE BATTLESHIPS QUANTUM DOODAD, HAHA YOU WOULDN'T EVEN BE ABLE TO COMPREHEND IT!"
>it sucks as a ttrpg setting that actually gives your pc's stuff to do and adventures to have, with most of the shit the book waffles on about being irrelevant to any adventure you'll have.
>plot holes and clashing concepts that make it feel like everyone on the team wanted to make something different
>stuff that's supposed to be uplifting but just makes you think the writers were evil people
>book waffling on for multiple paragraphs about what color of beige your beloved feds wear...

I could literally make one of those gay 8 hour video essays about everything wrong with this fucking setting if I could stomach reading the damn thing again. It is SO FUCKING BAD. It is probably unironically the worst writing I have ever encountered for a TTRPG. The gameplay might be a mediocre but inoffensive 5/10 but the setting is unironically a 0/10. It's simply UNCOOL.

Even Battletech, as autistic western mil-sci history nerd as it is, at least has fundamentally cool ideas in it. Lancer feels like something written by the kind of guy making "anime" on netflix.

>>97620999
>The creators themselves said shit like Harrison Armory not being inherently evil, the fans just paint them that way.

Pretty sure they totally flip flop on this in interviews.

I remember a quote where they said something like Harrison being an idealized vision of what America wants to be, but "it must still fall" because that vision is intrinsically bad.

These guys are huge pretentious faggots who don't know what they're talking about though if you actually read the interviews. One of my favorite quotes:

>Lancer’s core themes: the success of collective, persistent action in the face of seemingly unassailable systems to bring about a better world, the meanings of signs and signifiers in the built environment, and how the built environment interacts with, defines, and is defined by people and the natural world.

"Signs and signifiers in the built environment" yeah that's going to come through in a fucking ttrpg game about robot wars you fucking retarded hack frauds.

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This is why I disregard the setting and run a mercenary campaign. Union isn’t a factor: they’re busy with some sort of PR disaster. The contracts you do can actually change the course of the conflict if you begin to pick sides. I’ve even noticed my players who love the whole “good guy savior” aspect of Lancer begin to snub the rebel faction’s contracts because they just don’t pay as well as the corpos or especially the pirates.
Yeah, I know the actual gameplay aspect is mediocre, but I’m not looking for too crunchy of a system in the first place.

>>97612515
>It works well for groups that like wargames
Then just play Battletech.

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>>97620759
>besides that lesbian fetish mecha game, ofc

>>97623902
>everyone and I don't like is a CHEETO HITLERNAZI
And now you have your answer >>97612033, Lancer attracts THAT kind of "person"

>>97626963
Not the same thing.

>>97626718
You're overreacting a little, but I agree that the setting doesn't really serve the game. If your only interaction with the game through Comp/Con (which is excellent), I think you'll have a much better experience.

>>97627930
Book doesn't really serve the game, I should say.

>>97627930
>Comp/Con (which is excellent)
If your TRPG is unplayable without an app, it's a bad TRPG.
And if you ARE going to require a number crunching app to do the heavily lifting in your wargame-lite TRPG, just play Battletech since it's a better game, better setting, and the mechs feel like proper towering engines of destruction.

>>97627930
I should qualify that while Lancer may not technically be the worst TTRPG writing I've ever heard of full-stop - I'm sure chubby_goblin_shortstack_rape_quest.pdf (available from your local fileshare) is worse - but it is by far the worst *payed*, professionally sold and noteworthy ttrpg writing I've ever seen. It's very clearly the work of a bunch of amateurish failed californian novelists who didn't know what the fuck they were doing, on top of being pretentious as fuck and also making a mecha ttrpg ("THE mecha ttrpg", quoth their own advertising) without watching anything from the genre (they have said multiple times in interviews that they never watched anything for research or entertainment, being complete outsiders to the genre).

The game might as well have "unlike most mecha, this one is about the characters" emblazoned across every copy of the book. That's the overall energy everything about the setting exudes.

>If your only interaction with the game through Comp/Con

I think the fact that the game needs an external program to run decently is a condemnation, actually. The setting was designed by people who'd rather be writing a novel than a ttrpg, and the gameplay was designed by someone who'd rather be making a vidya than a ttrpg.

>>97628104
I didn't say it's unplayable without an app or that it needs the app because of number crunching. Play Battletech if you prefer Battletech. To anyone who does try Lancer, I recommend using Comp/Con since it presents the content better than the book, in my opinion. No system or setting is perfect nor do you need to be married to one.

>>97628112
> The setting was designed by people who'd rather be writing a novel than a ttrpg, and the gameplay was designed by someone who'd rather be making a vidya than a ttrpg

Yes, the book does not do a great job of weaving these things together.

>>97628112
>
The game might as well have "unlike most mecha, this one is about the characters" emblazoned across every copy of the book. That's the overall energy everything about the setting exudes.

Didn't really get that feeling myself. I do like the characterization of the big corps, though, and think you could do some cool stuff with that if you can ignore the post-scarcity concept entirely.

>>97628289
>and think you could do some cool stuff with that if you can ignore the post-scarcity concept entirely.

See, that's what I mean by "clashing concepts that make it feel like everyone on the team wanted to make something different"

It wants to be optimistic post-scarcity star trek utopia so there's no money but it also wants to be cyberpunk so megacorps for some reason and also arms manufacturers even though you just use magic star trek 3d printers to create all your shit and also it wants to be mud and lasers and also hard sci-fi and and and and and

Anyway you're right though that cool things can be done with megacorps in a mecha war setting, but that's Armored Core.

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Speaking of Armored Core, does a translation of the Japanese AC rpg exist?

>>97628455
Not that I know of, but that would be pretty cool. Is that a mini? Awesome paint job.

>>97628379
Yep, it's tonally inconsistent at times, as is any setting that tries to be an opinionated kitchen sink. I don't think that's a reason not to play it if given an opportunity to, or to throw out the baby with the bathwater, but I can appreciate that you prefer other systems in the same niche.

Not sure if I'll run or play Lancer again, but it was pretty fun when I did.

>>97628671
Yeah, it's from obsidian protocol, but not mine. I will get some next month though.

>>97628682
Hell yeah

>>97628455
I believe so, but it's a bit unsatisfying as far as I've heard. Give it a whirl, but brewers on here have made more comprehensive and satisfying Armored Core-like TTRPGs - the two best ones I can think of are ChromeStrike and LANCEHOUNDS. Both have full on ripped straight from Armored Core mechbuilding with slotting parts together and shit, and it's just a question of how much numbers autism you'd like. If you like less, ChromeStrike. If you like more, LANCEHOUNDS.

>>97628730
I've tried ChromeStrike, but it didn't hit for me (think it was mainly due to a low-effort group). I'll give LANCEHOUNDS a look sometime, it sounds cool.

Hope that AC's unsatisfying nature has been exagerrated, since AC is cool.

>>97626992
This has to be bait, right? Surely no one is that bad at reading comprehension.

>>97623902
And in the end all that PR bet hedging did nothing. The wokelefties still hated it for not being wokelefty enough.
https://www.tumblr.com/txttletale/731276116237615104/wtf-is-lancer-and-why-is-it-shit-serious
There's simply no pleasing them. You can't make them happy, they don't want to be happy. If they can't find a problem they'll invent one.

Better to just put all your effort into making the best game possible and say "fuck it, let the haters hate."

>>97628967
> And in the end all that PR bet hedging did nothing. The wokelefties still hated it for not being wokelefty enough

Reading that article, I get the impression that the author is upset at how much signposting there was, rather than being upset at it not being "wokelefty enough".

So I think they'd probably agree with you (and most of the thread, it seems), that more focus on the game is better than focusing on its political stance.

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Oh, here we are. Cool

>>97628671
>Yep, it's tonally inconsistent at times, as is any setting that tries to be an opinionated kitchen sink

Settings like Warhammer, Battletech, even - to some extent - oWoD are complete messes but still have an over-riding theme that largely unifies them aesthetically, thematically, and logically (remember that old Battletech writer post on "technologies and plot devices that will NEVER appear in Battletech"?). You may not like them - and I can't say I'm a huge fan of any of those mentioned - but there's some spark of divine inspiration there nonetheless.

Lancer has no such thing. There is no theme, there is no love or passion. It's a mech game made by people who didn't like mech - disliked them enough to NEVER watch a single one for research or even just entertainment - and couldn't decide what they wanted the setting or theme to be. It's incoherent and a mess and (perhaps worst of all) a total chore to read through in a way that even Warhammer isn't.

>>97632018
Or perhaps the bigger sin is that it's just uncool.

The ideas at play like "3d printing a mecha via a loiscense" are just so fundamentally uncool (remember when Hayao Miyazaki was going on about how rad and cool it was to build a mech with your own two hands?). It's concepts and ideas are just so boring. Anything you can think of that might be worth taking from it was actually already done a thousand times better by older sources (megacorp wars with robots? Armored Core. Spooky eldritch mechs? Demonbane, Evangelion, Iczer-1, Getter Robo. etc.)

>>97632018
Battletech doesn’t have an overriding theme so much as it does a series of cliches that the people who work on are too stupid and closed-minded to break out of

It also is very clearly made by people who watch just as little actual mecha media as lancer is

>>97632908
It very much has a logic to its basic premise, a goal for what kind of setting it wants to be, what kind of conflicts it wants to have and that players will engage in, etc. Again, I'm not the biggest fan of it, and it's certainly not to everyone's taste, but it has a basic level of craftsmanship to it that Lancer does not.

>It also is very clearly made by people who watch just as little actual mecha media as lancer is

Almost. But they literally, unironically have an advantage in terms of having seen enough to steal designs. This is a more than Lancer has. Watching anime just to rip off ideas is unironically more noble than arrogantly thinking it has nothing you can learn from.

But the real reason I don't hold it against is again, there's an actual idea behind it. Battletech doesn't - by word of its creators - try to be a mecha anime, instead it wants to be the work of autistic mil-sci nerds. Everything about it reflects the passions and interests of its creators. All Lancer reflects is that its creators are from California.

I want to get a mecha game going, what's a good starting point? I see some old mekton books around, and there's lancer readily available, what else? I heard about people actually just using battletech as an RPG, but does it actually work?

>>97623915
Given that Gundam is more than willing to present individual Zeon members as equally capable of being noble and moral as any Federation character even if they work for literal space neonazis, not to mention portraying Hathaway’s ecoterrorist crusade against the Federation as morally gray instead of an unambiguous “right thing”, never mind the talks surrounding the Newtypes, it’s not nearly lefty or as antifa as that crowd wants it to be since Gundam ironically takes the time to showcase that even the bad guys aren’t necessarily all completely evil nor the good guys fully good as part of its general anti-war and pro-environmental message, which isn’t good enough for the people who claim Gundam is somehow right wing because it doesn’t make all of the space nazis soulless straw men to be knocked down.

>>97626797
>but "it must still fall" because that vision is intrinsically bad
I'm not gonna pretend to like expansionism nor pretend it's the worst criticism one could have of the US, anon. Sorry.

>>97633528
>nor pretend it's the worst criticism one could have of the US

You don't get the actual statement. It was something like "an idealized version of the USA. As in completely pure, holy, lacking all the bad things or inequalities or questionable decisions or whatever, but they should deserve to lose because....uhhhh...ummmm...

Regardless you can't say the setting is open to player interpretation when the authors are running around telling you who should win and who should lose lol

>>97632018
>>97632049
Lancer has NHPs & Ra, the big corps and Union, the question of what becomes worthwhile to produce when production itself becomes trivial (though we are never really told what raw material printers run on, if any).

I won't pretend that Lancer is tonally consistent, I've already agreed that it's not. But saying there's no love or inspiration is simply dismissive and, I'd argue, dishonest.

> The ideas at play like "3d printing a mecha via a loiscense" are just so fundamentally uncool ... It's concepts and ideas are just so boring.

It was cool when Neal Stephenson did it in Diamond Age, so I don't think it's intrinsically as uncool as you say. But I agree that it runs contrary to the analog, mechanical satisfaction I want from mecha and its associated implied human endeavour. I rule that assembly is critical, and that a printed mech is essentially a skeleton without organs or skin.

Yes, you can point to that and say that a setting that you feel you must adjust is bad, and I agree with that, but I don't consider it a dealbreaker. I guess this depends on how rigid you are about running things as written, how well you can establish and communicate the boundaries between setting as written and your version of it, and how willing your players are to accept that.

Personally, I'm not puritanical about settings, but I get the impression that you are.

> Anything you can think of that might be worth taking from it was actually already done a thousand times better by older sources
I'm not sure I understand why someone else already having done individual parts better is relevant, in the context of running a game. You have all the creative freedom you could want to change and alter the setting as you see fit, and most of those others don't have cohesive systems to use for running games. Some of them might, but I don't like restricting myself. If you're talking purely about the setting, then I accede the point.

>>97633548
The setting is definitely open to player interpretation. The authors aren't gods nor is their word gospel. The activation of the religious circuit in this kind of conversation only proves that they can't be trusted to have sway in how my table's version of the setting is portrayed.

>>97633830
Barbatos! Nice work friend

>>97633349
I'd recommend checking these out
>>97628730

>>97633496
Don't forget the antagonists of Zeta are the victors of 0079, having gone full Earthfash in response to Zeon's Spacefash in an attempt to keep spacenoids from getting any ideas of independence ever again. It's unironically a more nuanced series than any culture warrior types want to confront.
>>97633528
>I'm not gonna pretend to like expansionism
Yet expansionism under the guise of "noble communism" is fine, right? Because that's what the "good" guys of Lancer are doing: crushing independent mudfarmers under their totalitarian commieboot because a literally and intentionally retarded computer god told them to "Unite Them" and they interpreted it as Manifest Destiny on HRT.

>>97633905
Reminder that Lancer has an objectively Best Mech™ and the only reason everyone doesn't just field armies of them is due to artificial scarcity induced by a loicense limit.

It may not be the WORST Lancer lore out there, but to me it's the perfect crystallization of how little of a soul the devs have and how little they understand the genre.

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>>97633913
>The setting is definitely open to player interpretation
Not an argument. I can play Princess Wing as a dark, gritty Black Rock Shooter Dawnfall ripoff instead of the optimistic SoL of the default setting or I can throw Embryo Machine into the far future instead of its cool medieval/renaissance but with mechs setting and play it as Armored Core, but that doesn't change any critiques or praises I would have for the book as presented.

You may as well argue Skyrim is a good game because you can mod big titties and cheek pinching into the game.

>>97633993
Check my post again. It's specifically a response to
> Regardless you can't say the setting is open to player interpretation when the authors are running around telling you who should win and who should lose lol

> You may as well argue Skyrim is a good game because you can mod big titties and cheek pinching into the game.

I would absolutely argue that mod-ability is a contributor to Skyrim's success. Your attempt to staunch that argument by pointing at smut is reductive.

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who cares don't play games you dislike and don't whine about others playing them it's their loss if the game really is that bad

>>97633981
I have already acceded that there is tonal inconsistency in the setting. I think calling the setting post scarcity is one of the worst offenders, and least sensible.
But I wouln't point at that and call it evidence of the lack of a soul, or use it as leverage to tear down the setting as a whole, including any possible adjustments made to it to make it work for the game you want to run.

>>97634033
This

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>>97634009
>I would absolutely argue that mod-ability is a contributor to Skyrim's success.
That doesn't make the base game suddenly good. Also funny how you are forced to appeal to consumerism when defending the anticapitalist game
>Your attempt to staunch that argument by pointing at smut is reductive
You think pinching little girls' cheeks is "smutty"? That's a bit of a weird self-report there, pal.

>>97634062
And now we have resorted to personal attacks and creatively rephrasing arguments. I accept your concession.

>>97634092
You're the one who called it a porn mod, my guy. I only brought it up as a frivolous little add-on that may or may not improve your enjoyment of a game but shouldn't be factored into one's rating of the base game, you're thr one who got all hot n bothered over the idea of pinching little girls.

Hell, by your own logic Lancer isn't even a good game or a game at all, but rather 4e DnD is a great game because with enough homebrew and refluffing it can become Lancer.
>I accept your concession
The last cope of the copeless.

Your discord aint sending its best. Or naybe it is and that's the sad part.

>>97634042
>But I wouln't point at that and call it evidence of the lack of a soul
Why not?
>use it as leverage to tear down the setting as a whole
Why not?
>including any possible adjustments made to it to make it work
There are none. Just play armored core if you want cyberpunk schizo-ops woth mechs. Funny how you guys always say anons should devote their time and energy polishing this turd and try to build a palace on the rotted foundation that is Lancer rather than trying any of the vastly superior mecha trpgs out there. I guess DnDrones will never change even if you do shuffle them over into a new genre.

>>97634062
Fuck off dude. It's really obvious you're just twisting or ignoring everything he says because you can't oppose the points he actually does make. Run off to /b/ if you're just here to play grabass.

>>97634219
>you can't oppose the points he actually does make
But I DID refute his/your points, I just mocked him at the same time. Clutching pearls over gooner mods or lusting after little children doesn't change the fact that Lancer is a bad game and no amount of desperate refluffing or homebrewing - or rather, begging qnons to do it because Lancerfags don't even know HOW to fix Lancer, they just insist that (you) should do it for them - can band-aid over the fetid, rotted gash that is Lancer

>>97608068

>>97616867
There is one in plans, but they news are lacking
https://youtu.be/EZNyychVLb0?si=iN9S5STY-DKEa6pv - ~6:17

Like a clockwork it derail with any Lancer posting you fucking Chuds.

I really like Flames of Orion, I will kitbash some mechs to try it with some friends, never painted any 1/300-ish stuff so I am thinking in ways to convey the scale, most people paint Battletech like it was some random space marine, they even use the same basic ass tuffs that absolutely don't look like 3 meter plants

>>97634940
in fairness when the thread was made it had 1 reply in 17 hours. needed something to get the thread rolling

>>97616867
I keep trying to get something but the stock is fucking ass. its always out of stock.

>Lancer has NHPs & Ra, the big corps and Union

Yes, these are all the things that do not work together and are generally written in a way that makes them feel eyerolling.

>I won't pretend that Lancer is tonally consistent

See, it's not JUST that it's tonally inconsistent. I'd also say it's logically inconsistent with ideas that don't work together, and also just plain...execrable? From the really pretentious way it's written, to the various ways in which it reeks of reddit.

>But saying there's no love or inspiration is simply dismissive and, I'd argue, dishonest.

What else can I call it when they make "THE mecha ttrpg" and then admit they basically didn't like mecha and had zero interest in it as a genre?

They had love for wanky hard-sci-fi garbage like The Culture and Star Trek 3d printers. Not much else. But unfortunately those aren't particularly interesting or uplifting things.

It's funny because you can often tell when reading the books description of space naval combat (aka THE REAL battles), that they wanted to be writing Star Trek combat and thought mechs were stupid. Then lo and behold, they release that janky battleship gothic space naval wargame in the setting! I feel like if they hadn't been mandated to make a mech setting, that's just what they'd have done in the first place lol

>>97633905
>Personally, I'm not puritanical about settings, but I get the impression that you are.

I really just genuinely wonder why you'd commit to the setting if you agree on how flawed and ugly it is. What is there worth saving?

This is another major criticism with Lancer's setting: it's so overwrought, so complicated, with so many conflicting ideas and poor aesthetics strung together and interlocked by paragraphs and paragraphs of technobabble...

...that "fixing it" becomes more of a chore then just abandoning it. It is unironically LESS WORK to just create your own simplistic Armored Core-esque setting than to try and remodel Lancer into something coherent.

>>97633961
>Yet expansionism under the guise of "noble communism" is fine, right?

See, that's another reason why I say the writers are just downright contradictory and full of plot holes, not just "tonally" inconsistent.

They say in interview that Harrison Armory is this idealized paradise that has to die because of some ancient sins its built on, yet in a half-assed effort to add nuance to the setting they also add lots of dirty laundry to the past and present for Union...but that's okay because Union is ontologically good :)

These guys don't know what the FUCK they're doing. They are awful writers. They're not just "tonally inconsistent" they leave a trail of plot-holes wherever they go! They don't get the appeal of mechs because they hate mechs and didn't even watch any on break for FUN.

>>97634940
>Chuds
Overplayed your hand

>>97637851
>>97637895
Wew this really has you mad, huh Virt?

>>97638377
Who the fuck is Virt?

>>97638392
Virtual Optim, a notorious troll who also goes by a new handle, "Tabletop Truth", and advertises his shitty AI slop youtube videos on here. You can find him making another thread to seethe about Lancer here where some anon is ragebaiting him >>97631231

>>97638400
Well I can assure you I'm not that dude. In fact, I actually shut down his video when he praised PBTA lmao. Fuck that game.

>>97638408
Virt is known for lying about who he is, not really convinced since you share his exact same posting style.

>>97634062
>That doesn't make the base game suddenly good.
Sure it does.
>Also funny how you are forced to appeal to consumerism
Popularity and cultural impact is not "consumerism".
>You think pinching little girls' cheeks is "smutty"? That's a bit of a weird self-report there, pal.
Nobody said anything of the sort, so I guess the real self report was from you.

>>97637748
Seems to be true in the us, there are a few copies of the core boxes here in europe floating around. Maybe it's less popular here or something.

>>97638377
You've been calling everyone virt in like 4 different threads now lil guy. Maybe just slide into his DMs if you wajt his attention so bad.

>>97638473
>Sure it does
Nope. The only praise you can give the base game in that case would be "easy to mod", which isn't even true.
>Popularity and cultural impact
It unironically is. "Millions of flies bought and ate this shit, they can't be wrong!"
>Nobody said anything of the sort
I'm not the ome who called it a porn mod, why are you trying to rewrite the past when we can all just scroll up? You're supposed to wait at least a thread before you start doing that.

>>97638970
He didn't call it a porn mod either you dishonest weasel

>>97637851
I'm not sure if you're the same person from before or this Virt. It's clear to me that some people aren't capable of discussing this in good faith and frankly I don't care to spend any more time on this, especially if they just want to talk about how bad you think the setting is. My arguments have always been about its value as a game, and can only imagine that people either haven't tried playing it, or have bounced off of it for any of the valid but subjective reasons they care to share. You do you. Suffice to say my group is having fun with the game, and it pisses me off when people cry about it and tell me that's not possible and please stop because they've soiled themselves. Yes, I'm exagerrating, but kentucky fucking christ people are babies about it.

>>97638987
He called it smut, nitpicking nonce.
>smut
>noun
>magazines, books, pictures, films or jokes that offend some people because they relate to sex
Care to tell me how pinching a little girl's cheeks "relates to sex" in your nonce brain?

>>97638996

> You may as well argue Skyrim is a good game because you can mod big titties and cheek pinching into the game.
Smut clearly refers to "big titties" and not "cheek pinching", you absolute mong.

>>97638996
He didn't, you just want to twist it that way because you seem to be losing

>>97638995
Same anon who made the original post here, and no I'm not virt (sounds like a made-up bogeyman honestly)

Honestly if you're the same guy here I was talking with before, I have to commend you for at least being reasonable and admitting the setting and writing has some flaws (even if we disagree on what they are and how big they are). I've seen so many arguments (even some just today) where fans of the game are just insanely defensive and would rather tear down the earth and all the heavens then admit that maybe the mecha game by the guys who expressly didn't care about mecha might be lacking in some areas.

We'll just have to agree to disagree. Only thing I'll comment is:

>for any of the valid but subjective reasons they care to share

I don't believe in "it's all subjective!". I think you can have objectively bad writing, for instance. But that's a whole 'nother argument anyway.

Peace anon, thank you for being somewhat civil and understanding here (if you are the anon I think)

>>97639000
Yet you called both smut. Should've made that distinction if you were gonna cry about smut in the first place.
>>97639007
I get that you're mad you completely lost our little debate and had to deflwct to a jokey little dig I took at you, but next time try to be less obvious about it.

>>97638995
>everyone who dislikes my commieslop troon rpg is a diaper-shitting baby from Kentucky!
Holy maldaroni, this is why no one likes your kind. Why would I even try to salvage Lancer when it just means I run the risk of attracting the likes of you to my tqble?

>>97639053
I'm not that anon you retard my opinion on the matter is this >>97634033

>>97639060
> Making it political. Bringing gender into it. Twisting words.
Thank you for volunteering to be an example for
> some people aren't capable of discussing this in good faith
now fuck off.

>>97639181
anon, "a" and "q" are right not to eachother that might've been an actual typo

>>97639183
You think that "twisting words" refers to "table" having being written as "tqble", and not the blatant misquote?

>>97639043
Same anon, yes, though obviously I don't know who you are or who else you might've replied to thinking it was me. Or who I replied to thinking it was you.

Your comment is noted, and of course I agree that some things are subjective and some things are objective. However, your attempt to sneak a detracting tone
> "it's all subjective!"
into your portrayal of my reference to subjectivity
> valid but subjective reasons
creates the impression that you are either not capable of or interested in distinguishing between the two. I am telling you because you might not be aware of how you come across, not because I am trying to argue with you.

The best place that this can possibly go is agreeing to disagree, and I'm fine with that. Peace.

>>97639270
>my reference to subjectivity

Fair enough, but a lot of people do believe "it's all subjective!" and a lot of people do throw up their arms in these conversations and retreat into the cave of supposed subjectivity. So it's something that prickled me enough to mention.

If you're not doing that, again fair enough.

>>97631207
It's Tumblr. Trust me, they're mad it didn't live up to its sign posting.

Also, if that's what you came away with, you probably weren't reading very hard.
They're using liberal here as in "not proper lefty, just pretending at it." The poster calls NHPs slavery and Union "Imperial Space Sweden" using uses its "Benevolent Imperial Power" to intervene on the "Backwards Violent Worlds" while refusing to topple Harrison Armory's "PMC fascist nation state because it would be 'morally wrong'.

>>97628104
>If your TRPG is unplayable without an app, it's a bad TRPG.
It's build on 4e.
4e is unplayable without an app too. That's why it sandbagged, the guy who was coding that planned app had a psychotic break and An Hero+2ed himself and his family, and his code was such spaghetti nobody could make heads or tails of it to finish the project. So what was supposed to release a couple months after launch instead released never.
Draw Steel has the same 4e problem too, that's why they have somebody coding them a dedicated VTT called Codex.

4e and derivatives are just too gamey to not need a game engine to be ergonomic.

>>97628112
>chubby_goblin_shortstack_rape_quest.pdf
Do you mean Goblin With a Fat Ass? Because that's actually Tom Bloom too, and really impressive in terms of minimalist design; I didn't think I'd ever see a system with only one stat actually function, even Lasers and Feelings technically has 2 even though it's a sliding scale.
Though you can just get it off Itch.io, you don't need the file share thread.

>>97628289
Funniest thing is that's patently the opposite, lancer has fuck all for PC rules.

>>97633905
>I rule that assembly is critical, and that a printed mech is essentially a skeleton without organs or skin.
I'm pretty sure that's canon. Otherwise your PC stats like hull, systems, engineering, couldn't actually affect anything. Like those are your stats as a mecha mechanic, they follow you between frames just like the talents, you're X good at improving the Hull, X good at improving the engineering. Not to mention all the systems you bolt on from other mech's licenses.

>>97633961
Are Union the Tau?

>>97639060
I'm a Kentuckian and I'm one of the people in the thread who's been, eh not really advocating for Lancer but at least defending its right to exist and why the authors made some of the choices they did.

I don't know why we keep getting used as the go-to.
We never seceded the US. There are states more conservative, more backwater, more uneducated, more poor. Yes we keep voting in McConnell but it's because coal is the only thing keeping the entire eastern half of the state from literal starving, the economy there was rigged by Big Coal so there are no other jobs, you're either a miner or provide goods and services to miners, and if you're the latter you also live on welfare because it's not enough if you aren't a miner, and McConnell is trying to cut that welfare, but if he's not around to keep the coal around you and everyone you know loses the ability to work entirely. They literally cannot afford to be anything but single issue voters.

We've voted Beshear as our governor twice though. You want the turtle out, get Appalachia some jobs that aren't coal. That's WHY Beshear got elected twice. Fixing KY education and replacing rather than just eliminating coal jobs has been two of his biggest platform pieces.

>>97639847
I am sorry, friend. I said kentucky because I wrote JFC first and then thought it would be funny to say KFC instead. I didn't realize that it would be interpreted as a political statement, and honestly find it bizarre that it was. I am not even from America or invested in its internal conflicts apart from how they affect international relations. Strange times, I guess.

>>97639733
I kinda don't care for it after seeing the demo tbdesu

>>97639733
For me, it'll either be a Teetans or Cosmo Babylonia force for Gundam Assemble.
if it lasts to that point, that is.

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Watching Gundam: the Origin to get into the right mindset for my next session. Shit, I wish I'd set this campaign up in space.

>>97638418
>Virt is back
Man, I remember when that guy was constantly shitting up /swg/, among others

>>97639060
>why Kentucky?
I doubt most people care enough about Kentucky to shit on it ;)
Just teasing you. I'm in Alabama, but used to visit KY frequently. Lovely state.

>>97639616
>Unplayable
This is a mecha tabletop thread. Some of us have played Level III strategic ops Battletech without digital assistance. Some of us built our own Mekton settings and all the equipment used within, no spreadsheets involved. Some of us are making our own systems. Playing 4e or Lancer pure-analog is definitely not more work than those.
Are all of those games crunchier than they probably need to be? Sure. But "unplayable" is underestimating the power of our autism.

>>97638418
Can you describe this "posting style", then?

/tg/ is notoriously bad about this. You can get scores of people refusing to recognize the existence of Bumpfag despite all his insane and instantly recognizable eccentricities, then on the other hand you get Lancerfags desperately coping that everyone who criticizes the games setting or gameplay is the same dude even when there's like 3-5 people shitting on it in the same thread all with fairly distinct choices of words.

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I'm currently waffling between either Lancehounds or Chromestrike to run an Armored Core game for my group. Embryo Machine is technically in there too but I'm not sure if my group would jive with it.

Can any anons that have played any of the above weigh in and maybe suggest one over the other? I'm reading through their books while I'm at work but I'd still appreciate a quick rundown if anyone has experience with them.

>>97639652
"Unlike most mecha, this one is about the 3d printers (and signs and signifiers in the built environment)"

>>97643383
For Armored Core specifically, I think Lancehounds is your best bet.

>>97640044
this and checked

>>97643456
Now that one i'll give you.

Personally, I think the setting works a lot better if you just interpret all the explanations as unreliable narration written by Union itself. So UNION thinks it's a utopia, UNION thinks it's ST Federation style root beer diplomacy isn't colonial. UNION says shackling lovecraftian demons from the Warp to be your AI replacement is a totally normal and ethical thing to do because once you put them in the lobotomy box they're happy to be there, and Ra said to and it's hard to argue with God when he's literally living on Mars, gifted man FTL, and has actively smote major faction leaders for disobedience.
Is it actually dystopic? Probably not, in that it's still a better society to live in than ours for the most part. But calling it utopia is just Union believing its own hype-ocrisy.

In fact Starfleet is an especially apt comparison, because Kirk, Sisco, and Janeway are all considered exemplary captains but constantly break the Prime Directive despite their frequent lip service and have a long list of self-justified war crimes, and that's not even acknowledging Section 31. Starfleet never actually lives up to the ideals it professes, but all its members pseudo-religiously believe that it does.

>>97645374
>the setting is great so long as you explicitly ignore the gamebook, every sev interview, and then just imagine your own setting!
....okay?

>>97645414
It's not ignoring it. Just reinterpreting what IS there in a way that becomes self-consistent.

>>97645440
You've had to deconstruct the setting to its base influences and then rebuild something similar but completely different out of the scraps. You may as well say Dune and 40K are the same exact setting because they're made out of the same base components.

Or if you don't mind food analogies, that hamburger and t-bone steak are the same dish.

A Gundam Wing campaign but with no Gundams basically OZ party vs a massive Earth Sphere Alliance