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lex1nat0r · 2 months

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The Danse Mechabre: White Elephant

AAR #01

Ran the first session in what is hopefully going to be a full Lancer campaign over the weekend. Gonna be posting these after-action reports from the GM perspective in case it's useful to anyone (and it turns out there are a couple of things I need to make sure I remember). No spoilers because at least half of the players are on the tumbles (eye see you).

Characters (LL 0):

Raiju (Hacker/Ace/Centimane) - GMS Everest - Delta

Sunshine (Grease Monkey/Technophile/Leader) - GMS Everest - Exchange of Affection

Rook (Walking Armory/Stormbringer/Brutal) - GMS Everest - Not Fun By Myself

Daylight (Technophile/Crack Shot/Infiltrator) - GMS Everest - Hits Different

Magpie (Hacker/Technophile/Centimane) - GMS Everest - General Protection Fault

You will notice right away that there are three - count 'em, three -characters with the Technophile talent. That means there are three bonus NHPs in the party. And the first thing I neglected to do is prompt for more interactions with the bonus NHPs. The only one that got characterization in this session was Molotov, Sunshine's little buddy.The reason I didn't prompt for more interaction is mostly because this group is used to 2.5-3 hour sessions and I am trying to hit one combat per session, which does not leave a lot of time for roleplay outside of combat. The schedule will need to be adjusted somewhat.

So in the year 4570u the PCs depart as crewmembers (and one stowaway) from the secret KRAKEN facility on the highly experimental blinkship Eye of the Tiger. The crew of the Eye of the Tiger had secretly been replaced with revolutionaries, planning to use its blink carver to quickly head towards the core worlds and help overthrow Union's Second Committee. They go into stasis, trigger the ship's blink carver and wake up to a variety of alarms blaring. It eventually turns out the year is now 5016u and the blink carver may have moved them in space as well as time. Or something. They fix up the ship a little and realize that they're near a planet that is putting out a distress call. When they also get the opposing force's broadcast about returning the planet to 'traditional Cradle values' they decide the situation requires mechanized intervention. Important note: I'm very happy with my players for not immediately deciding they need to intervene on the side of the people putting out the distress call and that maybe they need more information before getting stuck in. Keep hold of that instinct, just because you didn't need it this time doesn't mean you won't in the future.

So while the Eye of the Tiger engages the enemy fleet in orbit, the lancers drop right in to protect an urban area.

Combat 1.1: We get to be the Cavalry for Once

Sitrep: Control

OPFOR:

Pyro x2

Priest Vehicle x2

Hive x2

Grunt Breacher Vehicle x6

Outcome: PC victory, 11 - 8

No PC structure or stress damage, though Hits Different and Not Fun By Myself both used a Repair. The only mech to not get hit was Delta, which secured the lower left control zone and blasted away with its howitzer (whoever put the howitzer on the default Hacker loadout in COMP/CON is a real joker).

Here's the aftermath of the battle after I invoked the mercy rule when it became clear the NPCs couldn't take enough control zones some time around the middle of the last round (not pictured: the Hives' Razor Swarms that were still in 3/4 control zones).

(Tokens by Retrograde Minis (on the basic blank 1-hex tokens that come with Lancer so they show up well), map by Interpoint Station's pixel art assets, they released their new mapmaking tool like the day before we played. VTT is Roll20)

Most of the civilians had already been evacuated from the area with two exceptions: the blue building just above the lower left control zone (some kind of cultural building maybe, there were a lot of civilians around it), and the orange building to the left of the lower right control zone (an IPS-N showroom/liaison office). Those were both intact at the end of the combat, which will be relevant next session.

The enemy comp is very short-ranged which ended up working because the PCs had to get at them to get into their control zones. It also features a lot of burn which I ended up not using correctly (see below). I maybe went a bit hard on Strikers with that many Breachers, but I knew it would be fine because Breachers can only hit something once in a blue moon (Hits Different was the only one to get tagged by a Breacher shotgun). A lot of vehicles because I like combined arms in my mecha (I think I get this from my exposure to Battletech). No optionals on any of the enemies to reduce cognitive load on me, and even then there was plenty I forgot (see below).

I was worried about cover and LoS going into this because it doesn't feel like the Lancer rules have enough detail on that but it was easy enough to adjudicate in practice. Also shout out to one of the best rules in Lancer: the PC that went last nominates the PC to go next. That helped speed things up a lot.

Overall for a first combat with 5 PCs, getting through it in ~2.5 hours is pretty impressive! HOWEVER:

Things I Definitely Forgot About:

Tech attacks ignore cover!

Engagement gives +1 diff on ranged attacks!

Pyros deal double burn to anyone who already has burn!

Pyros can put out their FIREBREAK shield at the end of each of their turns!

Breacher's shotguns have a threat of 3!

All the PC talents!

Thankfully this can kind of be written off in fiction as the OPFOR being kind of bozos and the PCs not being fully familiar with their mechs (maybe some residual grogginess from stasis and the fact that mech warfare was still pretty new to them).

So definitely some things to keep in mind for next time - I'll have to come up with a format of NPC stat blocks that works for me because just using their stats in the core book clearly means some things get overlooked.

Next Time: Straight into the Wall?

INDULGE ME:

Campaign notebook is a Maruman Mnemosyne N195A, 7mm lined. A month ago I swore I would only use binders for campaigns going forward but Lancer seems constrained enough (note I did not say 'on rails') that I can get away with not doing that (as opposed to, say, a hexcrawling sandbox) that I can get away with it. Plus this notebook was only holding a half-done campaign idea that is unlikely to see the light of day so I figured I'd use the rest of the pages up. I've found the paper is very good at taking fountain pen ink, though I'm not using a fountain pen for these notes. I've settled on a Zebra Sarasa Clip 0.5mm gel pen as working best, and I do like that pen (it's what I used to finish out my #Dungeon23 notes).

#lancer #the danse mechabre #tdm white elephant

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