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[Blood_Librarian]

I'm recently got into tabletop games and one of the games I am interested in just came out on Kickstarter today.

Lancer is a mud-and-lasers RPG about mechs and the pilots who crew them. Narrative play, gritty tactical combat and deep customization.

Ten thousand years after the climate crash that ended the Anthropocene, a survivor humanity rebuilt itself and spread to the stars. Numbering now in the trillions, they are a polyglot, cosmopolitan people, organized under a central hegemon: Union. The galaxy is vast before them, and humanity is its mirror. For some, it is a golden age of post-scarcity utopia. For the rest, that golden age remains a dream to be attained.

Into this roiling galaxy the you take your role as a mech pilots —  from cold-blooded mercenaries to honor-bound Baronic cuirassiers, hardscrabble Union regulars to professional Constellar Midnights, Far Field teams at the uncanny edge of known space to the ever-wandering Albatross. Operating with a wealth of licenses from one of the galaxy’s Big Five fabricators, you and your friends play a tight-knit squad of pilots on campaign — comrades together in a galaxy of danger and hope. Will you fight for Union, working to rectify the crimes of previous administrations? Will you run contracts for a corpro-state, working to advance private interests while lining your pockets? Will you fight to liberate your people from all masters, human or otherwise? Or will you fight only for yourself?

Lancer features a mix of military science fiction and mythic science fantasy. In the setting, conscript pilots mix ranks with flying aces, mercenary guns-for-hire brawl with secretive corpostate agents, and relativistic paladins cross thermal lances with causality-breaking entities.

In Lancer, there is promise in the potential, but the hard-won gains of humanity are under serious threat. From the internal: ruthless corpro-states, bitter anthrochauvinist reactionaries, and ponderous oligarchs, to the external: MONIST 1, or RA, an anoriginary being with unfathomable power and unknowable goals; the Aunic Ascendancy, the unbroken heirs of Old Humanity; and more.

Having only begun the project of recovering from its own internal political revolutions, Union now scrambles to reassert its control over a galaxy that would fall to chaos otherwise.

Who will you fight for, pilot?

The game already has a free pre-release PDF out if you wish to play the game without backing, linked here. The kickstarter is here if you wish to back it and gain access to the extra things they offer.

I might be planning on playing a game of it soon if my responsibilities allow it.

[Knave]

Into this roiling galaxy the you take your role as a mech pilots

I think they need to work on their kickstarter copy editing!

This sentence in particular hurt my brain 

[Zangi]

The art looks really familiar.

[Jopax]

It's by the same dude who does Kill 6b demons, looks damn pretty, especially his designs are some fresh shit.

[Cthulhu]

It's by the same dude who does Kill 6b demons, looks damn pretty, especially his designs are some fresh shit.

Did he do any design work or just the art?  He made a dark souls esque RPG a while back and it was real bad

[Jopax]

By design I meant the artwork itself, the mechs look like they'd fit into K6BD pretty nicely. No idea about the gameplay itself tho.

[NullForceOmega]

The kickstarter page pretty clearly lays out that he is the main rules designer for the game.

Lifted from the page: Tom Parkinson Morgan — Tom Parkinson Morgan is the artist and writer of Kill Six Billion Demons, published by Image Comics and on the web. He also wrote the RPG Broken Worlds, and is Lancer’s lead rules designer. Tom is a co-founder of Massif Press.

[sambojin]

Didn't really get it when I first read the title, even though it was explained pretty well in it. I was thinking "Oh, a cheap Mechwarrior strategic wargame knock-off. Nice!".

Nope. It's a D&D d20 full roleplaying game knock-off, where it revolves around you being a mech pilot. From the rules, it seems 5e'ish (ie: simple, streamlined), but not quite as simple as that system, with a fair bit of character customization using feats and skills ect along the way. Not 3.5e bloat, but not quite 5e "maybe too damn simple for its own good, DM must provide all the rules.....". Nice little advantage/disadvantage system, skills/feats that both couple into different mechs/playstyles/character-types or are general/aside-from-them, and a pretty simple levelling system that rewards playing the odd adventure while capping gear/"magic items" to an appropriate level to your currently expected adversaries and experience.

Anyway, haven't read it all yet, and haven't began to digest it all even remotely, but it looks good.

DnD D20 Mecha (maybe with some d6's), character and DM driven? Yeah, sounds great

[EuchreJack]

Don't get too excited.  I'm sure whomever has copyright to the Mechwarrior franchise will sent a cease-and-desist letter soon, and the guy is too established to ignore it.

Grab whatever you can, its gonna disappear completely within 6 months.

[Egan_BW]

You can't copyright "giant robots in space".

[Levi]

You can't copyright "giant robots in space".

Swindle would.

[Hanzoku]

Harmony Gold says “Hold my Beer”...

That said, they’re pretty safe. There’s a crapton of already published games of people piloting robots in space that outside of lawsuit factories like HG, there isn’t a lot to worry about.

[NullForceOmega]

Given the number of mecha-based RPGs available both for free and purchase, I really don't think HBS, Harmony Gold, WotC, or Activision would have any form of legal ground to stand on.  That hasn't stopped them before, but I REALLY doubt they'll bother.

[EuchreJack]

Given the number of mecha-based RPGs available both for free and purchase, I really don't think HBS, Harmony Gold, WotC, or Activision would have any form of legal ground to stand on.  That hasn't stopped them before, but I REALLY doubt they'll bother.

Maybe you didn't catch that.  You said Mecha, not Mech.  LANCER uses Mech.  Plus, the Mechwarrior franchise has already released RPGs.  Its a concern.

[NullForceOmega]

Like GW tried to prove copyright on "space marine" and got kicked out of court?  This is not a meaningful concern, and if it does come up in court can be rectified by adding a single letter to a word.  Not exactly worth wasting energy stressing over.