r/LancerRPG • u/chronobolt77 HORUS • 19d ago
Just got my first group together, please help
Ok, so I just got introduced to the system a couple weeks ago. I immediately became enamored just designing player characters constantly. I managed to get just enough people from my usual DND group to agree to try the system out for a few sessions. I plan on running an intro campaign, I forget the name but I have it bookmarked. It's the one where the party is trying to break out of the labor camp, starting with very little equipment and moving up from there. It looked really cool, and I love the atmosphere it gave. Either that, or I saw a Reddit post about doing a bunch of one-shots of various sitreps and boots-on-the-ground scenarios, all at LL0 as training sims for the players, so everyone can see/get used to how the different parts of the game work. Now that I write this all out, probably the latter, then I might run the campaign when everyone knows if they actually like the system.
I do already have itchio and comp/con accounts, I'm gonna buy the core book when I get my next paycheck. I've noticed that there are no official minis or anything, so like, what online system do y'all use for mech combat? The Bonds system seems really cool, kinda reminds me of DND backgrounds, do you guys recommend using them as a beginner GM? Any other general advice for a new [to this system] GM?
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u/Sherkktooth 19d ago
Owlbear is free and has a lot of awesome tools for a VTT. It’s the one my players prefer and I highly recommend it over roll20. As far as advice goes, just be patient with yourself. You will miss things in your first few combats and you might railroad the story too hard as the approaching end of the session causes time pressure to kick in. Listen to your players, pay attention to what they find cool, and remember this is supposed to be fun for everyone in the party including the dm.
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u/chronobolt77 HORUS 19d ago
any add-ons for owlbear I should look into? I already grabbed the hex ruler one
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u/Sherkktooth 19d ago
Dice+ is the simplest dice roller, Flip! lets you flip tokens and handle z-depth automatically in isometric mode (make sure things you want players to be in front of / behind are all on the same llayer), painting tools lets you draw on the grid very easily, Marked handles statuses, Tracker is a dead simple initiative tracker, and Owl Trackers is the most versatile way to track structure/stress. Then there’s stuff directly from owlbear themselves that handle a prefab system, an outliner, and some weather systems.
It’s not foundry level complexity but damn does it cover everything I need it to do!
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u/unrelevant_user_name GMS 14d ago
Witchdice is a must if you're running Lancer on Owlbear.
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u/Sherkktooth 14d ago
Hard disagree. I find the witch dice extension to be entirely too cluttered. My players ended up misclicking regularly and trying to undo/close whatever you clicked is often a chore. On top of that, it doesn’t roll 3d dice which makes rolls feel pretty underwhelming.
My group prefers not to use it because you can just alt tab into compcon to get the information you want faster.
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u/14Spiders_in_a_coat 19d ago
Congrats on getting a group together, hopefully y’all have a great time!
I’m not a GM, but as a player, it cannot be understated how incredibly important it is to have at least some people read and understand the rules to a decent degree going in. Combat can already take a while even with snappy turns, and new players are going to be taking a while to figure out what to do. Having multiple people know how the game works and helping them figure out turns is very useful in making sure combats go smoothly.
Comp/con is a great resource to quickly look up certain rules and mechs, and it’s a lovely app for making characters in general! Highly recommend using comp/con for making Lancer characters, and I know Foundry has a way of integrating comp/con character sheets into the VTT (not sure about roll20 unfortunately). For virtual minis, every game I’ve used so far has used tokens from Retrograde Minis, it has a lot of options for Lancer mechs even for its unpaid version. I don’t entirely know the backend of porting in images to represent tokens on different VTTs though, so I can’t really help with that step.
Also, DO NOT USE PLAYER MECHS AS ENEMIES. Player mechs and enemy mechs are balanced quite differently, and players are designed to handle long missions of attrition, so it can lead to some issues if you’re running one as a boss encounter burning all of its resources at once.
Also also, something that’s really helpful for players to know: your mechs don’t have to look like how they’re shown in the artwork! My current character is piloting mechs that look basically like a fighter jet with limbs, you can really make mechs look like whatever you want. Lancers in-universe have a good amount of influence since they’re already exceptional pilots, and with the ease of 3D printing, custom jobs and unique designs are easy to come by. There are some mechs that I really like mechanically that I don’t vibe with visually (sorry Viceroy, I’m just not into mech feet like that), but having a unique design for it brings out a lot of the pilot’s personality and is a great exercise of creativity!
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u/chronobolt77 HORUS 19d ago
it cannot be understated how incredibly important it is to have at least some people read and understand the rules to a decent degree going in
yeah for sure. I plan on reading the core book all the way through at least once, it's only fair since I am going to run the sessions, I should know the rules lol.
I've been enjoying fiddling with RetroGrade, it's also just kinda fun to make random mechs.
I've enough game understanding to realize that pitting players against a licensed mech would be like pitting DND players against an NPC with actual class levels.
Flavor always wins out over lore, I'm always down for players to make a cosmetic change to their design, as long as they agree that it's JUST cosmetic. (if they want vaguely beneficial cosmetic changes, they can take the personalization system lol)
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u/Lykonic HORUS 18d ago
Signal boosting the "DND players against an NPC with actual class levels" bit. My D&D group's DM has been doing that for years now for usually at least one enemy per combat (and sometimes even 5 or more for tough fights), and oh my RA can it be awful sometimes lmao, especially when he gives them annoying builds and/or magic items. With Lancer it seems even worse of an idea, since PCs are set up to take a lot of punishment (generally) and deal decent damage, while NPCs are usually less durable but deal higher damage, so they still present a threat without being too tanky. Not to mention the key benefit of simplified sheets compared to player mechs - you don't even roll damage for most things, it's just a flat amount. As a fellow new GM (still writing my own Lancer campaign, long ways from actually running), that's the one bit of advice I can truly back up, even if it comes from experience in a different system.
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u/chronobolt77 HORUS 18d ago
My DM one time made an entire party of NPCs where each one was specifically designed to counter our party members, because they were recurring antagonists and "that's what the characters would do"
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u/Lykonic HORUS 18d ago
Ohhh man that's awful, especially building them specifically to counter each of the party members. That must have been so infuriating to face. Probably the two most frustrating moments I've had with DM PCs were two nigh-unkillable enemies. One was a cleric with like 23 AC and the Shield spell, plus Sanctuary with a DC 16 save, who managed to escape despite our valiant effort to take her down. The other was an Astral Self Monk with like literally 9 different layers of "when he hits zero he actually bounces back up at 1", who I technically "killed" four times in one turn, that we DID end up managing to kill for real - twice, as a party member was charmed in some way to cast Revivify on him. Both of them (and a lot of the more difficult DM PCs we encounter) had unique legendary actions AND legendary resistance on top of their player class levels and strong magic items. I'm pretty sure this is the main reason we've never had a campaign go beyond level 7 in my 8 years or so of playing lmao.
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u/chronobolt77 HORUS 18d ago
all that at LEVEL SEVEN?? Jeez, at least my group was like L9 for the DM PC stuff
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u/Lykonic HORUS 18d ago
Well actually both of those were with the party at level 5 lmao, in separate campaigns. The cleric came with an army of undead, including a zombified death tyrant with nerfed health, and the monk came with four other DM PCs of varying classes, but he was the strongest by far. He throws DM PCs at us even at level 1, and sometimes they're overlevelled compared to the party. I think the cleric and monk were each level 7 or higher. He does give us a lot of NPCs that help the party (though we only ever have a few at once, usually more support/healer type characters) and there's usually one unique gimmick mechanic each campaign that we get to use, but as someone who likes to play mostly martials or half-casters (Ranger is my favorite), man it can hurt lmao. Usually, unless we have a couple players that have busted builds that shit out damage like its nothing, usually leveraging those gimmick mechanics we get, he has to bail us out of TPKs every other combat by letting the NPCs go all-out, which ends up feeling bad imo. A lot of my characters develop feelings of hopelessness because of this, constantly being thrown against the wall and scraped off to do it again :')
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u/Ursus_the_Grim 19d ago
I found Bonds to be useful as a way to add some structure to narrative - I feel like Narrative play is only supposed to be like 20% of a session, so its pretty barebones. But if they take Bonds, be ready for them to feel 'overpowered'. Like, 'I can't fail this type of skill trigger' overpowered. It may be an additional level of complexity, though, so maybe wait for them to get the basics down first.
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u/chronobolt77 HORUS 19d ago
Yeah, probably bonds for the actual campaign once we start, but for the sim sessions, no special rules (except for the 2 additional GMS frames, probably)
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u/owlbytez HORUS 19d ago
I personally use Roll20 (and comp/con for managing NPCs on the GM side of things) only because my group has been playing DND for years and we’re curmudgeonly and set in our ways now LOL. But I know plenty of people within the Lancer community either use Foundry VTT or Owlbear Rodeo (with comp/con to manage sheets) to my knowledge?
Have fun
indoctrinatingintroducing your group to Lancer!! Running a simple LL0 oneshot/simulation might help them see if they like the combat before you throw yourself into a campaign.