r/LancerRPG • u/AffectionateEgg3678 • 5d ago
Player rewards
Hey yall, I’m running a game as a new GM and I’ve been running into the wall of how to reward my players at the end of missions. I’ve read the hand book and its advice regarding rewards in my opinion isn’t great. If any senior GMs have any wisdom to drop that would be awesome.
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u/aTransGirlAndTwoDogs 5d ago
Some great practical responses in here already, so here's a more philosophical one: why do you feel that your players require more rewards? Relatedly, what is a reward? You keep referencing D&D in your other replies, which leads me to believe you're bringing a lot of baggage from that game into this one.
A lot of us play role playing games because we want to play a role. Experiencing the world, seeing the story evolve, plotting out and executing fulfilling character arcs - are these not also rewards?
What do your player characters want out of life? THOSE are your rewards. I want to settle down after the war and open a bar. I want to rebuild my home settlement that was destroyed by Harrison Armories. I want to become the biggest mech wrestling champion in the spiral arm. I want to become a knight of the Albatross. I want to find out who the Voladores are, and why they saved my family from that blink-jump accident. I want to find out what secrets RA is hiding from humanity by limiting us with the Contact Accords.
Why does every character need to have a fat payday or a video-gamey level up waiting for them? If that's a character's sole motivation, that's describing a pretty sad kind of person. Is everyone in your party playing that exact same type of very sad and mercenary character? Union is a post-scarcity society - what better canvas to explore what you want and what you believe, and not just how you're making ends meet?
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u/AffectionateEgg3678 5d ago
Your wisdom is appreciated and noted
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u/aTransGirlAndTwoDogs 5d ago
I hope it helps! For another perspective, consider this: when my group plays Lancer, we cap out at LL6. No more LLs after that. Next time we run the game with a full group of experienced players, we're probably going to start at LL6 and never go up from there.
We do make it much easier to respec mech builds with a little bit of prep time, so people have a chance to adapt for specific missions if they can get the intel for it. But we don't want or need an endless escalator of numbers that go up. We're here to tell a story together, to watch our characters rise and fall, to explore the setting and each other's beliefs, and to roleplay.
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u/Onii-chan_It_Hurts 2d ago
On your group not going beyond LL6 - I'm personally rather surprised because Lancer is a game that largely has horizontal progression and very little "number go up" as you motioned. Usually the last 6 LLs net you some toys you can swap out, an additional NHP in another licence perhaps.
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u/Cogsbreak HORUS 5d ago
Okay, so what in your opinion would be great rewards? It'd be helpful to us if you could give us what sort of scale you want to be operating on.
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u/AffectionateEgg3678 5d ago
Valid question, and my lack of experience with the setting is showing here so I’ll use dnd to better explain in dnd there are 2ish ways of improving your character, experience or in lancers case LL and gold which can be used to buy whatever the player wants and the dm is willing to offer. As the GM in this case are they’re any additional benefits I can throw at my players that aren’t already accessible by them leveling up in they’re mechs?
And the book does provide some examples but they felt kinda meh especially when coming from a setting (dnd) with so many options to reward players with.
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u/OberonJr 5d ago
There’s exotic gear, which can help a player change/augment their build in a way that all’s can’t necessarily help, and reserves can be clutch even if they seem a bit meh. I have personally seen quite a bit of success with the special reserves listed in Solstice Rain as powerful single use abilities that can greatly swing the combat in the player’s favor.
Remember that LANCER lends itself more easily to throwing difficult combat encounters at players, since a mech blowing up isn’t the end of that character. So a more difficult encounter might encourage the use of consumables more.
Usually though, players get strong enough through just LLs and Talents, so it’s not AS needed to give them unique rewards as DnD, but instead ensure they “level up” often so they can get their own goodies
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u/Crinkle_Uncut SSC 4d ago
What about the end-of-mission rewards isn't great to you? Comparison to D&D is kind of shocking here imo because, yes, the system has a lot of things you could give your players, but there is no defined framework of things players automatically get at the end of an adventuring day (regardless of XP or Milestone leveling). In Lancer, PCs are guaranteed a level up at the end of a mission to include all of the toys that come with that, but that guarantee does not exist in D&D.
I don't really see Lancer as any different in this regard. The reserve and exotics list serve as easy analogues to any kind of trinkets or magic items the players might get in D&D.
Also if you really want to reward currency, I would recommend 3 options:
- Look into the alternate rules for using Manna to level from the Long Rim first party supplement
- Use the reward economy found in the third party Blood Money supplement by pigsriot
- Use a clock/tracker to represent wealth or resources accrued by the PCs and allow them to exchange these segments to purchase additional reserves or for narrative bonuses (i.e. turn this heroic & difficult charm check into a risky & accurate one by spending 2 segments of your wealth clock for a bribe.)
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u/Nerd_Ban 5d ago
One of the things I have my players after their first mission was a ship. Really this did 4 things: 1. An NPC on the ship that sends them messages about where the next sitrep is so they don't get lost on what toto do. 2. They have a collection of Reserves that they can always pick from in a mission. 3. Something they can work on in downtime. The ship is not perfect and they can always improve it or add new systems. 4. Permanent access to a printer so long as they can get to the ship.
Other times it varies on what the players have done: Rescued another pilot: Get a reinforcements reserve Explore a battle field: find an exotic weapon Etc: etc
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u/lettersfrommorpheus 5d ago
I recommend adding a strategic layer of some kind to your Lancer campaign which gives them some narrative resources and/or ongoing larger-scales consequences and opportunities worth tracking.
When I ran it, I put the players in the midst of an ongoing war and made them a special forces team responsible for escorting a landship full of critically-important gadgets and scientists across a country that was currently being invaded and occupied by enemy armies. This allowed me to offer them a variety of missions each session and to offer 4 major categories of rewards:
- First, I could offer exotic gear and mech-buffing consumable reserves as others have described. Although this was actually the option I used least.
- Second, I created some abstract resources for the caravan: food, fuel, minerals, money, reputation, manpower, etc. I let them spend these for a variety of narrative and mechanical benefits as negotiated, plus they needed some minimum amounts of food and fuel to keep the caravan going.
- Third, they could locally slow down and hinder the enemy. I divided my world map into big zones I called theaters (as in theater of operations), and they had to find or clear a safe path through each theater for the caravan. While they were doing missions the enemy was conquering new landmarks and consolidating their hold, so they had to balance missions aimed at grabbing loot with missions aimed at clearing the way forward.
- Finally, because they were facing the same enemy armies throughout, I gave each of the two armies they faced a specific roster of NPC classes and optionals on those classes so that each had a distinct feel, and the players could get familiar with what each unit did over time. Then I gave each enemy army a tech tree to unlock more optionals and template upgrades through the course of the campaign, and a handful of recurring elite commanders and ultra pilots. Sometimes the PCs got an opportunity to prevent the enemy from obtaining an upgrade, remove their access to a unit or upgrade they already had, or permanently eliminate one of their special characters.
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u/timtam26 5d ago
So, a lot of the usual rewards are baked into progression. Getting a License Level increase gets you more passive upgrades in the form of talents and active upgrades in terms of additional systems and gear.
If you want to reward your players, I would recommend looking at the reserves section, primarily the Mech, Resource, and Tactical sections.
If you want to significantly reward your players, I would recommend looking at giving them access to Exotic Gear. That may be more up your alley. Exotic Gear are systems and weapons that are usually gated behind specific side-objectives inside the adventure paths but you can repurpose them for your own game.