Intro to LANCER Garage

Why "LANCER Garage"?

A Garage is place where vehicles are sheltered / repaired / altered.

The LANCER Garage is fitting, for a game of Mechs:

LANCER is broken (This is a good thing)

At the LANCER Fan Discord, Pilot NET, the dedicated GM channel helps new and old GMs become better. The community response is overwhelmingly helpful and positive.

My motivation to write this comes from reading these GMs, old and new, and how they prepare for the game.

Mostly because I wholeheartedly cannot with the most widespread paradigm for GM prep, which can be summarized as Prepare All Combats in Advance.

That's no way to live.

In all other TTRPGs I run, I don't create combats, you create situations. If they end up being combats, that's on the Players, I just provide suitable challenges that make things meaningful and interesting.

I am not the only LANCER GM who wants to break the beast apart and make it roar in this other language.

How I approach LANCER

So hey. A lot of what I am writing here is based on my own experiences running the game. There's simple house rules, complex systems, and phiosophical approaches to the entire hobby of Tabletop Roleplaying Games.

Here I want to talk about the major shifts I keep in mind when GMing LANCER.

No Missions

The LANCER Corebook approaches the basic narrative loop of the game as a mission with specific parts, and makes suggestions on how to use those parts (Briefing, Preparation, Boots on the Ground, Debriefing, Downtime) to structure a campaign's gameplay loop.

I don't vibe with that shit. I tried it for like a year or two. It sucked. I am fine with diegetic missions, but framing a LANCER campaign as a series of capital-M game-mechanical Missions feels constraining, and not in a good way.

So. No Missions as a Mechanical Framing. Anything that the LANCER CRB connects with Capital-M Missions will be referred to as Story. For example, characters gain a License Level at the end of a Story.

Uncertainty Resolution

Every Player Character action that is uncertain needs to be resolved. If the resolution is more interesting when left to chance, that's when dice are rolled. In general, this framework applies to LANCER and any other game:

  1. Players declare their intention as an action.
  2. If the outcome is certain or uninteresting, the action occurs as narrated; otherwise, a resolution mechanic is needed.
  3. Via dialogue, the GM and Players determine the conditions (and the Players can choose to change / not do the action):
  1. Once that is decided, the uncertainty is turned into narrative via interpreting the results of the resolution mechanic. This always changes the state of the world in some way.

The most common resolution mechanic is the humble dice roll. Other games can use other types of resolution mechanics, but LANCER uses a D20 dice roll, affected by various modifiers depending on the circumstances. This is an atomic resolution mechanic, meaning it cannot be broken down into other resolution mechanics.

We can frame other actions as resolution mechanics:

This means that we can exchange one type of resolution mechanic for others: All of the above examples could be resolved via a single dice roll. You could portray a social interaction as a combat encounter (a bit esoterically, sure, but it's doable). A combat can be a series of rolls with progress trackers.

So, we are not strictly bound to deal with all uncertainty with a single resolution mechanic. As a GM, you must choose what feels relevant and interesting. Combat with some weak gonks can be resolved via a single roll, keeping the tactical map for more exciting set pieces. Tracking the progress of long-term projects with multiple rolls only works if the steps keep the players' attention on the game. The dice-less social encounter only last as long as the players feel engaged with it.

I have no guidance as to when to use simple or complex resolution mechanics. It is more art than science. Experiment, play around, find your method.

The Menu

I have a wishlist of articles I intend to explore. The order is suggested, but may change. See the main page for more.