#I don't play Lancer

[thepankratikidd]

so to clarify i am asking abt this for a FRIEND and not MYSELF but

does anyone who plays the HA mechgirls game know the rate on iskander bc a friend of mine has been playing for a year and still hasn't pulled her and its so sad yknow bc iskander is clearly his fave but somehow he keeps pulling nothing but napoleon and its getting on his nerves

[boypr1ncesss]

the thing about the queer media tournament that really gets me is that last i checked there wasn't a single mxtx work on it. like not even the untamed made it in and don't get me wrong the og mo dao zu shi books are huge but cql is def more popular among tumblr circles. idk it just really rubs me the wrong way how every single piece of western media that ppl have ever gotten a lil bit aggressive abt shipping with is there and then for east asian media there's utena and madoka magica and the handmaiden and last i checked that was pretty much it. and then for the rest of the world there's next to/nothing but idk enough to really make judgements there.

[parallelshore]

How am I going to not do Deltarune fanart when Kris has the best poses?

[momotech764]

i am this close to just begging people in the streets to DM a 5e campaign for me to play in. it's so bad

[sol-shines]

GOT ACCEPTED INTO A LANCER CAMPAIGN AT MY SCHOOL'S TTRPG CLUB. WE ARE DOING IT SCARED

[the-foley-knoll-horror]

Big fan of reading through adult TTRPGs and then never playing them

[carthus-flame-arc]

I need to be a pilot in a mech hunting Kaiju

I need to be a pilot in a mech hunting Kaiju

I need to be a pilot in a mech hunting Kaiju

I n-

[gender-euphowrya]

giving ffxiv another go on the free trial weeee

[ferronickel]

In honor of reaching 300 followers and getting record page views on the Looking Glasses website today, I set aside some time to do some doodles.

Here's a sadboy tax for @bleakoutlo, who didn't ask for anything specific, so here's the gang playing doing a sport!

@scratch-lunin noticed I referenced Tenna on one of the pages, and asked what my design for them would be. I went with TV whose "body" is made of static and can change for their fight as they "change channels". (Sorry this is so so late, your ask corresponded with the exact moment I needed to stop drawing for a while to recover from my rsi)

[magnuficentwo]

going from Doctor Ned's zombie island, a dlc that was so easy and repetitive beat it in a little over a day, to General Knoxx's secret armory was one of the biggest difficulty whiplashes I've ever experienced

[orrangeslices]

I've actually had this idea with mechs before. Magic would be so energy intense to cast, you'd need some sci Fi reactor to pull it off

Tabletop RPG setting where magic is real, but only for robots.

[vexwerewolf]

If we talk about the aesthetics of technology in Lancer, we can divide each of the Big 4 along lines of form and function.

IPS-N: Pure Function

IPS-N cares only what a mech does. It doesn't need to look good or pretty doing it - it only needs to be able to do that thing well. It's notable that the Raleigh, arguably the most form-oriented of the IPS-N frames, is also considered to be the company's biggest commercial failure - they strayed from their core design principles and got punished for it.

Harrison Armory: Form Follows Function

Harrison Armory still leans pretty heavily towards the functionality side of things, but it isn't satisfied with doing a good job alone. Yes, the mechs have to perform well, but they also have to look good doing it. There's no practical application for the Sherman's sleeveless coat or the Tokugawa's dainty little tassels, but they don't hinder combat functionality and they make the mechs look dashing. In comparison to IPS-N's coarse, industrial, almost unfinished look, HA mechs look stern, austere and imposing. There's a smoothness to them that you just don't get on IPS-N frames.

SSC: Function Follows Form

SSC is where we start to plunge into aesthetics-forward mech design. The Death's Head isn't six-legged because it's a sniper - the Death's Head is a sniper because it's six-legged. SSC came up with a mech design and asked: "what would this do best?" A six-legged chassis provided a more stable firing platform for precision weaponry, so that was what it did. Shapes and appearances are invented, and then a use case is discovered for them.

HORUS: Pure Form

It might seem weird to classify HORUS as "pure form" when their mechs largely don't have a consistent visual identity outside of the examples in the book. However, if we look a little deeper at the definition of "form," the explanation becomes clear: in some ways, HORUS is in the business of making statements, not mechs.

For anyone who's actually played a HORUS mech in Lancer, you may have noticed how awkward they are to actually pilot. Their statlines are, on paper, often very poorly suited to the sort of work they have to do. The Gorgon is built to attract attention and draw fire but has no armor. The Manticore is meant to be a front-line fighter but is quite slow. The Minotaur is meant to be a tech platform but has a low sensor range. The Pegasus' one functional trait doesn't apply to any of the weapons in its equipment package!

This is because HORUS mechs are designed purely as a testament to a certain discipline of technology. I remember expressing irritation with a friend's NeoGeo-for-X-Box emulator once, that you couldn't reconfigure the controller mapping so that it was easier to play with the X-Box controller. He remarked that it was meant as a historical preservation tool that perfectly duplicated the functionality of the NeoGeo, and that the only reason you could even play games using it at all is because that was a function of NeoGeo arcade cabinets.

That's how HORUS mechs are - their usability as chassis is broadly a side-effect.

[txttletale]

What would you say are the three best introductory ttrpgs? Not in order of quality, but like if you had to pick three games as a good collective foundation before someone explores other ttrpgs.

obviously this varies table to table and person to person, right, some people aren't going to gel with certain aesthetics or settings or tones or themes. but in terms of speaking pure mechanics, i think the world would be a much better place if more people were introduced to trrpgs via pbta (esp. thinking like, '3rd gen', post-monsterhearts stuff here) -- not because i think pbta games are without flaws or even, as a rule, 'good', but because i think that GM Moves are an absolute cosmic sea change in terms of allowing the GM/facilitator role to actually fucking play the game and a powerful antitode to the imo extrmeely corrosive attitude that 5e play culture instills towards that role.

other than that i don't have particularly strong ideas about what's a good 'beginner game', because i think that depends a lot on factors like the players' genre familiarity or previous experience with non-ttrpg roleplay. like, lancer could be an incredible starter game if you want to get your 40k group with no roleplaying experience into ttrpgs, and honey heist might work great with your improv buddies who don't do tabletop games -- but swap those around and you could have pretty awful starter experiences!

so yeah tldr it varies from group to group but i truly think that any game that provides robust narrative as well as mechanical support for the GM role, or splits that creative element around the table (including fully GMless games) is going to be a much better starter game than 5e.

[extremely-nervess]

I've caved to my desire to RP again, so I will be playing this rock nerd in a Lancer game.

Only problem is I don't actually know that much about rocks... So if you know any any cool rock lore, please share 🙏

[ostro-gothic]

This type of stuff is precisely why I only buy homebrew books now. I enjoy 5e as a system, including the 2024 changes, but I just abhor the company. Find your online resources, folks, everything is out there.

"D&D 4e was too much like a video game,"