Lancer is a mud-and-lasers RPG about mechs and the pilots who crew them, featuring deep narrative play, gritty tactical combat and broad mech and pilot customization.
Into this roiling galaxy you take your role as a mech pilot — 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 great powers, 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 corpro-state 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?
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Long Rim Mech #1: The HORUS Kobold!
over 5 years ago
– Mon, Apr 15, 2019 at 08:43:23 PM
[no one knows where you come from, child. use that to your advantage]
The first of the Long Rim mechs is revealed: The HORUS Kobold!
Under the halls of the House of Dust, in the steaming corridors of the sulphur mines, wrath took shape and form.
Belching blue flame, the Kobold pattern group was the go-to chassis of the early Ungrateful partisans. A clever suite of script, the Kobold’s root syntax is cousin to the Goblin’s INSTINCT code — injected into an unshielded chassis, Kobold liturgicode burrows deep into the power management systems and synthetic menisci, directing the malleable polymers to burst their constraints. This rapid growth sheathes the chassis in responsive sheets of versatile superhard material, capable of being extruded from the form to use as a weapon, or layered as armor.
A tool of rebellion, the Kobold was born from an unknown code lent to Barony partisans that allowed them to convert their mining rigs into deadly weapons without the use of a printer. The Kobold is a small mech (size 1/2, barely larger than a person), but it is able to quite literally shape the battlefield to its advantage, using its ability to spew out rapidly hardening polymer to create cover, terrain, and encase enemies in molten slag.
All backers will get the finished version of the mech with the Long Rim mech supplement, but you can try the Kobold out for yourself here by grabbing it from our itch.io page or from our google drive here.
Stay safe out there, pilots, and remember to thank Dog.
End of The Week Update #1
over 5 years ago
– Mon, Apr 15, 2019 at 08:11:02 PM
End of Week 1
Happy Friday, Pilots. What a week it has been!
When Tom and I sat down to write Lancer, we set out to make a mech game we’d enjoy playing. Something with the right balance between narrative play and tactical crunch; something with modularity, with meaning in its components, and a setting that envisioned a cosmopolitan, optimistic humanity with agency. And yes, we wanted mud, we wanted lasers, we wanted steel and paracausality, tachyon lances and monofilament swords — in short, the thing we wanted wasn’t out there yet, so we figured we’d give it a go and see what we could make.
We had no idea that Lancer would be this popular. We had no idea how much all of you wanted to be a part of this as well.
At last check, there are over 4,000 pilots out there eager to suit up. Pilots from the US (Portland! How are we not in 1st place? We gotta step it up!) and pilots from Canada, from Brazil, the UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, and all over the world have joined up to bring this project to life.
We were flattered — no — floored by this reception. Literally, on the first day of the campaign I (Miguel) had a moment where I had to lie down on the floor. So again — and in perpetuity — you have our endless thanks.
Now, on to the good stuff: what’s coming next.
Stretch Goal 0
Stretch Goal 0 is a completed, edited, laid-out, and art-complete digital version of No Room For A Wallflower, Lancer’s first canon campaign setting and narrative!
Current draft cover of No Room For A Wallflower; likely to change before release. Work pictured is "The Great Day of His Wrath" by John Martin, a work in the public domain.
Set two years prior to the narrative present of the Core Book, No Room For A Wallflower tracks your pilots as they delve into the mysteries of Hercynia, a world only recently returned to habitability following five hundred years of isolation.
-
The deck rumbles beneath your feet, and for the first time you hear the howl of windshear as the shuttle breaches Hercynia’s atmosphere.
The world below, seen through the a thick, condensation-streaked porthole: An emerald smear, scarred by ragged patches of black and brown. Sheets of grey and massive columnar clouds speak to the months-long rainstorms that deluge the world.
“Thirty minutes out.” The shuttle pilot’s voice in your ear, shaking from the turbulence. “Leave your helms on for now. Cabin’s not pressurized and we’re going through a helluva lot of chop.”
His radio clips off. The cabin lights flicker from an especially hard knock. The wind shear dies down, and the howling engines settle to a level cruising roar. The hiss of air through your helmet subsumes all other sounds.
Below, emerald Hercynia.
Below — somewhere below — the mildewed halls of ancient Egregorian hives lie dormant. Empty.
Waiting.
-
Tom and I were always fans of a hybrid style of campaign back in the days when our group had regular D&D sessions. There was an overarching narrative, key characters, and a central story that progressed over time, but we didn’t want our characters — or, if we were DMing an arc, our players — to be railroaded along a single story with no room to explore! For Lancer, we wanted to emulate that style of play — part sandbox, part narrative with rising action, climax, and denouement.
No Room For A Wallflower is set up to encourage this style of campaigning. A setting first, Wallflower features a narrative structure that progresses independent of player action, but not ignorant of player action — the story “beats” in Wallflower assume your players will encounter, observe, avoid, or engage with them, and are triggered at the discretion of the GM. This, we feel, provides a GM some guidance and flexibility in structuring sessions and the overall campaign.
Some of you out there likely know what I mean, as Wallflower has been around for a while in its pre-release state. You veterans of Hercynia — having left it behind, or still there on the emerald world — will encounter a land familiar enough, but deeper, more broad, with new secrets, narrative threads, and threats to face.
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This was the start of your year: seated in the open bed of a transport truck as it hummed over a frosted road, you watched Evergreen fade into the predawn haze behind you. This world was nowhere you ever thought you'd be. Not where you wanted to wind up when you signed for the job— but it was where you were, and Hercynia's fight was now your fight.
The air, cold. Dawn approaching. Another group of survivors rescued, and every moment bringing you closer to Home, where there was a kind of peace.
A kind of peace.
Your rifle lies across your lap. Your chassis is strapped to the bed of the truck in front of you, a tarp over its scarred plating, a corner free and flapping.
Both are reminder of the work left to do.
It is the end of winter. Hercynia in thaw.
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Since we’ve hit the bar for Stretch Goal 0, here’s what to expect from the release version of No Room For A Wallflower:
A revised Act I and II, featuring new hooks, new lore, new beats, and general content expansion.
A brand new Act III, bringing the events of the setting to a conclusion in the narrative present.
Fully edited text (current page count is about 160, without Part III).
Fully laid-out text.
Full art from members of Massif’s Lancer Art Team — and maybe from some new names! For the first time, you'll see full art of the major characters, factions, locations, and mysteries of Hercynia.
New player backgrounds.
Answers to deep, buried secrets.
A look towards the future of Lancer's canon narrative.
No Room For A Wallflower will be a digital release, available to any and all backers.
A Challenger Approaches!
A Learning Process
On day one, not only did you get Lancer’s production fully funded, you smashed our four stretch goals aside and prompted us to at least double our expected print run!
Our immediate thought upon such a strong international response to our game was that we needed to address our global/ non-domestic shipping prices. Well, good news! Over the last couple days, we’ve been hard at work to identify a better fulfillment service, and are happy to announce that we’ve found one! So, here are our revised shipping costs:
Domestic shipping (US) will run a flat $12.00.
Canada, UK, EU, Australia, China, Hong Kong, and Japan is a flat $25.00 USD.
Shipping to New Zealand is $27.00 USD
Shipping to Switzerland and Norway is $45.00 USD.
And shipping to the rest of the world is $51.00 USD.
These changes should be reflected in the main body of the campaign and, as before, won’t be collected until we have the book printed and ready to ship!
Questions, and Answers
You got questions? Well, we got answers.
Yesterday we opened the floor on Twitter to our followers (we're @Lancer_RPG if you don't follow us already!) to shoot us some questions they had for us. I went ahead and pulled some of them to include in this update (paraphrased for brevity).
From @IAMKevinBates: "500 pages is A Lot. Where are the 'Rules People Need To Know'?"
A: Character creation rules, rules for narrative play, and rules for combat all wrap up by about page 110 - in total, it's about 60-80 pages of critical-knowledge rules, but will likely be fewer pages following our final edit and layout!
From @Elsendor: "Do you have any plans to do merch if you can afford it?"
A: Yup! Not as a part of this kickstarter though - being that it's our first go at it, we want to concentrate on delivering what we promised: an accessible, well-written, well-laid out Core Book with incredible art, delivered to you on time. We have plenty of ideas about merch that we'll act on in the future.
From @DarkPrimus: "Will all the stretch goal PDFs have art by the Core Book team?"
A: If they want in, we've got the budget for them! We also want to do a second round of artist calls, so, get your portfolios ready for later this year, folks.
From @Tr4xicus: "How much of Lancer is compatible with other systems?"
A: We'd assume that most of the narrative and downtime stuff is pretty compatible, as that's mostly rolling dice to determine broad narrative outcomes. Crunchier bits might take some work to mesh well. As to the lore - as the refrain on Pilot.Net goes - "all is true in the dream of the choir."
A: With the stretch goals hit, there'll definitely be some coming!
Aaand finally, from @TheSlowPainter: "How complete is the Core Book? Specifically, how complete are the rules, artwork, and setting?"
A: Glad you asked! The rules are complete, save for light copyediting and minor balance tweaks. The setting is set and done, barring copyediting and minor tweaks. All of the key art for the Core Book mechs are done. What's not done is a full copy edit of the text, proper layout (for print and digital), and all of the interstitial, atmospheric, landscape, etc, art that we want in there.
We really can't wait to see what our great art team has in store for us - judging by some of the thumbnails they've sent us, it's gonna be incredible.
Looking Ahead
That’s it for this week!
Questions about lore, homebrew, or just want to hang out with other fans of Lancer? Come check out our fan-made, fan-run Discord server through this link.
Stay tuned for more information next week, Pilots. We’ve got some fun stuff coming up.
— Miguel and Tom
International Shipping - update #1
over 5 years ago
– Sat, Apr 13, 2019 at 04:57:53 AM
Hi all!
Wow! We've had a ton of interest from folks overseas, and we hear you on the shipping, so we wanted to make it clear that priority #1 for us is figuring out how to bring those costs down.
Keep an eye on the update feed here, we'll let you know asap when we get it sorted out.
Thanks for the heads up, y'all, we appreciate it,
Miguel & Tom
200% funding!
over 5 years ago
– Sat, Apr 13, 2019 at 04:57:50 AM
WELL what a day that was (and currently continues to be)!
We've blown through our initial goal, all of our stretch goals, AND our social stretch goals! We're totally floored by the positive reception - from the absolute core of us, thank you.
We're going to take tonight to celebrate (and maybe a little bit of tomorrow too!) and then we'll get right back to work. By the end of the week, we'll have more information - likely, an answer - on what to expect for updated UK/EU/World shipping. By the end of next week we'll have a clear roadmap for what to expect with Lancer going forward - this includes clear outlines of what to expect for Stretch Goals 0-3, a hint at SG4, and a horizon-peek at anything beyond.
In the meantime, we did it! You did it.
Thank you so, so much.
Got a whole galaxy of possibility out there pilots, all manner of stars left to see.
Can't wait to get started.
- Tom, Miguel, and everyone else on the Lancer Core Book team.
![[no one knows where you come from, child. use that to your advantage]](https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/024/776/389/c9a1558b2cbf47db584db7b55511dfe9_original.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&w=700&fit=max&v=1555338362&auto=format&gif-q=50&q=92&s=008188075327f84f227de73aca08b81f)
