Interest Check: Lancer RPG (Mecha)

[GM R0B0GEISHA]

Neurophage wrote:

They take their marching orders from a giant moon computer that already spat out one handful of gods from one of its simulations and they still think keeping the damn thing on is a good idea.

Excuse me, but that's top secret information.

[Echos Myron]

GM R0B0GEISHA wrote:

Neurophage wrote:

They take their marching orders from a giant moon computer that already spat out one handful of gods from one of its simulations and they still think keeping the damn thing on is a good idea.

Excuse me, but that's top secret information.

lmao I pretend I did not see it

[Atlas2112]

Neurophage wrote:

They are, even in their most benign form, the very kind of coercive hierarchy, the very kind of state, that communists want abolished

So they're like a Monarchy? (Isn't that what Communists hate?)

Neurophage wrote:

It takes, like, five minutes at most to look this up

Where is that?

[Neurophage]

GM R0B0GEISHA wrote:

Excuse me, but that's top secret information.

I will actively apologize. I had assumed basically everyone read the setting chapter. It isn't really intended that players keep their eyes off it, but I understand if it's a part someone wanted to keep secret from the players. It is also totally a secret in-universe.

Atlas2112 wrote:

Neurophage wrote:

They are, even in their most benign form, the very kind of coercive hierarchy, the very kind of state, that communists want abolished

So they're like a Monarchy? (Isn't that what Communists hate?)

Neurophage wrote:

It takes, like, five minutes at most to look this up

Where is that?

It's not for me to say, and I already overstepped by bringing it up at all. There's a lot of good stuff about Union today and in the past in the section on the Third Committee in the setting chapter of the core book. The long and short of it is that thinking of Union as "communistic" is probably an overestimation of their own progress. Union has a centralized leadership within Cradle, and it has an uneasy relationship with imperialists and corporate states that span entire star clusters. Plenty of people across the galaxy see Union's Third Committee as being exactly as imperialistic as Second Committee, only preferring soft power to hard power, and there are plenty of very convincing arguments to be made for or against this. Union making economic sanctions against less-prosperous multi-planet empires in order to essentially starve them into compliance sounds more peaceful and less jingoistic than just sending an invasion fleet and killing all local leadership, but it must be remembered that it's the poor who suffer when the rich wage war, even if it's a trade war. It's hard to argue that people shouldn't be angry that the galactic superpower outsiders made them ration food for forty years, especially if it was just to force their society to enter into a galaxy-wide community with which none of them will ever personally interact.

Union wants, someday, for everyone in the galaxy to have their material needs met and never fear being forced into bondage or having their dignity and personhood rejected by the hammer of state violence, but they need desperately to resolve troubles in their own house first. And the longer they wait, the more their doctrine of universal prosperity looks like a grift.

[CucumberTree]

Neurophage wrote:

GM R0B0GEISHA wrote:

Excuse me, but that's top secret information.

I will actively apologize. I had assumed basically everyone read the setting chapter. It isn't really intended that players keep their eyes off it, but I understand if it's a part someone wanted to keep secret from the players. It is also totally a secret in-universe.

Atlas2112 wrote:

Neurophage wrote:

They are, even in their most benign form, the very kind of coercive hierarchy, the very kind of state, that communists want abolished

So they're like a Monarchy? (Isn't that what Communists hate?)

Neurophage wrote:

It takes, like, five minutes at most to look this up

Where is that?

It's not for me to say, and I already overstepped by bringing it up at all. There's a lot of good stuff about Union today and in the past in the section on the Third Committee in the setting chapter of the core book. The long and short of it is that thinking of Union as "communistic" is probably an overestimation of their own progress. Union has a centralized leadership within Cradle, and it has an uneasy relationship with imperialists and corporate states that span entire star clusters. Plenty of people across the galaxy see Union's Third Committee as being exactly as imperialistic as Second Committee, only preferring soft power to hard power, and there are plenty of very convincing arguments to be made for or against this. Union making economic sanctions against less-prosperous multi-planet empires in order to essentially starve them into compliance sounds more peaceful and less jingoistic than just sending an invasion fleet and killing all local leadership, but it must be remembered that it's the poor who suffer when the rich wage war, even if it's a trade war. It's hard to argue that people shouldn't be angry that the galactic superpower outsiders made them ration food for forty years, especially if it was just to force their society to enter into a galaxy-wide community with which none of them...

So we were having fun wrong, and you felt the need to correct the situation.

Thank you for being a hero

[TK423]

Well since the only book I have is the free Lancer book that the GM posted about, I do not have a clue what everyone is talking about.

[Phntm888]

I think Necrophage assumed we were all working off the core book. The setting details available in the free player rules supplement are really skimpy and present an overly simplistic view of the setting. It’s easy to read the little bits of lore given in those rules as Union’s Third Committee being a perfect socialist state, especially the way the rules talk about how you can just 3D print an entire mech and don’t have to worry about how much it costs.

At least, I assume that’s what happened.

[Neurophage]

That'd do it. While the setting chapter was excised from the free version of the core book, it's still intact (and mostly unchanged) in the playtest document, which the devs still keep available, free of charge, if you know where to look (by which I mean that their Google Drive was the first result when I searched "Lancer Pre-Release"). I had not meant to come off as unduly harsh. As an indie RPG whose development is headed by open socialists, Lancer tends provoke knee-jerk reactions from people who argue in bad faith. I made a hasty assumption and I'm sorry.

[CucumberTree]

It's ironic that the only knee-jerk reaction was your own. However, I can say without sarcasm that I appreciate the apology.

[GM R0B0GEISHA]

Unfortunately, my grandmother recently passed away. I've been helping my parents with certain things, so it's set me back a bit. I'm still working on getting the campaign set up, but it's set me back a bit.

Thanks for your patience.

[TK423]

Sorry to here that. Take what time you need.

[CucumberTree]

My condolences.

[GM R0B0GEISHA]

Hey all. Thanks for waiting.

The recruitment thread can be found here.