Lancer Bloggin' 1: No Room for a Wallflower

Ran session 1 of no room for a wallflower (NRFAW from now on) a few weeks ago. Previous experience had been playing in a few sessions of a campaign and then dropping it because I wasn't having fun with the combat. Trying again, as I have been bitten by the mech-bug after playing some Battletech/Alphastrike and finding it too hard to get a campaign going (also not a huge fan of the aesthetics). So here we are again, but this time I'm GM’ing lancer so we will see how it goes. 

Thoughts after Session 1:

Session 1 was an interesting experience. With all the lore and complicated setup of NRFAW, I wanted to hew as close to the book as possible. This was a bad decision. The result of this was reading 75% of the book’s flavor text as written, which resulted in a very cinematic introduction to the planet of Halcyion, but not much room for the players to maneuver. Maybe all this introduction was some work that was needed to put in so that we all have a solid base to stand on when making decisions in the world, but it's not how I normally play and I'm not sure if it was the right choice yet. We will find out as play goes on. 

Running the adventure from the book is also hard. The writing is great and flavorful, but there is SO MUCH INFORMATION. It often feels like a really cool sci-fi novel, less like an adventure that is meant to be run on the tabletop. As the campaign goes on, I'm going to have to do the thing when I ran 5e adventures, which is basically writing my own adventure to be used at the table based off the source material that is the published book.

I (spontaneously) gave the players a little bit of downtime during the session, where they could roleplay building out their squad, and they also reached out to some locals to make some connections. Already the sandbox is vying to overrun the railroad, which I will happily allow to happen if the players decide they want to take the train off the rails. 

So, all in all, I think Session 1 was a success as the players were excited to get into a tussle with a sniper that's been taking shots at civilians. Our only roll during the game was a player trying to save a militia member that was hit, and that roll was a failure. The soldier bled out, giving us a tonally great place to start the campaign. 

Something cool about NRFAW is its structured into Beats, which (theoretically) translate into sessions. I have a feeling combat might stretch on and test this, but I have a tentative plan. After this first combat Beat, future Beats will have real world timelimits. If combat goals are not accomplished in that time, results will be decided with a die roll, with modifiers based on how well the party performed. I'm hoping this will both discourage analysis paralysis, and also make clear mission goals absolutely necessary to prevent long, knock-out drag-out fights. These were two things that made me bounce off the last game I was in. I want the fights to be quick and dire, and to make resources matter. 

Going into Session 2:

I would not run this game if comp/con did not exist. The fact that NPC mechs do not have a simplified character sheet is criminal. Luckily there’s a tool that makes running combat way easier. This makes more sense if you think of the game as something made for playing on virtual tabletops. 

I have been building some terrain, and a hexboard, to play on, and I'm really excited to bring that to the table. 

I think all I have left to do for Session 2 is to try playing through the mission solo a few times to get a handle on the rules/flow of combat. We will find out in a few days how it goes.