‘Lancer Tactics’ Brings the Mecha-Game Crunch to Your TTRPG
Lancer Tactics takes the tactical mecha TTRPG Lancer and turns it into a turn-based game of fighting a mech-fueled rebellion.
Lancer is one of those TTRPGs that comes along and occupies a space somewhere between your typical RPG and something like a video game. In a good way. Mechanics that would be right at home in a turn-based tactical game add significant crunch and depth to the many different playstyles you can take to a Lancer campaign.
While the story generated by the roleplaying elements gives those tactics context and meaning that would otherwise just be a boring turn-based slog. Because Lancer combat is often slow. And not just like a typical turn of D&D slow. But the slow of a child waiting for books to arrive from the Scholastic book fair.
But it’s slow because of how much depth there is. Your mech may have dozens of systems to use. Myriad actions to play with. To say nothing of overcharging for even more action. The rules are very strict about what you can do and when and how, but they’re only strict when it comes to governing what your mech can do.
But that too is its own struggle. Lancer would be much more difficult if it didn’t have a companion app, COMP/CON. But it does. And it’s great and free, you should be using it.
But Lancer Tactics takes it even further. Turning the TTRPG into a video game that feels like, in some ways, it was where Lancer had been heading the whole time. And its ethos is extremely Lancer: “Be gay and do crime in giant robots.”
Lancer Tactics – Kickstarting Now
Back Lancer Tactics on Kickstarter!
Lancer Tactics is an unofficial adaptation of the TTRPG to a tactics video game set on a world of fighting against border and climate injustice. I love this system of modular mechs, and I’m sad and furious at our historical and current politics — let’s make a game where you can fight imperialist land-stealing goons by being gay and doing crime in giant robots!
The Kickstarter, run by Olive Perry (she/they), a neurobiologist and indie game developer from Portland, Oregon, has concocted a Lancer campaign drawing on the greatest of TBT games, Advance Wars. The aesthetic is undeniable:
And the campaign feels like it could be pulled from the pages of any of the Lancer sourcebooks.
Lancer Tactics takes place on Viridian; also known as Verdevilla, also known as DS5. It’s the fifth planet in the Dawnline Shore, an entire area of space that was “gifted” to the Karrakin Trade Baronies — gifted, without consultation the people who lived there.
The planet is named for its striking green color that is visible from space — not from plants, but a poisonous heavy metal called chromite found in the soil. The inhabitants of Verdevilla have gradually learned to live and even thrive on this dangerous soil with the help of micro-organisms cultured from hot springs. Properly taken care of in devices called rock sappers, these micro-organisms are able to sustainably burn chromite to produce clean water and power — slow, but more than enough to live on.
After the Dawnline Shore was ceded to the Karrakin Trade Baronies, the hungry empire wasted no time in turning its eyes towards exploiting Viridian’s potential. Chunk by chunk, they proceeded to wall off sections of the planet and burn the chromite velds into productive bucolic landscapes. They pronounced it a miracle of terraforming; certainly enough of a marvel to justify the forced evictions and theft of land from the Verdevillians.
The galactic hegemon Union wrings its hands about stability; Harrison Armory laps greedily at the shoreline of this Emerald Harbor; the other corpro-states blind themselves with biological and mineral wealth. The only people who are working for the good of Verdevilla today are the Sappers, a planet-wide loose network of lancers who trace their culture back to the first group to cultivate and disseminate the micro-organisms that made life on the velds possible.
And if all that isn’t enough, you can play a free demo of the game right here.
There are still 8 days left in the Kickstarter, which has raised almost $120,000 at press time. So back now!
There is no place better to be gay and/or do crime than in a giant robot.
