Category Archives: Gaming

Tabletop

On Lancer, Again

Blaugust is half over and I haven’t even posted the thing I promised months ago.

Lancer’s Setting

Because it’s been so long, Lancer is a tabletop RPG about giant robot pilots (for a somewhat flexible definition of “giant” that also includes power armor). It’s set in the Somewhat distant future of our galaxy, in which mankind has used both FTL and long-form travel to spread out among the stars. There’s a mild space-fantasy element primarily consisting of AIs that do things that can’t be explained by physics and what humans have learned from studying them. The term used for this is “Paracausality”, borrowed directly from Destiny.
Monarch Cutaway

Lancer’s History

Lancer is a post-apocalyptic setting, but not in the usual sense of the term. In Lancer’s theoretical future mankind developed near-light ships and managed to establish some colonies on distant worlds. With colonies established and more ships en-route, the collapse of society cut off communication and ended most life on Earth. After a roughly ~5000-year dark age or so, old knowledge was rediscovered in the Massif vaults, and a “world government” called Union was created after a bit of fighting. The game’s narrative present is about 5000 years after this.
IPS-Northstar Mechs
As a Lancer, you (probably) work for Union’s Third Committee. Old Earth (now known as Cradle) and most of known space are recovering from the aftermath of the Second Committee, whose authoritarian and imperialist policies (referred to as “anthrochauvanist”) made a bit of a mess of the place before they were overthrown. Time has resulted in some of the original colonists re-establishing communications, and they’ve had plenty of opportunity to develop their own cultures and in some cases technologies in the thousands of years since contact was originally lost. The most notable of these are the Karrakin Trade Baronies (who existed before the Fall) and the Aun Ecumene (established during the dark ages). Relations between these entities vary.
Smith Shimano Corpro Mechs

Lancer’s Technology

A major event in Lancer’s timeline is referred to as the Deimos Incident. A summary is that a super-powerful AI (known as RA or MONIST-1) was being studied on the aforementioned moon of Mars, and it managed to somehow take over and leave, taking the entire moon with it. It reappeared to force Union to sign a treaty concerning AI research, and has proven to be willing to show up personally to enforce violations. Much of Lancer’s “advanced” technology is the product of studying this entity, and is the given explanation for FTL. Some other factions have their own unique technologies: The Voladores are space nomads and have some knowledge of folding space that no one else does, and the Aun have “hard light” and their own unique form of FTL.
Horus Mechs
As far as what players get, there are 5 major Manufacturers. (It’s really 4 and a cult that has a gear catalog.) Your starter gear is from General Massive Systems, who produces a really quite good generalist mech and weapons of every type. As you advance as a pilot you get access to gear from the other manufacturers with more specialized portfolios. Horus has a strong emphasis on both hacking and defying physics, SSC makes fast, lightly-armored mechs, IPS-N mostly makes the opposite, and Harrison Armory uses the most advanced tech (some of it stolen) in theirs. These manufacturers are also some of the major players within union, so you may end up working for/against their interests. Just like Shadowrun, it doesn’t prevent you from using their gear while you do it.
Harrison Armory Mechs

The Unknown

One of my favorite things about the setting as written is that there are a lot of explicit and implicit mysteries. What does RA want and where is it? What happened to most of the colony ships during the dark ages? What are NHPs really? What weird tech is HA currently developing? What happened on Hercynia?

That last one is the subject of the first module, but the rest of these you’ll just have to figure out as they come up.

Gaming, Tabletop

On Lancer

In the most recent podcast, I mentioned Lancer, a sci-fi mech RPG that’s currently on Kickstarter. I feel like I didn’t entirely do it justice, so here’s a bit of a longer explanation on what it is, and why I think it’s great.

The Premise

Lancer is a Mech-based Tabletop RPG using a custom d20 system. (A d20 is used for resolution, but the “standard stats” and levels and various other things that are in a normal d20 system are not here.) It’s set in a sort of future version of our galaxy with some hand-waves in the form of “sufficiently advanced technology” (think Mass Effect or Infinity) but very little in the way of aliens. As a result humans have spread across the galaxy, multiple factions are trying to advance their own agendas and the players are mech pilots who Got Involved. How exactly that works is left pretty open.

Lancer cover art

The System

One of the more creative things about Lancer is that it’s basically two games stapled together. There’s a very open narrative system for pilot interactions while you’re not in a giant robot, then also has tactical combat built in for when you need to get into fights. In this way it avoids the tendency of other narrative systems to break down when negotiations do (I know this is a complaint my usual GM has about World of Darkness-based systems) but also supports doing more than just fighting (which is the generally largest complaint about systems like D&D 4e). Interestingly Kodra proposed something like this on the podcast for playing 4e, so it’s interesting to see it in a more realized form.

The Mechanics

Part of the fun of Gundam Breaker 3 to me is the very high amount of customization you can do on any given robot. Lancer uses the concept of Licenses to add their own spin on this, and getting more licenses means you have more options to choose from when designing a mech. Each license has one associated frame, and then an assortment of 6 associated weapons and systems that go with that frame thematically. Once you have enough license levels you can mix and match these as you choose (within certain limits) until you have a mech that does what you want it to.

There’s also a little bit of vertical progression associated with license levels, as your pilot skills increase and can result in your mech having more ammo, more HP, faster movement, etc. Pilots also have talents for further customization, plus a set of things they can do while not in their mech.

The Fluff

This is actually complicated enough that I think it deserves its own post. Until next time!

Gaming

On Honorable Mentions, 2018

For those of you that missed it, we recorded our “GOTY 2018” Aggrochat show two weeks ago. In a break from tradition, a few Honorable Mentions also came up last week. I just want to give some additional words to a few of my favorites.

Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth: Hacker’s Memory

This is a side-story of sorts to 2016’s Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth. (It takes place at the same time, TVTropes would call this a P.O.V. Sequel.) It’s a good example of a “the same, but more” approach to a sequel, in that you play as an actual hacker who has more capability to mess with the digital world but less unexplained magical power to travel through computers. Opinions on this mostly relate to whether or not you needed Cyber Sleuth to be longer. I put quite a few hours into it, but Monster Hunter World cut into the time I was using to play it. It’s still worth a look if you really enjoyed the first game.

Spyro Reignited Trilogy

Crash vs. Spyro was a big thing when both of these franchises on the PS1, but for me there wasn’t really much contest. The Crash games were products of the limited ability to display 3D spaces at the time and don’t hold up terribly well today. Spyro levels have a considerably more open design and a more mobile protagonist, and remain interesting even 20 years later. These games show that with a fresh coat of paint, they’re just as good as they ever were. You still have to like collect-a-thon platformers on some level, and it turns out I still do.

Tangledeep

This is a game that I picked up in Early Access and liked a lot. It hit 1.0 and released in February and I unfortunately have to admit that I haven’t played it since this happened, but I’m still going to mention it here. Tangledeep is a roguelike in nearly all of the definitions of that term (turn-based, grid movement, random generation, (optional) permadeath). It’s set in a fairly whimsical and colorful world but what really drew my attention is that uses a job system for the main character that’s pretty close to the implementation from Final Fantasy Tactics.

The reason it didn’t get played this year is mostly because they announced a Switch version which then didn’t come out before the end of the year.

Gaming

On Missed Opportunities

It’s that time for Game of the Year discussions, and I find my list is pretty short. This is not because good games didn’t come out this year, but more because I didn’t play them (or enough of them) to have a solid opinion. Here’s a short list of games that seem good, but I can’t really comment on:

God of War

The big one. I’m not entirely sure what I was doing in April, but I didn’t pick this game up until the end of August and still haven’t gotten much of an opportunity to put time into it. People seem to like this game very much, but it’s so different from the old God of War games that it put me off at first. I think approaching it as its own thing would improve my experience, especially since the game seems to have a very strong theme of “new beginnings” anyway.

Marvel’s Spider-Man

The other big one. Swinging around in this game is so much fun but I didn’t pick this up until Black Friday. I’ve had not much time for gaming at all during December, and almost all of what I did have has gone to Smash Bros. This is at the top of the list once the holidays are over, but that’s not soon enough to get mentioned for GOTY discussions.

Ni No Kuni II

As far as gameplay goes, this is way better than the original. This one’s a victim of timing, since it came out while I was still buried in Monster Hunter World. Later, instead of going back to it, I went back to a different long JRPG. Nier: Automata could probably be mentioned here because it’s in a similar situation. Maybe no good JRPGs are going to come out in 2019, and I can finally catch up.

Omensight

I’m not sure what happened with this game. It’s the spiritual successor to a game I liked very much (enough to beat on two platforms): Stories: The Path of Destinies. It got a bit lost in the shuffle when it came out, and they announced a “definitive edition” patch not too long after that, which came out in October. One of the other games I think was great this year took over the time that would have gone here.

Shadows: Awakening

It’s entirely possible I’m the only person who would like this game. Shadows: Awakening is a sequel/remake to Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms, a game that came out when I was trying nearly everything on Steam that looked remotely interesting. I liked the premise but figured I’d come back to it when the story was complete, since Heretic Kingdoms was just supposed to be Chapter 1. This year that happened, but like many of the story-focused games in the above list, I haven’t made time for it.

Honorable mentions…

…to everything that came out in late November/December that isn’t Smash Bros. Ultimate. Mutant: Year Zero looks like my kind of game, and Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom is absolutely my type of game. The remasters of Katamari Damacy and Last Remnant would also have gotten a look, but neither of those would have come up in GOTY discussions anyway. (A remaster of We ❤︎ Katamari might have, though.)

Gaming

On PAX West 2018, Part 2

More games from PAX West!

Soundfall

Like I mentioned with Spin Rhythm, rhythm games are kind of my thing. This one is a top-down style action-RPG where your actions are much stronger if you do them on the beat. This resembles Crypt of the Necrodancer in practice, but you aren’t punished quite so hard for failing to get the timing correct and you have free movement. The game looks really nice with a lot of neon, but manages to avoid the frequent problem that games with a lot going on tend to have with attacks that are hard to see. This should be coming out for everything under the sun next year (yes, including Switch) so we’ll find out how all of these ideas hold up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHnJQFKX-RM

Star Renegades

This is a somewhat non-traditional entry into the roguelite category. This is a sci-fi party-based RPG about a rebellion, and you play as a group of heroes fighting to dethrone the Tyrant. A big selling point is the battle system, which bears a very strong resemblance to Grandia. (If you’re unfamiliar with Grandia, Child of Light also uses a very similar system.) the idea is that actions take different amounts of time, and by choosing your actions and targets properly you can do the things you want while disrupting what the enemy is trying to do to you. The roguelike structure discourages you from getting too attached to your team members, but it still seems like you can have a sense of progression even if your party meets a horrible death.

Summoners Fate

I feel like that title needs an apostrophe somewhere, but there isn’t one to be seen. Summoners Fate is a top-sown tactical RPG-like game featuring deck building. In many ways this reminds me of Hero Academy, but with more of a focus on interesting single-player. It also features a primary character (your Summoner) that is both the source of all of your cards and your loss condition if they’re defeated. This one definitely looks like it’s developed for mobile first, but it was a lot of fun to play and should also be coming to PC at some point.

This game also earns lots of bonus points for having a ranged attack that spawns a squirrel on hit.

Honorable Mentions

I saw a lot more games at PAX: Party Golf/Party Crashers was a set of fun and highly customizable party games from the same studio. They’re on Steam now and should be hitting the Switch shortly. Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a CRPG rendition of Pathfinder’s most popular adventure module, and it should be out very soon. Indivisible is a party-based RPG from the studio that made Skullgirls, and it brings that same level of incredible 2D animation to a very different type of game. All of these look like they’ll be interesting, and the future of indie games looks very bright indeed.

Gaming

On PAX West 2018, Part 1

As you may be aware, PAX West happened last weekend at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. A good time was had, and many indie games were played. Here are some of my favorites:

Risk of Rain 2

I had no idea this game was in development, although it was announced last year. The original Risk of Rain is possibly my favorite roguelike game. Permadeath doesn’t feel nearly as bad when your run was at most 40-ish minutes (and at that point you’re either dead or nearly immortal). Risk of Rain 2 is a faithful recreation of that experience in 3D. PAX West was the first public demo for the game, and it was one of the most crowded indie booths at the show. I got to try it out, but in two tries I died within the first two minutes on attempt #1 and died to the first boss on attempt #2, so it feels a lot like Risk of Rain.

Dragon Marked for Death

IntiCreates is calling this a “Dark Fantasy-Style Action RPG”, and that seems like a bit much. The developers largely responsible for a number of good 2D pixel art games lately (including the last few Mega Man games) are making a side-scrolling Action-RPG with co-op, where each playable character has different tools to navigate through the levels. Playable on the show floor were the warrior and the empress; the former focused on using his big axe and guarding, while the latter had a variety of melee and ranged attacks and a grappling hook. The final game will also have a shinobi and witch.

Spin Rhythm

As someone who is a sucker for Rhythm games, this one definitely caught my eye. In some ways it’s to DJ Hero what Rocksmith is to Guitar Hero, since they were demoing it on an actual DJ controller. Motion controls were also mentioned at the show for anyone who doesn’t want to buy a $100+ piece of hardware for use with a single (admittedly cool looking) game.* I hear the initial demo was for a mobile game, so who knows what control options will be supported by the time the game comes out, but I’ll be patiently awaiting more info about this one.

*Yes, I know people did this with dance pads and Rock Band. I’m just saying it’s not likely.

More to come later!

Gaming

On Gundam Breaker

2 Comments

I was quite excited for New Gundam Breaker when it was announced to be releasing here in the States, but it turns out that game’s quite awful. This was quite disappointing because Gundam Breaker 3 was pretty amazing, so I’d like to talk about that game instead.


Taking a bit of a step back, the Gundam series has been putting animated giant robots on TV for almost 40 years. Models of said robots, generally known as Gunpla, have been around for almost as long. Gundam Breaker is a game series that is entirely about building and battling Gunpla. Gundam Breaker 3 is the first game in the series to be translated into English, although it was only released in Asia. The general premise is the typical for a tournament anime: you fight battles, you crush all comers, you sometimes get sidetracked by odd sidequests, and you win everything. Gameplay involves you and potentially a few AI-controlled teammates battling swarms of other gunpla in order to progress through a linear stage. This is occasionally broken up by objectives or stronger enemies in the form of “other players”. Most stages end with a boss or two, which can be anything from just a stronger enemy, a giant enemy, or a large “Mobile Armor”.


Along the way, as you beat enemies you may break parts off of them. This has a chance to cause the parts to drop, as well as a chance when you defeat an enemy. When you finish a mission, you have an opportunity to review what you got and potentially incorporate anything you find into your own gunpla. Your skills level up, you can combine parts to make your parts level up, and there’s a lot of depth to the whole “building” system. Some parts have built-in skills which you can only use when the part is set. Mastering these skills will let you use them even without an appropriate part equipped. Also attached to parts are Option Equipment, which are additional weapons/attacks enabled just by having certain parts set. A pair of legs with a sword strapped on will let you swing the sword, for example.


It’s this building and customizing that really got me hooked on the game. It’s so much fun just seeing what you can make and getting to then turn around and use it in the next mission. It’s still pretty easy to get this one with all of the DLC, so I highly suggest you give it a try if you’re into Gundams in any way.

Gaming

On EDH

In most senses, I’ve known how to play Magic the Gathering since I was in middle school. I never had any cards of my own (I had Pokemon cards when those were new) but I knew the rules somewhat and I could play at a very basic level. Most of my Magic experience remained theoretical until I got Duels of the Planeswalkers (the first one, in 2009) on a whim and really enjoyed it. At the same time, I never really got into “competitive” Magic. I was (and still am) uninterested in putting in the time and money it would take to get “good” at any of the constructed formats. Draft is also a skill I just never picked up.


Fast forward several years, and I find out about the Commander format. For those unfamiliar, this is a format usually played with more than two people, using decks containing 100 cards where you can have no more than one of anything other than basic lands, and using a legendary creature as your “Commander”. This is a card you have access to at all times that also determines what colors of cards you can include in your deck. (The original Commanders were the Elder Dragons from way back in Legends, so that’s where the original name “Elder Dragon Highlander” comes from.) Commander games tend to be quite a bit longer and crazy things can happen that are unlikely to ever see any use in a normal game. The multiplayer aspect is also relevant, because it encourages playing politics if someone is getting ahead.


I started with the pre-constructed deck featuring Atraxa, the rather ridiculous card pictured above. I’ve since tried building my own decks, some of which have been more successful than others. It’s definitely re-kindled my interest in the game, and this more casual approach has helped other podcast members get into it as well.

Gaming

On Finely Cast Resin Miniatures

1 Comment

It’s as much a surprise to me as anyone else that I’m getting into Warhammer Fantasy (now called Age of Sigmar). It’s also a surprise that the first faction I took an interest in wasn’t Lizardmen (now called Seraphon); this one actually caused someone else to lose a bet. Instead I decided to jump in with the start Collecting box that looked most interesting to me. I tend to favor large things, and the Beastclaw Raiders box is just 5 big things, so that’s what I ended up with. The majority of the units in this faction are mounted ogres (now called Ogors) and they’re large and hard to kill and it’s a faction definitely suited to my playstyle.
Yes, it's really just 5 "minis" in that box.
Branching out into other things in this faction, one of the options to field is a hunter and some frost sabres. This would add a few more bodies on the table for me and enable the faction to attempt some strategies that aren’t “rush forward as fast as possible”, so I ordered some. These come in the form of what Games workshop calls “Finely Cast Resin Miniatures” and everyone else calls Finecast if they’re being polite.


To date, I have never heard anyone say anything good about Finecast. I’ve assembled lots of plastic in the past, and I’ve had metal minis too, but this was a first for me. Getting these to a reasonable state involved a lot of cleaning, other work I’m not completely used to. In the process, I learned a few things.

  1. Resin is soft, and cuts with a sharp knife much easier than plastic. Care should be used when dealing with these.
  2. Resin warps in shipping/storage. The tip I got was to use hot water to bend them into shape, and then cold water to set them into that shape.
  3. Resin pieces don’t always fit together that well. I found it was okay to just hack bits off until they did fit, but keeping in mind point 1.


I’ve now filed this material away as “something to be avoided” and am factoring that into list construction. At least it’s good to be informed?

Gaming

On the 2017 Game of the Year

Excuse me while I brush the cobwebs off.

At some point this month (possibly even this week), there’s going to be a Game of the Year show from Aggrochat. I’ll keep most of my thoughts contained to that show (or possibly a post after said show), but I do want to place some special emphasis on one game from last year. In a year filled with many incredible games, one stands out as my overall favorite.

Hollow Knight was my favorite game of 2017, and also my favorite Metroidvania, period. (For anyone wondering, it’s displacing Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow.) It’s a beautiful and expansive entry into the genre, set in a kingdom of bugs. The art style is fairly unique: It’s hand-drawn with limited use of color. This is fairly subtle, but it’s enough to give most areas a unique feel. Things that hurt you tend to be orange.

A while back, Matt Lees mentioned (when talking about Hyper Light Drifter) that “It’s a bit like Dark Souls” basically translates to “I don’t know what I’m talking about.” I’m not really going to help matters at all: Hollow Knight bears a more than superficial resemblance to Dark Souls. Aside from the obvious “lose all of your currency on death” aspect, it really shows in the storytelling. You are dropped into the kingdom and a nearly empty town with no context. Bits and pieces of the story are handed out as you go, mostly from various NPC interactions. Taken as a whole, you can get a picture of the world (and the awful things that happened before you got there). You get the feeling of being alone in a very big world, thanks to how rare it is to see NPCs that don’t want to do you harm.

The thing that really puts Hollow Knight over the top for me is the incredible sense of exploration. The game is very nonlinear even for the genre, and the map is very large. Without sequence breaking, you need to get the fireball, the dash, and the wall climb. After this point, things get really open. You’re intended to go into City of Tears, but there’s very little preventing you from poking the other edges of the map and finding your way into some very dark places. On a smaller scale, the game is good at rewarding poking into things. Hidden rooms are blacked out until you either walk into them or break open the entrance. Tiny corners tend to have some sort of reward, usually in the form of a relic (lore and currency) but sometimes a captured grub or something rarer. I also found traversal a lot of fun once you have the dash and wall-jump, although no single ability stands out in this area. (Ori still holds the crown for most fun movement ability ever.)

All of this without even mentioning the charms, or the bosses, or the major secrets. I really had fun with this one, and you can probably hear me repeat a lot of this in a few days.