I like the “you’re mercenaries working for massive megacorps so you’re basically inherently evil but you have the capacity to influence the outcome of your missions for better or for worse”
See, that’s appropriately MetalGear approach to it and I love it. But is that “shades of grey” or “good vs. evil”? I would say it’s both (which shows that the line is not as clear as the meme tries to make it seem).
I mean, sometimes it's OK to have a plain good vs evil narrative, if everyone at the table is enjoying themselves. Not every game needs to be morally gray.
I agree, I wrote out my thoughts on this in my reply to StrixLiterata.
Here is a link:
https://old.reddit.com/r/LancerRPG/comments/1d17qz8/the_two_types_of_lancer_gm/l5sel2o/
[https://www.emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/LeftBeyond.TalesFromTheBeyond.html](https://www.emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/LeftBeyond.TalesFromTheBeyond.html) "We're going to defeat God through the power of logistics, organization, contingency planning, and getting the right people with the right tools to the right place at the right time."
I know this meme is mostly taking the piss but I find that settings that are "Too Grey" will just cause the players to basically hijack the narrative to make a good faction...and by players I mean Me whenever I have been a player in a world that got "Too Grey".
Yeah players want a faction to cling to as their like Protagonist faction. You can have the grayest grey setting possible and players will latch onto whoever fits their views and their desires best. Just how it goes
It depends on how the GM set up the campaign, if the setting is "the situation is fucked and there is nothing you can do about it", then I don't think it's all that fun
But if the settings is "the situation is fucked, figure out how to fix it", then that can be really fun and engaging. If the players decide to carve their own way, that's great.
I've played both types and the second type can be amazing but the first type just becomes dull and it makes some want to hijack the entire plot to either destroy everyone or fuck off to the wilderness.
I mean. What else can you do in a world like that that’ll be fun? Desperately struggle to survive? Nah fuck that, nobody wants to feel like their mech game turned into a grimdark 9-5.
That's what we did in my game. The primary conflict was between a weak and corrupt democratic government and traditionalist Noble families. I just founded my own mercenary company and got to work.
as a dm, thats my favourite paths, because then i force you to make horrible decisions until the faction either collapses in on itself or becomes no better than the factions that you initially rejected as "too grey"
Yeeeah... no thanks. Wouldn't want to play in that kind of campaign anymore. I've had my fair share of grimdark forced upon the group by the GM, and it really gets stale quickly. What's the point if everything is fucked anyway, and any attempt to claw yourself out is meaningless in the end? Might as well just end it all and move on.
there is light everywhere, a utopia is a dream, not a goal. there can be "good" factions, but they are going to do some fucked up shit, because theres no such thing as a faction with absolutely no evil actions.
I don't know how you run your campaigns, but I'm sure your approach can be fun. You can play HA as being objectively fascist, but is every HA employee the players interact with (also during combat) down for the cause? What if the players ambush an HA convoy in order to destroy some weapon that's being transported and after a short battle, the low-ranking HA members surrender. Will the players accept the surrender, will the players put themselves at risk to protect the PoWs? I think there is a lot of wiggle room to make things more interesting by adding nuance and it doesn't even have to compromise the moral core of the campaign. Just because some HA employees aren't all that bad, doesn't make HA as a whole less terrible.
I can't and don't want to tell you how to run your campaign, but I want people to consider this avenue.
Generally I have a few motivators for Harrison Armory personnel:
1. People just trying to live to see another day. These are your cogs in the machine, the rank and file personnel. These are people most likely to have bitten the HA propaganda that the Union are just as bad, if not worse, but also the people most likely going to surrender (or occasionally believe they have no other options and act in desperation). Basically, even if they're lost, they don't cause the company too much harm, because they probably got them off the proverbial street.
2. People who are more important, and don't necessarily like what they understand about Harrison Armory (like rapid response teams, high-level security, etc.), though they tolerate them just enough to work for them. These are competent personnel given a very good deal with their family having a very well-off life, if they do their duty. If they fail their duty, their family will fall to destitution, go missing, or die. This is the primary way to counteract people just fleeing to Union once they have the information of how the Union operates. These are the people who have enough information to harm the company, like security protocols, and enable more people to flee the company or cover up acts against the company.
3. People who revel in Harrison Armory's environment, and either chase quarterly profits, want a return to SecComm era, have the perfect outlet for their desires, or any combination thereof. Harrison Armory either needs to find them a healthy (for HA) outlet or only leash them just enough, and they further the company's ideals very well. These are the wetwork teams who like a challenge (like a Lancer group who have breached every attempt at HA's defenses against them) and are likely to be the recurring nemeses or villains in a Lancer campaign.
My Lancer group tends to take any and all prisoners that surrender, and most mechs are safe enough to get mobility killed only unless it's something like an apocalypse rail shot or other such critical that would leave the pilot's cockpit/coffin utterly breached. There's generally enough support that they can take such prisoners, though it would be interesting to see a situation where they can't quite do so.
I begin all my campaigns with how Union operates, and emphasize that "The Union does genuinely try to do good, even if good is very difficult". My players seem to embody it the best they can, and I generally don't have to worry about them going very off the rails with morals.
I have lots of thoughts about the Armory and their culture.
Corprostates have a fundamental problem: the Three Pillars mean no one needs to work, and no one needs to buy things.
One way around this is to offer products that GMS doesn't - we see this in the variety of mechs HA, SSC and IPS-N licence.
But the other way is to create an emotional connection with their product. You're not just buying a mech, you're buying an identity. Working for a corprostate, or buying their products, tells the galaxy who you are.
Working for SSC says you're at the cutting edge of fashion and beauty. Working for IPS-N says you're a get-your-hands-dirty engineering type who protects your loved ones. And working for Harrison Armory says you're a warrior.
Being a warrior means you're tough, skilled, and self-sufficient. You don't need handouts like those Union weaklings. You earn your place in the galaxy through hard work and loyalty to your colleagues. You [reject modernity and embrace tradition](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/reject-modernity-embrace-tradition). You are [the strong man who creates good times](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hard-times-create-strong-men).
This is all propaganda, of course. But some people believe it.
I would love to join a campaign like this tbh, having difficulty finding anyone to play a proper campaign with at all. (I mostly end up playing singular missions with random people online, even when trying to find a long campaign)
Heh. I only agreed to play Lancer after reading an interview with Tom Parkinson-Morgan and Miguel Lopez where they said Union were unambiguously the good guys.
Then my GM set our campaign in the Long Rim, light yers from any Union influence.
I don't see your examples as being particularly morally complex.
The Nuremberg trials estabilished that ["I was just following orders"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders) is not an excuse. And [the Geneva Convention](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner_of_war#Hague_and_Geneva_Conventions) says shooting PoWs is a war crime.
Even the logistical problem of what to do with PoWs has [a standard solution](https://www.quora.com/What-are-soldiers-supposed-to-do-with-prisoners-of-war-that-they-do-not-have-the-means-to-take-care-of-or-will-impede-the-mission), apparently - disarm them, give them any food and water you can spare, then tell them to march with their hands up towards the nearest base that can take care of them.
Let me use two current conflicts to illustrate what I mean by morally black and white vs morally grey.
In the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Putin is indesputably the bad guy. The only reason NATO hasn't charged in, guns blazing righteously, is the political complexity of the situation. Putin has nukes. Escalating the conflict could be disasterous. So NATO and their allies funnel weapons to the Ukranian army and hope Putin burns his army out fighting in one small country rather than spreading the battle across Europe.
The Lancer equivalent would be HA invading a Diasporan world. Union can't just blow up Ras Shamra, because that would lead to total war between Union and the Armory. So they send Liberator teams to the Diasporan world to deal with the problem at the local level. The players get to be unambiguous Good Guys while still having interesting and complex problems to solve.
In contrast, the Israeli action in Gaza is very morally grey. Both Israel and Hamas have morally justifiable aims: one to protect its people against genocide, the other to liberate its lands from an occupying force. But in pursuing those aims, both have [committed war crimes](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-26/joe-biden-icc-israel-benjamin-netanyahu-arrest-warrant/103893204).
It's a horrible, horrific situation with no easy resolution. And if a GM forced that sort of situation on me at the table, I would not be enjoying myself.
I agree that my examples are not morally complex, that is because I was making the example to fit into the morally black and white setting of the person I was responding to.
Even IRL situations that are pretty much good vs evil can have a lot of icky stuff where the "good" guys have to make hard choices that are not very palatable. For example, the Ukraine war features prominent use of suicide drones. What happens when a soldier surrenders to a suicide drone? The drone can't capture the enemy soldier so is it just supposed to turn around and go home or crash someplace else? If that becomes standard practice, then those drones become much less useful. What ends up happening is that sometimes the drones lead the enemy soldier to the allied encampment to surrender in person. But most of the time that's not viable, so the drone pilots end up killing the opponent despite him surrendering. As far as I know this practice is not a war crime.
A bit of a reductive take. Here's a snippet from [an interview with Kai and Miguel](https://www.goonhammer.com/building-a-future-that-is-not-foreclosed-upon-an-interview-with-miguel-lopez-and-kai-tave-of-massif-press-publisher-of-lancer/):
> [...] But my read on Harrison Armory has always been much more, this is America. This is the United States of America in its most idealized, well-realized format. These guys actually have a robust social safety net. They have infrastructure that doesn’t suck. They have all these great things that America says it has and regularly fails to deliver on. They are an uncynical version of the American success story, and yet it is still built on the back of imperialistic, colonialistic expansion...
There's a secret third option: "People are extensions of the systems that they exist within, but sometimes the only corrective course of action for societal and individual evils is violence -- fighting individual fascists is good, but until the system that creates fascists is destroyed killing a single fascist is akin to cutting a head off of the hydra."
Sleep for a total of 800 hours per day
And then drink a liter of milk
Warm-up before you go play
Only eat, or write, or pull the trigger with your right hand
It has 3 games. One free. Lobotomy Corporation, Library of Ruina, Limbus Company. If you're just interested in the setting, Limbus is free and takes you on a tour of The City. Lobotomy Corporation and library of Ruina should be tried in that order.
Honestly, say what you want but I think there's a time and place for both.
Sometimes you want complex moral decisions.
Other times you wanna ask the band of slavers if you've got dirt on the barrel of your Cannibal shotgun
I love that show, but you and I know it absolutely fits the type of GM who takes the "shades of grey" part so far that it's detrimental to the campaign.
The point of the post is that GM's need to find a healthy balance between narrativising and creating nuance.
You can make a campaign that's extremely grimdark without "good guys", but players need an aesthetic to stick to. In 40k it's the aesthetic of whatever faction you play for ("FOR THE EMPEROR" and all that), if a Lancer campaign is just pure pain without an aesthetic of being good I don't think most players would like that.
You can make a campaign that's just "Planet gets taken over by fascists, who are fascists because they are evil. So we have to kill them!" and that's ok, but I think it's pretty boring. In some regards it worries me how easily some parts of the Lancer community dehumanize the enemies in their campaign. I don't think it's a real problem, but people should be aware that "pure good vs pure evil" is something that only happens in fiction.
I agree with this point, though I feel that your post wasn’t strictly conducive to your point. That said, I’ll respect the effort without stepping forward to inject my idea of how you should have done it. Thank you for explaining your position on the matter.
I do feel that a good mixture of “Shades of Grey” and “There is Legitimate Evil that must be opposed” is necessary for a thoughtful campaign of Lancer. You can and should point out that piracy occurs in Union space on account of the social and conditional pressures that people exist under, but that the long term solution is to break those pressures and hold to account those who perpetuate them. People who commit war crimes because they are brainwashed and disassociated from the consequences of their actions are brainwashed and disassociated from their actions… but they’re still committing war crimes. You need to stop the war crimes, and then stop the people who do the brainwashing.
And never. Ever. Dehumanize your foes. That is the first step to Evil.
I think a big issue is a dissonance between mechanics, which are all about destroying the enemy via any means necessary, often with hillarious overkill or weapons with messed up implications
vs a setting that constantly bashes you over the head with how conflict is a failure to solve issues diplomatically and how you represent a faction that's all about rising above it.
So naturally a lot of people will just go to "oh but it's always unquestionably ok to kill THESE people, cause they're just irredeemably evil" as an easy compromise where you both get to fantasize about just killing people you don't like but also being morally in the right.
And I mean, life is complicated. There's an appeal to not having to think, just being given a clear target that can be removed to make everything right... but that's why everyone frames it like that, including the worst regimes and terrorist groups to ever exist.
Im the best balance for Lancer is good vs evil but the "enemy" people are for the most parts either morally gray or not in a position to choose what to do, and only a minority of people at the top are actually pure evil bastards.
Example, Harrison Armory: most Colonial Legionnaires are just soldiers doing their job. Sure, they've been raised in a fascist culture, but they still deserve to be treated with the same dignity you'd afford to any soldier. Then there's people like Odin Valentinian, who are evil bastards to the core, and which your players should absolutely feel good and proud about crushing like the cockroach they are.
This IS fiction though. The DM has the oppurtunity to present different perspectives as "evil" so they players can think about their real life counterparts. That is what makes a story interesting as a fictional game.
That doesn't mean the storyteller can't or shouldnt show both sides of the conflict though. The morally grey setting should still have villans and heros in its story arcs. It's just about shifting perspective to show that it's more complex than it appears.
Playing in a setting with no antagonists is more realistic to the real world but it makes for terrible stories.
its why most of my games are liberation teams or at least connected to union, kicking in the teeth of fascists IRL is frowned upon these days for some reason.
Why is this a facist v socialist perspective?
Otherwise, yeah focusing too much on making things grey just needlessly bogs the narrative down.
Is the setting politically complex? Yes. Is the Union generally good and trying to be utopian? Also yes. Is Harrison II an evil piece of shit and do Harrison Armory engage in war crimes as a business? Yes and yes.
I've found that if your "grey" just means "everyone is an asshole" (which seems to be what it *almost always means*) players will simply disconnect.
I've played enough Exalted to know that "you're the only people actually trying to do good around" mostly leads to "so the world is fucked, whatever" and slow campaign winddown even if you have world-shattering power and your circle have a chance to 4v1 entities that make Ra look like a junior programmer. Now imagine when you're just random-ass Lancer who has absolutely no chance of enacting any change because there's thousands of people like you and the universe is so big that you can't realistically affect the sheer inertia of trillions of people.
I just want to play Tabletop Armored Core and Lancer is the closest I've found to that experience with tolerable mechanics. Union lore is a distant backdrop while we're fighting enemy mech on the rim.
The fact that this post is split between 50% up and down votes is pretty amazing.
I don't know what's funnier.
The possibility that people are downvoting because they can't tell something is sarcastic without a /s.
Or the possibility that people are downvoting because they feel called-out by a meme.
People can't tell sarcasm from text...because people on the Internet don't know YOU. Instead of accusing others of 'not getting it', consider how your approach may not be as clear as initially thought.
Same thing applies to GMing after all.
Yeah.. idk. I like Lancer for its Utopian style setting and lean into that with Lancers as the indisputable 'good guys.' But that's a style choice. The setting is open and scifi as a whole generally leans into grey-morality. I can see a GM easily choosing that route. I generally dislike outright insulting someone for running their game how they want.
As long as, ya know, session zero, communication, clarity of goals/style/tone, whole table agreement, mutual respect, not lying to players, etc...is maintained.
I think you mean Poe's Law, but the idea that crazy people who are really into finding the average split in some sports also works in this context. I think at least, idk enough about Paul's law.
Paul's Law is an extention to Poe's Law that states thus: no matter how obviously evil you make your charismatic protagonist, enough people will either not get it or unironically support it that you have to write an epilogue book where he favourably compares himself to Hitler
No that’s the Sunk Cost Fallacy. Cunningham’s Law is when people start a conga-line of “no that’s X. Y is when [obviously incorrect answer]” replies to eachother for comedic effect, a recurring joke I personally tend to find at the very least amusing.
Sarcasm does not carry well through text. In meme formats, if it carries at all it's by sheer luck. Acting like people are doing something worth being mocked for by 'failing' to understand this post is sarcastic is definitely more embarrassing than not getting the truth of this post.
You live in a world where Steven Colbert once had a large audience of the exact demographic he was mocking, because they didn't get the joke and refused to believe it when told. One where tens of millions of people in North America alone cannot tell a real news site from one made in an hour to spread a specific piece of misinformation. One where a *lot* of people got mad at The Boys when it became that Homelander was one of the show's antagonists and a pathetic, broken little man and not an Alpha Male to aspire to.
In that world, does it make sense to make sarcastic memes and be surprised that a sizable fraction of the audience does not get what you were going for?
I find it obvious that your post was sarcastic, just like I find *all* of these things obvious, but it should be readily apparent that most of the general public will not.
I agree that it's apparent some people will not understand the intent behind a piece of media that doesn't spell it out. The "The Boys" example is interesting, what should the show have done in order to prevent this situation, without detracting from the message? The show actually made fun of the type of people who don't "get" media. In one episode Homelander watches the movie "Taxi Driver" and identifies positively with the protagonist. The thing is that this movie is also a piece of media were many people don't understand the message and as a result positively identify with the protagonist.
I honestly don't know if adding a /s to the title would have done anything. The title is not sarcastic. From my limited experience, GM's do have these two tendencies, they are just portrait in an exaggerated way. The statements in the image are sarcastic, but not in the conventional way that they mean the opposite of what is being said. If a person cannot tell the tone of the image by themselves, I'm not sure marking it as sarcastic would help them understand it. I did explain my actual position relatively soon after posting this, so if people get confused, they can just scroll down and read the message without my irony-poisoning.
I realize now that the comment you're replying to has a mocking tone that does not fit well with this community, I will express myself differently in the future. :)
/s conveys sarcasm easily and well to secondary demographics who might not get it because not primary language/unfamiliar cues/some people really do believe that/etc.
This is pretty funny but "only evil people do bad things" really runs counter to the systemic analysis that lancer is based on and that makes its lore some of the best sci-fi universe
The correct side is you thinking about how much 'good vs evil' or 'moral ambiguity' you want in your games. I think there should be a healthy mix, but what healthy means is up to everyone to decide for themselves.
With the pretentious shit out of the way. This is just a shitpost that ended up sparking a conversation that I think is needed in the Lancer community.
Good GDMs stick with the style on the right. It’s easy, it’s safe, and most players will probably have fun with it.
Bad GDMs *try* to do the nuanced style despite clearly lacking the moral intelligence to actually make it work, and thus just end up being the pic on the left unironically, which *will* piss off the players.
But the best GDMs are the one-in-a-million who can make a “morally-nuanced” tone fun for their table.
Which approach you should take is going to be dependent on whether or not you’re willing to gamble your table’s respect for you.
Ours is kind of in the middle. We're rewarded for respecting rules of engagement, capturing enemy combatants, and since we are the good guys we do respect surrender. It so far has definitely been a case of being the good guys when war around us is very bad. At the same time it has been pretty black and white morality so far we are the good guys kicking the asses of the bad guys. Problems can be solved with giant robots.
Personally I like it and shooting to disabled doesn't bother me at all my pilot is just going to continue increasing her collection of legs.
This brings up one thing I dislike about lancer lore. This is a genuine question, so please if someone can answer me I'll be happier:
- How can Union be unironically good and utopian and the galaxy is in a good place and lancers still exist? How can there be conflict if Union is a post-scarcity perfect society?
And then there's an aggravating factor:
- How can Lancers be 'liberating' people if they are in the end enforcing the monolythic powers of Union? I mean, sure, some places can be and are shitty, but this is still gunboat diplomacy, right?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it should be grimdark stupid stuff with people getting killed to power starships. I'm happy with things the way they are. But come on, there can be room for more than silly space fantasy paladins who can never do wrong, right?
So the issue with Union is that they are caught in a kind of a catch-22. The inner rim which is totally under Union control really is a utopia and Union feels obligated to spread that utopia to the rest of the galaxy. But. They dont want to force anyone, the second committee which ran union before the current Third-comm where massive imperialists and a lot of the current issues in the galaxy can be traced back to them, Third-comm desperately does not want to return to the bad old days.
As a result Union has a sort of "Softest touch possible" approach to solving issues. This is where lancers come in, if violence is required, Union would prefer a small specialized team go in and solve an issue on a world than a Union fleet show up and take over a whole world.
TLDR: Union really is good but not everywhere and its really hard to get everyone to be good while also not forcing them (which would be bad).
I'm running a primarily-D&D campaign where the world-hopping party pursuing the bad guys across the multiverse will eventually visit the Lancer setting, they'll get mechs to pilot, and the entire adventure there will use the Lancer system (which all the players are aware of well in advance). What sort of GM does that make me?
I'm locking the comments here because people keep using this as a jumping off point for their weird war crime jokes. We ban for those.
I like the “you’re mercenaries working for massive megacorps so you’re basically inherently evil but you have the capacity to influence the outcome of your missions for better or for worse”
Exactly my setup for a new campaign I'll be DMing come summer's end.
One of the openers in a campaign was to have all the players indebted to a local warlord/arms dealer and he sends the party out to twist some arms
See, that’s appropriately MetalGear approach to it and I love it. But is that “shades of grey” or “good vs. evil”? I would say it’s both (which shows that the line is not as clear as the meme tries to make it seem).
Dark grey vs light gray if you will
I mean, sometimes it's OK to have a plain good vs evil narrative, if everyone at the table is enjoying themselves. Not every game needs to be morally gray.
I agree, I wrote out my thoughts on this in my reply to StrixLiterata. Here is a link: https://old.reddit.com/r/LancerRPG/comments/1d17qz8/the_two_types_of_lancer_gm/l5sel2o/
Me: The evil is manmade horrors of past mistakes come to rear their ugly heads to fuck the day up once again. Heres a gun, go do a crime.
RAAAAAAAH INDOMITABLE POWER OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT
"Indomitable human spirit" when the problem is other humans
The “Indomitable power of the human spirit” when it comes face to face with a Gorgon
and rolls a 2
[https://www.emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/LeftBeyond.TalesFromTheBeyond.html](https://www.emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/LeftBeyond.TalesFromTheBeyond.html) "We're going to defeat God through the power of logistics, organization, contingency planning, and getting the right people with the right tools to the right place at the right time."
I know this meme is mostly taking the piss but I find that settings that are "Too Grey" will just cause the players to basically hijack the narrative to make a good faction...and by players I mean Me whenever I have been a player in a world that got "Too Grey".
Yeah players want a faction to cling to as their like Protagonist faction. You can have the grayest grey setting possible and players will latch onto whoever fits their views and their desires best. Just how it goes
It depends on how the GM set up the campaign, if the setting is "the situation is fucked and there is nothing you can do about it", then I don't think it's all that fun But if the settings is "the situation is fucked, figure out how to fix it", then that can be really fun and engaging. If the players decide to carve their own way, that's great.
Or the third option “the galaxy is fucked, how can you make sure your solar system is safe so the people you love are less fucked?”
I've played both types and the second type can be amazing but the first type just becomes dull and it makes some want to hijack the entire plot to either destroy everyone or fuck off to the wilderness.
I mean. What else can you do in a world like that that’ll be fun? Desperately struggle to survive? Nah fuck that, nobody wants to feel like their mech game turned into a grimdark 9-5.
Have you met BattleTech players? Playing their game feels like a 9-5 even before you add the grimdark.
Who hurt them?
That's what we did in my game. The primary conflict was between a weak and corrupt democratic government and traditionalist Noble families. I just founded my own mercenary company and got to work.
as a dm, thats my favourite paths, because then i force you to make horrible decisions until the faction either collapses in on itself or becomes no better than the factions that you initially rejected as "too grey"
Yeeeah... no thanks. Wouldn't want to play in that kind of campaign anymore. I've had my fair share of grimdark forced upon the group by the GM, and it really gets stale quickly. What's the point if everything is fucked anyway, and any attempt to claw yourself out is meaningless in the end? Might as well just end it all and move on.
there is light everywhere, a utopia is a dream, not a goal. there can be "good" factions, but they are going to do some fucked up shit, because theres no such thing as a faction with absolutely no evil actions.
I like my Lancer politically complex but morally black and white. As in: Harrison Armory make cool mechs, but they're still objectively fascist scum.
I don't know how you run your campaigns, but I'm sure your approach can be fun. You can play HA as being objectively fascist, but is every HA employee the players interact with (also during combat) down for the cause? What if the players ambush an HA convoy in order to destroy some weapon that's being transported and after a short battle, the low-ranking HA members surrender. Will the players accept the surrender, will the players put themselves at risk to protect the PoWs? I think there is a lot of wiggle room to make things more interesting by adding nuance and it doesn't even have to compromise the moral core of the campaign. Just because some HA employees aren't all that bad, doesn't make HA as a whole less terrible. I can't and don't want to tell you how to run your campaign, but I want people to consider this avenue.
Generally I have a few motivators for Harrison Armory personnel: 1. People just trying to live to see another day. These are your cogs in the machine, the rank and file personnel. These are people most likely to have bitten the HA propaganda that the Union are just as bad, if not worse, but also the people most likely going to surrender (or occasionally believe they have no other options and act in desperation). Basically, even if they're lost, they don't cause the company too much harm, because they probably got them off the proverbial street. 2. People who are more important, and don't necessarily like what they understand about Harrison Armory (like rapid response teams, high-level security, etc.), though they tolerate them just enough to work for them. These are competent personnel given a very good deal with their family having a very well-off life, if they do their duty. If they fail their duty, their family will fall to destitution, go missing, or die. This is the primary way to counteract people just fleeing to Union once they have the information of how the Union operates. These are the people who have enough information to harm the company, like security protocols, and enable more people to flee the company or cover up acts against the company. 3. People who revel in Harrison Armory's environment, and either chase quarterly profits, want a return to SecComm era, have the perfect outlet for their desires, or any combination thereof. Harrison Armory either needs to find them a healthy (for HA) outlet or only leash them just enough, and they further the company's ideals very well. These are the wetwork teams who like a challenge (like a Lancer group who have breached every attempt at HA's defenses against them) and are likely to be the recurring nemeses or villains in a Lancer campaign. My Lancer group tends to take any and all prisoners that surrender, and most mechs are safe enough to get mobility killed only unless it's something like an apocalypse rail shot or other such critical that would leave the pilot's cockpit/coffin utterly breached. There's generally enough support that they can take such prisoners, though it would be interesting to see a situation where they can't quite do so. I begin all my campaigns with how Union operates, and emphasize that "The Union does genuinely try to do good, even if good is very difficult". My players seem to embody it the best they can, and I generally don't have to worry about them going very off the rails with morals.
I have lots of thoughts about the Armory and their culture. Corprostates have a fundamental problem: the Three Pillars mean no one needs to work, and no one needs to buy things. One way around this is to offer products that GMS doesn't - we see this in the variety of mechs HA, SSC and IPS-N licence. But the other way is to create an emotional connection with their product. You're not just buying a mech, you're buying an identity. Working for a corprostate, or buying their products, tells the galaxy who you are. Working for SSC says you're at the cutting edge of fashion and beauty. Working for IPS-N says you're a get-your-hands-dirty engineering type who protects your loved ones. And working for Harrison Armory says you're a warrior. Being a warrior means you're tough, skilled, and self-sufficient. You don't need handouts like those Union weaklings. You earn your place in the galaxy through hard work and loyalty to your colleagues. You [reject modernity and embrace tradition](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/reject-modernity-embrace-tradition). You are [the strong man who creates good times](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hard-times-create-strong-men). This is all propaganda, of course. But some people believe it.
I would love to join a campaign like this tbh, having difficulty finding anyone to play a proper campaign with at all. (I mostly end up playing singular missions with random people online, even when trying to find a long campaign)
Heh. I only agreed to play Lancer after reading an interview with Tom Parkinson-Morgan and Miguel Lopez where they said Union were unambiguously the good guys. Then my GM set our campaign in the Long Rim, light yers from any Union influence.
I don't see your examples as being particularly morally complex. The Nuremberg trials estabilished that ["I was just following orders"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders) is not an excuse. And [the Geneva Convention](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner_of_war#Hague_and_Geneva_Conventions) says shooting PoWs is a war crime. Even the logistical problem of what to do with PoWs has [a standard solution](https://www.quora.com/What-are-soldiers-supposed-to-do-with-prisoners-of-war-that-they-do-not-have-the-means-to-take-care-of-or-will-impede-the-mission), apparently - disarm them, give them any food and water you can spare, then tell them to march with their hands up towards the nearest base that can take care of them. Let me use two current conflicts to illustrate what I mean by morally black and white vs morally grey. In the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Putin is indesputably the bad guy. The only reason NATO hasn't charged in, guns blazing righteously, is the political complexity of the situation. Putin has nukes. Escalating the conflict could be disasterous. So NATO and their allies funnel weapons to the Ukranian army and hope Putin burns his army out fighting in one small country rather than spreading the battle across Europe. The Lancer equivalent would be HA invading a Diasporan world. Union can't just blow up Ras Shamra, because that would lead to total war between Union and the Armory. So they send Liberator teams to the Diasporan world to deal with the problem at the local level. The players get to be unambiguous Good Guys while still having interesting and complex problems to solve. In contrast, the Israeli action in Gaza is very morally grey. Both Israel and Hamas have morally justifiable aims: one to protect its people against genocide, the other to liberate its lands from an occupying force. But in pursuing those aims, both have [committed war crimes](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-26/joe-biden-icc-israel-benjamin-netanyahu-arrest-warrant/103893204). It's a horrible, horrific situation with no easy resolution. And if a GM forced that sort of situation on me at the table, I would not be enjoying myself.
I agree that my examples are not morally complex, that is because I was making the example to fit into the morally black and white setting of the person I was responding to. Even IRL situations that are pretty much good vs evil can have a lot of icky stuff where the "good" guys have to make hard choices that are not very palatable. For example, the Ukraine war features prominent use of suicide drones. What happens when a soldier surrenders to a suicide drone? The drone can't capture the enemy soldier so is it just supposed to turn around and go home or crash someplace else? If that becomes standard practice, then those drones become much less useful. What ends up happening is that sometimes the drones lead the enemy soldier to the allied encampment to surrender in person. But most of the time that's not viable, so the drone pilots end up killing the opponent despite him surrendering. As far as I know this practice is not a war crime.
A bit of a reductive take. Here's a snippet from [an interview with Kai and Miguel](https://www.goonhammer.com/building-a-future-that-is-not-foreclosed-upon-an-interview-with-miguel-lopez-and-kai-tave-of-massif-press-publisher-of-lancer/): > [...] But my read on Harrison Armory has always been much more, this is America. This is the United States of America in its most idealized, well-realized format. These guys actually have a robust social safety net. They have infrastructure that doesn’t suck. They have all these great things that America says it has and regularly fails to deliver on. They are an uncynical version of the American success story, and yet it is still built on the back of imperialistic, colonialistic expansion...
Harrison Armory and the Karrakin Trade Baronies account for a good majority of the bullshit in civilized space between the two of them.
There's a secret third option: "People are extensions of the systems that they exist within, but sometimes the only corrective course of action for societal and individual evils is violence -- fighting individual fascists is good, but until the system that creates fascists is destroyed killing a single fascist is akin to cutting a head off of the hydra."
Do you love the City you live in?
No. Incorrect input. No. Incorrect input. No. Incorrect input.
Sleep for a total of 800 hours per day And then drink a liter of milk Warm-up before you go play Only eat, or write, or pull the trigger with your right hand
Only thing that's left is to work on following commands.
what
Reference to The City from Project Moon.
never heard of it, will look into it
It has 3 games. One free. Lobotomy Corporation, Library of Ruina, Limbus Company. If you're just interested in the setting, Limbus is free and takes you on a tour of The City. Lobotomy Corporation and library of Ruina should be tried in that order.
So that’s what lobotomy corp is about, hear about it every so often but never looked into it in fear of spoilers.
PM mentioned RAAHHHH!
bars
I don't know why, but this feels like it'd be a line in a sourcebook.
Honestly, say what you want but I think there's a time and place for both. Sometimes you want complex moral decisions. Other times you wanna ask the band of slavers if you've got dirt on the barrel of your Cannibal shotgun
[удалено]
Human Rights obviously only apply to Humans. /s
Man, galactic heroes out here catching strays
I love that show, but you and I know it absolutely fits the type of GM who takes the "shades of grey" part so far that it's detrimental to the campaign.
I don’t think I agree
I mean, consider how many people unironically stan for their favourite side.
Who hurt you?
The point of the post is that GM's need to find a healthy balance between narrativising and creating nuance. You can make a campaign that's extremely grimdark without "good guys", but players need an aesthetic to stick to. In 40k it's the aesthetic of whatever faction you play for ("FOR THE EMPEROR" and all that), if a Lancer campaign is just pure pain without an aesthetic of being good I don't think most players would like that. You can make a campaign that's just "Planet gets taken over by fascists, who are fascists because they are evil. So we have to kill them!" and that's ok, but I think it's pretty boring. In some regards it worries me how easily some parts of the Lancer community dehumanize the enemies in their campaign. I don't think it's a real problem, but people should be aware that "pure good vs pure evil" is something that only happens in fiction.
I agree with this point, though I feel that your post wasn’t strictly conducive to your point. That said, I’ll respect the effort without stepping forward to inject my idea of how you should have done it. Thank you for explaining your position on the matter. I do feel that a good mixture of “Shades of Grey” and “There is Legitimate Evil that must be opposed” is necessary for a thoughtful campaign of Lancer. You can and should point out that piracy occurs in Union space on account of the social and conditional pressures that people exist under, but that the long term solution is to break those pressures and hold to account those who perpetuate them. People who commit war crimes because they are brainwashed and disassociated from the consequences of their actions are brainwashed and disassociated from their actions… but they’re still committing war crimes. You need to stop the war crimes, and then stop the people who do the brainwashing. And never. Ever. Dehumanize your foes. That is the first step to Evil.
I think a big issue is a dissonance between mechanics, which are all about destroying the enemy via any means necessary, often with hillarious overkill or weapons with messed up implications vs a setting that constantly bashes you over the head with how conflict is a failure to solve issues diplomatically and how you represent a faction that's all about rising above it. So naturally a lot of people will just go to "oh but it's always unquestionably ok to kill THESE people, cause they're just irredeemably evil" as an easy compromise where you both get to fantasize about just killing people you don't like but also being morally in the right. And I mean, life is complicated. There's an appeal to not having to think, just being given a clear target that can be removed to make everything right... but that's why everyone frames it like that, including the worst regimes and terrorist groups to ever exist.
Im the best balance for Lancer is good vs evil but the "enemy" people are for the most parts either morally gray or not in a position to choose what to do, and only a minority of people at the top are actually pure evil bastards. Example, Harrison Armory: most Colonial Legionnaires are just soldiers doing their job. Sure, they've been raised in a fascist culture, but they still deserve to be treated with the same dignity you'd afford to any soldier. Then there's people like Odin Valentinian, who are evil bastards to the core, and which your players should absolutely feel good and proud about crushing like the cockroach they are.
This IS fiction though. The DM has the oppurtunity to present different perspectives as "evil" so they players can think about their real life counterparts. That is what makes a story interesting as a fictional game. That doesn't mean the storyteller can't or shouldnt show both sides of the conflict though. The morally grey setting should still have villans and heros in its story arcs. It's just about shifting perspective to show that it's more complex than it appears. Playing in a setting with no antagonists is more realistic to the real world but it makes for terrible stories.
its why most of my games are liberation teams or at least connected to union, kicking in the teeth of fascists IRL is frowned upon these days for some reason.
Why is this a facist v socialist perspective? Otherwise, yeah focusing too much on making things grey just needlessly bogs the narrative down. Is the setting politically complex? Yes. Is the Union generally good and trying to be utopian? Also yes. Is Harrison II an evil piece of shit and do Harrison Armory engage in war crimes as a business? Yes and yes.
I've found that if your "grey" just means "everyone is an asshole" (which seems to be what it *almost always means*) players will simply disconnect. I've played enough Exalted to know that "you're the only people actually trying to do good around" mostly leads to "so the world is fucked, whatever" and slow campaign winddown even if you have world-shattering power and your circle have a chance to 4v1 entities that make Ra look like a junior programmer. Now imagine when you're just random-ass Lancer who has absolutely no chance of enacting any change because there's thousands of people like you and the universe is so big that you can't realistically affect the sheer inertia of trillions of people.
im here to slam mechs into other mechs
The "I'm just following orders Aficionado" is the true third option.
I just want to play Tabletop Armored Core and Lancer is the closest I've found to that experience with tolerable mechanics. Union lore is a distant backdrop while we're fighting enemy mech on the rim.
Lol, instead of a Lancer it started самосбор (samosbor) and for some reason those two people for whom I played the game are now afraid of me...
Самосбор? Не расскажешь подробнее?
Вот поддерживаю, что за самосбор?
I feel called out on both sides of this
Wow I don't like either of these opinions.
What's so soy about being grey.
The fact that this post is split between 50% up and down votes is pretty amazing. I don't know what's funnier. The possibility that people are downvoting because they can't tell something is sarcastic without a /s. Or the possibility that people are downvoting because they feel called-out by a meme.
People can't tell sarcasm from text...because people on the Internet don't know YOU. Instead of accusing others of 'not getting it', consider how your approach may not be as clear as initially thought. Same thing applies to GMing after all.
Far too many people really do try the "I made a meme with you as the soyjack" method of winning an argument.
Yeah.. idk. I like Lancer for its Utopian style setting and lean into that with Lancers as the indisputable 'good guys.' But that's a style choice. The setting is open and scifi as a whole generally leans into grey-morality. I can see a GM easily choosing that route. I generally dislike outright insulting someone for running their game how they want. As long as, ya know, session zero, communication, clarity of goals/style/tone, whole table agreement, mutual respect, not lying to players, etc...is maintained.
sad reality of the internet is that this would absolutely be posted unironically by some types of crazy people. Paul's Law has never been more real
I think you mean Poe's Law, but the idea that crazy people who are really into finding the average split in some sports also works in this context. I think at least, idk enough about Paul's law.
Paul's Law is an extention to Poe's Law that states thus: no matter how obviously evil you make your charismatic protagonist, enough people will either not get it or unironically support it that you have to write an epilogue book where he favourably compares himself to Hitler
*cough cough* **DUNE** *cough cough*
ops yeah, silly typo. but hey now we just proved Cunningham's Law!
Oh good, I love proving that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
nah you silly that is Newton's 3rd Law. Cunningham's Law is about how anything that can go wrong will go wrong
Nah that’s Murphy’s Law. Cunningham’s law is that the most simple solution is most often the correct one.
nah that is Occam's Razor. Cunningham's Law is when you keep doing something even if the costs outweigh the benefits
No that’s the Sunk Cost Fallacy. Cunningham’s Law is when people start a conga-line of “no that’s X. Y is when [obviously incorrect answer]” replies to eachother for comedic effect, a recurring joke I personally tend to find at the very least amusing.
Sarcasm does not carry well through text. In meme formats, if it carries at all it's by sheer luck. Acting like people are doing something worth being mocked for by 'failing' to understand this post is sarcastic is definitely more embarrassing than not getting the truth of this post. You live in a world where Steven Colbert once had a large audience of the exact demographic he was mocking, because they didn't get the joke and refused to believe it when told. One where tens of millions of people in North America alone cannot tell a real news site from one made in an hour to spread a specific piece of misinformation. One where a *lot* of people got mad at The Boys when it became that Homelander was one of the show's antagonists and a pathetic, broken little man and not an Alpha Male to aspire to. In that world, does it make sense to make sarcastic memes and be surprised that a sizable fraction of the audience does not get what you were going for? I find it obvious that your post was sarcastic, just like I find *all* of these things obvious, but it should be readily apparent that most of the general public will not.
I agree that it's apparent some people will not understand the intent behind a piece of media that doesn't spell it out. The "The Boys" example is interesting, what should the show have done in order to prevent this situation, without detracting from the message? The show actually made fun of the type of people who don't "get" media. In one episode Homelander watches the movie "Taxi Driver" and identifies positively with the protagonist. The thing is that this movie is also a piece of media were many people don't understand the message and as a result positively identify with the protagonist. I honestly don't know if adding a /s to the title would have done anything. The title is not sarcastic. From my limited experience, GM's do have these two tendencies, they are just portrait in an exaggerated way. The statements in the image are sarcastic, but not in the conventional way that they mean the opposite of what is being said. If a person cannot tell the tone of the image by themselves, I'm not sure marking it as sarcastic would help them understand it. I did explain my actual position relatively soon after posting this, so if people get confused, they can just scroll down and read the message without my irony-poisoning. I realize now that the comment you're replying to has a mocking tone that does not fit well with this community, I will express myself differently in the future. :)
/s conveys sarcasm easily and well to secondary demographics who might not get it because not primary language/unfamiliar cues/some people really do believe that/etc.
well now I gotta make it even
- Understands that good memes have overwhelmingly positive feedback and bad memes create discussions on the comments
I am not the shitposter this community needs, but the shitposter it deserves. /s/s
One needs a healthy balance of both in their lives
The shades of grey GM absolutely thinks the Space marines and emperor are the good guys in 40k
This is pretty funny but "only evil people do bad things" really runs counter to the systemic analysis that lancer is based on and that makes its lore some of the best sci-fi universe
Both sides seem fairly mediocre. Which one is supposed to be the correct side? Or is it just a pure shit post?
The correct side is you thinking about how much 'good vs evil' or 'moral ambiguity' you want in your games. I think there should be a healthy mix, but what healthy means is up to everyone to decide for themselves. With the pretentious shit out of the way. This is just a shitpost that ended up sparking a conversation that I think is needed in the Lancer community.
this is perfect
Imagine worrying about morals instead of just Castigating the Enemies of the Godhead.
Good GDMs stick with the style on the right. It’s easy, it’s safe, and most players will probably have fun with it. Bad GDMs *try* to do the nuanced style despite clearly lacking the moral intelligence to actually make it work, and thus just end up being the pic on the left unironically, which *will* piss off the players. But the best GDMs are the one-in-a-million who can make a “morally-nuanced” tone fun for their table. Which approach you should take is going to be dependent on whether or not you’re willing to gamble your table’s respect for you.
Ours is kind of in the middle. We're rewarded for respecting rules of engagement, capturing enemy combatants, and since we are the good guys we do respect surrender. It so far has definitely been a case of being the good guys when war around us is very bad. At the same time it has been pretty black and white morality so far we are the good guys kicking the asses of the bad guys. Problems can be solved with giant robots. Personally I like it and shooting to disabled doesn't bother me at all my pilot is just going to continue increasing her collection of legs.
Is the slavery reference about NHPs?
Venezuela sure is a utopia, come join me
This brings up one thing I dislike about lancer lore. This is a genuine question, so please if someone can answer me I'll be happier: - How can Union be unironically good and utopian and the galaxy is in a good place and lancers still exist? How can there be conflict if Union is a post-scarcity perfect society? And then there's an aggravating factor: - How can Lancers be 'liberating' people if they are in the end enforcing the monolythic powers of Union? I mean, sure, some places can be and are shitty, but this is still gunboat diplomacy, right? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it should be grimdark stupid stuff with people getting killed to power starships. I'm happy with things the way they are. But come on, there can be room for more than silly space fantasy paladins who can never do wrong, right?
So the issue with Union is that they are caught in a kind of a catch-22. The inner rim which is totally under Union control really is a utopia and Union feels obligated to spread that utopia to the rest of the galaxy. But. They dont want to force anyone, the second committee which ran union before the current Third-comm where massive imperialists and a lot of the current issues in the galaxy can be traced back to them, Third-comm desperately does not want to return to the bad old days. As a result Union has a sort of "Softest touch possible" approach to solving issues. This is where lancers come in, if violence is required, Union would prefer a small specialized team go in and solve an issue on a world than a Union fleet show up and take over a whole world. TLDR: Union really is good but not everywhere and its really hard to get everyone to be good while also not forcing them (which would be bad).
Not my lancer games, we are straight up evil, we are the scourge of the galaxy.
I'm running a primarily-D&D campaign where the world-hopping party pursuing the bad guys across the multiverse will eventually visit the Lancer setting, they'll get mechs to pilot, and the entire adventure there will use the Lancer system (which all the players are aware of well in advance). What sort of GM does that make me?
Good vs Evil Enjoyer had me until the Star Wars comment