Just learned what I'm going to homebrew into my next campaign
flameborn
Lancer sounds more interesting with every short.
Coid
Lancer is great, thank you again for adding it to your playlist!
ghostmatrix
Wait, so lancer rewards rolls on either extreme and punishes roles in the middle?
SocialJusticeCleric
Oh god please don't give me more reasons to play Lancer, I CANT AFFORD ALL THE SYSTEMS I WANT TO RUN 😭
professionalneet
every time you mention lancer i want to take ideas from it. now where can i find this book.
FreelancerStudios
That's interesting.
Downtime systems in TTRPGs are always bad in my hot take opinion. The reason they are all bad is because they gamify *not* playing the game. It's a misuse of table time. I don't want to spend my precious table time to not roleplay my character, and I don't think anyone ever joins a game with that intention.
I know I know, I can hear the counter argument already. I do not want roleplay my character sleeping for eight hours in real time either, but there must be some sane middle ground between the two extremes of roleplaying every moment of a story at one extreme and purposefully making rules that avoid roleplay at the other extreme.
What Lancer is doing here is similar to what HackMaster did back in late 90s with character advancement. To level up, an adventurer needed to not only gain adequate XP but also attend an adventurer school where the details of skill improvement were taught. A table accompanied this in-game event, and various complications could result from a roll on that table. The adventurer might gain a new NPC villain in the form of a rival student for example.
I'm unsure if I like this Lancer approach or not. It seems to not be about downtime at all but rather the intend is to convert downtime into a story book that then gets roleplayed. Unless the group wants to handwave the results of the roll, there is no downtime in the game. Maybe this is the compromise.
lordzaboem
At the cost of what?! Time, reputation… I mean makes sense but wdym dignity?!
