Lancer is a mud-and-lasers tabletop roleplaying game centered on modular mechs and the pilots who crew them. 

Ten thousand years after the climate crash that ended the Anthropocene, a survivor humanity rebuilt itself and spread to the stars. Numbering now in the trillions, they are a polyglot, cosmopolitan people, organized under a central hegemon: Union. The galaxy is vast before them, and humanity is its mirror. For some, it is a golden age of post-scarcity utopia. For the rest, that golden age remains a dream to be attained. 

Into this roiling galaxy you take your role as a mech pilot —  from cold-blooded mercenaries to honor-bound Baronic cuirassiers, hardscrabble Union regulars to professional Constellar Midnights, Far Field teams at the uncanny edge of known space to the ever-wandering Albatross. Operating with a wealth of licenses from one of the galaxy’s Big Five fabricators, you and your friends play a tight-knit squad of pilots on campaign — comrades together in a galaxy of danger and hope. Will you fight for Union, working to rectify the crimes of previous administrations? Will you run contracts for a corpro-state, working to advance private interests while lining your pockets? Will you fight to liberate your people from all masters, human or otherwise? Or will you fight only for yourself? 

Lancer features a mix of military science fiction and mythic science fantasy. In the setting, conscript pilots mix ranks with flying aces, mercenary guns-for-hire brawl with secretive corpostate agents, and relativistic paladins cross thermal lances with causality-breaking entities. 

In Lancer, there is promise in the potential, but the hard-won gains of humanity are under serious threat. From the internal: ruthless corpro-states, bitter anthrochauvinist reactionaries, and ponderous oligarchs, to the external: MONIST 1, or RA, an anoriginary being with unfathomable power and unknowable goals; the Aunic Ascendancy, the unbroken heirs of Old Humanity; and more. 

Having only begun the project of recovering from its own internal political revolutions, Union now scrambles to reassert its control over a galaxy that would fall to chaos otherwise.

Who will you fight for, pilot? 

What is Lancer?

Lancer is a tabletop roleplaying game that prioritizes four pillars of play: 

• Rules-light, fluid, narrative play while outside of the mech.  
• Tactical mech combat that promotes creative tactics, teamwork and explosive moments of action.
• Modular, progression-based mech customization where narrative, setting, and character is imbued in the gear, systems, and equipment your character chooses. 
• A play loop that encourages narrative advancement. 

Lancer offers deep, modular mech customization, a wide range of player backgrounds to prompt storytelling, and a system and setting with room for any narrative you and your group want to tell. It’s best with a group of 3-5 players, and can be used to run a one-shot session or persistent campaign. 

Lancer draws thematic inspiration from various media: The lived-in, cosmopolitan, working class CRT retrofuture ofAliens,Blade Runner,2001: A Space Odyssey,Akira, andCowboyBebop; the science fantasy of Dan Simmons’Hyperion Cantos, Bungie’sDestiny, Ursula LeGuin’sThe Left Hand of Darkness, Moebius’sThe World of EdenaandArzach, and Anne Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy; the soldiers-on-campaign tension ofThe Thin Red Line,Band of Brothers, andPlatoon; and the subjectivity-fraying uncanny of Tarkovsky’sStalker, Cronenberg’sVideodrome, andEvangelion’s Angels. 

Mechanically, aspects ofLancer’s play owe particular thanks to existing media for inspiration: Schwalb Entertainment’sShadow of The Demon Lordfor its Accuracy/Difficulty system; theArmored Coreseries for its modular mech customization; and to John Harper’sBlades In The Darkfor its downtime systems.  

While we have a significant number of finished art and lore in the book already, we imagine the final product to be part setting book, part ruleset, and part art book — a rich resource for not only roleplaying tools, but narrative-inspiring art and worldbuilding. 

What Does Lancer Do Differently?

There are clear, differentiated rules for narrative play and tactical combat.

Narrative play and tactical combat demand different rule sets and scales of play. Whether you want the game to move at a fluid, narrative pace in order to zoom in or expand your story, or jump right into tactical mech combat, Lancer establishes clear guidelines for when and how to implement differing styles. 

Lancer offers systemized downtime and brings narrative-enhancing structure to the play session.

Lancer has a clear play structure making it easy for game masters of any experience to run a dynamic campaign. Players can take downtime actions with defined outcomes to progress story beats, work on projects, or get access to resources. What they do during downtime impacts how their missions begin, progress, and end. This structure prompts clear goals, stakes, and personal involvement from the characters that will help your table to bring storytelling, role-playing, and consequence to every game.

Lancer’s character system is classless, modular, and encourages deep customization.

When you progress in Lancer, your pilot permanently gains licenses that grant them access to parts and gear from a mech of their choice. Unlike other games, however, you are not locked in to a set character path – instead you will create your own personalized mech. Your pilot can mix and match any parts you like, creating a system where players define their own roles by the choices they make. Build broad or deep — your pilot isyourpilot, and your mech isyourmech. 

Flavor, characterization, and setting drive every aspect of Lancer 

Nearly every gear option has lore attached to it, further defining the history and tone of the setting as well as acting as hooks for deeper player characterization. When you take licenses from the IPS-Northstar Raleigh, the gunslinging mech with the MJOLNIR chest cannon, you know exactly what you’re getting.

You can already play the pre-release version of LANCERhere(the link or clicking on the title above will take you to our itch.io page where you can download the game) and download a fully working version of our companion app, COMP/CON,here. This is thefull game,totally free and currently being played by dozens of groups, but without a lot of the art, layout, and editing that’s the goal of this kickstarter. Even after release,we will always have a free version of LANCER available on all platforms.

After nearly two years of development, play testing, and community building, we wanted to take the next step and finishLancer’s first edition core book in proper form: hardback, with full color, professional editing and layout, and packed with art by some of the best illustrators working in comics and concept design today. 

Lanceris a large project. Roughly 560 pages of finished text — rules, setting information, lore, generators, NPCs, and many more tools for Game Masters — almost 20 artists, and millions of possible gear combinations. We’re asking for a fair amount to fund this project, but we think it’s just that —  a fair ask. 

One of the things we want to make clear is that we don’t want to keep anyone from playingLancer. Despite the campaign to raise funds necessary to create a final product, we mean to keep a version ofLancerfree — always. We’ve gone almost two years in public development of this game and intend to keep the game available for the community to play and enjoy.

Our rewards for backing are pretty straightforward: 

• Everyone who backs this campaign at the PDF tier or higher will get a code that grants them a copy of the Premium PDF. 
• Everyone who backs this campaign at the PDF tier or higher will have access to any and all digital stretch rewards. 
• All backers at any level will receive the Long Rim mech supplement .pdf as part of our social stretch goals. These are four (five???) mechs not included in the core book. This supplement will be available for wide release some time after our campaign concludes, but we are including it early and for free with all pledges.

• Everyone who backs this campaign — at any level — will have access to any additional social stretch goals we unlock, as soon as we can deliver them.  

What are social stretch goals? Pretty much what they sound like: they’re unlocks tied to social engagement, not money raised. 

We’re going to include some additional simple social stretch goals attached to how many backers we have. Here’s the breakdown:

• 300 Backers:Iconic Mech Wallpapers (for desktop and phone) –ACHIEVED!
• 400 Backers:Logo Wallpapers (for desktop and phone) –ACHIEVED!
• 500 Backers:Company Catalog Wallpapers  –ACHIEVED!
• 1000+ Backers: Access to CLOCKMAKER’S BARDO, a sealed Union Intelligence Bureau report. –  ACHIEVED!

As we gain in backers, we will release the art and details for the four Long Rim mechsabove, so stay posted!

We amazingly blew through our first stretch goals in the first 6 hours of this campaign. This means all backers at the PDF tier and up will receive digital copies ofNo Room for a Wallflower,Lancer’s first official campaign module, and three Field Guides, setting and lore guides for the various areas of theLancercanon. Delivery for these digital-only rewards will be some time in 2020.

 –from the publisher