Expectations for a Lancer One-Shot

I have been stewing on the idea of publishing a one-shot for Lancer for over a year at this point, so I was thrilled to hear that Lancer community member Suji/nimoos volunteered to host a Lancer One-Shot Jam on Itch this December. I've decided to take this opportunity to stop letting my dreams be dreams and finally put my money where my mouth is and join the jam.

The jam doesn't start until December 22 and it doesn't have a theme yet, so that grants me some freedom to organize my thoughts before I try to crank out a module in the span of a month. Ideally, I'd like to have a plan in place before things actually get started so that I have a solid set of realistic goals, objectives, and systems in place to accomplish them. I have a myriad of thoughts to work through and decisions to make before I even start on the module proper, so now's a great time to work on that.

So, what sort of workload am I looking at? What should be on my to-do list? What does a Lancer one-shot consist of? Let's figure that out!

Setting Expectations for Myself

What should my primary considerations and constraints be for a Lancer one-shot?

Length

The general definition of an RPG one-shot is a single, self-contained adventure that can be started and finished in a single night of play. Colloquially, a single night of play can be expected to last between 3-4 hours, so that should be my target.

Audience

There are multiple types of people and groups who seek out one-shots to play, and each one should be considered when writing:

• New players and GMs who want to try out the game and learn the rules with minimal commitment
• Regular TTRPG players who want a single night of fun, such as at a local TTRPG meetup
• Players looking to kick off a campaign with a low-stakes adventure to find their footing
• GMs looking to stitch modules together to flesh out their campaign

In particular, I suspect the new player audience is going to be the most important group to cater toward, though potentially also the most difficult – it's very possible that without a firm hand on the reins, we could violate our time constraint. Arguably, this isn't necessarily a bad thing for the group (leave them wanting more!), but it does somewhat violate the goal, which is to create an adventure that can reasonably be completed in a single session of play.

I think that making an adventure that caters to players looking to start up a new campaign lends itself well to a one-shot, as it allows the GM to set the scene and stakes assuming no knowledge of the rest of the world. The trick is to present the situation in a way that is pluggable into an existing campaign, or at the very least serve as a source for mining cool ideas. Details about the scenario of the one-shot should be comprehensive enough to provide a springboard, but broad enough to be freely ripped out of its given context to be jammed somewhere else.

The audience of new players comes somewhat in conflict with the audience of GMs looking for modules to stitch together, in that new players are likely going to gravitate toward LL0 adventures, while GMs might want to have access to a variety of LLs to pull from. In practice, though, this isn't a terribly difficult problem to solve, as Lancer itself has relatively robust rules for scaling up (or down) the difficulty of a given adventure, so adjusting for different LLs requires very little legwork. Really, the issues here are education (do Lancer GMs know about these scaling guidelines?) and marketing (do I advertise the module as being for LL0 pilots, or for pilots of any LL?).

Finally, it's generally understood that a Lancer party includes one GM and 3-5 players. I don't expect to write anything supporting groups outside those bounds.

Content

This is where things get interesting, so let's drill down into some more detail.

Combat

Lancer is well-known as a combat-centric game, as nearly all of the game's systems, rules, character options, and GM advice are focused on combat scenarios. I think it's fair to say, then, that any GM or player who sits down to play a one-shot of Lancer should expect to experience combat – after all, it's the main course!

I've long had mixed feelings about the centricity of combat in Lancer, as I feel as though the assumption of combat can easily lead a GM to build a campaign that undermines player agency, narrative, and decision-making in service to shuttling the players from prefab combat to prefab combat. I'll save those mixed feelings for another post, though, because for a one-shot, I can't help but feel like not providing a guaranteed avenue for combat would be a complete letdown anyone who might pick up the module. For better or for worse, there's an expectation that a Lancer module provides GMs with combats to run for their players, and doubly so in a one-shot. So to that end, I have to concede that the module must feature combat, complete with a map, sitrep, and list of enemies.

That said, the assumption of combat doesn't mean the scenario can't facilitate player agency. Maybe combat is inevitable, but I would love to provide the GM with guidance and scaffolding that allow the players to dictate the terms of the combat. Maybe the players can pre-scan some enemies, or disrupt (impair) them ahead of time, or maybe even take out some enemies early. Maybe the players have an opportunity to scout the combat field and prepare traps or choke points. Giving players an opportunity to affect the combat through the use of the narrative rules feels like a great opportunity to ensure the session isn't simple mono-combat.

However, there's another elephant in the room: combat in Lancer takes a long time. Especially for newbies. It's not out of the question that a full-size Lancer combat could take 3 hours of gameplay alone. That eats up nearly the entire time budget! That doesn't leave much time for narrative RP sections, let alone time to teach the game to new players. Any combat that I set forth, then, should probably lean on the short side. That probably rules out double-budget sitreps at a minimum, and might even require a budget below standard size.

Narrative

Because the rules and guidance for creating combats are so comprehensive, it won't be sufficient to simply put together a combat and call it a day. The real secret sauce, here, ought to be the actual scenario – that's what will spark people's interest and imagination. Oddly enough, despite the centrality of combat in Lancer, the real selling point is going to be the narrative around the combat: Who are the PCs fighting? Why are they fighting? What happens if they lose? What's at stake?

I want it to be unique and memorable. I feel pretty strongly that whatever I come up with should be better than what a GM can come up with on their own, and should be interesting enough to serve as a creative springboard for future play. It should be conceptually dense, giving GMs content beyond cliches that they couldn't think of themselves (no cascading NHP villains, please).

And to reiterate, I would love for there to be narrative sections that allow players to express their agency and desires in the scenario outside of combat. To that end, I would be in favor of abbreviating combat in service to the narrative, if it comes down to that.

Extras

A lot of Lancer adventures include a variety of other content. Some thoughts on these:

• Custom frames, mech gear, NPCs: Frankly, I'm not interested. It seems like this sort of content already makes up the lion's share of Lancer third party material, so I don't think there's any shortage of existing creativity on that front. I'm not against providing an Exotic weapon or system as a mission reward, and an LCP to go with it, but I'm not going beyond that. Gonna set that boundary for myself now.
• Pre-gens: Now this is a real idea. COMP/CON provides pre-gens, but as much as I love COMP/CON, I personally have a bone to pick with how dependent Lancer as a game is on its existence. My dream is to run Lancer IRL on pen and paper, without requiring people to refer to screens during play, as it allows the players to be much more present during the session. I am heavily tempted to create Lancer pre-gens to include with my module, filling in the various roles, complete with printable sheets that are well-formatted with comprehensive reference material.
  • It's rather unfortunate that NPC content is locked behind the Lancer paywall, as it would also help the GM quite a bit to provide compact printable stat blocks for enemies as well. Perhaps this is something worth looking into from a licensing perspective.
• Maps: If I'm going to have a combat, I ought to have a map. Despite my soft spot for IRL play, the fact remains that a tremendous number of Lancer players are online players, and it would greatly improve the module's accessibility if I provided a VTT-compatible map. I own DungeonDraft and a ton of assets, but I need to review all their licensing requirements before I start using them willy-nilly. Furthermore, there's a part of me that wants to include a sort of "bare-bones" version of the map to make it more accessible to IRL players who just want to sketch the map on a Chessex wet erase mat like everyone used to do back in the day. Not sure how that will work out though.
• Tokens: Retrograde is the go-to here. Not sure what their licensing is like. I don't think they've ever allowed anyone to ship tokens with their modules before? Something to look into. If not, I'm not against commissioning some tokens. Maybe I could also provide standee print PDFs too.
• Advice: I've publicly groused multiple times that Lancer's non-combat GM advice is effectively non-existent. I would love to provide some amount of advice to GMs on how to run narrative sections, but that will probably depend on how much narrative I'm able to cram in. Also, I don't want this module to be especially long – I want a GM to be able to pick it up at 1pm the day of the session, read it, and feel confident enough to run it by 7pm. I expect I'll be leaning heavily on my NSR background to aid me here, but I expect some of those lessons haven't been fully learned yet.

Closing Thoughts

I think this has been helpful to me to sort out what is interesting and important to me about the idea of a Lancer one-shot. To summarize:

• The one-shot should be a self-contained scenario that does not require outside context, but is flexible enough to be slotted into an existing campaign.
• The one shot should contain content to last for no more than 4 hours of play.
• The one-shot should work for LL0 characters, and direct the GM toward the core book's rules on scaling combats.
• The one-shot should contain a combat that serves as the scenario's climax and primary content. This should include an enemy list, sitrep conditions, and a VTT map, possibly with a "low-fi" version for IRL use.
• The one-shot should include a narrative segment that allows players to exert their creative thinking and agency over the scenario, while still keeping the players on track to engage with the combat. This may come with GM advice on running narrative scenes.
• Optional: Pre-gens should be provided along with the one-shot for ease of getting up-and-running.

I'm certain my thoughts will continue to evolve, especially once I dive into the creative process, but I think this gives me several goals and guidelines to start out.

What do you think? Anything I'm forgetting? Anything I'm overthinking? Feel free to comment below! This is my first time working through this, so I appreciate insight from those of you more experienced than me.

Next Steps

What comes next for the blog? A few thoughts:

• A survey of existing Lancer one-shots. This will be rather short, as there are scant few of them, but there could be some worthwhile lessons to learn from them.
• A review of some articles from Explorer's Design, particularly the General Design 101 article. I've skimmed it, but haven't dug deep into it yet since it sort of requires that I have my idea already, which I can't have until the jam has a theme.
• An analysis of potential layout tools.
  • Valkyrion has a Lancer RPG template for Word and Google Docs, which is profoundly accessible, but also produces results that look exactly like every other Lancer publication out there. As an NSR goblin, I've grown to greatly appreciate when people take bigger risks in the area of layout, and I have a lot of respect for the team that made Sleeping Beneath a Stolen Crown for making a Lancer module fully in the vacuum of time before any first party modules had been released. I think I'd like to invoke that DIY spirit with whatever I make.
  • I have an Adobe subscription, but I sort of hate Adobe. Also, I don't know anything about InDesign.
  • Affinity Publisher seems like it's the new hotness, but also I don't know anything about Publisher.
  • Lately I've been learning Typst, which is sort of like what you'd get if LaTeX and Markdown had a baby. It's really neat, and I've had great success with it so far making reference materials for His Majesty the Worm. I have an advantage of understanding markup languages due to my experience as a full-stack web dev. Unfortunately, I fear that it's not as flexible in terms of layout as traditional layout tools, and I worry that it would result in pretty rigidly-presented text. Also, Explorer's Design has a template for InDesign/Affinity and that feels like an easy way to get off the ground quickly. I could be wrong though, and I have time to experiment.