Making Games

In a strange and hypothetical turn of events, you've found yourself running two mid-level Lancer campaigns. You're an experienced GM, you have plenty of time on your hands, you figure you're up to the challenge. You've recruited friends and familiar faces from your favorite TTRPG spaces, especially those that you know are really into the character-building side of the game. Build freaks! We know 'em and love 'em. But you're a little surprised when both groups end up with the exact set of character builds. It wasn't planned or anything, everyone just picked all the same character options as someone in the other group. Weird, but there is a silver lining: since it's the same party at both tables you figure every combat you prep can be used for both groups. What could go wrong?

First session of the campaign(s), you run a combat for Mobile Task Force Zeta-Zero-Two "Radiation Ronin," and they love every minute of it. It's a long hard fight with tough decisions to make, but they emerge victorious, and everyone talks about how much they're looking forward to the next sitrep. Feeling very pleased with yourself indeed, you put that same combat in front of the time-hopping band of rebels, Carrion Cavalcade. They hate it! By the end of the session, everyone is clearly frustrated, they're too tired to keep playing, and you're left wondering what went wrong.

Within a couple days, you've gathered something of a postmortem from the Cavalcade's players. They tell you that even though they won the fight, none of them feel like they really fulfilled the fantasy they built their characters for. The Really Big Sword player felt stuck making hacking rolls, the sniper had to ram and grapple to shut down the enemy. They weren't making any tactical errors, it was a difficult fight and they made the choices they needed to in order to win the sitrep. But they weren't playing the way they really hoped to.

Okay, that's good information, and you know enough to prepare differently for the next session. Radiation Ronin need to push their session back (someone has a cat wedding), so you even have some extra time. You set to work crafting a combat that will let every character show off their strengths and fulfill the role their players envisioned. It's not going to be an easy fight, just one where everyone can be where they want to be.

Showtime. The difference is palpable. Carrion Cavalcade pounces on every opportunity for a clever combo and fills the chat logs with their favorite moments. Everyone gets to see their mechs at their best, everyone leaves happy, you're feeling so much better about the campaign from here on out. You can't wait to run this same combat for Radiation Ronin and-

hm. that didn't go as well.

They're a quieter group, even at the best of times, but you can tell they didn't share the Cavalcade's enthusiasm. They won the fight with flying colors, triggered the same hype moment combos, but, they just weren't feeling it. They tell you the combat was fine, they enjoyed it, it just didn't have the same thrill as the first one. One of them says that things went a little "too smoothly," and things start falling into place for you.

Radiation Ronin enjoyed the first combat because they were forced to make new plans in the moment, Carrion Cavalcade didn't because they felt like they weren't getting the gameplay they had planned for.

Carrion Cavalcade enjoyed the second combat because they were able to fulfill their gameplay fantasies without a hitch, Radiation Ronin hated it because executing their ideal turn repeatedly felt boring to them.

Both groups genuinely enjoy the mech combat gameplay of Lancer, both groups genuinely enjoy building a character out of a smorgasbord of rules-chunks, but the things they enjoy about those things are different. Do you want to explore the whole space of possibility, and it's disappointing if you can get away with doing the same thing over and over? Or are you here to experience one particular slice of play, and it's frustrating if you feel like that's being denied?

To invoke some truly incomprehensible jargon, Radiaton Ronin enjoy their frotz in a nitfol sort of way, and Carrion Cavalcade have more of a gnusto approach to their frotz. I'm not suggesting either approach is inherently superior, or "more true" to Lancer or any other combat game, but I do hope I've been able to outline the different needs of different players, and potential opportunities for expectations to become misaligned at the table.