Lancer TTRPG Core Rulebook

by Tom Bloom, Miguel Lopez

A Mud-and-Lasers Tabletop Roleplaying Game of Modular Mechs and the Pilots that crew them. Created in partnership with Massif Press, Dark Horse Books presents LANCER.

15,000 years into the future, humanity has survived near collapse and since expanded ever wider into the frontiers of space, organized by UNION, the central hegemon of the populated galaxy. At Union’s heart, the dream of human utopia has been realized; but Lancer is set at the trembling edges of the expansion where resistance to the ideals of the utopia grow.

As a lancer, you pilot a mech as unique as yourself. You are, by training, luck, circumstance, or work, one of the best. In this era near the golden age, you have one question to answer above who do you fight for?

Lancer features a deep, story-rich setting for players to engage with. Every choice they make, every ordnance they mount, every weapon they wield — all of it has lore attached, just waiting for a story to develop.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

432 pages, Hardcover

Published July 9, 2024

Reviews

[Healz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece of TTRPG worldbuilding
Banger of a lore

[Ian Mathers · Rating 5 out of 5]

So this is definitely the.... second book I've read because of a shitpost (I do have a review of the dril book on here). I have read and really loved most of Kill Six Billion Demons (the creator of which cocreated this one!) but it was seeing a Tumblr roundup of funny posts about various Lancer mechs that got me to actually look into it, which eventually got me into getting the PDF, which led to ordering the new physical edition. As things currently stand, I'm not at all likely to ever actually get to play a game (my current groups aren't really into this kind of system, and while I'd love to play I'm not sure I'd want to run it), but I still loved it. I read it very slowly in bits and pieces, eventually interrupted by the new D&D Player's Handbook (which doesn't appear to be on here?), which felt like a higher priority since the game I'm running is using that one.

But I love pretty much everything about this book. I love the setting (and particularly some of the choices the authors have made around the politics of the setting), I love the mechanics, I love the various mechs and have daydreamed plenty of halfassed build ideas since I've read this. I've also thought about the HORUS Pegasus frame roughly 50 thousand times since I first read the shitpost about it. So although I might not be playing it anytime soon, between loving this book (and what I've seen of the other resources for this game) and loving all the memes I've run into on Tumblr, I'm happy.