Session Report — Fire in the Heart of Ordan 3

A session report for a sci-fi mech campaign.

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4 minutes to read
A colored hex map that represents the battle in the third session of the Jotun campaign.
A colored hex map that represents the session battle atop the tower.

The year is 2597 AST.

With the invention of Jotun, twenty foot tall bipedal war mechs, the Frontier has freed itself from the yoke of the fascist One Earth Alliance. But peace was not meant to last.

Earth was destroyed.

The bastards that did it call themselves “The Ventiri.” They tried to do the same to Mars, but a brave few souls stopped them and destroyed their dreadnought. Despite the victory, our losses were significant.

Now the Ventiri have regrouped and invaded Ordan, a metropolis world and headquarters of Dretyl Armory. The Frontier Militia is sending all nearby forces to engage.

The campaign uses a new tactical ruleset I made and host online. It’s basically Lancer but solving all of my personal mechanical gripes with it. I will update the rules over the course of the campaign and then release them for free online.

There are six player characters:

  • DEADEYE, a sniper jotun. Piloted by “BULL”.
  • OBELISK CORVID, a shield generating jotun. Piloted by “ECHO”.
  • SOLAR WOLF, a CQB jotun in a man-sized frame. Piloted by “DIZZY”.
  • MARA, a sword-wielding jotun with active camo. Piloted by “GLASS”.
  • DEDP 709, a jotun with an experimental drone platform. Piloted by Finè.
  • WHALE, a massive jotun with a mini orbital cannon. Piloted by “STARFISH”.

Took me forever to get this out there, but I finally wrote it up. This last session report covers the finale of this campaign and summarizes some thoughts on the whole ordeal and game system.

Summary

The 3rd session began with the death of “STARFISH”. His player could not attend the rest of the games, so he asked for his character to perish. A great threat, an enemy naval destroyer, focused its magnetic rail cannon on him and he was destroyed instantly. “DIZZY” found a hyper-advanced AI in a robotic form similar to a Jotun bound beneath the museum and returned with her to the surface. “BULL“‘s jotun was greatly injured in the remaining combat as the group fought off two Scorch enemies and “BULL” elected to have “STARFISH“‘s jotun throw his jotun at the destroyer, overloading its reactor for an improvised bomb that destroyed the bridge of the naval vessel. The combat ended with the rest of the players escaping on a dropship with a course set for a nearby titanic skyscraper where they’d determined a jammer was placed. If they destroyed that, then they could get word and support from the fleet above the planet.

In the 4th session, “BULL” piloted the drop ship and dropped all of the PCs off at the tower with the jammer. While most PCs fought off the trolls there and disabled the jammer, “BULL” was shooting down fighter jets and incoming enemy dropships that were deploying more troops at the tower. The PCs were able to disable the jammer and call for reinforcements, but a sword-wielding ronin troll wrapped in a cloud of red nanobots spoke to the players asking for its “mother”. They surmised this was the AI person they’d captured. At the last moment, ally naval forces swooped in to save “BULL” and the rest of the group, some of which had lost their jotun and were rolling death saves. Special forces secreted away the “mother” AI and the rest of the players got a hard earned rest.

Thoughts on the System

Boy, I remember why I don’t like to run tactical games. Not only is it very slow, but it’s just a lot of effort on the part of the GM. Since I at one point had 6 PCs, I had to have enough NPCs to keep up with them, which was so much rolling.

It was fun, but I had to be on top of everything, and players asking a lot of questions about the rules made it even harder. Would I run this system again? I don’t know, probably, but I can’t run it often or I’ll lose my mind.

Thoughts on the Campaign

Players really enjoyed the combat overall, but there were several times that they complained that their character was “bad” because they were trying to do something they thought their mech should be good at, but wasn’t statted that way. Players often struggled with “too much” to do on their turn. Choice paralysis was an issue and took up crucial time. To a certain extent, those aren’t design problems to solve as much as player decisions, but I could probably address some of them in the future.

Overall, it was a fun story that opened up even more questions than it provided answers. I like this setting I’ve made and maybe I’ll run something in it not from the perspective of mech pilots. Researchers and maybe a few security guards on a remote planet and something goes wrong… Mothership materials would be perfect for that.

End Report

That’s the end. Since I finally wrapped up this last session report I can stop delaying all those real blog posts I want to write. I think I want to do a review of The Big Wet by Sam Sorenson next.

The Dolent Chronicle is an RPG blog produced by Dante Nardo. If you liked this post, please consider sharing it on whatever doomed planes you reside.