"Lancer" by Miguel Lopez and Tom Bloom

This is a (sort of) D&D-like TTRPG about giant mechs. (Note to readers: TTRPG stands for Table-Top Role-Playing Game. A cursory Internet search for "etymology of ttrpg" doesn't turn up any info on its origins; if it had, I'd have included it.)

Unlike many if not most sci-fi TTRPGs and things (I'm looking at you, Warhammer 40,000), Lancer isn't dystopian. Apparently its creators specifically intended it to hark back to things like Star Trek where humanity is fine and thriving, rather than collapsing or locked in endless war (again, looking at you, Warhammer 40,000) or ruled by evil overlords/cults/AIs/whatnot (still staring accusingly at Warhammer 40,000. That 'verse is not a nice place. It is in fact the verse that inspired the coining of the term "grimdark").

Lancer is both more and less complicated than D&D. On the one hand, it doesn't have the complicated system of combat bonuses and penalties that D&D has; on the other, you get essentially endless freedom to mix and match systems between mechs. On the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth hands (we're piloting the SSC Dusk Wing here), you have Lancer's lack of eleven different classes, Lancer's possession of 29 different mech bases, D&D's arcane XP system, and Lancer's lack of eight thousand different spells.

There are four five main mech producers in this (I always forget about GMS because they have the starting mech and pretty much nothing else): IPS-Northstar (who make normal things), Smith-Shimano Corporation (who make fancy stuff), Harrison Armory (who make strange guns), and HORUS (who make no sense). Also General Massive Systems, who are IPS-Northstar's "make normal things" taken off the mech scene (except for the starting mech, the Everest). 

I think IPS-Northstar is my favorite of them, just because they aren't jerks (HA), incomprehensible (HORUS), or clone manufacturers (SSC). Also their mechs look the most mech-ful and cool (well except the Vlad, but every mech company has their black sheep. SSC with the weird spider-tank Death's Head, for instance, or HORUS with the Goblin, or pretty much everything by Harrison Armory except the Barbarossa and Tokugawa). That's not to say I have no respect for SSC's overly streamlined and humanoid look, but it's just not as cool as IPS-Northstar's aesthetic.

I tagged this with "weapons" because fully half the book space is taken up describing the various mechs and the, you guessed it, weapons that come with them. Most of which you can mix and match between them if you want. And when I say "fully half the book space" -- this is not a small book, at 426 pages long and measuring more than a foot on its long edge.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for robot violence when playing it (at least if the guy running the game doesn't add random stuff that would drive the content level up), T15+ for the book (there's a section called "On Content, Discomfort, and Lancer" in the GM guide section which deals with... well, you can guess, and is one of the book's two places--the other, strangely enough, is the index--which mentions |the annoying gender ideology things|.)

4 stars. Could have gotten 5, and would have if it had the two bits I mentioned redacted out.

Image gallery (so y'all understand what I was talking about with the stupid-looking mechs):

IPS-N's black sheep

Incomprehensible spidertank

Just looks weird

HA's worst offender

Yup, it has six hands

 

Favorite lines:

    You can't attack normally with this weapon. Instead, 1/round, as a free action during your turn, you can use it to deal 1 Kinetic AP damage to a character within Range and line of sight. This doesn't count as an attack, hits automatically, ignores cover, bypasses Immunity, and its damage can't be reduced or ignored in any way. No rule in this book or any other supersedes this.

    Page 218 (emphasis mine), from the description of the Ushabti Omnigun weapon on the HORUS Pegasus. I find it somewhat hilarious that the #1 rule of Lancer is effectively "The Ushabti Omnigun hits and does 1 damage".

(Endnote: The images would have been much more compact if I could do that without messing up the formatting. [EDIT] Sorta fixed.)