*Damanor’s Lair: a Gaming Blog

https://www.reddit.com/r/MFZ/comments/1tyj2tz/new_assault_frame_i_made_plus_enemie_infantry/?solution=f125c06afbd30c95f125c06afbd30c95&js_challenge=1&token=7afd7253fec22262ff1c52b1703fe9ec9fcf19e7ecc3d2d5dbfb686dadc178e5&jsc_orig_r= https://www.reddit.com/r/MFZ/comments/1tzj0vu/new_mechs_from_the_same_faction_as_my_previous/?solution=e53cfc06d7cc2501e53cfc06d7cc2501&js_challenge=1&token=7afd7253fec22262ff1c52b1703fe9ec0d1c9ccb70866f03533c42bcde4cf8d7&jsc_orig_r= https://bsky.app/profile/krismur.bsky.social/post/3mlwax7mle224 https://www.flickr.com/photos/60990643@N06/albums/72157629352407814/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MFZ/comments/1oruuxi/mini_frame_zero_continues_with_the_petit_ecuyer/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MFZ/comments/1ov6a8m/%CE%B4_finch/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MFZ/comments/1q42vb7/some_7p_battle_suits/?solution=712e4357fa199531712e4357fa199531&js_challenge=1&token=bbbe4bf1c9a2b5160829c4be34da58612e00a0fc82cdf8e1cc182ba05bc3e7ef&jsc_orig_r= h...

  B-34 Brassbounder Construction Kit I’ve been looking for small MFZ frames to build both for Rapid Attack and Rooftop Racing and again and again I come across designs by Mrc Ozon (aka u/that-bro-dad) . I risk becoming a fanboy. Anyway, here are some frames I’ve made based on their work.

 A truck ready to be loaded with fresh peaches. For Mobile Frame Zer0. Forgive me, my photography skills are lacking.

A list of websites I visit regularly: The Mobile Frame Zero Hangar Mobile Frame Zero Reddit MFZ Fans Facebook MFZ All In (Flickr) The Mobile Frame Garage MF0 Strategy Library Commander’s Handbook Sarna News Pelgrane Press Blog Drivethru RPG Fight Club Releases 5E SRD 5E 2024 SRD Facebook Groups Bundle of Holding Yahoo Mail Blogger

 The Freelancers campaign I mentioned in the last post mostly didn’t happen. I DMd one session where I had one player, John, plus my 12-year-old son and my 8-year-old daughter. I threw out most of my prep (which really needed more PCs) and sent the group against a false hydra  but it only had one head with HP. The PCs managed to usually have at least one of them who made a Wisdom save and they each got  a hit or three in before it went down. After that session I realized that I was having a lot of trouble getting into the right mindset to DM. Family troubles and challenges have been coming up left and right. I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever be up for DMing D&D 5e again any time soon, because I just don’t know the system well enough and I have anxiety about my kids, my spouse, and life generally. Besides that, when I never know how many players will be there I can’t really prep very well. (My original prep was for 4-6, and I ended up with two players plus one druid u...

 It looks like I’m going to be GMing a D&D 5e miniseries that may turn into a campaign (depending on how well it goes). I’m thinking they’ll have a series of jobs, sort of like Shadowrun where they’re hired to complete a mission. At the same time, they’re trying to fight against a corrupt system and institutionalized discrimination. The team may or may not be part of a formal thieves’ guild or other guild. Major inspirations: the Gentlemen Bastards series by Scott Lynch (especially The Lies of Locke Lamora), Ebonclad, Fritz Lieber’s Lankhmar stories (very picaresque), Shadowrun (RPG), the Thief series of video games, Night Reign (RPG), Cryptomancer (RPG), Terry Pratchett, Vornheim. Sources of adventures: the Mr Porter series of adventures, Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. The Silence from Doctor Who, Remember Me from Star Trek TNG.

(Yes, some classes have access to more than one of these. Just go with it.) Wizard’s Knock Spell: Knock (Available at Level 3) - Open the door or chest with arcane magic. Rogue’s Knock Spell: Thieves’ Tools (Available at Level 1) - No simple lock will keep you out. Artificer’s Knock Spell: Tinker’s Tools (Available at Level 1) - Take the lock apart and remove the hinges from the door. Cleric’s Knock Spell: Thaumaturgy (Available at Level 1) - You instantly cause an unlocked door or window to open, regardless of whether it’s stuck or there’s something behind it. Druid's Knock Spell: Mold Earth (Available at Level 1) - Dig a tunnel underneath the door. Fighter’s Knock Spell: Fists (Available at Level 1) - Just knock the door down. Barbarian’s Knock Spell: Rage (Available at Level 1) - Shatter the door in its frame. Ranger’s Knock Spell: Conjure Animals (Available at Level 9) - Summon a rhinoceros to smash through the door. Paladin’s Knock Spell: Indomitable Moral Rectitude (Available...

Just watched a brief video about fake buildings . Now I’m familiar with the giant ventilation structure for the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, which became the outside of the  Men in Black  headquarters in the movies. It put me in mind of an idea presented by Keith Baker in  The Complete Guide to Doppelgängers  that the life cycles of doppelgängers and mimics are connected and the end of development is a “doppelstadt,” an entire building or grove or, eventually, a large partof a city or forest that is telepathically aware and controls a shape-changing hive mind. Kind of an interesting idea; it reminds me of the changeling species in Star Trek: Deep Space 9, only with even more connections between beings. Other interesting ideas about the ecology of doppelgängers are found in  on Reddit  (see also the post on mimics by the same author). There’s also rolling to seduce the monstrosity found at a few  places   on the   web . It’s fun to pretend to be ...

 I really like the idea of playing a shape-changer in Dungeons and Dragons, but I’ve sometimes wondered if I could pull it off and make it fun for myself and the others at the table. Doppelgängers, changelings, mimics, trappers, lurkers above, piercers, rugs of smothering - I like the concepts but have often wondered if I could pull it off. I finally broke down and am giving it a try. https://damanor.blogspot.com/2022/10/rime-of-frostmaiden-keth-hand.html?m=1 Obviously I’m not keeping it a secret. Here are some of my thoughts. I’ve read two big bits of advice for secrets in social-focused RPGs like Houses of the Blooded or Vampire LARPs: 1. Keep all your secrets to yourself and nobody can betray you. 2. Play with open secrets and let any player who wants to know about it in on the secret so it’s more fun for everyone. Obviously, these two pieces of advice are in conflict. In my mind, each piece of advice comes from a completely different goal in playing the game. People who follow ...

[I thought about it and decided that having someone with all the benefits of a half-elf PLUS all the benefits of casting Detect Thoughts and shape changing from the Doppelgänger Secret is OP, especially since no other characters have Secrets. Edited with some modifications. The character is still able to do all the things he did previously.] AKA Robert Swan, Kellen Ambrose, Lady Margus [Deleted: Half-Elf (doppelgänger) criminal clockwork soul sorcerer/order cleric] Changeling (doppelgänger) criminal Shadow Sorcerer/Hexblade Warlock Keth’s mother Elspeth and his grandfather Aleric Hand are free carters, traveling the same sales route every year and trying to make ends meet with a one sack share. (They are hired to drive a cart full of other people’s goods from town to town and are allowed to carry one sack of their own goods as a “one-sack share” to sell on the side.) Keth learned to value and sell anything, but his favorite times were when he wintered with Ambrose, a wandering friend o...

Chaotic neutral* outlander lizardfolk druid A lot of this is inspired by a great post on Goblin Punch. https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2014/09/7-myths-everyone-believes-about-druids.html?m=1 As a reptile in cold weather, Hangul is out of its** element. Hangul comes from a naturally forested area, where they learned from the druid Nataalsha. Nataalsha’s views on non-druids were very extreme, and she often opposed local lords and elf leaders about the right way to live with nature. After a time, Nataalsha sent Hangul away to a desert, where they learned about plants and animals that survived with minimal resources and how to live independently+. After nearly two years, Hangul returned to the forest, only to see that local human lords and elven leaders had driven the dangerous forest animals away, cut back the more invasive plants, and generally turned the wild forest into a tended game preserve where the nobles and rulers could hunt at their leisure¥. Hangul found Nataalsha in one of th...

 I recently joined a new D&D 5e campaign. It looks like it’s going to be a ton of fun. I made a druid that set a polar bear loose on a group of goblins. Good times. The MeetUp.com announcement https://www.meetup.com/wasatch-rpgamers/events/289237936/ The campaign Facebook page https://m.facebook.com/groups/1561088737668003/ I’m going to post a few things on this blog just for fun. This is not official content, it’s just character backstory I’ve come up with.

 Sarna.net has their Bad Mechs feature for the Charger. Go check it out.

 For the Americans out there, Happy Thanksgiving! Of course, holidays by this name are celebrated on different dates in other countries (states in political science terms). In Canada, Thanksgiving is celebrated the second Monday in October. Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Liberia celebrate Thanksgiving on various days this time of year. There are festival holidays with similar names in Germany and Japan. There is a harvest festival in the United Kingdom during Autumn, and I understand that some people in the United Kingdom celebrate what they call Thanksgiving on July 4 . Other places throughout the world celebrate it differently. Regardless of where you are and what you celebrate, I hope you have many reasons to give thanks.

 A less complicated and more straightforward way to model pilot inexperience is to just say that the less experienced pilot just doesn’t have the ability to use all the systems or avoid enemy fire as well as an experienced pilot. Just remove a system to model that. For example, let’s say that a green pilot is supposedly piloting a frame with a Soldier loadout (2RD/1B/1Y/1G/2W). However, since they’re inexperienced, they don’t have a spotting (Yellow) system. The reason the inexperienced frame pilot doesn’t have a spotting system is that he or she doesn’t know how to use a system to spot enemy frames as effectively while doing too many other things such as attacking an enemy frame and moving their own frame. On top of that, the less experienced pilot isn’t as good at keeping the frame out of trouble under fire, so they can’t take as many hits. Basically, I’m using my existing house rules for inner Sphere pilots against advanced or Clan tech to instead model pilot inexperience. A les...

 One thing that was interesting about Battletech was the idea that pilots could improve their abilities to pilot a vehicle or make weapon attacks. (I’m not sure it’s a good rule, but it was interesting.) So how can we model this in Mobile Frame Zero: Rapid Attack? At the beginning of each clash/skirmish/battle, identify the pilot of each frame on your side by name. Determine their experience level. During each conflict, a pilot whose frame is destroyed may die. You have to decide whether a pilot automatically dies when their frame is destroyed or if they can somehow eject to escape. I suggest giving them a 3 in 6 or 4 in 6 chance to survive, but that chance may vary or even be zero depending on environment conditions. All players must agree to change the chance of surviving ejection before the game begins. Now for the difference between experienced and inexperienced pilots. One option is the Ace Pilot rules as adapted for Rapid Attack from pages 22-23 and 41 of  Intercept Orbi...

 One reason I like frankenmechs  is the same reason I liked the original Battletech setting: it’s like lots of the Mechs are built, or at least reassembled, in a repair shop. Your Mech has been in your family for three or more generations, and it can’t easily be replaced. If it gets beat up, you take it in and repair it as much as you can or you just fight with a broken Mech. Technicians are worth more than tanks, and nobody has any idea how some advanced machines like jumpships work. This was emphasized in the early Gray Death Legion novels. Mechwarriors always doubled as technicians, and when their base was captured, the worst part was that they couldn’t repair their Mechs. It was also front and center in the early scenario packs, where you had Mechs with permanent damage that couldn’t be repaired for lack of parts or permanent structural damage. One very cool take on it was the novel Double Blind, where Avanti’s Angels made a point to always collect what battlefield salvage...

  To celebrate sarna.net’s latest Bad Mechs feature, here’s my assessment of the Quickdraw . Let’s see if it fares any better in Mobile Frame Zero. The Quickdraw was designed to replace the Rifleman , but frankly is does a poor job of it. The Rifleman was designed as an anti-aircraft Mech but is also used for fire support. It has considerable firepower and great medium- to long-range damage-dealing potential, but also has paper-thin armor, has average speed for a heavy Mech (which is to say it’s slow), and tends to overheat. The designers of the Quickdraw wanted a much more versatile Mech and focused on fixing the Rifleman’s weaknesses, but this was at the expense of the Rifleman’s strengths. The 60-ton Quickdraw has SLIGHTLY more armor than the Rifleman and is 33 percent faster. It also uses jump jets for added mobility. Just these features took up half the weight of the Mech, however, and that’s not including other essentials like a cockpit, gyro, and internal structure. As a re...

In 2492 Earthwerks developed a new 60-ton mech, the Griffin. This heavy mech was designed as a close assault mech to fill a gap in weight class and function between the 20-ton Wasp and the 100-ton Mackie. It combined significant firepower for its time, but eventually became obsolete in the face of newer designs. Still, it was popular enough that Earthwerks continued the line, reducing its weight to 55 tons and changing its armament to handle long-range Fire support. Its primary weakness was a lack of close ranged firepower, as well as tendency to overheat (though less so than many other mechs). The Griffin remained common throughout the Succession Wars, being found in the armies of all the great houses and in the periphery. It’s a real workhorse design, one of a trio of 55-ton mechs found everywhere, along with the Shadow Hawk and Wolverine. GRF-1N Griffin: Size Medium (55 tons), Speed Average, Armor Medium. Particle Projection Cannon (1RA/1RD), Long Range Missile Tube, Jump Jets. 3RA...

To get in the mood to race frames, just watch an episode or two of  IGPX . Watch the long promo on YouTube.