Alright, time to dive back into it, this time, with Apocalypse Frame, or APOCALYPSE FRAME if I am going to do it right, a game by Binary Star Games . Immediately, upon seeing the credits of this 100 page PDF, I see that the header font was Audiowide, and smiled, because that's my font of choice in Foundry. This game was included in the Bundle for Ukraine.
The game is based on the LUMEN RPG game system, which I don't know what that is so I guess it'll be time to learn. APOCALYPSE FRAME is a game about Aces piloting Frames in an almost worker-revolt, if I'm reading right, against both the Infection that has claimed your home planet, and the Republic, the brutal dictatorial government.
In normal fashion, going to try to sort things by General, Player and GM focused bullet points.
General
- Attribute rolls seem pretty straight forward. Roll a number of d6's equal to your rating in one of the 3 Attributes, and take the highest result. 1-2 failure, 3-4 mixed success, 5-6 total success. Nice, easy, clean.
- It looks like the game is meant to be played more at the Frame level, because if you're out of your Frame, you have a 1 less point in those Attributes. If you had a 1 before the deduction, roll 2d6, take lowest. Will have to see how the rules handle mixed On Foot/Frame missions later on.
- I am a sucker for how APOCALYPSE FRAME and LANCER both handle mechs, with different mech classes (light/medium/heavy) and Divisions/Manufacturers.
- Wheeled and Treaded Mechs. Fuck Yes.
- Something that's really really nice so far is that they've kept stats simple for both Aces and Frames. Because both sets of Attributes matter, you're not getting overwhelmed trying to figure out when 1 is applicable, or which of your 5 pilot stats interact with your mech's 7 stats. It's 3 attributes, and 3 resources for the Frame. They interact straightforwardly (so far).
- Speaking of resources, I love Tension. Represents momentum, morale, and the ability to change pace. Let's you take extra an extra action, or reroll a roll. Very Bravely Default in a way, where you can decide to push through on a turn to try to turn things in your favor, at the cost of this resource.
- Big fan of Advanced Rules sections towards the back. Something to add to your second campaign to mix it up, or something to go deeper into the weeds with after you and the players are comfortable. These include things like Experimental Frames, Drawback Tags, Enemy variants, and more.
Player
- When you create your Ace, you'll split your allotment of stat points between the 3 skills. You'll also pick which Division you came from (3 by default from the book), and which size mech, since each Division has an associated mech of each weight class.
- Looking at a bit of the Frame customization, this is neat! To attack, you roll the number of dice listed on the weapon, and each weapon has different tags, meaning there's real tradeoffs for taking the 1 die weapon that deals 5 harm, over the 4 dice, 2 harm one. You still need to score a 3 or better to hit, but you got fewer bites at the apple with the 5 harm one.
- This, paired with a pretty robust Tag system, allows you to customize not only your primary/backup weapons, but also things like your integrated systems, such as missle batteries, afterburners, shield projectors, and elbow spikes. Slap a Suppressive tag on the elbow spike, and you can temporarily immobilize enemies you jab.
- Abilities that are marked Ally typically cannot be applied to the user.
- When Vigor hits 0, you take Frame Damage, which I think is similar to Core damage in LANCER, in that something is happening to your Frame. This could be something that lessens your HP going forward, until repaired, or damages your signature system, or any of a few more possibilities.
- After a turn out, while immune to further Harm, you reboot, recover some resources and get back in the fray.
- You can take 2 Frame Damage safely. On the third, you decide if you Eject, or make a Last Stand.
- I like that adding a tag is random (or you can pay double to choose the tag) to your weapons or system. This can sort of represent the Division's R&D team's research and things they've worked on for that specific armament.
- Advancements being a mix of attribute increases, new capabilities, new tech (perfect for introducing supplements), and other customizing options is really neat.
Game Master
- Combat uses 4 abstracted ranges: Close (same hex), Near (Short distance, takes a few seconds to move from A to B), 1 Hex), Far (Further than you could move in a couple seconds, two hexes away), and Extreme (Pretty much outside of the reasonable combat range in most cases, 3 hexes).
- Shields can block all damage until it is eroded, Armor is a flat reduction of damage.
- OK! WE HAVE A FIX FOR ACTION ECONOMY! On the GM turn, after each Ace has taken their turn, you can give an enemy a turn. You get a number of these equal to the number of Aces. If you have say, 4 players, and 2 big enemy ships, you get 4 activations still on your turn. The first time an enemy is Activated, they get 2 actions, like an Ace does, but every Activation after that is only 1 action. This keeps you from just over-using the most powerful enemy, but soooometimes them having a 3rd action on their turn is enough to make the players scared.
- GM is then encouraged to do a Situation Change every turn, after the enemies act. This could be a call for reinforcements (that could be a situation change on future turn when they arrive), a call for tactics changes, or any number of things. Something that changes the ebb and flow of battle.
- After that, a short recharge of some resources for Aces.
- Then finally, Drops, which is like the video game thing. For each (non "Minion") enemy defeated on the turn, roll a d6 and it'll determine the type of resource dropped. Could be actual resources, like scrap or materials, or more intangibles, like catching your breath (recovering Vigor).
- The selection of "Global Combat Effects" are really flavorful and provide a good idea of things a GM can do to make battles more interesting. One example is that the encounter is taking place in a Reactive Gas Cloud: Energy weapons do more damage, but they also take some harm using them, as the energy interacts with the gas.
- I like the Favor/Crisis/Moonshot clocks. Moonshot being the "time to make a major swing at changing things" clock. When that fills, usually by filling Favor clocks and exceeding expectations for a mission, you can take a moonshot mission, to try to more directly help The Collective.
- Crisis Advance rules in the Advance Rules section is a nice way to gradually ramp up the danger of a campaign as your players progress, and gives you some ideas for how to keep the Republic a threat.
- Big big fan of the clean and easy to read tables in the back. Good for determining random tags for gear, and giving you mission ideas from each of the Divisions.
All in all, this game KICKS ASS. It feels like LANCER, but with the crunch scaled back, while still keeping the cool custom mech feel. It seems real simple to play but has a lot of room for cool action. Attributes being -1 when out of Mech feels weird, but I get it. The Aces are Most Effective when piloting their Frames. That's when their abilities come to bear the most. If I felt like breaking a game on my first time running it, I'd probably throw something in like LANCER's background stuff for characters, to give them situational bonuses to rolls, but that might encourage me to do more ground stuff when the focus should be your Frame. It's probably for the best that it's designed the way it is, as the Frames are the real star of this book.