A common joke in the Lancer community is that new GMs like to outright ban a manufacturer from their games (usually HORUS, the esoteric hacker collective) without fully understanding the implications. The reasoning is that the developers designed Lancer’s “Big Four” mech manufacturers to coexist in the same game. Therefore, removing a manufacturer from the pool would terribly restrict the options available to players. Without HORUS, Controller mechs would lose numerous tools (usually hacking options) for their role. As a result, the community typically discourages completely banning a Lancer manufacturer from a campaign.
However, I’m not here to tell you how Lancer was intended to play. I’m here to tell you how to actually ban HORUS.
Lancer’s pool of first-party content has done nothing but broaden since the core book’s release on itch in September 2019. Official Massif Press content alone leaves players spoiled for choice. I still recommend new Lancer tables stick to allowing all manufacturers in the Lancer Core Book, but veteran tables can remove their training wheels. GMs should curate the content they want to engage with at the table, whether by bans or house rules. Sometimes, the GM wants to run a space trucker campaign where the players can only use IPS-N licenses. Other times, the PCs may actively be at war with a faction, like joining the House of Stone against Harrison Armory in the Dawnline Shore. In cases like these, a GM is well within their rights to restrict options to reflect the narrative circumstances.
So, without further ado: This is how to ban a Lancer manufacturer from your campaign.
The Reflavor
This is the lowest-effort approach, as it doesn’t actually restrict player choice: Simply reflavor the manufacturer’s licenses. This can mean:
- The PCs found the license fallen off the back of a space truck, or otherwise received it through unconventional (or illegal) channels.
- Another faction acquired the license, and bequeathed it upon the PCs. This does not require faction-specific tweaks, though some supplements (like Cornylius’s Lancer: Rebranding) cover how, for example, Harrison Armory would augment an IPS-N Drake.
If the GM wants a manufacturer banned in name only, this is the approach to use.
The Excision
This is the second-lowest effort approach, as it is simple deletion: No options from the banned manufacturer are available. This, of course, limits player options to the remaining manufacturers, but this is not a death knell to build variety. For example, the common concern of banning HORUS is losing a plethora of Controller tools. However, licenses like Vlad, Black Witch, Dusk Wing, Iskander, and Sunzi all carry balms for this loss. The GMS Chomolungma’s hacking package from Solstice Rain is absolutely nothing to scoff at. A single banned manufacturer simply means that the remaining content will support the weight. This becomes less tenable with additional bans, but if a GM is at the point of only allowing a single manufacturer, this lack of options is likely a desirable aspect of the experience.
The Replacement
People really like making third-party mechs for Lancer. If a GM is open to third-party content, they could consider replacing one manufacturer with a third-party one that fills a similar niche. The overall breadth of options remains constant, but the selection becomes different. GMs who want to dabble in homebrew without introducing combinatorial complexity may find this approach appealing.
The Exclusives
This approach splits the difference between Reflavor’s “fallen off a truck” and Excision’s outright removal. In this approach, PCs cannot obtain a banned manufacturer’s licenses normally. Instead, they may obtain gear from banned licenses outside of the typical licensing approach, in a combination of ways:
- The Rented Gear reserve (Lancer, p. 51), which nets a piece of equipment for a single mission.
- If Manna is in use, Rented licenses (The Long Rim, p. 37), which unlocks a single rank of a mech license in exchange for Manna for one mission.
- Gaining a piece of licensed equipment as Exotic Gear (introduced in No Room for a Wallflower, Act 1, but used in all following adventures), as described below.
Exotic Gear functions as the following:
EXOTIC GEAR: Once acquired, this system becomes a permanent part of the character, but does not increase their LL or count as a license rank for the purposes of gaining core bonuses. If it is destroyed or damaged, it can be repaired or reprinted as any other gear with no penalty. EXOTIC GEAR can only be installed or removed during a FULL REPAIR, like any other gear. Characters may install up to two pieces of gear with the EXOTIC GEAR tag at a time, but can own any number of pieces with the tag.
No Room for a Wallflower, Act 1, p. 10
A GM could even treat a banned manufacturer’s Core Bonuses as Exotic Gear, like Winter Scar‘s “Order of Leander” Exotic core bonus. And of course, the GM can treat third-party content the same way, if they wanted to restrict players to a curated list of options from a particular supplement.
The benefit of this approach is it maintains the feeling of “restricted access” one would expect from a campaign with a banned manufacturer, while transforming an entire manufacturer’s catalog into a source of campaign rewards. Fighting Harrison Armory at the campaign scale? They may rescind all your licenses, but maybe you can borrow a friend’s External Batteries for a mission or jailbreak a Tachyon Lance into Exotic Gear with enough downtime! Players may even get proactive and start looking for mission opportunities to steal HA equipment! I personally feel this approach combines the best of the other approaches.
Conclusion
Banning Lancer manufacturers does not have to be an all-or-nothing affair. With nuance, a GM can limit access to a given manufacturer without completely shutting off player build avenues. With a deft hand, a GM can even leverage a manufacturer’s restricted access as a tool to drive player campaign goals.
So yeah, now that you know what you’re doing, go ahead and ban HORUS. Just keep this ban’s roleplaying opportunities front and center when making this decision.