Solstice Rain Remix

This is the beginning of a series detailing my personal remix of Operation Solstice Rain.

Operation Solstice Rain, by Kai Tave, is the official introductory module for the Lancer RPG. Aspiring GMs have long awaited Lancer’s equivalent of “Lost Mine of Phandelver” since the system’s release in Fall 2019. At the time of Solstice Rain’s publication, Massif Press had only published one other adventure: The daunting No Room for a Wallflower: Act 1. I, personally, was excited to see what lessons Solstice Rain learned from Wallflower. Having written my own LL0 Lancer adventure, I was curious to see how Solstice Rain onboarded new Lancer GMs and players.

Solstice Rain’s combat encounters serve as the primary draw for prospective Lancer GMs. Specifically, the module includes six separate combats, each accompanied by GM tips and dedicated battlemaps (a huge boon and timesaver). Solstice Rain loosely strings these combats together in a linear, two-mission structure, with two or three sections for roleplaying. It’s a straightforward module that plays to Lancer’s tactical strengths. Besides these fights, Solstice Rain also provides a brief overview of its setting’s history and politics, roleplaying profiles for several NPCs, and guidance for brief narrative scenes during a mid-module interlude. These components are all I need to set a basic foundation for my own customized take on the adventure.

Goals of the Remix

While I could simply run Solstice Rain as written, I find great joy in taking a published module and molding it to suit my gaming tables. Therefore, my goals for this remix are threefold:

1. Build off of existing content. Use the battlemaps, combats, GM tips, NPCs, and lore provided within the module to inspire my own ideas and content to present to my tables. I always prefer to refine or repurpose a piece of existing content instead of creating one from whole cloth.
2. Adjust combats to fit my tastes. I have my own set of design philosophies when it comes to combat encounters. As such, I plan to shape the existing fights to fit my own GMing style — and hopefully tailor them to appeal to my typical gaming tables.
3. Experiment with nonlinear scenario structures. The author of Solstice Rain has frequently stated that Halo 3 ODST — a video game where players could determine the order in which they completed the missions — served as a major inspiration for the module. I hope to emulate that same nonlinear style by restructuring the scenario into a node-based point crawl. I feel this reorganization will facilitate player choice and expression for a more personalized experience.

In this remix, I dive into the design of Solstice Rain and present my personal approach towards achieving these goals. I hope that potential Lancer GMs find this remix useful and inspiring for their own games!

Solstice Rain Remix

I will periodically update this table of contents over the course of this remix.

• Introduction
• The Combat Lineup
• The Vestan Sovereignty as Villains
• Nonlinear Solstice Rain: A Bird’s Eye View
• Solstice Rain Nodes & Clues
• Nov Elysia Point Crawl
• Setup, Buildup, Boom: Introducing Players to Solstice Rain
• Taking the Reins in Nov Elysia
• Completing the Operation: Finding the VIPs
• Epilogue: After the Solstice Rain
• Addendum: Revisiting Solstice Rain’s Fights