Shadow of the Wolf
Lancer | Campaign
About the adventure
Join the elite students of the Karrakin Cavalry College - attend formal balls, make friends (or enemies) of your fellow students, and reach your true potential as a Kavalier. Mounted in your mechanized chassis prove yourself worthy as a scion of Karrakis and rise from Kuirasser to Kavalier. Of course, there will be many obstacles on the path of your ascension, and danger lies around every corner. Shadow of the Wolf is an official Lancer module published by Massif Press that runs from license level 0 to 2 over the course of two missions. Your pilots, whether noble scions of a house of the Karrakin Trade Baronies, or an ignoble with enough skill and connections to earn a place here, will be expected to conduct themselves with honor, grace, and dignity. Bonds will be in play from License Level 1 onwards and narrative play will take a large part of the campaign, while the rest will be taken up by tactical combat.
Game style
Roleplay Heavy
“Roleplay Heavy” games place the focus on the story, the characters, and the world they live within, and tend to lean hard into the various roleplaying elements of the game. These games will frequently find the party talking with NPCs, exploring the personal elements of their backstories, or even having emotional moments around the camp fire.
Rules as Written (RaW)
Games that are ran “Rules as Written” emphasize realism and stick to the letter of the rules, allowing players to explore creative solutions while still operating under a consistent rule set. Players have the ability to utilize the rules in creative ways to create awesome characters and moments in the game.
Combat Heavy
“Combat Heavy” games emphasize the combat mechanics within their systems over roleplay or puzzle solving. There are frequent and longer battles with enemies and a greater emphasis on tactical game play.
Game will be starting no earlier than March 30th, once the current game in this timeslot has finished.
1 year on StartPlaying
230 games hosted
Highly rated for: Inclusive, Voices, Storytelling
Average response time: 1 hour
Response rate: 100%
Game Master Reviews (19)
Proficiencies
Players say this GM is great at:
Inclusive
Voices
Storytelling
Talons is among the best DMs I have ever had. With her talent, great communication, lovely and terrifying voices, inclusivity, carefully crafted worldbuilding, homebrew game mechanics, and a growing supportive community, she stands apart as one of the best DMs I've found on StartPlaying. She supports creativity and has interesting, serious, and hilarious characters. She adapts well to what players throw at her and builds off of player ideas. You feel as if your character is genuinely part of the world and you feel yourself fall into the world as that character. Overall, I'd give her 6/5 stars if I could.
Talons has a great handle on world building and is one of the best I’ve seen on this site for giving each NPC life with amazingly new voices, details, speeches on the fly that rivals Matt Mercer seriously. That said think she would thrive best sticking to her own long campaigns or only two or three players on one shots for now. For a game listed as roleplay as high there was no apparent interest in helping characters connect before hand or giving characters any feedback/background on the homebrew world. Very easy going attitude of ‘what ever you guys decide’ or upon sending over the character info giving the response of good or equal to a thumbs up emoji. When the characters are meant to be roleplaying, two players with them IRL or actively in other campaigns took the spotlight with relevant info and past connections, one with a mic that kept cutting out, and when the rest tried to interact there was just talking over each other that wasn’t well resolved, but if you waited for non NPC interaction to roleplay like travel time or making camp they were skipped over to follow a schedule and get to the fighting/finale quicker. So the high roleplay is pushed instead for room for combat. Now I’m playing a literal fighter so in this case that should be almost as good for me (the shy artificer I felt a little bad for) but out of three combat encounters I think only one had more than a single round of combat (and that was a test to see if we were worthy not a single round happened in the climax). Another player convinced one fight to end early and the finale boss to remain unconscious after making a deal with the spirit possessing it(?). I was staring at the unused initive tracker during the final encounter in vexation as the final fight was actual a coordinated open heart surgery of organ harvesting. A good story but a little underwhelming for the non participants. So the end result was not much roleplay nor combat and rewards not even sure my character would find worth it. What is the value of a scale of this not dragon in this world? Will it help my character who really wants to get out of debt in any meaningful way? Unclear and left to me to decide I guess? The session ended on time and the regular players of hers seemed to have fun, talking about how this will come up in later adventures and referencing inside jokes. I am positive that is true as Talons definitely is a gifted DM that crafts a nice narrative that if you are a part of and involved in must be a truly epic experience!
Additional details
How to prepare
Players will need access to a mic, and an ability to connect to Foundry via Forge, as well as Discord.
What I provide
Experience running Lancer, a polished virtual tabletop with character art presenting art for NPCs in narrative play, and combat maps.
Gameplay details
Lines and veils will be discussed with players during Session 0 and breaks will be taken at least 1 to 2 times per session, for around 5 minutes.
Content warnings
• Abuse
• Confronting Abuser
• Violence
Safety tools used
• Breaks
• Lines and Veils
• Session 0
How will character creation work
Character creation will be finalized during Session 0, players are recommended to be at least somewhat familiar with Lancer.
Players can expect
Combat / Tactics
Medium
Roleplay
High
Puzzles
Low
Experience level
Intermediate
Platforms used
• Discord
• Foundry VTT
$20.00
/ Session
Each player will be charged when a session starts.
Details
Weekly / Sunday - 4:00 PM UTC
3-4 Hour duration
4 / 5 Seats filled
Requirements
Experience required: Intermediate
Age: 18+