5. Disassemble Engine
Games have a flow, which, when you hit, the game pretty much runs itself. It is extremely satisfying. After examining the interactions of game elements, we single out the most important - the one that sets the pace of sessions, or even campaigns. We focus on how that engine works, how it makes the game move along, and what to do to make it do what you want to do - and how to keep it running clean.
Ludo
Apocalypse Frame inherited the LUMEN system core engine of shoot things, get better things to shoot at increasing bigger things. Now, that is an engine that really does not pull weight on its own; the actual engine there is capitalizing in the exitance of a drive to see numbers go up and get better stuff as the reason to keep playing. So the LUMEN skeleton is not really what is driving Apocalypse Frame.
No, there is a mission routine cycle, but that is not as important as one may assume for this type of game; it is just the metronome for the game’s pacing. The driving engine of Apocalypse Frame is the immortal science of historical materialism.
It is not doing the missions that drives you to do more missions. It is social economy of Favors, the avoidance of material-conditions worsening Crisis and the accumulation of Material that you can leverage into labor and means to customize your warmachine.
This flawlessly feeds into the progress of the Collective: Missions that contribute to a major turning points of the struggle against the Republic increase Moonshot. Once a Moonshot is achieved, the nature of the Collective Changes, leading to Aces advancing as a result of that: the access to new technologies, new industrial and social capacities, recognition for their extraordinary labor and efforts, etc.
Getting a random new Armament is cool, but it is nothing compared to feeling the world change around you as result of the struggle.
Brad
Drops and the pursuit of them drive the game, y’see, everytime you defeat an enemy they drop something, this could be a scraps for new parts, to replenishing your existing resources. This not only lights up the reward system of the brain, it enforces how your players center themselves in combat and makes them focused, you want to inflict as much damage and as many kills as possible to keep that wind blowing in your sails.
6. Essentials For Session One
So, you got this game, you going to play it, but you don’t have the time to read everything. Or even worse, your have read it and now it is all jumbled together. Here we break down the things that you absolutely want to try to get right and/or hit during your first session, so you get the felling of what makes this game stand out from similar art.
Lucrécia
The options may seem overwhelmed when presented as mech-things, but it may be easy to create an association with other classes by thinking in terms of classes. Complexity-wise, there are three “classes” in Apocalypse Frame: Arrows (DPS/Glass cannons), Shields (Crowd Control, Defensive, Support), Swords (Hybrid builds). Each of these “classes”can be spec’d towards agility, towards endurance: a Sword focused on shrugging off blows, a Sword that avoids obstacles and threats, and a Sword right in the middle of either. That is the weight classes, respectively: Heavy, Light and Medium.
This is immediately complicated by armaments and system customization, but it is true enough/just fine for the first mission to imagine your choices as between three modes of these three classes. But because it is hard to get a feel for the swing of the numbers and tags, and there are nine (baseline) mech frames to pick up, how you can narrow down without opening the hood of all customization options? Introduce each frame with their signature system — a unique system that is always part of that frame. So, ask each other: do you want the mech with the massive flamethrower? The one whose build is a murder-spring you can release to punch someone into space? Or the construction crane with the bigass nets?
Most of the mechanics needed to play the game can be played from the character and reference sheet. However, keep the tags descriptions at hand (pg. 32-33).
It is crucial to go through the setup process together at the table: this is where your pilots become characters and the colour of missions is defined (pg. 58-60).
Most enemies are no match for players, so really, feel free to throw pretty much anything that is not a Tyrant or Colossus at them.
Brad
Lu stole all the good points here, so rather than waste time repeating them, I am going to hit the ones that I almost forgot, but ended up being one of the most memorable parts of the session. Follow the mecha rule, and make sure to have the antagonists occasionally say something dramatic to the PC’s, calling someone a “collectivist dog!” or having enemies mock surrender will help define the enemy force, and give your players something to talk about back at camp.
If you are running it, make sure you know how all of your GM moves work, and then read them again, you have a lot of tricks up your sleeve, and you better use them.
7. Playing The Game Wrong
Games are played wrong. Rules will be misunderstood, interactions will be confused, the importance of certain tech disregarded; etc. This is good, and it is good to acknowledge for: you cannot have the designer at your time, and even if they were, they would be just another player - and entitled to play it wrong. After identifying stress points of the game, things that don’t connect that well, we think of the things that are more likely to be (our have been) “played wrong”. What happens when you forget a line in page 273 clearly saying this is impossible?
Lucrécia
The biggest problems with Apocalypse Frame are inherited from Lumen, and as always in such cases, I find it hard to pin this on a given game. Still, they may cause an issue. The biggest one is the Approaches. It is something that you use all the time, while at the same time feels pointless. You should always going for the +3, and is an extra layer of justification, the three approaches rarely feel substantially different or do anything at all. And worst, it really sucks to make a 2,2,2 “balanced” character; it is a trap-option that ends up with you playing a game with a +2 when everyone else has +3. For this kind of game, for this kind of experience that it seeks to emulate, having everyone have the same modifier or altering the math to include it build in would result in a more elegant experience in pursuit of the desire game-state.
Fuel scales with weight class. If you plan to make heavy use of Systems, be aware those depend on Fuel. Light frames can run out of use of Systems fast, and perhaps you should consider Heavier options for this kind of play.
When and how to use the Spring action is unclear, and there are no examples in the book of how to use. From our experience and with a hex map, it seems Sprint is just something that is very unlikely to an option in the first place.
The Action economy is based around activations, with GM-side activations happening after PCs. Furthermore, each enemy can only be Activated to Attack once. As such, “boss battles” style missions can be tricky: it is pretty easy for those unfamiliar to corner themselves in encounters they cannot do anything to effectively challenge the players. Starting with many enemies with the expectation players will go through them fast, looking into Colossal enemies having different parts that each at its own enemies, and making heavy use of the Reinforce action when it seems you will be running out of viable targets for Attack actions is key.
You should avoid Advanced Rules, not only because they may be more complex, but because they are such good things to open up as results of Moonshots, you are wasting a perfect opportunity.
Brad
For the love of Minovsky, keep your battle mats small! I accidentally made my first one way too big, and we had to go back and redo it on a smaller scale. I also wish I would have printed out a shorthand of weapon tags, so you may want to do the same.
8. What to Steal
Experiencing good art is the most important step in making good art. We look back at the things that worked and did not work about this game, see what we learned for design work, interesting tech and just a general overview of things that we will take from this game and bring into others. Or more honestly: since many of us may not play this game and we have it in our library, this way we can get some use out of it.
Lucrécia
Many people erroneously think emulation diminishes the artform, that TTRPGs are stunted when they mimic another artform and media. Now, I do not think that is inherent to emulation, but by the abundance of emulation that relies on you having experienced or consumed the art or media that is being emulated. Apocalypse Frame is a great example of emulation in genre, a masterclass on how you can make the things you love in another piece of media work in the medium of cooperative collaborative storytelling games.
During the writing of this critic, a special commentary edition of Apocalypse Frame has come out. It is a priceless resource for anyone working on Lumen games/making new content for Apocalypse Frame. It is also pretty good annotations for consultations for designers, positioning a history of development in space and time.
You don’t need to know anything about mechs, you never need to have played a looter shooter; understanding of both of those and of the power and limitations of TTRPGs, Apocalypse Frame lays a full-range of possibilities that you cannot experience somewhere. If you are working on emulation and adaptation, this is a great case-study.
It is also extremely easy to make more content for Apocalypse Frame. Maybe give it a try!
Brad
Apocalypse Frame is a war in your pocket, and it rules. If you don’t read the commentary edition you are hurting yourself, But, I think what makes Apocalypse Frame stand out to me, is a genuine focus on understanding itself, this isn't a game that’s afraid to wear its inspiration on its sleeve and makes it work. The game explains what to expect from it, explains how it works, and does so in a calm, clear and concise authors voice1 you need to steal the idea to do that.
Also, Steal so much that you end up just making more Apocalypse Frame, because its good with a great license, and I cannot wait to see how it
It is crazy that this is the only artform where that isn’t an expectation.