# Character Creation Challenge 2025: Day 14 - Apocalypse Frame - Bill Turley, Ace H2-Lancer Pilot tags: #articles/CharacterCreationChallenge/2025 #game/rpg/apocalypse-frame > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] ## Game of Choice Time to dive back into the monkey pit and pull out the next most recent RPG acquired. This time we're going with something based on [the **Lumen** system](https://gilarpgs.itch.io/lumen), though it does have some significant departures from the original SRD. It also has a setting that I'm not fond of from the perspective that it's actually written in the text but I have enough imagination to turn it on its head and subvert expectations. Or, if you know me, *live up to* expectations. On today's menu: **[[Apocalypse Frame]]**. ![[Apocalypse Frame (cover).jpg|400]] Yes, it's a giant robot game. With that title, it was kind of inevitable. Let's talk about that setting. It's essentially condensed on one page, the first page of the book. I'll give you the short version. The Earth is a bit of a mess, full of political turmoil, wars, natural disasters, the usual. You know, the entire history of the Earth. At some point, *something* arrived from the stars — some sort of invasion or visitor. It's extremely unclear what we do know is that it became known as the Infection and it ended up destroying or changing much of the world however it came to happen. The remnant of the Earth's military organizations essentially decided to throw off the ineffective yoke of civilian government and unify under the name the Republic. It's a bit of a brutal dictatorship, but it also is literally the only surviving nation state in the face of what is an entirely unconstrained assault from the stars.^[This is where I start to seriously veer off from the implicit ideas of the text because it's described as *"sacrificing its citizens to a useless war,"* when we established in literally the previous paragraph that the infection is completely winning and humanity is being wiped out. Trying not to be killed *en masse* never strikes me as useless, but maybe that's just me. I prefer to fight back than to be dying on my knees no matter what. I may be weird.] But then Frames are invented. Multi-terrain exoskeletal humanoid vehicles, which became extremely popular, and mankind threw themselves into common single-minded purpose using the frames against the Infection and actually beginning to turn the tide. This was exactly when The Collective assembled itself out of civil dissent and an outbreak of the Infection at a remote frame production facility. They had a factory that could make experimental Frames, so they could defend themselves against the Republic who were also struggling hard to push back the Infection. While the Collective collected dissidents and pulled together elite frame pilots to take on missions against both the Republic and the Infection.^[That's just like a bunch of little commie bitches to take advantage of the distraction of their betters at trying to save their asses to take over an entire factory and do their best to distract from the real fight to preserve humanity. No, I'm not very impressed by the Collective as it's painted here. Of course, nothing in the rest of the text requires that I actually have them be the good guys.] The players all have Ace Frame pilots who are above and beyond their peers and who are dedicated to the cause of the collective. The entire group of aces have been assigned to a strike team to go fight to protect home and hearth. *"The last hope for freedom from oppression is in your hands."*^[I have never actually heard any organization say such a thing which wasn't the bad guys, I'm just saying.] ## Acts of Creation As you likely picked up by now, this game is about smashing things in your mech and not really about doing many things outside of it. That's not to say you *won't* do anything outside of your Frame, but effectively your stats are exactly the same minus one. ### Attributing it to Malice Creating a character has three steps. We will start with the one you probably saw coming from about six kilometers away, dividing six points between the three attributes. You probably didn't see that we were going to be dividing six points, but you knew there were attributes involved. In this case, the three in question are **Drive**, forcefulness and destructiveness. **Speed** for quickness and reactivity. **Control** for expertise and skill. Nothing lower than one, nothing higher than three. | Attribute | Value | | --------- | ----- | | Drive | 2 | | Speed | 1 | | Control | 3 | Being capable of advanced mathematics as you are, you know that there are only really two ways to divide six points between three attributes, with the least being one and the most being three. You can allocate 3-2-1 or you can allocate 2-2-2. Since the second one is boring, the first is what we're going for. We'll put an emphasis on Control because we want to be someone whose actions are technical and deliberate. We will follow that up by Drive, so we have those moves being sweeping and powerful. Speed is going to be last, so very few of our moves are going to come across as reflexive and immediate. Whatever Frame we end up piloting, it's going to be all about precision and firepower, and probably it's going to be a little bit plodding. I'm okay with that. ### Division of Labor There are three different divisions with very clear names: The Sword, The Arrow, and The Shield. Each division has a set of Frames that they really prefer using and give you access to. Given our setup, I'm going to go with **The Arrow**, which do risky operations, quick strikes, and unusual or large threats. They get to pick from the M2-Archer, L2-Brawler, or H2-Lancer, which all have offensive layouts. You get absolutely no extra points for figuring out which one of those is light, medium, or heavy. ### It's a Frame Job Next up we pick our Frame Light frames are about 15 to 18 feet tall. Mediums are about 19 to 21, and heavy frames are 22 to 25 feet. Mediums and heavies can have one or two secondary cockpits, and have extra cargo area built in On relatively flat areas, they use wheels or treads to travel more efficiently. Feel free to imagine that is using a skating motion or with the wheels and treads on the front of their legs and folded underneath them for travel. Either one can look really cool. Go with what looks cool. They're also fully electric. Frames all have three depletable resources: vigor, tension, and fuel. We probably ought to run them down: - *Vigor* is effectively hit points. It is the toughness and ruggedness of the vehicle. Bigger is better. Take the Frame value and add the pilot's Drive in order to figure out maximum Vigor. - *Tension* is your morale, your momentum, your ability to change the pace of battle and effectively move in and out of combat on your own terms. Unsurprisingly, it adds Speed. - *Fuel* is about what you expect it is except that it also covers how much ammo you have left and other expendable goods. If you want to use a signature or modular system, you need to burn one fuel. More Control, more Fuel. Let's just dig in here and decide which of the three options on the table we want to pick. First up the Archer, which is a range-focused Scout/Sniper built off a mid-range Medium Soldier Frame. It drops defensive and full auto in favor of better sensors and optics. That's tempting. The Brawler is a close-range hand-to-hand combatant built off a civilian racing frame. It's a bit fragile. The Lancer is a ridiculous monstrosity that looks like somebody welded together several frames. It's all about firepower with advanced targeting and a built-in flamethrower. Baby, you had me at the word "flamethrower." ![[Apocalypse Frame - H2-Lancer.webp]] | Resource | Max | | -------- | --- | | Vigor | 9 | | Tension | 2 | | Fuel | 8 | As you can see, **Apocalypse Frame** is another game that uses descriptive tags as part of working out how various pieces of equipment work. It's a mechanic I'm very fond of because it does simplify describing things and centralizes referencing questions you have about how things work mechanically. The drawback for some people is they can't get beyond thinking about and with tags, which is a bit of a problem when they want to create their own elements for the game. Not an issue here because we're going raw out of the book, but it can be a problem for a select few. You know who you are. I am completely down for a mech which has a flamethrower, a grenade launcher, and a mortar that can fire indirect. It's almost like they saw me coming. Saturate the battlefield with artillery. Laugh very loudly. Rinse and repeat. That's it, we're done. Character created, ready to rock and roll. Everything else is playing the game. ![[Apocalypse Frame - CCC2025 - Bill Turley, Ace Lancer Pilot.webp]] Also, while we're here, let me talk about something that annoys the absolute balls off of me: if you're going to make a character sheet, at least have it follow the visual rhythm of everything you've talked about in terms of the character. And if you provide something like a mech design sheet, have the stuff on the character sheet at least roughly mimic the location of the things on the mech sheet. Don't, for the love of God, change the column that something is in. Don't change it from the top to the bottom or vice versa. Present the things in the order and the way that you want them to be recorded. You would think this would be straightforward and obvious, but this is not the first time that's been the case in terms of character sheet design this month. It is more than a little bit frustrating when you go in and have to fill out the thing while looking at what is an extremely simple amount of content to move over, but you end up flailing around looking for the place that it belongs or looking for the thing to fill in the blank. New game designers: don't do this. Seriously, just don't do this. It would be better to have no sheet at all. ## Exunt As you've probably figured out by now, **Apocalypse Frame** is a game that is heavily slanted toward getting yourself into and out of combat situations. It even has a hex-based combat system which caters to a very specific kind of game. Not that that's bad or wrong, in fact I'm quite in favor of it, but you have to be wanting to play a tactical game. It's also intended to be played as a GM'd game, with at minimum one other player, so you can play it as a duet and it will work just fine – but it's not a solo game. Overall I think it's extremely neat in every sense of the word. If anything it may be overly neat; there are only three Frames per Division, so only nine Frames in total and no mechanics for actually creating your own variants. There are some advanced Frames in the advanced rules in the back of the book but there's only three. Not having some sort of mecha construction system stands as a strike against. There is also an additional text called **[Apocalypse Reframed](https://binary-star-games.itch.io/apocalypse-reframed)** which adds a certain layer of options to gameplay. ![[Apocalypse Reframed (cover).jpg|200]] The first of which switches from a purely ideologically driven mission motivation set to something more like a mercenary campaign in **BattleTech** where you literally take missions from all of the groups as well as seeking the general good of the Collective. The second removes dice entirely from the game in favor of a more deterministic system which I find extremely interesting but would be hesitant to actually play with. The third and last brings more potential harm to the table in turning up the lethality level across the board not just for the mech but for the pilot as well. Some interesting options but nothing *vital*. I would play this game if someone else volunteered to run it. I'm not sure I would volunteer to run it myself just because it feels so constrained in terms of play though the way in which missions are constructed and played out on a hex battlefield would certainly appeal to hard-core tactical gamers. The game simply may not have enough flexibility and growth potential for the people that find that truly compelling. Overall, I'm hesitant to say you should check it out. The $20 price point for the PDF is a real stumbling block. If you've got the money burning a hole in your pocket, sure, go for it. Even if it turns out not to be your cup of tea it might be something you want to sit upon once in a while or you might find it inspirational for something of your own design. Tomorrow things get particularly dire – but at least we get to go in alone.