Sage Genesis wiki

Mass Effect

As a work in progress, first some general notes about the setting:

Lancer frames are better described as mech-suits now. Large and massive, but not the multi-story tall titans they'd be in the standard Lancer game. Much of the Mass Effect universe is in stations, ships, underground, or otherwise within valuable but cramped real estate. Tanks and aircraft fare poorly there, not to mention the costs and logistics of fielding such troops. Elite troops with suits can go where vehicles can't, quicker and cheaper too.

The events from the videogames, novels, etc. are not used here. We adapt the _world _of Mass Effect but not its story. As such, many aspects you know will be different here. The Reapers don't exist. The Proteans are (probably) not bug people and nobody knows why they disappeared. The Shadow Broker is not a Yahg.

As we don't have budget or engine constraints, more minor species will be around than seen before. However, playable species are limited to human, asari, salarian, and turian.

Geth are more like their original ME1 appearance: techno-organic entities with an alien, unknowable mindset. They are not the software-consensus constructs which inhabit purely robotic platforms, as ME2 made them out to be. Geth will not chat with you. They will not make friends with you. They are not poor misunderstood children of the Quarians who could've peacefully co-existed if only we'd listened.

Krogan warriors are massive and terrifying. While in the videogames the Krogan enemies and companions are about on par with everything else, this is not so in this game. Krogan can naturally do things that others need mech-suits for. Curing the genophage is self-evidently a bad idea because you're not saving one species, you're dooming all the others.

Rules Changes

Characters of different Sizes still only take up one space on the board. Your size refers to overall bulk, like comparing a Salarian to an armored Krogan, but those differences are too small to justify doubling or tripling the number of spaces such characters take up. Size still matters for some game effects though.

The Jammed condition doesn't prevent you from making attacks. However, it does impose +1 Difficulty to all attacks other than Improvised Attack, Grapple, and Ram as the attacker lacks input from a HUD, battle scanners, or VI assistance packages.

The Shut Down status is mech-only and as such can't affect Lancers in armored suits. It still normally affects vehicles and synthetic lifeforms.

The AI tag should be renamed to VI. Any suit with the VI tag can use the Scan option of Quick Tech as a free action. This ability counts as a Limited (3) system.

The Talent Technophile Rank 3 doesn't allow you to carry your VI outside of a mech, as that effect is redundant. Instead, your Enlightened-class VI grants you the ability to reroll your Downtime skill roll, provided it's an activity with which a VI could significantly assist you.