Pre-order Fully Armored: The Battlelords Gear Manual as well as order other currently available Battlelords game books and merchandise.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
WE ARE SUCCESSFULLY FUNDED!!!
over 2 years ago
– Thu, Nov 25, 2021 at 01:09:38 PM
THANK YOU! (Current Status: FUNDED)
Thank you to all our backers for your support! We're successfully funded with four (4) days to go! Let's see if we can hit a stretch goal (or two)!
In the next few days, we will be setting up our BackerKit site, which will process your orders and calculate shipping. We will let you know when backer surveys are ready to email out.
Thanks to everyone!
-The 23C Team
Interviews
In the meantime, you can check out any of these interviews (in no particular order) we've done recently if you're interested in hearing more about Fully Armored and what's in store for Battlelords in the future!
Update 4: We are 84% Funded!
over 2 years ago
– Sat, Nov 20, 2021 at 09:49:52 AM
Current Status
We are 84% funded! Thank you to all our backers for your support. Help us spread the word! We’re so close to hitting our funding goal!
New Add-Ons
As the campaign continues we will occasionally be dropping new and limited quantity add-ons. We will be adding our navy blue digital camo dice bags soon. Keep an eye out for them. They’ll be very limited quantities available.
More About Battlelords
THE LOOK OF BATTLELORDS AND “THE THREE GS”
Battlelords takes place in a war-torn universe. There can be no doubt about that. Most characters fight using whatever they inherited or can scrounge up, assuming they’re not enlisted in the Alliance military. That doesn’t mean there aren’t places in the Battlelords universe that are bastions of wealth, technology, and high society, but often they’re not what they appear. That brings us to The Three Gs.
GRIME
Everything is dirty. Unless it’s fresh off the showroom floor, most stuff the characters have is going to be dirty, pockmarked, riddled with dents from bullet strikes, and covered in grime. Mercenaries use whatever equipment they can afford, and often its used. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, they’ll even hose the prior owner out of the armor before they sell it to you. Pirates only have what they can steal. The only ones who aren’t hauling around scuffed and dirty gear are Alliance soldiers who aren’t deployed. Trust me, they’re not happy about it. After Sarge makes you clean every crevasse in that suit of power armor with a toothbrush equivalent, you’ll be wishing you could leave the suit dirty. The irony is that once the grunts hit the trenches on the Arachnid front, they get just as dirty as everyone else. Probably more so. The only difference is they know when they get back, that Sarge is going to make them spit polish every bit of gear.
GEAR
Some wise military scholar once said, all plans break down at first contact with the enemy. The best laid plans… The path to hell… This is an all-to-familiar theme for humanity in general and doubly so for mercenaries in Battlelords. So, how does an undertrained mercenary deal with things inevitably going off the rails? They over-equip. Since nothing ever goes according to plan, it’s best to be prepared for anything. As a result, characters are often festooned with gear.
A long time ago armor manufacturers learned from watching sports car commercials on the Tri-V that it’s easier to sell armor if it looks flashy. However, armor is supposed to help a soldier avoid getting shot, not draw attention to them. The solution? Program the camo units in armored suits with bright colors and attractive patterns. Since a malfunctioning camo unit always fails into a camouflage pattern, there’s no risk of a soldier’s armored suit with a malfunctioning camo unit turning canary yellow during combat. As a result, armored suits, when not in combat, tend to be bright and garish colors. Military planners also found out that this is an easy way to designate unit affiliation and rank. If everyone from the 113th has crimson-colored armor, you can easily identify a member of that unit on sight when they’re not in combat.
GRAFFITI
As we discussed earlier, nothing in the Battlelord’s universe stays clean for long. Armor, weapons, dining rooms filled with Size Class 9 HALs, the characters’ souls. They all get tarnished along the way. Since the characters know equipment is going to get dirty or get destroyed, why not preemptively deface it with a little graffiti. Players can have a lot of fun thinking up ideas for the graffiti on their character’s armor, and the ideas and humor those scribbles convey can help to cement the character concept for the player. Many of the armored suits and ultra armor shown in the book have graffiti, most of which conveys the dark humor we love in Battlelords. You might as well let the other guy know you’ve got a sense of humor before he starts scorching the outside of your armor.
“This is why we can’t have nice things, Carl.”
More About Fully Armored
Here’s a taste of some of the equipment and weapon options in Fully Armored:
Fully Armored - Equipment: Hat Collector
This device is hated upon the battlefield. It walks around the battlefield on 4 legs cutting off the helmets of the deceased and injects the head with a cryo injection. A snakelike appendage contains the laser that slices through the helmet. Once the helmet is removed, the Hat Collector then uses a hat box to cut off the head of the affected individual and places it within its onboard storage system. Once the collector reaches capacity it wanders off the battlefield back to its home base (or nearest med station if home base is gone) to deposit its collection with the overworked medics.
The RTA provides a bonus of -1 to -4 to the wielder’s Initiative roll by leveraging A-Grav thrust to help move the barrel on target faster. It’s a high-tech look and shoot kind of approach. Any weapon system that leverages A-Grav can use this system. If the weapon doesn’t already have A-Grav, the weapon system can be retrofitted for c25,000. A-Grav must be operating to leverage the system. Sensors will pick up the UV signature of any active A-Grav system.
Art Sneak Peek
Kiki “Kay Kay” Kurnia has been adding more detail to her rough draft for Patty Lynn the Fott in preparation for adding color. Check it out below!
Update #3 - We're 76% Funded!
over 2 years ago
– Mon, Nov 15, 2021 at 05:32:07 PM
Current Status
We are 76% funded! Thank you to all our backers for your support. Help us spread the word!
New Add-Ons
As the campaign continues we will occasionally be dropping new and limited quantity add-ons. Today we added our black hex mini-dice bag embroidered Battlelords logo and drawstring pulls made out of nickel finish cartridge casings and our woodland camo mini-dice bag with brass finish cartridge casings! The mini-dice bags are slightly smaller than the standard size dice bags we offered previously. We also listed our BioCyberdyne ID badges as Add-ons as well. Images below.
More About Battlelords
What is a Battlelord?
Everyone wants to be a Battlelord. They’re the subject of Tri-V documentaries. They’re celebrities. They’re damn near kings. So, what are they?
"A Battlelord is an honorary rank in the Galactic Armed Forces (GAF), and it is outside of the normal chain of command.The rank of Battlelord is only accorded to the most loyal and capable of Alliance military personnel. A Battlelord is someone who has exceptional battlefield prowess and a proven ability to win battle after battle despite overwhelming odds. These are elite military veterans who can tactically access a situation, quickly devise a response, and act decisively without hesitation. Mega-corp personnel who have met the requirements for the rank of Battlelord can also be awarded the title. Regardless of whether the personnel are members of the GAF or from mega-corp, preference is given to individuals who have repeatedly dealt with and defeated numerically superior foes, since Battlelords are almost always outnumbered."
More About Fully Armored
Fully Armored - Equipment: The Crawler
Much like the hat box, which is used to decapitated salvageable soldiers and cryogenically preserve their heads, The Crawler is one of those pieces of medical equipment that the grunts have a love-hate relationship with. No one wants to see “the recycle slug” headed their way. Here's your Battlelords dark humor for the day...
"Designed by the Phentari corporation RRR LCC (Reuse, Recycle, Resuscitate) to get soldiers back into the fray, this device is reviled by the Zen. This device is usually dropped behind your infantry. It identifies friendlies and moves to get them back on their feet during a battle. It does this in the fastest, most efficient manner possible. All models come with a nice, pleasant, Phentari voice that tells you “please remain calm, you have suffered and injury. We are currently treating your wounds. We will return you to 95% combat effectiveness prior to evacuation!”
The Crawler moves around the battlefield like a giant slug, swallowing patients marked as friendly and evacuating them out the rear after repairs. The device scans the battlefield and travels from least disabled friendly to the worst disabled. Once there, it devours the injured using a suction orifice which places them into a med bay assembly line. The individual is paralyzed upon entry to prevent movement and pain. No sedation is used which allows the combatant to return to combat without the haze of sedatives. After parallelization, repairs begin on both the armor and the individual. . Any structural or organic matter left within the unit is re-purposed to the printers. Additionally, the unit will pull in deceased individuals and armor to break down if it is running low on supplies. You do not want to see your bill or contract extension after this thing gets you back on your feet. Once the individual and armor are combat capable, they are returned to service via evacuation at the rear orifice."
"Mega-Corporations are concerned about the welfare of their corporate mercs. After all, including training, transport, housing, etc. You guys are a big investment. Somewhere along the way, some ineffectual middle-management jerk realized that the majority of the combat most mercs see is not against heavily armored mercs from competing corporations, Arachnid shock troops, and the like. Statistically, the most common enemies by far are lightly armored sentients or hostile fauna. In these situations, pulse cannons and Omega weapons are overkill. Some committee of similar middle management penny pinchers decided that the best answer to this problem was for mercs to be able to pour massive amounts of firepower downrange, without the price tags associated with the more powerful mega-weapons. The solution? Pulse Submachine Guns, also known as Pulse Blasters. The concept behind the pulse blaster is a simple one: utilize a smaller magnetic generator with a faster recycle time to send a higher volume of smaller plasma pulses into the target in much less time. They chew up lightly armored targets in short order, and vaporize unarmored targets in shorter order."
-The 23C Team
Mini-dice bags & Biocyberdyne mega-corp ID badge - Available as Add-Ons now!
Update # 2: More than half way there & Sneak Peeks
over 2 years ago
– Wed, Nov 03, 2021 at 09:49:49 PM
Current Status
We are slightly more than 72 hours into our campaign to Kickstart Fully Armored, and we’re 68% funded! Thank you to all our backers for your support.
New Add-Ons
As the campaign continues we will occasionally be dropping new and limited quantity add-ons. Today we dropped the tan digital camo dice bag with glow-in-the-dark embroidered Battlelords logo and drawstring pulls made out of real cartridge casings! Only 3 available.
More About Battlelords
Known around here as the granddaddy of military sci-fi RPGs, Battlelords has re-occurring themes, which are explicitly mentioned in our free quick start rules (grab a copy here: bit.ly/BLQuickStart) and in the core rules.
Theme 1: In The Trenches – You’re not under-trained and over-equipped! You’re just expendable and your gear is built by the lowest bidder.
Theme 2: Overcoming Speciesism & Stereotypes - Cizeracks don’t like Rams. Orions don’t like Eridani. Mazians don’t like Chatilians. Phentari don’t like anybody, but if you don’t work together you’re all going to be filling the same fox hole at the end of the day.
Theme 3: Runaway Capitalism - The mega-corps own everything. They run everything. You work for them. Everyone you know works for them, or the government who they puppet from behind the scenes. Welcome to the 23rd century.
Theme 4: The Haves vs. The Have Nots – The Mutzachans banned nano-tech ages ago. Scarcity is still an economic principle in the 23rdcentury. The upside is that corporate mercenaries have the best chance to make it big, or (literally) die trying!
Theme 5: Dark Humor – Combat is violent and gritty. A little levity helps relieve stress and promotes bonding among the troops. Somebody pick up that arm and find out who it belongs to.
More About Fully Armored - Armor
Do you want armor that can shape shift with your Mazian? We’ve got that. What about some armor that the Keen can fly in? It’s in there. Need specialized armor for general exploration or work in space? What about extreme environment suits for hazmat work or underwater work? Gotcha covered (literally, again). How about an excerpt?
Mazian Shift Scale Armor
“This Dickens Corp invention is a new twist on an ancient Earth armor concept. The engineers at Dickens essentially took a suit of Mazian baggie armor and covered it scale mail created from modern materials. The interlocking and overlapping plates of the scale mail provide extra protection for the Mazian underneath, while still allowing the Mazian to change shape. The suit also gives the Mazian a decidedly reptilian appearance, while covered in row upon row of matte black, shield-shaped, metal scales. As a result, the Mazian can not attempt to impersonate people or things beyond their general shape, but the suit still allows the Mazian to utilize its shape shifting abilities in combat. ShiftScale is not elastic enough for a Mazian to bounce while wearing it, but they can roll just fine and the scales provide ample traction.”
Sneak Peek
Speaking of sneak peeks, check out Kiki “Kay Kay” Kurnia’s rough draft for our Cizerack. We know how much some of you love the battle kitties! You know who you are!
-The 23C Team
Cizerack Rough Sketch for Fully Armored by Kiki Kurnia
The First 24 Hours & More Than Half Way There!
over 2 years ago
– Tue, Nov 02, 2021 at 03:45:55 AM
We are slightly more than 24 hours into our campaign to Kickstart Fully Armored, and we’re more than 50% funded already! Thank you to all our backers for your support.
As the campaign continues we will occasionally be dropping new and limited quantity add-ons so be sure to check back periodically.
We have been working on this book for a long time, and we’re certain Fully Armored will fulfill all your Battlelords gear needs. We will occasionally post an excerpt from the book during our updates so you guys can get a sneak peek at the interior and all the cool new stuff.
Speaking of sneak peeks, check out Kiki “Kay Kay” Kurnia’s rough draft for our Fott. We call her Patty Lynn and we can’t wait to see the finished illustration!
