I started corresponding with Panayiotis Lines during his time with Modiphius Entertainment. Now that he’s running his own company along with Aled Lawlor, I wanted to catch up with him. With their upcoming post-apocalypse mech pilot RPG, Salvage Union, headed to Kickstarter, it is an opportune time.
EGG EMBRY (EGG): Thanks for letting me ask you questions about your newest Kickstarter. What is Salvage Union?
PANAYIOTIS LINES (PANAYIOTIS): Thanks for the interview. Salvage Union is a tabletop roleplaying game where you play as Salvager Pilots controlling huge, scrappy mecha and using them to scour a post-apocalyptic world for survival.
EGG: Your characters are piloting mechs in the post-apocalypse? How long after the apocalypse is this set? How does the apocalypse tie into the story?
PANAYIOTIS: The apocalypse is far away enough that a new society and way of life has been built and some hope exists to rebuild. We don’t want to get too specific as we want players to feel encouraged to make their own adventures within the setting without worrying too much about getting lore correct. The post-apocalyptic setting also fits the games take on the mecha genre. In Salvage Union you don’t play with sleek, powerful, high tech mecha but instead control scrappy mech’s built from industrial salvage and jury rigged with all manner of things from extra rigging arms to devastating railguns. To do this you need to constantly be out in the wastes salvaging.
ALED LAWLOR (ALED): Yeah, the idea is that all these sleek high tech mechs exist but they’re the domain of the big corpos who live in their insular arcologies. You’d be lucky to get a bit of kit from them here and there but the game is played on the fringes of that society so you have to take what you can get and go from there.
EGG: This project is powered by the Quest RPG. What is that?
PANAYIOTIS: We wanted to create a mech RPG that was a lot simpler and easy to get into than similar games out there. Quest provided a surprisingly robust chassis to craft a mech game around. It’s core d20 variable resolution mechanic can emulate some of the bombastic action within a mech game such as blowing up arms or flanking a foe and hitting them in their rear armour, without having to go too into rules detail about how that works.
Quest doesn’t have any core character attributes and most of the customisation comes from your character abilities. These abilities are really powerful and produce flashy and exciting effects within the game. If you tie those abilities to specific mech parts then you get a really interesting mech ‘crafting’ framework without again being too bogged down in details.
EGG: This uses a d20 engine, but isn’t a D&D style project, correct?
PANAYIOTIS: Correct, Quest does use a d20 as it’s only dice and Salvage Union is designed with the same mechanic, but that shouldn’t be confused with the ‘d20’ system by Wizards of the Coast, which is entirely different despite both using a d20.
ALED: It’s super simple, really the dice roll is there to create interesting situations as opposed to being used as a skill check.
EGG: This game features mechs, but it doesn’t get deep in the weeds with a complex engine. How do you combine a tech-centric RPG with the rules lite design aesthetic?
PANAYIOTIS: The real meat of the crunch for the game is intended to be within the downtime. Once your group returns to your union crawler, which is like a huge walking home base, you can refit your mechs with salvage that you find in the wasteland. We do go a bit noodly with this, for example if you want to build a laser you have to find optical glass, wiring loom and circuitry to piece it together. This allows players to have that ‘crunch’ but do so likely during ‘downtime’ sessions or in between sessions. The core of playing the game itself however is lite and simple albeit with a lot of flexibility.
ALED: We also tried to create interesting tensions between the different systems, sort of like a Magic the Gathering approach so when you build your mech you can find nice synergies between different bits of equipment so in specific situations you can combo as it were. It also means there isn’t ever really a guaranteed thing as almost everything has a counter of some kind.
EGG: Will this just be a core rulebook or will their be adventures and a campaign setting with this Kickstarter?
PANAYIOTIS: We’re planning lots more beyond the core book. We have adventures planned and we’ve even got a couple of great writers on board Virginia Page (Star Trek Adventures, John Carter of Mars) and ENnie Award winner Diogo Nogueira (Halls of the Blood King, Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells). We also have ideas for an expansion book. That being said the core book will contain everything you need to play, including an adventure.
EGG: Who is working on this project with you?
PANAYIOTIS: We’ve got a great team on board. Leyline Press which is a company I founded with Aled Lawlor are behind the core of the project. We have some fantastic artists including Hamish Frater who did the gorgeous banner art, as well as Francesco Silva who did a lot of our character art and Alex Connolly who did the mech art.
We’ve also as mentioned got Virginia Page and Diogo Nugueira on board and we’re currently in talks with various other writers, artists and editors in the industry which we can’t say too much about now but are really excited to potentially be working with on this.
EGG: Where did the idea for this come from?
PANAYIOTIS: As with many tabletop and creative projects the idea was swimming around for some time and in various different forms. Aled along with his friend Mal came up with a lot of the initial concept of the world and lore as well as the first designs of the game, which played out more as a wargame than a roleplaying game. Aled and I then took it through a development process and we happily settled on what we have today.
ALED: Yeah it was initially going to be a tabletop miniatures game years ago, but once I’d had some experience working on miniatures games and realised how expensive they were to bring to market that got swiftly put to the side! I actually feel it’s much better now in the way and ironically more like the game I’d wanted to make to begin with.
EGG: Beyond Salvage Union, what else are you working on?
PANAYIOTIS: Leyline Press has a lot going on right now. We make a monthly Old School Essentials riso printed module which you can get via our Patreon.
We’ve just successfully kickstarted Andromeda a module for Mothership that glows under UV light, which we’re close to fulfilling for backers. We’ve also got some exciting projects planned for next year though the core of our focus in the new year is going to be Salvage Union.
EGG: Thanks for talking with me. Where can fans learn more about this project?
PANAYIOTIS: Great to chat!
You can follow the Kickstarter page here. You can also visit our website here where you’ll find blogs and some updates on the project. You can also sign up to our newsletter. All sign ups will get a free copy of the Salvage Union Quickstart PDF when it’s released soon.
Salvage Union from Leyline Press
“Salvage Union is a post-apocalyptic Mech tabletop roleplaying game powered by the Quest RPG.”
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