Leyline Press Blog — salvage union

Salvage Union is a tabletop RPG set in a post-apocalyptic world where players take the role of Mech Pilots who salvage scrap in the wastes. They live together within a ‘Union Crawler’, a giant Mech that acts as a home base. The game uses a gear-based progression system, where the Mech's advancement is determined by its Chassis (base stats), Systems (external hardware like weapons), and Modules (internal hardware like hacking chips). Progression in the game involves finding new Mech components or scrap to craft them. There are six "Tech Levels" that represent increasing power and access to more tools and abilities.

Our core design goal with Salvage Union was to create a simple-to-learn mech tabletop role-playing game, which retained the essence of the genre while vastly simplifying its mechanics and learning curve. One key aspect that makes mech games appealing is the ability to customise your own unique mech, fine-tuning its various options to your tastes. In Salvage Union, we wanted to intertwine this customisation with the role of salvagers scouring the wasteland for scrap. This blog explores the challenges myself, Panayiotis Lines  @panny_lines, and Aled Lawlor,@aledlawlor, encountered in developing a salvaging and crafting system for Salvage Union that met these design goals....

For the last 30 week we've been revealing one of the 30 Mechs that's going to be in the Salvage Union Core book. We've come to the end of that reveal and today we're collating every Mech in the core book for handy reference in this post. If you're interested in Salvage Union you can download the free Quickstart here. You can pre-order Salvage Union here.  The game is currently scheduled for a digital launch at the end of March and a physical launch in Q3 of 2023. Tell us what you think of all these Mechs!  You can discuss...

One of the key mechanics that makes Salvage Union works is the numerous Systems, Modules and Abilities that allow players to directly ask The Mediator (GM) questions and get true answers from them. For example the Spectrum Mech, which can be piloted at Tech 1, the starting level of play, has the following Mech Chassis Ability.  Data Scanner: The Spectrum is a mobile data repository that has all manner of information stored within it. It is able to scan objects to both gain information about them and store that data to access at a later time.  Range: Close // Short...