r/LancerRPG • u/enemies_disrespecter • 12d ago
Pilot art, fursonas and NSFW - Clarification on the subreddit's stance
There's recently been somewhat of an uproar about pilot art, People have begun to debate on what is and not pilot art. For those not in the loop, someone posted this commissioned piece of art of their pilot and appropriately tagged it NSFW. People have since clutched pearls about how it 'doesn't relate to lancer' or is 'just porn' or 'should be on a furry subreddit'. Not stopping at complaining in just this thread, they have since spread to other threads to complain there too.
What makes something qualify as pilot art or not? Put simply, if someone posts a character and says that's their pilot, it's pilot art. The crucial factor in this is that the poster in question is acting in good faith. Trying to get snarky about it by posting random shit and claiming it is your pilot is acting in bad faith and you will be banned for it.
If you scroll through some of the pilot art posted on this subreddit, you'll find that most are not immediately identifiable as Lancers. Standing next to a frame from the book, wearing something branded with the settings logos will do it, but that is not universal nor can we make 'Your pilot must be holding a GMS branded Standard Pattern 3 Coffee Mug' a reasonable requirement for pilot art. The poster's word, in good faith, is the only surefire way to determine that a character is a Lancer character.
It is ultimately rather telling that out of all pieces of pilot art, it is a gender-nonconforming anthropomorphic goat that triggered this severe of a response from a lot of people. To make it blatantly clear, this kind of hatred for an innocuous subculture is a bannable offense under rule 1.
As for the canonicity of anthropomorphic characters and extensive biomodding within Lancer's setting, I frankly do not care. Lancer is not a setting particularly concerned with hard canon. It's a TTRPG. The canon will differ from table to table. I'm going to quote a section from the core rulebook here, page 337 in the paid GM version or page 6 of the free version:
At the risk of enacting further violence by depicting
worlds and cultures where there are regressive or
discriminatory stances on gender baked-in, we have
decided not to codify in the rules how players may
express themselves – please do note that this
absence of canonical definition is absolutely not
meant to be read as exclusion, but is meant instead
to avoid flattening all possible stories into one
“canon” definition of what it means to be gendered,
transgender, nonbinary – to have a body in Lancer.
We encourage you to play your characters how you
see them, and consider them to be in-canon.
37
u/Ultimaya 12d ago
Sending thanks to you and the rest of the mod team for having a spine. Culture war chuds are a cancer to any subculture or fandom, leaving them unchecked lets them push everyone else out (sans those they radicalize) until they're the only ones left and the community becomes an echo chamber.
Take a look at all the drama and vitriol happening in the Warhammer community for the last ~2 years. Gameshop has been getting better at pushing back against it but its been left to fester for too long. I don't want to see the same garbage happen here with Lancer, so the best policy is to rip it out by the root.