Writing At Midnight: How We Made Lancer, A Tabletop Mech RPGI wanted to write a utopia not lost, but
Writing At Midnight: How We Made Lancer, A Tabletop Mech RPGI wanted to write a utopia not lost, but in the making and under threat. I want Lancer’s players to fight to save a potential golden age of humanity, be it salvation as-is or salvation-through-revolution. As a tactic and gear-heavy mech game, we knew that violence would play a significant role in a given session, but a setting that promoted loot-focused reactionary violence was never the goal. I wanted any fight to be part of a righteous one, and costly, and the prize to be a victory over that which we found odious: fascism, slavery, colonialism, the cruel and petty oppressions and atomizations of human life. At the same time, I wanted players to engage with less overt — but no less terrible — political cruelties: climate change, capitalism, anthropocentric chauvinism, and so on. The enemies you face in Lancer are human, as are your allies; the only devils present in Lancer are ones of our own making.Player characters in Lancer are the contact point where the setting’s concerns meet mechanics. They are rich narrative territory to examine and interrogate the core setting, dig into the politics of canon entities, and make real material choices about how you build power; NHPs (Non-Human Persons) are, mechanically, a piece of gear in the game, though I don’t think any other aspect of Lancer has generated more thoughtful discussion among players on the morality of use.At its best, Lancer asks its players: what does your better world look like, and what are you willing to do to achieve it? There are many more specific questions of course: How do I, as an agent of empire who is not loved by their empire, benefit from its existence? How do I perpetuate it? How can I meaningfully resist it? Does humanity need a central organizing body? Can it succeed without one? Or is that premise a false binary? Is anthropocentric progress a reactionary impulse?Lancer Kickstarter -- source link
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