For people who are not in the know Lancer is a mecha tabletop rpg, set in a universe vaguely similar to that of Ian Banks' Culture novels. Basically after a global warming induced collapse and a millennia long dark age people of Earth got their shit together, achieved fully automated gay space luxury communism and forcefully brought a bunch of worlds colonized by people (there no aliens) that escaped Earth before shit hit the fan into the fold. Then after this lead to a whole bunch of war crimes there was a bit of a coup and now the Union exercies a gentler touch. Oh, and everyone uses 10 meter tall humanoid robots in combat for some reason.
The system is supposedly really cool and a bunch of guys in my group are excited about the whole thing. The problem is that I'm not much of a mecha guy (I love NGE and Gurren Lagann like everyone else), so I was kinda drawing a blank trying to come up with a plot.
Then, it hit me. If it's a game about communist warriors, why not mine communist military history for ideas? Focus the on a communist revolution against feudalism on the periphery (there are Dune-style noble houses in the setting), player characters sent clandestinely to help with the civil war by the Union, which doesn't want to engage in open intervention. Sorta like a Spanish Civil War thing with International Brigades. Mix in Russian Civil War with Intervention, Kronstadt, handwringing about what to do with the nobles.
Also annoy the players by referencing Soviet movies and songs about civil war and revolution people here in Russia know since childhood.
What do you guys think? I need ideas! Any interesting historical combat situations to recreate? Tricky conundrums to throw at the heroes? Books and movies to use as inspiration?
Spanish civil war with mechs is an extremely cool idea. Maybe you could use something like Blood of Spain as an inspiration for the setting or some scenarios, although I don't know if the battles are directly translatable to mech combat.
No Room for a Wallflower was a really cool book to browse, but if you want to come up with your own campaign, I had an idea for a Trojan War-inspired campaign that has the players stuck in a long planetary siege.
Mecha shows like Gundam share their appeal with the Iliad - heroic exploits and drama in the face of war.
If you want to do something more cowboy/ronin, set something in the Long Rim.
I'll likely run Wallflower if don't come up with my own thing in a week's time. Not particularly exited about the whole
spoiler
bugs
situation.
Regarding the spoiler, is it because of the political implications or do you simply not like them?
I only read the beginning of the adventure on the off chance that I'll come up with my own and somebody else my group will Wallflower, so my attempt to explain why I didn't dive straight into it is going to look pretty silly.
spoiler
So it's starts with fighting the remnants of the bugs genocided by the second committee? There's a lot of talk on forums about how heavy the subject matter of coming to terms with said genocide is. I dunno, seems like a bit much to drop on players who haven't yet bought into the setting on the first campaign. But if you say it's great I'll take your word for it.
Sounds kindof similar to the backstory for my Lancer for the No Room for a Wallflower campaign.
Basically, small rimworld colony, living in a lil communal colony eking out a living, somewhat Fremen inspired. Then megacorp comes by, scans planet and realizes its rich in Lithium, and trying to secure mining rights by claiming the planet is uninhabited, then tries to 'uninhabit' it before the Union gets there to check. Colony uses some of its basic mining supplies to delay the corp, steal some mechs, and basically delay the genocide long enough to the corp's plan to fall apart, as people notice "hey, this planet is totally inhabited, WTF guys???"
So the Union totally saves the day!!!
Except the corp gets off with a fine and a warning, and the home planet is now not safe to habitation, and his people need to leave. Barber (my lancer) uses the skills he got to earn a living and send money back to the now spacer colony.
Did some art for him, pictured here
Check out the Stolen Crown adventure if you want a springboard. Written by a third party for Lancer
I always thought it might be interesting to do something where a colony world has been isolated for so long with limited resources that interstellar civilization has passed into myth. The rulers of the planet have used what advanced tech does exist to control the population militarily and has regressed into full on feudalism.
The PCs, probably peasants or proles oppressed by the nobility that has grown on the planet, stumble upon a printer and a comm system that connects them to Union who decide they have to come and help but the PCs will have to take certain steps first to pave the way (disabling ancient automated defense systems so the space communists can land, fighting their way through mecha knights to reach the one NHP on the planet that the empires priesthood tends to and lies to to keep it docile and explaining what is going on so it won't help the empire anymore, helping to evacuate vulnerable populations so the empire can't hold them hostage when they get desperate, etc).
This probably isn't enough to make it through 12 license levels, but maybe 2-4, and after their successful revolution maybe they are just "independent" enough from Union to get away with stuff like waging open war on the Karrakin Trade Baronies.
I'm not super familiar with that setting, but it seems like there's a certain degree of decentralization (at least around the periphery) if you've got feudalism and noble houses. So, how about having some planet (or region within a planet) that's essentially formed an autonomous commune of sorts, and managed to stay under the radar since they're far away from any semblance of central authority? But they come into conflict with some other faction - maybe some noble house based on a planet in the same system decides there's valuable resources to be exploited, or the central government starts trying to reassert itself (or both at the same time, and the central government has to both deal with its own unruly nobles and the space-commune).
Don't know how exactly the mech technology in the setting works, but perhaps you could have your protagonists be a militia on the side of the commune, who have to make do with outdated tech, maybe even improvise combat mechs by taking ones meant for more industrial purposes (like mining, or construction) and strapping guns to them, like the mech equivalent of a technical. Or maybe they could be a mercenary unit that gets hired to fight the commune, but ends up joining them and turning their fancy high-tech mechs on their former employers.
