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?
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.
If it's just a bit heavy for the group, then that's understandable