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 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.