The core mechanics are mechs fighting each other but Lancer's setting and lore focus on the struggle of an explicitly communist state to bring about Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism against myriad threats to the Revolution. There's pages and pages written about the history and conflicts that Union has fought to try and guarantee the promises of the Revolution to every person, and the compromises and mistakes it's made along the way and is trying to rectify. The players can skirt around all that for cool mech fighting without context, but the authorial intent is clear in that player characters should be motivated by ideals, not money, and provides loads of scenarios where they can aid the Revolution (for instance by acting as liberator teams for the Department of Justice & Human Rights by actively dismantling some space fash).
Also, both authors are leftists and they use their company twitter to publish messages like ACAB and Abolish ICE
Cane down here to say this too. Fucking love LANCER even though I've never got to play a game of it.
it looks like OG monopoly before parker bros made it into the monopoly we know today
I've played it IRL once (in German). Pretty fun game, though when you're playing with comrades, nobody wants to play as the Bourgeoise lol
Proles & Property
Debts & Distribution
Surplus & Society
Prisons & Profits
Violence & Value
Petty Bourgeoisie: The Reaction
Capitalist: The Extraction
Neo-Serf: The Gig
World of Dialectics games
How is this even a question?
Axe and Sickle is linked straight to this website.