 Goto [ Index ] |
"Lacuna Part I. The Creation of the Mystery and the Girl from Blue City" is an interesting experimental RPG that combines elements from both The Cell and The Matrix. (What do you mean, you never saw "The Cell"!?! It's got J.Lo in it!)
Do note that pretty much this entire review can be considered spoiler - the game book says that anything after the initial character creation section is restricted from the players.
Format wise, it's your usual small-format 6x9 glossy cover, with really theme-enhancing graphic design and art throughout. It's not written anything like a normal RPG, mostly being in the format of a briefing (and other apocryphal documents) for the Mystery Agents (players) and Control (GM).
The system's pretty light. Mystery Agents have three Attributes with three Talents related to each -
- Force: Aggression, Athletics, Strategy
- Instinct: Investigation, Communication, Intuition
- Access: Logistics, Intelligence, Navigation
You spread some points around and roll an equivalent number of d6es and add them together when making a roll, trying to beat 11.
The real interesting mechanic is that of "Heart Rate". Every time you roll, the result adds to your Heart Rate. (As a result, rolls in Lacuna are often more scene-level resolution than task-level resolution.) There are mechanical effects based on whether you're below, above, or at your target heart rate. This adds a lot of tension to the missions, in which usually the Mystery Agents get hooked up to the Slab, dive into the Blue City, conduct their mission (typically hunting down a Hostile Personality and banishing them to the Lacuna), and eject, ideally before meeting a bad end - like flatlining due to heart attack or other, more inexplicable, fates.
The Blue City is like a "real" collective unconscious. It's a combination of the "VR dive into someone's mind" idea from The Cell combined with the more persistent world concept of the Matrix. The Blue City is a strange, archetypal place with distinct Personalities inhabiting it. A "Control" watches over the Mystery Agents and can provide them with help, and communication with Control is better via land lines (very Matrix).
The Company in the real world isn't a completely happy place either - there are security clearances taken very seriously, and a lot of shadowy characters (including the PCs). During a mission you can gain Static, which can manifest as problems in Blue City or misunderstanding, mistrust, etc. with Control. There's definitely a hint of - at least, conspiracy, at most, something stranger about the "real world." The apparent goal of banishing the Hostile Personalities is to [deleted for security reasons], which leads to some utopian/dstopian questions of its own.
The Blue City has plenty of threats - from the fairly "standard" Hostile Personalities, to the completely mysterious, like the Spidermen (whose attention you do not want to draw). Although all of this is a very prosaic way of describing the game, which tries to set up an environment weirder and more open-ended than Over the Edge or... anything else really. Perhaps hints of Kult are similar. It deliberately sets up a basic frame of a setting, hints at some things beneath the surface, and dares you to go about anywhere with it.
I really like Lacuna. In the beginning some of the "you may already be playing" bit triggered my pretentious-meter but once I reread it a couple times I really started to groove on it. It's definitely a touchstone on how to write a RPG that sets a consistent tone.
The biggest problem with actually playing Lacuna looks to me to be actually GMing the thing, in terms of coming up with scenarios. Lacuna is fertile ground for ideas, but it's so big and odd that a couple pages worth of one-sentence sample missions, complications, etc. would be extremely valuable.
Lacuna is a great example of game design - light but on-target mechanics that fit seamlessly into the game's mood, an intriguing and suspenseful environment, vivid imagery, and weird mystery/conspiracy/Lord only knows what abounding. I give it a 5 for style, as it's one of the most stylish games out there. I give it a 4 for substance - if only there was a little more guidance to the GM on "what to do with all this" it would be a 5.
I hope to run (or play, but that's unlikely) Lacuna someday. I'm tempted to try to combine it with some of the other indie RPGs that are similar in trope - Don't Rest Your Head, Cold City, etc. in order to cobble together more material. It's a great effort and shows what experimental gaming can be like, and many props to Jared Sorensen for this game!
