Lacuna Part I

With apologies to Jared for my tardiness:

        As the regular Dear & Constant Readers out there know, I’ve been praising Lacuna Part I for a long time now, but have yet to do a full review on it. Well, it’s time to rectify that situation.

        Part of the fine stable of RPGs available at The Wicked Dead Brewing Co. (in association with Memento Mori Theatricks), Lacuna was created by Jared A. Sorensen, also responsible for the post-apocalyptic RPG octaNe. Much like his Wicked Dead colleague, John Wick, Jared has a flair for the surreal, and nowhere is this more evident than in Lacuna.

        How to begin describing Lacuna? It’s available as a pdf, but my print copy is wire-bound, with incredible cover art by Manning L. Krull. At 40 manual-sized pages, you wouldn’t expect Lacuna to contain as much as it does, yet just as much is left unanswered. And perhaps that is for the best, because the true strength of Lacuna is mystery—mystery which Lacuna, by its very design, seems to envelop itself in. Jared Sorensen warns us that as much as this is a game, it is also a game that is a puzzle—and perhaps some of the pieces may be missing.

         The setting of Lacuna starts with the revelation that a collective unconscious does exist, and that it can be expressed as a place—a city, a reality all its (and our) own. This place is called the Blue City, and is just one level of this subconscious. There also exists a blacker, deeper level, one named the Lacuna (a pit). Here, nightmares themselves live, and perhaps things even somehow worse. You as a PC, are a Mystery Agent of The Company (a rather faceless, suitable MiB type of organization), and this landscape, both horrifying and gorgeous, is the terra incognita you will be exploring.

        There are many hooks in this game, and I don’t care to give them away, but they range from unknown entities inhabiting the Blue City to unexplained disappearances and betrayals. There are also hostile forces at work, most notably in the shape of the oh-so-disturbing Soviet-esque Spidermen, with their human bodies and multiple arachnid eyes (see the cover art). Like many creatures and occurrences in Lacuna, the Spidermen need not be explained, no concrete purpose spelled out. They simply are. I must stress this is not sloppily or negligently done, but more in the manner of a tantalizing silver string left just within the PC’s view.

        The mechanics are simple, and require more on the side of backstory and GM/PC input than a legion of stats & skills. The main attributes are Force (used for shooting, fisticuffs, kicking in doors), Talent (artsy stuff, ingenuity, etc.), Instinct (sense motives, ambushes, tracking), and Access (diplomacy, research, and so forth). Attributes range from Impaired to Exceptional which regulates how many d6 you’ll be rolling. Success rolls/task resolution are divided into 4 basic tiers; Failure, and Mediocre, Nominal, and Exceptional Successes. Most actions call for at least a Nominal success.

        Combat is not really that detailed in this game, nor does it particularly need to be. Combat resolution is handled like any other action, and probable results of each success tier are described in the book.

        The most unorthodox mechanic of this game is that of Heart Rate. You have a designated starting heart rate. Since the actual Mystery Agent being played is accessing the Blue City and its environs through their unconscious efforts, the physical body of the PC is lying on a slab somewhere in a Company lab. Exertions, damage, and yes, even a big scare will raise the heart rate—sometimes to dangerous levels. If things get bad enough in Lacuna, and you don’t “eject” in time, your PC can die of a heart attack. This leads to interesting gameplay; the fact that each action you make can be compounded with risk multipliers to seriously affects your bpm (beats per minute) gives an edge and often a tinge of desperation to game play.

        Agent creation is fun, and leaves plenty of room for customization. I enjoyed the fact you can pick a mentor agent, whom studying under has granted you a stat raise or special talent.

        As for the mysteries in this game, we are granted tiny glimpses of the odd, the obscure in the Blue City and Lacuna. Sometimes while reading Sorensen's game, I experienced the same jarring one receives upon the first viewing of a Magritte painting—the mundane juxtaposed with what simply should not be there. In this, many readers who prefer an entire preset adventure, or even a full storyline mapped out for play will find Lacuna lacking. But if one reads Lacuna, you’ll agree it simply wouldn’t do to have such a thing included. Lacuna’s strength is giving glimpses of what could be, of giving us just enough of a lead to be dangerous, as it were. The GM bears a heavy burden of responsibility when playing Lacuna, and it certainly would behoove a group to have a good one at their helm when playing.

        In retrospect, this was a difficult review to write; Lacuna relies more on feeling, mystery, and the unknown than anything. I can’t give you many concretes, firstly because it would ruin part of the feel of the game for you, but I can offer these three facts: Lacuna is smart, well-designed, more than a little creepy when played correctly, and deeper than you’d think 40 pages of gaming text would ever be. This is a game that seems literally to live outside its pages.

        Before Lacuna Part I, I never would have thought incompleteness in an RPG could actually boost a game’s score. But in this case it can—I feel I’ve been given the pieces to a great adventure. I can fill in the rest, but sometimes the best puzzles are those that go unsolved. Jack The Ripper. The Man In The Iron Mask. We have the clues, but the puzzle is eternal.

Style: 3+/5

Not a bad little book. Wirebounds generally have some durability problems, and so it is with my well-loved copy. The cover art is exceptional. The inside print and design are both a bit above average, and legible.

Substance: 4.5/5

People looking for a full adventure here spelled out for them will be disappointed. But aside from that, the light mechanics, freaky-cool setting, and open-endedness of it all blend seamlessly to make one of the most unusual, thought-provoking, and limitless RPGs of the past 10 years.

    Psst!  More clues await your downloading leisure at http://memento-mori.com/lacuna/!

Comments

[Mr. Teapot]

http://www.chimera.info/daedalus/articles/winter2004/lacuna.html

You can read most or all of the game for free online in a back issue of Daedalus. I'm not sure if there's any additional information in the print version. I do, however, agree with your overall review of the game.

[Mr. Teapot]

http://www.chimera.info/daedalus/downloads/daedalus-winter2004.pdf#page=5

Or rather, this URL. My mistake.

[Danny Levine]

Best. Review. Ever.

..well, best you've done this far--Lacuna is an awesome game, and you did a great job fo nailing down something that's pretty tough to nail down.

Good on 'ya. :)

[JD]

I just got out oof my first game with this system, I have fallen in love with it. It was great, other than the fact that my char got stuck when these guys took the part of my brain that lets me out. lol. But it was great. Now we have ordered the book and we are going to get it and have campaingns on a regular basis.

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