Metropolis

By Evan Torner

Players: 10

Genre: Sci-fi

There is only the City. Few know what exists outside it. If such an Outside existed, however, its Inhabitants would desperately yearn for it. For as nothing exists outside the City, so too does nothing exist inside its Inhabitants.

Metropolis’ architects designed it according to what its denizens could afford: the Ruling class lives far above the rest of the populace in the Spire, their sons playing in the wondrous Pleasure Gardens when young – and in the decadent Yoshiwara district after reaching sexual maturity. Under it lies the bustling Factory where the Ruled work in dangerous conditions, producing the goods and services for the City thanks to the power provided by the almighty Heart Machine. Elevated highways and airships provide transit between its vast production facilities. An elevator ride down reveals the cramped and squalid apartments where most of the Ruled reside. It is rumoured that another City existed before the City, with its winding Catacombs still penetrating its underbelly like a root system. A single, squat House amidst the skyscrapers immortalises a long-forgotten architecture, an engineer within its walls feverishly developing an immortality of a different sort.

The Ruling – the City’s Head – rule by ignoring their class privilege. The Ruled – the City’s Hands – are ruled by fear and tedium. It is a closed system that sustains itself, yet proves utterly unsustainable. The hierarchies harden, becoming brittle and cracking under their inflexibility. And cracks have begun to appear in the City too.

Can the Head and the Hands be mediated through the Heart?

Cost: free

Available from: http://guyintheblackhat.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/metropolis-larp-fastaval.pdf