Beam Saber (Part 1)

Unlike other mecha TTRPGs, this one is about the characters

Beam Saber is a game by Austin Ramsay. Game material and content is reproduced here for review purposes and is owned by Austin Ramsay. The game was the beneficiary of a crowdfunding campaign.

1. Every Individual Component Is The Best

In our analysis, we consider every individual artistic element of a game the best; we don’t find bad or good useful. So, the Split/Party framework assumes it is the best art, best layout, best writing, best design. This is an acknowledgment that nobody makes “bad” art on purpose; any given element is the best art that could have been produced at that point, restricted by its material conditions and constraints of time and effort. This is also because saying something is good/bad art is the most useless criticism that can be given. In practical terms, this section is for things we will not touch on the review but merit acknowledgment.

Lucrécia

No designers I respect more than those that choose to make a Forged in the Dark (FitD) and keep fighting the design framework tendency to rubber-band Blades enough to deliver a game past the finishing line. Designing a mecha TTRPG is one of the most challenging enterprises for anyone that really wants to tangle with it, rather than do lip-service for aesthetic reasons. Many try, few succeed, and the ones that do, achieve so by being precise and focused in scope.

Given those two massive challenges to this game, it is with great trepidation and excitement that I approach the final version of Beam Saber, a FitD mecha game. The FitD mecha game. A FitD game that has been in development for seven years, a game that I played through at least a dozen different versions, back from the first attempts at development to the games leading to this critic.

Beam Saber is here, in all its glory.

Brad

Beam Saber, a game that was hyped up to me at various points over the years as te The Story Mecha Game, finally, the time has come to play it, and to discover if it can live up to that promise.

2. Meet The Game At The Level It Is At

Each game comes with certain expectations and tone. To properly break it down, we have to meet the game at the level it is: not lament its choice of premise and wish it was something else, nor resent for not conforming with our politics, not letting “missed opportunities” stand in our way of applying the critical framework relentlessly. It also includes not working with the game as marketed or how it exists in our desires, but as it is.

Ludo

It is a TTRPG about war-machines, violence and war. That cannot be avoided and carries all that needs to be safely and comfortably managed for all wishing to play Beam Saber.

Beam Saber is very careful and specific on its safety tools, being interwoven with game mechanics in various key points. It also addresses and empowers players in how to develop within their own space a culture of safety and comfort, effusively sharing insights clearly obtained from their experiences with doing so through play of the game, letting this communication of experiences and negotiation be the best tools to recreate your own procedures and mutual assured safeguarding.

The art direction is brilliant, with the art and layout — despite an initial impression of too busy, but growing on me, — fully used with purpose and game design, characterizing the tone and gamescape of the War. Always a delight to encounter a TTRPG that cares about art direction, which stands out in using t to both highlight illustration, layout and writing’s aesthetic composition as well as a game design element.

For all its clever design, Beam Saber is still a quite orthodox FitD. If you dislike Blades in the Dark and/or do not click with Forged in the Dark, this game will not be what sells you on it. That’s said, if you only have minor frustrations with those games, Beam Saber is quite savvy in how it acknowledges and paves over those issues; the additional work over seven years of design has been tried and tested to improve on the original system framework. This makes Beam Saber an obligatory game for FitD fans.

Brad

Do the pregame talk about how violence is going to look and accept that the cleanest hand will still become dirty. The game has a lovely art direction that always enhances the way the book flows and the narrative locked within it, and I can’t say anything bad about the clean (if a little cluttered for my taste) layout.

The game does an excellent job teaching FiTD as you go , and as someone who had only played Band of Blades, I still picked it up quickly and easily.

3. Identify What The Game Says It Is About

Games are about things. Usually. Mostly. That is often the same thing they market themselves as. This often means to establish the relationship of the game with systems, mechanical frameworks, genre, etc. This is how games establish exceptions about the nature of play and establish a common space for creation.

Lucrécia

Mechas, by way of Forged in the Dark. Humanity took to the stars, forgot Earth, waged War, found Earth during the War, retaking Earth is a political symbol to rally around, ata yata. Classic, effective set-up to roll out some mechas.

Pilot playbooks, Crews become Squads. The endless doom spiral is slowed down,so the devastation of war takes less a toll than being a criminal landlord in goth not-London — which also let’s your characters become, well characters. The lack of character of Blades characters is replaced with a more pilot/mecha focus rather than a Crew focus: each player controls two characters — the Pilot and the Vehicle being two characters with their own characteristics, working in tandem. With its innovative tech to the design framework, more time for characters to breath, Beam Saber is able to set its own pace and focus apart from its baseline framework.

Brad

Welcome back to Earth, now a political victory that must be done for various space powers. You play a role in this new front from smugglers to [redacted] squads taking care of various missions for various factions.

Every player controls a pilot who in turn controls a Vehicle, this creates a fun system that spreads out FiTD’s tendency to doom spiral and makes a very solid and interesting feedback of experience gain along with interesting scale play.

4. Uncover What The Game Is REALLY About

What the game says it is about is not always what the game is about. This is where we look at all the weird interactions, examining the system that game creates, how the way mechanics interact with the text and art, how it exists in a given context, how well parts flow together or get in the way. This creates a much richer environment that the original design could ever imagine once a game hits the table.

Ludo

The main reason why what seems like an easy thing to do (hack FitD to make your game) become such demanding and long-development process comes down to the same issue: it is extremely hard to wash the Blades in the Dark off. You think you managed to move on, but it keeps creeping in and showing up, oozing between the coat of paint and corroding the fancy new engines strapped on top of the hood.

So, if left to its down device, what almost every single FitD game does is what Blades do: play disposable two-dimensional scoundrels, burning through a dozen of them to accumulate money and territory to a criminal enterprise, so that eventually ten characters down the line one of those non-persons is able to retire to become a landlord (legit) rather than landlord (criminal). And many people do this even for games that try to crawl away from FitD origins, by being run like one would run BitD. So, the biggest achievement of any FitD game is being a game that is able to do literally anything else.

Beam Saber succeeds. The Vehicle additions add a much needed buffer to characters. The folding of Factions and Heat mechanics together merge flawlessly to create war stories even better than a dedicated war-themed FitD like Bands of Blades. Not only delivering that personal touch through the actions of pilots, the way combat missions are organized is much more characterizing than scores. Everything is nested, and through the interactions of squad mates, rising rivalries, compromised enemy squads, Factions drift, there is always a connecting line between agency and small acts and the outcomes of the war. It is really impressive and elegant how adjusting the objectives, targets and rules of engagement for each Faction and mission drastically changes how the individual missions play, pacing, thematic resonance and strategic outcomes. Very light in its implementation, it is a gentle breeze cooling the engine.

Beam Saber is about rivalry. Every conflict, echoing and distilled into facing a succession of rivals in mecha duels. The progression of the war is by achieving missions; the progression of your characters is by escalating conflict with rivals, meeting rivals and beating them. It is about turning war with the most advanced futuristic war-machines into the emotional wrecking escalation and prolonged steps into stepping a spear into another guy.

Of course this would not work with a close adherence to FitD baseline; BitD characters are not much of a person. Once again, simple, elegant and effective pays off. Characters are driven by a History, Tragedy and Opening, which feed on each other and reinforce every sortie who they are. On the meatier side of mechanics Drives neatly tie back in looser points of the FitD engine, putting them together and using them for deep characterization: it is what your Pilot, as a person, fight for: not pursuing cash to retire as a landlord, but how they convert fighting into changing the world and enacting change. Through decisive actions, long-term projects, testing their beliefs, forging new connections and compromising the relationships they previously established with squads and Factions, pursue their Drive. Truly, playing Beam Saber, one is consumed by fighting Rivals that stand between them and the power to change the world… or sacrifice what you achieved and hoped to achieved on behalf of someone else.

I mentioned before that mecha TTRPGs tend to benefit from being focused experience. Firebrand mini-games offering precise snapshots, Last Shooting is on the duels between two pilots, and so on. Even games like Lancer shine the most when focused on what they care about (grid-based heroic tactical combat). Beam Saber casts quite a wide net into different elements of the mech genre, and perform quite admirable at everything I have tried to do within it; unless it is chasing after something quite specific, it is difficult not to recommend Beam Saber as the TTRPG that may please the widest number of mecha fans.

Brad

Beam Saber is about being in the shit, you wake up every day, hop in your big mech and do whatever job that you are barely qualified to do and hope you don’t run into the enemy and when you do you kill them and try to make the world make sense after. The worst part is the ones you run into multiple times, the dudes and chicks who you realize are just like you, underqualified and underpaid and risking their lives for things they believe in.

You start to hate ‘em, you start to wish they would just yield because if they did this could be over sooner and you could build that ranch you’ve always wanted. The worst part is? Maybe if you’d met over a pool hall instead of the ruins of some old earth city you coulda been friends, maybe something more… But to hell wth it, engage thrusters and activate Beam Saber.

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