World of Lazarus: Some Thoughts

Lazarus, come forth.

I have been repeatedly disappointed by Greg Rucka and Micheal Lark's Lazarus. It always seemed to skirt the edge of being good and ended up as, well, adequate. Well drawn (if a little too close visually to something that a high-end television studio might produce), fascinatingly detached in its depiction of violence, suggesting a great deal. It's been running on-off since 2013: Green Ronin applied it to its Modern AGE system in 2018, publishing World of Lazarus. That's where I come in.

The premise is this: the year is X + 65. In the year X, the sixteen wealthiest families in the world signed the Macau Accords and divided up the globe amongst themselves. Nation states broken or eroded by crises and catastrophe folded relatively easily. A new age of feudalism begins: there is Family, there are Serfs and there are Waste. 

Why is this setting called Lazarus? Well, each family has a champion, enhanced by the technology of the new era. They are stupendously capable in combat and may survive injuries that would be death in the unaugmented. Accordingly, if you want to kill a Lazarus, apparently you need to dismember them: therefore, each Lazarus carries a large sword, or something of the sort. A Lazarus is one of the Family, and is quite possibly a propaganda icon. The series focuses on Forever, Lazarus of House Carlyle. 

***

At this point, some of you will be rolling your eyes. I sort of am myself. Would these amoral capitalists really set up a world where the term for their chief enforcers is Lazari? Is one of them also at work on the Icarus Project?

Allow me to suggest the following, springing in part from the 'Chimpanzees in Cambridge' debate. Most grand speculative settings have in them some key element that, simply, looks really cool to somebody regardless of how much sense it makes. There's exceptions here and there, I suppose - largely I should imagine alternate history, which occasionally produces literal histories of another world rather than a thriller set in another timeline - but the beautiful pearl is created by some speck of grit in the oyster. You can extend this further, if desired - how many historians writing detailed papers on barley production in Swabian monasteries got their start reading about Agincourt?

That's probably not too controversial a thesis. But I rather enjoy (and am not alone in enjoying) settings that hold together: where vast armies don't teleport, where horses need oats and curry-brushes and horseshoes, where rulers have to acknowledge laws and customs even if they wish to ignore or trample them. There's some tension with all that and wizards or dragons or psychics or laser swords or Lazari - and resolving that is an interesting problem! Likewise, not resolving it or failing to find an adequate fig-leaf is dissatisfying: some critiques of the latter seasons of Game of Thrones focused on this. 

And so this leads back to Lazarus. Sometimes it all clicks together and works wonderfully, sometimes it lapses into smallness - not quite the 'worst of all possible worlds' version of it this discussion in the LA Review posits, but still not great. It can dwell on the few members of a Family without much regard for the greater system around them (be they Serfs or other Families - Cf. treatments of House Tully or Tyrrell). Which is what engages me about the possibilities of an RPG for Lazarus. 

***

So, some thoughts on World of Lazarus. 

• This isn't a review of the Modern AGE system from Green Ronin, but from what I can see it looks a touch unwieldy. Characters get Backgrounds, Professions, Drives, Specialisations and more - I'm used to something a little lighter. Where's the 52 Pages for assault rifles, smartphones and defibrillators?
• Various modes of play are suggested based on a group of Wastes, Serf or Family - survival, service and intrigue being the centre of each. 
• This said, the specimen Campaign seems rather railroad like, darting from Scene to Scene. Waste campaigns at least should have a rather more open form of play (A Hexcrawl through contested Morray/D'Souza territory in Columbia? Guerrilla operations against Vassalovka?), and Family constraints are limited (though subtle). 
• An Appendix contains notes for how to play as Lazari. The variant where a Lazarus is a shared PC sounds best, and most like the depictions of Lazari as military assets or political footballs. 
• There's a nice section on how an organisation a GM creates might grow and plot to advance itself. A component I can see myself using elsewhere. 
• The two major families in the former United States - Carlyle and Hock, divided by the Mississippi - receive the most development. This is in part due to their place in the comics, and the contrast between Carlyle's 'Longitudinal Capitalism' and what we might term Hock's pharmaceutically assisted juche is pronounced. 



All the same, one finds a use for this evergreen image.

• Sub-genre taxonomy enthusiasts! Worry not! World of Lazarus has you covered: Isn't this cyber punk? .... In cyberpunk, corporations are faceless, implacable......In Lazarus, the Families are anything but faceless. These sixteen dynasties make their political dramas and infighting aggressively personal.  
• Grumble One: Why do so many of the Families dress in business casual? What sort of Neo-Feudal future is this?
• Grumble Two: If you are including maps of a setting that is dynamically changing (EG, Rausling absorbing Bittner territory) those maps should be clearly dated. That those maps have the Americas at the centre is understandable (see above) if hardly comfortable.



Before the aforementioned absorption. 



• A nice touch of the worldbuildng contained in Lazarus is that not all the families grew from big obviously sinister tech or pharma companies: sugar processing, entertainment, insurance and 'Elfsaga video game cartridges' enabled some of them to get their start.
• There's some appropriate variations on the Family-Serf-Waste schemee in different territories: different terms used or attitudes taken. (EG, Carragher serfs refer to themselves as Workers and shun conspicuous consumption. This does not necessarily make their lives any less comfortable.)
• Inamura's intensive use of robotics for labour feels, if not stereotypical, then uninspired (Japan = Hi-Tech). One notes the problems of an ageing Japanese population in the present day, though this seems like it would be corrected by one means or the other in X + 65.
• Armitage is based in 'The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland-Made-One'; the head of Armitage eventually became the Duke of Lancaster and benefited by the marriage of his daughter into the Royal Family. The authors of World of Lazarus note: 'Armitage arguably benefited from a culture more readily familiar with its feudal roots and class system than almost any other Territory.' Hmmm.
• The Armitage Lazarus is a Bond pastiche named Sir Thomas Huston, complete with Idris Elba references.
• Minetta (apparently descended from a family associated with the Dutch East India Company) is described as 'the last true Capitalist power' for being more centred on trade than territorial dominance, and relatively laissez-faire internally. They are willing to work with 'local powers—be they warlords, junior signatories, religious leaders, or others', which explains how they've kept hold of Iran.
• The effects of climate change are felt in Lazarus: indeed, 'The vast majority of the Meyers-Qasimi Serf population live in idyllic, microclimate-controlled safety in cities such as such as Tel Aviv, Riffa, Cairo, and Dubai'.
• Speaking of which, a recurring security issue for Meyers-Qasimi is religious fundamentalism. The old world does not die so quietly.
• Vassalovka was once a Lesser House in service of Sidorov, the initial signatory. The vastness of their territory means they have given up on enforcing a shared culture and a great deal of autonomy is given to Lesser Houses.
• The impact of social media seems to be downplayed in Lazarus - perhaps unsurprisng in a setting dreamt up around 2012. Still, later material on Vassalovka does have a certain emphasis on Grief Farms and social media personalities. 

There's more I could note for your attention; I'm not certain it's super necessary to go over tech levels or what have you. Does World of Lazarus provide the information you'd need to write your own material in this setting? Yes. Do you really want to? Well, that's the question. I don't suppose I've sold it marvellously here. There's potential untapped. But I wouldn't tap it in this system.