I had a strange moment of hobby rumination lately, revolving around the question of pre-determined lore. The whole thing began with a little bit of a deep dive into Steel Rift. I found out about this game from a YouTube video about inexpensive starter sets for wargames. Steel Rift has a starter set for $45, which is a good deal for a game with six miniatures, a quick-start version of the rules, and even some simple terrain.

The author, Ash Barker, also wrote another mech wargame, Gamma Wolves, which appears to have a similar ruleset. So naturally, I started looking at reviews. What surprised me was that most people liked Steel Rifts over Gamma Wolves, they complained about the fact that the game lacked lore. Lore, like a backstory. Like, “here’s side one, here’s side two, they have giant mechs for some reason and this is why they fight.”

Which really surprised me. I enjoy when a wargame has lore, but if you find a solid (and inexpensive) game, how long does it take you to come up with something on your own? Maybe you might even re-skin historical events and make them mecha-oriented. The 1800’s is a gold mine for this sort of thing.

So, for example, let’s just pick Souliote War (1803 CE). The Souliotes were a Orthodox Christian tribal community in Albania. Basically ignored by the Ottoman Empire, they slowly built up military strength, supplemented surreptitiously by European powers like Russian and France, who were hoping that an internal military conflict would weaken the Ottoman Empire (which they were under as a semi-autonomous state). When the United Kingdom needed help against Napoleon and wanted the Ottoman Empire to assist them, help to the Souliotes dried up. At the same time, the Souliotes had been led by a charismatic religious leader named Samuel who believed that independence was possible. Add to the story betrayal, kidnapping, genocide, and a bunch of women killing their own children in a ceremonial dance.

Now add mechs. Mechs given to the insurgents by foreign powers. An empire sabotaged by internal strife and religious zealotry. I could file the serial numbers off of a minor historical conflict and spin a compelling lore that allows both sides to feel good about fielding small plastic robots representing each side.

Spoiler alert, the Souliottes ended up losing, then becoming part of the war to make Greek independent, but never returned to their homeland. Tragic destiny!

Seriously, I need to write all this up. Because lore is not that hard. It just takes work and a little creativity. And should not keep you from enjoying a good game.