Metropolis
By Evan Torner
Can the Head and the Hand be mediated through the Heart?
Metropolis is a science-fiction melodrama in three acts based on the eponymous 1927 silent film by Fritz Lang, though no experience with the film is necessary. Players are invited into 
an expressionist mega-city, where their characters are largely determined by their social class and the spaces which they inhabit. Alienated from Nature, God, each other and themselves, each character yearns for some kind of meaningful connection in the world, and yet are continuously foiled by the social system in which they live and – paradoxically – the very crises that threaten that system. In addition, at any given time, some of the players physically embody the very City that constricts the characters, manipulating the others’ actions and emotions while being acutely aware of the impending doom that awaits it. The game rules are designed to explore these issues and situations, as well as simulate the exaggerated and bombastic style of this particular German film, while giving the players agency over the ending.
Class struggle has never been so allegorically simple, yet so emotionally complex.
Length: 3-4 hours (including 2 breaks)
Players: 6-11
Genre: Expressionist science-fiction melodrama
Player Type: Those players who like mime and physical improvisation, can explore complex social issues like class and wealth through simple parables, and think acting means overacting.
GM Type: A GM who can take charge between scenes, help the act transitions, rules and plotline flow along without interfering with the action as it unfolds.
About the author: Evan Torner is a doctoral candidate in German and Film Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA. A longtime tabletop GM in the States, he’s only recently become a game studies scholar and a larpwright as well, visiting Fastaval first in Spring 2010 and falling in love with the convention right then and there.
