Welcome back! I hope that you had a productive week and remembered to take time to play games with family and friends.
Back in part 44 of the “I Have a Board Game Idea, Now What?” series I discussed what role lore has in board games and their design. As a follow up to this post, I wanted to start a series of blog posts about the lore behind The Hackers Guild. For this week’s post, the first in the series, I wanted to look at the story behind the background story and setting of the game.
The story behind the background story
When I first started designing The Hackers Guild, I didn’t spend much time thinking about the story behind the game. All I really knew was that I wanted to design a hacker-themed board game. Shortly after hiring Jonathan to do the artwork for The Hackers Guild, he asked me what the story behind the game was so he would have something to take inspiration from while creating the artwork for the game. Using Mr. Robot as a source of inspiration, I sat down to respond to Jonathan and came up with the background story of The Hackers Guild in about 20 minutes.
The setting and background story for The Hackers Guild
The year is 2120 and the world’s population is still trying to overcome the devastation of the worldwide market crash of 2117. After a number of studies, it was revealed that corruption in government and the lack of unity among the government leaders were leading causes of the crash. As a result, a group of world leaders are now pushing for a single, worldwide government. Monolith Global Inc, an expert in cybernetics, has suggested that this government be run by robots, claiming that “It’s not possible for a robot to become corrupt, and as a result, they will always make the best decisions for the fate of mankind.”
However, a small number of people see this for what it really is – an attempt to enslave mankind. Known as the Hackers Guild, these ragtag freedom fighters are branded as criminals and are living as fugitives from the law. All reasonable attempts to convince the powers that be that they are making a huge mistake have failed. The only option remaining appears to be the destruction of the program from the inside out. There is only one problem: hacking the company’s network is said to be impossible. Despite this, more and more of the common people are joining in the cause.
Time is running out for the guild as they strive to perform the impossible: hacking Monolith Global Inc, destroying their robots, and saving humanity from slavery.
Members of The Hackers Guild are all humans who were born on a version of the planet Earth strongly resembling what we know today.
That is everything for this week. In upcoming entries of this series, we will start looking at the story behind Monolith Global, as well as a personal history for each of the six hacker personas that players can play as so keep an eye out for those. Until next time, happy designing.
Neat to read the back story! Thanks for posting!
Thanks for reading!