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Lasers & Feelings

A collection of 9 issues

The Bacon Strip Principle of Science Fiction

A Field Guide to Sci-Fi's Blind Spots How a piece of bacon, three play examples, and seven systematic erasures reveal what science fiction doesn't see—and why those absences shape the futures we imagine Introduction: The Interpretive Key A two-inch strip of bacon fell out of

Electric Eden Meets The Lost Folk

Well, what have we here? We made a joke, of course. That's what Electric Eden was — and still is — a sharpened stick whittled into a kind of prank, poking at the ambered reliquary of British folk tradition. We wrote a rules-light machine for breaking songs because we wanted

Designer's Notes: Electric Eden

Or: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Loop the Ballad What This Is, and Isn't This game emerged from a conversation between two people who could probably tell you which version of "Matty Groves" Sandy Denny was referencing in verse three of the Fairport Convention

Faith & Circuitry: An RPG About Signal and Noise

The magnificent beauty of John Harper's Lasers & Feelings is how adaptable (or as the "scene" likes to say, hackable) it is over almost any storytelling premise. We created a YACR (Yet Another Cyberpunk RPG) structured like a Docker container image (yes, we're nerds)

From Cyberdecks to Stagecoaches

Widescreen Dramas of Morality and Compromise, Set Two Centuries Apart An essay on the unexpected kinship between cyberpunk futures and post-Civil War Westerns At first glance, the neon-soaked streets of 2080 and the dust-choked trails of 1880 seem to share nothing but their aesthetic of decay. One crawls with chrome-limbed

Sense & Wonder: Against the Cozy Industrial Complex

The Problem with "Cozy" Modern "cozy" media has been colonized by productivity culture. What began as genuine comfort has become optimization disguised as rest. Animal Crossing gives you debt cycles with cute animals. Stardew Valley offers profit maximization with pastoral aesthetics. Self-care apps gamify mindfulness with

The War Beneath: Historical Echoes in Steel & Soul

A Personal Journey Through History, Memory, and Game Design This essay explores the historical and cultural currents that flow beneath Steel & Soul's mythic surface, but also examines how we come to understand complex historical patterns and why that understanding matters for how we create and play games.

Fragments from the Signal Wastes

Compiled from open-channel memory caches, ghost logs, and residual mindprint overlays. 1. The Neon Liturgy (Archive Loop 7) "This city's made of light..." Found on a corrupted DAT relic embedded in a broken synthpriest's chest cavity. It loops endlessly, like a hymn from an

At the Record Plant, 1978

A Lasers & Feelings hack of legendary studio sessions, inter-band drama, substance abuse, sprawling double-LPs, and Michael McDonald Character Creation Name: Pick something that sounds good on a marquee Role: Choose your position in the chaos: * The Songwriter (tortured genius with too many feelings) * The Producer (trying to wrangle chaos