Gran Meccanismo
2023 ENNIE NOMINATED FOR BEST WRITING
A roleplaying game of fantastical inventions and Machiavellian politics in Renaissance Italy.
It is the Year of Our Lord 1510, and one has to wonder how differently history could have played out if Niccolò Machiavelli, the military commissioner of the Republic of Florence, had not understood the true scale of Leonardo da Vinci’s genius. In such a world, the visionary might simply have wasted his time painting portraits of women and doodling in a sketchbook. Instead, he unleashed a technological revolution where primitive computers, decorated with delicately painted cupids, run on water clocks; spring-powered tanks whir across the battlefield, cannons thundering from their flanks; and gliders flit across perfectly blue Tuscan skies.
Gran Meccanismo is a roleplaying game of swashbuckling adventure in a Renaissance Italy where Florence's winding alleys play host to spies, scholars, and sell-swords alike. Players are nobles, mercenaries, inventors, and artisans who may find themselves crossing wits with Machiavelli, avoiding the dangerous charms of Lucretia Borgia, or hearing Christopher Columbus telling tales of the new world he has discovered...
Professor Mark Galeotti runs the Mayak Intelligence consultancy and is also an Honorary Professor at UCL, a Senior Associate Fellow with RUSI and a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Institute of International Relations Prague. Formerly Head of History at Keele University in the UK and Professor of Global Affairs at New York University, he is a former Foreign Office adviser on Russian security affairs, and for 15 years (1991–2006) wrote a monthly column on this for Jane's Intelligence Review.