Privateer Press - Iron Kingdoms Character Guide AT THE PRINTERS! - See .pdf preview

[Karl Green]

In the end it is all about personal tastes, etc.

TO ME (and maybe to me alone) they seem pretty similar, as does DragonMech. I will look them over when they come out and get the one(s) I like and think are worth it IF they are worth it.

IK would have been a sure sale for me a year ago, now it has to complete for my attention AND has to blow me away or I will shrug my shoulders and move on. Same goes for the other two. I have plenty of worlds these days and lots of interested stuff to spend my money on... NOT just D&D stuff (waiting for M&M revised, Annual #1 for sure, others maybe)

Now is the Monsternomic (sp?) a great monster book? You bet. I am just rather tired of waiting AND if I REALLY want to run a game in this world with the World info I have to wait until the end of the year to get the complete set

 

[Banshee16]

Unless I'm woefully misinformed, that does not describe Eberron at all. Nor does it describe steampunk. Eberron is the opposite of -punk, it's another misused term -pulp. Punk is all about gritty urban dystopias, Eberron is all about high adventure and over-the-top action ala Raiders of the Lost Ark. Also, Eberron doesn't have any steam-like technology, which has been repeated ad nauseum here and other places. Why that particular fallacy continues to dog discussions of the setting is beyond me.

That's because you apparently don't understand what steampunk is. Steampunk isn't just anything with steampowered engines of some sort, and Cockney accents, it's a specific vision of an urban dystopia centered on an Industrial Revolution type of setting. Iron Kingdoms really doesn't have that vibe at all and is therefore only superficially a little bit like steampunk, if even that.

Zeppelins are always nice. They may already exist, though -- the Warmachine book does mention once or twice odd flying contraptions. I guess if the book actually does come out within the next month or two we'll all know, won't we?

I may very well not be quite correct in my understanding of the specific definition of steampunk. However. Unless I confused myself, or simply didn't write clearly enough, I wasn't trying to say that Eberron had black powder etc. Iron Kingdoms does. It also has sprawling urban distopias, grime, big industrialized factories seemingly spewing soot into the sky, etc. It also has grit oozing from the pores. That's what I see when I read the three Witchfire modules, Lock and Load, and Monsternomicon. From that angle, I think it uses a lot of elements of Steampunk. Maybe that's just me.

Eberron is high fantasy....but taken to the level where they do have devices and things which are somewhat Steampunk-like. Admittedly, they're not using black powder and such. But they don't need to. My copy of Sorcery and Steam states that Steampunk doesn't *have* to be reliant upon steam and coal. It can be the application of other arts to create technological type devices which are otherwise out of period. In fact, it even lists bound elementals used to drive vehicles or devices as an example of a steampunk variant that doesn't have to depend on coal. And Eberron fits that idea very well. They've got elemental powered ships etc. created by the gnomes. They've got the lightning train (which uses the powered khyber stones to allow it to fly between cities). They've got magic used to allow towers to stretch *way* higher into the sky than normally possible.

So I do think that Iron Kingdoms has a lot of Steampunk elements, and Eberron has steam-style devices and technology.

I guess we'll all have to see when the book finally comes out. I don't think that either is a hardcore Steampunk game (ie. like Arcanum). From the impressions I've been getting, on a scale of 1 to 10, I'm thinking that Iron Kingdoms is like a 6 or 7, and Eberron a 4, with regards to how "Steampunky" they are.

Banshee

 

[Buttercup]

I'll definately be buying this. Presently my players are adventuring in Freeport, but IK looks to me like a good candidate for the up-to-now nameless "mainland". Naturally I'll need the world guide too. But since I've got enough material already to keep my group busy for about 6 months, I'm not all that worried about release dates...yet.

 

[Desdichado]

I'm not sure that there is a "specific" definition of steampunk. See, I'd otherwise call Iron Kingdoms at least borderline steampunk, but Privateer Press specifically rejects that label.

To me, though, steampunk is an outgrowth of cyberpunk, and it's pretty much the same genre but with steam instead of robotics, etc. The Difference Engine is the quintessential steampunk story.

 

[Desdichado]

I'll definately be buying this. Presently my players are adventuring in Freeport, but IK looks to me like a good candidate for the up-to-now nameless "mainland". Naturally I'll need the world guide too. But since I've got enough material already to keep my group busy for about 6 months, I'm not all that worried about release dates...yet.

Yeah, I think Freeport and the IK are a particularly good fit too. There's even a few specific locations I can imagine sliding Freeport in, based on Lock and Load. For that matter, the "feel" of Freeport and Corvus aren't really that different either, although the geography certainly is.

 

[jerichothebard]

Well, for me, the lack of interest is that it took so long to come out that I went ahead and developed my own setting (which isn't even vaugely like IK).

Had they brought it out when they said they were, I would have bought it, run my game in it, probably bought whatever supplements they created... But it took too long and I wound up creating my own world, which I have put too much work into to abandon. So they don't get my buck.

Which is too bad, because I think it will rock.

jtb

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

PP is the Blizzard of d20. I'm sure the IKCG will rock muchly, and I am looking forward to the 3.5 MN! and Witchfire.