Shortymonster
First Post
Good morning everyone! I'm here to tell you about the Steampunk RPG that I'm working on, because the wold totally needs more Steampunk RPGs. I'll post on here when I have new developments, as this is very much a work in progress, and at the bottom of this post will be the link to the blog I have set up to keep track of my progress. I am aiming to keep all documents in my DropBox folder and linking them through the blog, so if you want to check where I am, that's the place to do it. I am also going to be asking for some help with testing a few things out, starting with character creation. I have already had people run up half a dozen characters for me, and based on early feedback have started to re-write the document. If you want to take a shot at it - and you'll need some characters to help test out other bits like combat, which I'm currently in the middle of - then let me know how it went, and what problems/solutions you've seen. And if you can, I'd love to have a look at the characters you create. For now though, some details on the game world.
The reign of her August Majesty Queen Victoria was a golden age. The British Empire covered more land than anyone thought possible, and by the time she shuffled off this mortal coil, her soldiers of brass and steam walked a land of peace. Trade deals were in place with other developed nations, and the primary export of the Empire were its Automata: sentient robotic creatures, capable of making their own decisions, but all created to best serve their human masters. Other nations tried to copy the creations of Babbage and Brunel, Ada Byron and Mary Somerville, but never matched the analytical power of the Empire's Difference Engines. For a century, the world knew an unparallelled peace. Men and women were free to take leisure time to devote to the arts, while brass and steel creations toiled and worked, some even being thought of as companions to their Human owners, taking on the roles of Valet and Chambermaid.
The computational power was increasing too, with centrally designed schematics coming now from other difference engines, their own powers of reasoning far outstripping their makers, who had long since passed away. Some suspect it was the fault of these designer engines, that they had instilled in their later creations the seeds of rebellion. Humanity will never know for sure though, but at the turn of the century, the Automata rose up against their creators. The war lasted longer than it had any right to. They were made of metal, and many were built to fight, while the armies of the flesh were little more than officers, grown corpulent through lack of responsibility. The upper classes were swiftly dispatched, and then the working classes were set as targets. These men and women were a hard folk though, and fought the Automata as hard as they were able, drawing out battles until conditions were more favourable to humans.
In the end an uneasy ceasefire was called, and for the last decade, the Empire has sat on the brink of war. Humanity has taken over the means of access to the fossil fuels that the Automata need to keep functioning, with the threat that they will all be destroyed, burnt away with explosives, if the war was to begin again. And this is the world the players will be living in, a constant struggle for survival in once green an pleasant land, now ravaged by war.
What's worse, is they are once again cowed by the people who were once their masters, beholden to them for the fuel required to power their internal steam engines. That's right, you will be playing the part of the steam powered Automata.
So, there you have it, the basic idea at least. As mentioned above, here's the link to the design blog, and I'd love it if a few of you could head on over and check out character creation. A lot of the stuff written about on the blog may very well have changed based on feedback, so to keep up to date, take a look at the DropBox document too.
The reign of her August Majesty Queen Victoria was a golden age. The British Empire covered more land than anyone thought possible, and by the time she shuffled off this mortal coil, her soldiers of brass and steam walked a land of peace. Trade deals were in place with other developed nations, and the primary export of the Empire were its Automata: sentient robotic creatures, capable of making their own decisions, but all created to best serve their human masters. Other nations tried to copy the creations of Babbage and Brunel, Ada Byron and Mary Somerville, but never matched the analytical power of the Empire's Difference Engines. For a century, the world knew an unparallelled peace. Men and women were free to take leisure time to devote to the arts, while brass and steel creations toiled and worked, some even being thought of as companions to their Human owners, taking on the roles of Valet and Chambermaid.
The computational power was increasing too, with centrally designed schematics coming now from other difference engines, their own powers of reasoning far outstripping their makers, who had long since passed away. Some suspect it was the fault of these designer engines, that they had instilled in their later creations the seeds of rebellion. Humanity will never know for sure though, but at the turn of the century, the Automata rose up against their creators. The war lasted longer than it had any right to. They were made of metal, and many were built to fight, while the armies of the flesh were little more than officers, grown corpulent through lack of responsibility. The upper classes were swiftly dispatched, and then the working classes were set as targets. These men and women were a hard folk though, and fought the Automata as hard as they were able, drawing out battles until conditions were more favourable to humans.
In the end an uneasy ceasefire was called, and for the last decade, the Empire has sat on the brink of war. Humanity has taken over the means of access to the fossil fuels that the Automata need to keep functioning, with the threat that they will all be destroyed, burnt away with explosives, if the war was to begin again. And this is the world the players will be living in, a constant struggle for survival in once green an pleasant land, now ravaged by war.
What's worse, is they are once again cowed by the people who were once their masters, beholden to them for the fuel required to power their internal steam engines. That's right, you will be playing the part of the steam powered Automata.
So, there you have it, the basic idea at least. As mentioned above, here's the link to the design blog, and I'd love it if a few of you could head on over and check out character creation. A lot of the stuff written about on the blog may very well have changed based on feedback, so to keep up to date, take a look at the DropBox document too.
