Dimension 20 Announces Upcoming Steampunk-Themed Season

Dropout has announced a new season of Dimension 20, which will premiere on June 4th. The new season, titled Cloudward, Ho! will feature Brennan Lee Mulligan and the recurring Interpid Heroes cast (Emily Axford, Ally Beardsley, Brian Murphy, Zac Oyama, Siobhan Thompson, and Lou Wilson) in a steampunk-inspired adventure. No other details about the Actual Play season was announced, although it's assumed that the series will continue using D&D 5E as has been the case with all longer seasons.

Episodes will air weekly on the Dropout streaming service on Wednesdays. The trailer can be seen below:

 

[GMMichael]

I believe his home campaign is running 3.5 . . .

That's admirable, and what I'd use if I ran a home D&D game.

By the way, I know D&D can run steampunk. I mean, isn't that basically what Eberron is?

 

[AlViking]

That's admirable, and what I'd use if I ran a home D&D game.

By the way, I know D&D can run steampunk. I mean, isn't that basically what Eberron is?

The line between steampunk and Eberron's magitech is mostly one of description. D&D has had steampunk like bits and pieces for a long, long time.

 

[bedir than]

Meanwhile I don't see why you couldn't do Steampunk with D&D. You might want to reflavor a few things here and there but I don't see much need to do any massive house rules.

My goblins are smog-punk, think even dirtier than steampunk. For the most part that shows up as Artifice flavored differently. Little packets of smoke-sand, tar-tree oils, springs and gears, etc.

 

[humble minion]

There's approximately a million 3rd party steampunk supplements for 5e out there, I wonder if they'll be using an existing one, or homebrewing.

In my limited experience (a level 1-5 Iron Kingdoms campaign), the main headaches with emulating the steam vibe in D&D are:

• making stuff. Engineering and tinkering and inventing etc is at the absolute core of steampunk/steam age settings, and 5e D&D is utterly dreadful at anything related to crafting (deliberately, according to the designers, because they wanted PCs to be out adventuring rather than hanging around in a workshop, so they made crafting as unattractive and suboptimal course as possible).
• the guns thing. The more and better guns exist in a setting, the more attractive ranged combat becomes in comparison to melee, and melee is the only real application of the Strength stat in D&D. Dex becomes even more of a dominant stat than it is already, and a lot of melee-focused rules, feats, spells etc become less applicable. This might not be a problem, per se, but it definitely drives the sort of PCs you'll get in a campaign, and can lead to un-fun experiences for the guy who rolled up a 18 Str PC in heavy armour.

It's not impossible, but there are hurdles. I'll be interested to see how they go.

 

[RangerWickett]

EN World published a steampunk D&D campaign! It's kinda silly to ask if D&D can handle it.