BigFreekinGoblinoid
First Post
yep --see the post above where I give your props!
Are you going to do the Steampunk thing?
- Thread starter Krug
- Start date
Carnifex
First Post
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Are you going to do the Steampunk thing?
Heh, yep, it's me (I posted my last post before reading all the way through the thread). Anyway, here's the little bit of 'intro' I wrote up for Steam & Steel. Hope it sounds appealing to people
Imagine a world where the magic of fantasy and the power of science is thrown together to create and exciting new mixture of the eldritch and the mechanical. Industrializing cities spread and grow, becoming cityscapes of roofs and chimneys, vents and smokestacks, smoke pluming upwards from the incessant toil of hundreds of smithies and alchemists and factories. Mechanics and arcane engineers assemble mighty beasts of steel, designing armoured constructs to take to the field of battle and ironclad vehicles to travel far and wide. Elves seek to defend the boundaries of their ancestral lands from the burgeoning cultures around them, bringing their advanced technology, magic and skill to bear against their foes, fighting from graceful flying airships and wielding blades and armour augmented by steamwork power. Dwarves delve deeper than ever before in their mines with massive drilling machines, their fortresses sporting massive chimneys to gout forth the fumes of a thousand machines forging weapons of war. Evil goblin necromancers craft sinister and deadly war machines that feed off the souls of the dead to fuel their engines, darkening the skies above their hordes with the smoke of burning corpses. The clergy of a machine cult spread their word far and wide, bringing with them new technologies and crafting steel prosthetics to replace weak flesh and blood. Turmoil and change grips a land that is undergoing the transition from feudal and ancient cultures to dynamic and powerful industrial nations.
This guide is aimed to allow a Dungeon Master to take a more conventional fantasy setting, a campaign rich with fantastic beasts and exotic magic, and to integrate the marvels of steam technology into it to create a world like that described above – one made exciting from the opportunities to be had from the power and possibilities of steamworks.
Steam & Steel presents rules and ideas for a DM wishing to incorporate steam technology into their campaign setting, however much or little they may desire. From small everyday steamwork devices to the massive machines employed by heavy industries, to steamwork prosthetics and deadly constructs, this guide presents a framework of rules that cover many different forms of steam technology, and explores the possibilities of meshing magic with machinery to get a unique feel for a fantasy world. As well as rules, Steam & Steel covers the impact that steam technology has in a setting, on a wider scale than just the items that adventurers can get their hands on, delving into the effects and ramifications of the changes that advancing technology brings about and the advance of industrialization.
BigFreekinGoblinoid said:
Heh, yep, it's me (I posted my last post before reading all the way through the thread). Anyway, here's the little bit of 'intro' I wrote up for Steam & Steel. Hope it sounds appealing to people
Imagine a world where the magic of fantasy and the power of science is thrown together to create and exciting new mixture of the eldritch and the mechanical. Industrializing cities spread and grow, becoming cityscapes of roofs and chimneys, vents and smokestacks, smoke pluming upwards from the incessant toil of hundreds of smithies and alchemists and factories. Mechanics and arcane engineers assemble mighty beasts of steel, designing armoured constructs to take to the field of battle and ironclad vehicles to travel far and wide. Elves seek to defend the boundaries of their ancestral lands from the burgeoning cultures around them, bringing their advanced technology, magic and skill to bear against their foes, fighting from graceful flying airships and wielding blades and armour augmented by steamwork power. Dwarves delve deeper than ever before in their mines with massive drilling machines, their fortresses sporting massive chimneys to gout forth the fumes of a thousand machines forging weapons of war. Evil goblin necromancers craft sinister and deadly war machines that feed off the souls of the dead to fuel their engines, darkening the skies above their hordes with the smoke of burning corpses. The clergy of a machine cult spread their word far and wide, bringing with them new technologies and crafting steel prosthetics to replace weak flesh and blood. Turmoil and change grips a land that is undergoing the transition from feudal and ancient cultures to dynamic and powerful industrial nations.
This guide is aimed to allow a Dungeon Master to take a more conventional fantasy setting, a campaign rich with fantastic beasts and exotic magic, and to integrate the marvels of steam technology into it to create a world like that described above – one made exciting from the opportunities to be had from the power and possibilities of steamworks.
Steam & Steel presents rules and ideas for a DM wishing to incorporate steam technology into their campaign setting, however much or little they may desire. From small everyday steamwork devices to the massive machines employed by heavy industries, to steamwork prosthetics and deadly constructs, this guide presents a framework of rules that cover many different forms of steam technology, and explores the possibilities of meshing magic with machinery to get a unique feel for a fantasy world. As well as rules, Steam & Steel covers the impact that steam technology has in a setting, on a wider scale than just the items that adventurers can get their hands on, delving into the effects and ramifications of the changes that advancing technology brings about and the advance of industrialization.
Carnifex
First Post
BigFreekinGoblinoid said:yep --see the post above where I give your props!
*nods in gratitude* I'm just an idiot for not reading the thread through entirely
Anyway, I had one of the test readers describing Steam & Steel as 'the steampunk bible'. I hope it lives up to that description
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Carnifex
First Post
Anyway, yes, to finally get back to the main topic of the thread, I've been doing the steampunk thing for quite a while. The main reason I originally wrote Steam & Steel was because I'd been incorporating steam tech into my campaign for quite a while, and was encouraged by Horacio to write it for the now-dead Horade Publishing. Now I have a proper set of rules I can use in my own campaigns, and hopefully other people find 'em useful too
My next project involves writing up another facet of my Acrozatarim game that is slightly unusual in terms of fantasy
My next project involves writing up another facet of my Acrozatarim game that is slightly unusual in terms of fantasy
Jeremy Ackerman-Yost
Explorer
I just have to say that is the coolest game concept I've seen in a long time. That is a game which needs to be played, IMO.TheAuldGrump said:
BigFreekinGoblinoid
First Post
The Auld Grump - I'd like to see the Druid for this setting
Desdichado
Hero
Auld Grump -- does this campaign have a website? 
Jack Daniel
Legend
My campaign sort of "grew into" steampunk as my group and I decided that it's basically cooler than pure medieval or pure renaissance D&D. To that end, I don't understand people who have a need for "pure steampunk" defined as lacking in magic. Settings like that are already dime-a-dozen. If I want to play D&D in a steampunk world, it has to be D&D first, with all the elves and magic and dragons included, and if you don't like it, then you're a stupid-head.
The premise of the Relative Entropy setting is not so much an alternate earth as a very earth-like fantasy world. As a kid I had three favorite fantasy authors, JRR Tolkien (where I get my love for D&D), CS Lewis (where I draw a lot of inspiration for religion in RPGs), and L. Frank Baum, the one fantasy author who really knew how to write stories that mixed magic and technology. Baum is called the inventor of the "American fairy tale," and I sort of took that to heart, because I also draw on a lot more fairy tale than mythology for my games.
Basically, if you take the world as it was in the Napoleonic era (because I like lots of swashbuckling to still be around), with some of the technology of the Victorian era, and all the fantasy found in Elizabethan folklore, you've got my campaign world. Give me airships, flintlocks, rapiers, and anomolous steam-driven contraptions, and I'm a happy dungeon-master.
The premise of the Relative Entropy setting is not so much an alternate earth as a very earth-like fantasy world. As a kid I had three favorite fantasy authors, JRR Tolkien (where I get my love for D&D), CS Lewis (where I draw a lot of inspiration for religion in RPGs), and L. Frank Baum, the one fantasy author who really knew how to write stories that mixed magic and technology. Baum is called the inventor of the "American fairy tale," and I sort of took that to heart, because I also draw on a lot more fairy tale than mythology for my games.
Basically, if you take the world as it was in the Napoleonic era (because I like lots of swashbuckling to still be around), with some of the technology of the Victorian era, and all the fantasy found in Elizabethan folklore, you've got my campaign world. Give me airships, flintlocks, rapiers, and anomolous steam-driven contraptions, and I'm a happy dungeon-master.
Tanager
Registered User
TheAuldGrump said:
Have you ever read A Dangerous Energy by John Whitbourne, if not you might like it.
As far as playing in a steampunk setting, if my group and I can ever find a reasonable time to meet and play a modified victorian setting like the Auld Grump's might be fun...
Maybe with Queen Vic. as an orc?
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