D&D General Basic Steampunk Items

[Greenfield]

Don’t leave out ALL the science! Besides Shelley and Verne, H.G. Wells is just as important, if not moreso. And Wells started out in life as a teacher of science, educated at the Normal School of Science in South Kensington, London, now the Imperial Institute of Science and Technology.

And depending on how big a window of time you want your steampunk setting to cover, youstart hitting inventors like Bell, Babbage, Marconi, Edison and- a personal fave- Tesla.

Because of Wells & Tesla, I came up with:


His Tesla-inspired weaponry included an electrical death ray and mechanical resonance mines.

Also for that same setting:

My point was that actual science can't actually do any of those things. No death-rays, no time machines, no reanimation of the dead. The huge spider from the Wild Wild West remake couldn't have stood up, or even existed: The metal legs depicted would have buckled, and putting that much weight onto that small an area is a great way to drive the legs into the ground.

Now, story wise, the people depicted are great. Someone depicting a Girl Genius type world in which "sparks" set up rival city/states suggested that North America would be essentially divided between the Wizard of Menlo Park (Edison) to the east, and Tesla to the west. (They were terrible rivals.)

Still, in most Steam Punk depictions their various sciencey vessels still used hollow tubes to carry instructions from the bridge to the engine room.

So ignore the fact that jet packs would burn your backside off, and apply thrust so off center (compared to the center of gravity) tht you would be in a constant forward loop, and destined to slam head first into the ground whenever you tried to take off. (Note that the old reliable James Bond/Commander Keds jetpack you occasionally see at parades and other events can fly for less than a minute before it runs out of fuel. It runs on hydrogen peroxide.)

So let there be "science", but make it so arcane and elaborate that it might as well be magic. (I strongly recommend the old Vincent Price/Boris Carloff/Peter Lorre/Jack Nickelson film The Raven, where most magic required elaborate equipment and preparation.)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Well, we DO have death rays. We just call them things like “lasers” etc. Few are man-portable, though, mostly because I’d power requirements.

Jet packs exist, too, but not nearly so compact, sleek, long ranged and effortless to control as depicted in fiction.

A mechanical resonance mine would probably work- I’ve seen demos of small machines generating detectible resonance in things like bridges. But based on those same demos, it would probably take so long to reach destructive levels of resonance that such a device would be discovered and disarmed long before the desired results had been achieved.

 

[Greenfield]

Lasers aren't very effective as weapons, particularly against the human body. We're mostly water, and it's circulating. Our bodies are actually designed specifically to dissipate heat. You can surface burn someone's skin, but instant death is incredibly difficult. The old science-fiction idea of slicing people up with a laser is exactly that: science fiction.

The limitations on that portable "death ray" type laser include the problem of fitting a niagra falls worth of power into the hand grip of the pistol, but also the problems of converting that power into a focussed beam of any capacity in that small a space, and the serious question of how you cool it enough that it doesn't melt into a puddle every time you fire it.

The "jet pack" that appeared in the James Bond movie wasn't a jet pack at all. It was a rocket.

That is to say, it didn't draw in any outside air. All the "action" needed to create the flight reaction came from the self contained fuel supply. Hell, the thing would work under water or in a vacuum. That's why the rang and flight time haven't changed in fifty years.

Now the Flyboard Air that's hit the news recently is a jet. It burns kerosene, which really is standard jet fuel, and draws in outside air. It has a flight duration of about ten minutes, which is incredible compared to previous "jet packs". Still a long way from being anything like a real transportation system.

Then there's the guy referred to as Jetman. he has a jet powered rig, with wings, that's more like a strap-on plane than a sci-fi jet pack.

But the jet pack from the old sci-fi adventure serials, like Commando Cody of the 1950s, or the design from the Rocketeer comics or movies, is the one that toasts your buns and slams you into the ground upon takeoff.

So for steampunk, forget jet packs and death rays. Dirigibles were the best way to fly in style and everybody knew it. And exotic guns? Take a look at the currently available ornate toys we see at conventions. Brass and steel with cooling fins or rings, brass sighting tubes on top etc. As in, never going to quick-draw that from a holster.

Death rays were always lightning guns or some kind of energy cannon (broad beams, the exact opposite of the narrow focused beam of a laser). Big, grand and gawdy was the flavor of the month, so don't just use it, glory in it.

As a DM (or mabey World Master would be a better title), the more powerful the weapon, the larger and more ornate is has to be. And complicated is always better. We're going for flavor here, color and depth of scene and story, and power gamers should probably stay home.

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Small addendum: One TV station has recently been showing the old Tony Curtis/Jack Lemon film, The Great Race. It features a decidedly steam-punk-ish car that belongs to Professor Fate. The film features a pedal-powered mini dirigible and ornate, hand-dropped bombs with wide, elaborate fins on them.

The film is hilarious. If you have't seen it, please do. (It contains the largest pie fight ever filmed. The whole thing was done in one take, and Tony Curtis really did walk through the middle of it all without ever getting hit. They had to patch in a short scene of him getting a pie in the face because the directors didn't think anyone would believe it without that.)