Bizarre Magic, Empires, Terrible Advances In Technology, and Pushing The Limits!

[BlackMoria]

My campaign is in peril....

I have some very clever players who have very unorthodox uses for existing magic items.

IMC, the players ended becoming the rulers of a very small city-state they call Coranauth.

It stated innocently enough - a Decanter of Endless Water.

A clever player decided to see if he could utilize the geyser feature of the Decanter as a method of propulsion, which I (foolishly) allowed.

The result - a JetSki (the water jet principle). Clever....

It gets better. The party massed produced this JetSki.

It was enviable.... how about slaving a bunch of these decanters together with the same command word.

Welcome the HydroFoil..... a water winged jetski boat the size of a small frigate

They are researching a submarine right now......<sigh>

They came up with an airship (based on lighter than air) and now they are into generation X of the idea and the freakin' thing is now turning into a slow moving 'lighter than air' aircraft carrier....with griffon riders for aircraft.......<groan> [picture a huge blimp with a wood deck fixed on top of it and using a number of 'bags of wind' for propulsion and several enslaved fire elementals as the powerplant for the lift mechanism.

They are designing a goddamn ground tank now.....

It was fun at first, but the technological innovation is a serious threat to the status quo, which is why a neighbouring nation is going to war with their city state.

So, a warning to the wise..... give out a Decanter of Endless Water at your peril.....it may be the start of something.....

 

[SHARK]

Greetings!

Oh My God! Black Moria! That had me laughing so much! LOL!

This does sound quite facinating though! Very cool! I know what you mean--the implications can be daunting! It certainly isn't something for the faint of heart, you know? However, might I suggest that, at least in *this* particular campaign of yours, that you run with it! Let them do it! Let them go for it, and BIG! Along the way, you can experiment with stuff, too! Spies might infiltrate their city state and steal such secrets, and make use of them in some brilliant fashion! Other city states can have neat stuff too, you know? Why not, Black Moria? Cheers my friend! Go for it! You can have fun working harder to cope with the new realities, of a new age changing the world. In some ways, you can let the campaign witness dramatic and historical changes that actually are massive, impressive, and noteworthy, as opposed to the presupposed game world that has been around for thousands of years, and yet, everything seems to stay trapped in 12th century Medieval Europe.

Huzzah!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[F5]

[
So, a warning to the wise..... give out a Decanter of Endless Water at your peril.....it may be the start of something..... [/B]

BlackMoria, get this...
I thought it was a neat idea to give the Dwarves in my campaingn magnetically-charged piledrivers that they used for mining. They're experimenting with electro-magnetism, so it seemed only logical, right?
One of my players needs to get into a locked chamber behind a massive iron door, so he knocks over one of these piledrivers and holds it in place with a pair of Immovable Rods. Pulls the lever, thus inventing the railgun...
Thankfully I had the presense of mind to force the thing to make a Fortiture save to resist tearing itself apart into a cloud of shrapnel. It made the save and the Door (and most of the room beyond) was reduced to rubble. But it ALMOST didn't make the save, and no one in my group wanted to find out what happens when a Railgun self-destructs.
If the crazy inventions in your game get TOO out of hand, remember that Craft checks can fail, and crazy inventions tend to find ways to explode. As long as its' handled fairly, a cataclysmic failure can be as much fun as a success...

 

[F5]

Greetings!

F5, that sounds very cool! What kind of creatures did you have in the campaign? How did the players respond with such a mixture of magic and technology? It sounds like a facinating campaign! Have you gone back to it to try and perfect it? You should! What were your cities like? Where there any advances in naval technology? Of interest also, is what kinds of magic or technology changed the standard modes of living? Like clocks, hospitals, running water, industry, production, storage of food, marketing, architecture, and so on. Cool stuff indeed!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Thanks, SHARK! IT was a blast while it lasted...

Unfortunately, most of the players weren't as interested as the technological/magical advances as I was, so I didn't develop a lot of it as much as I could. I never really played with magic weapons and armor, for example. I had a Stone of Summoning Earth Elementals worked into a pocketwatch, so it could be set to summon on a timer, but that's as close to magic "modern" weaponry as I got...I think one of the villains had a +2 revolver, or something, too.
The city was fairly unique in all the world; the presense of the dwarves made it into a de facto center of industry and science. Factories that could crank out mass-produced pistols, or furnature, or hammers, made many necessities easier for the Common Man to afford.
The presense of active gods and miracle-friendly churches was a big factor, too. Medicine hadn't progressed at all from the Middle Ages, but didn't need to, because the Clerics could heal you easily and quicker than doctors. The Brotherhood of the Staff was a priestly order of Paramedics, basically. They would wander the streets of the cities righting minor injuries until a major accident happened. They would then Summon giant eagles (white, with red highlights, of course) and fly to the scene. Their temples doubled as hospitals. Thsi was one of the few places where technology really couldn't improve on the magic, so I left it completely non-technological. I also had a World Bank, run by the high priests of the God of commerce.
As for creatures, it wasn't a very monster-heavy campaign, mostly humanoids. The constant expansion of the Dwarves had driven the goblins out of their tunnels and onto the surface. Broken and weary, the goblins that showed up in the city were no threat, so rather than kill them, the humans hired them as foctory workers. Goblins thrive in dark, crowded, stagnant conditions, so they took to factory life immediately. Soon, a Goblin ghetto started to form in the factory district, which soon came to be known as the Goblin Quarter. The Goblins adopted human customs, wearing shabby black suits and huge top hats to make themselves look taller. Quasi-civilized, the goblins gave kind of a Charles Dickens/Oliver Twist subplot to the campaign. It also made for some neat moral dilemmas; on the one had these were baby-stealing, cannibalistic monsters a few generations ago, but now were downtrodden, exploited, second-class citizens, who obviously needed someone to fight for their rights on the city council. It was fun watching PCs fight FOR the goblins instead of against them.
Another race that had interesting ramifications in this setting were the Elves. In 500 years the world had gone through an Industrial Revolution, a dozen wars, and vast changes in lifestyle. In 500 years and elf barely makes it to middle age. So the Elves were seen as backwards and old-fasioned and "obsolete" in the new world order. They were seen as relics who were hopelessly set in their ways.
I have been refining and tweaking the setting ever since the campaign ended. I've revised classes, added spells and magic items that would be appropriate, and mapped out the world. There are a ton of options in a setting like this. If schedules hadn't shifted a year ago, I'd still be running adventures in this game, and probably wouldn't have even touched on half of the ideas I'd had.

 

[Voneth]

My campaign is in peril....

It was fun at first, but the technological innovation is a serious threat to the status quo, which is why a neighbouring nation is going to war with their city state.

So, a warning to the wise..... give out a Decanter of Endless Water at your peril.....it may be the start of something.....

I guess it's a matter of taste. If your blessed with players who are that creative, it's time to rase the bar and have NPCs just as creative and cunning.

Polyhedron's d20 Pulp Scientist Class is a help for this.

 

[Voneth]

May I suggest Gregory Keyes "Age of Unreason" series of books?

The book details an alternate reality where Newton discover alchemey and angels instead of physics. The series takes the colonial world to a doomsday scenario. Very twisted and very riviting.

 

[mmadsen]

The first 3E game I ran was set in a SteamPunk/pseudo victorian city, because I wanted the characters to have to take on a villain modelled after Jack the Ripper.

Wow, F5, that's quite a first 3E game to start with!

So, in order to make a late 1800s era setting viable, I had to add a lot of weird advances in technology and magic.

Now you've got me wondering, what kind of advances are really necessary for a Victorian setting? Do you need much more than a few clockwork trinkets, large-scale navies, and mass-produced weapons (that require little skill, a la guns)? Of course, they all have to be relatively new advances concentrated in one section of the world, so it can "colonize" the rest of the world and form a globe-spanning empire.

I actually had to manipulate a lot to MINIMIZE the impacts of technology.

I can imagine!

Dwarven-crafted revolvers and shotguns made melee weapons and armor obsolete (house rule: against firearms armor provides 1/3 of the normal AC bonus, all movement and Dex penalties apply normally...simplistic, but it worked OK).

I'm not sure revolvers and shotguns would make armor obsolete. A thick cuirass should stop pistol rounds and buckshot, at least at range. The real issue is that it doesn't stop musket or rifle rounds, and armor costs more than a whole new soldier with a firearm -- and weighs down any soldier using it.

I didn't want to elimiate melee combat entirely, so I house-ruled it that Aberrations, Magical Beasts, Dragons, Elementals, Etc are immune to bullets, which do subdual damage instead.

I can see many gooey Cthulhu-esque creatures or incorporeal creatures more or less ignoring bullets (and arrows), but Dragons are just asking for a Holland & Holland .470 Nitro Express! Beware the big-game hunter!

So, armor and battleaxes are all but useless in civilized areas, but in the wild they were necessary. This way the game kept a semi-D&D feel.

I believe mail was still worn in parts of India and China in the Victorian era. A mail shirt certainly could stop a knife in the back.

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

Bizarre things? Terrible magic? Strange science?

It was all in the 3rd IR.

Refer to the In Character Board. You can't miss the backlogged IR threads (all 50 of them.)

 

[LostSoul]

I have to give credit to those DMs who allow thier PCs to develop new and interesting applications for magic. I think that it helps players think for themselves, creating thier own plot hooks, and creates a much better game!

Nice work!

 

[mmadsen]

Goblins thrive in dark, crowded, stagnant conditions, so they took to factory life immediately.

Excellent!

Soon, a Goblin ghetto started to form in the factory district, which soon came to be known as the Goblin Quarter. The Goblins adopted human customs, wearing shabby black suits and huge top hats to make themselves look taller. Quasi-civilized, the goblins gave kind of a Charles Dickens/Oliver Twist subplot to the campaign.

Sound like GURPS Goblins (a very amusing, not-very-GURPS GURPS supplement).