Industrial Fantasy Campaigns!?

[Knightfall]

Ok, with the announcement of the name and style of Keith Baker's winning setting, Eberron, it has brought to my attention that others might have done something similar at one point.

This sort of campaign setting seems to uniquely advanced to be called 'Steampunk'. Thus, do we call this sort of campaign Industrial Fantasy?

Anyway, what I want to know is has anyone else created something similar to Eberron in style for their own homebrew campaigns? Did you submit it to WotC and what, if anything do you feel sets the concept of Eberron apart from what you created, based on what we currently know about the setting from the reports posted on Gaming Report Dot Com?

Me, I have a homebrew campaign setting, entitled Time of Ages, that falls somewhere in between 'Steampunk' and 'Industrial Fantasy'. It too has flying machings (altered Spelljamming concepts with Airships stuff thrown in), dinosaurs (both normal and common), the common D&D races, as well as several unique ones, and large, urban, magical, industrialized megacities.

Cheers!

Robert B.

 

[Moe Ronalds]

I have a homebrew magicless D&D world with steampunk. It has some D&D monsters still (the various humanoids, a few monstrous humanoids, animals/beasts, constructs, some aberrations, and illithidkin and dragons (the most "magical" creatures in the whole campaign.)), so it isn't completely non-fantasy.

I also had one that would be swashbuckling with psionics (as many psions as there are mages in standard D&D, 1/2 as many clerics as Psions, 1/10th as many wizards as psions) and with a very rare few scientist types who would rely on steampunk-ish machines and various chemicals and whatnot.

 

[Mallus]

A few years back I hit on the idea of a necromantically-powered Industrial Revolution for a homebrew that never got off the ground.

Picture a blasted landscape dotted with "factories" when the motive power for machinery came from toiling legions of the living dead. Huge crank-wheels turned by clanking skeletons. Tireless zombies spinning scads of bright fabrics out of silent looms.

The idea was that this world had recently undergone a cataclysm that caused the ocean levels to rise dramatically --the planet was slapped out of its original orbit by an angry God. A once prosperous island trade nation had almost all of its coastal and low-lying areas drowned. Resources were now submerged, the workforce decimated. So the pragmatic survivors used the only plentiful resource left; the dead, along with black magic, to rebuild their nation.

Within a century they had regained much of the former economic power on the strength of --relatively, if we're not talking the added cost of their mortal souls-- undead labor. They importanted vast quantities of raw materials and exported equally vast quantities of worked goods. Use of undead labor also led to a premature interchangable parts and assembly-line manufacturing revolution.

The line between the living and dead got pretty blurred, the surving living beings inevitably slid into decadence through the combined effect of enormous wealth and reliance on the dark arts. Eventually they became a necrocracy, where only free-willed undead landowners could vote...

I just loved the idea of hordes of undead being used for economic dominance. Plus I loved some of the flavor details: names like The Industrial Necropolis at Nezzan, and slogans for their trade goods like Gauranteed untouched by living hands!

 

[teitan]

Actually, I just began writing a homebrew that is very industrialized steam punkish sort of thing. The idea is that the Elves, Dwarves and humans came together in order to fight off a dark force and combined their magic to create new weapons and devices like flying machines, mass transport systems etc. After defeating this eternal enemy they used the newly created technology to change the way people lived. The world became a more industrialized setting, with massive, spired cities and huge magic power engines that supplied the people with power. It is 500 years later and things are not so pretty, nature worshippers are little more than eco terrorists, the 12 Houses that govern the EMpire are feuding or in open war against each other and there are rumours of a massive army forming in the barbaric north, an area long ignored by the Houses and home of the evil that once dominated the world and forged the original empire. Think Lord of the Rings meets Final Fantasy. I am even creating new classes for the setting and streamlining the rules a bit..

Jason

 

[Larry Fitz]

Mallus,

That is a phenomenally good idea... I had a dozen story ideas just reading that post... why didn't you do anything with that?

 

[Tonguez]

The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin - various races, an absentminded inventor, and evil organisation, flying ships, gliders and crystal powered machines...

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Anyway, what I want to know is has anyone else created something similar to Eberron in style for their own homebrew campaigns?

Well, sort of.

"Urbis - A World of Cities" doesn't exactly have Industrial Age technology - but the society is pretty much the same as in the Industrial Age, and magic pretty much takes the same place as technology.

Did you submit it to WotC

Yup. In fact, that's how Urbis got started.

and what, if anything do you feel sets the concept of Eberron apart from what you created, based on what we currently know about the setting from the reports posted on Gaming Report Dot Com?

- I've kept the number of new races, spells, feats, prestige classes down to a minimum. I wanted to figure out how a world where the D&D rules represent "reality" would look like, not rewrite the core rules.

- Not many flying machines. If you want bulk travel, you use ships or (golem-drawn) trains. If you want to go fast, you use teleportation (if you can afford it...).

- Interplanetary travel: Some spells allow you to go to other planets and survive there. This isn't the main focus in Urbis, and it's still difficult - but it is possible. And it also explains neatly why some of the weirder critters are around (in what kind of environment would destrachan and yrthak evolve naturally? Now you can find out...).

- "Nexus Towers": Most major magics are powered by these constructs, which gathers a small of life energy from all who live nearby, and convert it into magical energies. This is what makes urban society possible in this setting...

Apart from that, it is hard to say what the differences are unless we learn more about the new setting than that short article on GamingReport...

 

[wizardoftheplains]

A few years back I hit on the idea of a necromantically-powered Industrial Revolution for a homebrew that never got off the ground.

Picture a blasted landscape dotted with "factories" when the motive power for machinery came from toiling legions of the living dead. Huge crank-wheels turned by clanking skeletons. Tireless zombies spinning scads of bright fabrics out of silent looms.

The line between the living and dead got pretty blurred, the surving living beings inevitably slid into decadence through the combined effect of enormous wealth and reliance on the dark arts. Eventually they became a necrocracy, where only free-willed undead landowners could vote...
[/B]

I really like the vision of this idea also. Awash in undead, politics, and industry. Write it up!
gary

 

[Desdichado]

Yes, I'm a big fan of steampunk in general. My current homebrews all feature some level of "steampunk" technology.

 

[Hand of Evil]

In the Sci-fi, TV and Movie forum I used the term Pulp Fantasy, in talking about the way movies are going, I think the term can be used for this setting. It goes back to the old Flash Gordan, Tarzan, and such.

Magic is being used to create a tech effect, it can be explaned but the parts are magical in nature, not science.