Is Iron Kingdoms worth it?

[Stormborn]

I love the IK books, but found many of the special mechanics very very frustrating in play. For one thing, the Gun Mage could have been handled with a few feats, IMO, made available for spontaneous casters, at low levels, as written, it just doesn't really work out. The Witchfire Trilogy, or at least the first 2 I have played through, are poorly done (a 3.5 version is supposed to be in the works but don't know if it will fix actual story issues).

Keep in mind that IK has technically been around for a long time. The Lock and Load guide came out years ago, but the rest has been somewhat lacking. It has the feel of a long running homebrew, where things have been tweaked and retweaked w/o a serious conscious effort to reconcile them to the balance of the sytem as a whole.

However, as has everyone else, I strongly recommend Monsternomicon.

As to the original poster's question: go elsewhere for your steampunk rules, good suggestions have already been made. I would honestly consider Eberron from what you described over IK, with some tweeks of course.

 

[Axegrrl]

I would honestly consider Eberron from what you described over IK, with some tweeks of course.

Ugh. Eberron has some serious flaws. There are virtually no crunchy bits about stuff I would consider essential to a steampunk campaign. We are having so many problems with Eberron not following through on what it promised that we are switching to a homebrew setting.

For crunchy bits, we are getting more use out of Sorcery & Steam than Eberron. Other stuff you may find useful, depending on how much conversion work you're willing to do: Castle Falkenstein (GURPS edition should be easier to convert), Deadlands (a d20 version exists), Space:1889, GURPS Steampunk and Technomancer, Spycraft and Dark Inheritance... we're also using some stuff from Dragonstar and GURPS Traveller (which has proved more useful than Traveller T20 -- go figure). GURPS Age of Napoleon is under consideration, but we don't have it (yet).

As far as guns are concerned, we've found IK prices to be *far* too expensive on a per-shot basis. We've been using prices from Sorcery & Steam.

Edit: For the missing details for the flavor bits hinted at in Eberron, we've been pulling ideas (sometimes wholesale) from IK.
Edit2: We picked up GURPS Steam Tech yesterday. While the TL is a bit high for the campaign, some of the items will be perfect for Mad Scientist inventions.

 

[Pants]

Hm, Eberron was never supposed to be steampunkish...

IK isn't really steampunk either, it's Full Metal Fantasy

 

[Stormborn]

No Eberron isn't steampunkish, but its coming close to magepunkish, and could be with just a little bit of a push. Sharn particularlly. Yeah, it does seem to fall short in places. But since the orgininal poster was looking at adapting anyway, I say start with Eberron and make it more magepunk.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

The Mechanika classes will be weak in a campaign with no mechankia...I think some people might change their minds about the "underpowered" classes after the "Liber Mechanika" comes out.

Ooooh yeah!

The Auld Grump, looking forward to LM? What do you think?

 

[tadk]

with a limited budget I suggest

Get Lock and Load for ideas to pilfer, great layout ideas for nations/races/etc stuff

If you want monsters get the Monsternomicon

Lock and Load is also 10$ US so cheap buy in to decide if you want to get more and get a feel for the entire world

Tad