The Fantastic Science - your experiences?

[Kelleris]

I haven't gotten to the gadgets yet but I'm liking the antimagic theory to keep FS to FS "casters". And I really like the masterwork qualities as well, though I have only gotten through the weapon ones so far.

Looks like I'm going to have to finally fully read and get a handle on the craft rules for this PC.

The world I'm using is Wildwood modified to be more extreme wilderness with no native ore or metalcrafting resources so most people use stone axes, arrows, and spears. The warforged was made by an alien race and has a toned down power armor adept class (from Deeds Not Words). He was on a dimensional exploration ship that got sucked in and crashed when it tried to dimensional shift out.

The new technologist PC [SBLOCK]who is a member of the ship who survived in a stasis tube[/SBLOCK]might have access to some resources from the ship but will be mostly on his own for resources. He's pretty excited at the mad scientist technologist in D&D concept and I'm on board with the concept and checking out specific mechanics.

Oh, this sounds like a perfect situation for the stuff in the book. You can present his craft points as scavenged resources from the ship rather than as ongoing projects. You could even, either you or the player or both, decide ahead of time which devices are available on the ship. They're all in perfect working order, more or less, but stranded on this magic-lousy planet he has to figure out a whole new way to use them. Trust me when I say it can be fun to carry around a disintegrator wand from first level and finally figure out how it works at an opportune moment.

And you have a ready-made reason why the ship crashed if you use the "magic interferes with technology" rationale. It could be completely intact and still be totally nonfunctional in such a situation. The technologist's goal might be to master this weird new skill to such an extent that he can escape entirely, if you think that might be a fun end-game goal under the circumstances...

And even just outfitting the party with high-level masterwork weapons will set them apart from the natives in this setting - you can give them a higher-tech cast even when all of them can't use higher technology directly. That could be quite interesting as well (how valuable is a heavily masterworked steel sword in such a world? valuable enough to serve as an adventure hook is how!). Should definitely be fun freaking out the locals, if nothing else.

 

[mykovas]

Thanks! I'm curious, though - could you tell me what your other favorite fantasy-tech material is? (It's a surprisingly crowded field, relatively speaking, though I've never really understood why.)

And if you could elaborate on the few balance issues you've noticed, that'd be helpful too. I have my own ideas regarding things that, in retrospect, were minor mistakes, but I like to hear from other people who've had some experience. Maybe I could suggest some fixes, if you haven't already managed it?

And yeah, I do skew complicated over simple. I was bound to overdo it at some point.

I run a fantasy-steampunk campaign, so I try to pick up any fantasy-tech stuff that looks worthwhile.

The other book I really love is the Iron Kingdoms series - specifically the character guide. Now, their technologist class (the Bodger) is utterly unplayable IMHO and I think their magic/tech mixture is a bit too complex, but for flavour and some crunch it's quite excellent. Not to mention the art is just amazing.

I also have Steam and Steel (from EN Publishing), which I use but less than Fantastic Science and Iron Kingdoms. It doesn't have a great system for a PC technologist - no base class and all item and thus cash-based. However, it has some cool steamcraft items that really pop out for my players.
Finally, I have Steam and Sorcery from Fantasy Flight (...I think that's the publisher?). I've got a few things from there, but overall I wouldn't say it was worth my money. It was one of the first books to come out though, so I didn't have much to compare to at the time.

As you say, there's a surprising amount of stuff out there. I find the hardest part is just picking the simple and flavourful stuff to put into my game. While my players have bought into the world, they really don't want to deal with complex rules for crafting and maintaining devices - they've learned basic D20 and they don't want to learn an entire new system. This may be why there's a whole lot of fantasy-tech resources out there, but not that many people playing it (as far as I can tell). Unless you count Eberron.

As for balance issues, I'll check my old notes and get back to you. I can't remember them off the top of my head.

 

[Kelleris]

I run a fantasy-steampunk campaign, so I try to pick up any fantasy-tech stuff that looks worthwhile.

The other book I really love is the Iron Kingdoms series - specifically the character guide. Now, their technologist class (the Bodger) is utterly unplayable IMHO and I think their magic/tech mixture is a bit too complex, but for flavour and some crunch it's quite excellent. Not to mention the art is just amazing.

I also have Steam and Steel (from EN Publishing), which I use but less than Fantastic Science and Iron Kingdoms. It doesn't have a great system for a PC technologist - no base class and all item and thus cash-based. However, it has some cool steamcraft items that really pop out for my players.
Finally, I have Steam and Sorcery from Fantasy Flight (...I think that's the publisher?). I've got a few things from there, but overall I wouldn't say it was worth my money. It was one of the first books to come out though, so I didn't have much to compare to at the time.

Hmm, your experiences are pretty close to mine. I'm not too familiar with Iron Kingdoms, though... A DM in a group I just joined is looking to start a campaign in that setting, though. I've heard nothing but good things about it, though. I wish we'd had an art budget to compete with theirs!

As you say, there's a surprising amount of stuff out there. I find the hardest part is just picking the simple and flavourful stuff to put into my game. While my players have bought into the world, they really don't want to deal with complex rules for crafting and maintaining devices - they've learned basic D20 and they don't want to learn an entire new system. This may be why there's a whole lot of fantasy-tech resources out there, but not that many people playing it (as far as I can tell). Unless you count Eberron.

Yeah, that was one of my motivations for writing the book. I don't know whether that's atypical or not, but it's right at the edge of the amount of new stuff my guys are willing to learn. You'd think my book would've sold better if the problem was learning a new system, though...

As for balance issues, I'll check my old notes and get back to you. I can't remember them off the top of my head.

Heh, thanks. I'll take the fact that you can't recall anything egregious off the top of your head as a good sign, though, if you don't mind.

 

[RangerWickett]

I really loved FS when I finally saw how it was shaping up. It oozes all sorts of nifty flavor (that's probably because of the flavometric phlegmbelcher, but I digress). Thanks for starting this thread to remind me that I want a POD version of the book, so I can show it to my Eberron DM and get his permission to use it.

 

[DMH]

One other thing. With the rules on how to adapt pretty much any spell to this system, I don't see any reason why not use it instead of spells for certain kinds of settings.

Hmm. Divine science users vs arcane science users.