Monday, June 27, 2016
House rule #3: Attribute scores and leveling
At levels 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25 (and so on), characters can add one point to one of their attributes. They may go over 18 by doing so.
Thursday, June 23, 2016
Background: Transportation &c.
Moving people or things from place to place in Pathfinder 1899 takes much longer than people living in contemporary American society would imagine. In the USA, rail lines link all the major cities with fuel and water depot stops spaced out so that the trains' engines don't break down; mail delivery stations coincide with the food and fuel storage facilities. It would take a week or more to go from California to Maine via railroad, and if the destination isn't near a big city the travelers would have to switch to stage coaches or horseback to get somewhere more obscure. Inside the various large cities, trolleys, trains or subways move people around while horse-drawn wagons deliver goods like food, coal, consumer goods or ice blocks (home refrigeration is the province of literal ice boxes at this point). Sanitation crews sweep up the mountains of horse shit in the streets, generally in the richer and more prosperous neighborhoods although some attempt is made to clear out the poorer neighborhoods from time to time (not least because animal feces can be used in tanning leather or in making crop fertilizer, and so much of it is lying around free for the taking).
Cities, incidentally, tend to have a patchwork of gas lighting and electricity, with homes heated individually by coal rather than the piped-in gas heating that everyone playing the game would be familiar with. Industrial regulations do not exist; factories can belch smoke and shit chemicals into the air, water and soil with impunity. Want to know what that genuinely looks like? Here you go. Since this is fantasy, there's less smog and chemical foulness in the atmosphere of the larger cities. Since it's fantasy, alchemical pollution can be even more dangerous than the ordinary chemical kind. The rural areas get by with horses for plowing fields or drawing carts for the most part. Roads in and around the main cities are paved with tarmacadam, while the more distant streets tend to be gravel or dirt, though generally kept in good repair.
Airships are also in use, a luxurious way to view the countryside from thousands of feet up. Goods are also shipped by sea and people travel across the oceans on massive liners as well.
Rail lines terminate at the edge of the territory controlled by the 500 Nations; the tribes do not allow heavy industry in their lands. This led to the creation of border towns full of warehouses and shops all over the edge of the Nations' territory; anything people want can be found at these hypercapitalist boom towns...for a price. Similarly, the Native Americans living near those artificially developed cities make a fine living selling fresh meat, spring water or handicrafts to the merchants (who sell them to other people in the USA, taking a cut off the marked-up prices themselves). That far out from the huge cities and smaller towns, criminal gangs tend to gravitate thanks to the promise of easy money and distant governmental forces.
Deseret has miles of railroad lines from when it was part of the USA, but most of their transportation infrastructure is deteriorating for lack of skilled maintenance and industrial facilities capable of rolling out quality steel rails. Horse-drawn wagons and carts make up the bulk of transportation for goods while stagecoaches or horses provide the way for people to get around from place to place.
Tejas, as well, tends to depend on horse-drawn transportation (though the use of refined crude oil as a fuel for mechanical transports shows a great deal of promise for the near future). Some of the existing railways in Tejas have been adapted so that train cars are pulled by teams of horses or mules; the unused engines have been torn down for scrap or sold to Peachtree, the USA or CSA (depending on whether or not it was feasible to move them). Most of the roads in Tejas and Deseret are gravel or dirt rather than paved (and a vast amount of open country exists in both countries).
Peachtree has undergone a massive project to link its major cities with Electric Railways; the smaller towns have spur lines leading to them as well. The Railways are subsidized by nationwide taxes and no charge is assessed for their use; George Washington Carver declared that they are a public good and will be financed by public funds. Shipping into Peachtree is monitored by Engine-using police who watch for sabotage (the CSA is a constant threat on that score). Exports from Peachtree are also closely monitored to prevent advanced technologies from falling into that nation's enemies (and, occasionally, its allies). Like the USA (and the remaining lines in Deseret), Peachtree's railways have a standardized gauge, with the rails always a standard distance apart and the ties made of the same lumber over every mile of track.
The CSA, however, never developed an industrial culture like the United States did. Its country-spanning railroads vary gauge and construction materials state by state or even county by county; individual small railroads worked together or against each other in various places and the nation is covered by a crazy quilt of different rail lines. Switching from one to another is a relatively brief matter for passengers and luggage, but for shipping cargo it's a laborious and time-consuming process. It's been known to take longer for a train to get from Florida to Arkansas than from California to Boston under the worst conditions. Repair and maintenance of the rails and engines is also a patchwork affair, with the poorer lines deteriorating faster than the richer ones and getting restored more slowly. The dirt and gravel roads in the Confederacy are in generally poor repair, while the paved ones are in conditions that range from horrible to impassable thanks to fourteen years of warfare and an impoverished nation that cannot afford to fix them. The ports of New Orleans remain a bustling commercial enterprise, and there is a zeppelin port in Oklahoma that mostly serves as a depot and refueling stop for American and Tejano airships (but does also handle the vast majority of Confederate airships). Nearly all travel and transport in the CSA requires horseback riding; the poorest people walk or simply don't go anywhere else.
Cities, incidentally, tend to have a patchwork of gas lighting and electricity, with homes heated individually by coal rather than the piped-in gas heating that everyone playing the game would be familiar with. Industrial regulations do not exist; factories can belch smoke and shit chemicals into the air, water and soil with impunity. Want to know what that genuinely looks like? Here you go. Since this is fantasy, there's less smog and chemical foulness in the atmosphere of the larger cities. Since it's fantasy, alchemical pollution can be even more dangerous than the ordinary chemical kind. The rural areas get by with horses for plowing fields or drawing carts for the most part. Roads in and around the main cities are paved with tarmacadam, while the more distant streets tend to be gravel or dirt, though generally kept in good repair.
Airships are also in use, a luxurious way to view the countryside from thousands of feet up. Goods are also shipped by sea and people travel across the oceans on massive liners as well.
Rail lines terminate at the edge of the territory controlled by the 500 Nations; the tribes do not allow heavy industry in their lands. This led to the creation of border towns full of warehouses and shops all over the edge of the Nations' territory; anything people want can be found at these hypercapitalist boom towns...for a price. Similarly, the Native Americans living near those artificially developed cities make a fine living selling fresh meat, spring water or handicrafts to the merchants (who sell them to other people in the USA, taking a cut off the marked-up prices themselves). That far out from the huge cities and smaller towns, criminal gangs tend to gravitate thanks to the promise of easy money and distant governmental forces.
Deseret has miles of railroad lines from when it was part of the USA, but most of their transportation infrastructure is deteriorating for lack of skilled maintenance and industrial facilities capable of rolling out quality steel rails. Horse-drawn wagons and carts make up the bulk of transportation for goods while stagecoaches or horses provide the way for people to get around from place to place.
Tejas, as well, tends to depend on horse-drawn transportation (though the use of refined crude oil as a fuel for mechanical transports shows a great deal of promise for the near future). Some of the existing railways in Tejas have been adapted so that train cars are pulled by teams of horses or mules; the unused engines have been torn down for scrap or sold to Peachtree, the USA or CSA (depending on whether or not it was feasible to move them). Most of the roads in Tejas and Deseret are gravel or dirt rather than paved (and a vast amount of open country exists in both countries).
Peachtree has undergone a massive project to link its major cities with Electric Railways; the smaller towns have spur lines leading to them as well. The Railways are subsidized by nationwide taxes and no charge is assessed for their use; George Washington Carver declared that they are a public good and will be financed by public funds. Shipping into Peachtree is monitored by Engine-using police who watch for sabotage (the CSA is a constant threat on that score). Exports from Peachtree are also closely monitored to prevent advanced technologies from falling into that nation's enemies (and, occasionally, its allies). Like the USA (and the remaining lines in Deseret), Peachtree's railways have a standardized gauge, with the rails always a standard distance apart and the ties made of the same lumber over every mile of track.
The CSA, however, never developed an industrial culture like the United States did. Its country-spanning railroads vary gauge and construction materials state by state or even county by county; individual small railroads worked together or against each other in various places and the nation is covered by a crazy quilt of different rail lines. Switching from one to another is a relatively brief matter for passengers and luggage, but for shipping cargo it's a laborious and time-consuming process. It's been known to take longer for a train to get from Florida to Arkansas than from California to Boston under the worst conditions. Repair and maintenance of the rails and engines is also a patchwork affair, with the poorer lines deteriorating faster than the richer ones and getting restored more slowly. The dirt and gravel roads in the Confederacy are in generally poor repair, while the paved ones are in conditions that range from horrible to impassable thanks to fourteen years of warfare and an impoverished nation that cannot afford to fix them. The ports of New Orleans remain a bustling commercial enterprise, and there is a zeppelin port in Oklahoma that mostly serves as a depot and refueling stop for American and Tejano airships (but does also handle the vast majority of Confederate airships). Nearly all travel and transport in the CSA requires horseback riding; the poorest people walk or simply don't go anywhere else.
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
Background: Etheric Travel
In 1877, Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla developed the Etheric Propeller, a device that allowed ships to travel from Earth to the Moon. On its maiden voyage, the first successful spaceship, the Daedalus IV, successfully landed on the Moon and almost immediately raced back to earth because of the massive swarm of giant spiders that greeted it after landing on the lunar surface. Still, it became obvious that Etheric travel was the new coming technology, and in the wake of the United States losing the Civil War and giving up substantial parts of its territory to the CSA and the 500 Nations the country needed something to boost its pride. Nothing puts a spring back in a nation's step like flying its flag on new territory, and both Venus and Mars presented brand new challenges for American knowhow and ingenuity.
There are two general types of spacecraft; the massive Etheric Zeppelins serve as cargo haulers and transports for passengers in a noticeable lack of comfort or style. Most of the human civilizations on Mercury, Venus and Mars are barely self-sustainable, with shipments of machine parts, Calculation Engine punchcards, alchemical reagents and other industrial-age goods making it possible for the settlements on the other planets to continue to function. The outposts on Mercury are the least able to look after themselves without outside help; then the pitiless Martian deserts show the next greatest degree of difficulty to survive. Venus, with its frequent rainfall and almost frighteningly fertile soil, is capable of supporting a frontier civilization nearly indefinitely--and it's certain that on that planet, at least, industry and the infrastructure necessary for its development will eventually rise.
Etheric Transports are the other types of space ships, and they range in size from one or two man vessels to naval warships. Travel in the Etheric void is risky in dozens of ways; the void between worlds is bitterly cold (though far from absolute zero) and the Ether is not breathable for more than a few minutes before lack of oxygen will cause a sapient being to pass out and eventually die from asphyxiation. For obvious reasons, the various Etheric ships are sealed against the cold and emptiness of the void (though portholes and fore and aft viewing windows are necessary for piloting). The naval and commercial ships also have Etheric Void Suits in storage in case repairs or combat needs to take place outside the ships' hull; the suits are constructed of rubber-laminated canvas and look similar to deep-sea diving suits. It's dangerous to go out the hatch into the void in one of the suits, and suicidal to do so without either tying one's self to the hull or wearing magnet-soled boots. The Etheric Navies of the USA, CSA, Peachtree and other spacefaring nations have all invented a medal of their corps of engineers for meritorious service while fixing problems in Etheric transit; nearly all of them have been awarded posthumously.
There are two general types of spacecraft; the massive Etheric Zeppelins serve as cargo haulers and transports for passengers in a noticeable lack of comfort or style. Most of the human civilizations on Mercury, Venus and Mars are barely self-sustainable, with shipments of machine parts, Calculation Engine punchcards, alchemical reagents and other industrial-age goods making it possible for the settlements on the other planets to continue to function. The outposts on Mercury are the least able to look after themselves without outside help; then the pitiless Martian deserts show the next greatest degree of difficulty to survive. Venus, with its frequent rainfall and almost frighteningly fertile soil, is capable of supporting a frontier civilization nearly indefinitely--and it's certain that on that planet, at least, industry and the infrastructure necessary for its development will eventually rise.
Etheric Transports are the other types of space ships, and they range in size from one or two man vessels to naval warships. Travel in the Etheric void is risky in dozens of ways; the void between worlds is bitterly cold (though far from absolute zero) and the Ether is not breathable for more than a few minutes before lack of oxygen will cause a sapient being to pass out and eventually die from asphyxiation. For obvious reasons, the various Etheric ships are sealed against the cold and emptiness of the void (though portholes and fore and aft viewing windows are necessary for piloting). The naval and commercial ships also have Etheric Void Suits in storage in case repairs or combat needs to take place outside the ships' hull; the suits are constructed of rubber-laminated canvas and look similar to deep-sea diving suits. It's dangerous to go out the hatch into the void in one of the suits, and suicidal to do so without either tying one's self to the hull or wearing magnet-soled boots. The Etheric Navies of the USA, CSA, Peachtree and other spacefaring nations have all invented a medal of their corps of engineers for meritorious service while fixing problems in Etheric transit; nearly all of them have been awarded posthumously.
Despite the name, the Etheric Propeller doesn't churn up the ether to move a spaceship forward; instead, it's more properly understood as a device that can refract gravity. Under manual control or run by a Calculating Engine, the Propeller forces an Etheric vessel through an atmosphere or through the interplanetary void. Transit is rapid between the planets (specifically, Etheric ships move exactly at the speed the plot requires, but several weeks at least to go from one of the inner planets to the other or to the asteroid belt). At the time the campaign starts, there are no outposts on Jupiter or its moons or farther out but the USA and Peachtree have designs on every planet in the outer solar system. As things stand now, though, the asteroid belt is the very end of the Etheric frontier.
Traveling from one planet to another takes a great deal of mathematical precision; the ship, the planet it left from and the planet it's going to are all moving in curved arcs either towards or away from each other and making the trip in as little time as possible is usually requires a mathematical prodigy, magical divination, or a Calculation Engine.
Space, food and water are at a premium on Etheric voyages, and passengers are advised to bring reading material (the larger transports, whether military or commercial, tend to carry as many books as possible and lend them out freely to the passengers. As the alternative to boredom on an Etheric transport is disaster passengers are advised to just shut up and re-read the same newspaper one more time. Food for the first day or two out of port is usually lavish, but after a while it's inevitable that the passengers are given "tack and tins"; hardtack with tinned seasoned meat-and-vegetable paste for every meal. Since it's impossible to compress a liquid, water (and beer and wine and the inevitable rum rations) are also in short supply. Generally there's enough food and water for the crew and passengers for the trip plus three weeks as a margin for safety. The
There is no wireless communication in 1899 world, either on Earth, between planets, between ships or from ships to shore (of any planet). Ships with staff wizards can use telepathic communications, but barring that method, Etheric ships are forced to use signal displays like Aldis lamps, flags or (on the newest models) a display panel controlled by a Calculation Engine. Signal towers on the ground direct ships to their landing sites on any of the planets with flags or lights of their own, although nearly every Etheric Transport is constructed so that it can land on the ground without destroying crucial parts of its structure so a landing outside of a space port is possible in almost every case.
Space ports on Earth, Venus and Mars all recognize the difficulty in communicating between the various planets (there's a lag time of two to four months for round-trip communications). Because of this there's a postal facility that stores mail and packages for Etheric sailors free of charge (landing fees and import taxes pay for the maintenance of these facilities). Generally an Ether sailor lives a vagabond life; it's one of the attractions of interplanetary travel for the people who live that life. The call of the Void is just as strong as that of the sea, and the inner planets comprise a new frontier that beckons to people whose lives were shattered by the decade-plus Civil War. There's risk in the new frontiers, but with painful memories or the devastation of a family back on Earth, there's always something in the American spirit that calls for pulling up stakes and trying something new somewhere far away. And it's hard to get farther away than Mars.
Sunday, June 19, 2016
Background: Computational Technology
In some ways, technology in the 1899 world is significantly farther advanced than it is in present day real life 2016 (there's no routine passenger travel to Mars, for example). In other ways, things have remained stagnant or failed to develop the same why. Because why would it? With the massive loss of manpower after more than a decade of civil war and the technology-retarding effects of magic, not everything is going to wind up exactly the same way on our Earth in 1899.
One of the major differences is that the Difference Engines were constructed in England in the 1820s and turned into major sources of mathematical knowledge. Once the concept proved usable, inventors in Great Britain and elsewhere quickly worked on ways to create Difference Engines that could perform calculations thousands of times faster than a human being. The first major quantum leap in computational technology occurred in Boston in 1855; a group of Difference Engineers at the Massachusetts Bay Colony Institute of Technological and Arcane Arts worked out a way to construct a mechanical device that had multiple functions; rather than simply performing mathematical calculations it could be directed to display two-inch by two-inch black and white panels on a massive grid to display pictures or writing. The distinctive noise of the panels flipping back and forth led the constructors to start referring to themselves as "clackers", a term which quickly fell into general use.
Their new device was christened the first Calculating Engine, and it's probably best to think of these devices as mainframe computers that run on steam and have to be programmed and calibrated with a monkey wrench rather than a keyboard. The display screen for a standard sized Calculation Engine can cover as much space as the interior wall of a room and the machine, when operating, fills the area with the stink of heated oil and metal as the incessant clacking of the gears and other parts working against each other as well as the picture cards flipping back and forth. Thirty years of progress and development has led to smaller and smaller Engines being produced, with Etheric Transports making do with an Engine the size of a large breadbox rather than one the same size as a dozen steamer trunks lashed together. The ones used for Etheric navigation tend to be simplified to the point where they are very, very good at the few things they can do out of necessity--the more complicated a mechanical device, the more that can go wrong and having the Engine break on a spaceship means a longer voyage at best and the death of everyone on board at worst. The military and larger commercial Etheric Transports have multiple clackers (given a low officer rank and excused from regular duties) for each crew shift to minimize the danger of the Engines malfunctioning or breaking.
(Remember, by the way, that computers in our world didn't have keyboards or monitors for several generations of their technological development.)
In the USA the government and military use Engines for various tasks related to their fields of endeavor, and with the advent of the 1890 Census each person in the United States was assigned a twenty-digit Citizen Identification Number; the Engines used by the government keep track of people to assess taxes, observe lifespans and monitor disease outbreaks, among other tasks. A national Citizen Identification Card program was started in 1894, with cards listing the bearer's name, C.I.N., height, weight, race, eye color and hair color going into use. In various industries Engines have come into use as well; with the loss of manpower in the Civil War some factories have automated large sections of their production floors in order to keep making items. A single-purpose Engine can run an entire factory, overseeing the various aspects of manufacture that humans aren't needed for. The railroads use Engines to check tracks for breaks and adjust timetables as needed. Nickelodeon theaters have been known to project films on one wall of the theater and have another made up of a massive display screen; patrons can see motion pictures and animated Engine "clicks" over the course of their evenings. Vaudeville acts have even been known to use an Engine or two in an evening's entertainment--either as a repository of history and trivia or as a comedic foil for an actor or two; one specific Engine, referred to as the Musitron, controls a bank of brass, woodwind, percussion and stringed instruments; Robert Duke, its owner, wears a tuxedo and theatrically inserts a programming card and then lets the machine play a four-minute section of a classical work.
In the Confederate States, there are a bare handful of Engines used by the government and their lack of industrial power tends to make them less useful for governing the CSA than it is for the Union. They did adopt the use of monitoring citizens with the Engines that they do have. The CSA has a tiered system of civil rights, with the literate white property-owning males granted full rights under their Constitution and varying other levels existing for white women married to a first-class man, unmarried white women, white men and women who are not literate and / or do not own property, visiting humans from other countries, other sapient races (granted guest visas with an expiration date prominently stamped on it) and finally any human beings with measurable African ancestry, who are considered property rather than people. The use of Engines in the CSA is meant to keep everyone aware of their place in the social hierarchy.
Deseret does not currently have any Calculating or Difference Engines; the dust and sand of the Utah desert is exceptionally bad for the machines and they don't have enough clackers to keep them usable.
The 500 Nations generally view the Engines as a white man's speaking toy; they recognize the utility of them when keeping track of millions of people but their own situation in their territory does not include steam or coal power that is needed to run the machines. Some individual Native Americans find the Engines fascinating, and there are a few clackers among the 500 Nations. Out of necessity they need to study the machines out of their own territory, which has led to Irongear Alley, a city in western Minnesota founded by clackers where the newest techniques and programs are tried out. Irongear Alley is also notable for having dozens of coffee bars, cocaine dispensaries and other places to get stimulants over the counter, cheap and reliable. Lastly, Irongear Alley is considered one of the most welcoming places on the American continent for the other sapient races, provided they don't mind getting lots of lectures about clacking techniques and algorithms for shortening processing time.
Peachtree, perhaps unsurprisingly, is beyond the forefront of Calculation Science, with the gigantic mainframe "Monolith" helping George Washington Carver administer the country. One of the most promising experiments in this field is Peachtree's attempt at "Distributed Intelligence", a method of connecting different Engines in different cities via telegraph wires. Peachtree also assigns Citizen Numbers to the people living there, and the Citizen Cards for anyone living there are used as proof of identification at banks, post offices, libraries, museums, concert halls and the like. Peachtree's identification cards are also the only ones on the continent to have a picture of the person on them; none of the other nations have yet managed to make a usable photograph system. There are guest visa cards for people visiting Peachtree, but unlike the CSA they do not involve curtailing the rights of others who are in the country. Peachtree is also unique in that its arcane colleges have used Calculation Engines in their research, working through the difficult task of harnessing the Spark and running through hundreds of permutations of spells and alchemical reactions without casting them.
Finally, Tejas has a bare handful of Engines, and no identification cards in use. The government uses their Engines just the same as the USA, CSA and Peachtree do but the country is so large and so sparsely populated they lag behind in research (although they do keep up to date in the various ways other countries are using their Engines).
One of the major differences is that the Difference Engines were constructed in England in the 1820s and turned into major sources of mathematical knowledge. Once the concept proved usable, inventors in Great Britain and elsewhere quickly worked on ways to create Difference Engines that could perform calculations thousands of times faster than a human being. The first major quantum leap in computational technology occurred in Boston in 1855; a group of Difference Engineers at the Massachusetts Bay Colony Institute of Technological and Arcane Arts worked out a way to construct a mechanical device that had multiple functions; rather than simply performing mathematical calculations it could be directed to display two-inch by two-inch black and white panels on a massive grid to display pictures or writing. The distinctive noise of the panels flipping back and forth led the constructors to start referring to themselves as "clackers", a term which quickly fell into general use.
Their new device was christened the first Calculating Engine, and it's probably best to think of these devices as mainframe computers that run on steam and have to be programmed and calibrated with a monkey wrench rather than a keyboard. The display screen for a standard sized Calculation Engine can cover as much space as the interior wall of a room and the machine, when operating, fills the area with the stink of heated oil and metal as the incessant clacking of the gears and other parts working against each other as well as the picture cards flipping back and forth. Thirty years of progress and development has led to smaller and smaller Engines being produced, with Etheric Transports making do with an Engine the size of a large breadbox rather than one the same size as a dozen steamer trunks lashed together. The ones used for Etheric navigation tend to be simplified to the point where they are very, very good at the few things they can do out of necessity--the more complicated a mechanical device, the more that can go wrong and having the Engine break on a spaceship means a longer voyage at best and the death of everyone on board at worst. The military and larger commercial Etheric Transports have multiple clackers (given a low officer rank and excused from regular duties) for each crew shift to minimize the danger of the Engines malfunctioning or breaking.
(Remember, by the way, that computers in our world didn't have keyboards or monitors for several generations of their technological development.)
In the USA the government and military use Engines for various tasks related to their fields of endeavor, and with the advent of the 1890 Census each person in the United States was assigned a twenty-digit Citizen Identification Number; the Engines used by the government keep track of people to assess taxes, observe lifespans and monitor disease outbreaks, among other tasks. A national Citizen Identification Card program was started in 1894, with cards listing the bearer's name, C.I.N., height, weight, race, eye color and hair color going into use. In various industries Engines have come into use as well; with the loss of manpower in the Civil War some factories have automated large sections of their production floors in order to keep making items. A single-purpose Engine can run an entire factory, overseeing the various aspects of manufacture that humans aren't needed for. The railroads use Engines to check tracks for breaks and adjust timetables as needed. Nickelodeon theaters have been known to project films on one wall of the theater and have another made up of a massive display screen; patrons can see motion pictures and animated Engine "clicks" over the course of their evenings. Vaudeville acts have even been known to use an Engine or two in an evening's entertainment--either as a repository of history and trivia or as a comedic foil for an actor or two; one specific Engine, referred to as the Musitron, controls a bank of brass, woodwind, percussion and stringed instruments; Robert Duke, its owner, wears a tuxedo and theatrically inserts a programming card and then lets the machine play a four-minute section of a classical work.
In the Confederate States, there are a bare handful of Engines used by the government and their lack of industrial power tends to make them less useful for governing the CSA than it is for the Union. They did adopt the use of monitoring citizens with the Engines that they do have. The CSA has a tiered system of civil rights, with the literate white property-owning males granted full rights under their Constitution and varying other levels existing for white women married to a first-class man, unmarried white women, white men and women who are not literate and / or do not own property, visiting humans from other countries, other sapient races (granted guest visas with an expiration date prominently stamped on it) and finally any human beings with measurable African ancestry, who are considered property rather than people. The use of Engines in the CSA is meant to keep everyone aware of their place in the social hierarchy.
Deseret does not currently have any Calculating or Difference Engines; the dust and sand of the Utah desert is exceptionally bad for the machines and they don't have enough clackers to keep them usable.
The 500 Nations generally view the Engines as a white man's speaking toy; they recognize the utility of them when keeping track of millions of people but their own situation in their territory does not include steam or coal power that is needed to run the machines. Some individual Native Americans find the Engines fascinating, and there are a few clackers among the 500 Nations. Out of necessity they need to study the machines out of their own territory, which has led to Irongear Alley, a city in western Minnesota founded by clackers where the newest techniques and programs are tried out. Irongear Alley is also notable for having dozens of coffee bars, cocaine dispensaries and other places to get stimulants over the counter, cheap and reliable. Lastly, Irongear Alley is considered one of the most welcoming places on the American continent for the other sapient races, provided they don't mind getting lots of lectures about clacking techniques and algorithms for shortening processing time.
Peachtree, perhaps unsurprisingly, is beyond the forefront of Calculation Science, with the gigantic mainframe "Monolith" helping George Washington Carver administer the country. One of the most promising experiments in this field is Peachtree's attempt at "Distributed Intelligence", a method of connecting different Engines in different cities via telegraph wires. Peachtree also assigns Citizen Numbers to the people living there, and the Citizen Cards for anyone living there are used as proof of identification at banks, post offices, libraries, museums, concert halls and the like. Peachtree's identification cards are also the only ones on the continent to have a picture of the person on them; none of the other nations have yet managed to make a usable photograph system. There are guest visa cards for people visiting Peachtree, but unlike the CSA they do not involve curtailing the rights of others who are in the country. Peachtree is also unique in that its arcane colleges have used Calculation Engines in their research, working through the difficult task of harnessing the Spark and running through hundreds of permutations of spells and alchemical reactions without casting them.
Finally, Tejas has a bare handful of Engines, and no identification cards in use. The government uses their Engines just the same as the USA, CSA and Peachtree do but the country is so large and so sparsely populated they lag behind in research (although they do keep up to date in the various ways other countries are using their Engines).
Saturday, June 18, 2016
Background: Society and Magic
The existence of magic in a campaign world means you're going to get a different history and a different end result. I'm setting my game in the Divided States of America in 1899 and it's going to be (hopefully) recognizable but distinct from the historical 1899. Here's a few examples of what's going on in the game world that would be different from our own.
First up, there are magic colleges in every major power on the continent other than the 500 Nations territory (who practice apprentice-mentor teaching relationships one on one for their Wizards; the written language Sequoyah came up with made it possible for Native American arcane spellcasters to standardize their spellbooks, but before that the use of pictograms and personal artwork on animal skin parchment meant that you could indeed have Indians with spellbooks). Not everyone's going to be Merlin, even with instruction from those magical schools, but people (or Persons) with the Spark are generally expected to go into a field that uses their ability if they've got it. Arcane magicians aren't necessarily all going to become adventurers (there's a place for Necromancers in any food storage / transport business because they can retard or completely stop the decay of meat or plants; more than one of that field works in the stockyards of Chicago just keeping the food in better condition than it would be otherwise). Diviners are employed by oil and mining companies to determine where the richest deposits of petroleum or precious metals can be found. Even the least talented Illusionists can find work on the vaudeville stage spraying colors and light over a fascinated audience that paid a couple pennies apiece for a ticket. Artificers and alchemists can make strength potions for the military or single-use explosive items for wizards or sorcerers in the armed forces.
But one thing all the magical applications listed above have in common is that they require individual effort and individual attention. The Necromancer working at the stockyards has to personally cast the magics to slow or stop decay on a few dozen sides of beef themselves. There has not been (as of 1899) a way to industrialize the magical effects that can be used to make life easier. This means that the wizards (and sorcerers) who perform magical feats as a job are more analogous to medieval craftsmen and guild members than corporate officers. In the example given of the stockyard worker, the employers want to keep that wizard happy and productive because the lack of maggots in their tinned meat is a selling point. Wizards that want more money or shorter working hours tend to be able to negotiate from a position of strength because there simply aren't enough of them around to make hiring a cheaper one a workable tactic for the bosses--there's also a sense of class solidarity among people who have the Spark, and nobody wants to be thought of as the guy who ruined everything for everyone. The existence of the printing press does mean that research results can be disseminated to arcane spellcasters more easily than it could in the past, but copying a spell into one's own spellbook means individual effort. There's no "Level 1 Spellcasting for Dummies" books in the game world and there never will be.
Divine magic and its healing properties works essentially the same way. Healing the victims of an industrial accident or train wreck one at a time and only until the miracles run out means that not everybody is going to get treated and that a single divine spellcaster will be overwhelmed every single day in a major city. Clerics that accompanied the militaries of the USA and CSA found that the best they could do every day was a pittance compared to the healing that was needed by the thousands of injured and maimed soldiers. Incidentally, if someone in the game loses a limb and the wound is healed, they wind up with a sealed and infection-free stump if a Cure Wounds spell that was used on them; higher level healing magics with limb-restoring effects are necessary to regrow a severed arm. During the decade-plus Civil War, clerics from both militaries had faced courts martial for healing enlisted men before officers until the threat of a general strike led to the adoption of the Rules of Conscience in the clerical healing corps; under these newly adopted rules a cleric could not face charges for healing someone against the orders of their commanding officers. It's continuing to be a grey area of military law, with some cases rising where a cleric was accused of intentionally running out of spells before an officer came in for treatment. It's very hard to prove a negative, though, and public opinion turns sharply against a system that wants to punish a cleric for healing an "unimportant" person before an important one. Some of the most devastating wartime propaganda against the CSA stemmed from the depiction of their healing troops letting thousands of common soldiers die while attending exclusively to the plantation-owning class.
Black Sorcerers in the CSA were considered one of the gravest threats to the social order imaginable. Having wild magical talents crop up among the white serf class was thought to be regrettable but inevitable (and the ruling class did make sure to make use of the ones they found), but having a slave capable of performing arcane wonders on their own initiative was seen as a horrifying affront to the natural order even before the Bronze Brigade stopped a Confederate advance with only three casualties. Generally, the plantation owners and other Confederate aristocracy would have to find ways to manipulate and threaten sorcerers that didn't depend on hurting them because that could be the spark that sets them off to burn down everything they see. Instead, ironically, slaves that were sorcerers could count on their families being kept at the same location as them because threatening a spouse or child could keep an errant wild-talent mage in line.
In the Mormon theocracy of Deseret, every category of spellcaster is seen as having a measure of divine favor, with the Lord bestowing some gifts on His children for different uses. Even the arcane magic users are considered divinely powered. Clerics of other faiths are allowed to practice their healing arts and their religious practices are grudgingly tolerated but people tend to be truly desperate to call on someone from the Faith when they need help. Non-Mormon wizards and sorcerers are usually targets for conversion attempts, with social prestige being the carrot and the stick often nonexistent (irritating someone who knows how to cast Fireball is not a wise choice).
Tejanos, as a whole, appreciate everything a spellcaster can do for them (having someone who can call up a rainstorm in a desert is a useful thing for farmers during the growing season). Clerics and sorcerers generally find something they know how to do well and learn to use it to help the region they're in; the nation-state is large enough and sparsely populated enough that traveling healers won't get to where they're needed in time. Instead, staying in one place and doing everything one can for the people already there is the general "career path" for clerics (although there are always exceptions). Sorcerers have been renowned outlaws and lawmen, with names like Three-Finger Jake and Fancy Dan Wilson gaining reputations for their magically-fueled robbery careers and the bounty hunter Jack Monroe becoming a living legend for stopping and punishing criminals all over that country.
On Venus and Mars the frontier lifestyle means that the more academic arcane spellcasters aren't seen as particularly useful and the fussy and effeminate alchemist is a stock comedic archetype in vaudeville and theater on both planets. Materials for spellbooks are usually in short supply on both planets, as are some of the more esoteric research materials. But people with the Spark are usually given high social status in the more settled areas simply because they can do things that nobody else can (and a rifleman who can give himself faster reflexes and better eyesight is someone that most people want to stay on the right side of, if given the opportunity).
First up, there are magic colleges in every major power on the continent other than the 500 Nations territory (who practice apprentice-mentor teaching relationships one on one for their Wizards; the written language Sequoyah came up with made it possible for Native American arcane spellcasters to standardize their spellbooks, but before that the use of pictograms and personal artwork on animal skin parchment meant that you could indeed have Indians with spellbooks). Not everyone's going to be Merlin, even with instruction from those magical schools, but people (or Persons) with the Spark are generally expected to go into a field that uses their ability if they've got it. Arcane magicians aren't necessarily all going to become adventurers (there's a place for Necromancers in any food storage / transport business because they can retard or completely stop the decay of meat or plants; more than one of that field works in the stockyards of Chicago just keeping the food in better condition than it would be otherwise). Diviners are employed by oil and mining companies to determine where the richest deposits of petroleum or precious metals can be found. Even the least talented Illusionists can find work on the vaudeville stage spraying colors and light over a fascinated audience that paid a couple pennies apiece for a ticket. Artificers and alchemists can make strength potions for the military or single-use explosive items for wizards or sorcerers in the armed forces.
But one thing all the magical applications listed above have in common is that they require individual effort and individual attention. The Necromancer working at the stockyards has to personally cast the magics to slow or stop decay on a few dozen sides of beef themselves. There has not been (as of 1899) a way to industrialize the magical effects that can be used to make life easier. This means that the wizards (and sorcerers) who perform magical feats as a job are more analogous to medieval craftsmen and guild members than corporate officers. In the example given of the stockyard worker, the employers want to keep that wizard happy and productive because the lack of maggots in their tinned meat is a selling point. Wizards that want more money or shorter working hours tend to be able to negotiate from a position of strength because there simply aren't enough of them around to make hiring a cheaper one a workable tactic for the bosses--there's also a sense of class solidarity among people who have the Spark, and nobody wants to be thought of as the guy who ruined everything for everyone. The existence of the printing press does mean that research results can be disseminated to arcane spellcasters more easily than it could in the past, but copying a spell into one's own spellbook means individual effort. There's no "Level 1 Spellcasting for Dummies" books in the game world and there never will be.
Divine magic and its healing properties works essentially the same way. Healing the victims of an industrial accident or train wreck one at a time and only until the miracles run out means that not everybody is going to get treated and that a single divine spellcaster will be overwhelmed every single day in a major city. Clerics that accompanied the militaries of the USA and CSA found that the best they could do every day was a pittance compared to the healing that was needed by the thousands of injured and maimed soldiers. Incidentally, if someone in the game loses a limb and the wound is healed, they wind up with a sealed and infection-free stump if a Cure Wounds spell that was used on them; higher level healing magics with limb-restoring effects are necessary to regrow a severed arm. During the decade-plus Civil War, clerics from both militaries had faced courts martial for healing enlisted men before officers until the threat of a general strike led to the adoption of the Rules of Conscience in the clerical healing corps; under these newly adopted rules a cleric could not face charges for healing someone against the orders of their commanding officers. It's continuing to be a grey area of military law, with some cases rising where a cleric was accused of intentionally running out of spells before an officer came in for treatment. It's very hard to prove a negative, though, and public opinion turns sharply against a system that wants to punish a cleric for healing an "unimportant" person before an important one. Some of the most devastating wartime propaganda against the CSA stemmed from the depiction of their healing troops letting thousands of common soldiers die while attending exclusively to the plantation-owning class.
Black Sorcerers in the CSA were considered one of the gravest threats to the social order imaginable. Having wild magical talents crop up among the white serf class was thought to be regrettable but inevitable (and the ruling class did make sure to make use of the ones they found), but having a slave capable of performing arcane wonders on their own initiative was seen as a horrifying affront to the natural order even before the Bronze Brigade stopped a Confederate advance with only three casualties. Generally, the plantation owners and other Confederate aristocracy would have to find ways to manipulate and threaten sorcerers that didn't depend on hurting them because that could be the spark that sets them off to burn down everything they see. Instead, ironically, slaves that were sorcerers could count on their families being kept at the same location as them because threatening a spouse or child could keep an errant wild-talent mage in line.
In the Mormon theocracy of Deseret, every category of spellcaster is seen as having a measure of divine favor, with the Lord bestowing some gifts on His children for different uses. Even the arcane magic users are considered divinely powered. Clerics of other faiths are allowed to practice their healing arts and their religious practices are grudgingly tolerated but people tend to be truly desperate to call on someone from the Faith when they need help. Non-Mormon wizards and sorcerers are usually targets for conversion attempts, with social prestige being the carrot and the stick often nonexistent (irritating someone who knows how to cast Fireball is not a wise choice).
Tejanos, as a whole, appreciate everything a spellcaster can do for them (having someone who can call up a rainstorm in a desert is a useful thing for farmers during the growing season). Clerics and sorcerers generally find something they know how to do well and learn to use it to help the region they're in; the nation-state is large enough and sparsely populated enough that traveling healers won't get to where they're needed in time. Instead, staying in one place and doing everything one can for the people already there is the general "career path" for clerics (although there are always exceptions). Sorcerers have been renowned outlaws and lawmen, with names like Three-Finger Jake and Fancy Dan Wilson gaining reputations for their magically-fueled robbery careers and the bounty hunter Jack Monroe becoming a living legend for stopping and punishing criminals all over that country.
On Venus and Mars the frontier lifestyle means that the more academic arcane spellcasters aren't seen as particularly useful and the fussy and effeminate alchemist is a stock comedic archetype in vaudeville and theater on both planets. Materials for spellbooks are usually in short supply on both planets, as are some of the more esoteric research materials. But people with the Spark are usually given high social status in the more settled areas simply because they can do things that nobody else can (and a rifleman who can give himself faster reflexes and better eyesight is someone that most people want to stay on the right side of, if given the opportunity).
Thursday, June 16, 2016
Miscellaneous: Twenty Questions
One of the things I disliked immensely in previous gaming groups was that some people would put together characters with backgrounds and personalities and other people would try to juke the stats and buy the perfect feats, bonuses and flaws to make their character into a combat machine. I know the appeal of playing a character that can kick the shit out of anyone but for this game I'm hoping to have a bit more of the "everyone is creating a semi-improvised story together" and a little less of the DESTROY ALL RIVALS in it.
To that end, I've got a list of twenty questions that players are advised to look over and think of answers to. There are no right and wrong responses. It's just a way to get your head into the character's mentality and to accrete some details that will help you with performing them in the game. If you decide later on that an answer that was given to this post is wrong or needs to be rewritten, that's just what is going to happen. I'm the storyteller; it's my job to fit things into the game. Provided that it doesn't break the fiction, I should be able to do that with any new answers to old questions.
Future players: If you feel like it, please copy and paste the questions in a comment and leave your answers there.
Without further ado:
01) Where is your character from?
02) Where did they get their training or learn their skills?
03) What is / was their family background?
04) What is their view of magic use and magic users?
05) What is their view of the six major powers occupying the continental United States (the USA, the CSA, the 500 Nations, Peachtree, La Republica de Tejas and Deseret?)
06) Have they been to another planet yet? Do they want to go some day?
07) Your character finds $500 on the ground (a windfall equal to a three months' wages for a working class laborer). There's no way to tell who it belongs to. What do they do with the money? Does this answer change if they find it by themselves or in the group?
08) What religion (if any) does your character follow, and how fervently?
09) What's one of their bad habits? How about a good habit?
10) What does your character do with their leisure time?
11) What would your character order at a restaurant? Does this answer change if someone else is paying for the meal?
12) Does your character have any bias against the Skaven, the Red or Green Lizardmen, against Tripod Martians (or against humans, if they're a nonhuman character)? Does your character have any prejudices against other humans if they are a human?
13) Where do they live when not adventuring? Is it just a rented room somewhere or an actual home?
14) How does your character tend to dress when out in the field having adventures? Are their "town clothes" different from this?
15) How does your character pack for travel or for going out into the field for adventuring?
16) What is your character's education level? (It is presumed that all PCs will be literate in English without a reason for that in the back story.)
17) What is your character afraid of?
18) Does your character owe a significant favor to anyone? Does anyone owe them a significant favor?
19) What does your character want to get out of adventuring? What to they expect to get out if it? What are they afraid could happen while out on adventures?
20) What, if anything, does your character consider to be a cause worth dying for? What would they see as a good death?
Bonus question #21: What advice would you give your character if you could?
To that end, I've got a list of twenty questions that players are advised to look over and think of answers to. There are no right and wrong responses. It's just a way to get your head into the character's mentality and to accrete some details that will help you with performing them in the game. If you decide later on that an answer that was given to this post is wrong or needs to be rewritten, that's just what is going to happen. I'm the storyteller; it's my job to fit things into the game. Provided that it doesn't break the fiction, I should be able to do that with any new answers to old questions.
Future players: If you feel like it, please copy and paste the questions in a comment and leave your answers there.
Without further ado:
01) Where is your character from?
02) Where did they get their training or learn their skills?
03) What is / was their family background?
04) What is their view of magic use and magic users?
05) What is their view of the six major powers occupying the continental United States (the USA, the CSA, the 500 Nations, Peachtree, La Republica de Tejas and Deseret?)
06) Have they been to another planet yet? Do they want to go some day?
07) Your character finds $500 on the ground (a windfall equal to a three months' wages for a working class laborer). There's no way to tell who it belongs to. What do they do with the money? Does this answer change if they find it by themselves or in the group?
08) What religion (if any) does your character follow, and how fervently?
09) What's one of their bad habits? How about a good habit?
10) What does your character do with their leisure time?
11) What would your character order at a restaurant? Does this answer change if someone else is paying for the meal?
12) Does your character have any bias against the Skaven, the Red or Green Lizardmen, against Tripod Martians (or against humans, if they're a nonhuman character)? Does your character have any prejudices against other humans if they are a human?
13) Where do they live when not adventuring? Is it just a rented room somewhere or an actual home?
14) How does your character tend to dress when out in the field having adventures? Are their "town clothes" different from this?
15) How does your character pack for travel or for going out into the field for adventuring?
16) What is your character's education level? (It is presumed that all PCs will be literate in English without a reason for that in the back story.)
17) What is your character afraid of?
18) Does your character owe a significant favor to anyone? Does anyone owe them a significant favor?
19) What does your character want to get out of adventuring? What to they expect to get out if it? What are they afraid could happen while out on adventures?
20) What, if anything, does your character consider to be a cause worth dying for? What would they see as a good death?
Bonus question #21: What advice would you give your character if you could?
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Game Mechanics: Inborn Magic
Wizards study for years and channel arcane energies through incantations. Clerics pray for miracles and their requests are often heard. There's a third category of spellcaster, though, and that's the inborn magic user. Pathfinder calls them sorcerers so that's the term I will also be using. Sorcerers have the Spark, just like wizards do, but it works differently in them. They still select spells from the Wizard list but they can't learn anything more than their selections each level (wizards are technically capable of learning every spell in the game, although they can only cast a certain number of spells per day). They can't specialize in a school of magic like wizards can. They can't craft spells or potions or magic items either. In exchange for these flaws and disabilities (in game mechanic terms) sorcerers get a couple of benefits. First, the casting time for any sorcerous ability is 1 (Wizards have different casting times depending on the spell their using). Second, they don't need to use gestures or words to fire off their spell(s). Third, they have a 1 in 4 chance of being able to use any magic item, regardless of whether or not it's one that an arcane spellcaster can use. Fourth, they can wear armor to protect themselves while Wizards generally cannot.
In game terms, this makes a sorcerer closer to a superhero character than a wizard, albeit one with a limited number of times they can use their powers in a given day. In the 1899 world, sorcerers were traditionally viewed with suspicion by the common people (it's not really witchcraft, but that doesn't stop sorcerers from being accused of being witches). The politically and economically powerful have been known to prize having a sorcerer or two in their employ, since they are rare and unpredictable. In the USA sorcerers with useful talents are guaranteed an officer's rank in the Army, Navy and Ether Navy; in the CSA the same is true. In the theocracy of Deseret a sorcerer is considered to have the favor of the true God and sorcerers tend to be given considerable license and latitude while indulging their particular vices. The sorcerers of the 500 Nations are respected as wonder-workers and medicine men and in Peachtree they're considered particularly blessed. The Bronze Brigade is a group of fifty sorcerers in the Peachtree armed forces, all of whom train and drill together to maximize the effectiveness of their abilities in combat. The first Confederate attack against Peachtree was foiled almost exclusively by the Bronze Brigade, whose existence was revealed to the world at large at the time. Since then the mere threat of their deployment has kept the CSA from rattling their sabers too loudly on occasion.
Sorcerers have been observed in the Red and Green Lizardmen, the Jaguar Men of Venus, Tripod Martians and Skaven at roughly the same rates that they are in humans (roughly one in 5000 people). Especially in the case of the agrarian and contemplative Tripod Martians, sorcerers tend to live a life of adventure and travel. It's as if the Spark inside them compels them to go out and find situations that require their talents, because by using them out in the world their skills and abilities grow.
In game terms, this makes a sorcerer closer to a superhero character than a wizard, albeit one with a limited number of times they can use their powers in a given day. In the 1899 world, sorcerers were traditionally viewed with suspicion by the common people (it's not really witchcraft, but that doesn't stop sorcerers from being accused of being witches). The politically and economically powerful have been known to prize having a sorcerer or two in their employ, since they are rare and unpredictable. In the USA sorcerers with useful talents are guaranteed an officer's rank in the Army, Navy and Ether Navy; in the CSA the same is true. In the theocracy of Deseret a sorcerer is considered to have the favor of the true God and sorcerers tend to be given considerable license and latitude while indulging their particular vices. The sorcerers of the 500 Nations are respected as wonder-workers and medicine men and in Peachtree they're considered particularly blessed. The Bronze Brigade is a group of fifty sorcerers in the Peachtree armed forces, all of whom train and drill together to maximize the effectiveness of their abilities in combat. The first Confederate attack against Peachtree was foiled almost exclusively by the Bronze Brigade, whose existence was revealed to the world at large at the time. Since then the mere threat of their deployment has kept the CSA from rattling their sabers too loudly on occasion.
Sorcerers have been observed in the Red and Green Lizardmen, the Jaguar Men of Venus, Tripod Martians and Skaven at roughly the same rates that they are in humans (roughly one in 5000 people). Especially in the case of the agrarian and contemplative Tripod Martians, sorcerers tend to live a life of adventure and travel. It's as if the Spark inside them compels them to go out and find situations that require their talents, because by using them out in the world their skills and abilities grow.
Sunday, June 12, 2016
Game Mechanics: The Undead
It wouldn't be D&D without the undead. Skeletons and zombies are among the standard low-level threats to chuck at a beginning party because they're dangerous but not overpowering. Plus, let us face facts directly here, skeletons with swords are cool. Defeating a swarm of zombies when you're outnumbered is cool. Plus, in 1899 world there are no orcs, elves or dwarves so I need some kind of antagonist to throw at the party. (There are goblins and kobolds, as it turns out.)
In game mechanics terms, the undead are the magically reanimated remains of a formerly living creature--usually a bipedal humanoid, but not always. The classic zombies and skeletons are slow, mindless, and follow the orders of the necromancer that animated them (other varieties of undead like ghosts or liches are quite beyond what anyone will be able to deal with in the campaign at the start and will be covered later). Mindless undead that stray out of their necromancer's control radius will become wandering monsters or stand idle waiting for more instructions, depending on many various factors. All corporeal undead can sense the life force of living creatures and are driven to attack anyone alive. Zombies missing their eyes are still capable of tracking living creatures; skeletons (other than this specific one) never had functioning eyes but are still capable of stalking and attacking living beings.
Using the rules for alignments, the creation of a skeleton or a zombie is an evil act. It involves bringing death energy into the world and infusing a dead creature with the desire to kill indiscriminately. Those are not good acts, although I'm sure some necromancers had relatively good intentions when making a squadron of skeletons to defend themselves. And there are some industrial workplaces in the game world (Peachtree and the USA forbid this) where skeletons man textile looms or industrial furnaces, removing the need for the factory owners to pay their laborers; they can also work their undead slaves until they literally fall apart.
Divine spellcasters such as clerics and druids can channel their faith and patron [(G/g)od(dess)(s/es)]' energy into turning undead (which will force them away from the cleric or druid as long as the effect holds) or destroying them outright with sufficient power. Arcane spellcasters generally are not able to do this; it's one of the differences between arcane and divine magic. Evil clerics / druids can be capable of commanding or healing lesser undead instead of turning them.
In game mechanics terms, the undead are the magically reanimated remains of a formerly living creature--usually a bipedal humanoid, but not always. The classic zombies and skeletons are slow, mindless, and follow the orders of the necromancer that animated them (other varieties of undead like ghosts or liches are quite beyond what anyone will be able to deal with in the campaign at the start and will be covered later). Mindless undead that stray out of their necromancer's control radius will become wandering monsters or stand idle waiting for more instructions, depending on many various factors. All corporeal undead can sense the life force of living creatures and are driven to attack anyone alive. Zombies missing their eyes are still capable of tracking living creatures; skeletons (other than this specific one) never had functioning eyes but are still capable of stalking and attacking living beings.
Using the rules for alignments, the creation of a skeleton or a zombie is an evil act. It involves bringing death energy into the world and infusing a dead creature with the desire to kill indiscriminately. Those are not good acts, although I'm sure some necromancers had relatively good intentions when making a squadron of skeletons to defend themselves. And there are some industrial workplaces in the game world (Peachtree and the USA forbid this) where skeletons man textile looms or industrial furnaces, removing the need for the factory owners to pay their laborers; they can also work their undead slaves until they literally fall apart.
Divine spellcasters such as clerics and druids can channel their faith and patron [(G/g)od(dess)(s/es)]' energy into turning undead (which will force them away from the cleric or druid as long as the effect holds) or destroying them outright with sufficient power. Arcane spellcasters generally are not able to do this; it's one of the differences between arcane and divine magic. Evil clerics / druids can be capable of commanding or healing lesser undead instead of turning them.
Saturday, June 11, 2016
Background: Divine Magic and Religion
Divine magic works differently than arcane magic--part of that is a game mechanics issue (because having one type of spellcaster that could do everything would make it less interesting for players and more difficult for storytellers) and part of that is because different characters have different roles in the party. Clerics tend to be support characters--good in a fight (they get to wear armor, which helps), often restricted to blunt instruments rather than swords (because caving someone's Goddamned head in won't be as violent as stabbing them?) and their magic tends to be of the defensive, healing and helpful type. Wizards can be described as a "glass cannon"; they can do massive damage but they aren't tough and they (generally) don't get to wear armor because the weight and restriction that several dozen pounds of metal pressing down on your shoulders brings will disrupt the concentration necessary to perform magic.
Divine magic isn't the same as having the Spark and learning arcane magic. It's more like dipping a cup into a river and using the water for your own purposes. Clerics don't have to carry spell books around and don't have to learn new spells at a bookstore. Instead, they are granted their magical abilities through faith and worship. In the game world, the gods are real (or at least, their worshipers are capable of doing the impossible in their name on a regular basis). Their prayers have a real and tangible effect on the world, which means there probably aren't a lot of atheists in the 1899 game world. There might be people who only go to services once or twice a year (just like there are on Earth) but religions are provable correct in the game.
One might think this would lead to strife, but here's the thing--more than one religion has shown it's capable of producing the same results. If only Christians could breath fire and fly while Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Buddhists and Taoists could not, that'd be some evidence that Christians have got it going on. In Pathfinder, priests of any of the religions in the game--if granted the ability to do so by their [(G/g)od(dess)(s/es)]--can perform wonders. In game terms it means that characters who got stabbed, shot, burned, bitten or splashed with acid will be as good as new in ten minutes (or at least not in immediate mortal danger). Clerics can nullify poisons, make food and water appear out of thin air, and when they've been granted sufficient power by their patron deities, restore limbs to the maimed, sight to the blind and life to the dead. Not Re-Animator style second life, but actual resurrection.
Since I don't feel comfortable putting JHVH and Christ in a roleplaying game, I'm pinching some ideas from various other sources to make religions in the game. The inspirations are pretty transparent, and if people familiar with the sources find that they're being done differently in the game world than in the novels (TV shows, movies, other games, etc.) that they're familiar with, welcome to the rule of "I'm running the game and this is how things work here".
For players who want to have incense, prayers, holy water and oil and the various other aspects of medieval Catholicism that informs the generic "good" clerics in D&D and its successors, I'm adding in the Faith of the Seven from Westeros. This church essentially replaces Christianity in the game world--and as I'm sure I've said before, don't look to closely or this all will fall apart. At any rate, the Faith has a sacred text (The Seven-Pointed Star), instantly recognizable robes and vestments, stained-glass windows in their septs, holy symbols (the seven-pointed star symbol as well as crystal prisms that separate white light into seven bands of color) and a duty to serve the weak and poor in the world by going out and doing good in it. Septons and septas can count on institutional support from their church (it's very well established in Europe and the Americas, and traveling / adventuring clerics are an accepted part of the Faith's outreach efforts in the world).
The Red God, R'hllor, is also worshiped in fire temples, since I'm stealing more than one thing from the same source. Players who want to have a monotheistic cleric (or just want access to fire and shadow magic) can use this framework. The Drowned God is popular on Venus, though in 1899 the services are less about Viking-style pillage and more about the cyclical nature of life, death and rebirth (though the adventuring Drowned Men and Women are more direct and forceful than most of the other priests of this faith).
Similarly, the Old Gods of the North are available as a worship focus for druid characters, and serve as a focus for clerics / druids that work from an animist or nature-worshiping framework. There won't necessarily be observances or standard prayers (and weirwoods have been extinct since the 1690s in the game world), but even without the sacred trees the powers still work.
The Skaven (more about them in another background post) are alchemically created bipedal rat creatures that will use Halfling stats in the game if anyone wants to play them. They were created by Jacob Waterhouse, an alchemist at the Massachusetts Bay Colony Institute of Technological and Arcane Arts, in 1796. He taught several dozen breeding pairs of the inquisitive ratlings all he could about the world, science, the English language, and how to channel the Spark that a few of them developed. They escaped his lab in early 1802, fled to the open lands in the USA and bred like rats; there are now Skaven communities in virtually every large city in the USA and Peachtree (the average Skaven prefers living in a city to rural areas). The CSA does not consider them human and does not grant them civil rights, so they avoid that country. Deseret considers them abominations but under political pressure from the USA, but no longer offers a cash bounty on Skaven pelts. The 500 Nations allow them free entry into the territory (which is not a privilege extended to many humans from other countries). Peachtree scientists and alchemists tend to view Skaven as the best lab assistants and researchers on the continent, since their natural curiosity, sharp senses and nimble hands help them out in their labors. Tejas is big and empty enough that there are Skaven cities and neighborhoods there as well, and they get along with the Tejanos about as well as they do in the USA or Peachtree despite Tejas' relative lack of creature comforts and luxuries.
The Skaven religion worships eight figures, with the ratkin viewing them as different aspects of existence. Jacob Waterhouse is revered as The Creator, whose aspect is that of bringing new things into the world or making new discoveries built on the framework of old ones. The Litter-Mother is their fertility goddess and the Nest-Mother is their household goddess; they are considered two different aspects of Skaven existence (birth and breeding isn't the same as making a safe space for one's family and finding comfort in domesticity). The Laughing Rat King is a mythical figure celebrating victory over adversity, whether that's famine, house fires, or prejudice from other races. He's more of a Bacchus figure (or Ho Tai from Buddhism). The Open-Handed Giver is the Skaven spirit of community and cooperation and good fortune; unlike the previous four gods it is not ever pictured as consistent to its appearance, gender or species--after all, the Skaven have been treated well from quarters they didn't expect often enough that they recognize the touch of the Open-Handed Giver even when it's from a human (or Martian or Lizardman or Jaguar Man, etc.). The Seeking Child is always depicted as a Skaven child with one eye open; it's ratling god of inquisitiveness, curiosity, secrets and knowledge. The Enduring Sufferer is also always depicted as a Skaven, one that is half-starved and mangy, its tail injured and a front paw maimed or missing. The Enduring Sufferer is the god of adversity while it's happening, and several Skaven myths tell the story of how this figure becomes the Laughing Rat King after outwitting or merely outlasting its oppressors. The final god of the Skaven is the Blight. This is their devil figure; it's the cause of suffering and oppression when it works its will through other living creatures. Dead things rot because of the Blight, but there are times when calling on your worst enemy means you live to fight another day.
The Skaven use the following symbol as a religious icon; the eight arrows represent the eight paths their gods revealed to the Skaven as a race. At one time or another all eight paths are open to an individual Skaven to follow and this helps them remember it. Metaphorically, the Skaven is standing at the center of the icon and each different god or goddess has a path to follow from there.
Divine magic isn't the same as having the Spark and learning arcane magic. It's more like dipping a cup into a river and using the water for your own purposes. Clerics don't have to carry spell books around and don't have to learn new spells at a bookstore. Instead, they are granted their magical abilities through faith and worship. In the game world, the gods are real (or at least, their worshipers are capable of doing the impossible in their name on a regular basis). Their prayers have a real and tangible effect on the world, which means there probably aren't a lot of atheists in the 1899 game world. There might be people who only go to services once or twice a year (just like there are on Earth) but religions are provable correct in the game.
One might think this would lead to strife, but here's the thing--more than one religion has shown it's capable of producing the same results. If only Christians could breath fire and fly while Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Buddhists and Taoists could not, that'd be some evidence that Christians have got it going on. In Pathfinder, priests of any of the religions in the game--if granted the ability to do so by their [(G/g)od(dess)(s/es)]--can perform wonders. In game terms it means that characters who got stabbed, shot, burned, bitten or splashed with acid will be as good as new in ten minutes (or at least not in immediate mortal danger). Clerics can nullify poisons, make food and water appear out of thin air, and when they've been granted sufficient power by their patron deities, restore limbs to the maimed, sight to the blind and life to the dead. Not Re-Animator style second life, but actual resurrection.
Since I don't feel comfortable putting JHVH and Christ in a roleplaying game, I'm pinching some ideas from various other sources to make religions in the game. The inspirations are pretty transparent, and if people familiar with the sources find that they're being done differently in the game world than in the novels (TV shows, movies, other games, etc.) that they're familiar with, welcome to the rule of "I'm running the game and this is how things work here".
For players who want to have incense, prayers, holy water and oil and the various other aspects of medieval Catholicism that informs the generic "good" clerics in D&D and its successors, I'm adding in the Faith of the Seven from Westeros. This church essentially replaces Christianity in the game world--and as I'm sure I've said before, don't look to closely or this all will fall apart. At any rate, the Faith has a sacred text (The Seven-Pointed Star), instantly recognizable robes and vestments, stained-glass windows in their septs, holy symbols (the seven-pointed star symbol as well as crystal prisms that separate white light into seven bands of color) and a duty to serve the weak and poor in the world by going out and doing good in it. Septons and septas can count on institutional support from their church (it's very well established in Europe and the Americas, and traveling / adventuring clerics are an accepted part of the Faith's outreach efforts in the world).
The Red God, R'hllor, is also worshiped in fire temples, since I'm stealing more than one thing from the same source. Players who want to have a monotheistic cleric (or just want access to fire and shadow magic) can use this framework. The Drowned God is popular on Venus, though in 1899 the services are less about Viking-style pillage and more about the cyclical nature of life, death and rebirth (though the adventuring Drowned Men and Women are more direct and forceful than most of the other priests of this faith).
Similarly, the Old Gods of the North are available as a worship focus for druid characters, and serve as a focus for clerics / druids that work from an animist or nature-worshiping framework. There won't necessarily be observances or standard prayers (and weirwoods have been extinct since the 1690s in the game world), but even without the sacred trees the powers still work.
The Skaven (more about them in another background post) are alchemically created bipedal rat creatures that will use Halfling stats in the game if anyone wants to play them. They were created by Jacob Waterhouse, an alchemist at the Massachusetts Bay Colony Institute of Technological and Arcane Arts, in 1796. He taught several dozen breeding pairs of the inquisitive ratlings all he could about the world, science, the English language, and how to channel the Spark that a few of them developed. They escaped his lab in early 1802, fled to the open lands in the USA and bred like rats; there are now Skaven communities in virtually every large city in the USA and Peachtree (the average Skaven prefers living in a city to rural areas). The CSA does not consider them human and does not grant them civil rights, so they avoid that country. Deseret considers them abominations but under political pressure from the USA, but no longer offers a cash bounty on Skaven pelts. The 500 Nations allow them free entry into the territory (which is not a privilege extended to many humans from other countries). Peachtree scientists and alchemists tend to view Skaven as the best lab assistants and researchers on the continent, since their natural curiosity, sharp senses and nimble hands help them out in their labors. Tejas is big and empty enough that there are Skaven cities and neighborhoods there as well, and they get along with the Tejanos about as well as they do in the USA or Peachtree despite Tejas' relative lack of creature comforts and luxuries.
The Skaven religion worships eight figures, with the ratkin viewing them as different aspects of existence. Jacob Waterhouse is revered as The Creator, whose aspect is that of bringing new things into the world or making new discoveries built on the framework of old ones. The Litter-Mother is their fertility goddess and the Nest-Mother is their household goddess; they are considered two different aspects of Skaven existence (birth and breeding isn't the same as making a safe space for one's family and finding comfort in domesticity). The Laughing Rat King is a mythical figure celebrating victory over adversity, whether that's famine, house fires, or prejudice from other races. He's more of a Bacchus figure (or Ho Tai from Buddhism). The Open-Handed Giver is the Skaven spirit of community and cooperation and good fortune; unlike the previous four gods it is not ever pictured as consistent to its appearance, gender or species--after all, the Skaven have been treated well from quarters they didn't expect often enough that they recognize the touch of the Open-Handed Giver even when it's from a human (or Martian or Lizardman or Jaguar Man, etc.). The Seeking Child is always depicted as a Skaven child with one eye open; it's ratling god of inquisitiveness, curiosity, secrets and knowledge. The Enduring Sufferer is also always depicted as a Skaven, one that is half-starved and mangy, its tail injured and a front paw maimed or missing. The Enduring Sufferer is the god of adversity while it's happening, and several Skaven myths tell the story of how this figure becomes the Laughing Rat King after outwitting or merely outlasting its oppressors. The final god of the Skaven is the Blight. This is their devil figure; it's the cause of suffering and oppression when it works its will through other living creatures. Dead things rot because of the Blight, but there are times when calling on your worst enemy means you live to fight another day.
The Skaven use the following symbol as a religious icon; the eight arrows represent the eight paths their gods revealed to the Skaven as a race. At one time or another all eight paths are open to an individual Skaven to follow and this helps them remember it. Metaphorically, the Skaven is standing at the center of the icon and each different god or goddess has a path to follow from there.
Tripod Martians have a different religious observance--there aren't any churches or services for the Martian religion. It is instead an inward-looking and meditative study where the worshiper goes into a circular stone chamber lit by flickering torches and looks at the slowly revolving stone cylinder inside. The cylinder depicts the Three-Faced Judge--the stone artwork features the faces of Joy, Sorrow and Wrath. While meditating in the chamber the Martian watches the stone cylinder revolving and sees which face of the judge is looking at them. Once the Martian decides what to do in order to atone for what they've done that made their deity either sad or angry, the next face to appear is Joy. Then it's up to the individual Martian to go out and do what they've decided to do in order to put things right. The flickering flames in the temple conceal the fact that all three faces on the cylinder are identical; it's the Martian's own thoughts that make one or the other appear to them.
The Lizardmen on Mars are nomadic and don't have churches, but leave offerings at small stone altars on travel routes and oases for their gods who live among the stars (and, as it turns out, for travelers who need food, water or clothing). Their sacred calendar is governed by the Sun and Mars' two moons, with single or double eclipses calling for fast days or feast days, depending on the order of events in the sky. The Venusian Lizardmen follow similar rites on their planet, with the lack of a moon on Venus meaning that there are no eclipses and the feast days occur on equinoxes and solstices instead. Of possible interest, the Green Lizardmen, being able to breathe water, do not understand the Drowned God at all.
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
Background: Arcane magic
One way that my fictitious 1899 differs from the real world is the existence of arcane magic. Before I get started: there are three types of magic in the Pathfinder system: Arcane, divine and inborn. Arcane magic is the "learned it from a book, cast it in the field, have to relearn it again after burning it off" magic style that's the classic AD&D Wizard stuff. Arcane magicians have a spellbook that essentially holds the instructions for the spells that they know (which can be anything from a classical "big leatherbound book with parchment pages covered in arcane diagrams" to a silken cloth stained with finger-traced scribbles that describe what goes into spellcasting. It's different for each wizard and it's possible that one wizard would be completely unable to understand the spellbook from another. It's also possible that two wizards would be able to swap spellbooks between each other if they learned their skills from the same teacher. "Wizard's ink" is the personal recipe for spellbook inscription that each wizard derives on his own and the composition of their own ink is the magical equivalent of a DNA test or fingerprint. One might use the dregs from beer mugs and ground charcoal to make his own ink while another could use literal blood, sweat and tears.
All arcane magicians have the inborn ability to learn and channel magical energy. In past times it was called anything from hell-spawned powers to the will of the divine working on Earth, but with the coming of electrical power in the 1800s the general term is "the Spark". You can hear the capitals when a wizard says it, incidentally. People (or Skaven or Lizardmen or Jaguar Men) who have the Spark are recognizable to each other, in a vague "I sense a ripple in the Force" manner. That's one of the most common ways that existing wizards find new wizards. The Spark can manifest at any time of a person's life, and in either gender. Peachtree used a Calculating Engine to try and determine how, if at all, it was possible to determine whether or not someone will develop the Spark but after four years of continual study the results are decidedly inconclusive. They have found that women are slightly more likely to develop the Spark than men, but it's still only one in a couple thousand people who show this capability.
Once it is determined that someone possesses the Spark, several years of book learning ensue. Different countries have different methods of teaching (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has a Department of Arcane Studies, the foremost college of magic in the country but by no means the only one; the CSA has the Midnight Academy based in northern Alabama, while Peachtree has a campus made up of the Red Tower, the White Tower, the Black Tower and the Green Tower in its capital, Carver City, where each tower corresponds to a different school of magical influence (but covers arcane magic exclusively). La Republica de Tejas has a series of scattered colleges on a county-by-county level, students accepted at any one are given research and education privileges at all of the others. Deseret has the Golden College, which has the unique feature of teaching arcane, divine and inborn spellcasters. The arcane spellcasters from the 500 Nations tend to learn and teach each other as they encounter each other, with the operating theory being that the more each individual magician knows, the stronger all the tribes are as a whole. Incidentally, teaching a slave to read in the CSA is a felony but teaching one with the Spark how to cast magic is a capital offense. The official position of the Confederate government is that a trial for someone teaching slaves with the Spark how to use it is an unneccesary formality. Each nation's presence on other planets has at least a small magical library and college there as well.
Arcane magicians are rare on the ground in every country on the American continent and valuable due to scarcity; even in the impoverished CSA magicians are not expected to pay for their own tuition, supplies, or upkeep at the Midnight Academy (though that institution only admits white human students; no blacks, no Skaven, and no other sapient species from other planets). That's because as they grow stronger and more capable, wizards are among the fiercest weapons available to their countries and can provide great leaps forward in the understanding of the world.
Arcane magicians fall into the adventuring life essentially as a way to gain more control over their abilities through use. Some people, when given the choice between studying in a library for twenty years or risking their lives for two in order to gain the same mastery over their inborn skills, will take the second option every time. To the ones who live through their experiences, great power and knowledge are granted.
Specific to the rules of AD&D / Pathfinder, material components do not exist and are not used in the game. Verbal and somatic components only.
All arcane magicians have the inborn ability to learn and channel magical energy. In past times it was called anything from hell-spawned powers to the will of the divine working on Earth, but with the coming of electrical power in the 1800s the general term is "the Spark". You can hear the capitals when a wizard says it, incidentally. People (or Skaven or Lizardmen or Jaguar Men) who have the Spark are recognizable to each other, in a vague "I sense a ripple in the Force" manner. That's one of the most common ways that existing wizards find new wizards. The Spark can manifest at any time of a person's life, and in either gender. Peachtree used a Calculating Engine to try and determine how, if at all, it was possible to determine whether or not someone will develop the Spark but after four years of continual study the results are decidedly inconclusive. They have found that women are slightly more likely to develop the Spark than men, but it's still only one in a couple thousand people who show this capability.
Once it is determined that someone possesses the Spark, several years of book learning ensue. Different countries have different methods of teaching (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has a Department of Arcane Studies, the foremost college of magic in the country but by no means the only one; the CSA has the Midnight Academy based in northern Alabama, while Peachtree has a campus made up of the Red Tower, the White Tower, the Black Tower and the Green Tower in its capital, Carver City, where each tower corresponds to a different school of magical influence (but covers arcane magic exclusively). La Republica de Tejas has a series of scattered colleges on a county-by-county level, students accepted at any one are given research and education privileges at all of the others. Deseret has the Golden College, which has the unique feature of teaching arcane, divine and inborn spellcasters. The arcane spellcasters from the 500 Nations tend to learn and teach each other as they encounter each other, with the operating theory being that the more each individual magician knows, the stronger all the tribes are as a whole. Incidentally, teaching a slave to read in the CSA is a felony but teaching one with the Spark how to cast magic is a capital offense. The official position of the Confederate government is that a trial for someone teaching slaves with the Spark how to use it is an unneccesary formality. Each nation's presence on other planets has at least a small magical library and college there as well.
Arcane magicians are rare on the ground in every country on the American continent and valuable due to scarcity; even in the impoverished CSA magicians are not expected to pay for their own tuition, supplies, or upkeep at the Midnight Academy (though that institution only admits white human students; no blacks, no Skaven, and no other sapient species from other planets). That's because as they grow stronger and more capable, wizards are among the fiercest weapons available to their countries and can provide great leaps forward in the understanding of the world.
Arcane magicians fall into the adventuring life essentially as a way to gain more control over their abilities through use. Some people, when given the choice between studying in a library for twenty years or risking their lives for two in order to gain the same mastery over their inborn skills, will take the second option every time. To the ones who live through their experiences, great power and knowledge are granted.
Specific to the rules of AD&D / Pathfinder, material components do not exist and are not used in the game. Verbal and somatic components only.
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
Background: The Inner Planets
In addition to the alternate history North American continent, there's going to be colonies and indigenous races on all the planets in the solar system. Using the Etheric Propeller, a device invented by Nikola Tesla and patented by Thomas Edison, spaceships can travel to the Moon, or to any of the planets in the solar system. They get where they're going at the speed of plot, because trying to come up with a mathematical expression for how fast an Etheric Zeppelin can go from Earth to Mars based on the two planets' velocities relative to each other is something that I don't care enough to try and do. As of 1899, travel to the other planets is not possible through magic and must be done via technological means.
Each planet is one of those "only one biome" pulp adventure science fiction worlds; Earth is the only place in the solar system where all of the varying terrain types can be found. There are a series of colonies on the other planets--but thanks to the lack of instantaneous communication between Earth and the other planets there is usually more tolerance and cooperation between rival nations than there would be on Terra. The smarter consuls, military officers and political authorities realize that this is the way things have to run on another planet when support from their home nations is weeks or months away. The less intelligent ones die, have their duties covered by subordinates until a replacement can be sent from Earth or promoted from the ranks, and are unmourned by the colonialists on the other planets.
Mercury, as can be expected, has very few resources. A volcanic hellscape with rivers of magma and an atmosphere hot enough to cause mild tissue damage, it's valuable for rare minerals and gemstones prized by magic users more than anything. The USA, CSA, Peachtree, England, France, Germany, Russia, Holland, Spain and Portugal have colonies here, each one close enough to the others to offer support in the wake of inevitable catastrophe.
--
Venus is a jungle / swamp / rain forest / ocean world, with the sun taking up six times as much space in the sky as it does on Earth. It's nearly constantly raining there, and the plant and animal life on Venus tends towards the poisonous or horribly clawed / fanged. Daguerrotypes of Venusian life are reliable circulation boosters for Terran newspapers or the journal of the National Geographic Society; of particular note are the Jaguar Men. They're a sentient, bipedal race of humanoid spotted cat people and are reasonably closely allied with the USA and Peachtree settlements on Venus (a fad in the Confederacy's recent past for Jaguar Man-skin rugs and wall hangings has had the expected result on Venusian-Confederate relations). The Deep Ones (which will be using the stats for Sahuagin) live in the oceans and deep swamps of Venus; there is also a race of Green Lizardmen who can breathe underwater on this planet.
Of the expected carnivorous plants in the Venusian jungle, the gallows tree is one of the strangest. It ensnares its prey with vines that strangle the victims to death and flytrap-like jaws consume the corpses headfirst over a period of days or weeks. The gallows tree grows fruit with addictive narcotic and hallucinogenic properties, but the hallucinations are always of memories of its previous victims. It is considered ghoulish and repulsive by pretty much all Terrans to have a gallowfruit habit. Other species have opinions ranging from general tolerance to viewing the gallowfruit dreams as shamanic experiences. The Jaguar Men cultivate the Gil Weed as a sustenance crop, which is the basis for the sugary-sweet Venusian liquor margil (valuable and rare on Earth and celebrated on Venus as well).
The USA, Peachtree, England, France, Germany, Spain and the CSA maintain presences on Venus to a greater or lesser extent, with each settlement concerned with keeping the jungle beaten back from their cities.
--
Mars is a desert world, with nomadic Red Lizardmen traversing the deserts and the three-legged Tripod Martians cultivating the arable land to the sides of the Martian canals. The polar ice caps experience a partial melt every summer, flooding the canals with fresh water and fertilizing the Martian crops. There's still a small trickle of melt water through the rest of the year but it's the annual flood melt that makes Martian agriculture possible to any large extent. It's extraordinarily difficult to raise animals larger than chickens on Mars for food, which has led to a diet high in fruits and vegetables on that planet. The Vuz, a hardy desert tuber, is one of the staple foods of Martian agriculture (it is also used as the base for vuzd, a bitter Martian liquor).
The animal life on Mars tends towards the reptilian and insectile, with many creatures burrowing under the Martian soil (their tunnels, especially from the larger boreworms, have been known to create sinkholes and subsidence in the Martian outposts from time to time). Martian plants tend to look like cacti or grow underground with wide and deep root systems. The soil is rich in nutrients but Terran and Venusian planets require much more water than the Martian system tends to supply.
Peachtree has close diplomatic ties with the Tripod Martians following the construction and maintenance of a Calculating Engine that helps control a series of water-diverting and retaining flood gates on the main canals, which has increased crop yields and reduced hunger on the agricultural settlements considerably. The USA offers military support to Peachtree and the remote CSA outpost , Fortress Carter, has used Mars as a punishment detail for unruly slaves, since they have nowhere to flee on the planet (it is surrounded by hundreds of miles of empty desert). They labor and die in the Confederate mines, a source of alchemical and magically significant minerals and precious metals.
--
The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is thought to be the remains of at least one massive planet that was destroyed in a cataclysm hundreds of millions of years in the past. The remains of this planet or planets range in size from pebbles to massive boulders capable of sustaining an atmosphere. Ceres, having a diameter of 955 kilometers, is found to be the largest member of several hundred sizable boulders locked in what would seem to be a merry-go-round of primordial debris from a very early phase of planetary formation. Out of over two thousand asteroids regularly charted and observed, Ceres, due to its large size, convenient location and availability, was found to be the perfect spot for a drinking establishment, or "bar" if you will. It was named, appropriately enough, "The Ceres Crossroads". And it was more often than not frequented by roughnecks and thugs. It is also renowned as the inventor of the Three Planets cocktail, a concoction of Terran rum, Martian vuzd and Venusian margil.
The rest of the asteroid belt serves as a hiding place for smugglers and criminals, with some crews of Etheric Pirates laying claim to larger asteroids and using them as bases of operation for raids on Martian targets or ranging into the outer planets. Groups with Calculation Engines or mathematical prodigies use high-level calculus to determine the orbital paths of asteroids, with the right of salvage and ownership going to the people who register them first on Earth. While some of the asteroids are merely huge lumps of stone or iron, there have been legends of house-sized nuggets of gold, silver, mithril, adamantium and other impossibly precious metals out in the asteroid belt and George Washington Carver himself, testing a mathematical theory, led the Peachtree expedition to the asteroids that wound up recovering a sapphire the size of a bread basket; the gem carved from that sapphire is on display in the capital of Peachtree as a testament to the limits of the possible when intelligence and will are properly applied.
Every spacefaring nation has some sort of presence in the asteroid belt, and the boundary zone between the inner and outer planets is also a place where individual treasure hunters and groups of rogues can be found. Piracy is a constant threat, although the etheric navies of the more powerful countries run patrols to deter (and destroy) the pirate gangs. It's a constant struggle, with neither side able to claim victory at this point.
Monday, June 6, 2016
House Rule #2: The Dime Novelist
If you want to play a bard but don't want to have your character break into song all the damn time, you can use the same rules for bards but play as either a Journalist (if you want to be investigating things and reporting them to a newspaper somewhere in the game world) or a Dime Novelist (if you're out looking for thrilling adventures that you will be turning into pulp books for semi-literate people to enjoy). Because honestly, most journalists should know how to pick locks and sneak around if they want to be any good at what they're doing.
Small to massive XP bonuses for people who actually write up stories or come up with plot synopses of their dime novels.
Small to massive XP bonuses for people who actually write up stories or come up with plot synopses of their dime novels.
Sunday, June 5, 2016
House Rule #1: Spellcraft
Cleric, Druid or Wizard characters (not sorcerers, who have inborn powers rather than studied or bestowed ones) can add their Spellcraft ranks to their rolls when making any kind of magic item (potions, scrolls, rings, wands, or anything else that would be a single-use or multiple-use item that mimics the effect of any spell or other magical effect in the game. I'm choosing to interpret "spellcraft" as the way magic users channel the background radiation of arcane energy into a desired effect. Instead of requiring a wizard to learn armor smithing to make magic armor, Spellcraft means they can shape metal based on what they need it to be through arcane skill alone. This is mainly to make things a little easier for artificers and to make a steampunk / magic world depend a little bit on magic to make wonderful things.
Saturday, June 4, 2016
Background: Map of the Divided States of America
The map of the former United States for the Pathfinder 1899 game that I'm working in (probably without ever getting it off the ground, but hope springs eternal).
The game takes place in a steampunk 1899 based largely on the magical / industrial revolution Bas-Lag novels from China Mieville with bits and pieces stolen from Harry Turtledove novels, my own political prejudices and scraps from Deadlands and Castle Falkenstein, among many other sources.
The back story (which should not be examined too closely or it will fall apart) features a victorious Confederacy that broke away from the United States in 1874 after nearly a decade and a half of continued fighting. The depleted resources of the United States couldn't continue the war and the CSA gained its independence largely by not losing the conflict instead of directly winning it.
However, in the wake of the CSA's own losses Texas was recaptured by Mexico, leaving it a non-slave territory on the CSA's western border (and serving as a buffer between the USA and CSA). La Republica de Tejas is its own sovereign nation closely allied with Mexico and somewhat less closely allied with the United States.
Every square inch of Georgia was bought outright by George Washington Carver (a Tony Stark / Nikola Tesla genius figure in this continuity) and seceded from the secessionists. It now exists as a sovereign nation called Peachtree, serving as a release valve for tensions in the Confederacy (the smarter politicians in the CSA realize that having a place for the slaves most dedicated to escape to run keeps tensions from boiling completely over into a revolution that would destroy their entire nation).
The blue area in the northwest corner of the map is the 500 Nations' Territory. In a game world where magic works, Manifest Destiny ran up against a working Ghost Dance and powerful medicine men who halted the westward advance of the USA, leaving the native American population in control of a great deal of territory. With various shaman and wonder-workers ensuring that the USA lives up to the terms of their treaties an uneasy truce exists between the USA and the 500 Nations.
Utah is now Deseret, a Mormon theocracy let go by a war-weary nation that didn't want to throw away tens of thousands of troops to reclaim a desert. The Mormon view of blacks means that Deseret is a strong ally of the Confederacy, with Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico maintaining a strong border presence to prevent the CSA or Deseret from trying anything aggressive.
The remaining United States are an industrial powerhouse, with steam-driven Calculation Engines, a continent-spanning railroad, and several colleges of engineering and magic ensuring a supply of people capable of fighting the Confederacy and Deseret on the economic and political battlefields of the future. Neither nation has forgotten its dead or the atrocities committed by either side, but until another generation of young men grows up to join the military the current conflict between the two sides is a cold war rather than a shooting one. The USA, Peachtree and Tejas tend to use their considerable economic clout to bleed the Confederacy a drop at a time, which infuriates the secessionists who wonder why their roads are still dirt or gravel and why their industrial infrastructure is second-rate if they won the war.
Again, looking at this too closely means it'll fall apart like a house of cards in a hurricane but it's a starting point for the setting.
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