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Steam

Steam power. Clockwork. Infinite Possibilities... and the Romantics Hate You For It.

In between the Age of Reason and the Industrial Revelotion, you hold the secret powers and majesty of science and technology in your hands. Wonderworks of technology and thought empower your world, as you struggle against a society that doesn't want to believe.

You harness the powers of Steam Technology, Reanimation, Clockwork wonders and the evolved potential of the human mind. Fantastic forms of science power you to unlock all the mysteries of space, time and the human mind and you explore all realms with equal unyielding scientific curriosity...

Steam

What is Steampunk?

Steampunk is an off-shoot of the cyberpunk genre of science fiction that sets the stage in an earlier time frame and envokes the pseudo-scientific wonders of writers and thinkers of the romantic period.

The 'steam' of steam punk refers to steam power, the major force in technology before the full force of the industrialization. The 'punk' puts your character, the super-scientist, just outside of society, for the romantics of the steampunk genre fear technological progress, and they see your wonderworks as dangerous affronts to the noble savage and social contract. Of course, super science is dangerous, but to you it's all omelletes and eggs, and a steampunk has bigger things to worry about than consequences.

Theme, Morale etc...

Steam is a setting rife with undiscovered possibilities. At it's heart, a Steam game should be a retelling of the story of Prometheus, with the characters as the people who bring fire to the world. All though their are serious consequences, and the whole social structure has to brace for massive impact as the world adjusts to your character's latest discovery, where would all the cave-folk be without fire?

This doesn't mean that your character's a hero. Even though steampunk is lighter and often more swashbuckling than it's parent genre cyberpunk (how seriously can you take anybody in victorian dress riding around on a steam-powered time-machine?), it is still inherently dark. The victorian world is full of dirty little secrets, and the steampunk is set against society, often embittered by a world that refuses to accept the truths that he has so obviously discovered.

But, like in any genre, there is plenty of room to move. Steampunks can be as unscientific and as bumbling as Dr. Frankentein, or as twisted and tragic as the captain of the Nautilus. Stories can range from tongue in cheek as a James Bond movie, or serious and full of social commentary. A GM can spend his time filling his stories with parallel between victorian like and modern day dilemmas, with all the self discovery his players can stomach, or everybody can simply revel in the over the top polite long windedness of the time period. Probably, the game will fall somewhere inbetween, but the choice is there.

Abjucating Super Sciences

SCIENCE is at the heart of Steam and that skill should sit at the gateway of the most of the games special powers. Also Understanding stands a reasonable chance of housing broader based powers.

Sample Powers

  • Science Speciality Powers

    Treat these as Broad Specialities

  • Steamtech (Knowledge/Technology): This character can add steam power to nearly any object, and create steam powered objects that do high tech or implausible things. Flying machines and matter conversion are not out of reach. Steamtech is characteristically loud and requires large amounts of liquid and fossil fuel.
  • Microtech (Knowledge/Technology): This character can shrink items to impossible sizes. Each degree of success halves the size of the item, but after the item is smaller than hand held, it also increases the item's complexity and difficulty to use. Microtech items are in no other way hindered by the shrinking.
  • Clocktech (Knowlede/Technology): Like Steamtech above, Clocktech creates fabulous devices, but it uses miles of turning wheels instead of steam power.
  • Reanimation (Knowledge/Sciences): This power allows the character to use chemical, magnetic or electrical processes to reanimiate dead tissue.
  • Time Manipulation (Knowledge/Sciences): This power allows the character to use other forms of technology to manipulate time.
  • Grafting (Knowledge/Sciences): This power allows the character to graft technology into the human body and create victorian cybernetics.
  • Information (Knowlege/Technology): This power allows the user to encode and send information through irregular pathways, like water, electricity, sound or unexplained 'waves.' This can also represent advanced knowledge of radio or cable communication.
  • Potions (Knowledge/Sciences): This power creates fantastic effects through chemical combinations, from medieval alchemy to Mr.Hyde formulaes.
  • Mesmerism(Knowlede/Sciences): Allows quick, powerful mental conditioning, often through some technological device.
  • Automaton(Knowledge/Technology): Allows for the creation of very simple remote control intelligences to thinking machines.
  • Extra-Terrestrial Secrets(Knowledge/Sciences or Technology): This speciality, which may also be treated as a skill (twice as narrow: ET Sciences, ET Technology, 4x as narrow: ET Applied Science, ET Theoretical Science, ET Creation & Repair, ET Engineering etc...) allows the character to draw alien knowledge that is different and more advanced than earth knowledge.

  • Ability Powers

  • Psionics/Psychics: Characters with evoloved minds maybe able to get a mental edge on others and perform amazing acts of super-science.
  • Cybernetics: Also handled as a skill, cybernetics refers to any artificial, mechanical parts that the character may have.

    A Steam Campaign: Food for the Gods

    Aliens Make Contact in 1880

    Sir Robert looked up at the drawn, shattered figure of a man that stood before. His robust chest and keen mind did not falter from fear, but they did falter when so close to Miss Janet Hennig, their hands were actually touching through the bonds, and the stout academean felt himself sweating at the her closeness. And their was Ludwig, emaciated and brandishing a pair of shaving razors, the shadows playing across his face, glaring at them, his eyes drawn up like a hysteric's. "It took a janitor to realize what that astounding flash of light was the night before, but he, poor fellow, never got a fair chance to tell. You see, friend... they ate him. No, I don't mean they devoured his guts or any such thing, no not at all, they ate his thoughts, all of them. Every last one, and now, gentleman, they are eating from you. Don't worry, though, they won't hurt you. No, on the contrary, they are helping you emmensely, as they have helped me." They? They? What was this mad man on about? Sir Roberts eyes shrank in terror as the answer came to him, as he felt them crawling their way into his brain, they had come to eat him as well it would seem, and he could feel them. Though he was himself he saw through their eyes, looking down like hungry wolves upon he and Janet. The image would have made a lesser man sick, and it made Janet scream as they pulled her into psychic mouth.
    more comming soon