Arcanepunk: Help with Setting Building

[phydaux]

If I understand your game world, technology works and magic works.  But only people who are of the proper blood line can do magic.

 

See, that immediately puts Magistan at a disadvantage.  If anyone who goes to school long enough can become an engineer but you have to be born a mage, then Techtopia will out produce Magistan in a single generation.

 

If anyone can become either an engineer or a mage so long as they have the brainpower then the real power is in the schools.  Or more specifically in the teachers and the text books.  Both nations would guard their schools, professors and libraries very jealously.  Each nation would have active measures to destroy the other nation's schools, kill their students, kidnap the professors, and steal the text books.

 

And now we get into the REAL fun of a Cold War campaign - Espionage!  

 

Let's see....  Techtopia and Magistan are both trying to win supporters in Balancelandia.  One of the ways they do that is to give "scholarships" to the children of prominent  Balancelandia families to come and study in their most prestigious universities.  EXCEPT Magic or Engineering, or course.  You must be a native-born citizen to enroll in those courses.

 

The PCs are students from Balancelandia and are studying in, say, Techtopia.  They get approached by spys from Magistan, counter-spys from Techtopia.  Oooo, this could get fun.

[Lucius]

The other advantage I see helping Ultria is food prodcution- industrialized societies generally far outproduce food compared to non-industrial, and that allows them to field much larger armies. 

 Thoughts?

You could justify it being the exact opposite - fertility magic ensures the farms are very productive in Oberan, but industrial pollution in Ultria harms the health of land and people alike.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary ate the rest of the post

[Manic Typist]

Going in reverse order because it's easier.

 

@Lucius- yes, of course, but I don't want to wiffle-waffe back and forth. So I thought of that and just said "Yes but they don't have enough labor to harvest it, and magical labor is cost-ineffective for the purpose." Because I am trying to create a plausible if precarious and ultimately unsustainable balance. In this setting, the future is somewhat written - the combination of magic and technology is too obvious and powerful a matchup to be stopped (short of a truly cataclysmic event that sets things back in which case you have new problems). What is going to be decided is the contours of what the world looks like - it's flavor, how smoothly the approaches are integrated, and the governing/moral framework surrounding that. I'm rooting for Balancelandia/Huma, personally.

 

@Phydaux- Huh, I... didn't expect that comparison. But I guess it works in an incredibly loose sense (and I lost any potential interest in returning to GW's world/fiction after I found out they picked the incredibly boring path of "Chaos wins, blow it up, start over."). And yes, this will be a lot of espionage, as each side tries to entice defectors with critical knowledge/abilities/technologies to swap sides, assassinations, spying, etc. Schools WILL be primary targets, because they each build up how to DO things (you can't be a very good magic user if you don't study) and how to defeat them (here are the weaknesses of this vehicle/spell). Not to mention, targets for recruitment/assassination. Kill the next archmage before he ever finds his way out of his dorm, you know?

 

@Cantriped- I hear you, I feel you, and in this case, I (mostly) disagree with you. First, for me, this is all about simplicity. Cutting out the hundreds of variations of fantasy lore out there to only one magic system with some guiding principles and built in vagueness will make my life much easier than trying to balance whatever school someone comes up with versus some other school. Druids are people who live in the woods and protect nature with whatever abilities they have, priests are spiritual leaders not alt-magic users, etc. I'm not going to make up all the ins-and-outs - that's what players are for! Generating good ideas for me to steal, asking questions that make me come up with answers and then following those answers to their inevitable conclusions. Here are 9 principles, 3 are mentalism themed, 3 are physical themed, 3 are energy themed, and they are aligned with these concepts individually. Go!

 

A lot of my inspiration came from Brian Sanderson's Mistworld series. The magic is, for the most part, incredibly simple. There are something like, 8 "kinds" of caster, and one can ONLY push on metal (and if the metal outweighs them, the caster gets sent flying, leading to dramatic fight scenes of people jumping incredible heights and pushing coins at each other as fast as bullets), and another can only PULL metal (similar results but in reverse), etc. The creativity and engagement with the systems comes from when people get creative within the limitations.

 

This is, for me, a change from the typical high fantasy pace where pretty much it's the standard "everything and the kitchen sink." No elves, no dwarves, no demons, no vampires/werewolves, and no dozens of magical caster types. I think it can be a lot more fun to play with hard limits, and see what the PCs do to think their way around those limits. So they get two major types of caster whose only real difference is what pre-fabbed Limitations are required/Advantages are allowed, and then are limited to picking a SFX and creating a narrative for a spell that flows with it. So lots of different spells will mechanically be the same but have very different narratives for why they work. And the concept of colors not blocking themselves is incredibly simple but leads to interesting conundrums - a Red Sorcerer is a great way to attack a Red Sorcerer, except that both are equally vulnerable to each other. The game becomes maneuver and fire rather than one of defenses. Yet throw a different color into the mix and while conceptually it isn't any more complicated, the tactical environment has drastically changed.

 

So, in short, for me this is both cinematically more interesting and simpler than just saying "Yeah, go pick whatever kind of spellcaster you can think of." If I wanted that, I'd use my classic fantasy brew setting or grab a prebuilt system (I've always wanted to try Tuala Morn, for example).

 

I'm torn on the "must be born with the talent of magic" thing but think I'm going to stick with it. I used to play much more "kitchen sink" style and now I'm much more interested in limitations, saying "no" and seeing what happens when the players have to come up with a new plan rather than "I'll just do what I've been doing for years with different PCs- I'll teleport." I'm almost tempted to cut out wizardry entirely, but figured I'd limit it instead to see how that goes.

[phydaux]

"A lot of my inspiration came from Brian Sanderson's Mistworld series."

 

 

 

A buddy of mine has been trying to YEARS to get me to read Brian Sanderson.  

[Manic Typist]

Give Mistworld a try- you can get free Kindle demos via Amazon; might be able to find some copies (physical or electronic) in your local libraries.

[Old Man]

"A lot of my inspiration came from Brian Sanderson's Mistworld series."

 

 

 

A buddy of mine has been trying to YEARS to get me to read Brian Sanderson.  

Brandon Sanderson will be easier to find on Amazon using his correct first name.

[Ndreare]

Brandon Sanderson will be easier to find on Amazon using his correct first name.

It helps that he is simply put the best Fantasy Author alive.

[Manic Typist]

I'm considering starting another thread for adventure/campaign ideas within this setting, but for now I'll put some adventure seed ideas down here for feedback.

 

 

Adventure Ideas

1)   Assassinations

a.     Attempt by Obera to kill Ultrian ambassador

1.     Embarrass Ultria in face of other nations

2.     Provoke Ultria into overreacting against Huma by attempting to frame Huma via fabricated evidence or facilitating anti-Ultria factions within Huma w/weapons/training etc.

 

2)   Illicit cargos

a.     Weapons shipment meant for 3^rd party states being channeled through Huma

b.     Drugs, people, illegal weapons for resale in Huma

c.      State sponsored to destabilize other factions, or done to punish Huma/raise funds for other operations

3)   State sponsored terrorism

a.     Obera/Ultria supporting insurgencies, rebellions, and sympathetic factions in Huma, each other, and allied and non-allied states

                                               i.     Those factions have own agendas that can extend beyond their official sovereign territory to Huma

4)   On the Run

a.     Foreign security forces trying to catch deserters/defectors

b.     High value individuals would be sought after for recapture/kidnapping/killing to prevent falling into wrong hands

c.      Huma has an interest in minimizing the risk to life and property within its lands, willing to shelter/ignore low level people and perhaps turn truly high value targets for themselves

5)   Refugees

a.     Could be hiding HVIs, illicit cargo, enemy saboteurs, or simply just be victimized by foreign security forces/religious agents, bandits, etc.

b.     Tensions between local/refugee populations – blamed for rise and crime, but are a vulnerable population for predation of various kinds

6)   Honeypots

a.     Attempt to ensnare an ambassador or other critical figure, tilt a relationship away from Huma to provacteur state

7)   Industrial espionage

a.     Preventing foreign agents from stealing Huma’s secrets –tech, magic, destroying resources (people, places, material)

8)   Serial killer

a.     Always a classic – red herring, incidental, or somehow tied in to the larger game of shadows?

b.     Pressure to solve quickly due to Obera/Ultira’s outrage at their expats dying in Huma

9)   Spying – obvious plots abound, to be filled out later

10) Rogue Agents

[Jab Gideon]

Love the idea, for inspiration about two steampunk/magitech conflict reminds me of Full Metal Alchemist. They turn the source of magic into a secret war, and high lights the conflict of intent versus action.

 

It is also possible that you can have perpetual motion being powered by souls... human, faerie or automaton's

Now each side could consider one of the three as non-sentient and an Okay source of perpetual energy. The truth is yours to decide. Even the Balanlandia might consider the magical ore used to make automatons (or automaton-like creations) a clean source, not knowing it was created by a long forgotten genocidal war against a long absent fourth power. etc.

[Manic Typist]

Ooohhhh... that gives a much more interesting backstory to a rare resource idea I had....

[Manic Typist]

I should probably start a separate Campaign Thread, but I'm trying to get ideas out here for any feedback in my limited bandwidth during the week.

 

Below represents I think what the core bones of the plot will look like, with adventures filling in the details, connecting acts, or just serving as red herrings to it.

 

Plot idea:

1)   Crisis: Obera and other states not aligned with Ultria

a.     The recent innovation in repeating weapons means that within the span of perhaps a decade Ultria will have overhauled its weapons and gained a massive edge

2)   Grievance

a.     Ultria has a base leased in Huma (or near adventure setting) territory

                                               i.     If in Huma, lease is for 50 years and came with a massive price tag in terms of money and technology

b.     Obera is furious about this strategic advantage

c.      Ultria is secretly tunneling out around the base and building extensive tunnels, bunkers, etc. and building up a military redoubt/force for future actions

d.     While doing so, they will discover the edges of a mysterious, highly advanced underground structure

e.     They will gain partial access (an antechamber that is blocked off from the rest of the facility) that promises immense knowledge/resources…after the lone maintenance bot in the area reactivates and kills a good chunk of the personnel at the site before being put down

f.      Then are looking around on the surface for another entrance as well as expanding their digs

g.     Obera gets some inklings of what’s going on (sketches or pieces of the bot, informants talking about the underground walls) and (with hidden Fae manipulation) realize that there’s something from the Old Empire buried in the area.

                                               i.     The race is on!

h.     Unknown to both parties, the digging also releases The Purity…and it wants them to finish opening up the site so that it can use what’s inside to wipe out all of humanity

                                               i.     PCs must stop it, and ideally activate the self-destruct feature of the old military base/prison

3)   Flashpoint of crisis – all the spying, counterspying, and sabotage that is jockeying for influence will occur as the above events unfold and are geared towards each side gaining a relative advantage in this search. Obera wants to displace or destroy the base (even before this), both sides are looking for clues/to interfere with each others agents (plus their usual priorities), but then an important scion comes to visit the city (potential Archduke Ferdinand situation).

a.     Multiple factions have an interest in all of these but especially this event, and if the humans aren’t up to starting a war The Purity might try to nudge things along…

[Lucius]

What's a Purity?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says it doesn't sound nice

[TheDarkness]

One thing comes to mind.

 

The technological society is early in that process, so they need lots and lots of workers. This could both explain why they do not divert population to learn magic in order to gain an advantage and why they are at odds with the magical land, due to the need for more workers and resources. Further, the assembly line idea is partially about replacability of each individual part, including its managers. Magic using beings are much harder to quantify, and the wrong one could make completely invalid a major industry, crashing the economy. Further, they could be aware that the use of magic may prevent them from having a motivation to find other, mass producable solutions to specific problems. And even further, they may be secretly be seeking the means to mass produce magic itself, or its effects, for consumption as well as for their own national needs.

 

On the flip side, the magical society is dependent on mages, and thus, there would be huge social pressure from the guilds to not use technology to essentially decrease their share. Further, the dependence of the people on the bottom may be due to the need for magic. However, I do agree with a previous poster, making spell users too rare compared to engineers would make it hard to justify how they could hold an edge. Perhaps a better approach is simply that those able to muster the power to be directly valuable as human artillery on the battlefield are rare, but that those able to protect crops, heal, or otherwise have a niche role in a community or organization, are much much more common. Further, the ability of those who can heal to prevent plagues would give them a reason their population isn't dwarfed by the early industrial nation despite being feudal.

 

However, there is one thing that, even if magic remains uncommon, would make up the difference between the magical society's mages and the ability of the technological society to produce large amounts of engineers. Scrying. Seeing into the planning rooms of the technological society. If you know where your enemy plans to move before they do so, this means you also know where your defenses need to be or where is open to attack.The magical society would have an enormous advantage in this area, that cannot be overstated.

 

As far as the blended nation, they become hard to believe in if they are not, at the stage of the story, significantly smaller than the other two. At that point, why they don't control the world, even by way of peaceful or economic takeover, is a huge question. However, if they are a bit like Israel, small but higher 'tech' than their neighbors, and that the area of buffer between the other two is largely geographic barriers like mountains, rivers, and seas, with a narrow area that they occupy that happens to be the only easy land route between the other two, this makes a more believable delicate balance of power, where they are a powerful enough group to make either of the others think twice to mess with, but in a place where there's a fairly high motivation for either of the others to mess with nonetheless. This would also explain their mixing of the two, they had no choice.

[Manic Typist]

 

As far as the blended nation, they become hard to believe in if they are not, at the stage of the story, significantly smaller than the other two. At that point, why they don't control the world, even by way of peaceful or economic takeover, is a huge question. However, if they are a bit like Israel, small but higher 'tech' than their neighbors, and that the area of buffer between the other two is largely geographic barriers like mountains, rivers, and seas, with a narrow area that they occupy that happens to be the only easy land route between the other two, this makes a more believable delicate balance of power, where they are a powerful enough group to make either of the others think twice to mess with, but in a place where there's a fairly high motivation for either of the others to mess with nonetheless. This would also explain their mixing of the two, they had no choice.

 

I was originally thinking more like Switzerland but the comparison to Israel holds fairly true at well. Huma/Balancelandia is much smaller than its two superpower neighbors, and has survived through skillful geopolitics, the mutual fear of the superpowers attacking each other when one is distracted by a full scale invasion, and a better use of tech/magic.

 

This situation I've set up is deliberately untenable- it's a short term equilibrium that cannot hold, much like Europe pre-WW1.

 

Lucius- right now, it's just a name that's meant to sound ominous. However, I think I'll recycle an idea I never got to use in my homebrew fantasy setting, that involves a group of genocidal elves obsessed with either destroying humanity or "improving" it through eugenics in order to restore the purity of their sacred homeland. I'm thinking the Purity is the last of his kind, a survivor from the time of the Old Empire and the cataclysm that ultimately led to the current world order.

[Manic Typist]

An update to the magic system, with some light flavor text. Thoughts on themes, nicknames, potential implications of powers/SFX, are welcome.

 

Magic in Miundo infuses everything – it represents the fundamental building block of reality and the underpinning of every process. Life, death, the composition of soil, natural processes, sapience – all could accurately be described as magical in nature. Properly, “magic” is best understood as the deliberate manipulation of the natural laws that constitute existence, rather than something apart from what already is. There are nine flows that, in combination, make up Miundo.

The Material Arts
1) Destruction (Diminishment/Red)

This stream manifests as a red light, and is about the breaking of bonds and reduction of a thing. It can be used to disintegrate a door, blow a hole into the ground, or purge an infection from a wound. Destruction Adepts are often called Sunderers.

2) Amplification (Binding/Orange)

Nothing which is can continue to be without some manner of making more of itself, of affirming its existence. This streams manifests with an orange light and is used to bind like with like – Amplifiers are often called Builders or Binders, and can perform rudimentary healing if they have knowledge of anatomy. They frequently are asked to officiate or bless weddings.
 

3) Transformation (Alchemy/Alternation/Yellow)

Few things persist without undergoing some kind of change or transformation. Turn a wall into sand, a sword into glass, skin into stone, or lead into gold (and yourself into a wanted man). The effects are not necessarily limited to physical material – skilled (and clever) practioners can transform the direction of inertia of an object, for instance. This stream manifests with a strong yellow glow, and its users are often alchemists, pharmacists, etc. They are imaginatively called Changers.
 

The Living Streams
1) Life (Growth/Green)

The Life stream manifests with a green light and relies upon the manipulation of living matter. They can rapidly accelerate healing, promote the growth of crops, or cause an infection to rage through a body in seconds. The Life stream is, directly, useless against non-living objects. A blast of raw power against a stone wall would do nothing – but causing the weeds in the mortar to explosively grow would bring it down. The Life stream is generally very positively perceived outside the magical community, and an adept would receive a warm welcome since the most frequently since aspect of the practice is in the form of healing or enhancing crop yields. Life adepts prefer this to the public knowing the full potential for harm that they can inflict. They are sometimes called Growers, Sprouts, or Greenies.

2) Stasis (Continuity/Inertia/White)

Stasis manifests with a white color and consists of effects that thematically deal with continuation, permanence, or maintenance. Without Stasis, nothing could endure, and existence would unravel into chaos. Stasis manipulation is often used to reinforce armor and weapons, preserve items which would spoil, extend the life of an individual, or immobilize people who would really rather keep moving. Stasis adepts are sometimes called Holders.

3) Death (Decay/Black)

To all things comes an end, and the Death stream is a natural part of the cycles of Miundo. This stream manifests as what is usually described as a black, but a pedantic mage (or one deep into his cups) would tell that it was really the absence of all color – that sight itself ends, and it’s best not to dwell on the implications of that. Those who wield the Death stream are often called Death Dealers, Reapers, Blighters (they can ruin a harvest in a few moments, leading to famine and despair). Most hate these names, and view their art as perfectly natural – but the common man’s fear of the unknown is strong.

The Thoughtful Disciplines
1) Domination (Imposition/Insertion/Blue)

Domination, which manifests with a blue effect, is the most literal and direct way an adept imposes his will upon reality – through substituting his will in the place of another. Dominants rely upon existing frameworks of will to effect their plans by forcing new commands into the framework. A Dominant can tell a guard to go away, a liar to tell the truth, and a truly power caster could tell someone to stop breathing.

2) Liberation (Truth/Lies/Halluciation/Disinhibition/Indigo)

Liberation carries an indigo aspect to it, and deals with the removal of boundaries, restrictions, and barriers to thought or action. A Liberator could induce someone to speak by removing their inclination to not speak – but she couldn’t guarantee that what the person said would be true. Curiously, Liberators are sometimes called Breakers – because they can break the boundaries between reality and fantasy, whimsy and fact, dreams and the waking world – breaking minds and lives if their power is applied carelessly or callously.

 

3) Inception (Creativity/Novelty/Violet)

Inception, showing a violet aspect, is perhaps the least understood stream. Via Inception, new ideas, concepts, and realities are born. Without it everything that is would pass and leave nothing behind. The creation of anything that is new, the act of bringing something out of nothing – this and more relies upon Inception. These practioners are sometimes called Fonts, and are frequently artists, inventors, and strategists.

 

There are two principal forms of spellcaster in Miundo –sorcerers and wizards.

 

Sorcerers, also known as “natural casters” (a technical misnomer), adepts, channelers, sparkers, and various other names (some quite rude), tap directly into the streams of magic to powerful effect. Sorcerers frequently manifest their magic during puberty and need little education to learn how to tap into the stream to which they are aligned – what they must learn is control for the safety of others and how to achieve advanced techniques through  the thoughtful application of power.

 

There are some tactical considerations to how these powers interact.

·       Like cannot stop like. A raw blast of Life energy will pass straight through a Life energy shield.

·       Most adepts only channel one kind of energy – skilled practioners find ways of pushing themselves to tap into additional streams.        However this can be dangerous – channeling multiple streams at the same time can harm the practioner (to the point that it could        literally cause them to explode). Most multi-channelers choose to only channel one stream at a time to maximize tactical options          while minimizing the risk of self-immolation.

·       Adepts make great combat mages since they do not require words or gestures – concentration and being able to see the target            are all they need. However, all casting comes from their own personal endurance.

·       Adepts frequently display unique physical characteristics or other talents based on their principal stream.

·       Sorcerers don’t actually cast spells so much as direct the existing magical energy in a controlled manner to attempt to achieve a desired outcome.

 

Wizards, through disciplined study, have unlocked the secrets of combining the streams in a (relatively) safe manner to achieve affects greater than what the streams can achieve in isolation. By binding streams into words, gestures, and thought, wizards compartmentalize the magic and allow it to intertwine and build upon itself. This process, however, takes longer than natural sorcery. In Hero terms, “free casting” wizards take a minimum of a full turn to deploy a spell, and usually require gestures, incantations, and extensive concentration. Skilled practioners can surpass these limitations, but doing so elevates the risk of something going wrong. This is why wizards (those who live long, anyway) prepare their spells in advance by enchanting objects or putting spells into staves, wands, rings, or even the very air around them. This allows a wizard to activate a spell in an instant, but it also means they will eventually run out of charges and then must resort to casting on the fly – a position that smart wizards do everything to avoid.

 

However, the secrets of wizardry are extremely difficult to obtain. In the time of the Old Empire, they were almost as common as sorcerers, but in the Upheaval and ensuing wars, insurrections, plagues, religious mania coming out of the nascent Ultrian independence movement, many wizards were killed and their centers of learning were lost outside of Obera. Only Obera still has the institutions necessary to life sorcerers to the true heights of magedom. Due to the desire to maintain this monopoly (any wizard could in theory pass on the secrets to a pupil) on knowledge and preserve limited resources, only the most promising and esteemed sorcerers are selected for the honor of indoctrination into the lost arts of wizardry. The graduates who emerge are incredibly powerful, dedicated supporters of the Oberan regime. Those sorcerers who chafe at this and speak publically in support of growing the ranks of wizards more rapidly and building more schools to do so typically find themselves stationed in dangerous or remote (often both!) postings.