The Campaign Builder's Guild

While I will claim Tephra, anything on the wiki is old news. Please feel free to delete it.

I'm not entirely convinced on the Edison-Tesla War where it is. The rest of the history flows pretty well (as far as the author is concerned :P ), but the Edison-Tesla war feels off. As you described, Crow, it's a cartoonish twist, and that makes my skin crawl. I'm going to need to either nix it or re-write it in such a way that it doesn't feel like two mad scientists battling it out with crazy dooms day weapons that you'd only see in a cartoon.

(Unfortunately, that's what it is!)

Your evolution catalyst idea sounds awesome. Bloody painful, but awesome nonetheless.

And yes, my goal is not to reinvent steampunk, but to work very definitely within the boundaries of steampunk. As we've been developing and releasing Tephra, we get a lot of steampunk fans who want to migrate their ideas into a steampunk roleplaying game. Unfortunately, Tephra has such a redefined steampunk element that it's difficult to do so. So, in the creation of Steam Charged, I want something that is very accepting of steampunk, but still has a good, unique, and exciting flavor involved.

Thanks for the feedback!  I'll definitely be updating again soon.

[spoiler=The REAL Reason I am Here]You might read, at your discretion, my background reasons for Steam Charged's Creation. That's fine. Want to know the real reason?

I'm the executive director of Cracked Monocle. We have a release date on Tephra, our Steam-Powered Fantasy RPG of December. In a wave of inspiration, I developed a completely new gaming system that addressed all of my problems with other systems and began work on a very steampunk setting. My crew, however, doesn't know this, and they can't know it. It's a side project for now, until I'm ready to reveal it. If my company knew I was developing another system and setting, I'd get quite a backlash. Thus, I come here, where it's safe, and ask for y'all's opinions and feedback.

Let's face facts - I need some sort of feedback on my endeavors. We're all a little bit starving for attention.[/spoiler][spoiler=Background Reasons for the Creation of Steam Charged]It's been a long time since I've posted on these forums anything of substance. The last time I was here, I was piecing together the foundation that would become Tephra, a steam-powered fantasy roleplaying game. Since that time, Tephra has taken off, I run a game development company called Cracked Monocle, and have a lore department in charge of making sure the world comes to fruition. Unfortunately, that leaves me without a personal project.

So I'm back, and this time with something a little different. It's an alternate history earth, an endeavor I've always been skeptical of partaking in, but I think I'm ready for it. And, if you hadn't already guessed, it's quite steampunk.

This is going to be pretty sporadic as I organize my thoughts and start compiling a finished product. In the meantime, I would be blessed by the knowledge of my reader and your astute judgments on my opinion of a history that could've been.

My thanks,
Daniel Alan Burrow[/spoiler][spoiler=Legal]The final reason I come here is because I trust this community and know its views on copyright. Thus, if you don't mind, I wish to copyright 2010 all material posted within this topic as belonging to Daniel Alan Burrow, sole proprietor of Cracked Monocle. If anybody has any questions on this or wishes for me to expand further, I am more than willing to do so. For now I will let it be stated that I do want to publish this someday, though I might do it for free via a website, and any suggestions you post I might use. That's the nature of the beast, eh?[/spoiler]

The Steam Charged Boom
It is the early 20th century, but not as you probably know it. Almost eighty years ago, In 1837, the story of the world deviated grandly from the history you know. From almost out of nowhere, a new company known as Utopian Enterprises began selling small, translucent spheres, smaller than eggs, that they called Steam Charges. These charges, made of a composition few chemists can figure out, almost instantaneously turns water into steam. When demonstrated to Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the chief engineer of the Great Western Railway, in the late months of '37, the few witnesses said that there was a glint in his eyes that they hadn't seen since he started work on the Clifton Suspension Bridge in 1831. The immense and immediate amount of steam produced by dropping one of these magical little spheres into a boiler was incredible, and the selling price on each sphere was measly compared to the amount spent on coal for anything near that output.

Within two years the Great Western had entirely changed from steam powered to steam charged. The clean and cheap output so revolutionized the railroad that George Stephenson also quickly adopted steam charge technology, and many of the great engineers of the day invested heavily in opening Utopian Enterprise factories all across Britain.

By this time, Isambard Kingdom Brunel was already working on his second steam-powered ship, the Great Britain, and he converted its engines over to steam charge technology immediately. This improved the production speed of the vessel, and it was launched in 1942. Within 5 years, a ship twice as long was built, the Leviathan, that fully built upon steam charge technology. This set the course for the first major iron-hulled, propeller-driven fleets.

With industry across the British Empire booming within the first decade of Utopian Enterprises opening its doors, parliament passed numerous acts encouraging further scientific progresses. Across Europe, too, as other continental powers fought against Britain's radical new technologies and attempted to bring Utopian Enterprises to their borders, the sciences gained an enormous amount of prestige and capital. Any man who could prove, even slightly, that he was working on steam charges or improving steam charge technology qualified for numerous government grants.

In the early 1850s, the first steam charged dirigibles were exhibited. With engines considerably lighter than if they had been conventional steam engines, the airships were able to carry several tons, soon, the numerous uses for them were seen. Though some minor incidents did occur with the explosive hydrogen gases used aboard the airships, the sudden displacement of coal miners led to there being an abundance of people willing to take any work, and helium extraction soon became a thriving industry. By the time of the American Civil War, the production of helium-based airships of war was well into testing phases.

Meanwhile, analytical engines were becoming quite common, and advancing rapidly. Charles Babbage, using numerous government grants to continue his work, quickly finished the first Analytical Engine. In 1846, Babbage and his new associate, Ada Lovelace, introduced a second analytical engine, this one ready for mass production. Though Lady Lovelace would die by 1853, Charles Babbage would continue to work on his analytical engines, which would become widely known as Adas.

The War Between States
In 1861, the world was shocked by the sudden power seen in the United States. Several states seceded from the Union, and, on April 12, 1861, Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter. The newly elected Abraham Lincoln wasted little time in rallying the Union forces, which prompted numerous other southern states to secede. Both sides prepared for war, but the Union, with better production factories and more standing military, engaged first. In August, as Britain was considering whether to intervene on the Confederacy's side, Lincoln attacked.

The event would be known as the Bloody August of 1861, as Lincoln steamrolled across the south, obliterating the Confederate forces. The airship bombings, better railways, and stores of superior munitions made the Confederate defenses seem petty, and, by November of that same year, Jefferson Davis publicly announced that he was dissolving the Confederacy and that the southern states would be rejoining the Union.

The Advancement of Bio-Sciences
As the United States began its rather quick road to reconstruction, the rest of the world was left with a newfound understanding and demonstration of the new destructive power that existed. France, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire all redoubled their efforts to catch up to the British Empire, whose influence and power they now greatly feared. This caused an even greater investment into the sciences and, soon, Utopian Enterprises.

The British Empire was surprised to discover that the Utopian Enterprises was not seated in England, and that, for the right price, Utopian Enterprises was more than willing to build factories across continental Europe. Unwilling to block the Utopian Enterprises and without the ability yet to produce the steam charges themselves, Britain begrudgingly allowed Utopian factories outside of Britain to be built.

In 1882, a terrible horror arose in the newly formed German Empire. A man, whose true name is unknown, was dubbed Victor Frankenstein, after Mary Shelley's novel, A Modern Prometheus. This scientist created a new science, called anatomics, and, quite literally, brought Frankenstein's monster to life. Using human body parts, direct current electricity provided by the inventions of Thomas Edison, and a series of nearly inexplicable accidents, this Frankenstein gave birth to true abominations.

Though the life of the man named Victor Frankenstein is virtually unknown, that of Igor Fritz is well documented. In 1885, Igor Fritz took over for the apparently deceased Victor Frankenstein and began mass producing the abominations. Though not nearly as intelligent as the monster in Mary Shelley's novel, the abominations could walk, consume, and think like an intelligent creature, if not a human. Some were more impressive than others, and some were even capable of speaking.

Though German citizens were opposed to the existence of the abominations, the German Empire saw them as one of the few ways to catch up with Britain. The German Empire would soon be filled with abomination foot soldiers, slave labor, and other clever means of using these expendables in labor.

Meanwhile, the idea of evolution was spreading across the world. Darwin's On the Origin of Species made quite a mark in the world, and soon led to numerous new ideas. In the early 1890s, splicing experiments began in secret to help other species more quickly evolve. These scientists, called Evolutionaries, started combining humans with animals, creating people that were no longer just people.

These experiments were soon forcibly stopped, and several of the scientists were executed for murder. However, it is believed that many Evolutionaries still exist and work today.

The Second American Revolution
In the late 1880s, two great American inventors started a feud that the Bloody August of 1861 seem like children's games. Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison were both geniuses, and their opposing ideas on electricity led to the creation of two camps: the followers of Tesla and the Edison Company.

Going into the turn of the century, both inventors had made vast fortunes with their work, and their companies dwarfed those of the railroad and steel barons. Edison and Tesla both began work on robotics, and, building off of Babbage's analytical engines, their advances soon became great. Tesla created highly advanced robots that could be given orders and powered from miles away. Edison, on the other hand, began work on automatons, advancing the analytical engine to such a degree that the automatons could make decisions for themselves and understand their surroundings. But though Edison's automatons were the more cunning foe, Tesla's lightning-wielding robots were frightening combatants.

The war between the two escalated until the United States army was forced to intervene, and the intervention did not go smoothly. But, as we are nearing present day, I'll leave the story here.

---------------------------------------

This is by no means exactly as I want it. I'm also still leaving out some vital information, such as the effects of the steam charges on the human body, the origin of Utopian Enterprises, and the founding of the larger empires that now dominate the world. But, for now, I'd love to hear your thoughts. I know the above is long, but hopefully it has a bit of interest to it. Also, if you find any glaring flaws, please let me know.

Cheers,

Cracked Monocle is a relatively new roleplaying game company that is on the verge of releasing its first product - Tephra, an innovative steampunk roleplaying game. You can find out more information about Tephra at our site, crackedmonocle.com.

[spoiler=About Tephra]Steam, magic, automatons, your ancestral sword, her magnetech rifle, a little luck and a dirigible's worth of courage  - these are your weapons in the world of collisions. Board your airship and hold on tight, everything from sky pirates to tax collectors to evil spirits are just over the prow. Join our world and experience Tephra, the revolutionary tabletop roleplaying experience, and create your ultimate gentleman adventurer. [/spoiler]
We've begun development on several expansion books and adventures, and we are now looking to bring in some new, talented writers to help flesh out our steampunk world, write adventures, and, if the interest is there, write fiction set in the world. We're not necessarily looking for experience (though it can help) - we want a cutting edge, innovative mindset, a positive personality, and somebody who is willing and able to dedicate just a little time every day to the development of these projects.

While this is not an initially paid job, you will receive a share of the profit on any product you contribute to.

If you're interested, feel free to send us an e-mail at Info@CrackedMonocle.com. We can discuss the specifics, see if you're interested, and more thoroughly discuss your wishes, our goals, and how we can form a mutually beneficial relationship.

Cheers,

Daniel Alan Burrow
Director of Cracked Monocle
[spoiler=About Cracked Monocle]Cracked Monocle is a steampunk company working to put its own spin on the genre. We're currently writing our first pen-and-paper roleplaying system, Tephra, and numerous expansion books to go along with it. You'll often find us on our forums at CrackedMonocle.com, heading out toward anime and gaming conventions in central Texas, and doing everything we can to push the steampunk genre. We love to roleplay and we love to create (be it in our head, on paper,  or in the form of solid objects), and Cracked Monocle is the collision of those ideals.   [/spoiler]
PS - I specifically chose to post this on the CBG since I've been a member here for several years and have always loved and appreciated y'all's work. When we decided to start looking for world builders to help with the project, this was the first place I thought of. I do hope you don't mind the advert.

I don't spend a whole ton of time on the CBG now-a-days, but I saw this campaign pop up and I couldn't help but read it. I love the imagery you've created, and the potential campaigns sound really fascinating.

I can't wait to keep up with your development. It'll be quite exciting, I'm sure!

The best (and often undervalued) GM trick for fixing a game is to announce, in game, that you're going to do it. Foreshadowing makes the players start to think about it, gets them used to the idea, and then - when it happens - they don't feel like they've been randomly spited by the GM.

In the example of a powerful magic item, I could easily see an infamous thief walking into a tavern where all the players are hanging out, putting his boot on a chair, and proclaiming, "Before the week's out, I'm going to steal that armor of yours. I guarantee it."

It doesn't need to be the theme of the adventure, but you could have a lot of fun watching the player squirm. I could easily see the player deciding that they're just going to sleep in the armor all the time, but it's a breastplate, and therefore going to give them terrible penalties after a couple naps in it. Eventually the thief will strike, steal the armor, and be off.

If you wanted some sort of competition, you could even have the thief leave behind some gold afterwards, with a note scribbled, "It took me more than a week, and by my honor, I now have to pay for it. 'Course, doesn't mean I'm not going to take it!"  

Because it's armor, I will admit that it's more difficult than other items to balance.  Armor is more difficult to sunder, and has greater resists to just about everything.

On the note of sundering, this is a splendid idea. My one recommendation is that you don't sunder the most powerful item first - sunder the armor second, after you sunder something else. Again, foreshadowing. If the player with the powerful item sees somebody else's item go up in pieces, they'll mentally start preparing and you won't be seen as specifically attacking them.

Yeah, gnome stew is going to bring a ton of traffic. It's the most visited RPG blog to ever exist, isn't it? I love that place. ^_^

Congratulations on everything going so smoothly. It's always refreshing to see people putting these quirky "Campaign Building" skills to good use.

Mine is the calligraphic (though poorly done) Arabic letters, t-f-r-a, for Tephra, my world.  I realized that it looks vaguely like a creepy face or set of eyes. So I thought I'd make a cool version. ^_^

Quote from: Light DragonThe earring thing is a nice idea Jharviss.

Hah, I'm actually surprised to hear it's not more common. I've DMed for and played with a pretty good amount of people, and I thought it was old hat by now. I guess I just attract the type of players who do things like that. ^_^

One of the larger issues with this stems from D&D's approach to magic items. If you've played D&D for any period of time, you've probably had a person ask if they could use one of their two "magic ring slots" as an earring.  Some people rule that an earing is different, whereas a lot of DM's will allow the magic ring slot to be used in more creative locations.

For a lot of people, it all depends on your player base. I'm currently playing a character that has a series of pierced studs that run vertically down the length of my forehead, nose, and part of my chest.  That idea came from early on in the campaign when my character received an almost career-ending blow that cut me straight up the center. It scarred over and I got piercings along it. It's a cool image, in my opinion.

A lot of it also comes from cultures. European culture, which most games are based on, had little in the ways of piercings. Yet when you introduce eastern cultures and gypsies, you're much more likely to have a lot of piercings.

I can't really address the magic subject, as my setting doesn't have "magic items," per se, but you'll definitely find character with unique body modifications, even going so far as to create mechanical limbs, replace fingers, that sort of thing.  But at the point, we've almost left the norm of body modification and entered something that is more akin to cyborg-ing.

This is fascinating, gnola14, and something I've certainly considered enough. Though you'd have a hard time getting your hands on them, anything in the Gygaxian Fantasy Worlds series of books would probably help you out immensely. Those books are full of random charts for you to choose things from.

That little sidenote left aside, I would love to help you out with any content you need.

Do you plan on this being fully generating? It would be really cool to have a list of parameters that you can adjust, but then it details out an ENTIRE world.  A large enough program with enough processing power could truly detail out a lot... that'd be fascinating.

And I could see how it would work, too.

Step One: Random races

Step Two: Random nations
 - Random cities in nations
 - One of three biggest randomly selected as capital

Step Three: Random Cities
 - Populations assigned based on nation populations
 - Livestock and crops randomly assigned based on random assigned location in world which then selects from a list of random environs that can be in that location

Step Four: Random People
 - Adventure plots randomly assigned to random people
 - Goals and merits randomly assigned to people

Bigod, if this could be created to have no overlaps, it'd be brilliant. Gah, as if. :P  That'd require quite a bit, but like you, I'm just thinking through my keyboard.

Don't do it, and not for any of the reasons you've listed above.

You made note of the "nice guy" fallacy.  What "nice guys" fail to realize is that they rarely give two shits about what the girl in question feels.  Woah woah, I know what's going through your head.  And it's because you're the nice guy that you're thinking it.  But really, look at your question.

1. A girl is interested in my friend.
2. My brother dated this girl and has residual interest.
3. I'm interested in this girl.

So, by asking out this girl, you're worried about screwing over your Eddie and David.  Yet you forget about the girl - she's interested in Eddie.  She's already told you this.  If she was interested in you, she would have kept that secret or not told you that she's interested in Eddie.

Helpful Hint: If a girl tells you they are interested in somebody else, it means they are not interested in you.

The second part of the "nice guy" fallacy is that you're obviously over-thinking things.  Over-thinking means procrastinating.  You've admitted that you've never dated a girl, so that tells me enough.  It's difficult for you to ask girls out.  Okay, let's move on to the heart of my advice.

If you are interested, despite everything I've already said, just ask her out.  Don't beat around the bush, don't plan it, don't bring her flowers, and don't give a damn about Eddie and David.  If they cared, they should have asked her out instead (which, in the race for love, is what often happens to the "nice guy").  Don't overdo it.  Don't make it a life or death question.

Just ask, "Hey, wanna get dinner this weekend?"

Girls are intelligent.  They know what that means and, if she asks anything else, just say, "Yeah, just the two of us."

All you're doing is testing the waters.  That's all a date is.  If you're not compatible or she's not interested, she'll say so.  And, FYI, if she's not interested, it means you're not compatible.  Both parties must be interested for there to be compatibility.  Your overwhelming affection will not make her suddenly feel interested.

(That's another fallacy of the "nice guy" theory.)

Now, I do apologize if this has been overbearing.  I've coached too many friends through this issue, as I tend to be friends with the "nice guy." And if any of this is not true, take it with a grain of salt. I speak only through my experience, and only with the knowledge I have gained around this subject.  Which, unfortunately, has become substantial.

Cheers,

This is rather asinine of me.  I want to join this quite a bit, but I can't quite figure out how to bring Tephra over to the CBG.  (Hence I've only taken part in general discussion threads rather than world-building.)  Nonetheless, I put together the two badges for my world -





Edit:  Which, of course, don't pull through.  I've been having this issue a lot recently.  Hmmm.... well, sorry for the wasted post - I'm trying to fix it!

Quote from: Light DragonThat sounds VERY interesting. I'd like to see how you pull that off.

Did you also do a bit with batteries... Westinghouse, Tesla, Edison, Volta, Ampere sorts of things?

From what I recall, electricity's charge is partially due to magnetic fields and electron-spin... But my memory is a bit fuzzy.

We've mostly avoided using electricity.  Tephra's magnet-based technology is so advanced that, with the invention of electricity, they would have weapons off the power scale very quickly.  Electricity would make things like rail-guns and coil-guns possible, which is what we wanted to avoid.  

We've been dabbling in "Tephra Future," however, which takes place three-hundred years after electricity is invented, and is basically a magnetech steampunk gone sci-fi space explorer.  It's out there.

Defintion
The best definition of steampunk I've heard is this: Steampunk is a setting where the combustion engine has been invented but - prior to electricity or fossil fuels being discovered - the world enters the information age.  I can't recall where the definition comes from, but it seems pretty top notch.  Technology advances using steam as its prime mover, as Llum says.

Polycarp is quite right about the sense of "punk," and how it's fallen out.  Steampunk is supposed to be more punk, though I don't see it in the dark and gritty way that Polycarp mentioned.  I see the punk aspect in the more adventurous, human-driven exploits.  It would be dark, but not in the way that cyberpunk would push it toward.  

There's a lot of steampunk costumes out there now-a-days, and nothing gets me more irritated than seeing a victorian dress with goggles.  That is not steampunk - that's victorian, with goggles.  Nonetheless, you'll see a lot of that.  Steampunk has largely become a way for people to wear Victorian clothing.  They forget the punk aspect as well.

Clockpunk
Luminous, Jade Stage sounds like it has a couple instances of clockpunk, which is not steampunk and really doesn't deserve the "punk" aspect of clockpunk.  You just don't have the typical technology of most medieval fantasy settings.  Nothing wrong with that!

Trains
It's funny that you bring up trains, because when my team decided that we were going to go fully steampunk with Tephra (and yes, Tephra is a steampunk setting), adding trains was one of our debates.  Tephra has always been steampunk-esque, but we more heavily use magnetech, or magnet-based technology.  We're now throwing in some more aspects of steampunk, and it's meshing well.  Regardless, trains were a big turning point.

Using Steampunk
Steampunk is actually a very rigid term used loosely.  To constitute real steampunk, you have to have a variety of things in play.  Tephra is definitely steampunk, and we've worked to make sure those aspects are there.  The one thing in normal steampunk that we avoid is having anything that rings of 1800s England.  Tephra is very culturally mixed, and using England as a baseline just sounds boring.

Is "Steampunk" code for "automatically terrible."
By God, I hope not!