The Campaign Builder's Guild

Ok, I am still very much in the early stages of this, and I guess it's not that original, but I am toying with the idea of a Victorian Steampunk setting with elements of 17th Century Ceremonial Magic and Alchemy.  For now we'll use London (or at least a fantasy interpretation of London) as the basis for the setting.

1.  Crime and Scotland Yard
From theft to prostitution to gruesome serial killings, the Police are up to their necks.  Mystery abounds and fills the city like the thick London fog.  Most often the explanation is simple: a crime of passion, greed, revenge; but now and then something comes up that defies explanation.  Now and then something comes up that would seem to be the work of something . . . supernatural.  How can you enforce the laws of the City on something that does not obey the laws of Nature?

2.  Secret Societies
Behind the proper and respectable face of London lies a secret, or many secrets.  Secret Societies, performing esoteric and arcane rituals, invoking untold spirits, angels, and demons gather, cloaked in shadows.  These men come from London's upper crust:  judges, writers, landlords, bankers, lawyers, even members of Parliament.  What are the goals of these fraternities?  How wide and how deeply do they penetrate the city?  How much can be learned about them, and how much do they already know about you?

3.  Alchemy
Eccentric fellows lock themselves away with their chemicals, seeking to uncover the mysteries of life.  It is said they seek riches, seeking complex formulae to transmute lead to gold.  But there is more to the business of Alchemy than monetary gain.  There is power and understanding to be gained.  But how long can one seek wisdom and power at the expense of society, health, and potentially sanity?  How far can you delve into the unknown, and what are the consequences?

4.  Steampunk
The train whistle sounds, bringing in tourists and travelers, businessmen and those who simply seek to be lost among the crowd and go unnoticed.  The well-to-do lumber off in their Steamers:  Horseless carriages whose small steam-engines let out a thick white cloud from the tall pipes in the back.  The gray of the overcast sky is broken by the outlines of dirigibles transporting passengers above the hustle and bustle of London's cramped city streets.

Done well this kind of alternate history could be really awesome.  What kind of flavor would you be thinking of using for the supernatural?  Straightforward gothic (feathered angels, horned demons, Stokeresque vampires, werewolves, etc?)?  Lovecraftian pulp?  Something more exotic?  Is magic an ambiguous/furtive force widely disbelieved in and practiced only in the gaslit confines of a gentleman's laboratory, or do peddlars hawk scrolls in foggy London streets?  Is steampunk wholly technological or does it possess arcane elements?

In case you aren't familiar with them Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel, William Gibson's/Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine, and Neil Gaiman's short sory  "A Study in Emereld" in Fragile Things might well be worth a read or at least a wiki.  The Iron Kingdoms campaign setting also does a lot of stuff similar to what you're going for.  Not the same, mind you, but worth checking out to cull ideas from, perhaps, in case you haven't seen it...

My thoughts were as follows:

1.  Magic and Technology are separate.  Steampunk is not magical in nature, and at present I do not plan for there to be magic items of any sort available for regular purchase.  (There might be a few items of an . . . interesting sort at a curiosity shop, but it's not as if people are running around with flaming swords)

2.  Magic is mysterious.  All magic is conducted in secrecy, usually in dimly lit rooms, perhaps in gathering halls of an organization, or in the home of a wealthy leader figure.  No one "Hawks scrolls on the corner."  Again, only a curiosity shop might be able to get away with it.

3.  There's definitely plenty of room in this for Stokeresque Vampires and Werewolves, Jekyll and Hyde, and suchlike characters.  Granted they wouldn't be all over the place, and their existence would be largely unknown.  For the angels and demons, think Mephistopheles in Doctor Faustus.  They might not always manifest in physical form however, and their effects could be subtle--easily ignored as coincidence.

ETA:  Actually, they probably wouldn't manifest physically at all.  They'd be more of a presence than a "creature."

From what you've posted so far it seems magic will have a very occult feel to it, something Lovecraftian but without all the unspeakable madness stuff trampling everything.

Since you reference London I'm going to guess that it is set on Earth, so my next question is how historically accurate is the world? (aside from the whole steam punk thing). Are there actual historical characters to be found, with a twist to make them fit the setting? Certain people I can see would be the alluded Jack the Ripper, Charles Darwin and events of this time such as the Irish Potato Famine, the two Boers Wars and the Crimean War. As well as dealing with India (the British Raj started in this period).

Also, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hide was published in this era as well, perhaps based on true events?

Quote from: LlumFrom what you've posted so far it seems magic will have a very occult feel to it, something Lovecraftian but without all the unspeakable madness stuff trampling everything.

Since you reference London I'm going to guess that it is set on Earth, so my next question is how historically accurate is the world? (aside from the whole steam punk thing). Are there actual historical characters to be found, with a twist to make them fit the setting? Certain people I can see would be the alluded Jack the Ripper, Charles Darwin and events of this time such as the Irish Potato Famine, the two Boers Wars and the Crimean War. As well as dealing with India (the British Raj started in this period).

Also, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hide was published in this era as well, perhaps based on true events?

Yes, magic is very occult, although it's funny: when it comes to something being "Lovecraftian," I tend to think of the unspeakable madness stuff trampling everything as the most important part.  But if the occult nature is enough to make you consider it Lovecraftian, then Lovecraftian it is!

As for the historical accuracy of it, I'm not sure quite how strict I will be with it yet, but I expect there will be at least allusions to real historical events . . . even if some details are changed.  I may leave certain details to specific campaigns.  Things like the Potatoe Famine, the Crimean War might serve well as specific campaigns (or in some cases more a backdrop to specific campaigns)

On another note, I'm not totally sure about what system I might use to implement this setting.  I must confess I haven't looked much beyond D&D thus far, but some aspects may need to be more freeform.  Vancian casting for magic is definitely a no.  d20 doesn't seem like the best system for this in general.  Something classless I think could be good. . .

While I always found the occult side of things defining for Lovecraft, I guess most people wouldn't see it as such.

For the system, you could go with GURPS, while fairly complicated can handle anything. You could homebrew something (what I would do) but that isn't for everyone. Nether of those options have classes.

4e doesn't have Vancian casting so that's a possibility for something more familiar (albeit only vaguely). Although it still suffers from the class aspect.

For the historical side of things that seems like a good practical view, and a steampunk Crimean War (perhaps support by occult military division) sounds interesting, to me at least.

Quote from: LlumWhile I always found the occult side of things defining for Lovecraft, I guess most people wouldn't see it as such.

For the system, you could go with GURPS, while fairly complicated can handle anything. You could homebrew something (what I would do) but that isn't for everyone. Nether of those options have classes.

4e doesn't have Vancian casting so that's a possibility for something more familiar (albeit only vaguely). Although it still suffers from the class aspect.

For the historical side of things that seems like a good practical view, and a steampunk Crimean War (perhaps support by occult military division) sounds interesting, to me at least.

4e doesn't have Vancian casting, but I don't think it's any better an alternative for capturing the feel Ceremonial Magic.  It DOES have rules for rituals as being separate from other powers, but I don't think it's adequate.  And classes are still an issue.  I've been curious about totally skill-based systems lately, and I might go that way with it.  

Now, as far as the Steampunk Crimean War, I really don't see there being an "occult military division."  This is not to say that there wouldn't be occult influence over the Steampunk Crimean War, but this would be conducted secretly, under the table even for those benefitting from it.  It would be behind the scenes--a summoning circle in an officer's tent, or something to that effect.  Or even something conducted from afar.  

Your right, I didn't mean to imply that their would be a blatant occult division that operate on the battlefield, my apologies. I thought of it more as a small division looking after occult interests for each side of the military, maybe a handful of people or something.

Dirigible Airships




The invention of dirigible airships owes a great deal to a happy accident.  James Murdoch, in collaboration with Josiah Pemberton and a few others, performed experiments to test the viability of gas lighting on London's city streets and in homes, businesses, theaters, and all over the city.  Receiving for his birthday, a number of helium balloons, Murdoch stumbled across the idea for a dirigible airship.  It was not a completely foreign idea:  Balloons had been used for flight before.  But it was at this moment that the airship we think of today was conceived in the minds of Murdoch and Pemberton.  Murdoch, who had worked with Watt on the Steam Engine, envisioned an aircraft propelled through the power of the steam engine and kept aloft by lighter-than-air helium or hydrogen gas.  Murdoch's desire to pursue the dirigible aircraft clashed with Pemberton's desire to continue working on gas-lighting.  After some argument, the two split, and Murdoch sought Watt's aid in creating a steam powered airship.  The above is a blueprint of an early dirigible.  A small boat suspended from a massive helium balloon, at the stern is a propeller, powered by a steam engine below deck, with an exhaust chimney behind the wheel.  A rudder-sail in the rear controls horizontal movement.

Looks great. Though from a purely mechanical (physics, not crunch) perspective, capturing the smoke/hot air as an extra lift would be a good idea. Also ballast is important, since your burning fuel (lowering the mass) of the ship.

The ballast issue confuses me.  I find it difficult to see how ballasts help once you've left the ground.  If the point of the ballast is to counterbalance the lift, and from the beginning, when you're running on full fuel, there is enough lift to bring the whole airship (ballasts and all) off the ground, how is it that ballasts help in the least once you're losing fuel weight?  I haven't been able to find an explanation of how this works.

As far as capturing the smoke/hot air for extra lift, I can see the value of this, but don't yet know how to go about doing so.  I mean, the ideal place to store the air would seem to be a balloon, but it seems that the main balloon would get in the way.

 . . . unless perhaps there was a sort of hybrid balloon structure.  A pocket of some kind in the body of the main balloon might, perhaps, allow the type on envelope needed to gain lift from the hot air.  If hot air were, in fact, an important part of the flight of the Airship, then this could help deal with the ballast issue.  If the balloon structure contained an amount of helium insufficient to reach neutral or positive buoyancy, it could depend on hot air to achieve the necessary lift.  The fuel would work double-time, as a steam engine powering the propeller and creating the byproduct of lift.  As fuel weight decreases, lift increases, but when necessary for landing, hot air could be released from the envelope, thus drastically reducing lift and bringing the Airship to the ground.  That . . . might work.  Maybe.

I know it's not exactly 17th century, but when it comes to the whole "magic is occult" thing, I get the urge to ask how familiar you are with a certain Mr. Crowley. I'd have a very hard time thinking up a historical figure that would better fit that sort of Faustian-Occult tone.

Speaking of Faustian, I don't think you should give up entirely on the idea of angels and demons having physical manifest. They might just not manifest in the big, flashy, "hi, I'm a demon. Do the horns, pointed tail, cherry-red skin, and goats feet give it away?" manner. Poe's Never Bet the Devil Your Head is a good example of this, and a Victorian example, as well. I would suggest making some sort of allusion to Poe, but he really wasn't that big in his own lifetime; such a character would probably be best worked in as a sort of cameo in a given campaign.

Right, the whole ballast because of the fuel thing is me being bad at sentence structure. I meant to say that their is no ballast at all, which helps when you need to climb rapidly for some reason, (avoiding collision, storm, multiple possible reasons). Sorry for the confusion, my bad, I not only didn't get what I was trying to say across but looked like a tool :P

For the secondary balloon I was thinking something like the main helium balloon has a rigid frame, then their was a wrap around balloon, U shaped or encircling the rigid structure, forming an outer balloon membrane that would be connected to the smokestack.

Also, is that a sail behind the smokestack above the propeller?

[blockquote=SDragon]I know it's not exactly 17th century, but when it comes to the whole "magic is occult" thing, I get the urge to ask how familiar you are with a certain Mr. Crowley. I'd have a very hard time thinking up a historical figure that would better fit that sort of Faustian-Occult tone.
[/blockquote]
Indeed, he fits the tone very well, and while he himself doesn't exactly fit the time period of Ceremonial Magic, the secret societies Crowley associated himself with--The Golden Dawn, A.'.A.'., Ordo Templi Orientis, all derived a great deal from the Ceremonial Magical tradition.  In fact you could say that the activities of these secret societies essentially WAS 17th Century Ceremonial Magic (just, you know, not in the 17th Century).  So I do intend to borrow from the ideas of Crowley and his contemporaries, even if they wouldn't make appropriate NPCs.

 [blockquote=Llum]Right, the whole ballast because of the fuel thing is me being bad at sentence structure. I meant to say that their is no ballast at all, which helps when you need to climb rapidly for some reason, (avoiding collision, storm, multiple possible reasons). Sorry for the confusion, my bad, I not only didn't get what I was trying to say across but looked like a tool   :-p

For the secondary balloon I was thinking something like the main helium balloon has a rigid frame, then their was a wrap around balloon, U shaped or encircling the rigid structure, forming an outer balloon membrane that would be connected to the smokestack.

Also, is that a sail behind the smokestack above the propeller?[/blockquote]

Ok.  A lot of my ballast confusion comes from the research I've done thus far for the Airships, that seemed to suggest that they should be there, but didn't seem to give a proper explanation of why, or how they worked (except in the case of a Rigid-Frame Hydrogen filled Zeppelin--even though hydrogen was dangerous and they preferred helium--where they simply expelled hydrogen, which doesn't exactly count.)  The examples of "ballasts" I came across included atmospheric water condensers and they felt for some reason anyway too high tech to me.  

And yes that is a sail, although it's purpose is for steering rather than propulsion.

Quote from: Seraphine_HarmoniumThe examples of "ballasts" I came across included atmospheric water condensers and they felt for some reason anyway too high tech to me.

True, I had though of something along those lines and it didn't make a lot of sense to me ether. Yet I had another thought, with all the steam being used, where do they get the water from? I'm guessing a recycling system to reuse the water, condensing it back into water.

Now this would potentially have condensing technology, which would come in handy in gathering potable water, since weight is an important factor so bringing tons of drinking water isn't the best solution. I don't know how this could be worked out (maybe resident science geek Nomadic has some ideas) but could be possible.

Steampunk technology isn't that far behind modern technology, mainly it just lacks the electrical and digital components.

Finally I had one last question, would their be steam powered analogue computers?