Sample file CONTENTS August Hahn Editor Adrian Bott Contents Development and Layout Richard Neale Introduction 2 Additional Text Alejandro Melchor Character Background 7 Cover Art Scott Clark Classes & Vocations 28 Interior Illustrations Eric Bergeron, Jim Brady, Stephen Cook, Anthea Skills 68 Dilly, Kythera, John McSweeny, Pete Slough, Ronald Smith, Sami Walu & Leo Winstead Feats & Traits 104 Studio Manager Ian Barstow Equipment & Wealth 132 Production Manager Alexander Fennell SampleA Worldfile Of Adventure 166 Playtesting Mark Gedak, Kent Little, Murry Perry, Patrick A. Kossmann, Tammy Gedak, Mark Howe, The Power of Steam 223 Mark Sizer, Daniel Scothorne, Mark Billanie, Micheal Young, Alan Moore, Daniel Haslam, The Occult 263 Jamie Godfrey, James Sparling, Shannon Sparling, Shannon Sparling, Jimi Braun, Jason Index 301 Thornton, Bill 'Urklore' Schwartz Proofreading License 304 Richard Ford, Ian Finch, Fred Herman, Sarah Quennell & Lucya Szachnowski OGL Steampunk is ©2004 Mongoose Publishing. All rights reserved. Reproduction of non-Open Game Content of this work by any means without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden. OGL Steampunk is presented under the Open Game License. See page 304 for the text of this licence. With the exception of boxed story text and character names, character creation rules detailing the mechanics of assigning dice roll results to attributes and the character advancement rules detailing the effects of applying experience, all text within OGL Steampunk is declared as open content. Printed in Canada. 1 iintroductionntroduction magine a world where computers were developed period never occurred. What kind of world may have a century before their time, powered by levers evolved from networked computing based on clicking iand steam engines instead of microprocessors machines and mechanical modems? Such are the kinds of or even light bulbs; a world where the zeppelin never questions that you can answer in Steampunk. went out of fashion as new technology made it safer and faster; where brave men and women explored a yet Technology in a Steampunk setting is either stylish and undiscovered world to find the wondrous ruins of lost elegant or incredibly clunky, using basic mechanisms civilisations or entrances to entirely new worlds; where and primitive wiring to achieve the levels of performance the mysterious age of magic is slowly fading away to usher for which modern technology would need far less space, in an age of jaded, even cynical reason. This is the world with a wildly different appearance to boot. Brass tubes, of Steampunk, a shadowy subgenre of fantasy and science wooden handles and incandescent lamps (also known as fiction that is more devoted to marrying the possible with ‘light bulbs’) replace fibre optics, touch screens and LEDs the improbable than to exploring the future or exploring as the materials of choice for machinery. Steam-powered fantastic themes. Steampunk investigates a fantasy past cars roam the streets while monstrous airships crawl that might have been, had some things happened a little through the skies. All the while, the people lost through introduction differently. the cracks in the ‘modern world’ scratch out a living in the shadows of a concrete nightmare. The Age That Never Was The Fantastic and the Occult (And Should Have Been) Another common element of many Steampunk stories Steampunk as a genre grew from revisiting the old scientific is the presence of magic and the supernatural. In the romance novels, such as the likes of 20,000 Leagues Under backdrop of scientific progress, magic begins to enjoy the Sea, The Time Machine and The Lost World, which a renaissance, with mediums and magicians practicing took the spirit of progress, exploration and exploitation a dying art while humanoids wrestle with their own th prevalent during the 19 Century and translated it inventions in the wild. Secret societies organise rituals to into stories of speculation, wonder and excitement. As contact occult powers from beyond time and the stronger literature that explored the future as moulded by progress, communication with distant lands opens the way for the scientific romance is the great-grandfather of modern an influx of exotic cultural imports, including grossly science fiction. At its core, Steampunk is a look back at misunderstood traditions and beliefs. those times through the eye of imagination. Sample Magicfile and the occult are so prevalent that they mingle Steampunk either takes a typical world of the fantasy with science, with the most prominent example being genre and changes it by adding the darker elements of the mind’s psychic potential. Magic is a palpable reality science and invention, or investigates alternate worlds that the heroes of the day must discover and contend where technology took a different turn than it has in with. Cultists seek to awaken the power of ancient races, ours. The subgenre of Steampunk fantasy adds its own alchemists use arcane formulae to power their infernal ingredients of magic and mythical elements to such a devices and creatures of legend walk alongside the human world. In essence, Steampunk is about playing in an age occupants of major cities, either adopting the science of that was not, but could have been. the day or enslaved because of it. Retrotech The Great Malaise Steampunk stories are dominated by strange technology Above all, the feeling that dominates Steampunk is a and weird science. While hard science-fiction bases its sense of despair, a certainty that while any challenge can principles on proven or theoretical science in our time such doubtless be defeated through ingenuity, this will always as quantum physics and the advances in biotechnology, be achieved at a terrible cost. The scientific worldview saw Steampunk takes a look backwards at the early advances Nature more as an enemy to be conquered than as an ally; in scientific and technological inspiration. in the worlds of Steampunk, this is precisely what it has done. There was a pervading sense of adventure, in which In the Victorian epoch, phenomena like electricity are the world offered untold opportunities for discovery and beginning to be fully understood, steam and mechanics exploration; in the aftermath, the great challenges have move most of the age’s machinery and telecommunications come and gone. Following a period of relative stability, the are being born in the form of the telegraph. One can look dominant people of the fantasy world had a chance to look even further back; consider that if early inventors had around and see what surrounded them. They reached out received sufficient funding, the first computer could have their grasp to chart what had remained unexplored until, been created in feudal times, especially if a Dark Ages 2 assuming that they had discovered everything, they turned Empire and Expansion their backs on the rest of the world. In the face of infinite Just as the Industrial Revolution is one of the main possibility, cities are becoming increasingly cut off. backdrops of Steampunk, imperialism is another fundamental tenet of the old scientific romances. People However, the tangible world is not the only one where the sylvan expanses of the fantasy Steampunk world Steampunk has spread its dark influence. Interest in with elves who refuse to give up their ancestral homes magic and the supernatural has become rampant, trying to and wield magic powers beyond humans’ ken alongside fill the remaining darkness that science cannot completely mountain dwarves who compete with humans for the illuminate. At the same time, the power of science is introduction mining of resources; there you have all the makings of a swiftly crushing the life from magic by making many of dark epic about expansion and imperialism set amid toxic the latter’s wonders easier to replicate for the ‘common clouds of steam, smoke and burning blood. man’. Why would an orc shaman waste years of its short life learning to cast a magical missile spell when it could What Empire provides is a platform for stories, a ‘safe’ just carry a rune cannon? place from which characters can jump into the unknown. Danger does lurk even inside the Empire, but the Lastly, exploration and discovery brings the people of institution itself is what is important. If danger is outside, Steampunk into conflict with other cultures. The most the Empire provides the comforting existence of King common response when facing a weaker, apparently and Country. If the danger exists within, then Empire uncivilised people is, after all, to conquer them and expand is what must be preserved against the forces of internal the empire. In their hunger to learn about new things, the chaos that threaten to tear it apart. When the tables are people of a Steampunk world incorporate, misinterpret turned and the characters are not citizens of the Empire, it and import wholesale aspects of foreign cultures, mostly then becomes the monolithic enemy, the oppressor whose in the realms of art and culture, as foreign sciences are seen ravenous advances must be stopped or at least curbed, if as somewhat inferior if they do not offer clear advantages the characters want to preserve their way of life. and improvements over the disciplines already mastered. In this way, even in the wake of amazing new sciences The notion of Empire is tied with a drive for expansion and inventions, the old stresses of elf versus man, man and colonisation, whether the ‘colonies’ are in the jungles versus orc, and all versus the monsters of the night are not of some primitive nation, the canals of a distant world just perpetuated. They are heightened by science to an in another dimension, or the lost valleys of the forsaken apocalyptic degree. elves. While not impacting directly on the doings of the characters most of the time, imperial expansionism will Progress and its Flipside create many situations that do.