33AR - A Steampunk Campaign

Wellington
#21

[quote=“Ants”]Doesn’t it seem reasonable that if someone is shot 3 times they are incapacitated?

They do one damage and you have 3 hp. That doesnt seem to make them powerful, considering armour on the torso will negate quite a lot of bullet damage (large target, whereas its easier to hit legs, arms with melee weapons than nerf guns)

I am not advocating for guns in the game. I think they are quite clunky, but I am just not sure on the rationale is all.[/quote]

It is indeed reasonable that someone getting shot 3 times would be incapacitated. However, 3 shots can be fired off quite quickly with some of the nerf guns (even excluding autos and semi-autos) and you can do so while easily out of range of a melee weapon of an opponent. This range and speed is what makes them powerful. Yes, I agree that armouring your torso would indeed hide the biggest target for nerf bullets, but I’d also like to see people wearing armour on, say, one leg and one arm, rather than everyone wearing armour on their torso to avoid being shot so easily.

I had no idea such weapons existed back then, I admit I didn’t do much research about weapons of the time as I was planning on simply excluding guns when I started writing this campaign. As for things burning; wherever the demons have found humans, they have killed and destroyed, usually with fire. A nasty blight has also been seen to spread from places that demons have been, killing of plant and animal as it spreads.

While Queen Victoria the First is dead, Queen Victoria the Second is the current reigning Monarch of what remains of the British Empire. It is likely that you can still find a decent tailor.

Since I’m only 10 pages (of 35 total) from completing the website, I may as well share the setting maps to give you all a better idea of the situation. As it stands, it’s a little more apocalypse than post-.

Maps: (they are rather large, so I’m not going to put them in this post as images)
World Map Circa 33AR
Map of the British Isles Circa 33AR

Back to the topic of guns; I suppose the real question is; do people want to bring them to this campaign? Please bare in mind that after this campaign I will be running Orion; in which the main weapons are guns and they are plentiful.

#22

While Queen Victoria the First is dead, Queen Victoria the Second is the current reigning Monarch of what remains of the British Empire. It is likely that you can still find a decent tailor.[/quote]

That is good to hear. It would be terrible to let standards slip.

I think that they have to exist, simply because they existed pre-Ragnarok, and the technology to produce them hasn’t disappeared (looking at your maps, the industrial north of England is still fine, but even if it wasn’t, you can make guns with stuff only slightly superior to a village blacksmith). But if you want people mixing it up hand-to-hand with the demon hordes, then you can always go the Buffy route, and have Demons simply be immune to guns. Which makes firearms an internal security weapon, used to keep the Lower Orders in line.

#23

This could be combined with some rare varieties of ammo that do effect demons, but are expensive or difficult to procure. That way you’d only have a few shots available, and melee would still have a dominating role. Normal ammo could also be priced high if you want to limit gun use against non-demons. Those kinds of compromises to “realism” are handy to balance mechanics.

I’m guessing people are just thinking how cool steampunk guns can look, and how they’ll make the gameplay feel different to fantasy larps with physical combat. Sci-fi guns look cool in a different way, so they’d still provide another sort of flavour again and could function differently mechanically (perhaps dominating more over melee by not having the same kind of ammo scarcity). (EDIT: in a future sci-fi larp, was what I meant in that last sentence).

#24

Just to be clear and ensure we’re all on the same page; I have said that there will be guns in the setting, just that they will be rare (and, perhaps, more special because of it). I’d also like to point out that roughly 30 years of war is likely to consume a lot of resources. What are the chances that the industrial sector of England even has the resources left to pour out guns after doing so for nearly 33 years with dwindling areas available to mine for more metal?

#25

About the same as them being able to pour out swords and armour.

I like Ryan’s suggestion, BTW. It achieves your aim of making guns less useful (except against other PCs), while not doing violence to the internal consistency and believability of the setting.

#26

I agree. Ryans idea is elegant I think. But as always its up to you Nick to decide how you want it to be.

Although a lot of good advice I think in this thread already to help you create a believeable and consistent setting

#27

About the same as them being able to pour out swords and armour.[/quote]

Ah… fair point. I hadn’t thought of that. Perhaps I will have to go down the route of just saying guns don’t harm demons. I wonder if I can get away with an reason such as “you have to put your spirit energy into an attack to harm a demon, and you can only push that spirit energy into things that you are touching, thus a bullet cannot carry said spirit energy”. Although with that idea I may have to reduce the demon occupied territory on countries that practice martial arts focusing on the use of spirit energy, or whichever term they use for it in each country.

The biggest problem with special bullets is; how do you know you’ve been hit by one? In the heat of battle, how do you tell? If you’re playing a character that is only affected by special bullets, but you don’t look like any of the other creatures that are only affected by special bullets, how do you tell if the bullet that a player fired at you, in the heat of battle while you’re attempting to fend off attacks, was a special one that affects you, or a normal one that doesn’t?

That is the biggest problem with special bullets that I have seen documented by people who have played in LARPs where there are such things, and it’s the main reason I originally dropped them from Orion. Believe me, I like the idea as a game concept, but it’s impossible to implement in any easy manner. This mostly being due to the lack of eyes in the back of our heads.

EDIT: I realise that if I say guns don’t harm demons, the people dressed as demons will have a hard time of deciphering whether what him them in the back was a sword or a foam dart/disc (because it will inevitably happen that someone who has forgotten such a thing will fire at a demon).

I realise letting guns into the setting will solve my search for a reason to limit them, but that will also make the armour mechanic a lot less effective, increase the speed of physical conflict resolution, and leave me with a lot more dead combatants than I had planned on. These things are not what I want for my game, but I admit that I am currently lacking in believable reasons for there to be a limited supply of guns. Any ideas?

#28

Laws? make them illegal and carrying them results in a high penalty?

#29

Problem is that players can be members of factions such as the remnants of the army, or the bodyguard of the reigning monarch, or mercenaries for the Honourable East India Company, which all have reasons to carry guns, if guns were allowed in the setting.

While discussing this dilemma with another person, I have decided to up the apocalypse side of the game, and go with shortness of available resources. As such, not everyone will have swords, but I know someone who will be attending the game with a LARP-safe cricket bat as their weapon.

Having said that, if anyone has a different suggestion that might work, I’m very keen to hear it.

#30

If you go with a resource-contraint scenario, then maybe guns are just mostly useless because bullets are so limited? Wouldn’t affect swords and armour, as they’re not used up. Plus you can create effective armour and melee weapons out of junk. People could still carry guns to look threatening/in the hopes of finding ammo/bludgeon people (as long as they’re larp safe of course).
I haven’t actually read any of the documents, so I might be missing something massive here - but in a post-apocalyptic scenario things like factories tend to be abandoned. Everyone’s usually dead/fleeing/busy trying to find food, survive etc - so who’s making the bullets? Or for that matter, generating electricity for any of these industrial plants to operate?

#31

[quote=“No Rectangulars”]If you go with a resource-contraint scenario, then maybe guns are just mostly useless because bullets are so limited? Wouldn’t affect swords and armour, as they’re not used up. Plus you can create effective armour and melee weapons out of junk. People could still carry guns to look threatening/in the hopes of finding ammo/bludgeon people (as long as they’re larp safe of course).
I haven’t actually read any of the documents, so I might be missing something massive here - but in a post-apocalyptic scenario things like factories tend to be abandoned. Everyone’s usually dead/fleeing/busy trying to find food, survive etc - so who’s making the bullets? Or for that matter, generating electricity for any of these industrial plants to operate?[/quote]

Factories at the time didn’t run on electricity - they ran on coal. There’s plenty of coal in the civilised areas on Tetrajak’s map, but someone still has to mine it.

As for bullets, they’re actually quite easy. It wasn’t unusual for pistols to be sold with moulds for making your own. The difficult bit is cartridges (the Empire had just gone off muzzle-loaders pre-Ragnarok in favour of bolt-action, breach-loading rifles) - but if people have made the sensible switch to air-powered weapons (and in 33 years you have to ask why they haven’t), that ceases to be a problem.

But a more important question: if the factories are abandoned, and resources are that short, what are we wearing? All that lovely Victorian fashion people love for steampunk is a product of the same industrial base that produces weapons (in fact, moreso, since the raw materials are largely imported). And in a war for survival, its hard to see fancy clothing being prioritised above the weapons required to fight it (and keep the treasonous lower orders in line).

That’s the problem: explanations have consequences for the rest of the setting, which affect its believability and consistency.

#32

Good points, all.

I may have to just say guns don’t affect demons, and the new range of Nerf Vortex blasters aren’t allowed (as they fire with a great deal of strength more than Nerf foam dart guns and telling the difference between a strike from a disk and a small sword is rather difficult when you can’t see what you’ve been hit with).

I think I’ll say that a demon can only be damaged by attacks with spiritual energy (same reason exorcisms work), and a person trained in casting their spiritual energy into attacks can only cast it through things that they’re touching, and even then not very far from themselves. That way bullets wouldn’t be able to affect demons. What does everybody think?

#33

So much ‘weapons’. So little ‘does this bustle make my butt look big?’ Who’s got the shiny on costumes for this LARP? Sounds like black, brass and big skirts to me. I’m keen.

#34

So very interested since this is something I’ve been developing for a while…
love to attend, love to cross polinate…
talk to me!

m_gritt @ hotmail.com

and for stuff look here
[ul]http://www.greyveil.com[/ul]
[ul]http://rules.greyveil.com[/ul]

We hope to be running our first game just after the christmas period

#35

Sounds good to me! I think the colours that you would find most commonly in Steampunk and in post-apocalypse genres cross over quite commonly (browns, blacks, brass, copper, iron, grease and grit), so you’d be on the right track taking inspiration from either of 33AR’s main themes.

@Mat; I’ve replied to your PM, we can continue discussing things there.

#36

Having talked to a few people in the community about other events that occur on a very regular basis, I’ve come to a provisional set of months in which to regularly host 33AR sessions. I’m currently looking at March and September as the months I run sessions of 33AR (although not March 2012, as I am far too busy that month already). Does anyone know of anything that is planned for September 2012, or that occurs annually in March that LARPers commonly go to so I can avoid booking my venue on such dates?

#37

No clashes with any of the Wellington or national rpg cons; it falls nicely in the gap between KapCon - BattleCry and Day of Games, and ConFusion / Chimera and Fright Night.

SF or wargaming NatCons are usually at Easter or Queen’s Birthday, so you’re clear there too.

#38

Count me in, if you run this in September 2012!

#39

Certainly! We even have a subforum here on Diatribe.

You can get all the information about the campaign at the 33AR website.

#40

So Teonn is over, Chimera is looming, now is a BRILLIANT time for you all to sort out your characters so we have plenty of time to scheme and plot and scheme. Tears before bedtime or bust!