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Koekepan
A lot of the discussion around SINs was concerned with the implications of a panopticon for the viability of shadowrunning. As a throwaway remark, I suggested starting with the first VITAS in 1918, and setting the world in 1938, or similar. Might even be 1958. The more I think about this, the more potential it has. Let's start a good, old-fashioned, two-fisted, tuxedo-and-trenchcoat Dumpshock brawl on what the rules for that might look like.

Obviously, computing and the Matrix become ... well, not nullified, but greatly reduced in relevance. No ASIST, no VR, no cyberware, substantially more limited health care. So what are we left with, so that we don't end up with Magicrun?

We can start by thinking of some of the nicer ideas from Earthdawn. But we can also put our own spins on various things.

For instance, Essence would have vastly reduced relevance, if we even bothered with it. People just aren't putting any metal more sophisticated than an earring in their bodies.

Information is deeply valuable, as always, but now the blueprints you're stealing are real, a list of employees might (if it exists at all) exist as punched cards or paper tape - or quite simply a filing cabinet. Stealing a ribbon out of a typewriter would be useful because you can read off the imprints on the used tape what was last typed on it. However, you don't have a virtual fugue state - information media are highly physical.

To prevent the utter domination of magicians, it's not necessary to prevent magicians from existing, but there are a few limiting ideas.

For instance, one can have a slower, more cerebral practice of magic. Rather than snapping your fingers and tossing off fireballs at a moment's notice, make it take longer, be harder, or benefit so substantially from preparation of formulae that impromptu magic is largely useless for doing more than lighting another cigarette while you turn up the collar of your trenchcoat against the rain. This means that when the shit hits the fan, the thug with the tommygun pretty much reliably wins against any but the most carefully prepared magicians.

Another thing would be to make a broader population actually sensitive to the existence or manifestation of magic. They mightn't be able to do much about it, but they can all see it, so it's not a secret invisible power which suddenly erupts in fireballs.

Another idea is to give lots of people minor talents - basically their own party tricks. Some might be utilitarian - like mending rips in fabric. Some might be decorative - instant cosmetics! Some might be vaguely combat useful - magic skunk spray!

Another idea is to open the doors to negotiation with spirits to anyone. Anyone who isn't magicblind (which would now be a meaningful flaw) would be able to try talking to a spirit and negotiating with it to get something done. For example, Mick the Bruiser might ask the domestic spirit of a neglected building to please unlock the front door, and promises in return to wash the windows. Of course, he might be lying which might result in all sorts of bad karma coming down on his head... for those with a historical bent, a relationship of negotiation with mystic forces was typical of pre-christian european religions, so there's a wealth of material to draw on.

Another idea might be that, given sufficient knowledge, mundanes might be able to manipulate magic. By analogy, completely colourblind people can blend paints if they have a list and suitable annotations. If Ida the Femme Fatale knows enough about magic she might be able to arrange a few ingredients from a herb garden into a magic ward which, smeared on the doorjamb, will wake her up if the door opens, giving her enough time to grab a pistol and prepare to defend herself. Would she be on a par with Boxcar Billy, moonshine-fueled visionary and itinerant alchemist? No, but it would be useful nonetheless.

What I like about the ideas of letting everyone taste just a little mystic power is that it shows a deep-seated change in everyday life.

There is also huge potential for examining the results of the social turmoil. The Roaring Twenties crash hard as more and more ugly things happen, Europe is a mess, Russia is coming to terms with ideological madness, and colonialism is still alive and (comparatively) well.

Let's hear your thoughts.
Sendaz
It is an interesting idea though I would not rule out all cyber, it just would be pretty obvious, bulky and a bit clanky.

The movie Cast a Deadly Spell might be useful for this.
Koekepan
QUOTE (Sendaz @ Jan 15 2015, 11:48 PM) *
It is an interesting idea though I would not rule out all cyber, it just would be pretty obvious, bulky and a bit clanky.


Cyberware which goes beyond the level of prosthetics requires some kind of neural interface.
Prior to microsurgery that was not even an option.

I could contemplate some kind of cyberware equivalent where there is a mystic or spiritual link in use.

"My arm is possessed by a gremlin!"

"You probably ticked off the goblin I originally installed. Did you to remember to sacrifice cupcakes to it?"

"Uh .... no?"

"Then the repair isn't in warranty, chum. I can exorcise the gremlin, but it'll cost ya."

"And what about the goblin?"

"I can install a new one, sure. That'll cost ya too."
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
This is an intriguingly interesting idea...
Koekepan
QUOTE (Tymeaus Jalynsfein @ Jan 16 2015, 12:33 AM) *
This is an intriguingly interesting idea...


Thank you.

Spreading the rich, creamy butter of life on the hot, crispy toast of insanity. It's what I do.
Koekepan
How is it that my old scar twitches whenever trouble is on the horizon?

I had it courtesy of Fritz, in the Great War. He got me in the lung with his bayonet, but I got him in the heart. Lucky for me, the stretcher bearers got me out of there and I ended the war in a hospital bed. But I've never forgotten it.

I could feel it twitching as the telex chattered. I didn't show - no good worrying my typist - and just walked over to read it.

HALLO HARDTACK

SPOT OF BOTHER IN UNION OF S.A. NATIVES PLAYING WITH WITCHCRAFT. A FEW OF OUR CHAPS IN TROUBLE. TRYING TO AVOID ANOTHER ZULU WAR. NEED YOUR TENDER TOUCH.

The source was a number in Durban - but only a few old trench fighters knew me as Hardtack. Which one could it be? And what were they doing in South Africa of all places?

And how had he found me, whoever he was?

I only realised how long I had stood there, mulling the strange message when my typist came up behind me and said: "What is it, Gavin? Even you read faster than that." She had plenty of cheek, but I rather liked it. Old soldiers' habits give me little patience for fainting violets.

"I'm going to the Union of South Africa. You can come along if you want. I might need a hand."
Koekepan
Dieselrun magic (a thought sketch)

Overview:

The idea is that magic should not run the streets. It should be visible, it should be useful, it should be powerful. So is a well-equipped machine shop. That doesn't make machinists kings of the world. Neither should, on any inherent level, magicians be. To achieve this, work out a structure for magic rules which rewards or requires physical preparation, careful placement and timing, deep study, consideration of intent and consequences, and adherence to a suitable way of life. This ensures that the balance of effort, cost, risk and reward is maintained.


General:

If Sally the Sorceress wants to do something, she can do it the right way, or the wrong way. There's basically one right way and a positive myriad of wrong ways. The right way has minimised risks, but the greatest confidence in the outcome despite relatively high costs and effort. Doing things in a wrong way might work - but it could blow up in her face to an uncomfortable degree.

The overall concept is that every magical tradition (regardless of type or trappings) places certain burdens on its practitioners, and those are integral to the ordinary successes of those magicians. Failing to adhere to them introduces or exacerbates the odds of failure. Minute adherence to every particular powerfully mitigates or (in sufficiently overwhelming circumstances) effectively nullifies the risks.

Time:

A dianic priestess of the hidden mysteries may find that the hour before dawn is her best time to be active.

Place:

A holy grove, a lodge, a church, a sewer. Wherever gets your mojo working.

Reason:

This might matter more for some than others. Is a shaman of Bear healing someone? Bonus, for coherence. Is a hermetic magician healing someone? No bonus - but no real penalty either.

Ritual:

Set up the fancy ritual with the fancy ritual and vestments and objects and songs and so on for great success. Or don't, and draw purely on your inner energies - and collapse of fatigue, most likely. Hope you have a pet Igor to drag you out afterwards.

Knowledge:

Are you trying to heal a wound? It sure would help if you understood anatomy. As well as the ways of healing magic. Each wound is different, so is each spell - casting a spell isn't like a machinist shifting a jig and pulling the arm on a drill press. It's more like a machinist carefully crafting the jig and then putting it to use.

Dedication:

Did Mistletoes the Modern Druid remember to wash himself? Did he anoint his robes with essential oils every morning for the past week? Is he in good with the spirits which dominate his worldview? No? Then it's going to be just that much harder for him to get stuff done.

Emergency casting:

Well, shit. Prudence the Prestidigitatrix is pinned by a troll. No times for rituals, can't wait for the propitious hour, it's all or nothing now. She casts a spell, but bears a terrible karmic burden. She has to pay for what she has done - beside the fact that her vision is now blurring and she's coughing blood - or magic will go all awry for her.

Prepared spells:

If Pru had only had the foresight to prepare a few frozen formulae of Needle Lance, she might have been able to pierce the troll with a bouquet of hot steel, and escape the situation - poorer for having expended her painstakingly prepared works, but alive and largely hale.

Assembling magic:

Alfred the Academic lacks the fundamental talent for magic. Sure, he sees things the way other people does, but his will doesn't work with reality the way a talented magician does. Nonetheless he studied fervently, and can, with the use of some Orichalcum, effectively create his own prepared spells. Emergency casting is quite out of his realm, and the only point to a ritual for him is to prepare spells. But at least his studies have not been in vain.

Minor talents:

Eric the Elf is a mean bastard with a straight razor and an eye for the main chance. He can also, by natural magical talent, clean his person and clothing at any time. Great for bloodstains.

Summoning/Binding/Banishing:

Anyone, who isn't magicblind, can try to talk to spirits. Usually it's pointless. Sometimes bargaining can occur, and the spirits will usually keep to the letter of the bargain. To require a spirit to appear, and to bind them to a purpose independent of bargaining, or to unleash them and force them away from the world at large, are all magical acts. These can be done by assembled magic or prepared spells, but as a general rule they are carefully worked specialised spells which require extensive knowledge of spirits.

Any reaction from the community?

My thinking here is that it creates a niche for magicians while not making them juggernauts.
nezumi
Fudging the dates helps a good deal. In the 1930s to 1950s, we have a number of interesting programs that start coming up. The Russians and Americans both begin experimenting a lot more with chemicals, including steroids. In fact, the Germans, Americans, and Russians all had military investment in making 'super soldiers'. Captain America doesn't seem so far off compared to some things these people were doing. So that gives us some space for our classic street samurai.

Deckers, yeah ... as much as I'd love 'Difference Engine Decking', it does seem like it would be a tough trick to pull off. Maybe stick them playing interference on radios? I don't know.
Koekepan
Decker functions largely don't apply in the same way. Deckers are then replaced, notionally, with investigators who have a good working knowledge of everything from a card catalogue to a radio to morse code to typewriters to shorthand. Someone needs to understand all that stuff. Researchers may also have a solid set of skills behind soldering, wire wrapping, fundamentals of DC and AC circuitry, telegraphy and maybe even heliography. However, they're also knowledgeable in accounting, cryptography and ... well, everything, really.

Riggers are then replaced by drivers. However, a good driver is also everything from a shade tree mechanic (and maybe even his own machinist) to a logistics expert.

Really, all the main functions still exist, they are just different.
Koekepan
Some observations on the probable tone of Dieselrun:

Build/Repair skills should make a comeback, because they're really important. This was much less a world of disposability. Also, tweaking items for the purpose at hand is a common activity.

The weapons available will at least be anything available around the time of the first world war, if not more. Everything from the Chicago Typewriter to the Arisaka. Calibres from .22lr to .45-70, and of course the .308 was in common use in various forms (.30-30, .30-06, .303, 7.62x54R and more). Lots of steam trains were still around, but diesels were common as well. The Model T had hit the streets, and later on Detroit was streamlining rolling tanks.

Sociopolitical ideas to consider: how would proto-fascists have thought about metahumans? The elves might have been all right, and maybe the dwarves (after all, they made reasonable appearances in wagnerian traditions) but elves might just as easily have been relegated to a sort of pseudo-native role as a sort of sideshow, while dwarves were enslaved. As for orks and trolls ... well.

In literary terms we're not that far from the genesis of gothic horror. Frankenstein, Dracula, The Golem. People would come to terms with things eventually, but also wrap them in misconceptions.

Other things might happen as well. Lofwyr, and lesser dragons of the area, might easily precipitate a redivision of Germany. This might unwind many of the european changes wrought by WWI. China might benefit, or be destroyed by dragons buttressing the wobbling Qing dynasty. Africa might rise in rebellion, or at least a patchwork of rebellions, while India might easily split into multiple provinces under the stress of the resurgence of magic. The possibilities should be considered carefully. I'm not an expert in Latin America, so someone else might be able to provide more information on everything from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego. It's a big place.

There are also a lot of people looking out for Number One. Gangsters in prohibition-era America (and Canada for that matter). Political pressure groups across Europe. Even if you're not in WWII yet, there is the Spanish Civil War to consider. Would that happen or would the tide of events mitigate that? How would communists in Russia deal with goblinisation? Under Comrade Stalin's benevolent gaze, it's not easy to imagine it being a good time.

Megacorporations. Why not? IBM was riding high and getting higher. Standard Oil was broken up, but Ma Bell was climbing the ranks. The process of tearing down the old barons of industry was far from complete, and newspaper magnates were political kingmakers. In the world of the telegraph and the telex and the telephone, they were well placed to take advantage of chaos and hire men like the Pinkertons to do their bidding.

Shadows. Of course. Ranging from abject hoovervilles to shadowy tenements around Chicago's slums to the ramshackle developments of Kowloon, to the sunbaked streets of Delhi. A sedan full of desperadoes with tommyguns and brass knuckles can scoot into the alleys of the French Quarter or Chinatown and disappear.

Of course, someone hanging out her washing or clearing up his trash saw them.
Koekepan
What about currency?

This is an interesting period. The gold standard - would it still have been modified? Technically moving off the gold standard broke the old promises of currency equivalency, and so constituted a default. This, or debasement, would likely still have been necessary, but we all know that it was a turbulent time in monetary terms.

The pound sterling was causing all sorts of trouble. It was accepted across much of the known world, but the British Empire was in financial trouble after the expenses of the war.

The dollar was rising fast - the US had mostly stayed out of the war, and avoided overcommitment compared to the wrecked countries of Europe.

We should think about a timeline.

And thus it came to pass, in the ages of Steam and Diesel ...
Sendaz
One thought is when does the awakening happen?

In the regular timeline we have 40- 60+ years from the Awakening to the starting point of the campaign.

If we are looking at the 1920-1930s as the setting and Haley's Comet does swing by in 1910, we could possible look at a timeline like this:

1861 First UGE reported/Awakening

1861 American Civil War starts

1864 Three years into the war, an Indian Leader by the name of Goyathlay, who we would come to know as Geranimo, who having lost his wife and childen in '58 has been in a running battle with the Mexican and US army for many years, but now is bringing magic to the field under a council of Shamans made up from the various indian nations. The Northern US army is now fighting a war on two sides.

Texas rallies to their plea for unity against a common foe, especially as they were on the forefront of the Indian assaults, while the rest of the South uses this to enforce their separation from the Union.

Canada is forced to fight alongside the Union/Texas forces as the Council of Shamans spreads across much of the middle of the North American Continent.

1867 The Great Ghost Dance, The South grudgingly joins in as they realize if Texas and the North fall they will be next, bringing with them their Houdon and backwoods magicks.
Seward's attempt to purchase Alaska falls through as it simply was not feasible at the time. Remains Russian territory.

1868 The Treaty of St. Louis is signed ceding most everything west of the Mississippi except for Texas to the New Native Nations. Texas declares it's own independence as it is cut off from the North and holds a grudge against the south for being used as a meat shield. Nobody contests it as they are all licking their own wounds.
Quebec also succeeds but nobody cares. (teasing nyahnyah.gif)
California becomes sort of the Hong Kong of the Americas, cutting deals all around to keep itself from being absorbed, including reaching out its Pacific neighbors.

1871 Goblinization. Ironically in Pensburg, Kentucky nobody noticed.

and so on.

Probably not what you are looking for, but food for thought. nyahnyah.gif
Koekepan
QUOTE (Sendaz @ Jan 17 2015, 02:34 AM) *
One thought is when does the awakening happen?

In the regular timeline we have 40- 60+ years from the Awakening to the starting point of the campaign.

If we are looking at the 1920-1930s as the setting and Haley's Comet does swing by in 1910, we could possible look at a timeline like this:


*snip the proposed timeline*

Not a bad line of thought, but I would have pushed the origin a bit forward. Halley's comet shows up in '86 in the canonical timeline, and things only start to get nutty after its arrival. The previous go around was 1910, and before that 1835. VITAS in the canonical timeline shows up in 2010; that's 24 years later. UGE in 2011, along with Ryumyo. Goblinization in 2021, more VITAS in 2022.

By my thumbnail counts, your proposed rough timeline starts from the 1835 comet, putting UGE at 26 years later, and the Great Ghost Dance about 32 years after the comet. Goblinization 36 years post-comet. So, broadly, you're working with the canonical timeline shifted back about 150 years. The other side of the coin is that dragons would start to show up around the time of the civil war.

Japan, not having modernised at all yet, would pretty much be a bit player on the world stage, if locally notable. China would be a lot larger and possibly boosted a lot by the arrival of dragons - at least they'd be well placed, culturally and organisationally, to roll with the big punches.

The rebellion in India (old style: Indian Mutiny) would already be over, with the British Empire having taken over before UGE and VITAS. The Crimean War would also be over, with Russia licking her wounds. The european rebellions of 1848 would of course be long over. Large parts of Africa would still be "Darkest Africa".

An other option would be to count from the comet in 1910, put VITAS at 1934, UGE in 1935 (prime time for Adolf!) along with Lofwyr, goblinization in 1945, and so on.

Or we could ignore the comet in broad terms and work from my suggestion of the Great Influenza Epidemic as being VITAS in 1918, UGE in 1919, goblinization in 1928...

All things considered, I rather like your idea of counting from 1835-ish.

Large parts of the world would in fact have swung with the punches. The real ascendancy of magic wouldn't have demonstrated itself until the second half of the nineteenth century, which would have really changed the victorian era's flavour.

However, we might have to consider a few factors - the Great Powers would probably have lost a bit compared to where they were in the real world. Would the british have been able to defeat Cetshwayo and subdue the Zulu? Since they have a rich and active shamanic life, they would have embraced those powers swiftly and wholeheartedly, as opposed to the redcoats who looked down on the poor benighted heathens. What would have happened in the twilight years of the Ottoman empire? Would Germany ever have unified? Quite possibly not. By 1871, VITAS would have had two rounds, goblinization would have transformed 10% of the population, the dragons would have been hanging around for over ten years. In fact, the kingdom of Hungary and the Austrian Empire would not even have combined yet.

I guess what I'm saying is that the map would have ended up looking very different.

This is actually a really cool idea, the more I think about it. Sendaz, you've already started thinking about North America. Maybe a few folks could each pick a continent and try to figure out likely courses of events?
Koekepan
OK, Sendaz is camping out in North America.

I don't know enough about South America, and we have enough europeans on here that I'd feel a little weird tackling that.

I'll start with Africa and see where I end up.
Sendaz
I admit I liked the earlier kick off as it allows things to be a bit more settled by the time of the campaign opening.
If goblinization happened in 1928 then a campaign in the 30s would barely have them out the gate.
Which could be fun in itself, but not necessarily to all groups taste.

QUOTE (Koekepan @ Jan 16 2015, 08:46 PM) *
I guess what I'm saying is that the map would have ended up looking very different.
And that is the real question before we start diving too far in.

So do we want to totally overhaul the map kind of like how original SR did to the globe or do we want something closer to the classic 1930s but with that Parallel yet Alternate twist?

Each has their appeal.
Koekepan
I think we should take a long, hard look at rewriting the globe.

Your own quick view of things showed that Alaska would probably stay russian, and for darned good reasons.

It's the approach I'm taking in Africa. As of 1860, the French were a colonial power in North Africa, and I'm tracing through how that would probably have changed. Entirely? Maybe not. But a lot.

So I figure if we can target an opening date of 1900, we can at least extrapolate to a reasonable degree.

(1900 because the original 2050 opening was about 40 years after VITAS and UGE.)
Koekepan
I'm going through the histories of african nations, and one thing is pretty clear to me:


One of the greatest sources of resistance to european colonisation of Africa was disease. Given the horrors and slaughter of two VITAS plagues in the latter half of the nineteenth century, I can't imagine that the surviving europeans would be either motivated to, or equipped to engage in the Scramble for Africa.

Basically, there will be some colonies, but much of Africa will remain free (for some definitions of free) and quite wild and hostile.

Great place to run the shadows.
Koekepan
I have started to work on the outlook for Africa, and while I've done a glance at each african country's history and established some idea of what's going on, here's my summary paragraph so far:

Africa

The white man's grave - rumoured to be the source for VITAS, as well as many hideous tropical diseases. The Scramble for Africa never happened, because no real benefit could be seen after the plagues which slaughtered europeans as much as anyone. Aside from a few established holdings (primarily french in north africa, british in the south, portugese here and there) native tribes in various degrees of organisation run the continent as of 1900, and continue into 1920.
Colonialism depends on a sufficient source of money and manpower to enforce a colonial plan, and the loss of about 30% of the european population over a couple of decades in the last half of the 19th century simple rendered a large scale land grab untenable.


What do y'all think of that as a general outlook? I'm still piecing together a fragmentary map of regional (mostly fractious, tribal) powers, and the few cases where europeans or the Ottomans have a substantial hold (mostly though not exclusively in northern Africa).
Koekepan
While I was looking things up, I stumbled across a counterpart to the Ghost Dance, in Africa, although it had rather more tragic outcomes in real life:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nongqawuse

It's pre-awakening, but I think that such a figure might have turned into a potent early shamaness, and have redeemed herself and help contain the spreading influence of europe in southern Africa.

Speaking of big movements, a continent or so away in the Sudan towards the latter half of the century, there was the Mahdi, who was a thorn in the side of the british, the ottomans, and pretty much everyone around him. North Africa was at the time very much in the islamic sphere (and largely still is) so there's a lot of potential for analysing what would have happened.

I'm inclined to the idea that until they could reorganise their theologies, the abrahamic religions (or more to the point, the imperialistic ones; christianity and islam) would have taken a beating early on because of their early refusal to contemplate what they would certainly have characterised as witchcraft, while the animist, shamanic ancestor-worshippers of the african hinterlands would have been quite comfortable taking advantage of these new-found powers to push back hard. Sub-saharan Africa would have been in no significant way industrialised, but certainly would have been a lot more capable of offering major resistance to colonisation.
Koekepan
So here's my summary fluff on Africa:

The white man's grave - rumoured to be the source for VITAS, as well as many hideous tropical diseases. The Scramble for Africa never happened, because no real benefit could be seen after the plagues which slaughtered europeans as much as anyone. Aside from a few established holdings (primarily french in north africa, british in the south, portugese here and there) native tribes in various degrees of organisation run the continent as of 1900, and continue into 1920.
Colonialism depends on a sufficient source of money and manpower to enforce a colonial plan, and the loss of about 30% of the european population over a couple of decades in the last half of the 19th century simple rendered a large scale land grab untenable.

National borders have no real meaning in most of Africa. Countries are what armed bodies of men can hold, and authority largely reaches as far as a rifle bullet - a mile or two at most. Cities exist, especially the more ancient ones, but they are largely coastal and defined by rare harbours and river mouths where traders gather. Cairo, Alexandria, Tripoli, Marrakesh, Fez and others are bustling and active, as are Durban, Cape Town and others, but with rare exceptions the hinterland is wild. Railways are almost nonexistent, roads are just guidelines, telegraphy works - but honestly radio works better. If there's anyone to receive it.

As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Africa produces monsters, nightmares, disease and wild peoples with blood in their eyes. Maybe in another fifty years, Europe might have the wherewithal to engage in widespread colonisation of the dark continent, but for now the indigenous powers are burgeoning.

The industrial revolution has not reached Africa, with the exception of a couple of the saharan states, such as Egypt and Algeria. Even there its hold is extremely tenuous. Travellers to the bundu are advised to take everything they need with them, because replacements are few and far between.

In general terms, the traveller to Africa can consider Africa to be two continents, the same way many divide Eurasia into Europe and Asia. North Africa has some colonial influences from Europe, but in general if one were to draw a line from the northern tip of Madagascar to the Gambia, most area north of that line is under the control or substantial influence of various sultans and potentates, of whom the majority are at least nominally islamic, and many of whom are nominally part of the Ottoman Empire. There are exceptions in the deep hinterland, where even the arabs rarely go on slave hunting missions, but as a general guideline it holds true.

South of arabic and islamic influence, the continent is largely populated by a wide variety of people including pygmies of various tribes, khoisan and khoikhoi and bantu clans of various degrees of fractiousness. The Zulu are an example of a well coordinated group, warlike and capable, while large stretches such as the Namib and Kalahari deserts are practically empty of human life. The one substantial exception is the Cape Colony, where the british hang on to the southern tip of Africa. Tough, grim white settlers fight against encroachment from colonial forces they dislike as well as native tribes, but achieve little more than a hardscrabble agrarian existence. The Boer republics of the Orange Free State and South Africa (wedged between the Limpopo river and the Vaal river, north of the Orange Free State) exist, but their existence is under constant pressure, from the kingdoms of Swaziland and Lesotho as well as the warlike Ndebele to the north, Zulu to their east and other tribes such as the Tswana to their west.

The mineral wealth of Africa is legendary - but just that. Legendary. European and arabic colonists have extracted slaves, ivory and gold, but manage no large scale mines. Mines take specialised skills, vast manpower and deep capital. VITAS and other disruptions in Europe have not left much of any of those resources, and while the europeans lick their wounds and consider resource extractions in Africa, they have yet to take that step.

While magic is a strength of Africa, and industrialisation (or a lack thereof) is a weakness, VITAS has turned into something of a blessing in disguise. African rates of population increase are high, and many conflicts which look like military chest-beating actually have their genesis in conflicts over food and land. The drop in population resulted in a reduction in internal conflicts, so between 1860 and 1900 Africa rebounded better than most of the rest of the world. Ottoman domination of the north is weaker than one might think, and throughout the continent laws largely depend on who is watching.

Even disregarding diseases, the natural world in Africa is hostile. Africa practically draws level with Australia in terms of venomous snakes, spiders, scorpions and the like, while being essentially unmatched in terms of large predators and extremely tough, ill-tempered herbivores. Lions are almost the size of bears, but hunt in teams. The African Elephant can not be tamed like its indian cousin, and is larger and more aggressive. The Cape Buffalo is incredibly hard to kill, and will actually attack and defeat lions. And so on. Even smaller creatures are notorious - african honey bees are highly aggressive in the defence of their hives, and the honey badger is similar to a wolverine and a skunk rolled into one.

And these are just the unawakened creatures.

But the cities! The bustling throngs of Cairo, the shaded and narrow alleyways of Fez, the ancient buildings of Alexandria are all full of rascals and bastards planning for war, theft, or simple commerce. In Tripoli the call to prayer echoes from minarets while in the corners Berber tribesmen haggle over the price of their swords with warlike imams hoping to carve out new sultanates in their own names. Arab slavers cruise from Zanzibar down the coast in the hopes of filling their holds and chains with black gold, and bring their captives back to Riyadh or Khartoum. Golden grain from the valley of the Nile, carried on the backs of sweating porters, might fuel a labourer's day, or a soldiers. The french Foreign Legion sits in sun-baked fortifications bordering the Mediterranean, a remnant of a colonial dream currently awaiting a fresh push from home.

If you have the courage, Africa awaits.


Any amateur historians want to talk to me about the various chartered companies which might or might not have been created to attempt to exploit Africa? Some of those were the original megacorps.
Koekepan
Things weren't going well.

We'd slipped into the russian diplomat's compound all right. It was an old persian building, with huge windows designed to catch the cool breezes from the gulf. Security hadn't been on the mind of whoever built it.

Unfortunately, security was on the mind of who occupied it. It was one thing to avoid the attention of a sleepy sentry, but quite another to avoid those shadowy hounds which prowled the corridors. We hadn't known that they were there, so the first hint we had that things went wrong were glowing eyes, and a sort of baying which set my spine tingling.

The secrecy was gone in that moment - but with one accord we'd surged forward, running for the study. One fellow stumbled into our path, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and Davey caught him under the chin with a rifle butt, taking him down.

With what felt like fangs nipping at our heels we ran into the study, and I kicked the door shut behind me. Davey ran behind the desk, where a beautifully carved chair rested on a tigerskin rug. He barely had time to scream before the tigerskin came to life and rent him limb from limb. My tommygun (mercifully loaded with blessed bullets) tore the tigerskin to ribbons, but it was all over for him. Gertie grabbed a letter opener from the desk and used it to defeat the lock on the drawer, retrieving all that cyrillic correspondence ... and then we looked around for our escape, realising that the windows of this chamber were all defended by bars.

We looked at each other for just a moment, as at the door something hungry scratched and whined.

"If he's just a diplomat, I'm a nun."

I didn't answer her, but took a glance at the ceiling. No help there; it was masonry throughout. There was only one door. I glanced down, and saw wood beneath where Davey and the tigerskin both lay. A trapdoor. Shouts outside the door convinced me - we'd be no more trapped down there than we already were, and there may be a way out.

I pushed Davey and the tigerskin out of the way, and pulled it open. Beneath was darkness, and damp air.
Koekepan
So I've gone nuts and I'm adapting rules for DieselRun.

You know you want it.

So, question: should I adhere more closely to SR2/3, or SR4/AE? Don't bother suggesting SR5 - I don't have the books.
Koekepan
Any one of the Great Dragons of Dumpshock:

It occurs to me that this thread should probably be moved to the Community Projects board.

Sorry for being such a dumbass in the first place!
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
No, Leave it in the Shadowrun Community pages...

AS for what flavor - I would prefer SR4 flavor. Cold war Spies, Noir Detectives, etc. It does not need to be pink Mohawk and constant action. But then I tend to prefer a more cerebral game to the over the top, balls to the wall, no consequences style of game.
Bertramn
Well, setting it in the past does not lend itself to Pink Mohawks anyway, I think, except maybe if you set it in the late 80s, or early 90s, which would be ironic, considering the origins of Shadowrun.

For an earlier date a Noir genre would be way more fitting, as TJ said.
Koekepan
Style-wise, I completely agree. Pink mohawk games tend to the high casualty figures anyway, which aren't good for play coherence without 2050s medicine.

Actually, I meant rules-wise. Intelligence, or Logic and Intuition? Quickness, or Agility? Edge or Karma?

Especially for some aspects of magic, the Intelligence/Logic + Intuition divide can make a significant difference.
Bertramn
Consult my thread on the dice mechanic, if you are unsure which one you want to use.
A surprisingly large chunk of people was open to anything, as long as it works well.

I tend to lean towards the simple approach,
which I see as the 3rd Edition stuff,
since there are, for example, less attributes than in 4th onward,
skills are handled relatively simply as well,
and resolving situations with adjustable TN is arguably faster than waiting for the dice count to end.
Also, complicated subsystems such as the Matrix, do not enter the equation in your setting.

If you play pre-cyberization however, the amount of extra dice is limited in one way at least,
which is a serious point in favor of fixed-TN-d6.
On the other hand, if you have less dice, the biggest weakness of fixed-TN-d6 comes into play way more often,
which is that marginally hard tasks are impossible if you do not have enough dice, as opposed to just being unlikely.
Try getting 4 successes with 3 dice. (hard task, though it goes up to 10 required successes in 5th)
Koekepan
QUOTE (Bertramn @ Jan 19 2015, 07:40 PM) *
I tend to lean towards the simple approach,
which I see as the 3rd Edition stuff,
since there are, for example, less attributes than in 4th onward,
skills are handled relatively simply as well,
and resolving situations with adjustable TN is arguably faster than waiting for the dice count to end.
Also, complicated subsystems such as the Matrix, do not enter the equation in your setting.

If you play pre-cyberization however, the amount of extra dice is limited in one way at least,
which is a serious point in favor of fixed-TN-d6.
On the other hand, if you have less dice, the biggest weakness of fixed-TN-d6 comes into play way more often,
which is that marginally hard tasks are impossible if you do not have enough dice, as opposed to just being unlikely.
Try getting 4 successes with 3 dice. (hard task, though it goes up to 10 required successes in 5th)


Beautifully argued. You made up my mind with your incisive view:

It needs to be adjustable TN with plausible die pools, simplicity is good, and the complex subsystems are greatly curtailed with no cyberware or ASIST.

3rd Ed for the win!

Edit: Tymeaus, I agree with you about the more trenchcoaty feel, but given that I'm taking a bit of a chainsaw to the fluff simply by virtue of changing setting, and reducing overall survivability, and I am making magic more onerous and less immediate, I think that in spirit I will be moving in that direction. If you think that there are other things that should change in this cause, I'm happy to help.

After all, even in the thirties, there was a difference between the chiaroscuro and dutch angles of noir film, and the lurid works of pulp fiction.
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
No worries, it is looking good so far. smile.gif
Koekepan
Things that don't need to change in Dieselrun, in comparison to 3rd Ed:

Combat.

Trolls are still trolls. Swords are still swords. Guns are still guns. We can tweak details around which frags are on the market, and which rifles are readily available, and maybe add rules for aperture and ghost ring sights and recognise the narrower and weaker range of optics available. Smartlinks don't exist, nor do flechette rounds. Basically, a certain amount of obvious limitation of the technology. But if it worked in the trenches of WWI (smokeless powder rifles, semi-automatic handguns, submachineguns, bayonets, trench knives etc.) then it works in the game.

Most other hazards.

Drowning is still drowning, falling is still falling, poison is still poison, disease is still disease.

A few things change in degree.

Surgery doesn't change all that much, but its degree of sophistication drops a bit. Cancer treatments other than excision are mostly a pipe dream, and dentistry is a nightmarish realm of sadism and horror. Still, the wound recovery rules absent cyberclinics are not far off - mostly a matter of degree, rather than total rule change.

Some of the cuter equipment isn't available. Obviously, no decks, and the selection of vehicles will have to change completely. Drones are strictly custom constructed, and largely amount to radio controlled flying devices, and kites. Cyberware aren't on the list, and a lot of the more sophisticated security devices don't exist - although bugs and phone taps do.

A lot of personal body armour is completely off the list. Aramidic fibres didn't exist yet, and basically body armour is nonexistent, or extremely limited in its application. Leather jacket? Sure. Flak vest? Maybe - but even then, flak vests just don't stop rifle bullets, and only stop the weakest of pistol bullets. It's good to be a troll.

Price lists will have to change - and part of that will depend on what we work out for the alternate history, in terms of currency choices and society.

Big changes

Magic, and the metaphysics thereof. The ordinary system is based on the idea of magicians being a sort of specialist johnny-on-the-spot bag of tricks, like mobile artillery units, hospitals on legs or stealth devices. Everything pretty much revolves around the immediate, with rare exceptions like ritual magic. To change that, I'm crafting a new metaphysical concept, along the lines of what I detailed above in terms of goals, to keep it coherent, useful, but not overwhelming.

Spirits will have to change at least a bit, and while I think I can incorporate grounding, it may change in some details.

If you think I missed any major topics, feel free to bring them up.
nezumi
Time for the Order of the Golden Dawn and the Ordo Templar Orientis!

Of course, those things are practically already incorporated into current SR. But in Dieselpunk, those groups are still pretty young and very hip. And the Great Chiefs are totems again!
Koekepan
QUOTE (nezumi @ Jan 20 2015, 06:27 PM) *
Time for the Order of the Golden Dawn and the Ordo Templar Orientis!

Of course, those things are practically already incorporated into current SR. But in Dieselpunk, those groups are still pretty young and very hip. And the Great Chiefs are totems again!


You're right. And I've been looking into various aspects of alternative history as well.

I don't know whether anybody is tackling Europe or not, but I'm developing a list of the Great Powers of the era.

So far I have:
  • Japan (nascent, but the Meiji Restoration was well on the way before the turn of the century, and Ryumyo might well have been taken as a symbol of hope for the restoration)
  • China (deeply troubled, weakened by the intrigues of western governments including the opium wars and the backlash of the rebellion - which might in fact have been more successful than it actually was, in which case China might have been a more powerful, unified state)
  • Russia (Probably the Crimean war would have happened, but in the wake of VITAS the Russo-Turkish war might not even have happened - the Russo-Japanese war might similarly have taken a very different shape, thus not necessarily laying the ground for establishing communism, so the whole era needs a very careful re-examination)
  • Ottoman Empire (Might very well not have dissolved, if the exterior pressures on it were relieved before the Young Turks arose, or alternatively the appearance of Aden might have precipitated even earlier breakdown of an already dysfunctional empire)
  • Austria (Might still have combined into Austria-Hungary, but if the Ottoman Empire came out stronger rather than so fatally weakened, the course of events leading to WWI might never have happened, which would mean that it might still exist)
  • Prussia (It's not at all clear that, with Lofwyr around, Germany would have been unified - or if Lofwyr decided to unify Germany, Lofwyr might have included Austria, which would totally modify Austria's fate and create a monstrous german superstate in Europe)
  • France (Surprisingly stable, in terms of boundaries and coherence - many people forget that germany unified partly in response to the large, historically bellicose, and generally dominant France of history, but with VITAS and other disruptions France would have been distracted by reduced power and influence in North Africa)
  • England (Well, the British Empire was already well established and would probably, with allies, have defeated the russian armies in the Crimean War, and without the distractions of the Scramble for Africa, might have spent more time wheeling and dealing in south-east Asia)
  • USA (The dark horse in all this, especially if southern secession succeeded. The Union would still have been heavily populated and industrialised, but unable to push west into indian territory. Still, isolated from the madness of Europe, and relatively stable on the east coast of North America, the USA could easily engage in a long period of growth and consolidation)


The open question after all that, is what happens with the Great Companies? I think that they might become powers in their own right, given reduced supervision within their home nations. The East India company would already have been humiliated and dispossessed by the British Empire, but many others would have been in much better shape. With weakened unitary states, many companies would have worked hard to shape their own destinies independent of the demands of countries, and would have sought multilateral recognition.
Koekepan
I took another look at various sources on VITAS.

Basically, there are two major go-rounds of VITAS, in the canon. VITAS 1 takes out about a quarter of the population, VITAS II takes out another tenth. Call it a third of the world's population, over the course of a decade or so.

Here's the kicker: that's assuming availability of modern medicine. In the mid 19th century, that wouldn't have happened.

Best case survival rates based on canon books on third world mortality suggest that around half the world's population would have been wiped out the first time, and half again in the second round.

Got that? 25% survival. And that includes city and country populations, metahumans, everybody.

Even if we mitigate that assumption to, say, 50% survival for ... reasons hitherto unknown ... we need to strongly consider which nations or approximations thereof would even have been coherent entities after the fact. Any large armies hanging around would have been effectively ruined. It would probably have brought any large-scale conflicts to an abrupt halt while able-bodied people capable of working the land, so that simple starvation didn't kill off the rest, would have been at a premium.
Koekepan
OK, I've been doing more thinking...

Don't you hate it when that happens? You're all set to relax with a pack of NERPS, Stuffers, and Getlaidriel's latest, and then thinking happens.

Anyway, what I was thinking was that in the nineteenth century, while imperialism and general nationalism were on the rise, borders were often more fluid and certainly more porous. Even in Europe, in many areas where the industrial age had not really reached, and especially the further east you went, the notion of pride in a shared nationality was rather strange. Also, feudalism was still alive and well in certain nooks and crannies. Again, the further east you went, the more this was true. For example, in Russia serfs were still a real thing. Outside Europe, aside from some innovations in the Americas, feudalism or some equivalent thereof was effectively the norm.

Africa was a patchwork of kingdoms, tribal holdings, warring clans and the debris of ancient empires. The Ottoman Empire's reach over North Africa and the Middle East was not in any way representative of an enlightened modern state. China was still an imperial state, and things were no more liberated in southeast Asia, whether mainland or archipelago. Australia and New Zealand were barely known, poorly understood, and irregularly held. India was a mess of petty client kingdoms, and the British Raj was hardly established.

So. I'm going to be looking at this whole business in the context of the primary question: which countries will even exist in terms of having meaningful national identities? And inasmuch as they exist, what will their reach and coherence be?

A large part of the question will revolve around the notion of the dragons taking a role in politics - often as feudal lords. They have a few options, after all. They can be rapacious predators (and who will stop them?) or they could become presidents of their own republics (doubtful - the motivation would be vastly reduced compared to Dunkelzahn's canonically garnered advantages).

Or they could tell the local worthies that they were the new boss, see? And anyone who didn't like it could take it up with them. Like Father Macintosh, who by the way tasted delicious if a little fatty. Oh, nobody wants to? Well, it's settled, then.

So I think a neo-feudal approach under the draconic yoke is likely at least in unindustrialised areas, however I think that the dragons would likely be competent and halfway considerate rulers on the logic that it's better to head up a truly well-coordinate nation.

Industrialised countries such as England, the USA, arguably Prussia, France and a few others, or well coordinated ones like China and Japan, might be able to retain non-draconic autonomy or achieve some sort of detente.

Thoughts?
nezumi
On the other hand, in a young nation like the US, it might not be so hard to get elected president after all. Imagine a war against Spain; a superior enemy interfering in US business. The dragon takes up arms on our behalf, torches the Spanish fleet in port, opens the gates of Cuba to US soldiers, and declares the western hemisphere America's domain. Name the dragon Theodore and Bob's your uncle.

I wouldn't consider Japan necessarily a valuable location. They are still technologically backwards and resource-poor. However Japan, China, etc. do have a weak link, being monarchies. If a dragon secures itself over the royal family, everything else is done. In fact, a dragon doesn't even need to officially rule; twist the knife enough, and the king will rule on your behalf, taking all the assassination attempts, while you sleep nice and cozy behind the throne.

You're right though; I don't know if dragons would even want entire nations. In SR, it's necessary because a few fighter jets can take down a dragon. That's not so in the 19th century. But still, a dragon does need to sleep, and that is so much treasure those people have already collected ...

Mechanically, do bear in mind the initiative problem. SR3 expects multiple passes to spread your pools over. With no wired reflexes or similar initiative boosts, that becomes an issue. The easiest fix is to just increase everyone's unaugmented initiative by 2d6, or make reaction Int + Qui (instead of the average).
Koekepan
QUOTE (nezumi @ Jan 26 2015, 03:27 PM) *
On the other hand, in a young nation like the US, it might not be so hard to get elected president after all. Imagine a war against Spain; a superior enemy interfering in US business. The dragon takes up arms on our behalf, torches the Spanish fleet in port, opens the gates of Cuba to US soldiers, and declares the western hemisphere America's domain. Name the dragon Theodore and Bob's your uncle.


Yes, that would work. I just don't see the reward being worth the effort. A dragon would be far more likely to simply land on a convenient peak in the Catskills or the Blue Mountains and declare itself lord of all it surveys. And if the army of the US of A doesn't like it, they can show up and discuss the matter.

QUOTE (nezumi) *
I wouldn't consider Japan necessarily a valuable location. They are still technologically backwards and resource-poor. However Japan, China, etc. do have a weak link, being monarchies. If a dragon secures itself over the royal family, everything else is done. In fact, a dragon doesn't even need to officially rule; twist the knife enough, and the king will rule on your behalf, taking all the assassination attempts, while you sleep nice and cozy behind the throne.


Japan is catching up rapidly, as of the Meiji Restoration. It was one of the most impressive national upliftment programs in history. I can easily see Ryumyo deciding to be the power behind the throne, legitimising and supporting a defensible realm, and maybe even using it as a base to take Sakhalin, Korea and anything else tasty in the area.

China is definitely a strong contender for dragon takeover - the problem is that China is big enough that I suspect several pretty big dragons would end up fighting over it - or fighting in the shadows while seeming to peacefully divide China into provinces. I feel the same way about Siberia, regardless of what the Tsar of all the Russias thinks.

They don't even have to be great dragons. Several large dragons could do it even under the eye of a great dragon, which quite frankly sounds like a typical chinese arrangement among humans in imperial China.

QUOTE (nezumi) *
You're right though; I don't know if dragons would even want entire nations. In SR, it's necessary because a few fighter jets can take down a dragon. That's not so in the 19th century. But still, a dragon does need to sleep, and that is so much treasure those people have already collected ...


I think that reduced function of infrastructure compared to 2050 would make it a lot harder for dragons to take whole nations, when as a practical matter it's so much easier to just dominate a valley. What I see as being a lot more plausible is for a great dragon such as Lofwyr to dominate a number of ordinary dragons who then feudally rule local areas and provinces.

QUOTE (nezumi) *
Mechanically, do bear in mind the initiative problem. SR3 expects multiple passes to spread your pools over. With no wired reflexes or similar initiative boosts, that becomes an issue. The easiest fix is to just increase everyone's unaugmented initiative by 2d6, or make reaction Int + Qui (instead of the average).


Point taken, but I think that the magic system will allow for a temporary Haste effect - and what about letting the initiative die use the Rule of Six? In any party, in any given combat, chances are some tough guy will break into two or three passes that way.
nezumi
Rule of Six doesn't come up often enough to make a huge difference. In general, where your average initiative is 4+1d6, five times out of six the initiative will be 9 or below. Even for Shadowrunners who will frequently have 6+1d6, you get two initiative passes less than half the time. Magic is the one exception, but that makes magic very, very powerful.
Koekepan
QUOTE (nezumi @ Jan 26 2015, 11:13 PM) *
Rule of Six doesn't come up often enough to make a huge difference. In general, where your average initiative is 4+1d6, five times out of six the initiative will be 9 or below. Even for Shadowrunners who will frequently have 6+1d6, you get two initiative passes less than half the time. Magic is the one exception, but that makes magic very, very powerful.


So I did some counting on my fingers, and I think your idea of Int + Qui would combine well with rule of six to create some differentiation. It's an equal opportunity expansion for various monsters/NPCs/mooks/UltraDraconicDominationUnits, but it also creates an interesting contrast, as follows:

Og the Trog, with a Strength of 11 and a Quickness and Intelligence of 3 combined, will in the absence of magical or pharmaceutical assistance have an average initiative outcome of around 8. His chance of getting a second initiative pass is under one in seven, while his chance of getting three is under 0.5%.

Percival Primrose, Elven gallant, with a Quickness of 7 and an Intelligence of 6, is guaranteed to get at least two initiative passes, but is still likely to get only two. His chance of getting three is under one in seven, while his odds of getting four is under 0.5%.

So a couple of rounds out of every thousand, Og gets to act more than Percy, but most of the time Percy acts first and last, doubling the pain.

Of course, if all the pain Percy is bringing is a .32 rimfire, while Og is chasing Percy around with a meataxe, it might take a few rounds for Percy's corpse to stop twitching but the outcome is in very little doubt.

Adepts, and people boosted with spells or drugs might actually do yet better, but the general range of action should be fairly satisfactory.
Koekepan
I'm working on a new theory, foreshadowed a couple of posts up, based on the increased influence of Awakened powers in a human world less well established than in the canon timeline.

Dragon Age: Shadowrun! In dieselpunk! Dieseldragonrun! In the shadows! ... or something.

The basic idea is that industrial age cities would be able to stand off dragons. New York, Paris, London, Berlin, Rome, Vienna and sundry others would be able to mass enough musketry to make things quite hot for dragons smaller than Dunkelzahn, Lofwyr or Kaltenstein. This, as well as a possible concentration of magicians, would make them less attractive targets. This isn't to say that Lofwyr couldn't wreck the armies of post-napoleonic Prussia, but that it would be unnecessary, risky, and inefficient.

So with all that in mind, what I see being likeliest to happen is that a narrow selection of human realms would remain controlled by human forces, but that most of the world would be claimed by various awakened parties - youngsters, by draconic standards, but easily enough to overawe or overpower a village or even a thinly populated (especially in the wake of VITAS) region.

So, if you want to be metahumanocentric (or whatever the appropriate epithet might be) you can view the world as a few patches of light standing against the encroaching darkness of revived myths and horrors - or to take an opposing view, the world of magic has reclaimed the bulk of what it once controlled, barring a few obstinate outposts.

Comment?
nezumi
I think it's important to also consider here; the dragons aren't interested in dead humans or in a valley of embers and desolation. Most of them want gold and power, and the quickest way to that is to have an effective economy of humans doing that work for you.

So I could see it being a patchwork, with major human strongholds, dangerous zones where predators roam or that have returned to nature, then enclaves which are carefully nurtured by a dragon or other intelligence, but where humans are property used for labor, and an adventurer unlucky enough to land there will be claimed as a slave (albeit, possibly in a gilded cage) or if she's too much trouble, as food.
Koekepan
QUOTE (nezumi @ Jan 27 2015, 08:03 PM) *
I think it's important to also consider here; the dragons aren't interested in dead humans or in a valley of embers and desolation. Most of them want gold and power, and the quickest way to that is to have an effective economy of humans doing that work for you.

So I could see it being a patchwork, with major human strongholds, dangerous zones where predators roam or that have returned to nature, then enclaves which are carefully nurtured by a dragon or other intelligence, but where humans are property used for labor, and an adventurer unlucky enough to land there will be claimed as a slave (albeit, possibly in a gilded cage) or if she's too much trouble, as food.


I couldn't agree more. Dragons are smart enough to intimidate and manipulate metahumans into cooperation, and then benefit from exploitation at varying levels of intensity. I also take the view that dragons will use metahumans extensively as their agents and messengers, and that many adventures will have such a genesis.

After all, from the draconic point of view it's much lower effort to persuade people to play ball than to threaten them into doing your bidding - the threatened are too likely to betray you or run away, and are less likely to stay loyal when faced with a plausible threat of equal magnitude.
Koekepan
All right, this isn't quite the way I'd originally envisioned it, but it makes so much sense it hurts (and might resonate well with a few old Earthdawn players).

Magic came roaring back, with primary manifestation around 1861. First VITAS plague in 1859, second in 1872 (which is also when goblinization hit).

Humanity took it as a quadruple punch to the kidneys. The metahuman population in 1900 worldwide is down to about 25% of what it might otherwise have been, which is to say about 100 million metahumans alive and kicking at the turn of the century. Dragons rule every roost available, which is to say wherever metahumans haven't managed to hold ground by force of arms and magic combined - which effectively means big cities and their immediate environment.

Here is an approximate list of the top ten cities in 1900 with population figures modified to reflect VITAS losses:

  • London, 1.6 million
  • New York, 1 million
  • Paris, 800 thousand
  • Berlin, 700 thousand (bear in mind I don't think Germany could have unified - this would be the urban rump of erstwhile Prussia)
  • Chicago, 400 thousand
  • Vienna, 400 thousand
  • Tokyo, 400 thousand
  • Petrograd, 350 thousand
  • Manchester, 350 thousand
  • Philadelphia, 350 thousand


Yes, Chicago and Philly both existed and were populated well before the dragons returned, and while the trade which boosted Chicago would have been reduced, people flooding in to try to escape draconic domination would probably have boosted its fortunes.

But wait! If we take as a rule of thumb that only cities of at least 100,000 inhabitants could have stood off a draconic domination threat after the first VITAS plague, as of 1861, the actual number of free cities in the USA dwindles dramatically. NYC, Philly, Baltimore. That's it. Maybe Boston, at a stretch, but the rest, while they might still exist, would be dominated by dragons. Three or four metahuman cities in what was once the USA, and is now a combination of draconic feudal estates.

In Africa, a few cities would have been able to resist. Fez, Tripoli, Alexandria and Cairo spring to mind. In Europe, Paris, Berlin, London, Manchester, Vienna and possibly others. In China Shanghai and Beijing and a few others, and so on around the world.

However, this does not imply doom and gloom. The draconic estates would doubtless have been delighted to trade with the cities, and vice versa. People would have seen the advantages of industrialisation especially with labour now being rare, and the late victorian era would have been in a ferment of technical improvement.

More to come...
Koekepan
OK, so we have draconic feudal dictators running most of the world, out of sheer superiority in the teeth of current technology. Metahumans can only feasibly stand against them when massed.

So what does this imply?

To a certain extent, they will impose some limitations on mass conflicts and migrations except when draconically managed or demanded, or as a result of draconic machinations. Useful metahuman pets killing each other and destroying stuff isn't in draconic interests.

However, a side effect will be that the metahumans will flock to free cities, and those metahumans who are in the free cities will be well aware that their unity and their technology are pretty much all which stand between them and being the playthings of dragons.

So basically, the remaining human city-states will enter into a fear-based frenzy of technological innovation. We could plausibly push 1900 era technology (about 40 years after the dragons show up, analogous to 2050 in canon timeline) forward to about 1920s. The precision manufacturing and efficiency gains pushed by the first world war would have been motivated very strongly. Advances in magic would enable advances in chemistry, and vice versa. Biology would similarly get a push because of studies in metahumans. The physics of electricity and electromagnetism would be pushed until they squealed, and materials science would be of massive importance, both magical and mundane.

Remember that in the real world, the late 1800s and early 1900s were a time of ferment, but also of optimism as the promise of the industrial revolution showed boundless possibilities, and the guiding philosophy behind progressivism took a clear shape in the hands of leaders like Teddy Roosevelt and David Lloyd-George. The ideology of the time was that science was the way forward, and would find all the answers it didn't have. Centralised government was broadly seen as a good thing, with top-down imposition of structure and policy rather than an emphasis on delegation and decentralisation. I am taking the position that this would have then been modified to steely determination, a sense of shared purpose and common future.

This doesn't mean that orks and trolls would have been kindly treated in the big cities. After all, they remind everyone of the horrible, threatening aspects of magic. It also doesn't mean that human resistance to draconic machinations would actually have been particularly effective. Dragons, even young ones, are quite capable of using human proxies and front groups.
Rad
Okay, as a big pulp/noir fan, I love the hell out of this idea. Also, where was this thread when I was running my group through a metaplanar quest cloaked in the metaphor of an awakened 1800's?

A few quick thoughts:

Koekepan is right in pointing out that VITAS would have hit a lot harder if all we had to combat it was 19th century medicine. But another thing to keep in mind is that global travel was much less common in that time period than in the days of regular inter-continental business trips and suborbitals. A disease like this would have less opportunity to spread, and certainly might spread slower as geographically isolated areas remained unexposed for longer periods.

Also, to my understanding part of what made VITAS so bad was the prevalence of environmental toxins from uber-polluting megacorps. If you happened to live near a mine or a coal-spewing factory, that's definitely still an issue, but the sheer variety and intensity of industrial pollutants wouldn't be as bad or as ubiquitous. Urban centers with lots of traffic, industry, and a relatively high population density would still get hammered--but it might not be as bad as in Shadowrun cannon and some of the more rural areas could get by relatively unaffected.

Finally, there's the issue of not having cyberware. A few people have mentioned the idea of drugs and super-soldier serums taking over as the mundane augmentation option, and I think that's definitely a good angle to run with. Keep in mind this was the age of Doc Quack's Miracle Elixir, and with magic coming back it's entirely possible that herbalism and chemistry would get a big boost as a result of previously mundane ingredients developing strange new properties. Seems to me that would be a good way to make magic more accessible to the everyday person and keep mages from having too much of an advantage. Sure, only someone who's actually awakened can put magic together on the fly, but any Joe can work alchemy if they've got the know-how.

Basically, you'd still have physical augmentations, but with chemistry and magic replacing nanites and surgery. Want bone lacing? We've got an injection that transforms your skeleton into hardened steel. Want faster reflexes without relying on a spirit or a mage to keep an enchantment going on you? There's an alchemical formula that will permanently re-wire your nervous system, allowing you to act and react faster than ordinary men. Need to be stronger, see in the dark, or have skin as tough as armor? No problem, with the right combination of alchemical compounds and transformative magics, we've got you covered.

And for those of you who've lost a limb (or just need a "leg up" on the competition) try our new line of gen-u-wine golem-crafted prosthetics. These enchanted mechanical contraptions are tied directly into your soul, allowing you to control them by will alone! (Warning, overtaxing the soul with too many implants may lead to psychosis, impaired mystical ability, and death.)
Koekepan
QUOTE (Rad @ Feb 2 2015, 12:13 AM) *
Koekepan is right in pointing out that VITAS would have hit a lot harder if all we had to combat it was 19th century medicine. But another thing to keep in mind is that global travel was much less common in that time period than in the days of regular inter-continental business trips and suborbitals. A disease like this would have less opportunity to spread, and certainly might spread slower as geographically isolated areas remained unexposed for longer periods.


Alas, by the mid nineteenth century, global shipments were quite regular - in fact sea trade and sea travel were commonplace. This was the age of the tea trade, of huge clippers racing across the seas. It was the age of the steamer, navigating rivers and the oceans alike. The armies of the Crimean war didn't march there - they sailed. Combine that with a lack of understanding of infectious disease, let alone viruses, and plagues actually did span the globe on a regular basis. Maybe a bit slower in spread, but inexorable.

In fact, isolated areas would serve as incubation and re-infection zones as they were exposed. So no, I'm afraid this doesn't let the (meta)human population off the hook.

QUOTE
Also, to my understanding part of what made VITAS so bad was the prevalence of environmental toxins from uber-polluting megacorps. If you happened to live near a mine or a coal-spewing factory, that's definitely still an issue, but the sheer variety and intensity of industrial pollutants wouldn't be as bad or as ubiquitous. Urban centers with lots of traffic, industry, and a relatively high population density would still get hammered--but it might not be as bad as in Shadowrun cannon and some of the more rural areas could get by relatively unaffected.


Sorry, the canon doesn't support that interpretation. Supposedly relatively pristine areas were hit like anvils in canon, whereas the big cities actually had smaller losses despite pollution, owing to the presence of medicine. I was actually fairly conservative in my estimate of 50% mortality, based on what's in canon.

The other thing is that the mid to late nineteenth century was indescribably filthy in urban environments - because they simply had no clear notion of the consequences of the pollution they were creating. All those coal based furnaces and factories belched smoke every bit as much as thousands upon thousands of kitchen and hearth fires.

QUOTE
Finally, there's the issue of not having cyberware. A few people have mentioned the idea of drugs and super-soldier serums taking over as the mundane augmentation option, and I think that's definitely a good angle to run with. Keep in mind this was the age of Doc Quack's Miracle Elixir, and with magic coming back it's entirely possible that herbalism and chemistry would get a big boost as a result of previously mundane ingredients developing strange new properties. Seems to me that would be a good way to make magic more accessible to the everyday person and keep mages from having too much of an advantage. Sure, only someone who's actually awakened can put magic together on the fly, but any Joe can work alchemy if they've got the know-how.


It would have, from this side, to be a magically based solution. As I mentioned above, reducing the immediacy but increasing the flexibility of magic permits magicians to be used as offline experts, producing the temporary boosts which other people need. Seamus the Shamus then gets to carry some ampoules in his pea coat which let him do the wondrous - temporarily.

QUOTE
And for those of you who've lost a limb (or just need a "leg up" on the competition) try our new line of gen-u-wine golem-crafted prosthetics. These enchanted mechanical contraptions are tied directly into your soul, allowing you to control them by will alone! (Warning, overtaxing the soul with too many implants may lead to psychosis, impaired mystical ability, and death.)


This is why the magic system will be the hardest. The system will have to be robust and crafted for consistency.
nezumi
I do think VITAS will need a longer dormancy period, to make up for the slower speed of trade. Possibly something more grotesque like syphilis, which gradually consumes the body, in combination with lots of typhoid Marys, and of course, a much higher virulence. Unlike the Shadowrun plagues, were they rose and dropped away before modern medicine could adequately address it, this VITAS hangs around, and keeps resurging. Plague-infected people are in the cities (although certainly dealt with brutally when discovered). In countries which can't afford institutions to care for the dying, they lie in the streets or in quarantined plague towns.

I also love that Baltimore is a bastion of freedom and humanity. Long-live mobtown!
Koekepan
I see your point on VITAS. However, I will propose that it doesn't need a longer dormancy period so much as a longer infectious period, especially if environmentally resident. Anthrax spores can last for decades, so combine the infectious nature of smallpox with the lethality of yellow fever and the durability in the environment after deposition from coughing of anthrax and you're pretty much there.

And since you suggest hideous physical effects, haemorrhagic fevers like yellow fever are a good place to start.
nezumi
That is a good point. I'm used to thinking of person-to-person direct transfer, but that's hardly a requirement.
Fastball
I like the idea of the world recently awakening. It provides a themed basis for weakening magic without contradicting existing lore. With mana just starting to return, limited availability might make all magicians aspected. The only full magicians are tribal leaders and immortal elves.

Or maybe magic borrows edge mechanics - casting a spell temporarily reduces magic by 1. Once you hit 0 magic, no more spells until you rest.

Adepts could have double costs for power points.
Sendaz
For magic one could go adding a time factor, we could lift an idea of threading from ED with some tweaking.

For each point of Force in a spell, the caster spends 1 complex action raising power.
Have to decide on some kind of roll here to represent the gathering of power, with failure/disruption cancelling the spell.
The Concentration skill would help toward maintaining focus/resist disruptions.

Reckless casting could be used to raise power a little faster, so potentially 2 Force every IP, but at greater risk of losing control plus added drain at the end.

Reagents could be used to help 'power up' that much faster instead of raising limits on a spell, making them more like mojo ammo as well as removing the ability to lowball a spell.
If you want better effects you have to throw the bigger spells.

Dragon/Fairy/Song Lines can help power up faster those attuned to them. Each IP one can raise power equal to the value of the line. The caster is still casting himself and taking the drain as normal, he just powers up that much faster.

So a caster wanting to do a Force 1 spell could gather power on 1 IP and release it on the next.

If wanting to cast a Force 6 spell, he either gathers for 6 IP, goes full on reckless gathering for 3 IP, spends 1-6 reagents to cut the time down or combinations thereof.
If he had been casting a fire spell while on a Level 4 Dragon Line he could have Reckless Gathered twice in 1 IP and cast the next (2 Force for reckless casting both actions in the first IP plus the 4 Force from the Dragon Line which aids fire spells)

Now if you are going to do this, there should be a bit of a trade-off in damages/effects perhaps as there is little point spending loads of time powering up a spell just to barely scratch someone.

this does slow down casting considerably, but then it also makes one rely a bit more on enchanting items or prepping spells in advance.

They can go more ED style matrix which allows one to recast through the matrix over and over, paying the drain but gaining the bonus of fast casting but again only one set spell per matrix.
They can change the spell in the spell matrix, but it takes time.
How many spell matrix could you hold? Don't want too many but still want a few. Maybe a base of 1 plus any initiation grades or similar.

So they can hang a couple of spells for fast use, and slow cast for other uses.
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