Rusted Lands

I haven't posted in quite a while - almost two months. My workload was massive, and I had little time for game writing. I had, however, time to teach myself the Scribus  layout software and do a new layout for Cepheus: Faster Than Light, which, hopefully, will allow me to publish it through DriveThruRPG, which is more visible to Stellagama Publishing's prospective customers than Lulu. This is because DriveThruRPG PoD works with Lightning Source, which is far more demanding in terms of layout than Lulu. Fingers crossed, this will clear Pre-Media in a few weeks; if this will work, Cepheus Light: Pocket Edition is next!

Anyhow, I have been thinking about an ACKS post-apocalyptic steampunk-magitech setting. I have toyed with the idea of post-apocalyptic ACKS before, but it was a "modern" or "futuristic" apocalypse, demanding specialized classes and technology rules. However, a steampunk-magitech apocalypse means that I can use existing ACKS rules with significantly more minor modifications: ACKS already has steampunk-ish machinists and automaton rules, as well as Magical Engineering. Most magic will be ACKS-type, especially after the War, with pre-War magic being more common and automatons being much cheaper before the War.

Pre-War society had industry, steam power, and clockwork automatons as the basis for an advanced society. Then, civilization blew itself apart in total war. Now, as the industrial infrastructure lies in ruins, building machines is expensive, as per the automaton rules in ACKS' Player's Companion, and magic is less common (that is, as common as in ACKS Core).

This will use ACKS Core rules for the most part, rather than the Heroic Fantasy Handbook. Pre-War magic was flashy and wondrous; in the War itself, it was highly destructive. Imagine how destructive the Napoleonic Wars, the American Civil War, and WWI would have been with ritual-level spells combined with massive mecha in addition to the usual guns, artillery, and flamethrowers.

I see the WWI aesthetic as appropriate to this setting: ponderous machines (as WWI tanks were), chemical weapons and gas masks, and a long, futile, murderous trench war. Imagine how it would have looked if steampunk technology and magic existed on Terra. Imagine how deadly this would have been.

This is how the Rusted Lands came into being.

Civilization is dead, save several surviving pockets and enclaves. Huge wrecked war machines and industrial edifices stand rusting among the old battlefields. Technology regressed to an almost Dark Ages level - as per ACKS core ("late antiquity" - but I always imagined it as a bit later, along the lines of the early Dark Ages). However, matchlocks are still around - two steps down from the flintlocks (and beyond) of the War.

So, among the ruins, the survivors lead a feudal existence. And you can conquer them and restore a piece of the past's Glory.