[UA] What Mechanomancers built in my game (was Steampunk)

[Royal Minister of Stuff]

--- Cassady Toles <Con_Job at excite.com> wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 23:29:54 -0500,
> ua at lists.uchicago.edu wrote:
> 
>   >However - OK, here's the real question - if
> Mechanomancers cannot create
>   >Machines capable of magical effects, then what
> kind of artifacts would
> they
>   >build?  (I love the artifact rules, BTW.  Simple,
> elegant and sensible.)
>   >
>   
> I give mechanomancers leeway, but the device has to
> be relevant to what's
> being given up or the item being used.  For example,
> A mechanomancer with
> Sir Issac Newton's hot air balloon could feasably
> build something that
> altered gravity in a small area.  A memory of first
> love could be used to
> make something that alters people's emotional
> states.  
> 
> I also let them tie in to metaphysical truths of
> what they are making.  I
> had an artifact floating around that was a shotgun
> built by one of the first
> mechanomancers.  Bullets from the shotgun that
> wounded someone possessed by
> a demon A did damage to the demon's soul as well as
> the person's body, and B
> the demon couldn't leave as long as a piece of the
> buckshot was still in
> it's body.
> 
> It's also worth noting, Demons knew about the gun
> and tended to avoid or try
> to kill it's owners.  The gun was built from
> relevant items, the stock
> carved from the gallows that the Iron 13 were hanged
> from, the barrel was
> poured from a bar of the jail in dodge that Wyatt
> Earp worked for, and the
> Ace of Spades carved into the stock was actually
> engraved from the same
> playing card that was in Wild Bill's hand when he
> was shot.
> 
> The gun couldn't fire modern shotgun rounds (no
> nitrocellulose) so the owner
> would have to pack their own shells with black
> powder, and the shot had to
> be melted from nails taken from a pine box (note it
> didn't have to be a
> coffin any pine box would do).
> 
> So, again, I let mechanomancers do things they
> normally couldn't, but I
> added an additional restriction to how they work.  I
> also ruled that
> annhilomancy blasts categorically destroyed any
> clockworks within their
> range (by definition a mechanomancer cares about his
> clockworks) and major
> items were no exception, but I'd probably have some
> big time phenomena
> accompany the destruction of a major clockwork,
> quite possibly with a
> secondary explosion far worse than the annhilomancy
> blast...
>   

See, to me, this is pretty much how steampunk works,
anyway.  It takes weird bits of technology, goofy (but
easy to understand) scientific dead-ends and a
nostalgia for wonky workmanship and blends them into a
weird modern contraption.  Being able to damage a
ghost certainly does step on the toes of a couple of
other magical schools, but the creativity involved in
coming up with the device more than makes up for it.

I rather liked the old West End Game's version of
Weird Science.  Players had to come up with three
different options on how a device or weird
tech/steampunk solution would work.  Then the GM
choose the one which best fit the flavor of the
campaign from the three (and maybe assigned a few side
effects or problems to spice things up.)

I think a major element of weird
science/steampunk/anachrotech is that it needs to have
a temporary or surreal quality.  There needs to be
this feeling that, at any moment, this clankey,
groaning, chunky contraption will explode or go
haywire or just fall apart where it's clicking.  Just
something to show that, yes, you imitated Earnest this
time, but next time will take you twice as much work. 
(There's an unwritten rule that weird scientists
aren't supposed to come up with the same thing twice,
although a variation on a theme: Frankenstein's new
monsters, the chitty-chitty bang-bang submarine, etc.
is acceptable.)

=====
-- Rp Bowman, Royal Minister of Stuff
The Electronic Nation of Yokeltania:
http://www.geocities.com/yokeltania/

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