This month’s RPG Carnival is Steamworks & Klokwerks and so I thought I’d highlight my favorite Steampunk inspired setting: Privateer Press’s Iron Kingdoms. I say “inspired” because the Iron Kingdoms adds a heavy layer of fantasy, including sorcery, on to the traditional steampunk setting conventions. Doing so makes the setting that much more interesting to me because it really expands the possibilities for stories and adventures: Steam-powered robots and magic swords = pure win! in my world. It doesn’t hurt that that setting itself is also highly original, borrowing from various influences to create a world that feels grim, gritty, and real.
The setting is richly detailed in a series of six supplements and one mega-adventure, all of which display very high production values, art, and writing. The books, each with a tiny review, are:
- IK Character Guide: A D20-based rules book detailing character races, classes, feats, spells, etc. It also has an overview of the setting’s history and details. While it contains a lot of useful info (especially if you want to run a D20 based game), it’s not essential.
- IK World Guide: This book is a huge, detailed, and an enjoyable read. It has everything you need to know about the main locations and factions within the setting, as well as details on the Cosmology, calendar, history, etc. It is almost entirely system agnostic which means you can use it with whatever RPG you want with little to no effort. This is the essential book to have if you want to use the setting.
- Monsternomicon vol. I & II: Two monster books filled with original creatures. These are probably the best books (especially Vol. I) of the series because you can drop a lot of these creatures in to any setting (especially a steampunk one). These are one of only a few monster “manuals” I’ve ever found to actually be an enjoyable read.
- Five Fingers: Ports of Deceit: A very flavorful and detailed examination of a port city known for its debauchery, piracy, and gritty underbelly. This is a setting in and of itself that you could drop into almost any steampunk or fantasy world with few changes.
- Liber Mechanika – a crunch book fleshing out and refining the mechanika (i.e., steampunk stuff) D20 rules. It’s probably the least useful of all the books unless you are running the D20 game, although it does contain enough fluff and background info that die hard fans will want it.
- The Witchfire Trilogy: The original module series, collected in a hardcover volume, that kicked off the whole IK setting. This is an interesting and engaging story and adventure, and a great introduction to the IK setting, but the modules are largely an illogical mess that require a lot of railroading to make work as written. In my opinion, the adventure is better run using the ideas and scenes behind the module’s plot, discarding any of the fixed events, assumptions, and locations.
The company’s magazine No Quarter also has a couple of regular features fleshing out the world so they’re worth investigating. Finally, Privateer Press’s Warmachine and Hordes miniature games are set in the Iron Kingdoms, which means those using the setting have access to a huge set of very cool, high quality miniatures (including a small RPG-specific line).
Now for the bad news: Virtually all of these books are out-of-print, and thus very hard to find. I’m baffled as to why Privateer Press hasn’t released them on pdf. I would hope it’s not out of a fear of piracy since my guess is that scans of the books are available online for anyone motivated enough to find them. At the very least, I’m surprised that the books haven’t seen a second printing given how much effort went in to make them and the fact that they can be found selling on ebay for $80+. Then again, their roleplaying products probably bring in a minuscule amount of money compared to the miniatures side of the business so maybe it’s just not a priority. Whatever their reasons, the books are hard to come by so if you find any of them, my advice is grabbed them.
The other problem with the books is that they using the D20 system which, in my opinion, is a really poor fit for steampunk in general, but especially the Iron Kingdoms: The system doesn’t really capture the flavor or the feel of the magic system, nor the arcano-mechanikal systems of the world. Nor does it do firearms well. While it’s obvious why the D20 system was originally chosen (i.e., it was the 800 lb. Gorilla when the books came out), there are a lot better systems that could be used.
- The simplest is Savage Worlds which could be reskinned to do the world justice. In fact, you can find a lot of the major work has already been done on a fan site.
- Another good fit for the setting’s conventions and style is Spirit of the Century/FATE. Races could easily be modeled simply using Aspects and much of the rest of the system converts pretty easily. A check of the SotC Yahoo group even turned up a very well-written conversion guide.
- My choice for capturing the gritty and dark side of the setting though would be Burning Wheel. I think the core BW rules would be just about perfect for capturing the feel of the world. Adding in elements from the Magic Burner supplement (specifically Death, Blood, Enchantment, and Art magics) would really help bring the magic system of the world to life as well. About the only difficult, in my mind, would be that there would be a lot of upfront work designing life paths, especially for all the races. However, many of the core character lifepaths from the Character Burner are usable as written so much of the work would simply involving the setting specific lifepaths (e.g., the gunmage). Similarly, there isn’t really a need to create unique BW-style races for each of the IK races – instead these could be handled with relative ease simply by creating racial traits that help flesh out the essential differences.
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From what I gather from BW, it would be an awesome improvement to IK. A very cool setting for sure. I would probably use the general setting for a future game just for flavor.
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The setting is great IMO. You could run an entire, long-term campaign just using the Five Fingers city book alone. Similarly, the Monsternomicon books are filled with cool fantasy/steampunk suitable monsters that are outside the realm of gnolls, orcs, and mind flayers.
As for BW…with the right group that game is so capable of generating awesome stuff that you really don’t even need a setting – you literally just create the setting during character creation by getting the players to tell you what they want through their BITs. My Beyond the Breach campaign started as nothing more than me saying “I want to play a game that’s like Deadwood, only in a George RR Martin type fantasy setting.” That was it. From there we all started hashing out ideas for characters and through that we generated the seeds of what would become the Barrier, the Breach, and the lands of the North….then I had the idea of a land of eternal winter and the rest was history. A later player said “Ok, so this is a land of winter, here’s what I think that means….” and came up with the whole Drakari culture in a span of three emails.
The hosts of This modern death have been playing a Burning Deadwood campaign ((much closer to the actual show) too, and the guys over at Canon Puncture have been playing a game inspired by Rome. HBO series make kick-ass BW games…
All that said, the IK would indeed make a kick-ass place for a BW game. The key IMO is not to get too bogged down in the canon of the world but rather just use the setting information as a spring board for the game. I think playing Llaelese resistance fighters using BW would be pretty awesome. Or a city watch game set in the Five Fingers. Even the Witchfire Trilogy would work pretty well though you’d have to dump the overly prescribed plot of the adventures if you want any hope of empowering the PCs.
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My guess is that my local group would be prepared to create the world as we go, as well. I’d like to play, so maybe BW this winter is in order. I’ll have to pitch that idea.
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“I’m baffled as to why Privateer Press hasn’t released them on pdf”
You said it, I have been looking for the World Guide for years and thus far been unable to get one (without giving up my first born). I am almost to the point of installing a torrent downloader and becoming a pirate just to get my hands on this.
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I spend a lot of time reading blogs and I have to say I’m impressed with your posts. It’s refreshing to find a blog that has valuable content such as yours. I’ll be a regular reader from now on, you can count on it.
Thanks,
Dennis
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“Similarly, there isn’t really a need to create unique BW-style races for each of the IK races – instead these could be handled with relative ease simply by creating racial traits that help flesh out the essential differences.”
When I was pondering how to use BW in the Forgotten Realms (my first world-love, despite all its flaws) I realised that it would be more faithful to the world as-written to use human Life Paths for all the races. A few tweaks might help, especially to differentiate some of the more unusual religions that don’t follow BW’s pseudo-catholic assumptions, but for the average adventurer and most of the rest of the population, the existing LPs are plenty.
The way Burning Wheel handles fantasy races really makes it plain how D&D races are just humans with pointy ears and funny accents.
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Oh, and no offense meant to Dennis if I’m off-base, but you really sound like a comment spammer with that generic comment.
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Absolutely – in many RPGs, different races are simply handled through a use of physical differences, stat bonuses, and then hand waving. D&D is a good example where the major “cultural” difference between the different races have traditionally where they live and what they drink.
The Iron Kingdoms does make the races much more distinct but they still largely operate on the “human culture” basis. Hence, the average group doesn’t really need to use custom lifepaths; instead simply pare down the existing human ones and you’re good to go. The IK would work though to create custom lifepaths for someone who was really obsessive: The Cryx islands alone would create one hell of a set of lifepaths and you could have a character attribute called “Blight.” Lots and lots of possibilities.
Regarding Dennis – Yeah, I’m suspect about that comment too…. it made it through the spam filter and captcha so I left it but it’s kind of suspect due to his generic-ness.
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Someone has written up a players’ primer for Iron Kingdoms and stuck it on Scribd. It’s a good overview of the setting that I’d recommend to anyone intrigued by this post.
That said, I can’t say how much of the text is derivative, so caveat lector.
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[...] Gaming Brouhaha highlights his favorite steampunk setting, Iron Kingdoms (which I am a HUGE fan of too, so double awesome!). If you’re looking for a new setting, you should definitely read MJ’s spotlight on Iron Kingdoms. [...]
Well you can now buy all the Iron Kingdoms books from Pazio and rpgnow.com
Hope thar helps!
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