Steam Craft: Get your Goggles RPG

Hey there, steampunk and gaming fans! I have a worthwhile project here for you! We want to get our role-playing game into distribution. For that, we need your help! By contributing to this kick starter, you help us spread our love of steampunk and tabletop gaming to stores around the country! The game is already completed, and has gone through a few small runs. Our goal is to raise enough money to have the book traditionally printed and sent to distributors so that game stores nationwide can order our book.  Our deepest thanks to contributors!

Setting Synopsis

SteamCraft is a skill-based steampunk tabletop role-playing game set in an alternate world, where gears, goggles, and coal-powered airships dominate life.  It is a world that mixes the scientific wonder of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells with elements of gritty, futuristic cyberpunk.  SteamCraft is inspired by late 19th century Earth, where steam power dominates, and the industrial revolution is in full swing. While much is similar to this time period on Earth, technology is more advanced due to the completion and use of the difference engine. It is a world in conflict between the old ways of magic, new technologies, and those who attempt to meld the two for profit and power. For humans, dwarves, elves, and other races, it is a time when society threatens to plunge into either a dystopian future controlled by corporations and authoritarian governments, or one where individuals use information and technology to bring about a better future.

How the Setting is Presented

We presented the setting two ways.  First, there is just the direct explanation of the setting.  Spliced into the book are various newspaper articles.  These contain information from mainstream newspapers, as well as the more tabloid like papers.  These newspaper clippings give details about the setting, but also ideas to be used as plots.  GMs can stick with the ideas in the reputable papers and have players participate in covert actions against one company for the benefit of another, or perhaps chase down airship pirates (or maybe become airship pirates!).  On the other hand, if the GMs want, players can uncover government conspiracies to silence dissidents in an insane asylum, or become wrapped up in the technomancy conspiracy.  The setting provides the usual details of religions, governments, and various groups.  We tried to give GMs a substantial amount of world information, but leave plenty of room for the GM to add to the world as he or she sees fit in order to make the setting detailed their group’s interests.

The book provides all of the information needed to make Tellus into whatever steampunk world you want.  Our goal is to provide you with just enough information to allow you to tailor your games to your groups’ interests, whether it is corporate espionage, weird west, adventure pulp, or conspiracy.

System

SteamCraft uses an intuitive d100/percentile system designed specifically for the game. Being a skill-based game, there are no classes, allowing players the freedom to create any type of character they desire. Archetypes are provided to help players build effective characters as well as to give them ideas about the types of characters that exist in SteamCraft. Character creation uses a point-based system for fast and effective creation of characters. The combat system is fast paced, where players describe what their characters do in combat. SteamCraft is unique in that it includes not only magic, but rules for the creation of scientific wonders, coal-powered airships, and detailed rules for airship combat. 

What We have Done and Where We are Going

While this kickstarter is to do a high quality run of hardback books, we would like you to know that you are not just investing in the production of the book, but the company.  We have decades of experience in role-playing games.  Our first production is a fantasy RPG known as Perilous Journeys that has been received well.  (We liked it so much we made it out company name.)  SteamCraft is our second RPG.  The reviews of the game are very positive.  We are currently play testing an adventure set in SteamCraft we hope to release soon.  We are also writing the first world supplement for SteamCraft that we hope to have available at the end of the year.  Also on the drawing boards are a card game and a board game.

The financing of the hardbacks will put us in a better position to produce these products.  With your help, we will be putting these hardbacks into distribution.  That money will be used to finance other projects.  We would like you to know that we are personally and financially vested in our products.  In addition to the time and money spent on producing SteamCraft, we have been going to conventions to promote the game.  The money raised from conventions has been directly reinvested into this project.  With your help, we hope to take our company to the next level.  

About the Physical Book

The book is 216 pages.  It will be printed on high quality white paper.  The book will be casebound (hardback) and the binding will be smyth sewn.  This is the highest quality possible and is what is used with textbooks and library books.  Most other books are glued, but we will have these smyth sewn to make sure that these books will last.  Below you will find the cover of the book.

More about the Setting

StreamCraft is set in an alternate world known as Tellus.  It is a world where the industrial age, meets the information age, meets the resurgence of magic.  While magic was gone from the world, technology took over.  With magic’s return, there is both conflict and opportunity.  Some see magic as a way to return to the similar life.  Corporations see it as another tool to exploit for their own purposes.  However, magic is limited.  When magic returned, people attempted to mix magic with machine and the results have been disastrous leading to all civilized governments banning the practice.  It is rumored that a few of these technomancers have succeeded in mixing magic with machine.  But these are merely rumors and no reasonable person would believe such things! 

The world features humans as the dominant race, but there are also races such as gnomes, dwarves, elves, fomorians, tegs, and scaths.  It is a “new world” setting on the southern continent of Laurentia, which is filled with some of the most exotic animals ever to be discovered.  Countries created colonies on Laurentia, thinking it was previously unclaimed land. Later they realized that this “new continent” was actually an old continent that contained the Khemetic Empire.  This, however, did not deter colonists and soon colonies spread throughout the continent's western coast.  Those colonies are now part of the Commonwealth of Arcadia.  The Commonwealth is now the dominant power on the western coast after gaining independence.  However, foreign powers continually interfere in the Commonwealth’s affairs in attempt to gain access to the world’s largest known coal reserves.  The Chen Empire and the Ryoko Republic both interfere with the Commonwealth's internal affairs through covert actions, support of the white lotus trade, and manipulations of the economy and politics through the use of megacorporations. 

The sands of the Badlands border the Commonwealth to the northeast and hide untold ancient wonders from bygone civilizations of extraordinary power.  The Badlands is a source of conflict between the Commonwealth, the Khemetic Empire, and the city-state of Ironskeep.  South of the Badlands is the Central Savannah.  It is an area filled with crime and opportunity as airship pirates keep secret bases in the area.  It is filled with exotic animals and even more exotic people.  To the south are the mysterious jungles of the Shadowlands, where no expeditions have ever returned. 

- $35.95