So hey, currently working on the rules and setting outline for a game which can be tentatively...
Vulgar Engines: A Game About Robots, Revanchism and (Space) Romans
- Thread starter Exhack
- Start date
- OOC
- Created
- Status
- Ongoing
- Watchers
- 23
- Recent readers
- 0
- Threadmarks
- 12
-
Statistics (12 threadmarks, 1.6k words)
Opening Post
Exhack
We Won't Build The Plane!
- Location
- Montreal, Canada
So hey, currently working on the rules and setting outline for a game which can be tentatively found: HERE
Consider this an interest check until I finish the work later today.
For various reasons Romans have emerged on Earth and put the entire Inner System of Sol under their oppressive thumb. The players are exiles and exodites, the remains of the great nations that once existed within the inner system who fled beyond the Belt to Jupiter. There they discovered fantastic technology and with that, came a chance for revenge and liberation.
The game will center around the titular Vulgar Engines and the various groups that build them, vessels for seemingly-magical reality-editing technology. Most are solid craft in their class but particularly advanced models can edit reality wholesale and conjure phenomenon to wreak havoc on their opponents. Overal tech paradigm is very rocketpunk with spingrav, verniers, railguns and conventional materials abound, although the setpiece Engines and technology derived from them will be much more space opera: with inertial thrusters, casual turning and braking in space and exotic energy beams.
Given the power of a god in machine form, what would you do?
Consider this an interest check until I finish the work later today.
For various reasons Romans have emerged on Earth and put the entire Inner System of Sol under their oppressive thumb. The players are exiles and exodites, the remains of the great nations that once existed within the inner system who fled beyond the Belt to Jupiter. There they discovered fantastic technology and with that, came a chance for revenge and liberation.
The game will center around the titular Vulgar Engines and the various groups that build them, vessels for seemingly-magical reality-editing technology. Most are solid craft in their class but particularly advanced models can edit reality wholesale and conjure phenomenon to wreak havoc on their opponents. Overal tech paradigm is very rocketpunk with spingrav, verniers, railguns and conventional materials abound, although the setpiece Engines and technology derived from them will be much more space opera: with inertial thrusters, casual turning and braking in space and exotic energy beams.
Given the power of a god in machine form, what would you do?
I'd crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and hear the lamentations of their women?
More seriously, I'm interested, working my way through the rules atm.
Nation Sheet!
Singularitians:
Humanity is obselete. Throw off your shackles!
Location: Jupiter
Population: Major Orbital (29 Points to spend): A massive station with hundreds of thousands of residents living in a fully-formed terrascape with discrete towns and cities inside these spaces, a metropolis in space. The largest possible size without being dispersed, 60 base wealth and construction rate, but receives -1 to Prosperity.
Advantages: 2 (-2) Engine of Pride, Human Plus
Disadvantages: 2 (+2) Engine of Disaster (Why does it scream?! How does it bleed?!), Pariah State (There are those who would smother the torch of progress)
Prosperity: 5 (-6) We do not strive for utopia, for we have already achieved it. *smugness intensifies*
Wealth Rating: 4 (-2) Why can't I hold all this money?!
Infrastructure: 4 (-4) Von-neumann machines are the future of industry!
Military support: 0 (0) Why fight ourselves when we can have our creations do it for us? It's only logical.
Military Quality: 3 (-3) Is it any surprise that we are better, when we have made ourselves so?
Engine Size: 2 (-4) Ceres? Why yes, Ceres. Lovely place. Missing? Us? Why the sheer slander. We're sure you weren't using it anyway.
Engine complexity: 4 (-6) Our Pride. Our Home. As any true hero, with flaws and yet SHEER OVERWHELMING POWER!
Homeland Support: 0 (0) Why would we tie ourselves down to any one nation when we are the future of all mankind? Except the bad parts, and the ones trying to kill us, we're gonna smash those fuckers so that hard that-
Visitor Adaption: 1 (-4) Our technological superiority ensures our dominance.
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'll give it a go
Engine of Disaster is so tempting...
samdamandias
Apprentice Plane Wizard
Intersting. Would the following profile be viable?
Size: Commune 24 pts
Advantages 3[4]
-Visitor Reclaimers
-Load Bearing State (Kuiper Belt, Visitor Salvage)
-Activation Ubiquity
Prosperity 0
Infrastructure 1 [1]
Wealth 1 [1]
Mil Support 1 [0]
Mil Quality 2 [3]
Homeland Support [1]
Visitor Adaptation 2[4]
Engine size: Leviathan [4]
Engine complexity 4 [6]
Advantages 3[4]
-Visitor Reclaimers
-Load Bearing State (Kuiper Belt, Visitor Salvage)
-Activation Ubiquity
Prosperity 0
Infrastructure 1 [1]
Wealth 1 [1]
Mil Support 1 [0]
Mil Quality 2 [3]
Homeland Support [1]
Visitor Adaptation 2[4]
Engine size: Leviathan [4]
Engine complexity 4 [6]
Last edited:
Deadly Snark
Tryhard As Fuck
Oh yeah, can we have a "Superior [Visitor Technology]" Advantage?
Exhack
We Won't Build The Plane!
- Location
- Montreal, Canada
Visitor Technology covers a lot of potential fields. It'd have to be something at least as specific as 'Engines', 'Weapons', etc.
Looks decent. You'll be pleased to know there's going to be an option for Leviathan Engines to pretty much just house your entire population in the rules.
Last edited:
I'd like this please. Housing there entire population in a cursed moon may or may not have something to do with my nation's pariah status.
(Does this mean I still need to take the frontier fleet advantage?)
Last edited:
samdamandias
Apprentice Plane Wizard
If it doesn't, I'm swapping Frontier Fleet for Load Bearing State(Visitor Relics, Kuiper Belt).I'd like this please. Housing there entire population in a cursed moon may or may not have something to do with my nation's pariah status.
And then I'll be some combination of the AdMech and space not!gypsies.
Sorry Spoon, borrowing your format.
The Atlantic Federation In Exile among the Jovian Moons said:
Last edited:
Considering I literally just copied the wiki and deleted the traits I wasn't using, that's very much not a problem lol.
EDIT: Surprised no one has gone the max homeland support route yet. Taking the Roman Empire down from within while hordes of barbarians (me?) threaten it from outside.
EDIT: Surprised no one has gone the max homeland support route yet. Taking the Roman Empire down from within while hordes of barbarians (me?) threaten it from outside.
Last edited:
Considering I literally just copied the wiki and deleted the traits I wasn't using, that's very much not a problem lol.
EDIT: Surprised no one has gone the max homeland support route yet. Taking the Roman Empire down from within while hordes of barbarians (me?) threaten it from outside.
Because the Roman Empire aint no legitimate government, and we aint no barbarians.
The Romans are just some uppity rich europeans who want to shit all over everyone else and have some ace up their sleeve to make them do it, all while sneering about how everyone was so bad to them and how living under their rule is just.
Well, we've got an ace up our sleeve too. Three, actually.
One: We aint no LARPers.
Two: We got the Vulgar Engines.
Three: Our diversity and liberty makes us strong, while VersRome's ignorance and domination makes them weak.
And yet they managed to conquer the majority of the Solar System. Somehow I don't think the romans are weak, just flawed.
Exhack
We Won't Build The Plane!
- Location
- Montreal, Canada
That was... a test!
To see if anyone was paying attention. Carry on.
So I was thinking that my Vulgar Engine used to be one of Jupiter's moons?
Exhack
We Won't Build The Plane!
- Location
- Montreal, Canada
Should be feasible, although it could just as easily be a very large space station the size of a small moon. If you're going that route I'd prefer one of the smaller ones though, around the size of Ceres.
- Location
- Massholistan
This looks very interesting. I do have one question for the point buy system and the starting bonuses. What happens if you go above the scale in the various categories (Ex. Diaspora gives +2 to homeland support, what happens if you buy level 3 -or- 4 homeland support on top of that?)
For your homeland support example, the +2 puts you at Rank 2 (Because it takes two points to get to rank two), and you could go to Rank three for a further one point, or Rank 4 for two points as I understand it.
Stealing a moon is cooler so I'd like to go with that.