Steam and Steel Discussion Thread, Westward, Ho! Options

[Rohirrim]

This is a new Steampunk Western RP that the Colonel and I are planning, and we're looking for contributors. It won't be freely drop in/drop out, but if you want, we can work something out at a point in the adventure. The year is 1859. The story starts in the town of Dodge, Kansas. The characters are in a saloon in the slaughterhouse district.

-Horses are for middle and lower class people. The military, law enforcement, and upper classes all use steam-powered horse automatons, or "burners". These are classified by their metal plating:

Iron: Draft horse
Steel: Cavalry, heavy
Brass: Cavalry, light
Copper: Civilian, fast and weak
Bronze: Civilian, slow and tough
Tin: Pony

-Railroads have been established throughout all the major towns. They also run on steam, as do the zeppelins that service large cites.

-Where there is no steam, there is clockwork. Used since the beginning of the century, clockwork powers smaller machines and cut-rate automatons.

-In the early stages of development are some gigantic war machines; walkers, battle carriages, Darwinist mutants, the like. The American state governments are all buying them as tensions between the North and South grow hotter.

-Charles Darwin and Nikola Tesla are both regarded as great scientific individuals, responsible for mush of the world's rapid growth. (Ignore the timeline issues.)

-Firearms are still somewhat the same as in this period in history, with sniper rifles, hi-powered steam and clockwork guns, and rockets, as well as combat automatons, being some differences.

*Mustard's Stuff*
-Due to Darwin's recent theories and progress in mutation, white Southerners have adopted the idea that Anglo-Saxon Americans are God's chosen race, who are superior to all others through natural selection on account of the fact that they've conquered most of the known world.

-Secondly, in order to make them more efficient at working, black slaves are genetically manipulated and mutated. Generally, there could be a huge social stigma against mutating people (if they're not genetically superior white Anglo-Saxon people, at least) but seeing as black people are seen as subhuman there's not a problem for them there.

-Anyway, this leads me into my next point; people are sometimes mutated using genetic manipulation for various reasons, and these mutants face the same level of prejudice and bigotry that black people would have faced at the time, even if they're white, on account of being 'genetically corrupt'. As a result, having 'indentured mutants' is a thing where they're kept as slaves in all but name; one of the things Lincoln can be pushing for, and one of the things that eventually sparks a civil war, is giving mutants the same legal standing as non-mutants. I'll admit that the idea is shamelessly cribbed from the Remade in China Mieville's Bas-Lag novels, but it could be interesting.

- Minor occult element in their as well; occultism was a big thing in the West around that time, with people convinced stuff like telepathy, telekinesis and communicating with the dead could work, and could work in a scientific manner as well. It could be interesting to have something like telepaths and telekines (perhaps limited ones) and mediums be included in the world. The pioneer of telepathic practice was and is Sigmund Freud.

-Since Darwin, Tesla, and Freud have contributed so much to this society, they have almost Demi-God status and some people actually worship them, with neither their encouragement nor approval.










Happy trails, pardners.

This post has been edited by Rohirrim: Oct 17 2013, 11:17 PM