Wednesday 29 February 2012

Fantasy Mass Transit - A Technology Too Far?

A warforged hangs from the gondola of an airship as a
Lightning Rail loco passes below (artist unknown)
In his recent article, The Architect DM: Seven Wonders of Your World, Danny Rupp highlights the Lightning Rail from the Eberron setting as an example of a World Wonder.  As I was largely ignorant of the detail of the Eberron setting I did a little more research and was both intrigued and horrified in equal measure by this concept.

As I've written before, in a quasi-medieval fantasy setting personal mobility is generally restricted to a couple of days walk and even those who own horses don't tend to travel long distances unless they have a pressing need.    Long arduous journeys or quests to find this artifact or that magical location are the stock-in-trade of the fantasy novel and it is often the journey itself, not the final destination that defines the hero.

In Charlie Jane Ander's round-up of the 10 worst mistakes that Alternate History Authors Make, author Terry Bisson states that "if you don't bring your alternate history up to the reader's present, then you leave out half the fun".  Whilst I agree that this often the case with Sci-Fi and especially with the alternate history subgenre, it is not the case with fantasy literature.  In fact introducing some relatively mudane modern day solutions into a medieval setting can have disastrous effects.  

Although attractive as both a plot generator and as a mechanism for swiftly moving PCs from one location to the next, a system like The Lightning Rail (even if access to it is heavily controlled) opens up a whole new can of worms in that it also ushers in an age of mass transit in the same way that the real railways did in the 1830s.  With mass transit comes huge socio-economic upheaval as people inevitably migrate towards cities and goods suddenly become cheaper as transport costs are reduced.  Consequently cities will gradually expand in size, usurping nearby land which no longer needs to be used as farm land because produce can be brought in just as cheaply from further afield.  This is just the start. 


As always there is the "exception that proves the rule" and in this case it would be a setting which has suffered some form of technological regression.  There are often pieces of working ancient technology to which access is heavily controlled and the knowledge of its operation is usually forbidden by some form of techno-priesthood and the population will often rationalise this as being magical or divine.

A couple of good examples of this being:

Orson Scott Card's Memory of Earth features an Artificial Intelligence (which the population call the Oversoul) which uses mind control to prohibit access to ideas which will ultimately lead to the development of self destructive technologies.  In this way he allows access to things like electricity and magnetism but avoids the wheel and the industrial revolution arguing that they ultimately lead to the development of war machines.

In his novel Cat Karina, Michael G Coney uses a sail driven monorail concept, which utilises the remnants of technology left behind by a previous human civilisation.  A religious belief system prohibits the use of manufacturing and power systems which would ultimately lead to the development of faster, better "trains" and stems the onset of any transport revolution that might ensue.

Saturday 25 February 2012

RPG Papercraft: Judge Dredd H Wagon and Riot Tank

It's been a couple of weeks since I posted anything as I've been busy papercrafting again.  In honour of the 35th Anniversary of Judge Dredd, here's some photos of the prototype H-Wagon (and Riot Tank variant) I've designed for my upcoming Judge Dredd game.

UPDATE:  I've now created a 3D printable H-Wagon for use with 15mm sci-fi miniatures.

H-Wagon configuration - Front Quarter(The interior floorpan measures 3" x 2")


H-Wagon configuration - Rear Quarter
(The model will come with six detail boxes
which can be glued anywhere you like)

H-Wagon configuration - Underside (showing off the grav plates detail)

Riot Tank Configuration  (the tank "lid" just slots in place, so you get 2 models for the price of one)
 

Monday 13 February 2012

The Ages of D&D: A Timeline v3

By popular demand version 3

Click on the image to embiggen
You can also download a really big version from 4shared.

So what's the point? I hear you ask.  Well, I just wanted to see where I fitted into this whole D&D universe and I have so far come to the conclusions that:

I am definitely of the 2nd Age of D&D, I cut my teeth on 2nd Edition AD&D and my favourite campaign setting is Al-Quadim (precisely because it is the most alien campaign world to most players).  I was a late adopter of 3/3.5 and for me it didn't have the same hold on me as 2nd Edition (for all its failings).  I have played a demo of 4e and am unlikely to buy it given that D&D Next is on the horizon.

The lifespans of D&D editions have become shorter, whether or not this is as a result of commercial pressure, is hard to say as there is evidence to suggest that D&D has always had more editions with shorter lifespans than AD&D and that it has only become noticeable since the 3/3.5 reformation.  In fact I was mostly ignorant of the "Basic" D&D versions for many of my formative years, as my go-to game was AD&D.

More new campaign settings were published during the Second Age than any other and this may account for the slightly longer timescales between editions but also coincides with the Golden Age of Roleplaying, the 1980s. Dragon and Dungeon Magazine have been my stalwart companions along this journey, more so than any "edition" of D&D, and I have taken ideas from their pages and converted them to work in many systems and genres over the years.

D&D as a brand has been "managed" for a longer period of time than it was by its creators.  It is bigger than any one person or team and it will most likely outlive us all (in some form).  I wish Mike Mearls, Monte Cooke and all the other people at WotC the best of luck in what is arguably a truly Sisyphean task and I can say I am excited about the future of D&D under their guardianship.

Saturday 11 February 2012

Wednesday 8 February 2012

The Ages of D&D: A Timeline

When you can't google an image sometimes you have to make it.

Click on the image to embiggen