Please critique my one sheet
The Magus:
One sheet: Victorian Steampunk setting
Influences and inspirations
KW Jeter’s Infernal Devices, Nemesis the Warlock (the Gothic Empire in particular), Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Material’s trilogy, more for the flavour than his notion of daemons. A Victorian version of Charles Stross’ Atrocity Archives.
Premise
How far would you go in the pursuit of technological excellence?
What is Humanity?
Victorian morality, the lack of expression of emotion and sexuality, justice, freedom, the empire bringing order and protecting British interests. Middle class values of progress, laissez-faire politics, sportsmanship, business competition, religious piety, hope, honesty, decency, charity, domesticity, materialism, class consciousness, self-respect and deferential conformity to reasonable traditions.
What are Demons?
Object Demons created by brilliant engineers, intricate cogs and glowing lights. Their aim is to take over the empire, running it on far more mechanical lines in a Borg/Forbin project sort of way, thereby undermining great British values.
What are Sorcerers and thus what is Lore?
Brilliant but eccentric engineers or those working with access to the latest equipment. Lore is a form of advanced engineering knowledge (see descriptors) that completely baffles.
What are Binding, Summoning, Contacting, Punishing?
Contacting - an obsessive desire to work, chewing cocoa leaves will give bonuses, drawing a schematic in an almost trance-like state, tinkering, building.
Summoning – involves a blood offering of the sorcerer to the device, driving a screwdriver through one’s hand, extreme displays of emotion (e.g. primal screaming)
Binding – the application of heat, electricity, cold, involving the device and the sorcerer
Punishing – placing the demon in a Faraday cage.
Descriptors
Stamina - drop ‘Chemically Heightened’, otherwise as they are.
Will – Change ‘Rageful’ to ‘Cold’ (Cold and Vengeful)
Lore – Apprentice, as is
Naif
Solitary adept
Engineering genius
I'm thinking of running this at a con, with one slot for chargen and another for actual play. I'm planning on doing a couple of others also, to offer some scope. I'll post these in the next couple of days.
Ron Edwards:
Would you consider reversing the definition of Humanity? With everything you just described for it being, instead, grounds for losing Humanity?
Speaking only for myself, it seems to me that only in those circumstances would I be interested in playing. However, I may not be in your target audience.
Best, Ron
Graham W:
Historically, Piers' definition of Humanity is perfect. That's how Victorian society was: if you didn't believe in God, keep disciplined and abstain from impure influences, you'd descend into debauchery and criminality.
Not that I'm trying to talk you into enjoying it, Ron, but Piers' definition could, I think, do some very interesting things within the Sorcerer rules. The pleasure would be in playing people as they slide down that spiral of debauchery.
Graham
Eero Tuovinen:
That is so, Graham, but look at the inspirations Piers lists: not one of those works actually presupposes Victorian morality, and they all in fact reverse it just like Ron suggests. Interesting, ain't it?
I could just, barely imagine playing that setting straight - I'm enough of a white European to do it. But I don't know if I could get together a group that could fulfill the Sorcerer rules requirement of actually appreciating that Humanity requirement on a personal level. The nature of demons doesn't seem very antithetical to this Humanity, either.
In fact, I could see a double-definition here: reverse the first sentence and keep the second sentence as is, but make them separate Humanities as per Sorcerer's Soul. The first Humanity would become the issue of personal freedom of emotion, sexuality and thought against the benefits of the imperium, while the second definition would be as above, about the middle-class values of progress, sportsmanship, honesty, etc. I could get behind both of those and it'd be interesting how the two are contrary as regards the political sphere while often being concordant in being anathema to the demonkind who exemplify the worst parts of the empire. Probably too complex for a convention game, but otherwise that seems picture-perfect.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Graham,
I'm at least as well informed about Victorian morality, both British and American, as any non-expert in the field. I appreciate that Alan's summary is accurate.
However, regarding Sorcerer, the prevailing mores of a given setting are not the touchstone for Humanity during play, as I most recently discussed in Humanity and society. In order to use Alan's description as posted above, I would as a person have to buy into some feature of that ethos that I really, personally, think is right. I was careful to speak only for myself in saying that doing so is impossible for me; what others may make of that or find inspiring in it is their business.
As with the thread I linked to, I'll clarify some points about the Day of Dupes scenario in The Sorcerer's Soul, which outlines quite a bit of the literary presence of "honor" in the several relevant books by Alexandre Dumas. I see a substantial amount of tension in those stories between official duties to one's court and military on the one hand, and what might be thought of as emotional and financial ambition, or passion, or even entrepeneurship on the other. The very back-story fact that D'Artagnan is a Gascon means a great deal, and ties directly into the plot fact that nearly everything he does undermines the state rather than supports it. The "code" by which he and his friends live puts them into constant confusion, in which the right thing to do emerges usually out of immediate, rather grubby if understandable urges. In other words, I focused not on honor as 17th-century musketeers may have experienced it or bought into it, but rather as a 19th-century novel dramatized it and made use of it in ways which I think resonate with us, the modern readers. *
Alan, one aspect of this issue to consider is what the word "steampunk" means, to you, outside of its colorful trappings, in rather blunt political and ethical terms.
Quick correction for Eero's post: the doubled-Humanity rules he mentions are found in Sex & Sorcery.
Best, Ron
* By which I draw no particular distinction between us and the original 19th-century audience; that's not my point. Also, I don't think a reader has to verbalize or understand what I'm talking about in order to attend to it and to enjoy it. To illustrate: I find myself inclined to think that Milady DeWinter was not a low-Humanity character.
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