Jade Empire has been a big influence on my creativity lately.  I’ve been anticipating it for a while, and I recently got it and started playing it, and I love the game.  At any rate, a little while ago, because of the limited availability of some of the people in my monthly D&D game, I decided to start a secondary game for when people are missing.  Not surprisingly, the style of game was influenced somewhat by my anticipation of Jade Empire.

Ever heard of Dragon Fist?  For those who haven’t, Dragon Fist was a stand-alone RPG released by Wizards of the Coast just before the release of 3rd Edition D&D.  It used a version of the 2nd Edition rules that was somewhat similar to the d20 System, so it acted as a sort of preview of 3rd Edition, as well as a preview of Oriental Adventures.  It was a game based on wuxia movies and Chinese folklore, and it was a lot of fun.  It threw any form of realism out the window in favor of high-powered, cinematic kung fu action sequences.  Anyway, I wanted to play Dragon Fist as my secondary game, but I wanted to stick with the d20 System, or as close to it as possible, so as to reduce the learning curve somewhat for newer players.  Conundrum.

A while ago, Green Ronin purchased Dragon Fist from WotC, so that they could make a d20 version and put it up for sale.  This would have been fine with me; I’d gladly pay for d20 Dragon Fist, if it were availalble.  Unfortunately, it is not, as far as I can tell.  So, because I couldn’t find the d20 version anywhere, I decided to do something on my own.

My first thought was to use d20 Modern as my basis, but I soon discovered that that would take a lot of work, and it still wouldn’t emulate Dragon Fist in quite the way I wanted to.  I also thought about using the Oriental Adventures rules in combination with the Dragon Fist campaign setting, but that didn’t really do what I wanted it to, either.  I thought for a while, and I looked at the books I had on my shelf.  Then, suddenly, it hit me.

What book did I own that allowed people to create high-powered heroes capable of super-human actions?  Why, Mutants and Masterminds, of course.  I glanced through the book, and to my delight I discovered that I would have to do very little to make the rules compatible with the setting.  So, I opted for that.

Anyway, on the last gaming day, we sat down and made some characters.  Now I’m going to be GMing a game including the following:

• A wise man who gouged out his own eyes so that he could see more clearly.  He wields a sword with deadly percision and can see through untruths that would fool others.
• An acrobat who has the ability to assume a ghostly form.  Her chosen weapon is a bow, and she is so accurate with it that she can even paralyze her targets for breif periods.
• A short old man with a penchant for peeking in windows.  He casts a variety of spells, and rides on the shoulders of a large, hulking student of his.

So, after a little bit of searching, I found exactly the kind of game I was looking for.

So, who’s heard of Iron Lore? If you haven’t, you should head over to Monte Cook’s Website and check it out, as it’s one of Malhavoc’s upcoming products. Basically, it sounds awesome. Anyway, it got my juices flowing somewhat, so I figured I’d post some thoughts.

Iron Lore is an alternate Player’s Handbook for D&D, and it makes some interesting changes to the core rules (at least, as far as I can tell from the limited amount of information currently available). At any rate, while it isn’t necessarily a ‘low magic’ setting, it does make magic a lot less reliable as a source of easy power. There’s one magic casting class, the arcanist, and as I understand it, casting spells in Iron Lore isn’t as simple as simply saying, “I cast fireball”. Further, magic items are few and far between. I’ve heard them likened to artifacts in d20 Call of Cthulhu, in that they’re largely unique items that have unpredictable and often dangerous effects.

At any rate, this all got me thinking how great these rules would fit into a steampunk-style setting. In rules terms, it would be as simple as adding some more modern weapons to the mix (firearms, for one), and a new, gadgeteer-type class.

Now, Iron Lore has a mechanic where different character classes can do things to earn ‘tokens’, and can then spend their tokens to access class abilities. For example, an archer could spend a round aiming, earn a token, and use it the next round to ignore a target’s armor. This mechanic fits very well with my vision of a gadgeteer. In my head, the gadgeteer spends a round rummaging through his pack and constructing a doodad, and he earns a token. He can then cash tokens in to create effects, like dealing area-effect damage, blinding someone, or filling an area with smoke. More complex and powerful effects require more tokens to activate; thus, they take longer to ‘build’. If the gadgeteer already has a few tokens, he’s basically got part of the item constructed already.

This brings up the question, “If the gadgeteer can create all sorts of effects by simply cashing in tokens, wouldn’t that sort of step on the arcansit’s toes a little”. Not really. The gadgeteer and the arcanist should be able to do a lot of the same things; magic and technology are basically two different routes to the same power. The difference is that magic tends to be more dramatic and powerful, but far more unpredictable and dangerous, while technology tends to be more reliable but less powerful and somewhat slower. Both classes might be able to fill a twenty-foot radius with fire, but they’d go about it in different ways. The arcanist would make a check and do it in a single round, but the result might not be exactly what he wants. The gadgeteer, on the other hand, will get the exact result he wants without a check, but it’ll take a couple of rounds of doing nothing but earning tokens in order to accomplish it.

Anyway, that’s what Iron Lore got me thinking about.