Clark was a big part of the Dresden Files RPG team and he knows his stuff. With this project he’s coming up with not only a cool setting/premise but several innovative system tweaks to emulate the high-flying action and competitive nature of the pilots. Great stuff.

I love the style and variety, and the depiction of female characters is promising.

We’ve gone through most of character creation and setting customization – two things that Fate Core does really well – and I’m thrilled with how the group has hooked into the setting and made their own by setting up issues and potential situations that are likely to be lots of fun to explore once the emerging fiction starts flying. Anyhow, I’ll be summarizing all the notes in posts on the V&V site this week, but in the mean time here’s a link to the aforementioned gallery of Lego Aethership images:

One of the first ingredients tossed into the V&V project cauldron was my creation of a Lego Steampunk airship. I’d seen several other cool bits of Lego Steampunkery online and I wanted to try my own. The ship part came together easily enough and the huge…

Continue reading at the Vigilants and Vagabonds site

In defiance of this often dark and bitter winter, may you be warmed by the fire of creativity, nurtured by the spirit of your muse, and strong in your passion to protect those things that matter to you most.

Vigilants and Vagabonds is an alternate-history setting focusing on the Eastern region of what we call North America – a land that is known in the setting as Terre Giovane (Italian for “the Young Lands”).

At this point I’ve established a loose timeframe of the early-to-mid 1800s. Rather than being the young, fledgling United States and Canada with which we’re familiar, Terre Giovane is a land where colonies and dominions of various Old European powers still vie for control with one another and with the native peoples of the First Nations. Meanwhile, Europe itself has become an almost uninhabitable wasteland after centuries of conflict and overt misuse of scientific advancements.

Essentially, all that remain of the cultures and nations of Old Europe now inhabit Terre Giovane. The largest and most powerful of these is Lucretia, ruled by the last remaining nobles of the Florentine Empire, once Europe’s greatest political entity. Next in power and influence are the colonies of Nueva Espana in the south and the Sultanate of al Andalus, a bastion of Mooorish, Turkish and North African cultures united by the Islamic faith. Other Old-world colonies include the Dominion of New Britain, the French realm of Louisiana, the Germanic colonies of Westphalia and New Prussia, the Danish and Nordic island of Newfoundland, the Scottish region known as Nova Scotia, the Irish free state of Tirowen, and in the southern isles below Spanish Florida, a smattering of colonies ruled by Portugal mingled with islands under the dominion of various West African powers.

As for the “alternate history” that brought us to this place, according to a strange leather-bound tome known as the Book of the Ape (recently discovered by a police officer in the city of New Kent and only seen by a select few members of the governments of the more powerful nations) sometime in the early 1400s a group of about 20 human-like beings from “Somewhere Else” calling themselves the Children of the Vagabond arrived in Central Europe and set about manipulating culture, politics, religion, and scientific progress in various places in Europe, Africa, and West-Southwest Asia. The most profound result of their machinations caused the Italian Renaissance to produce much greater advances in science, art, and political thought, not to mention creating a unified Italian political dynasty under the Medici family that eventually blossomed into the Florentine Empire, which grew in the 1500s to become Europe’s most dominant political and military power.

Other notable changes to history include the Spanish Armada’s victory over the British navy and the subsequent conquest and occupation of Great Britain by Spain – which caused Queen Elizabeth I and members of her court to flee via airship to Terre Giovane, where they established a realm-in-exile.

So Who ARE These Vigilants and Vagabonds, Anyway?

D.I. Brick Madley, Agent Vigilant

So. Perhaps you might ask at this point, “What are Vigilants? Come to think of it, what are Vagabonds?”

Well, I will tell you, broadly, what I have in mind.

VIGILANTS are agents who work for a secret pan-national organization called Ord Vigiles (aka Order of the Watch). The Order’s leaders are all officials in the Italian, Spanish, French and British governments who have been made aware of an artifact known as The Book of The Ape. This book claims to be a chronicle of the shadowy activities of a group known as The Children of the Vagabond (see below), also known as The Rippers. Ord Vigiles has recruited a few dozen brave souls from among all of Terre Giovane’s many nations and tribes in order to investigate – and whenever possible thwart – the ongoing activities of the Rippers. On the surface, you might think of the Vigilants as being “the good guys.”

VAGABONDS, on the other hand, are thought to be the agents, followers, and pawns of the Children of the Vagabond, a mysterious group of otherworldly human-fleshed beings who have been manipulating the world’s politics, cultures and sciences for almost 400 years since their arrival in the early 15th Century. The Rippers – a term used interchangably with “Vagabonds” by most members of Ord Vigiles – seem to be intentionally trying to bring the world to the point of self-destruction, although its reasons are unknown. On the surface, this group would easily qualify as ‘the bad guys”.

HOWEVER, reality is not nearly that simple. Although the Vigilants are mostly unaware of the fact, the Vagabonds have actually broken up into factions, and some of them are as intent upon stopping the Rippers as the Vigilants themselves. These anti-Ripper factions tend to follow the philosophy of a mysterious trickster known as the Ape of Harps – and while they do in fact hold to some rather libertine and anarchist beliefs, they claim to be doing it in the name of human progress, freedom, and individuality. Some are champions of the marginalized, the oppressed, and the outcasts. Some are agents of change. Some just want to be left alone to freely exist outside the bounds of nations and factories. And you can be sure that in the larger war between order and chaos, they will be around to tip the balance in all sorts of interesting ways.

What’s the Genre? What’s it About?

Let’s talk about how Vigilants and Vagabonds relates to the term “Steampunk”.

Steampunk has become a label that’s hard to pin down, in part because it can mean such a broad array of things to different people, some of whom tend to be very restrictive and protective of what they consider the proper definition of the term. I’m not really interested in spending much energy on fitting this project into any one of those definitions. This article is intended to be a broad list of things that I hope to include in the setting and things I intend not to include. I think in general the V&V setting will prove to have many bits of Steampunk flavor – but whether or not it “IS” Steampunk I will leave to those of you who care about such things.

Last Train Home w/ Sally Ike & Tony Ballard Smoot

Things that Vigilants & Vagabonds WILL include (if I do my job right):

• Multiculturalism. A broad array of cultural perspectives and flavors will be present. This will be a setting about humans of all sorts trying to deal with the ever-increasing chaos and rapid destabilizing change that seems to keep driving the world into ruin. Appropriate and honest depiction of that, from a wide variety of cultural angles, is one of my main goals.
• Science! – in other words, lots of crazy brass and copper gadgets, impossible aetheric machines, and steam-powered industry – stuff that’s helpful, useful, and amazing on the one hand but harmful, out-of-control, and chaotic on the other. Flying ships that employ aether-manipulation engines to soar in the skies. Clockwork automatons that may or may not be sentient. Alchemical concoctions made to prolong life, or to alter our bodies in strange ways.
• PUNK. By which I mean thematically highlighting the struggle of common, marginalized, disenfranchised people not only against the harsh and ever-more-chaotic machine that the world has become, but also against the powerful and privileged people who will do whatever they must to maintain their authority.
• A balance between gee-wiz wonder-fun and gritty, dramatic situations that expose the darker themes of imperialism, colonialism,  privilege, and dehumanizing technology.

Things that Vigilants & Vagabonds will NOT include:

• British people running around acting as if they own the world. Because quite literally in this setting, they don’t. There is no British Empire, at least not in the sense that we think of based on real-world history and what we see in most Anglo-centric expressions of Steampunk/neo-Victoriana.  The British Isles themselves are a sparsely populated stagnant landscape shrouded in ash and smoke. And even before they became that way, the Isles were conquered and occupied by Spain. All that remains of  Britain is the Dominion. And the Dominion of New Britain, for all its continued pride, stiff-upper-lippiness and pomp, is but a shadow of its former self.
• Men running around as if they own Women. I’m simply not interested in making yet another world where women, by default, are considered second-class humans and then have to be extra-strong and extra-awesome to justify being protagonists. No. This is an alternate-history fantasy world and that means I get to establish that gender-based structural oppression as a default societal norm got weeded out a long time ago.
• Vampires, werewolves, elves, dwarves, and other demi-human or meta-human fantasy-horror folk. I enjoy many of the interpretations of various fantasy and/or horror folk that can be found in other Steampunk-flavored works. But thematically, they don’t fit in my vision for V&V.
• Sorcery, steam-o-mancy, gear-o-mancy, or any other kind of magic. Same as above. I’ve seen several really cool steamy/clocky flavors of magic, but that’s not where I’m planning to take V&V.  But then again …
• Hard Science. There’s no way I’m going to be able to base V&V’s  aethercraft, clockwork, alchemy, or resonance manipulation on plausible scientific principles. I hope to make them semi-plausible, yes. You could say that I’m taking my layperson’s understanding of string theory and other cutting-edge bits of theoretical physics like dark energy & dark matter, etc. and bastardizing them into a baseline for how the world works the way it does. And some folks will say that the way I fill in the gaps and make certain leaps – especially with how I’m doing alchemy – might as well be called magic. That’s cool with me. My point is, there’s not going to be anything that people in-world will think of as magic – they will think of it as … Science!  But it’s the kind of “Science!” that could not pass muster as plausible in the real world. And I’m not going to worry about making it so.
• Nazis, Orcs, Voldemorts and Saurons. By which I mean that I intend to avoid painting easy stereotypes and black&white depictions of Good and Evil. As much as I hope to skewer and deconstruct systems of oppression and dehumanization like imperialism, colonialism, etc. I don’t want cardboard bad guys or lily-white good guys. I want complexity of character, authentic motivations, and lots of grey areas.

J.R. has written several posts on her blog about the project, but the one I’d like to share here is especially relevant IMO because it gets to the heart of the thematics of what she’s creating, and it took a conversation with a colleague for J.R. to realize it:

“It’s about colonialism,” I say, waving my fingers, “About how a group of people can perceive another group of people as less than human, less sentient, less important, in order to justify taking what they want.”

“Hmm,” she says.

“Not that I actually SAY that at any point,” I tell her.  I don’t say, ‘Oh, this is about colonialism everybody’ instead I have the aliens tell them ‘I KNOW you can talk! I think it’s ADORABLE! But no, really, we’re going to eat like, those eight people over there right now.”

via Court/Ship Colonialism | J.R. Blackwell.

First, I love that the game is about colonialism, because that’s an issue I think deserves more focus. And it’s a front-and-center topic in my own creative endeavors these days - Vigilants and Vagabonds will explore it pretty blatantly. But secondly, I love the story of how J.R. came to realize it so organically. And even better, I love that the topic is explored in a twisted-up kind of way, with the group of people who represent the colonizers in our real-world history becoming the colonized in Court/Ship. Basically I love art that says stuff without having to actually say the stuff its saying. You know, it’s that whole “show, don’t tell” thing that fiction writers do.

And also, as I mentioned to J.R. on Twitter, I’m really glad she’s jumped into the Fate pool. You can bet there will be more about Court/Ship and J.R.’s other Fate project, The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences RPG, featured here on the Harping Monkey in the coming months.

I play with Fate!

I’ve decided it’s time to give some love back to the game system that loves me enough to have kept me in the hobby.

Many of you know I’ve been messing around with various intents and hopes and half-baked plans to make roleplaying games to share with others for years. I’ve always fumbled or lost energy or triple-guessed my abilities or just … well, quit making the effort.

But now I’m older, I’m wiser, I’m in recovery from a bout with depression that was severe enough to put me in treatment and now I’m armed with therapies and support that have me feeling more clear-headed and confident than I have in years.

This year, I’m determined to prove something to myself. I’m determined to be a finisher. I’m determined to put a big dent in the well-earned reputation I have for having great ideas and starting interesting projects and then never finishing them enough to put out into the world.

And in honor of the fact that this is going to be a really big year for Evil Hat’s magnificent FATE system in any case - just look at the FateCore Kickstarter - I’m celebrating the game that I recently identified as my favorite of all time life-saving go-to system.

This is the year I dance with Fate.

To that end, I’ll be putting as much hobby energy and time as I can into providing, news, reviews, signal-boosting, and links to discussions and resources related to Evil Hat’s FateCore project and all of the supplements, add-ons, settings, and variations that come to my attention. This category heading here on the Harping Monkey will be the repository for that effort.

Also, I’m setting a goal – and I mean it to the bottom of my heart and soul this time – to finish creating the two Fate-based rpg projects that I myself have been allegedly working on: Vegas After Midnight and Vigilants and Vagabonds. This year.

Yes, Vegas After Midnight is back on the front burner, folks, and it’s going to be a Fate-based game like it was in the first place. And once I’ve got VAM written, playtested, revised, edited, re-revised, and all that, I’m putting the PDF of it out for free, as a thank-you to all of you who’ve been fans and supporters over the years. THEN, if it seems like a good idea – and only then – we’ll see about doing a Kickstarter to get a print version made.

Actual Brick Madley

And along with that I’m currently playtesting Vigilants and Vagabonds with my local group and I’m going to use the resulting data to get that setting going, too. In fact, what I intend to do is to get both VAM and V&V ready enough to be able to run solid short-play versions of them as part of Games on Demand at GenCon 2013.  And then, after making one more round of revisions and editing in the wake of that, I’ll make the VAM pdf available.

I realize it is pretty ambitious to set a goal to do BOTH games in one year, at least for a guy like me, but that’s the point. I want this to be different. I want this to be challenging. And yes, I want to strike while the FATE iron is so damn hot.

So, let’s get our Fate on.

Tee Freaks Out

Podcaster/Author/Raconteur Tee Morris jumps back into his blog with a timely and spot-on rant about geeks freaking out about Steampunk going mainstream, the latest chapter in the long sad saga of geeks freaking out about other people engaging with the stuff geeks think they own.

Fanbois and elitists are screaming about the “mainstreaming” of steampunk, and with IBM leading the charge it seems that science is predicting that THIS TIME it’s really going to happen. (Science!) Now here’s a little slap from the Halibut of Truth: weren’t people just bickering mere months ago (particularly around the infamous Prada campaign) about the definition of “true” steampunk. It’s the running joke of the genre — what is steampunk, exactly? The lack of a concrete definition could very well hinder the sub-genre’s journey to mainstream, but much like those pinheads ranting against “fake geek girls”some are bemoaning the fall of steampunk. Again. Why are so many worried about a genre that, if it isn’t redefining itself minute by minute, no one can agree exactly what it is?

– Tee Morris, STEAMPUNK GOES MAINSTREAM…and other things for geeks to panic about. Again.