Cortex Steampunk Game 1 OOC Discussion

[IsabellaRose]

This is for Group 1, consisting of @MagnificentBastard, @WickedCadrach, @Chiyako, @WritesNaughtyStories, and @StarlitSiren.

We're still working from the basic setup premise as described in the original "Interest Check" thread:

"My favorite game system is Cortex, or more specifically, the Cortex Drama system originally developed for the Smallville RPG, improved with suggestions in the Cortex Hacker's Guide, and then brought all together in the latest version of the system, Cortex Prime.

I'm considering running a dramatic game centered around a small group of PCs and their connected NPCs set in an 1880s wild west / steampunk / weird science world. Imagine someone combined the works of Jules Verne, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allen Poe, HP Lovecraft, and HG Wells, added in a dash of Nikola Tesla, a pinch of Indiana Jones (without the Crystal Skull nonsense), mixed in Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickok, Annie Oakley, Doc Holliday and all the wild west tropes you can imagine, maybe added a bit of mad scientist and supernatural weird west nonsense, and dressed it all up in steampunk finery... and you're looking at the general idea for the setting. There will be over-the-top villains, square-jawed heroes, and buxom babes a plenty. Obviously, given our site, there were be lewd content and a deviation from the more buttoned-down, puritanical ways of the colonial western expansion and Victorian era, and I expect most characters to "get some" on a regular basis. In fact, I intend to add a mechanic that will make it imperative that you keep your honey pot stirred or your wick well dipped regularly in order to keep functioning at your highest level."

 

Let's start with the basics of worldbuilding. Working from that original description:

1. Write down anything that YOU WANT to be in this game, concepts, set pieces, species, tech, etc., for you to enjoy it. If you want there to be Automaton's write it down. If you just think they'd be cool, but you don't really care one way or the other, don't write it down. This is the list of "I want this to be in the world!"
    
2. Write down anything that you DO NOT WANT in the game. If zombies will ruin the setting for you, let us know.

Once we get input from everyone, we'll move on to the Pathways system.

[MagnificentBastard]

I am a little swamped with work this week, but once the weekend comes I'll edit this with my take.

@IsabellaRose

Thank you for all the work you have done with this.

 

[WritesNaughtyStories]

I've said it before: I want Prudence to have existed in our past and to have left her legacy of defending love in all its forms. With that comes the oppressive social and religious pressure that drove Prudence to condemn her lover.

Beyond that, gunfighters in dusty streets, airships, and government agents in luxury train cars with odd, clockwork and steam-powered gadgets are welcome.

I think it's worth talking about the First Nations, the US Army and what frontier forts look like and how they act on the world around them.

[StarlitSiren]

Seconding @MagnificentBastard, We appreciate you @IsabellaRose

I'm a dummy, @WritesNaughtyStories- can you tell me what you mean by Prudence?

I'm in for Everything writesnaughtystories says. Obviously the character premise I started out with very much leans into that steampunk inventor/tinkerer concept. If this is a bit more of an Alternate history than a full on imaginary world (going by your post above) then that does open up very fun premises and opportunity for reference. I'm good with both.

To clarify, I'm also not against magic being a thing in the setting in the right, mystical, unobtainable doses (The big bad dabbling in something they don't understand and we won't either) but I'm also not expecting or asking for it. I just thought I should address the fantastical since the other thread leaned that way a lot