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

 

[WritesNaughtyStories]

Prudence is the woman from Isabella's Anamnesis playthrough:

It is very western, very steampunk and feels very rooted in this setting. She was a judge/executioner who condemned her lover, and herself, because they were both women. At the end of the tale, she transforms herself into Ashborn,

Quote

I will carry this destruction with purpose. No more whispered judgments in darkened halls, no more zealots hiding behind scripture and scales that tilt only toward cruelty. I will protect those who are dragged into the circle, bound and condemned for who they are or who they love. I will be the one who burns the gallows before the rope can tighten, who tears down the pulpits where intolerance is preached.

I am vengeance, yes. But I am also devotion reborn, not to a church, not to a law, but to the women whose voices are silenced, whose love is called sin, whose bodies are bound in chains. My lover’s ruin will not be in vain. It will be the lightning that follows, the sudden blaze that leaves no shadow untouched. My life may no longer be my own, but I will wield what remains of it like a storm.

Isabella's epilogue:

Quote

The Manifesto of the Unbound

I was Prudence Lawton, judge of your laws, servant of your scales, voice of your verdicts. I carried the weight of your scripture, the lash of your zeal, the hollow mercy of your courts. I condemned, and I was condemned. I loved, and for that love I was broken. You buried me beneath your stone, you chained me to your Devil, you carved my name in the dust of your graveyard.

And yet I rose.

I am shattered and remade. I am the ruin of your false sanctuaries, the fire that devours your lies, the storm that scatters your order to ash. You cannot bury what you cannot bind. You cannot silence what has already burned. From this ruin I declare a new truth: that no love is forbidden, that no body is unworthy, that no woman shall kneel before your zealotry again.

My faith is not your faith. It is not written in books that rot on altars, nor spoken by men who weigh the world with tilted scales. My faith is written in the laughter of women who love freely, in the touch of hands unshackled, in the voices raised without fear of your judgment.

I am the woman who will burn your pulpits, break your chains, tear down your gallows. I am the storm that shields the meek, the flame that protects the scorned, the ruin that stands as sanctuary for those you cast out.

Know this: your laws cannot hold me, your prayers cannot bind me, your fire cannot consume me. I have already burned.

Your halls have fallen. From their stones, I build a new temple, not of walls, but of arms wrapped around each other; not of scripture, but of truth spoken plainly:

Love is not a sin.

Desire is not a crime.

To be yourself is holy.

Let those who have suffered find me. Let those who fear find me. Let those who burn for another woman, or who have been judged unworthy, walk in my shadow and find safety.

I was Prudence Lawton, but no more. That name and the woman who belonged to it are dead. I am ruin and rebirth.

I am Ashborn, rising from the ashes of what your piety burned. I am The Counterweight, The Broken Scales that can no longer balance the tilted judgment of zealots. I am the First Flame, but not the last. I am Unbound, free of your chains, bidding all to join me. I am The Voice of Love, Protector of the Forbidden and Forgotten. Some call me Mother Ashes, for from my ruin, others will be reborn. Others call me the Scarlet Bride, bound not to your God, revering not your saints, but bound to the love you forbid, married to the chains that once bound my love. I am The Bride of Chains, The Widow of Fire. 

I have many names, but I carry none of them. I am your reckoning, and I promise you this: the scales will balance, but not by your dogma, not in your courts.

 

[StarlitSiren]

Oh that's good

[WritesNaughtyStories]

Yeah, that's why I really want her as part of our history. I really want to play a monk of the Daughters of the Unbound. I love the idea of someone like Kwai Chang Caine being the champion of her message of love, acceptance and caring (and being kind of a slut about it, because they love everybody).

[StarlitSiren]

I'm into that. Millie, of course, will think it's an old timey cooky religion.

(until they get in on the kind of being a slut about it)

[Chiyako]

I would like to see automatons, or at least clockwork cybernetics of sorts.

And/or maybe some minor supernatural stuff. More classics like werewolves, vampires, etc. Or, if people want to play something with, say, bunny ears for example, perhaps having been created by some sort of experimentation. Not a one-off, so multiple people could go down that track, but probably a limited amount in the world. I imagine they would be, at best, treated like freaks or below Human by a majority of the populace, if not at least feared.

I haven't completely decided what I will make yet. It will depend on what sort of rails we want to set. I fine with any of these being objected to as well, if anyone feels it wouldn't fit. That said, the three ideas I do have in mind are:

• Vampire mad-scientist sort trying to also adapt to the new rapidly developing age. If there are hybrid experiment things then I wouldn't mind her having been part of that process, whether it be as the scientist in charge, an assistant, or what not.
• Clockwork living doll. Automaton essentially but not fully metal. Designed to appear as real as possible. Could have been just some tinkerer's life work or fun side project, or a military project.
• Gunslinger. Maybe gunslinger on the run, especially if we do use the experiment not-so-Humans. Or some sort of partial automaton limbed gunslinger who lost something during a war. Dunno yet. Either wandering sort or a law bringer.

[WritesNaughtyStories]

11 minutes ago, Chiyako said:

some sort of partial automaton limbed gunslinger who lost something during a war

I love this idea. Maybe not a war wound - maybe a gunfight they barely won? Either way, this is gold, in my estimation.

I figured out a way to create the mostly human kind of fur-folk Warning was hoping for. I think the idea of the Army performing horrific and unethical experiments to better combat the First Nations should be included, But that particular thought does not seem to resonate for some reason.