I've been developing a homebrew game for a few years now. It is pathfinder based ruleset but I like to add anything else I come across that adds to the flavor of a dystopian setting. Stephen King's Dark Tower series is the biggest influence but Fallout and Borderlands visually are more what i have in mind. Flora retaking bombed out cities, ancient ruins, intermittent long stretches of wastes, forgotten tech, and rediscovered magic blended together with the traditional medieval gameplay. Guns and sorcery, mostly. Nothing to original :)
I just bought the Pure Steam Campaign Setting pdf, which looks really great, but was wondering what other products are out there that might help out my theme. Im not too familiar with all the third party material available and wanted a bit of help to navigate straight to the best.
for purely flavor ideas, GURPS has some good steampunk stuff.
Deadlands has some interesting steampunk stuff in it. The Eberron setting is 3.5 D&D with a bit of a steampunk vibe.
Deadlands has some interesting steampunk stuff in it. The Eberron setting is 3.5 D&D with a bit of a steampunk vibe.
I guess i should have clarified i have been playing since 3.0 and am well aware of Eberron, thanx. There is plenty cribbed from it, Warforged being the main.
I also want to stick with d20 compatible stuff for Pathfinder, too. Im not too familiar with GURPs but i don't want to rework/balance a bunch of alternate systems.
I wrote a whole ruleset for a mid level magic steampunk game Here: https://domcur-by-under-a-bleeding-sun.obsidianportal.com/wikis/main-page. I probably have 300+ hours into it at least.
I'm not sure which are good (I've only glanced the books) but I know of the following settings outside Eberron: Thunderscape, Iron Kingdoms and Pure Steam. Pure steam and thunderscape were made for PFS, so I'd check those out first, Iron Kingdoms would take some conversion work.
Edit: Sorry, you have pure steam! I need to learn to read.
I'd also recommend Privateer Press' Iron Kingdoms setting. They have some cool steampunk stuff.
I know that you have Fallout and Borderlands in mind visually, but we were once going to try a a Gunslinger (Stephen King, not the APG class) Campaign and we were going to use the Iron Kingdoms book for a lot of stuff, though not the whole setting.
Also, while not dystopian, Earthdawn has a lot of ruined cities claimed by vegetation and rediscovered magic. I alway loved Earthdawn.
Monte Cook's Numenara might be worth looking at too. Post Apocolyptic but not in the usual way. Lost tech. Long stretches of Waste.
Look into content from the 3.5 D20 modern setting. It'll take some tweaking to make it work well, but it's a good place to get some inspiration. There are also splat books for steampunk and post-apocalyptic if I remember right.
Look into content from the 3.5 D20 modern setting. It'll take some tweaking to make it work well, but it's a good place to get some inspiration. There are also splat books for steampunk and post-apocalyptic if I remember right.
Ya D20 Modern was were 80% of my game's tech and guns mechanics came from. I had a "gunslinger" writeup and gunplay usuage all straight out of those books (with a home twist) well before Paizo released an official. I love D20 Modern.
Loads of good stuff to look into so far, all, thanx. Nice homebrew campaign at first glance, UnderABleedingSon. Love how you break down the different science systems in play. Good way to outline what you want in your game. I'll be digging into more of that later.
Magic, Science, and Psionics are all just different ways to manipulate molecules and the building blocks to matter, in my game. 3 different means to an end. I don't really replace magic with science as a standard as an alternate setting as Gamma World, but will still have to take a look at what it offers.
The setting i've created is modern earth gave way to a recurrence of magic after a 3rd world war that reset the planet. Elves returned a'la a noah's ark-esque portal from an alternate dimension, bringing back "two of every kind" talking beasts and creatures. After another millennium or so, magic has it's own quasi-fallout which reduces magic efficiency to at most half. This leads to a refounding of ancient tech ruins as the power struggle shifts again. Psionics is always a constant, but much more rare. Most psi-adepts are always hidden because of their unchecked power and are hunted to near extinction from time to time if their society is found out.
As you can see, mutants and monsters are created/re-created from both magic or radiation, whatever fits for the moment. I've pretty much mashed a whole bunch of setting archetypes together.
