Thursday, March 24, 2011

Game Mechanics!

Are Sky Madness and Sky Blindness real or just flavor? What kind of game effect does it produce? Is it something similar to the Sickly flaw? Something worse?

Normal people (with normal eyes) exposed to unfiltered sunlight over long periods of time will start to experience headaches and irrational behavior. Continued exposure leads to insanity and eventually blindness. The onset of symptoms depends on the intensity and length of exposure per day. A shipwreck victim stranded in the Arizona desert may go mad in as little as 2 days and blind by the third day. A survivor in the rainy and heavily-forested Seattle wilderness may not manifest symptoms for weeks.
A person may recover their sight, if rescued in time. Common perception, however, is that nobody ever fully recovers their sanity.

Exposure is instantly noticeable and slightly painful. Different people experience different symptoms, but it is never pleasant. Any character without eye protection suffers a -2 penalty on any sight-based skill or action.

Characters that are blind for any reason are immune to these effects. Some wizards, priests, or mutants may also be immune. Immunity to sky blindness/madness may be bought as a talent.


Are Doctor Gotraynes' Glare-X Goggles common items? Can they be purchased with money? Should they be equipment rather than a Rank 0 or Rank 1 gadget?


Goggles that prevent sky madness are common equipment, available in several levels of protection. Most offer standard protection, and most people will never need anything better. Cheap knock-off (or broken) goggles will offer inferior protection with various side effects. Heavy duty goggles (that someone exploring the Arizona desert would need) are available at a much higher price. Goggles in general are such a ubiquitous accessory that even folks that rarely ever venture into open air will own at least one pair. Rich folk will have a pair for every occasion.
Goggles that let you see into the 8th Dimension or have some kind of binocular ability would be a gadget.

No electrical equipment works anymore or just some things like TVs and computers? I believe that radios were mentioned. Are aircraft currently completely mechanical?

Electricity as a power source is a nonviable option.
The TV mentioned in the Brass Nail runs on V-Gas. A V-Gas TV set is essentially just a box with V-Gas and a dialer in it. The gas reproduces the sound and images recorded with a V-Cam, and can be broadcast city-wide on a V-net.
The Flying Monkey and the Toreador (most aircraft, for that matter) fly by a combination of a Repellium panel on the fuselage, perpetual motion drive, and old-fashioned wind-up gears. Many civilian or sport-craft lack a PM drive and use wind-up turnprops or even sails. Aircraft that dont use Repellium for upward propulsion are very rare.
Radios work via sonovert resonance technology. In game terms they are identical to a standard radio. They are more likely to get interference from noise between the transmitter and receiver, but they are unaffected by storms or other atmospheric activity.


Gunpowder automatic weapons do not work or work reliably. Do single shot weapons like revolvers work? What is the basis for the deck guns and gatling cannons?

The composition of gunpowder is radically different, preventing full-auto weapons from working. Things like Gatling guns with the rotating barrel have a much slower ROF than a real-world autofire weapon and are considered artillery or heavy weapons and take a different skill than Firearms. The deck gun on the Hairshirt is more like a mortar/artillery cannon.
Really, the main reason I banned auto weapons is for flavor. Modern firearms are blockier and heavier than their ancient counterparts. A fully-functional pre-AA (NOT autofire) firearm is worth double listed cost for the modern equivalent.
Exceptions to the no-auto rule will exist. A mad scientist could invent a rapid-fire AEther Shooter, for example.

Lightning still exists. Could "bottled" lightning be usd as fuel or ammunition?

Lightning still exists as just that--lightning. Common folk dont even use the word "electricity"--only scientists and other technical types.
The lightning farm that Reese and Emily fly near is essentially a grenade factory. Any city-state near a coast (and thus near the neverending electrical storm that blocks off the continent from the rest of the world) will have a lightning farm. Lightning is harvested and bottled in special glass containers the size of a baseball. They are stored in wire baskets and shipped out to the Air Force.
Lightning grenades hold a miniature living lightning bolt inside. The glass that Emily invented was suffused with electricity and held much more voltage.