Sunday, April 3, 2011

Moar Mechanix Plz

What sort of gadgets can I make?

You can gadget all you want, but lightning and electricity behave differently in the real world so I may alter gadgets that involve that effect. You should also try a couple gadgets based on wacky shit that doesnt exist IRL. Things like Invisible Color Radiometers and AEther Flux Rifles and the fearsome Psionic Conundrum Gun. I dont have any idea what any of those do, but that's the kinda thing average folk dont even blink at when they see it in a store window.

Remember that arcane magic is generally looked down upon. Even if a wizard cooks a bad guy with a fireball, most folk will assume he had a Finnigan's Fine Flame-Gun tucked up his sleeve.

Are there any changes to everyman skills?

I think I'll be removing Drive as an everyman skill and replacing it with Craft: Mechanics. Everyone lives in a giant floating fortress with lifts and trains and moving sidewalks. Not many wheeled vehicles around as in ages past.
Common folk dont pilot aircraft or walk around on the ground. You know how most people never (or rarely) go further than 50 miles from their house in their whole life? Most folk in this world never leave their giant floating city-state.


What is the occupation of most folk? I can see a subset being members of the service industry. Some I am sure are manual labor. How much non-city state industry is there?

Most technologies are mechanics-driven, but to earn a decent living most people specialize. A good analogy is the IT industry; the desktop support guy is significantly different than the firewall/security guy, but both have Science: Computers to some extent. So Average Joe might have Craft: Mechanics specializing in Slidewalk Maintenance and Average Jane might have Craft: Mechanics specializing in Lifts.

Farming is a huge industry with more status than in the real world. Cheap, mass-produced food is mostly hydroponics while higher-end stuff is produced from old fashioned farms on the top levels of any city. As you would expect, the higher up you live, the higher your wealth and status. Angus McMoneybags might own a large farm and have a palatial estate nearby, but most of his workers take a lift from 50 or 60 levels downcity to get there.

Each city-state has it's own ecosystem that can run indefinitely. Of course, everybody has something they do better than someone else so there's still lots of trade, even between nations that may have been at war last month. Now that I think about it, a likely occupation for a starting character may be Smuggler. During wartime, rich folk in the NuNu (New NewYork) or Detroit will still pay top dollar for cigars smuggled in from Nawlins or Atlanta.

Industry outside city-states is mostly mining (metals, coal, and V-gas) and scavenging. Both are dangerous business, because they involve staying on the ground for long periods of time.
Vision Gas/V-gas mines are essentially a giant umbrella/filter built over a dead city. Once they are built, it takes a company of bodyguards/maintenance workers to keep them running. Dead cities give off V-gas that is used to make TVs work. It floats upward where they catch it in the filter and siphon it off. Dead cities are full of strange, horrible, and wonderful things that may just take your head off if you're not careful. Someone would have to be running the right kind of character to make more information about dead cities "public."

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