Act 1, Scene 3: An Interesting Development

They both agreed that the rules looked simple enough; in fact, with just three stats and a profession to choose, players were more likely to take all night thinking up a name than creating their characters. Once she'd thrashed out the rest of the basics, she knew she'd have to pop in a box or two with some skill suggestions, but that wouldn't be a problem.


In keeping with fun and respected games such as Spirit of the Century, they would encourage evocative skill names, ones that would help to express the overall personality of the character. They would also encourage the GM to support creative skill usage by the players (providing they could flannel for <insert name of relevant country of origin here>).

But what about character progression? Neither of them really wanted XP (despite all the nostlagic coo-ing over Dragon Age and its retro dungeon-bashing hilarity), but both agreed that characters are far more entertaining when they have the space to grow and develop.


So they talked, and after many cups of coffee and some rather interesting maple and pecan galletes, they decided that players should be able to change skills, within reason and as long as they exhibited some imaginative flair. And narrated a montage scene, complete with soundtrack (if necessary; but then a good montage scene demands a good soundtrack, don't you think?).

This may play in to the hands of power-gamery types, but then, power-gamers will subvert anything and everything to their own ends eventually. They intended it to allow character flexibility and enjoyment, rather than the rigid straigh-jacketing of a leopard never allowed to change its spots.

So, not including a small box for a sample character (and the tables yet to be created), the entire rules with examples took up about 6 sides of A4. Possibly not as few as the inestimable Ghostbusters game, but then, she was using Book Antiqua 12, not tiddly-widdly font.

And next, the background; a few more facts to check before monkeying with them, then onwards and upwards into the Empire of Steam and Her Majesty's Flying Steam City Atlantis...