Skerples' Coins and Scrolls blog is a well known and popular blog, and Magical Industrial Revolution is an electrum best seller on drivethrurpg, so it's hardly a "hidden gem", but nonetheless I find it surprising that it is not treated as an even bigger deal than it already is. It has far and away the best civilization-sim (for lack of a better term) implementation I've ever seen in any tabletop RPG. I've talked before about my interest in Settlement Building, but this is just so, so much better than anything I've ever seen before or conceived of myself. My feelings towards MIR for settlement building is not unlike my feelings for Batteries Not Included for Mechs.
It's also just masterclass writing. It is so efficient and to the point, yet evocative. I truly believe this is the most important skill for RPG writing, which requires one to express game rules, setting, and ephemeral stuff like tone, often all simultaneously, and in a way the reader can comprehend. I'm yet to wrap my head around this skill, much to my own RPG writing detriment, so when I see it done well I deeply appreciate it.
The setting doesn't take itself too seriously and is genuinely funny, but not at the expense of feeling like something that can be played in any campaign. It's also clearly very well researched and demonstrates a deep understanding of the industrial revolution and all of its social, economic, technological, scientific, etc. implications, making for an intellectually and creatively inspiring setting. MIR accomplishes what I think many Victorian/Steampunk/Early Industrial-esque settings try and utterly fail to accomplish, or accomplish only superficially at best.
I'm generally not a fan of "traditional fantasy", but I do believe there's something to be said for the juxtaposition of the "traditional" with a small number of very well realized twists. While you could adapt the general framework of MRI to a more full-gonzo Weird setting like the types I tend to prefer, I think it really shines in its precise context that Skerples intended, and would have been perfect for my Aquarian Dawn campaign (seeing as that's basically died, I really need to do a writeup of how it all played out eventually). I had modeled my settlement-building elements off of a very stripped down version of Numenera Destiny, but I think MIR captures that essence in a much superior way.
The main schtick of MIR are the Innovations; taking a basic spell / fantasy trope, and extrapolating how it could be industrialized (and then catastrophized). It develops over Seasons, based on the actions of the players, in a very rules-light, intuitive, flexible, organic way. It would be very easy to add new Innovations (if you are clever enough), and there are some fairly simple rules for how players could invent magical industrial devices that could themselves become magical industrial Innovations. I've already got a few ideas I'm sitting on that I'd like to write up at some point, if I thought I could half-meet Skerples' quality.
This not-review doesn't get into all the intricacies and doesn't do the book justice. Just do yourself a favor and check it out.
Unrelated note, one of my oldest blogosphere friends has revived his blog, Tarsos Theorem. He was the originator of the Periodic Table of Elementals, and is a strong proponent for javascript and other coding innovations in the tabletop RPG space, something which I have ironically been slack on ever since becoming a software engineer so I hope he picks up my slack! Or whatever he decides to do, I look forward to seeing it! After drafting this but before posting, he posted his Digital UVG DM Screen and seems to still be pretty gung-ho about digital tools, so that's exciting!
Another unrelated note I'm sitting on a 95% complete draft for the next post for Maximum Recursion Depth, which will hopefully make more clear what the setting is actually about and how to play in it. I just wish I could write as effectively and evocatively as Skerples!
You've convinced me.
ReplyDelete