Jacobeans versus Aliens: weaponry

A significant part of the setting is, of course, period-appropriate(ish) equipment, and weapons are the first thing that tend to come up. One obvious and (I think) interesting point is the interplay between technologies, because at this time firearms are still very much in development.

Here we run into some problems. The New World of Darkness rulebook provides precisely one archaic weapons, sef the crossbow. And it's not that archaic, because it's clearly there a) to hunt vampires, and b) on the assumption that they're fairly readily available in the modern day. What we don't have is black powder. Jacobeans need black powder.

After much digging around, and a lot of forum threads that are unreliable or houserules, I find a couple of websites that feature weapons tables from actual White Wolf books. There's a problem. Over the years, White Wolf has used the Storyteller System (old World of Darkness), the Storytelling System (new World of Darkness), a rerevamped set of rules in the God-Machine Chronicles that is technically (I think?) a new setting/canon for the ruleset but also includes rule changes, variant rules in Armory supplements, and quite possibly variation between books. I can't find any discussion of exactly what is changed. I can't find any explanation whatsoever of what the different weapon properties are supposed to represent in each edition. As such, trying to assemble a coherent set of weapons from the disparate material is a formidable challenge.

Jacobeans versus Aliens: worldbuilding

Yeah, I'm still not super keen on any names I've thought of.

One of the big issues with this game is deciding how to represent aliens. Basically, I think there are two choices (thanks Dan).

The first one is my initial instinct: try to create aliens as they might have been depicted by Jacobean sci-fi if that actually existed. So they have wood and metal vessels, use weapons that Jacobeans can imagine (even though they didn't have that science), and so on. This has a sort of appeal in that I just like the idea of Jacobean sci-fi. On the downside, that didn't actually exist. And I have very little idea what it would hypothetically have been like. And when you get right down to it, would it really be all that different from either sci-fi or steampunk? Because it's kind of going to be somewhere between the two, to be honest.

The other option is a bit harder to articulate. Basically, the aliens are more or less like aliens as depicted in 20th century sci-fi, but described entirely in Jacobean terms. I'd also try to incorporate strong flavours of Jacobean worldview. A disadvantage here is the suspension of disbelief: how can these spacefaring aliens not just eliminate their human foes?

At this point, my inclination is just to go for the latter.

Chaos, furthest from the skies

Go go five-minute game!

Premise: Jacobeans vs. Aliens

Reason: looking through game PDFs, and noticed that "secretly fight fantastical creatures in modern world" is a big trope. Meandered around the thought a bit, via "could you reverse it?" (difficult) and "it's always using new stuff to fight basically old stuff", to "history vs. sci-fi". Then there came a touch of "what would a sci-fi game look like to people a few centuries ago?"

Blurb

It's the Jacobean Age, at least in Merrie England. Astronomers and astrologers alike are astonished by the sudden appearance of many new stars and meteors. They are even more astonished when these start falling to Earth, revealing themselves to be no meteors, but vessels bearing beings from the outer spheres of the cosmos! And naturally, they do not come in peace.

The allospheric beings are soon attempting to gain a foothold on the earth. Their great aetherships of iron, copper and sphere-crystal descent from the heavens en masse or in secret, trying now by force, now by guile to overcome the stout folk of Earth. Now let the King's champions take up arms to drive the invaders from this peaceful realm.

Summary

Strictly speaking, having the ability to invade other worlds involves fabulous technological advances that would, in passing, render the arms and tactics of the Jacobeans worthless. But let's pretend we don't know that. Maybe the allospherics simply never needed to be any good at fighting before, so they only really have quite primitive armaments. Maybe the aetherships work on such different principles that they didn't lead to the development of rockets, internal combustion engines or atmospheric craft. The important thing here is that, while (as always) the aliens need to be presented as having super-advanced technologies, mechanically they can be fought effectively with horses, black-powder weapons and swords. The technology's more advanced all right, but that doesn't make it stronger.

Otherwise, this will work much like other types of urban fantasy games. Sometimes the PCs need to root out an alien infestation in a small town, sometimes to hunt down an obvious invader, and sometimes to aid in a straightforward fight. The historical setting means information travels slowly, making it easier to support hidden alien sites and public ignorance of what's happening. The aliens can be a secret known only to a few, or a public threat, as the gaming group chooses.

I've been listening to a lot of Hunter recently, so I'm going to say this game uses one of those Storytell* systems with d10s. Maybe I'll incorporate Arthur's idea about having Skills be worth three times what Attributes do. Not sure. Either way, it's classless and skill-based.

There'll be a definite tradeoff in equipment, specifically bows vs. firearms. Strung weapons are broadly more reliable, quiet and faster to use. Black powder weapons can be fired one-handed, used readily in closer quarters, and need less training - but tend to misfire.

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Alternative title: Get with child a mandrake root