Barbarians with ray guns: He-man, thundercats and the like

[nerdvana]

Originally Posted by Nymdok

Gimmie till the end of the weekend to clean it up and post it on Google Docs. Ill PM you when its ready.

Can you PM me about it also then?

[Nymdok]

I may just start a new thread for it. Bu yeah Ill PM you as well :)

Nymdok

[tylrlsaa]

I keep looking at it as an alternate tech developement. They developed really advanced tech at some point, (bypassing gunpowder while doing so, I believe) had a major drop in the tech level, and are now working on an upswing.

If we're still talking about The Masters of the Universe, some of the have access to knowledge and/or tech to one degree or another, but it's a case-by-case basis. Man-at-Arms (at least in the cartoon) is a classic cartoon engineering genius. He-Man is just beefcake.

[tantric]

What's wrong with magitech? From wands to lasers, easy.

[Dangerious P. Cats]

I like the idea of technology being left over from the fall of a great civerlisation. Things like blasters would continue to be inproduction by hand since people tend to cling to weapons in times of crisis, the diffiuclty in making them combined with the rarity of the matirials required makes them rare, meaning that various cultures have ways of limiting their distribution (only the wealthy have them, only the military, only religious organisations). Bigger war machines would fall out of use, with thier construction and powering becoming lost arts requiring great efforts to revive. This works with the whole threat of the week formate many of these cartoons took since a mechanical genius could be hiding away could spend it's time rebuilding old tanks and planes, or worse, to occationally send at the heroes as part of thier eternal struggle.

[Voltron64]

Originally Posted by Dangerious P. Cats

Been watching some old saturday mourning cartoon favorites recently like he-man, thundercats and Skeleton warriors and began to notice a general theme of orvelaying fanatasy fiction with ultra tech elements and began to think of developing a setting based on that idea. Part of what I hope to do is capture the feel of this sort of series, a world where warriors happily wield swords and ride giant cats along side tanks, lasers and space ships. What are the quinticential elements of this sort of fiction and how can it be brought into roleplaying. The other issue is making it all sensible. While cartoons are ruled by cool roleplaying settings have this nagging problem of asking how things are actually achieved, so I guess the question to ask is why would people ride animals for transport when there are spaceships?

You know I've always found those series to be very Planetary Romancey. I'm sure no disagrees with me on that.

[Stephen Mann]

One solution for low tech ultratech is the Matrix from Northworld. The Matrix is an astral plane filled with models of various tech devices which a Smith may copy from. These smiths enter a meditative trance where they find the right device, try to copy it to the best of their ability, and transform raw materials (metal ores, crystals, etc) into devices.

Low-skill smiths can only make parts in a couple of hours, high-skill smiths may make entire small devices. They have no understanding of what they've made, so repair is entirely modular

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

Voltron is right - very much in the Planetary Romance genre.

In fact, I just finished a bout of Old Movie Serial watching, and you can see the same thing there. For example, Undersea Kingdom starring Crash Corrigan (released 1936). You have two low-tech armies, mainly swords, spears, horses and chariots. But one side also has robot troopers, an aerial gunship, ray-guns, guided missiles, an earthquake generator, and a tank! (And to show the blooming incompetence of the bad guys, with all that advantage they still can't take one small fortification which appears to be based on the Alamo!)

That is also a major trope of the genre - that no one has any idea how to use any of this stuff effectively! They have tanks and zap-guns, but they'll still fight in the style of their preferred tech level - usually TL 2 or 3.

The genre itself seems to lean toward post-apocalypse (or at least post-collapse). Maybe all those zap-guns were found in ancient underground complexes by bands of adventurers who had to fight their way past the monsters that inhabited the 10x10 rooms ...

[Dangerious P. Cats]

Originally Posted by Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2

That is also a major trope of the genre - that no one has any idea how to use any of this stuff effectively! They have tanks and zap-guns, but they'll still fight in the style of their preferred tech level - usually TL 2 or 3.

I've been working on a setting based on said genres where I explain this as all ray guns needing to be forged by hand, being made of expecive parts and requiring a high level of skill to make. Combine that with the parts degrading slightly each time the weapon is fired and they become sufficently rare that only the rich or elite soldiers can use them (one of the factions made their production a state monopoly in order equipe most of their infantry with them). Tanks on the other hand are super rare, but as effective as a tank would be against a medieval army should be. I was thinking of making one of the story arks that one of the chief baddies is rebuilding a tank and trying to get enough matirials to power it, the players needing to do something about it. Same logic applies to other big war machines.

[vicky_molokh]

IIRC this is not the case in He-Man/Sheba, where baddies get all the blasty tech, yet fail against the choppy boyz.