Post-apocalyptic TL 5/8

[dcarson]

One thing that makes it more Western is lack of a portable power source. They don't have the long range transport to move coal cheaply, oil is scarce, if they have problems growing enough food devoting crops to biodiesel won't make sense. So wood powered trains and horses.

I'd expect weapons to use both black powder and smokeless. You can make black powder on a small scale, nitric acid is a larger industrial base. So it will be available but you can't count on it everywhere and it will cost more. So a rancher or farmer that expects to fire a shot at a time for hunting or varmints will use the cheaper black powder. Someone that expects combat will use the more expensive stuff for lack of smoke to obscure vision and give away your position and barrels that don't foul.

[MatthewVilter]

Originally Posted by dcarson

One thing that makes it more Western is lack of a portable power source. They don't have the long range transport to move coal cheaply, oil is scarce, if they have problems growing enough food devoting crops to biodiesel won't make sense. So wood powered trains and horses.

And electric power will be small scale so stick to water wheels and windmills for that.

Originally Posted by dcarson

I'd expect weapons to use both black powder and smokeless. You can make black powder on a small scale, nitric acid is a larger industrial base. So it will be available but you can't count on it everywhere and it will cost more. So a rancher or farmer that expects to fire a shot at a time for hunting or varmints will use the cheaper black powder. Someone that expects combat will use the more expensive stuff for lack of smoke to obscure vision and give away your position and barrels that don't foul.

This sounds like good game design to me.

[Jonas]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

TL8 didn't do anything good the first time, why would they expect it to help the second time? Besides I don't plan to run a game about inventors struggling to recreate the atom bomb, or whatever.

If your justification was "Because its not the feel I want" that is all you had to say as otherwise it falls pretty flat. :p

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Jonas

If your justification was "Because its not the feel I want" that is all you had to say as otherwise it falls pretty flat. :p

I deliberately tried to avoid to discuss the the details of the setting in this thread because I didn't want to derail the question I was actually asking. I will post a thread with a link to the writeup when I'm done, and at that point I will happily entertain more general criticism about the campaign.

In the setting there certainly are people engaged in technological Renaissance, but that's not who the PCs are supposed to be.