Steamfunkateers

by Balogun Ojetade

  Get the Upper Hand: Use Rapport to establish a positive mood on a target or in a scene or to get someone to confide in you out of a genuine sense of trust. You could pep talk someone into having Elevated Confidence, or stir a crowd into a Joyful Fervor, or simply make someone Talkative or Helpful.

  Defend: Rapport defends against any skill used to damage your reputation, sour a mood you’ve created, or make you look bad in front of other people. It does not, however, defend against mental attacks. That requires Will.

  Rapport Feats

  Best Foot Forward. Twice per session, you may upgrade a temporary boost you receive with Rapport into a full situation descriptor with a free invocation.

  Agitator. +2d to Rapport when you’re delivering an inspiring speech in front of a crowd. (If there are named NPCs or PCs in the scene, you may target them all simultaneously with one roll rather than dividing up your shifts.)

  Popular. If you’re in an area where you’re popular and well-liked, you can use Rapport in place of Contacts. You may be able to establish your popularity by spending a point of Vigor to declare a story detail, or because of prior justification.

  Resources: Surmount/Get the Upper Hand

  Resources describes your character’s general level of material wealth in the game world and ability to apply it. This does not reflect cash on hand (see Wealth, under the Business skill)—it might be tied to land or slaves, or it might mean a number of owned properties.

  Surmount: You can use Resources to get yourself out of or past any situation where throwing material wealth or money at the problem will help, such as committing bribery or acquiring rare and expensive things. Challenges or contests might involve auctions or bidding wars.

  Get the Upper Hand: You can use this action to grease the wheels and make people friendlier, whether that represents an actual bribe or simply buying drinks for people. You can also use Resources to declare that you have something you need on hand, or can quickly acquire it, which could give you a descriptor representing the object.

  Resources Feats

  Money Talks. You can use Resources instead of Rapport in any situation where ostentatious displays of material wealth might aid your cause.

  Savvy Investor. You get an additional free invoke when you get the upper hand with Resources, provided that they describe a monetary return on an investment you made in a previous session. (In other words, you can’t retroactively declare that you did it, but if it happened in the course of play, you get higher returns.)

  Trust Fund Baby. Twice per session, you may take a boost representing a windfall or influx of cash.

  Scholarship: Surmount/Get the Upper Hand

  The Scholarship skill is about knowledge and education, including specialized education, such as legal or medical training, or supernatural and arcane knowledge.

  Surmount: You can use Scholarship to surmount any impediment that requires applying your character’s knowledge to achieve a goal. For example, you might roll Scholarship to decipher some ancient language on a tomb wall, under the presumption that your character might have researched it at some point.

  Frankly, you can use Scholarship as a go-to skill any time you need to know if your character can answer a difficult question, where some tension exists in not knowing the answer.

  Get the Upper Hand: Like Investigate, Scholarship provides a lot of very flexible opportunities to get the upper hand, provided you can research the subject in question. More often than not, you’ll be using Scholarship to get a story detail, some obscure bit of information that you uncover or know already, but if that information gives you an edge in a future scene, it might take the form of a descriptor. Likewise, you can use Scholarship to get the upper hand based on any subject matter your character might have studied, which gives you a fun way to add details to the setting.

  Scholarship Feats

  Bookworm. You’ve read hundreds—if not thousands—of books on a wide variety of topics. You can spend a point of Vigor to use Scholarship in place of any other skill for one roll or exchange, provided you can justify having read about the action you’re attempting.

  Shield of Reason. You can use Scholarship as a defense against Provoke attempts, provided you can justify your ability to surmount your fear through rational thought and reason.

  Specialist. Choose a field of specialization, such as herbology, criminology, or zoology. You get a +2d to all Scholarship checks relating to that field of specialization.

  Law Degree. Because of your legal training, you can use Scholarship to surmount obstacles and get the upper hand related to the invocation of legal machinery, including the action of courts and the law.

  Medical Degree. You are a licensed physician, and can use Scholarship to surmount obstacles and get the upper hand related to the deployment of medical knowledge, including the diagnosis of disease and the skillful treatment of injury.

  Spot: Surmount/Get the Upper Hand/Defend

  The Spot skill involves just that—spotting things. It’s a counterpart to Investigate, representing a character’s overall perception, ability to pick out details at a glance, and other powers of observation. Usually, when you use Spot, it’s very quick compared to Investigate, so the kinds of details you get from it are more superficial, but you also don’t have to expend as much effort to find them.

  Spot also includes aesthetic appreciation—the ability to attend to and evaluate an artistic performance.

  Surmount: You don’t really use Spot to surmount impediments too often but when you do it’s used in a reactive way: noticing something in a scene, hearing a faint sound, spotting the concealed gun in that guy’s waistband.

  Note that this isn’t license for GMs to call for Spot checks left and right to see how generally observant the players’ characters are; that’s boring. Instead, call for Spot checks when succeeding would result in something interesting happening and failing would result in something just as interesting.

  Get the Upper Hand: You use Spot to create descriptors based on direct observation—looking over a room for details that stand out, finding an escape route in a debris-filled building, noticing someone sticking out in a crowd, etc. When you’re watching people, Spot can tell you what’s going on with them externally; for internal changes, see Empathy. You might also use Spot to declare that your character spots something you can use to your advantage in a situation, such as a convenient Escape Route when you’re trying to get out of a building or a Subtle Weakness in the enemy’s line of defense. For example, if you’re in a barroom brawl you could make a Spot roll to say that you spot a puddle on the floor, right next to your opponent’s feet that could cause him to slip.

  Defend: You can use Spot to defend against any uses of Stealth to get the drop on you or ambush you, or to discover that you are being observed.

  Spot Feats

  Danger Sense. You have an almost preternatural capacity for detecting danger. Your Spot skill works unimpeded by conditions like total concealment, darkness, or other sensory impairments in situations where someone or something intends to harm you.

  Body Language Reader. You can use Spot in place of Empathy to learn the descriptors of a target through observation.

  Reactive Shot. You can use Spot instead of Marksman to make quick, reactive shots that don’t involve a lot of aiming. However, because you’re having a knee-jerk reaction, you’re not allowed to concretely identify your target before using this feat. So, for example, you might be able to shoot at someone you see moving in the bushes with this feat, but you won’t be able to tell if it’s friend or foe before you pull the trigger. Choose carefully!

  Stealth: Surmount/Get the Upper Hand/Defend

  The Stealth skill allows you to avoid detection, both when hiding in place and trying to move about unseen. It pairs well with the Burglary skill.

  Surmount: You can use Stealth to get past any situation that primarily depends on you not being seen. Sneaking past sentries and security, hiding from a pursuer, avoiding leaving
evidence as you pass through a place, and any other such uses all fall under the purview of Stealth.

  Get the Upper Hand: You’ll mainly use Stealth to create descriptors on yourself, setting yourself in an ideal position for an attack or ambush in a conflict. That way, you can be Well-Hidden when the guards pass by and take advantage of that or Hard to Pin Down if you’re fighting in the dark.

  Defend: You can use this to foil Spot attempts to pinpoint you or seek you out. You also use this to try to throw of the scent of an Investigate attempt from someone trying to track you.

  Stealth Feats

  Face in the Crowd. +2d to any Stealth roll to blend into a crowd. What a “crowd” means will depend on the environment—a train station requires more people to be crowded than a small bar.

  Vanish. Once per scene, you can vanish while in plain sight, using a smoke pellet or other mysterious technique—by spending a point of Vigor. This places the Vanished boost on you. While you’re vanished, no one can attack or get the upper hand on you until after they’ve succeeded at a surmount roll with Spot to figure out where you went (basically meaning they have to give up an exchange to try). This descriptor goes away as soon as you invoke it, or someone wins at that surmount roll.

  Elusive Target. Provided you’re in darkness or shadow, you can use Stealth to defend against Marksman attacks from enemies that are at least one zone away.

  Tinkering: Surmount/Get the Upper Hand

  Tinkering is the skill of working with machinery, for good or ill.

  It is used to maintain and repair aeroplanes and airships, as well as other steam-powered and aether-powered devices.

  This represents your general mechanical aptitude and training. It also includes your ability to manipulate the rigging and fittings of a craft to adjust its speed, trim, and altitude.

  Surmount: Tinkering allows you to build, break, or fix machinery, presuming you have the time and tools you need. Often, actions with Tinkering happen as one component of a more complex situation, making it a popular skill for challenges. For example, if you’re just fixing a broken door, neither success nor failure is interesting; you should just succeed and move on. Now, if you’re trying to get your steam car to start while a mischief of rat-kin is hunting you…

  Get the Upper Hand: You can use Tinkering to create descriptors representing a piece of machinery, pointing out useful descriptors or strengths you can use to your advantage (Armor-Plated, Rugged Construction) or a vulnerability for you to exploit (Flaw in the Cross-Beam, Hasty Work, Jury-Rigged).

  Getting the upper hand through Tinkering can also take the form of quick and dirty sabotage or jury-rigging on mechanical objects in the scene. For example, you might create a Makeshift Pulley to help you get to the platform above you, or throw something into the ballista that’s firing on you to give it a Jammed Pivoting Joint and make it harder to hit you.

  Attack: You probably won’t use Tinkering to attack in a conflict, unless the conflict is specifically about using machinery, like with siege weaponry. GMs and players, talk over the likelihood of this happening in your game if you have someone who is really interested in taking this skill. Usually, weapons you craft are likely to be used with other skills to attack—a guy who makes a sword still needs Melee to wield it well!

  Defend: As with attacking, Tinkering doesn’t defend, unless you are somehow using it as the skill to control a piece of machinery that you block with.

  Tinkering Feats

  Always Making Useful Things. You don’t ever have to spend a point of Vigor to declare that you have the proper tools for a particular job using Tinkering, even in extreme situations, like being imprisoned and separated from all your stuff. This source of opposition is just off the table.

  Better than New! Whenever you get Four Successes or Five Successes on a surmount action to repair a piece of machinery, you can immediately give it a new situation descriptor (with a free invoke) reflecting the improvements you’ve made, instead of just a boost. If you roll Six Successes, you can immediately give it TWO new situation descriptors.

  Surgical Strikes. When using Tinkering in a conflict involving machinery, you can filter out unwanted targets from whole-zone attacks without having to divide up your roll (normally, you’d need to divide your roll between your targets).

  Crack Airman. +2d to Tinkering when dealing with the routine mechanical tasks related to keeping an airship flying.

  Inventor. Once per session, you can spend a point of Vigor to introduce a useful mechanical contraption that is bulky, noisy, and connected to a limited or otherwise restrictive power supply. Define the invention as a descriptor that includes its limitations: for example, Clanking Steam-Powered Mecha. If the GM allows, you can add additional elements to your invention, making it a true extra.

  Powered by Steam!

  Characters with knowledge of Tinkering will be at least somewhat familiar with the workings and nomenclature of steam power. A strong and sturdy boiler contains liquid, usually water, supplied from a tank via a pump called an injector. The water is heated by a motor unit or firebox, which burns coal, wood, or oil delivered by hand or mechanical stoker from a storage bunker. This process creates steam which typically drives a set of pistons, which in turn moves a crankshaft and flywheel, which—when connected via mechanical linkages such as gears, cogs, and reciprocating rods—operates various sorts of machinery. The steam may be vented in billowing plumes, or recovered via condensers that siphon liquid back to the water tank.

  Such complicated machinery will inevitably develop mechanical problems. Represent these as descriptors the GM can compel when the characters operate steam-powered equipment. GMs, you can create these descriptors to add mechanical complications to the ongoing action—for example, as might happen if the Airship Sweet Chariot was pursued by sky pirates or if a PC aeroplane pilot pushed her craft to the limit and succeeded, but at a cost. If you want to randomly generate a mechanical problem descriptor, roll a die and pick from the following table:

  1: Boiler Pressure Low

  2: Leaky Valve Fittings

  3: Firebox Not Drawing

  4: Loose Gears

  5: Injector Pump Malfunction

  6: Pressure Build-Up

  The consequences of mechanical failure may include work stoppage, damage to the equipment, and injury to the operator; the unexpected venting of super-heated steam can scald the unwary in horrific ways. Sometimes a tinkerer must expose him or herself to such venting by operating a bypass valve or activating an emergency damper to relieve pressure in the system. A pressure build-up left unabated can cause a massive explosion that will destroy the boiler, wreak havoc on the surroundings, and kill or injure all those nearby.

  Airships, Aeroplanes, and Other Vehicles

  Airships consist of hulls or gondolas borne aloft by large silk-and-rubber gas-bags, thrust by steam-driven propellers, and steered by the manipulation of sails, rudders, and wings. The hazards of aerial travel adds to its charm: bad weather, mountainous terrain, mechanical difficulties, and—particularly along the wilder frontiers of civilized society—air pirates.

  Aeroplanes are lightweight mechanical contrivances achieving sustained flight by some combination of wing-created lift and steam (or aether)-powered propulsion. They are for local travel only, lacking the endurance for extended trips—though a small aeroplane might conceivably barnstorm across the country, landing in fields and sheltering in barns. However, this won’t be much faster, if at all, than floating in luxurious elegance aboard an airship, and there is a real possibility of the firebox running out of fuel: a disastrous event, as it replenishes the boiler driving the airscrews or ornithopter wings or both.

  Most airships carry at least one or two small aeroplanes for passenger excursions, cargo loading, and reconnoitering. Among the adventurous it is considered a sporting pastime to depart an airship by means of parachute to be retrieved by aeroplane.

  Additionally, clanking steam-powered mechanical walkers called mechs are com
mon in the nations of Nippon, and China. They are slow and affected by adverse terrain, but are more robust than delicate aerial machinery. Similarly, railroads do exist, but are mostly used for moving cargo and the less well-off.

  A literal underground railroad exists in the Steamfunkateers universe. It is, at present, used to transport the President of the US and important members of the government quickly and covertly across the length and breadth of the country.

  Will: Surmount/Get the Upper Hand/Defend

  The Will skill represents your character’s general level of mental fortitude, the same way that Physique represents your physical fortitude.

  Surmount: You can use Will to pit yourself against obstacles that require mental effort. Puzzles and riddles can fall under this category, as well as any mentally absorbing task, like deciphering a code. Use Will when it’s only a matter of time before you surmount the mental challenge, and Scholarship if it takes something more than brute mental force to get past it. Many of the obstacles that you go up against with Will might be made part of challenges, to reflect the effort involved.

  Contests of Will might reflect particularly challenging games—like chess or Ayo—or competing in a hard set of exams. In the world of Steamfunkateers, where magic and psychic abilities are fairly common, contests of Will are popular occurrences.

  Get the Upper Hand: You can use Will to place descriptors on yourself, representing a state of deep concentration or focus.

  Attack: Will is only used to attack if a character possesses psychic abilities. In that case, Will is used as a feat or an extra.

  Defend: Will is the main skill you use to defend against mental attacks from Provoke, representing your control over your reactions.

  Will Feats

  Strength from Determination. Use Will instead of Physique on any surmount checks representing feats of strength.