Adventure seed ideas

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Desperation bump.

I'll help think of some, OP. In the meantime, while I am brainstorming with what little there is to go on, why don't you post some more details or maps or something?

>>51547408
An enigmatic and wealthy banker, rumor has it, absconded with all his bank’s funds. Not only that, but preliminary investigations of his house by the national police have only turned up with gargantuan tread marks in the mud and an invoice for an obscene amount of machinery. Scribbled on the invoice, in hasty handwriting, is the following sentence:
“You can have the gold back when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.”
The Natpol have set a bounty on this banker’s head. Though whispers abound that the treasures he stole are worth far more than even the amount the Natpol are willing to pay…
In other, possibly related, news: A massive mobile fortress has been terrorizing the [Middle of Nowhere] Township area in the country of [Insert Country name here]. Coincidence? I think not!

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>>51547408
Thanks, fellow fa/tg/uy.

Here is a link to an archived map and some setting details of a previous thread that died before I got any replies:

>>51495931

thinking more in terms of the leadup to WW1, which it sounds sorta like where you are.

-One of the biggest things that changed about how militaries were run at the time was just how goddamn big they were compared to everything that came before. There was a letter by some dude living in a village the Austro-Hungarian army passed through in the opening days of the war, talking about how it took multiple days of marching for the whole thing to pass. If you're doing the standard fantasy race-segregated countries, some of them will be getting very worried about whether they'll have the raw numbers required to fight off any of their neighbors if/when a conflict actually starts. Example plothook: An Elven mad scientist has been doing something to try and come up with the several million troops high command thinks they need to muster by the time war breaks out, and now he's gone rogue/rival nation wants him stopped/the experiments have escaped into a neighboring country

>>51547816
This is pretty cool, thanks. The massive mobile fortress could be a Leviathan-Class Warcrawler disused or repurposed in the decade since the last war ("The Great Divide"). Maybe an old Republican vessel repurposed for a great fee by Royalist insurrectionists.

As for what the banker stole, banking funds are good but maybe with a twist; he's only done it to fund the war machine to protect something (and himself) of vastly GREATER value, which he intends on selling to the highest-bidding foreign national. Maybe a book of cypher decryption pages that holds the key to reading important military, infrastructural, clandestine and industrial secrets which he had the good fortune of being able to swipe during his transactions with key members of the Brass Republic.

Also would put an interesting twist in things; he's not only pursuing a buyer in foreign sovereignties, and being pursued by the Republic (for trade secrets) and the Bank's bounty hunters (for the money), but the Republic can't even openly admit the real reason they're after him due to the sensitive nature of the secret cargo he carries.

Opens up lots of political tensions too, if the Republic is following him onto foreign soil; the PC's could be hired either by the bank, the Republic, or even contacted by the Banker himself desperate for help or offering a cut of the sale should they help him evade both parties long enough to complete the transaction.

>>51547870
-Warships were getting both incredibly important and ludicrously expensive, made worse by the fact that they'd frequently be obsolete by the time they rolled out the yard. A lot of countries nearly bankrupted themselves trying to keep up in this arms race, the Ottoman Empire and Russia most notably; the latter spending so much on war materials was arguably one of the main reasons the Bolsheviks were so successful.

-This is also the time period were flight is really coming into its own. on Earth, fighter planes didn't start showing up till a few months into the war, but there's no reason that needs to be true for your campaign. Dirigibles and hot air balloons were pretty well understood, and likely will have fewer problems in a magitech based world.

Can easily combine those two for campaign seeds like:
-Sky pirates, privateers and the like. You may end up on a quest to deal with a particular pirate ship that turns out to have support from one of the Great Powers for whatever purpose.
-The party' been hired to steal the plans for a rival nation's new Airship, and possibly sabotage the factory somehow

>>51547870
Good food for thought. That is definitely one of the over-arching changes; transportation is being revolutionized by the first railways and the slowly-increasing practicality of air travel, but particularly large-scale drafting and the significance of the first massive scale standing armies (due to the advancements of supply line strategies) is huge. Particularly against sovereign nations that are ultimately still subject to feudal hierarchies or have in some way fallen to balkanization from past conflicts or even simple infighting.

Cool plot hook with the Elven scientist, he would go great as an "ace up the sleeve, gone traitor" for somewhere like Thassar; desperate to bolster the 'if the war starts, we'll be losing' side of the Coalition and then afterwards to expand their own territory once their neighbors are weakened and spread thin in victory.
Might be interesting seeing multiple allied countries trying to bring him back, too, but with Thassar sabotaging their efforts as secretly as possible to avoid letting others gain advantage of their own carefully cultivated trump card.

>>51548087
Fantastic stuff, thanks.

>Warships incredibly important but ludicrously expensive/easily obsoleted
Very good point, and interesting. In my mind the Republic has become an economic powerhouse due to a successful General taking the reigns and consolidating power/centralizing the economy during the last war. They would most likely be the most capable producer of such engines, but how long can a war-based economy feasibly function and produce such engines in the run-up to a war during tenuous peace? Maybe that's part of the narrative, that the economy is beginning to fail and the 'war machine' is beginning to fray around the edges, allowing the numerically superior opposition a chance for victory if they play their cards right.
Currently at about a decade after an armistice went into effect, but nationalism and paranoia about a new war are in full effect.

>Flight
Very cool, I like it. There are also floating islands in this world, it might be cool to combine the two and have zeppelin-carried scout outposts and long-term forward observers planted and moved from island to island where strategically viable.

>Sky pirates, privateers and the like. You may end up on a quest to deal with a particular pirate ship that turns out to have support from one of the Great Powers for whatever purpose.
>The party' been hired to steal the plans for a rival nation's new Airship, and possibly sabotage the factory somehow

Both awesome. I'm thinking sky pirates actually having a loose moral code and society of their own, possibly moored out of one of the floating sky islands, would be neat (and an interesting source of black market trade, as well as a place for turncoats to find shelter out of reach of the different polities). Cloud Lords? Maybe with their own form of admission, where you have to steal a stone from the Heavenly Tower in the Republic and bring it back to become 'vested'. Also provides a difference between a real "sky pirate" and simply being a freebooter.

>>51548400
Also like the idea of being hired to steal plans for a massive Kraken-Class Cloudnaught, an advanced and strategically vital warship that could turn the tide of aerial superiority if it's not either replicated or prevented from being manufactured (i.e. blow up the factory, sabotage the most vital flow of machinery/resources it's reliant on, whatever).

Last bump before I let the thread fade into obscurity; thanks for the advice and ideas from the anons who contributed upthread.

>>51549593
OP, read the Leviathan trilogy. It's alt WWI with genetic engineering and mecha.

>>51549855
This. It's quite good on its own merits and perfect for the type of campaign world you seem to be working on developing.

>>51549855
>>51549991
OP here, I actually read the first of the Leviathan books although I don't remember much about it beyond the neat war platforms and the biological engineering.

I've been thinking of ways to potentially incorporate a similar means of "weaponizing" creatures in this setting (who doesn't love a giant living whale zeppelin, mimic lizards to send messages, etc.), although it would more than likely need to be a result of some kind of thaumaturgic tinkering/hybridization methodology, as opposed to even semi-legitimate 'traditional' science.

The resulting problem from 'magitech' creating both 'traditional' tech and 'biotech', of course, is why the difference in 'tech' branches if both stem from magic? Why would one nation develop more "traditional"-seeming technology through magic like tanks, war zeppelins, mechs etc. whatever and a different nation develop massive 'weaponized' biological war engines?

One possible explanation is that magic, despite its pervasiveness as a common force/concept, is mysterious and complex enough that effectively utilizing mystic forces for the development of these kinds of 'tech' advancements are fundamentally very specialized by the time they have reached the stage of industrialization.

That is, magic at its default is dangerous, mysterious, flexible but with great cost when used improperly or without caution. Further distilling magic into specific uses is in itself dangerous, but with enough tweaking and experimentation it can be narrowed down into utilitarian, reproducible effects within a given area of specialization.

So, broadly, magic is still magic but the more specialized and well-studied it becomes in certain areas, the more it becomes akin to traditional 'sciences' in that there are multiple overlapping specialties, perhaps well-understood on their own but only a very part of the massive, far-reaching assumptions underlying magic's very nature.

>>51550373
tl;dr Magic, when sufficiently specialized, is akin to more traditional sciences.

This means that one nation with a certain specific background of thaumaturgy could potentially have a much different series of "advancements" from magic than another nation with a different background. E.g. "we've got massive iron airship war carriers, powered by enslaved Mystics shoved in soul harvester tubes," vs. "we've got clouds of bats whose saliva heals the wounds on our whale-ships," vs. "we've basically just got big man-shaped robots powered by aetheric diffusers, with ridiculously big swords and a cannon or two".

This would also lend weight to the idea of different polities jealously guarding their Warlocks and Witches (and whatever they develop), much like scientists in the largest 20th century conflicts. It becomes not just a question of guarding those who can use the knowledge effectively, but keeping the knowledge itself from the eyes and ears of those who could spread it or use it against you.

Even basic infrastructural or supply line inventions like this would be hugely impactful over the long-term, and this isn't even including economic considerations.

Last selfish bump.

Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is a book that explores british magic during the napoleonic era, if you're interested in the topic.