Iron Tsar is the sixth installment of the
Series Pitch Of The Month collection.
Nutshell: Engineers battle zombies in the Imperial Court of an alternate-universe magical Russia. It is 1920 and the Motherland is besieged by the undead armies from the west. You are a машинамастера — a machine wizard. Your engineering group must come up with archanotech devices to save Russia from the undead hordes while maneuvering through an increasingly treacherous political landscape, keeping secrets from rival groups, avoiding and engaging in sabotage, and somehow getting Rasputin's blessing to present your finished magical machine of war to the Imperial Court.
Characters: Have the players decide who their patron is, the nature of their project(s), things that might go wrong, and what obstacles they need to overcome to complete their project. Discuss what terrible things may happen if the project is not a failure. The characters all share a laboratory or workspace and the same patron. Despite conflicting interests, they are nominally working on the same war project:
- abomination that was not meant to be
- armchair soldier
- conscripted mechanic
- conscripted university professor
- convict test pilot
- cultist of the old dark gods
- discarded (failed?) experiment
- foreign (undead?) infiltrator
- hungry-eyed, low-ranking aristocratic officer
- impoverished noble seeking a way to bring her family back to power
- intelligent (evil?) monkey
- military witch
- necromancer (not a reanimator!)
- psychic noblewoman
- reanimator (not a necromancer!)
- revolutionary sympathizer
- rural mystic seeking political power
- scheming elder scientist clinging to power
- secret anarchist
- self-taught tinkerer
- shell-shocked soldier
- spy for a noble faction
- spy for another university
- veteran of the front lines
- visionary engineer out to change the world
- wide-eyed conscripted physics student
- young scientist with something to prove
Setting: Snow falls over St. Petersburg or, as it has been known for the last six years, Petrograd. In the distance you can hear the big guns, but the war with the Germans has not touched the capital yet. The center of Russian art and culture continues what the French used to call
La Belle Époque (when there was still a France). For six long years, the Great War has ground onwards, with ever more unconventional weapons being used. In the west, the Germans have stalled in protracted trench warfare against the might of British wizardry and the new tanks, and have turned their undead armies to the east. Though outmatched by the magic of the Imperial Starets led by Rasputin, every soldier that falls adds to their ranks. They now control Ida-Viru County and push towards the city. Desperate, and desperate not to seem so, the Tsar has reached out to any who might be able to save the Motherland.
Themes: The world is changing fast and nobody is willing to see it, and it will all end badly. Terrible things are contemplated for good reasons, and evil men serve the greater good. War presses ever inwards, but everyday life goes on, and the closer the war comes, the more fervently burn the fires of decadent intrigue.
- Hubris
- Science vs. Magic
- War
- Inevitability
- Paranoia (both personal and national)
- The True Cost of Serving “the Greater Good”
- Playing at Politics: Fiddling while Rome Burns
- The Death of Innocence and the Passing of an Age
- Man’s Inhumanity to Man, and the Horror of Weapon Design
- The Collective vs. the Individual
- Fear
- The Russian Soul
- Going Too Far
- Trust
- Too Much Truth
- Breaking Free
This message was last edited by the user at 14:56, Tue 12 Aug 2014.