The Chinese CoalPunk Revolution

June 12, 2009 5 comments

The theme of this month’s RPG Blog Carnival is Steampunk and Klokworks. When I think of steampunk, I think of three things: the industrial revolution, people working under oppressive conditions, and anachronistic technology. It’s almost always set in Victorian England, but I don’t feel that it has to be. That’s why I’m be presenting three alternate steampunk settings.

The setting is China, in the near future. Under skies polluted by coal fires, workers toil under increasingly harsh conditions in mines to meet increasing energy needs and in factories making goods for American consumers. Wages are low, and taxes are high. Jobs are scarce and many people live on the streets and starve to death. The government increasingly bows to the will of Chinese businessmen, who in turn bow to the desires of American corporate interests. In the spirit of their ancestors, however, a small group has secretly revived the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists to challenge the evil corporate overlords.

The player characters are Harmonious Fists, using martial arts, qi-manifested superpowers, and coal-powered analog battle armor and other antiquated low-tech devices. They fight to take down the Capitalist oppressors and put the power back into the hands of the People! The corporations have superior technology, however, as well a greater numbers.

Equal parts X-Men and the Boxer Rebellion, in what’s really more of a cyberpunk world, but the tech the player characters will have to work with is more long the lines of what Tony Stark had to work with in the Afghanistan caves in the Iron Man movie. The Harmonious Fist, with steampunk-level technology and wicked kung fu, do battle with megacorps using cyberpunk technology.

Previously:

The Tinker-King of Klockworld
Street urchins from Victorian London are swept into a steampunk fantasy-land!

Gears of the Golden Golem
A Biblical era clockwork mecha showdown between the Egyptians’ False Idol and the Israelites’ Golems!