so as to avoid the debate from yesterday should this be more horror or adventure themed? should there be mobile mechanical things or just the great machine?

How about this. There are corridoors and spare part containers. The spare parts are metals stronger then anything man has produced to this point. Food supplies are important. Keep track of funds and as your players get more money they can go deeper. Keep track of cash. Finances can be fun.

>>4818437
Well, with the basic synopsis of the setting out of the way, here's what your help in yesterday's thread has resulted in.

We have the issue of whether the Machine runs smoothly on its own, without as much of a hickup and no maintenance being required, or if it has some sort of caretakers repairing it. The original idea was a mix of the two, as it would look brand new and work flawlessly, yet still have clockwork Engineers working on it and attacking anyone getting close to vital parts of the Machine. The problem with the Engineers is that they make the Machine seem less alien and more "ROBOTS ROBOTS ROBOTS" lowbrow sci-fi. The problem with not having them around, however, is that the players will have very few encounters with things other than Delvers.

So, the first question becomes should the Machine have some sort of artificial life or should it appear to be completely abandoned? At the moment, I'm leaning toward the latter, with maybe a few hints of things prowling the depths of the Machine, who might or might not really exist.

>>4818494
You can sell parts too. Get science to research them etc..

>>4818494

cash is only good for exchanging for supplies? seriously, what good is money going to do you in such a place? you don't see people taking briefcases of cash with them to explore the jungle?

>>4818513
Yes. But first you have to finance the trip. Hire people to carry food. Or are you rich to begin with? Or are short expeditions alright?

>>4818513
I meant they make return trips whenever they find something significant. Make money from the finding. Use money to get more supplies and people to go deeper.

The thought of tribal societies having found their way into this subterranean setting was raised in the previous thread. Specifically, a 7 foot tall albino neo-Aztec wielding electro-spear. Anyway, what if we play around with the idea that it isn't just the surface worlders going down there but also the thought that there have been people and entire civilisations that have existed at one point or another with and around the machine?

Perhaps the stories of Agharti and the Deros aren't nearly as far fetched as we originally thought?

>>4818579

I'm not sure I like the idea of people living down there. People having been down there, scribbling things on the walls in various languages, and all that is awesome though, just that they haven't survived... and there's no sign of their remains

>>4818471

I don't think it's worth bracketing the whole thing. There's great opportunities for both angles, and ultimately it would be how you play the system.

If there are more "servants" of the Machine, and they are weaker, then a two-fisted tommy gun-wielding adventure party would have a great pulpy time.

If the Machine seems to run by itself, and the threats are less... physical then it could be great horror stuff.

I just don't think its worth shoving this great idea into one hole.

Essentially, that's it. Most Delvers hope to strike it rich, whether it's by finding a part of the Machine that can be analyzed and maybe even reverse-engineered, finding some kind of blueprint or simply bringing back some part of it to be examined. To do that, they must go deep. In order to go deep, they need money. The first couple of expeditions fund the big one they're betting everything on.

Of course, there are those who don't do it for the money. Whether its adventure, scientific curiosity or even religious beliefs, there are those who simply want to explore the Machine without any kind of financial gain.

Unfortunately, there's always the danger of someone stripping the Machine of the wrong component, breaking what might be the only thing keeping us alive. As such, rules are strict on what may be taken to the surface. There have already been several incidents with people trying to shut the Machine down just to see what happens, and most of the world's nations have no desire to find that out.

I think what needs to be decided is whether we will choose a theme for the encounters, and fluff the Machine to support them, or fluff the Machine and see if there are any sensible encounters.

>>4818579

Or indeed, the tales of K’n-yan.

>>4818623

At least one rogue nation is actively trying to find an 'off' switch for the Great Machine. The idea is to hold the world hostage.

>>4818622
That was kind of my intention with the setting. It's sort of adventure/horror/whatever the fuck I want it to be. All I know is that I don't want the Machine to be some kind of rollercoaster ride. It might be the answer to every philosophical question ever asked, it might be the source of life on Earth and it might just be responsible for the continents shifting. We just don't know how or why it works, who built it or what it's for, which is kind of the entire point.

The only reason the Engineers were there in the first place was essentially because halfway through the idea I realized two things, one in terms of game mechanics and one in terms of the setting.

1. The players will eventually want conflict. A giant empty machine might make for a good movie or novel, but games need obstacles.

2. If the expeditions are funded by bringing artifacts to the surface, the Machine would need some way to repair the damage Delvers would irrevocably cause. Sure, you could tear off that fancy looking power cell and hope it didn't do anything important, but unless the Machine has some way of repairing the damage you caused, odds are eventually someone will break something important.

Alright, how about this? There was an idea I found ridiculously awesome in the last thread, which is the best version of the Engineers I have seen yet.

They were created to tend to the Machine. They are fairly simple in that it's all they do. They literally can't do anything but make sure the Machine runs smoothly. Whoever built the Machine obviously never expected people to get into it. Consequently, the Engineers are completely unable to recognize people as people. All they see is something that shouldn't be in the Machine, and their job is to get rid of it and if possible, make it fit where it's supposed to be.

I've also thought about making the Engineers non-humanoid, to get away from "OMFG ROBOTS SO COOL!" They simply are what they need to be in various parts of the Machine. In one part they might simply be mechanical arms who keep things out of the gears. In other places, they might be moving mechanical constructs with welding torches for arms. In the depths of the Machine, they might be even stranger.

I kind of like the ambiguity of having these unpredictable things that just might kill you at the drop of a hat, who you still really shouldn't kill. Sure, it would be a lot safer for the Delvers if they simply destroyed the Engineers and were done with it, but do we really want to face the consequences when the Machine decides to break down?

How about this for a twist?!
It's broken already. been broken for millions of years.
Players just don't know that

>>4818736
That's actually a possibility I had in mind. The ultimate anti-climax. Another one I'm fond of is that the Machine was meant to be shut down from the very beginning. It's already served its purpose and is basically just a light bulb lighting up an abandoned shed.

I'm still not sure if I want to know what it does myself, though. Unless the players decide to do something drastic and wreck shit up, it really doesn't have to have a purpose other than that it fulfills by simply existing.

>>4818600

Well, whether or not they're still 'people' after all this time down there can be debatable. You could always run it like this one Psi-Judge Anderson story where she actually finds the underground city of Agharti and it's been abandoned for centuries at the least. I'd go into further detail, but I'd just recommend reading it.

The story itself was called Shamballa.

>>4818858
The problem with people is that people need sustenance. I really don't like the idea of the Machine being full of organic life capable of sustaining a human being. I do like the thought of other civilizations having made their way down there, maybe leaving some kind of message behind, but people actually surviving inside the Machine for any period of time kind of clashes with me. I think I prefer the whole "we're not really supposed to go down there" angle.

As you walk along the corridor, you see an earthenware pot beside some turning gears, filled with soil. Some long-rotten remains of some sort of plant lay around it. Worthless. You move on.

>The problem with people is that people need sustenance.

Obviously, they eat the Delvers. They are limited to small tribes of course. They try to pick off stragglers or steal supplies from the camp when everyone is sleeping. If the expedition is small enough they try to ambush.

>>4818735

Look at machines used in an assembly line for automobiles. The Caretaker people should follow a similar vein. Built for a purpose, utterly machine-like. Maybe built onto a track so they can travel along their little predetermined paths

>>4818964

And where do they get water?

And, that presumes there's a steady amount of delvers going into the Machine. Up until now, I'm betting there really hasn't been a steady stream of delvers... especially not enough that a number can die to the machine itself, get lost, AND get cannibalized without us going... "Yeah. We're not sending anyone else in..."

>And where do they get water?

Water is bound to condense on certain parts of the machine, in fact you could incorporate the choice between replenishing your water just a tiny bit, and being less likely to get dismembered by an Engineer due to proximity to functional components.

I guess it goes without saying I support the idea of Engineers. There shouldn't be that have been specifically designed to kill intruders, just a series of specialised upkeep automatons, almost all of which are coincidentally deadly to humans. If you want to try and remedy some of the problems with having personified horrors, you could have stuff like they are flawlessly integrated into the machine, IE they never have to wait for a gap in the spinning cog wheels they pass through, there is always one there at the exact moment they go past, they might actually make up the walls of some corridors, etc.

Also, if posters are looking for related material, see the novel "Blindsight" where this overall premise is done extremely well, even if Blindsight is shuffled about a hundred years forward, the machine they explore is still just as incomprehensible.

I think if you don't use the engineers idea you could go with other smaller animals which would have gone down millennia ago and adapted to the machine.

If not that then dormant engineers that only activate every so and so years or if a vital part has been breached/damaged, which could explain why civilizations had come in and been subsequently wiped out.

Kind of reminds me of Mirrodin.

I would greatly enjoy IRCing the shit out of these ideas.

>>4819196
Actually something like Mirrodin might work, where it has guardians, but they are removed from the machine until it starts breaking.

I am the anon who first put for the cancer idea. I was in a hurry and didn't intend for it to be magic. I was thinking more along the lines of Safeguard.

>>4819196
I see an underlying idea that is absolutely worth having: IE Engineers are only in an incredibly low activity state most of the time, but then at certain times they would all awake in a flurry of activity. These times are NOT regular, but can be predicted, IE following on the trope of having ancient diagrams from prior delvers, you could have one that requires a ton of decoding, and then by the time the party's number cruncher works through it turns out to be a prediction of the next engineer wake up call for that section is a minute or two away, followed by a FFFFFFUUUUUU- section in which everyone is desperately trying to escape.

Timing would be individual to segments so you wouldn't neccessarily gain a lasting advantage from that. Civilisations could have sprung up in the sections that only recieve maintenance every ~100 years or something, minor settlements in the ~10 year sections, but many segments would have a wake up call roughly every 5 minutes.

>>4819262
I like the idea of a spring cleaning of sorts. This could also separate the adventurers from the exit because their route has been blocked by a surge of maintenance robots forcing them to chose to find another route or try to last out the repairs.

Was looking for things related to what I was thinking of for the engineers, this is about the closest I could think of off the top of my head. Anyone remember these guys from metal arms? I'm thinking like these but less humanoid and more densely packed machinery.

The things that made these guys horrifying in their source game was a) The fact that if they lay down, spooled out all their gears, and lay still, they were perfectly camoflaged in their mechanical setting
and
b) It wasn't like they just kept running through your bullets like a freight train, but their bodies were so freeform and full of movement that they utterly soaked up all the knockback, IE you shoot it in the arm, it just spins its torso around without ever taking its eyes off you or slowing down, you shoot its legs, it falls forward and immediately readjusts its head so that its legs are now its arms and its arms are now its legs.

No engineers. No repair robots.

Just adventurers. In all kinds of flavour. Like insane, cannibals, wannabe vampire, hulk, paranoid, ghoul...

As for what is the loot... diamonds. Diamonds and other gems.

You see, the machine hasn't been there always... Someone crushed the inner earth together, and build the machine out of the iron core.

A lot of matter wasn't used and is just lying around the machine. The titanic forces used in the creation of the machine cause the unused matter to transform into diamonds, gems and other strange materials.

The idea of the Engineers being on a timer actually fits very well with a scenario I already had in mind.

After journeying through the alien Machine for days, encountering mechanisms they couldn't possibly begin to understand, the PCs come across what appears to be a fairly simple clock. Sure, it might not look like the ones they're used to, but it's definitely some kind of clock. But after inspecting it for a while, they realize it's counting down.

FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

The Machine should just be a machine. No robots running around.

It adds a desolate environment.

Watch The Sphere and you'll know what I'm talking about. Just ONE alien object. The rest is just human interaction, madness and betrayal.

>>4819507
The problem with this of course being that games generally need other kinds of obstacles. For example, there's really no reason for the players to turn on each other, and without the Machine itself presenting dangers, encounters will be limited to other Delvers, which I expect can get old after a while. As I said before, I like the concept of the Machine virtually being abandoned, but some things work better in literature than they do in interactive games.

In the deepest, strangest parts of the machine, things start to becomea little... odd. Gravity becomes weaker and weaker and is somehow impossibly non-existent in the very deepest areas. Despite the heat of the place generally increasing the further you go down, the central areas are extra-ordinarily freezing cold. The deep engineers are far more alien and menacing, damaging intruders with impossibly focused bright lights and arcs of lightning. And the walls become increasingly curious - from gears to what some scientists are hypothesizing are a kind of crcuit board - getting strager still the deeper you go. Strager still, is that the half maddened delvers who did make it this deep, limbs lost to frostbite from the rivers of liquid nitrogen and worse - speak of a strange noise, like the buzzing of insects combined with hints of some strange, sibilant language that they did not recognize, let alone recreate on the surface. Who knows what truths lurk at the core?

How about the different types of gasses and hydrolic fluids that vaporize into the air have a maddening effect on delvers who stay in too long. Different parts of the machine could have different liquids and therefore different effects, from something as harmless as the equivalent of a small high to an overdose of bad meth.

>>4819564
The Machine works on non-euclidian levels.

Prolonged exposure to certain radiating parts will cause mutation.

Time to pull out the Call of Cthulhu/Warhammer Roleplay/Dark Heresy random tables.

>>4819576
See, this is getting into the spirit!

>>4819628
I'm half asian. What are my stats?

I guess I'll mention that in Blindsight, the endgame is set in motion when in a desperate attempt to finally take some of the devices automatons captive, multiple nuclear strikes are ordered on its surface, before sending in heavily armoured troops with netguns. Even this fails, they eventually suck out all the loose contents of a section, and have to strain out whats left of the "engineers" from the people. And then after all that, the engineers only remain in their custody until the lab tech concludes that the automatons are actually researching THEM and tries to kill them, only to have the machine immediately grow and fire a railgun that knocks them out of their prison. It wasn't that the machine could actually aim, but rather its intelligence was such that it could predict, with flawless accuracy, where the protagonists ship would be when it would be neccessary to fire at it. It took it 3 hours to construct the railgun, which was completely immovable.

>>4819576
GODDAMNIT NO WORKER ROBOTS IT WEAKENS THE HORROR.

Use mutants, ghouls, zombies, maniacs and cannibals. Much better.

>>4819659
: /

>>4819507
I support this more. There could be a sort of cult that believes the machine to be their saviour and is dedicated to protecting it.

Cliched, yes, but it fulfills both the need for combat and the whole lack of ROBOTS.

Unless you truly made these Engineer things eerie and horrific-like.

Alternative, people dream about the machine Cthulhu-style.

They gain knowledge about cybernetics far beyond the current techlevel, and transform themselves into Techpriest/Blame! like cyborg entities.

>>4819576
It's like I'm really reading Roadside Picnic!

One question- what kind of machine exactly, is this? Steampunk? Futuristic? 'Magical'(wasn't it HG Wells who said that?), basically meaning more or less plain or defying classification?

Read through the previous thread, and I'm getting interesting Phyrexia/Autocthon vibes from this. Very cool.

>>4819761
It simply defies explanation. Parts of it are cogs, pistons and steam engines. Others are essentially Tesla coils buzzing with electric power. Far more are even stranger.

As for whether it's magic, science or SCIENCE, it's anyone's guess.

>>4819721
This works. Keeps the Machine desolate and alone. Gives the PC's things to shoot.

But there's one thing I don't get. How would a setting in which you fight other explorers and explorers gone mad be boring? Fighting intelligent humans are the most interesting fights. Fuck fighting monsters.

>>4819730

Why don't we make Roadside Picnic setting instead of Machine...

>>4819806
It's mostly because eventually things will devolve to "HERPADERP everyone wants to kill you".

There wouldn't be all that many Delvers to begin with. Assuming at least one encounter per session, we'd be looking at the PCs shooting down a team of other Delvers every five to six hours.

Other Delvers would become less interesting and more stand-ins for goblins and shit. If I'm gonna have traditional encounters, I think I prefer the Engineers.

Which I've decided not to make robots in the traditional sense, but rather intelligent tools, like robots today. A sentient welding torch on rails out to get you should work just as well as a humanoid.

why not also make it such that many of the parts of the machine, if removed from the Machine and brought back to the surface, will not work for some reason?

that would encourage some delvers, i'm sure, to give up on ever going back, if they found something really nifty they could only use below. and they'd defend their turf and their artifacts zealously. more encounters!

Guys, you're thinkg about combat...but what about the consequences of having guns blazing inside the machine?

>>4819813
Already happened, bro.

>>4819730
HAPPINESS FOR EVERYONE!

>>4819914
Elaborate.


Also another interesting obstacle could be the machine itself. Stuff like huge rooms with centrifuges you need to avoid or electricity/magnetism running through them.

>>4819914
Cthulhian-atmosphere-fag here.

I prefer the concept of an inconceivable machine that is indestructible/can nano-selfrepair really fast.

It adds to the alien atmosphere, removes the need for repair robots and gives for weird combat manoeuvres.

They're shooting at you? Hide underneath a machine... roll a couple flex saves to avoid getting GEAR'D into red paste.

Make the machine's components operate autonomously, to the level that even an individual gear will continue spinning when removed from a machine. These things could be valued as infinite batteries and stuff.

>>4819945
If I can elaborate of the poster above me with the nano-thing... you can remove parts if you gift the machine with raw materials.

Basically, you kill someone, take a gear out of a machine, leave the body near the machine, nanogoo eats the body and creates a new gear.

Well, if the machine is a very important part of this planet, I wouldn't want to damage it. So I wouldn't carry grenades and guns down there, but maybe knifes, batons, tasers...

>>4819945
But the people who use them for a long time always seem on edge, the things sometimes tick so loud they wake up even when you're in a different room, sometimes you have nightmares about being lost in a huge maze of machinery, many consider it bad luck to take anything from the machine.

>>4819958
Ehhh.....I dunno. 'nanogoo' sound a little out of place in a machine that's described as mainly clockwork/steampunk.

>>4819961
Or you put too much machine-parts together and when you wake up next morning your house is 12 miles underground and reintergrated with the machine.

Can we sum up some things first before we start on a new subject?

I really want to see the "enemy" part finished up. I like the idea of just mutated explorers and explorers from enemy countries/companies.

Keeps the setting new, alien, cold and solitary.

Violent environments are awesome too. Evil dreams are great too.

>>4819973
Why? Metal is metal. The idea of a giant clockwork machine that turns to liquid when doing something is awesome and alien.

>>4819961
And anytime an entire mechanism/submachine is removed, it develops a propensity to backfire in the strangest ways and times, burning down buildings of people who own them or electrocuting them.

Such stories are usually regarded as anecdote or superstition by the majority of people, however, and the demand for these miracle machines is growing rapidly.

>>4819986
I dunno. It just doesn't fit with the whole thing, somehow. Maybe it's just me.

Engineers, when removed from the Machine, do not actually stop working - they merely go dormant. If they are exposed to broken machinery, or if machinery is 'broken' nearby, they will immediately spring into action and try to 'fix' it. This occasionally results in carnage when an Engineer appears to be lacking the necessary parts for repairs and sets about either dismantling other nearby things (superstructures of buildings, for example) or even PEOPLE in search of some elusive component.

Items that Engineers have 'repaired' always develop the same aesthetic as the machinery: analog not digital, and operating in accordance to arcane principles. They are not self-powered, but can be powered by hooking them up to a drive-shaft or something. They generally manage to fulfil their earlier function, but in strange ways (a broken flintlock might be repaired by replacing the powder-pan with a steam-compression chamber, for example).

Some of these repaired items, however, retain no semblance of their original purpose and do something else entirely. Attempts to expose an Engineer to a nuclear power station in the hopes of having it create a kind of analog perpetual-motion machine resulted in it breaching the core and having the reactor go critical.

This was in Chernobyl. People in the area suffering from fallout reported seeing bizarre mutations and anomalies, including the cogroach, filament grass, and people developing literal glass eyes.

Engineers have no affinity for digital or chemical technology, and therefore do not repair watches, computers, or batteries.

Nanogoo sound really Jason X to me.

perpetual motion machine

maintenance is done by automated stopgears/switching out of interchangable parts/redundancy

spare part "forge" producing just enough spares closer to the center

large transportation tracks = easy movement once you find them?

insects. lots of insects. the buzzing isnt from the machines.

center of the earth = every direction is up = inner sphere is anti-grav

also, portals.

>>4819998
Engineers are boring, simple, overdone.

If I wanted a metal world with robot workers, I'd play Morrodin in 4e.

The Chtulhu-fag's idea is better. More distinct.

O.k. Get call of Cthulu. Look at price list for everything.
Armor can be made from scrounger material. Think dwarf armor from morrowind

I wouldn't use the engineer idea personally. Also what system should I use to run this I was thinking Spirit of the Century but what do you guys think?

with the engineers, there could be like tracks in the ceiling that the engineers use for traveling, with panels in walls that open up so they have pretty much free roam of the facilities

>>4820017
I just really don't like the idea of the Machine being explicitly supernatural. Even less so if it is sinister. The Machine is a machine. Even if it is God layered upon itself in a complex pattern that seals it underground or if it is somehow sentient, the one thing it is not is malevolent. It might drive people insane, and it might kill you if you're not careful, but it doesn't do any of these intentionally. It's just doing what it was made to do.

>>4820080
Engineers that try to kill invaders sounds pretty malignant to me.

How about you make them docile, but being around them causes people to act all fucked up or.....something. Robot enemies are just poor.

On that note, how many other delvers are going to be here? Taking a note from that STALKER fellow, we could rip off the Duty and Freedom factions.

>>4820140
The Engineers wouldn't actively try to kill you. They simply don't understand the concept of something not being the Machine. And if something that's not the Machine ends up in the Machine, they get rid of it. So long as you stay away from vital parts of the Machine, they don't even care about you.

>>4819996

You're not alone. General consensus in the last thread was that NANITES as a device was a cop-out and overdone in other settings involving alien machines.

>>4820198
>NANITES as a device was a cop-out
NANOMACHINES

>>4820017
I say the Engineers work fine as long as they're not a bunch of cute little Wall-Es. I'm thinking more like a sort of mine cart with a single sightless welding arm. Harmless generally, but if you find yourself in a narrow tunnel, maybe you look down and see train tracks under your feet. There's a tremendous clatter behind you. You're blocking its workspace, and it's a *lot* faster than you...

>>4820242
Yes, but that wouldn't fulfill the need for combat. Which was the whole point of the engineers originally.

>>4820262
Sure it does.

You enter some section of the Machine, ready to pilfer a couple of artifacts to sell, when suddenly, the entire corridor starts shaking. A gigantic clawed arm slides in on rails and tries to grab you. Foreign substances could end up caught in the gears of the Machine after all...

OH NOES HER NANOMACHINES

>>4820306
Well, that might work.
Just try to make them mundane, horrific nightmare machines wouldn't really fit the bill of janitors.

>>4819998
I like the idea - except for the fact that an Engineer will repair ANYTHING. Problem is that anything mobile will come back to life as a mechanical creation that will ultimately go back down into the machine to be broken down for spare parts.

Anything else works just fine on gears and a power source. It just has strange side effects, as seen with the Chernobyl Zone.

I'd try to get more emphasis on "Alien tech"

not our typical alien tech, I don't want no space egg or saucers here or shit like that. But technology that feels like its not from this world.

Having gears that morph into any cog-size necessary, pistons that can expand or shrink depending on what it needs to do, pipes that can move wherever it needs to move.

Make it feel more alive than "well hurr durr it moves the rooms". Make the rooms themselves alive!

ITT the same mortal kombat between horrorfags and adventurefags from the last thread.

I'm the original Anon that wanted an entirely empty, sterile, static Machine of unimaginable age, size, and complexity that drove men mad just from being so incomprehensible.

However, I think we should settle this right here. Since there seems to be such a straight divide between the two camps, I suggest we cease efforts to come to a compromise between them and instead split the setting into two different version: the Lovecraftian House of [strike]Leaves[/strike]Gears, and the steampunk ADVENTURE! setting with clockwork robots, Victorian-stlye Journey-to-the-Center-of-the-Earth-style animals, natives, underground civilizations, etc.

So, enough with the arguing. Now we start fully fluffing out each version seperately.

The robot engineers as a rule don't have to completely destroy the desolate/mysterious feel (which i think is the big strength of this idea), its really how you play them. A giant robot busting out yelling "Intruder" is campy, but if the robot just stands there, pulling a lever... and nothing the PCs do can make him stop... creepier. Unfortunately, puts us back in the spot of needing good enemies to fight.

Scavenger clans, machine cultists/cyborgs, the rogue nation, hostile/insane Delvers, Machine-dwelling fauna, are all good suggestions that have been made so far. As long as they clearly originate from outside of the Machine, the Machine itself remains a mystery.

One point which was made was that a "Sphere"-like atmosphere (people turning on each other) would be impossible because the players wouldn't have any reason to turn on each other. Perhaps a game mechanic where something in the Machine affect how a player had to play their character, i.e. insanity ala Call of Cthulhu. Adds a new aspect to the Machine, but an even bigger new aspect to the game itself. Players start out cooperating as per the usual adventuring party, but it would gradually become a competitive game as people lost it and backstabbed each other. And if this a commonly known feature of the Machine, they know going in that it's only a matter of time before their companions, or themselves, fall prey.

I don't really seem to understand where the people who were against engineers seemed to get the impression that they would like like fucking Gundams or something, I thought it was made pretty clear from the start that we were referring to pretty much any part of the device that doesn't spend 100% of its time connected into the cogwork, and "fixes" parts of the machine not performing to specifications, as an engineer. IE Engineers could encompass anything from a little skittering truck working its way along a rail track, changing over gears as it goes with a grasping claw, to a bear sized rolling, limbed collection of spinning blades and files that scours any organic matter from a reaction chamber. I'd suggest larger still but delvers shouldn't be able to take down anything larger, and the niche for a larger method of killing people is easily taken up by the gears of pistons of the contiguous machine.

>>4820605

Machine insanity: I'd like to take a cue from The Mystery of Amigara Fault and make it so that people become strangely, obsessively drawn to finding their "proper place" in the Machine. Like there is a special place where they will fit in, as living cogs, serving the machine in the most perfect bliss they'll ever imagine. At first the lure is weak, faint, but as you delve deeper the call becomes stronger and more urgent.

Easiest idea. Make the robots be able to sense parts of the machine that have come loose. You try to take something they just take it and put it back. If you're between it and the part.... then it does the same thing except it pushed it's arm through your torso

>>4820597
Or we could find a midpoint between a setting for a book and campy shit.

For instance this is exactly what the engineers AREN'T.

The Engineers are intended to be equally as esoteric as the machinery itself, they just happen to cause problems for Delvers because Delvers are NOT what the machine is meant to have there. Where there is meant to be an empty space or a gear or something, there is now a 1.5m tall piece of gunk coated in fibres and scrap metal. This is an issue that must be dealt with. And for most Engineers, they won't even have this level of cognition, simply by virtue of being made out of razor sharp metal that is constantly in motion, they'll pretty much go straight through a delver and leave nothing but slurry on the otherside as they trundle over to refit a 3mm gear that is going to wear down to the point of loss of efficiency in the next 30 seconds.

>>4820639
This, more or less exactly. The engineers shouldn't be lumped in with the "Dinosaurs hidden in the core of the earth" crap.

Recommended reading: Whitechapel Gods.

Whitechapel (as in, the neighborhood in London) gets walled up and taken over by mysterious forces called Grandfather Clock and Mama Engine, buildings grow like steel trees, constant smoke, and cultists strive to complete a great work for the glory of Mama Engine.

Relevant because: clockwork gonorrhea. People get "the clacks" and start growing random gears, wires, and tubes all over their bodies, eventually getting integrated into the clockwork of the town as steampunk zombies. Why shouldn't some Delvers become machine cultists, or slowly start mutating into clockwork horrors?

A good way to keep the engineers mysterious would be to mix it up. If every time the players see a piece of the machine moving they think "FIGHT", then you're doing it wrong. Some can be fights, sure but the engineers are just as likely to ignore them. The pissed-off engineers would be one of the most difficult fights, and some might be impossible to fight-- the delvers should see one and not know what the fuck is going to happen next.

>>4820658
My point was that trying to compromise would just muddy both settings, resulting in "impurity". It's better to at least START with horror being horror and adventure being adventure, and then add elements of each in later as needed.

>>4820718
Fair enough.

>>4820705
Who wrote it?

I like the idea someone mentioned earlier: Certain engineers will try to repair ANYTHING, including any unfortunate Delvers that encounter them. It'd try to rip off your arms/organs and replace them with mechanical components. You'd occasionally find the end result of their efforts wondering the hallways, driven insane by their abrupt assimilation into the machine.

Furthermore, don't establish consistent behavior patterns for the Engineers. They're just like every other part of the machine - unpredictable, inconsistent, and alien. Each Engineer operates in a unique way. I also agree with everything that >>4820615 said. The Engineers are nothing more than mobile extensions of the machine.

>>4820718

You could easily combine horror and adventure. Just have it start out as an optimistic adventure where the expedition intends to find the secrets of the Machine for SCIENCE and PROGRESS and then slowly begin the descent into madness and incomprehensibility as it dawns on the Delvers that they will never learn anything meaningful about the Machine, nor will they be able to control it.

>>4820705
This supports the horror elements (Hell, these guys could have the intelligence of feral delvers but the camoflage of engineers) but at the same time breaks with the level of realism in the current incarnation. inb4 "lol realism", I'm just saying that even infinitely complex clockwork stretching thousands of miles is actually POSSIBLE. I'm not entirely sure where a man gets the iron to grow cogs out of their own body.

There have however been a bunch of horror stories where "humans can be spare parts too!" has worked really well.

So... What does everyone else think of this? Kind of like how we managed to come to a solid conclusion of giant animals and OH NOEZ MY NANOMACHINES.

OK so what system is OP thinking about useing for the setting?
WoD ,4e, 3.5 DH?

The original idea for the setting was a sort of, in lack of better words, "careful adventure" setting. Sure, it's an adventure, you get to explore shit and find treasure. But God help you if you mess up. You're inside a gigantic machine. There are billions of moving parts that could crush you like a grape. There are things that definitely don't appreciate you clogging up the Machine. There are people who want your artifacts for themselves.

I never really planned on making it too horror oriented. Sure, there would be a few horror-inspired elements, but in general there wouldn't be too much of the whole "OH SHIT THE MACHINES ARE COMING AND THEY ARE MAKING ME INSANE OH GOD WHY CAN'T I SLEEP ANYMORE?"

But hey, a lot of the horror ideas are cool. Why not make it both?

>>4820775
uh casuals, damn scrubs

>>4820766
Neither. This will start a shitstorm, I am sure, but all of those systems are shit, and even more so in an adventure setting.

>>4819659
this is a lie as long as the machines are utterly inhuman it could end up being more horrible

>>4820789
Indeed, I would contend any numerical system is shit.

Vive la narrative!

>>4819659
^^^ Yeah I actually thought this was trolling to begin with. In fact I haven't neccessarily been convinced otherwise.

>>4820811
>If someone's point of view isn't mine, it's a lie.

>>4820821
I really hate the D02 system, it know no limit.

>>4820750

Engineers shouldn't be mobile, thell'be better if they are just manipulator hanging from ceilling or big machines on tracks

>>4820924

Face it, D20 system isn't good for this. Because levels.

>>4820930
They're as mobile as necessary.

>>4820930
Problem with this is that their entire point is to be able to get around to service the machine, and robot arms adhered to the ceiling can't really even reach to fix themselves, nor can another robot arm amble along and fix it, if they are indeed adhered to the walls. And if they have some kind of rail system to move along, who fixes the rails? Eventually, further up the foodchain of repairs, there will always have to be something independently mobile.

With the mobile engineers they go out, patrol a HUGE area for faults until they are nearly out of juice (Or spring probably), and then return to a base station which can rewind them and if neccessary dissemble them for parts replacement.

>>4820937

But no steampunk robots, please!

>>4820969

The ISS robot arm is fully mobile. Do that.

>>4820969
>Eventually, further up the foodchain of repairs, there will always have to be something independently mobile.

The machine is supposed to be beyond our understang. Also it is supposed to defy the laws of physics. I think lack of mobila "beings" isn't that big problem.

>>4820979
I don't entirely see how this addresses the problem I was discussing but whatevs.

>>4820976
I think we are talking more like terrestrial bound Langoliers made out of cogs and gearshafts.

Things the Machine definitely does:

It causes the motion of the continents.
It sprays out molten rock, lava, through the gaps.


Things the Machine definitely does not do:

It has no microtechnology of any sort. There is no printed circuits, transistors, nanomachines, anything of this sort.

Have written records. There are no symbols or writings on anything, except for what previous delvers have etched onto the parts. This includes delvers from as far back as human civilisation, so a number of languages are represented.


Mysteries of the Machine:

Who built it?
What powers it?
How do the simple mechanical processes of the parts coordinate themselves so precisely?

>>4821051
>Things the Machine definitely does:
i don't think it should 'definitely do' anything. Adds to the mystery of the whole affair.
>>4821007
Give that a set of wheels/legs and you're good to go.

Basically imagine something a bit like an R2, except with more pointy bits and menacing limb-things.

>>4821067

I just say that about the plate tectonics because in this world, there is no other possible explanation for how the continents move over time, except for the action of the machine.

Considering that a fair amount of tech has been salvaged from this thing, wouldn't that mean that it would have some effect on the advancement of human technology? What sort of unusual weapons/armour/whatever can we expect to see?

The Machine is nothing that can be defined, except by cataloguing the side effects it has. It utterly defies anything we fancy to know about the universe. For example, no one dares to bring any Engineers back up, because they repair all kinds of machines into mechanical devices doing the same thing they did before. Dead people get rebuilt as clockwork zombies, basically semi-organic Engineers.

I know you guys don't like the idea of clockwork golems or something being down there, but I think a good way to get more out of this environment is machine-life. For example, a digestive tract could be mimicked by machines that gather metal, break it down and pass it through a system that builds it into whatever is needed, which is then assembled into the machine-organism. There could even be some kind of gear-operated brain.

It would completely destroy our notion of life as we know it, and would add to the "alien-ness" of the atmosphere, but some of you don't want to have any creatures down there at all. What do you think?

>>4821110
A fair degree of tech has been salvaged, but very little that can be understood. Also, its likely that any of the more advanced pieces were unable to be removed, either due to size or constant function. Hence, while the machine may in fact have macrotechnic quantum diodes and other such devices, they cannot be recovered.

As such I expect that you would see very few things that didn't exist in real history until after the 1950's, but what was in existence at that time would function vastly more efficiently due to more advanced alloy, lubrication, and clockwork innovations, that simply hadn't been thought of. Engineers are too complex to be copied so we aren't going to be seeing characters with pet clockwork spiders. What we might see is something like a grappling hook gun with enough power in its clockwork to rappel someone up a sheer wall, due to an imperfect replication of some specific clockwork organ of an engineer. This doesn't mean everything is now clockwork, its very likely that the advances could also be applied to petrol engines and the like.

Certainly tanks will have progressed up on the surface as a result but this will hardly be a concern for delvers. I think with regards to what a Delver would be using, there will probably be more efficient conventional firearms than what we currently have (IE Metal storm was never invented, BUT almost all firearms have the rugged reliability you could expect from the great successes of gun history), and one or two nifty survival gadgets that wouldn't otherwise have been invented, since most ingenuity is being focused on exploration.

As OP has said in the past, you can expect delvers to have radios that can cover at least a reasonable distance within the machine.

>>4821176
Giving it parts that mimic those of lifeforms makes it more familiar/understandable and therefore less alien.

>>4821192
Well yeah, but a creature full of nothing but random gears wouldn't make sen...

OOOOH I get it know!

I think that delvers would have equipment that would help them avoid or escape dangerous engineers. Like a net-gun that would cover an engineer in a very sticky, quickly hardening net of goop.

Also, steal equipment.

Also, there would probably be some experimental utilities to try and hide Delvers from engineers that would actually actively seek them, just since this is something R&D would focus on. Something that mimics the properties and frenetic activity of the metal around it.

Not that such a device would neccessarily always save lives, since the engineers that have no comprehension of their own environment or reaction to stimuli would still blunder straight through them and tear them to shreds, and the engineers with a very high level of comprehension would immediately realise that there was meant to be an empty space where that mid sized pipe is now sitting.

I'm so running this in Spirit of the Century. It's perfect. Possibly have the PCs be the original discoverers.

>>4821235
>and the engineers with a very high level of comprehension
I don't think they should 'comprehend' as such. I like the idea that they're blind, mindless clockwork beings who are given an assignment, wound up, finish assignment(whatever it entails) and return.

Just started reading all this, and a idea pop up in my head for a story hook.

So the Party comes across the remains of a ancient remains of a group of Pre-Flood adventures. a group of Clay tablets in remarkable condition list their cause for traveling into the depths, however its extremely difficult to translate. Eventually the party discovers that the Machine at one point in its maintenance cycle caused the massive flood discussed in so many religious texts. Within the tablets their is a club to understanding a meter within the machine that indicates the next flood, and it seems it going to happen again very soon......

>>4821230
I like the idea of jamming objects into their mechanisms in order to stop up their gears. Basically means that you have to flank and sneak a hell of a lot.

Don't outright tell the players that there's engineers. Hint at it, build it up. Shadows flit around that weren't made by any of the cogs, this pipe has been loosened!, you hear metallic tapping against the floor of the maintenance tunnel up ahead...

Then, after hours of this, a few sessions in, OH NO WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT IT STOLE JIMMY'S HEAD WHY WAS THERE A GEAR IN JIMMY'S HEAD

Like Lovecraftian robos.

>>4821281
>Possibly have the PCs be the original discoverers.
That would be amazing but fucking impossibly difficult.

>>4821343
ShoggoTron 3000!

>>4821343
>WHY WAS THERE A GEAR IN JIMMY'S HEAD
I lol'd

All is fine, all is well, but when someone runs a campaign where they blow up engineers and bring heaps of loot to the surface, I'm going to cut a bitch.

>>4821587
They'll stop very soon, simply because they'll face a court martial and very likely summary execution for meddling with the Machine.

>>4821382

Depends, I'd go for the Schrodinger's Railroad approach, and once there's something the players can't allow to escape, the enemy flees with it below the surface and gets killed somehow by the Machine, leaving them watch as the MacGuffin falls into the depths.

Have a giant diamond/crystal at the core that has lightning arcing every which way up and down it.

And by giant I mean like the size of Madagascar.

It's the machine god's brain.

Awesome setting.

Here's your conflict generator... the players are the Engineers. Not in a "we are steampunk robots hurr hurr" sense. But someone already mentioned the possibility of dreams, and obviously someone has to fix it when it breaks. So have one (or more than one) of your PCs be a dreamer; someone who receives dreams telling them to go into the Delve and put parts back, stop people from breaking stuff, all that jazz.

The other members of your party can be down there for more conventional purposes, getting rich, studying the beast. But the one party member is down there because he's compelled to be, and to an extent he's dragging the rest of the party around. Good hook for a little intra-party RP conflict, when the dreamer wants to push on past the resources of the rest of the party, or someone spots a cool gewgaw that the dreamer insists they not mess with.

The dreamer's not unique. There's other Delvers with their own dreamer, so not every party you run into down there is expressly hostile. But if the dreamer's mission is to retrieve a part that's in the possession of another group of Delvers, rapidly headed towards the surface... hell, you could even have a mission take you back out of the Delve to retrieve vital things that have already been excavated (or, for real fun, to manufacture "like-new" parts!)

If you want to go for more of a horror feel, well, the dreamers are all a little insane. (God, I keep getting images of Dr. Hell here. That would be SO PERFECT.) Or worse, not all the dreams are coming from the same place, and there are as many dreamers dedicated to tearing the machine up as keeping it running. Worse, the destructive dreamers are convinced that the only way that they can prevent the end of the world is to jam up the machine... and you can leave evidence around suggesting that they're right.

>>4821777

That's not good. Giant clockwork difference engine the size of moon would be far better. Giant lovecraftian thing made from billions of humans stitched together with some steapunkish gears would also be fine.

>>4821777
Dark Heresy crossover incoming in 3... 2... 1...

>>4822032
No, not the bodies. Just the raw soul energy. This is the place where souls are stored when they're not in use.

I thought this was a warmachine mk2 thread =(

>>4821910

Awesome idea anon! Just, how are you going to distribute motivations among the players (if you don't, it's very likely that they all bring the same one and there will be no conflict inside party)

Also you need few more motivations than "dreamer" and "golddigger".

>>4822085
>I thought
LIAR!

>>4822083

How exactly are souls used? Also remember how much humilation has old Henry Phage suffered because of his own furnance?

Anyway, are such details necessary?

>>4818735
Long thread is long, so pardon for repeat(still going through it).

I think we determined this is a good idea.. but with a tweak. They'll leave you alone as long as you don't look like you are doing any harm. They have a to-do list an eternity long, and they can't spend it on such menial tasks as sweeping the floor.

Walk through a room full? Maybe not even look at you. Go through with something you stole..? They'll chase your ass down because a part of the machine shouldn't be taking things apart that work.. so they'll take it back and try to 'figure out' why you went haywire.

Which might involve pulling off limbs you'll miss and looking at your insides.

I think we've just disproved the summer /tg/ theory. Two awesome threads full of useful contributions in two days.

Now the problem instead becomes how to run this campaign. I just might have to do it several times in order to get to use everything I'd like to.

We have three ways I could do it:
1. Adventure. Journey into the depths of the Machine, find the bounty of your life and get back up alive.
2. Horror. The Machine does something to the people who go inside. You'll have to look out for crazed clockwork zombies and lunatics, as well as becoming a part of the Machine itself.
3. Supernatural. The Machine calls out to you. It wants you to repair it. No, it needs you to repair it. You don't know why and have only the vaguest of idea why, but you know you need to go down there and do it.

>>4822184
>Which might involve pulling off limbs you'll miss and looking at your insides.

...and turning you into gigersque steampunk cyborg. Which is sort of awesome.

>>4822161
It would just make life itself a function of the machine, for better or for worse.

>>4822190

Go for horror/supernatural! Adventure is for fags anyway!

>>4822201
I actually like the thought of them installing all these clockwork parts in order to make you "work properly", which of course just kills you since organic life was not supposed to have metal parts installed. Finding corpses full of gears and pumped full of hydraulic fluid would be enough to scare anyone.

>>4822233
They're better than that. They MAKE IT WORK, basically rebuilding you as one of them, replacing flesh with gears, part by part.

>>4822266

I agree. Don't know is such character should still be playable...

>>4822312
Depends. Problem is that he might retain vestiges of the human personality, but the rebuilding process basically makes him part Engineer, with an instinct-like programming that can take over.

Needs Robot immune system that repairs damaged parts and fights off intruders.

>>4822347
Did you actually READ the thread?

>>4822032
Uh no. My way is better for the adventuring or less macabre thing. It works for me, don't call something like this good or bad, it's an opinion, you fucking sock puppet.
>>4822083
Eh, I was inspired by Autocthonia in Exalted, not WH40K. But both are sort of a FUCK HEUG ARRRSOME!!! kind of a deal.

Oh shit this thread still here?

>>4822338
>...but the rebuilding process basically makes him part Engineer, with an instinct-like programming that can take over.

This part is super extra awesome!

With few machine parts one could find it easier to navigate in machine and the programing should be reasonably easy to resist. The more machine parts one has, the harder it is to resist the programing untill one's body refuse to follow orders from brain and begin to funcion like any other engineer traping one's mind inside it for rest of eternity unable to do anything.

>>4822361
Please explain to me where you found 40K in that post.

>>4822392

I found tecnophage in that post!

>>4822190
>>4822190
>I think we've just disproved the summer /tg/ theory.
Which is a shame because summer /v/ is in full fucking swing.


Anyway, what's this about recreating engineers out of human corpses?
I like the idea of a steampunk System Shock and all, but still, the entire point is that these things are supposed to be incomprehensible, incompatible, utterly different from us. And I can't help but think that clockwork zombies would cheapen that.
Although what machinefag suggested in the other thread, about corpses stuffed with gears and hydraulic fluid, sound incredibly awesome.

>>4822201
To build on that, what if the Engineers recognize Humans as friendly at all times? Then when the Delvers try to screw with the Machine, they interpret that the humans are "malfunctioning" and "require maitenance" and proceed to fix them.

EXCERPTS FROM THE NEWBIE MANUAL.

"...and please remember to dress warmly. Contrary to common sense, it can get quite cold at times. The machine takes waste heat created and redirects it to increase efficiency in producing power.

Younger divers may find it interesting to know this is how we averted a severe energy crisis. All heat from power plants is redirected toward keeping all buildings at a comfortable temperature, or it is redirected back into the process to heat more water to spin turbines.

This system created the mistaken impression that the machine is a giant steam engine when it was first discovered. Scientists will now say this is ludicrous, but are hard pressed to provide any other explanation.

Form your own opinions. Just make sure you bring a heavy jacket."

>>4822448
I found Jesus in that post!

>>4822493
".....It may appear that there aren't any engineers nearby when you spy an interesting widget, but you can never be sure. Stay still, listen for a clinking or faint screeching(it may be hard to hear it over the perpetual ticking of the Machine) and check the surroundings for any pieces of technology that look out of place.

If all is in order, CAREFULLY but QUICKLY remove said piece of technology, MAKING SURE NOT TO DISTURB ANY OF THE OTHER SYSTEMS NEAR IT."

I don't like the idea of all the weird supernatural shit. The idea is that it is a huge, infinitely complex machine. It has materials and components that are valuable on the surface. There are mobile parts (engineers) that perform the more minute tasks necessary for the machine to run. As Delvers take pieces, the machine automatically tries to replace the pieces, which results in conflict with the machine.
As one gets deeper into the machine, gravity slowly loses its effect, and physics become less stable. Getting lost in the machine is easy, since components shift at unpredictable times, changing the shapes of "corridors" and "rooms", which were never intended for human use in the first place.
Now why do there need to be zombies and magic gears growing out of people and Lovecraftian machines everywhere? It's easy to slap on an explanation for everything, but it takes skill craft an adventure without ever getting to the truth of the matter.

Whatever happens, please don't make this another "People go crazy the deeper they go" scenario. Yes, it gets harder to navigate down there, and not everyone makes it back, but don't make it some sort of Lovecraftian shit where OOOOHHHH EVIL MACHINES MAKE ME SOMETHING SOMETHING

>>4822516
>>4822493
"....and while Engineers are a very real threat, they do, for the most part, leave Delvers alone unless they attempt to retrieve technology.
It has been theorised that these Engineers are simply mindless automatons imprinted with several billion blueprints to a 'perfect machine' for any given purpose. This theory has no concrete evidence as, for obvious reasons, we have never been able to take one apart. However, we have gotten Engineers out of the Machine by holding a broken device in front of them and leading them outside, after which we exposed them to several types of machinery. It may be interesting to know that most grappling hooks and crossbows on the market today are based off an Engineer's design."

>>4822493
>>4822516
You sir, are awesome.

>>4822521
These are more or less my thoughts on the subject, even if I have to admit I like a lot of the supernatural ideas enough that I might run a supernatural game with another group.

>>4822560
Contrary to what DnDfags actually believe, the scenario isn't carved in stone. It will be what the GM makes it.

>>4822493

Oh my, that breaks so many laws of physics!

>>4822577
I like a lot of the ideas too, but for the purpose of /tg/ collaboration, sticking to the original premise sounds more fun than making a Warhammer40kCthulhuTechJulesVerne wankfest. Just my opinion.

>>4822493
"There is always a Janitor around even if you can't see it.

Whatever name you use, drone, engineer, builder, janitor, keep in mind one is always close by. Eye witness reports say the janitors are few and far between, but paranoia will save your life. Trying to so much as lift a panel to look at the inner workings of your new find with one nearby may be enough to forfeit your life.

Perhaps an exaggeration, but the janitors can be fickle. They do not react to invasions of any sort as long as there is no perceived obstruction of the greater operations of the machine.

Janitors come in varieties. When you first go in you may notice 'tracks' built into the ceiling, floor, and walls. Beware when standing on or near these, as some only zip back and forth along these rails. You might find yourself in something akin to a traffic accident. Except people aren't built with airbags. Others seem to be disconnected and operate at least somewhat independently. These are even more hazardous as you may not know if it is nearby, and you cannot evade it merely by standing far enough away.

If you see one as big as a house, keep clear. Anything that size, or larger, is a mover. They might not notice anything too small in their way to avoid it.

Always watch out for the small skittering drones. They can't do much of anything on their own, but they've been known to swarm. Even a single one is cause for being on your toes. They've been caught observing a group of divers stripping a find only to disappear when nobody is looking. Later a group of janitors shows up, and none too happy about having more things to repair. They can and will call others to aid in fixing malfunctions they find.

Take care you don't get classified as a malfunction.

>>4822636

Although all seem to act with some sort of independence, they've been known to come searching for their fellows. Our best guess is there is some sort of logging system so janitors can be replaced quickly, and to help make sure jobs are not doubled up on. Avoid 'killing' any if you can. Force is only authorized in the most extreme of circumstances."

>>4822392
misclicked. i was supposed to be linking to the one that said "dark heresy crossover."

apologies anon.

>>4822647
Fey Mood? Possessed or Secretive?
sage for politeness.

Here we are, getting shit done. Summer seems to be a fleeting moment of the past.

>>4822586
>Oh my, that breaks so many laws of physics!

Not really.

That is a real world thing. I'm not talking about PERPETUAL MOTION, but that is one way we are increasing efficency.

Why vent the heat we no longer need.. when we could put it to work?

>>4818502
>So, the first question becomes should the Machine have some sort of artificial life or should it appear to be completely abandoned?

Somebody probably suggested this, but I didn't bother to read farther down the thread. Perhaps as a living lifeform, the machine would have its own immune system. In popular fiction, the immune systems of an organism are often depicted as humanoid, but as a machine, perhaps its immune system would consist of inherently dangerous situations?

Traps, my friends. A world of horrifically deadly traps. Areas without breathable air, swinging, razor sharp gears, belching flames, pressure plate dropping floors designed to catch broken parts and divert them to recycling centers.

Critical systems of this machine surrounded by other systems that create situations which are intentionally harmful to organic life.

I have now decided to steal the newbie manual posts and make them hand-outs for the players. Should help set the mood, since they are supposed to be trained to deal with some of the stuff they will encounter.

>>4822664
Look up the meaning of the word fey. It doesn't just mean magical creatures.

>>4822636
MORE EXCEPTS(and thanks for the guy(s) that added their own. KEEP GOING DAMMIT).

"If you find the way you came is suddenly sealed off, do not panic. This will most certainly end in tragedy if your group looses their collective heads.

This is an expected and natural part of the machine. Corridors shift and move on their own. The exact layout subtly altering over long periods of time. There are central important locations that will remain constant, but avenues in between may disappear or simply move elsewhere.

DO NOT WORRY.

There has not been a reported case of a corridor moving while it is in use. The only reports received are of a group heading into a dead end.. only to backtrack and realize there are three new doors the way they just came. This can be disorienting so please use our suggested exercises for remaining calm.

Main structures will remain. As such there is always a way to get from one to the other. You will not be trapped without an exit as the entrance to the machine is one of the main structures. Always remain calm and try another way, moving toward the direction of the entrance. "

>>4822726

Traps? I'm interested.

>>4822670

Question is how... I think it's utterly imposible for something steampunk and clockwork to be efficient.

Also IRL it's always hot in the machine (that's why they are cooled) so hot enviromet makes better "atmosphere" of giant alien steam engine than cold one.

>>4822782
so you can imagine a planet core sized machine that is billions of years old and runs on steam...

but not that it deals with heat loss super efficiently.

herp derp you lost me.

>>4822751
>There has not been a reported case of a corridor moving while it is in use.

I really like the suble irony there!

Oh god, I just had to think about that one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBZmLzv9NKQ&fmt=18

...the center of the machine...

>>4822751
"When venturing even deeper into the Machine, it would be advisable to leave a trail. These are generally helpful as long as the substance being used is organic in nature(sometimes leading to a literal trail of bread crumbs), as any metallic or otherwise artificial substances will soon be claimed by the Engineers. They do not seem to notice most organic material, unless it is part of a complex system. And even then it is limited to an analysis, followed by swift removal.

Despite all this, there have been a few documented cases of Engineers attempting to tamper with organic material. At least 5 corpses have been found with their insides replaced with intricate mechanical systems. There have also been unconfirmed reports of these strange corpse machines moving about in the inner confines of the Machine, although this could be attributed to the strain brought about by extended periods of time spent inside the Machine."

>>4822796

Because it looks stupid if there's cold inside. Ever been close to working steam engine? That stuff is hot. Like really hot. The steam is hot too.

>>4822823
>I really like the suble irony there!

Not sure that is the word you are looking for, but I was hoping someone noticed that without pointing it out.

No REPORTED cases.

Yeah.

>>4822867
Did you catch the part about "First we thought that it's a steam engine, but frankly, we have no idea how it works"?

>>4822867
>Because it looks stupid if there's cold inside. Ever been close to working steam engine? That stuff is hot. Like really hot. The steam is hot too.

It may or may not be an actual steam engine.


And that doesn't mean there won't be hot spots near whatever is powering the damn thing. The rest could be frightfully cold at times as robots DO NOT CARE ABOUT COMFORTABLE TEMPERATURES. Only if it is within their standard operating limits.

>>4822913

and now we're back to my traps. :3

>>4822884

It's supposed to be steampunk. That means steam machinery and clockworks that look and feel like steam machinery and clockworks. When you start to turn it into something that makes more sence, it loses it's "magic".

anyone watched Tower of Druaga? Its an anime dealing with "climbers" who delve into this mammoth magical tower. Very dangerous place with many never coming back out. This thread has a lot in common with it.

>>4822939
I've always been fond of the idea of 'natural' traps. They aren't on purpose, but this thing wasn't meant for people to have a casual stroll through. It was not meant to be lived in either. If your group is standing on top of a steam vent.. and the section needs to be warmed back up for the janitors to operate in..

Or maybe you just start inspecting the wrong thing and suddenly OH GOD WHAT IS THIS STUFF SPRAYING EVERYWHERE?

Well shit. That's tough.

Or what I stated previously. A janitor on a track is going at high speed to a location. The track being the high speed system(so they can get to where they go and possibly disconnect THERE rather than walking slowly). Suddenly..

DM: Roll a perception check....

DM: Pass! You hear a strange sound. You look and a janitor is barreling right at you.

DM: ROLL REFLEX, BITCH.

I really think we should do all we can to keep the "cold unfeeling machine" bit. It has no defenses or such. It is just.. hazardous to be in. You can't really blame it for trying to kill you because it is doing no such thing.

I think that could give it a unique dungeon dive feel. Usually it is all about the things out to get you specifically. Its never "you just got in the way".

>>4822970
Dude.

Did you catch the part of the OP where it is WE HAVE NO CLUE WHAT THIS IIIIIIIISSSS?

Also, redirecting heat is not some FAR OUT MAGICAL 21ST CENTURY TECH. It is something you can do with very very basic stuff. It is just a matter of someone coming up with the idea of doing it(why it took this long I don't know) and utilizing proper structure layout to do it.

"...if, however, you should be unfortunate enough to find yourself on the wrong side of an Engineer, there are a few simple steps to take.

1- DROP EVERYTHING. Unless you should value your loot more than your well-being, life, and posthumous dignity, this should be your first resort. The Engineer will reclaim the components and leave you alone. Remember, there is no shame in giving up prestige to save one's life.
2- IF, for some reason, you decide to not give the Engineer what it desires, always remember that it relies on gears for all it's locomotion. There is a reported weak point along what passes for it's midsection where an important mechanism is housed. If you have a crowbar or an iron rod, wedge it firmly into the weak spot, taking care not to destroy it.

If you are lucky, the Engineer will still be stable, but it's mechanisms would have frozen. Bear in mind this is a temporary condition as even the strongest, thickest rods will, with due time, simply be crushed by the gears inside the Engineer.
If you are unlucky, one of the major systems would have been damaged and the Engineer is now dead. This means that several are coming to repair it, and this would be an excellent time to make yourself scarce."

>>4823016

You nicely described why I hate save vs. die rolls. Chars are always three or two botched rolls away from TPK.

>>4823074
Haha, yeah.

I wasn't suggesting that system specifically, but it got my point across.

"traps" should just be the natural hazards of being there.

If you allow engineers...
Lvl 1 engineer: small,weak, many, fucking everywhere. Just dusting off, bit of polishing, perhaps some repair...
If you kill one, there comes our next construct:
Lvl 2 engineer: human sized, often seen, almost everywhere, constantly walking around fixing.
Not strong enough to move through you, but bad idea removing something in their view.
If you kill them:
Lvl 3 shows up.Big, pherhaps like a bulldozer,really strong, won't take your shit.
Perhaps something like a kärcher against delvers.
If you would manage to kill one or stop it long enough:
Lvl 4 the banisher: with fire and perhaps some zap, enough to ward any possible animal of and chase it out.
You dont want to kill one of those...
Nobody lived to tell what comes then...

Here is my take on the machine.

Inside you not only find area of total machinery, but
also vast caverns, some of which have pockets of machinery poking in, other do not. Some caverns are lit by massive glowing gears and crystals, others are not.

Some of these caverns have vast empty cities, the size of states, and others are as large as one office builiding or smaller.

Most of these caverns are uninhabited a very few are inhabited.

The inhabitants appear humanoid,and human like, they are clearly related to humanity in some form.

Some of the inhabitants appear to be from ancient human cultures and others have no earthly surface analog.

The empty cities are where delvers mainly scavenge for artifacts to return to the surface.

Anything can be of value from a writing device, to some kind of pieces of artwork, or what is assumed to be artwork.

>>4823104

There could be more elegant system. Chars can either be carefull, which means zero risk of setting up a trap or more reckless, which would earn them some kind of bonus at the risk of setting up a trap.

And traps should not kill outright, that's not fun. Only suffering people are fun to watch (and play!) and corpses can't suffer and therefore aren't fun. Traps should break bones, cause burns and cut of limbs, but they shoul not kill character, cos that's usually too anticlimatic.

>>4823176

The Engineers mainly prowl the mechanized sections of the machine..

It is still not clear if the ancient civilizations and their descendants are in anyway the creators of the machine, or are in fact anyway related to it.

They of course have legends and stories, but these tales have yet to be backed up with hard evidence.

Inner oceans and rivers have been found, with piping that diverts the water to various parts of the machine...

Almost any surface environment's analog can be found inside of the machine and its caverns, along with entirely new ones, from a clockwork jungle, only called such because it if difficult to pass through all the working mechanical parts, to a frozen lake the size of

texas with an empty Ice City, it should be noted that this city is built on a scale completely wrong for humans, and is better suited to beings nearly twice as large.

There is an Empty Town, very near the first exploration point into the machine that is the starting basebcamp for most delvers. This city was the first to be picked clean of

artifacts. It is now a watering hole literally, as there is a supply of fresh water being shipped in from the surface via complex piping.

Just a little bit to make the setting more like an adventure filled hollow earth tale.

as I feel that empty sterile worlds that make you go insane are better in books and movies then player driven RPGs.

But thats just me.

>>4823170
>Nobody lived to tell what comes then...

...then entire section of Machine is declared beyond repair by machine itself, demolished, colapsed, reprocesed and replaced.

>>4822970
YOU suppose that it's steampunk. You also suppose that everything running with heat is automatically POWERED BY STEAM. If you want to play it that way, good for you, but don't try to force your point of view on us.

>>4823260
Oh come on...
There got to be something better than:
"You've got luck! Role an complete new char."

>>4823387
perhaps the machine shuts that section down and beings demo but its not instantaneous so the PCs have a chance to run for their lives trying to grab as much loot as they can get away with

>>4821663
it's quite simple.

Engineers beign destroyed triggers a cleanup and repair response in the machine, which calls MORE engineers whose purpose is to clean up any and all waste material in the vicinity.

This includes humans.
They're now being pursued by dustpans with spiked rollers on wheels designed to scoop them up, crush them into base materials, and deposit them in a waste chute.

Perhaps this machine is many machines laird over each other in levels or rings (think Inferno).

The first levels are complex but not beyond human understanding, say clockwork; like gears, springs, "boilers", etc. As one ventures down more levels the machine becomes even more odd or even seemingly illogical.

The tech in these lower levels is nearly priceless and can be reversed-engineered (if your clever enough or know where to find the sort on the surface) into seemingly futuristic tech for the time setting.

When a Delver is deemed an issue for the machine as a whole (tampering/removing parts) an Engineer/s will drag them deeper into the ring but never cross over into the next level.

They leave them (the Delvers) for what ever is going pick them up and drag them to where they "need to be", where ever organic material is stored/discarded.

>>4823387
English is not your first language, right?

Also, if characters manage to kill off four waves of clockwork implements of destruction, they already made the biggest mistake: attacking them at all. Punishment is swift and fatal.

Continued here:
>>4823788