Burrowowl

It remains true that Privateer Press has no intention of publishing Iron Kingdoms: Full Metal Fantasy roleplaying game material in the 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons rule set. It also true that I have no intention of doing the work necessary to convert the existing IKRPG material over to 4th edition. That does not mean that I won’t do some of the grunt work making Mediawiki templates that may be of use to those that are willing to do the heavy lifting. The Gobbernomicon seemed like a reasonable place to do the work.

The 4e Power Template had to cover a lot of variability. Some are usable at-will, some once per encounter, some only once a day. Some are attacks, some are utilities, some have side-effects, some have multiple targets, and so on. Happily, Mediawiki’s markup language allows for “if” statements and switches and such, through the addition of the Parser Functions extension.

Though I consider the power template to be a work in progress, I have also undertaken to create a creature/NPC stat-block template. A lot of the same things recur in the game-mechanics of each monster. Everything has an Armor Class and the three secondary defenses (Fortitude, Reflexes, Willpower), they all have hit points, etc. By comparison, the monsters seem easier than the player character abilities. I guess that’s appropriate.

Please feel free to hammer at them a bit, tinker under the hood if you like, or give feedback about the functionality or documentation. Otherwise it’s likely to suffer the ravages of interest drift and laziness. Don’t make me sic /tg/ on it.

Little known facts about the Butcher of Khardov:

• Khadoran Kommandants call him “sir.”
• Orsus Zoktavir does not tolerate card-counting.
• The Butcher of Khardov has a weakness for Victorian romance novels.
• Orsus Zoktavir has a gun. No, really.
• The Butcher has a preset kill-counter that’s stored as a 16-bit signed integer. He must be rebooted after every 32,768 Cygnarans he slays.
• Due to his Suio-Ryu fighting style, The Butcher’s wave-slicing stroke is unbeatable when in the water.
• Orsus Zoktavir is a vegetarian.

There’s been a fair amount of speculation about the future of the Iron Kingdoms, a campaign setting by Privateer Press ever since the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons was announced. They had put any publication of stand-alone books for the roleplaying game on hold, shifting their creative efforts entirely towards their miniatures wargames and drizzling out some RPG material in their magazine. But no word was forthcoming regarding the future of the d20 3.5 RPG product.

Now there’s word from Doug Seacat, their lead writer:

There has been considerable speculation and expectations about the RPG line so I wanted to clarify the situation before GenCon. As our fans know the RPG line has won a number of awards over the last several years and has earned a dedicated following. We have great appreciation and fondness for the readers who have stuck by us despite the occasional long wait between these books. It has been gratifying to have the support of people who have eagerly devoured every scrap of setting information and RPG rules we could produce.

As you are aware, we put future book publications for the RPG line on-hold after we determined that 4th Edition was a reality. With the future status of 3.5 edition uncertain and not knowing the shape of 4th Edition we decided it would be a mistake to invest further time and resources on upcoming products. After evaluating our options we have decided not to adopt 4th Edition for the Iron Kingdoms. We will not be converting our material for the Full-Metal Fantasy line to that system. We will continue to provide periodic RPG articles in No Quarter Magazine for the foreseeable future. This will be the best place to find information pertinent to your Iron Kingdoms campaigns in the months ahead.

As we have additional news or information related to the RPG line or pertinent to our existing books, including those which are currently out of print, we will let you know either here or in No Quarter Magazine. We are definitely aware of the difficulties being faced by those seeking the out of print books in particular.

No 4th edition, but no word of what we’ll be seeing aside from 3.5 articles in No Quarter Magazine for the foreseeable future. No big announcements in the works, either.

Seeing as I like 4e, and I like the Iron Kingdoms setting, but am more or less fed up with the d20 3.5 ruleset and do not care for homebrewing massive quantities of game information, this probably means that I will not be running an Iron Kingdoms game for the foreseeable future (by which I mean when the Privateers publish something other than 3.5 or Pathfinder).

I don’t care for the whole Khador == Soviet Russia oversimplification, but with the release of the Kayazy Underboss unit attachment and Yuri the Axe, there’s a rather solid cold-blooded-killer army available now for the Motherland:

Faction: Khador
Army Points: 750/750
Victory Points: 26

Kommander Sorscha Kratikoff
- Destroyer
Yuri the Axe
- Manhunter
- Manhunter
Doom Reavers
Kayazy Assassins (8)
- Kayazy Assassins Underboss
Kossite Woodsmen (6)
Widowmakers
Eiryss, Mage Hunter of Ios
Gorman Di Wulfe, Rogue Alchemist
Kell Bailoch
Croe’s Cutthroats (6)

Each model is directly associated with assassination, Kommander Sorscha being renown in WARMACHINE for her “woosh” tactic, leading to the quick demise of many enemy Warcasters over the years. The Destroyer has traditionally played the role of Sorscha’s assassination-partner for the Wind Rush to Icy Gaze combination along with Eiryss. Each of the other mercenaries is explicitly a professional assassin, as are the Kayazy ally unit. The Widowmakers are snipers, not assassins, but this is a rather fine semantic point from the perspective of Khador’s enemies. The only models that are a bit of a stretch thematically are the Doom Reavers (a penal unit of berserkers driven mad by their enchanted weapons). I included them due to the criminality of their background. The Kossite Woodsmen are treated as mercenary near-criminals in the background information, and add to the “hired gun” flavor of much of this list.

It’s also almost entirely Advanced Deployment, which is big fun. Line your little gaggle of murderers up against precisely the assets you mean to. A variation is also possible for 500pt games, but doesn’t quite have the punch and lacks the thematic overkill.

Today Privateer Press announced their first departure from the Iron Kingdoms setting in a major release. First they had the Iron Kingdoms RPG setting, released as d20 supplements. Then came WARMACHINE, a miniatures tactical game that is set in the Iron Kingdoms. It has been doing really quite well, spawning a stand-alone expansion game called HORDES that shares the setting, timeline, and several major characters. This past year Infernal Contraption was released, a card game based on the Iron Kingdoms take on goblins and the Iron Kingdoms concept of mechanika. This one’s a more complete departure: Kaiju. That’s right, giant rubber monsters, teams of super-men, the Tokyo Tower being destroyed over and over again…

I’m not quite sure what to make of this descent into matters so clearly weeaboo.

Monsterpocalypse Preview

Over a year ago, I started up my most recent game-mastering endeavor in the Iron Kingdoms, an adventure pitting a Morrowan monk, a priest, and an Ordic nobleman against a series of Orgoth tombs, all seeking out a personal relic of Morrow Himself. The specifics of the relic were unknown to the adventurers. The details of a monastery raid were long lost to time, as the Orgoth had rather thoroughly defaced their records and monuments at the end of their occupation four hundred years ago. Of the original party members, only Lord Farad Zacharo, retired Capitan of the Ordic Army, the eldest son of a minor Castellan family loyal to Baird Cathor II, survived to see this task completed.
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Several things have come up in the past week or so about the creators of my favorite campaign setting, the Iron Kingdoms.

• The Monsternomicon Volume II has been officially delayed to early July. (link)
• Founding staff artist Brian Snoddy’s last project with the Privateers was the Monsternomicon Volume II. He finished his part in that project back in November and has since moved on to other things. (link)
• Mike and Alison McVey, two notables involved in the miniatures and hobby-arts aspects of the Privateer Press product lines, have moved back to England and are no longer affiliated with the company, (link)

My, but that’s a lot to chew on. The departure of Snoddy is quite a blow. Years ago when I was first exposed to the Witchfire Trilogy, it was the outstanding black and white artwork that first hooked my attention and helped shape my conception of the setting. I very much look forward to whatever his next project is.

A while ago I installed a copy of Mediawiki for giggles. I wasn’t dead-set on what I wanted to do with it, so I figured I’d put some old Iron Kingdoms web forum content into it. The Privateer Press server has had issues in the past with its search tool, so having a bunch of info at my fingertips on a server that isn’t likely to be bogged down seemed like a reasonably-good idea. Problem: I didn’t populate it in an automated fashion and copying & pasting hundreds of forum posts is tedious. Horribly tedious. I’ll have to muster an army of wikimonkeys to get that task completed, or get an awful lot better at HTTP scripting.

Enter the Spirit of the Century SRD, a website containing the OGL information from Evil Hat Productions’ new RPG. Since it’s open content, I can wrench on it just like the FATE 2.0 rules, but secure in the knowledge that I’m dealing with something that isn’t about to be made horribly outdated by FATE 3.0. What a great chance to kickstart a stalled Iron Kingdoms conversion while brushing up on my wiki-editing skills. I haven’t gotten very far into things just yet, as there is a lot of 1920’s pulp fiction baggage built into the pre-set skills, stunts, and such, which will take some time to properly remove.

So if you’re interested in an Iron Kingdoms Roleplaying Game that isn’t caught up in the sacred cows and proud nails of the d20 game system, come on down to the Gobbernomicon and chip in a bit. The Resources, Gadgets & Gizmos, and Character Ideas articles are in particularly dire need, though any constructive input is appreciated.

*Edit March 6, 2007: Hey neat, somebody else has been working on an IK conversation of Spirit of the Century, here.

Many moons ago, a company called Privateer Press released a book called the IKCG after years of teeth-gnashing delays, setbacks, consternation, and a change in the core ruleset from d20 3.0 to d20 3.5. In the scramble to convert 400+ pages of content to the new rules, a fair amount of quality control issues slipped through the cracks. Some of the numbers don’t add up, some of the tables contradict the text, there are some rather amusing typos, and so forth.

But hark, news arrives via a mailing list:

Actually we are working on an official errata document for the IKCG to be released at the first of the year.

Paraphrasing the upcoming errata, the Gun Mage will be able to avoid spell failure in light armor as part of his spell focus ability with his pistol. This means if you are not holding your pistol, you will have a chance of spell failure for being in armor. This is different than the wording in the Bard class concerning casting in light armor.

-Nathan Letsinger

Nate Letsinger is the director of the Iron Kingdoms RPG line, and hence in a position to authoritatively make such claims. Since an online errata document isn’t subject to the vagaries of the printing process, and the Privateers already have a tried-and-true FAQ-and-errata web interface (here), I have higher hopes for this “first of the year” release date than I might have for other Iron Kingdoms products.

The fair nation of Llael is blessed in a great many ways. Located along the busiest trade routes in Western Immoren, Llael is a nexus of commerce, culture, and politics. Rhul borders to the North, Khador to the West, and Cygnar to the South. Ample coal and sulfur deposits lend stability to this kingdom’s economy, which is otherwise subject to the ebbs and flows of international commerce. As the home of the international monetary exchange and the headquarters for the Order of the Golden Crucible, a great deal of wealth passes through Llael.
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