Morovia: A Dieselpunk NRP

[Talis]

Morovia is a world defined by the sky. A great sea of dense clouds made of a poisonous gas called miasma covers most of the world, making everything below it permanently inhospitable to humans. Rising out from above this miasma are countless mountain peaks. Singular mountains make up countless islands across a vast sea of cloud, while mountain chains and high plateaus make up dense archipelagos and small continents. It is on these islands and continents that humanity would develop and civilization would begin. With the land below the miasma closed off people took to the sky to find their way. Morovia is a world where the glider was invented before the wheel, and airships are vital for transport.

Now the great powers of Morovia have risen from the mountain homes to spread across the world. The Industrial revolution has created a world of immense industry and human progress, but at the cost of great strife. Different people, different ideas of how Morovia will move into the future. The great powers build airships of steel and new heavier-than-air planes with which to wage war. As transportation technology grows the world has become a much smaller place.

Skies of Morovia is a dieselpunk Nations RPG game set in an alternate 1900s world. It includes a light rules system encouraging players to compete for glory, resources and influence in a massive world. We're currently recruiting and open to all players. The first turn will begin on September the 25th, but we will be accepting applicants beyond that date. Please feel free to take a look, or ask any questions if you're interested.

Link: skies.boards.net

[Yam I Am]

I have to ask just how a toxin-filled world would even be capable of anthropologically supporting the steps upwards to an industrial revolution. Even fluctuations in weather conditions on a weekly basis could likely lead to a lot of "coastal" settlements along the miasma sea to become virtually depopulated just because of a stray wind pattern. You can't really make the comparison to our own oceans, because the oceans themselves were a symbiotic part of human development. You can't fish or sail from a gaseous sea of aerosol poison. Realistically, it would make virtually anything that would have a remote chance of coming into contact with the miasma sea virtually unnavigable, which itself would stifle most forms of travel beyond the largest and tallest of mountain chains. This is to say nothing on what could come of errant weather's effects on agricultural development. If the peaks of mountains are above the mist, the soil is going to be very rocky and not particularly conductive to anything other than grasses, mosses, and shrub-based plants, as well as some very hardy trees. Couple this with the fact that almost any form of precipitation would result in Acid Rain On Steroids, and I think that all of this immediately rules most forms of agriculture viably.

If anything, the human populations of the world would practically be constricted to - generously speaking - isolated, semi-nomadic tribes that would need to constantly relocate due to shifting wind currents that might threaten to wipe out entire permanent settlements. Barring serious advances in architecture that would likewise require incredible mega-projects - i.e. self-sealed buildings that would be required to have their own virtual atmosphere to be sealed from the miasma - I can't particularly see the justification in any civilization larger than hunter-gatherers, or perhaps even ancient slave-based societies like you might see in Mesopotamia or Anatolia. But I can't envision any society gathering much traction beyond that - nevermind the myriad of advancements that is required for anything beyond nomadic societies: Any serious mining or metalworking operation requires permanence, and when the world as a whole is threatened by stray breezes of miasma that could depopulate whole towns, I don't see any serious advances in technological progress, barring some, "Aliens came and gave us airships" shit.

[Dinh AaronMk]

I have to ask just how a toxin-filled world would even be capable of anthropologically supporting the steps upwards to an industrial revolution. Even fluctuations in weather conditions on a weekly basis could likely lead to a lot of "coastal" settlements along the miasma sea to become virtually depopulated just because of a stray wind pattern. You can't really make the comparison to our own oceans, because the oceans themselves were a symbiotic part of human development. You can't fish or sail from a gaseous sea of aerosol poison. Realistically, it would make virtually anything that would have a remote chance of coming into contact with the miasma sea virtually unnavigable, which itself would stifle most forms of travel beyond the largest and tallest of mountain chains. This is to say nothing on what could come of errant weather's effects on agricultural development. If the peaks of mountains are above the mist, the soil is going to be very rocky and not particularly conductive to anything other than grasses, mosses, and shrub-based plants, as well as some very hardy trees. Couple this with the fact that almost any form of precipitation would result in Acid Rain On Steroids, and I think that all of this immediately rules most forms of agriculture viably.

If anything, the human populations of the world would practically be constricted to - generously speaking - isolated, semi-nomadic tribes that would need to constantly relocate due to shifting wind currents that might threaten to wipe out entire permanent settlements. Barring serious advances in architecture that would likewise require incredible mega-projects - i.e. self-sealed buildings that would be required to have their own virtual atmosphere to be sealed from the miasma - I can't particularly see the justification in any civilization larger than hunter-gatherers, or perhaps even ancient slave-based societies like you might see in Mesopotamia or Anatolia. But I can't envision any society gathering much traction beyond that - nevermind the myriad of advancements that is required for anything beyond nomadic societies: Any serious mining or metalworking operation requires permanence, and when the world as a whole is threatened by stray breezes of miasma that could depopulate whole towns, I don't see any serious advances in technological progress, barring some, "Aliens came and gave us airships" shit.

@Yam I Am

At this point one might just have to recast the RP as being something live surviving on a failed space colony experiment. But then the scope of it changes so much it might as well not be a traditional Nation RP. It may be a more heavily character driven RP based on the interpersonal or demagogic politics of the player characters over small portions of the surviving colonial population over scant or disappearing resources on the hopes that someday perhaps their long-lost benefactors will come back or they can rig a way to make it work for them or they can escape.

But then you're not doing Dieselpunk. You're like, the first Alien movie with a larger crew and there's no monsters. Stephen King's The Mist but the convenience store is replaced by a series of loosely connected laboratories, mostly abandoned dorms, and other neglected service pods in a strange alien world with an indescribable terra-firma below. But there's no monsters outside, just the creeping inevitability of the toxic and corrosive atmosphere coming in.

This really seems like a more refined option all in all. Just have to work out the general idea behind the colony's abandonment.

[KitsuneWarrior]

What if the miasma arrived on the scene after humans had developed civilization and industry? Maybe it was the effluent of some strange industry that got out of control, or was some natural toxin that was suddenly released into the air by mining or drilling? It was discovered that miasma would only rise to a certain altitude and so everyone suddenly had to relocate up to the mountains at a technology level of ~1850 or whatever. In my mind, this is a post-apocalyptic civilization, where the technology and knowledge to amend soil on shitty mountain dirt and build zeppelins already existed.