sounds gayer than shit

>>97884998
My initial impression is mostly just to question the logistics. IF you need blood from vampires and werewolves to power all of the more advanced technology, I'm left questioning how anyone figured this out in the first place.
I suppose some enterprising hunters might have done some experiments on Beast blood to find out some effective poisons and found out a way to turn it into either fuel or magical battery acid (depending on if you need blood to power the things or merely make it).
But given vampires and werewolves are difficult enough to slay that you'd need specific groups of hunters, that would leave any such things a rarity. But if the hunters are the ones who originally discovered and pioneered magitech as an extension of engineering their silvered Trick Weapons, then I don't really see where it makes the leap to being something on an industrial scale.

Wealthy individuals or governments might offer to buy things like weapons or telecommunication devices, or try to pay squads of amateurs in hopes of slaying beasts without relying on hunters, but that won't really let you reach the sort of economy of scale needed to kickstart industrialization.
I suppose if it's possible to trap a vampire or werewolf and endlessly harvest their blood by just nailing them to a table and relying on any supernatural regeneration to keep them alive, that might work. But at that point there's not really the same moral qualms about scarcity

>>97885043
>I suppose if it's possible to trap a vampire or werewolf and endlessly harvest their blood by just nailing them to a table and relying on any supernatural regeneration to keep them alive, that might work.
Honestly at that point it seems more likely a Beast figured out how to use their own blood for this bloodtech...

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Consider a hypothetical group of hunters who simply goes, "Okay, we will just kill every single vampire and werewolf we come across and sell the Beast blood we harvest." Alright, fair enough. This is probably the default stance of many hunters.

Suppose these hunters do well: very well, so much so that they are driving vampires and werewolves to extinction. Suddenly, these hunters have industrialists approaching them and warning of the dire consequences of the hunters' zealous crusade: if all Beasts die off, then the magitech/redtech industry comes to a grinding halt, and then civilization is screwed. (Or, more likely, the industrialists push politicians to establish limits on Beast hunting: which many hunters are sure to balk at.)

What will these hunters do now? Will they keep up their hunt regardless? Will they go rogue against the industrialists and the politicians? I find it interesting to consider.

>>97885043

Some of these logistical concerns are covered by the system's own magitech rules.

A magitech device has 3 charges. If a critical failure is rolled while directly, actively using a magitech device, it loses a charge. If it goes down to 0 charges, the device becomes unusable until refueled.

A fuel source (e.g. a dose of Beast blood) brings the device back to 3 charges. However, an abundance of magitech devices in a given area produces enough ambient energy to automatically refuel a device.

>>97884998
Not gonna lie, this sounds to me like Bloodborne being filtered through the most boring person.

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There is an additional dimension. In this setting, dhampirs, wolf-blooded, and similar sorts are referred to as "Beastbloods." A Beastblood's, uh... blood can function as a very, very diluted form of Beast blood. (This is reflected mechanically. A Beastblood character can take damage to fuel a magitech device, for example.) So there is, in fact, an incentive to round up large amounts of Beastblood in order to squeeze out just a teensy bit more fuel from them: and indeed, this is one of the setting writeup's few nods to the janky, brutal tactics employed by industrialists.

>>97885075

Yes, there is a non-zero chance that this is what happened.

>>97884998
Traditional games?

>>97885077
See, it being fuel just makes things more worrying in terms of getting it off the ground. Sure, at a certain point, you hit a critical mass of devices where the ambient magic somehow gets you perpetual energy.

But it's getting from point A where someone comes up with the first device to point B where you have a textile mill with a hundred magitech engines that no longer need to be recharged because they all recharge each other.
It's like how there was one steam engine in ancient Rome. It doesn't matter if steam engines secretly stopped requiring fuel once you had enough of them, because they never made enough steam engines to find out.

>>97885075
Maybe, but while they'd have more reliable access to the fuel, they don't seem like they'd be any better at invention. Werewolves certainly not. Vampires might have more time on their hands, but they've also got less resources. They can't exactly go to the library in the capital to get the newest books on chemistry in the way a hunter could.

>>97885095
Assuming that being a Beastblood doesn't have any major adverse effects, and that you only need so much fuel before the whole thing becomes self-sustaining, the more obvious answer seems to just be blood donations.
If it's potent enough where a quick flesh wound from a PC can give a charge to a device without killing themselves, then it's clearly potent enough to make new devices at a steady rate.

That especially seems important for the early days where there aren't enough devices to be self-sustaining. If you spent a fortune on a fancy vampire blood phone, you'd sure as shit want to hire a few dhampir maids or a wolf-blood gardener so that you have more blood on tap to recharge it. Even paying them more than a normal employee would be far less than the cost of the magitech itself. And much easier than trying to keep them chained in a basement.
You don't really want to be a wealthy person secretly collecting blood in a world where vampire hunters exist.

>>97885077
How would they be in danger of extinction if they can just make new ones? Send convicts to become vampires/werewolves using the ones you have captured, keep them under control. Yeah, I know, what could go wrong? In media these things always blow up, but that's how you'd approach it if scarcity was to be overcome.

>>97884998
sounds extremely basic

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>>97885169

A baseline PC with no investment in Toughness has 10 Hit Points. Refueling a redtech device takes 5 damage: a fairly big chunk.

You are right, however, in that blood donations from Beastbloods would be a very sensible method of accruing just a steady stream of fuel.

>>97885172

I can see there being several vampires and werewolves who have sold themselves out to industrialists to keep infecting prisoners, who can then be farmed out for blood.

>>97885202
>Refueling a redtech device takes 5 damage: a fairly big chunk.
Sure, but how quickly are hitpoints regained? Even if it's 1 per rest, that would imply that 1 point of blood loss over the course of 5 days would be sufficient.

Really it just feels like this concept is trying to mash together too many tropes at once, and isn't doing so in a particularly good way.
The example you gave there of a vampire making a deal with industrialists sort of illustrates why this dilemma doesn't work. The industrialist can arrange for death row prisoners to turn into new vampires, each of which ensures a constant supply of new blood. The industrialist also has more than enough money to simply pay people for blood in order to keep the vampire fed.

There's not really anywhere for the hunters to inject themselves into that anymore unless the industrialists try to be cartoonishly evil for the sake of it. The vampire is no longer hunting and killing people. There are more vampires being made, but if they were murderers sentenced to death and they're immediately locked up securely then that's also not any danger. And even if it is a danger, the industrialist has enough blood to hire a veritable army of security guards with automatic weapons and silver bullets.

The problem fundamentally is that magitech is already an established enough commodity for there to be industrialists at all. There's been at least a decade of these greedy industrialists rapidly with nothing but success to show for it.
Already it seems like it'd be more interesting to set it earlier, where the PCs are at the forefront of this discovery and are being offered large sums to sell out; or setting it later, where the big magitech city turned into some blood-cursed horror show overnight and the PCs have to clean up the mess.
At the moment it's just sort of assuming that the players who signed up for vampire hunting are going to be really enthusiastic about drafting government regulations.

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>>97885254

In theory, problems would arise whenever there is a Blood Moon, which spikes up the hunger of vampires and werewolves considerably. Granted, even this could be addressed, perhaps by locking down everything during such a celestial event.

>The problem fundamentally is that magitech is already an established enough commodity for there to be industrialists at all. There's been at least a decade of these greedy industrialists rapidly with nothing but success to show for it.
>Already it seems like it'd be more interesting to set it earlier, where the PCs are at the forefront of this discovery and are being offered large sums to sell out; or setting it later, where the big magitech city turned into some blood-cursed horror show overnight and the PCs have to clean up the mess.
>At the moment it's just sort of assuming that the players who signed up for vampire hunting are going to be really enthusiastic about drafting government regulations.

You are probably right in this regard. It is something I will have to think about if ever I run this setting. Thank you.

I will pass all of this along to the author, who is apparently writing a dedicated setting book for Vexia.

>>97885274
>>97885279
If it is possible to keep a vampire or werewolf trapped even during a Blood Moon, then the industrialists just do that (possibly after one major incident of the first farm to try it getting overrun after a month).
If it isn't possible, then the entire plan of trying to farm vampires doesn't work in the long term regardless, and so you're back to either relying on Beastbloods or hunters. Which helps in regards to the PCs having more sway over industry, but I still think they'd rather be fighting vampires and werewolves rather than saving some kidnapped dhampir from normal goons hoping to sell off the blood to a shady businessman.

And the PCs are probably going to assume the businessman who is going out of their way to keep their blood harvesting a secret might secretly be a vampire. But any situation where he isn't a vampire and is actually just trying to bump up the quarterly earnings report is just going to be a total letdown. Odds are you won't even get to the part where they argue about philosophy or the greater good if the PCs just break in and unload a submachine gun into his face expecting a monster.

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>>97885395

The mechanics of Blood Moons are very bare-bones. I do not know what the author precisely intends for them.

Another dimension to consider in this setting is that vampires are, in fact, rather powerful as a faction. Three years ago, they managed a successful coup of the old capital. They run it now, and have managed to plant agents in high positions elsewhere.

How this affects vampires (and, for that matter, werewolves) elsewhere, I am not sure.

That's not the setting being interesting, that's you being interested in the consequences of the plot holes that the writers didn't even think about. The interesting part is in your head, not in the book.

Your obsession reminds me a bit on how some Expanded Universe Star Wars writers made up an interesting location only to justify George Lucas not knowing what a parsec is.

>>97885457
>Star Wars writers made up an interesting location only to justify George Lucas not knowing what a parsec is.
Doesn't it directly mentioned in the script that Han was bullshitting Luke during that line

>>97885435
That alone makes it seem like there would be a very good reason for the current government to go very hard on trying to ban any sort of vampire collaboration or blood-farm efforts by industrialists. If they managed to take over the capital, then that easily warrants a red scare.

And likewise, vampires being on the rise also means that there's a lot less pressure for industrialists to try and even find other sources. There's clearly about to be some large scale vampire-hunting efforts, so they're much better off just trying to help fund hunters wherever they can and then buy up all the materials being sent back.
Though that also sort of ends up being in line with what I mentioned before, where if the capital had all of the fancy magitech and was overrun with monsters, then you've got a big vampire nest for the PCs to hunt in, and it has enough of a chilling effect on industry that they don't have to worry about making big decisions about business ethics.

>>97885457
That's pretty much the reason I'm entertaining this thread. Because there is at least something to chew on. Much more to discuss than a thread just asking an open-ended question about undead or whatever.

>>97885077
>Suddenly, these hunters have industrialists approaching them and warning of the dire consequences of the hunters' zealous crusade: if all Beasts die off, then the magitech/redtech industry comes to a grinding halt, and then civilization is screwed. (Or, more likely, the industrialists push politicians to establish limits on Beast hunting: which many hunters are sure to balk at.)
Honestly that was my next line of thought; If this Beast Blood is such a valuable commodity, would that lead to things like Industrial Beast Farming?

>>97885095
>>97885169
>>97885202
...Because yeah, I could easily see things turning into a Magi-punk Dystopia...

>>97885472
It's like saying that you've caught a fish 5 kilograms long.
You're bullshitting AND you don't know what is measured in kilograms.

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>>97885488

Yes, these are fair points (and a very apt usage of the phrase "red scare"). I will definitely take them into consideration if I run this setting.

Thank you very much.

>>97885515
Actually, the thing that'd probably be the most valuable to harvest would be werewolf sperm. You can use that to breed more wolf-blooded, which is drastically less dangerous than trying to keep dozens of werewolves locked up safely or trying to get your hands on death-row prisoners to turn into werewolves.
It doesn't matter if they're less efficient, because once you hit a critical mass, more blood is only needed for new machines, not for fuel. As soon as you build one factory, that factory is manufacturing goods at 0 energy cost, forever.

The only people who could really justify the risk would be the government itself, which would want the ability to mass-produce automatic weapons, would have a more ready supply of prisoners, and would have better means of putting a veritable fortress around the facility, and then could just ship the blood elsewhere for the manufacturing.
And even then they'd probably start wanting a lot of wolf-blooded or dhampir soldiers, because then their troops have the ability to recharge their own weapons while cut off from supply lines, so werewolf sperm still ends up being a hot commodity. And as soon as you've got an army of those guys, then you've also got enough of steady blood supply for weapon's manufacturing anyway.

That would probably still lead to some dystopia elements, where if big businesses and the army are all suddenly offering jobs and training to any and all beastblooded they can find, it'll cause a big shift in society. Since the beastblooded will also make for the best magitech engineers since they can help make and power their own devices. Which in turn could result in normal humans ending up as second-class citizens in a way. Not to mention the other fuckery that might occur by a government in an effort to increase the beastblood population percentage.

Buy an ad.

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>>97885644

I am not sure if in vitro fertilization is possible in the setting. It could be, given magitech.

I am not sure how heritable vampirism and lycanthropy are to begin with. Beastkin exist, and seemingly in large enough numbers to be a significant minority, but I do not know how hereditary it is. (Also, the current king is, himself, a Beastkin, although this seems to be a secret in-universe.)

You are correct in that it is fully possible for society to take a shift towards flipping around such that baseline humans are the second-class citizens and not the Beastkin. I think it is a neat hook to potentially explore.

Yet another dimension is that while the setting has no arcane magic, it does have (dark) divine magic. The Church of the Ancients is widespread, and hates both Beasts and Beastkin on principle. Schemes that involve promoting Beasts and Beastkin are likely to draw a significant amount of religious pearl-clutching from these holders of divine magic.

>>97885677

I am neither the author of the game, nor someone being paid or instructed to advertise it. I just find the system and this one setting interesting. I want to talk about said setting. That is all.

>>97885254
>it'd be more interesting to set it earlier
>or setting it later
I kinda agree, as of now it looks like everything is running smoothly and the system is going full ahead, unless there's factions of terrorist beasts that are lashing out to break the status quo and the hunters are needed to slip between the cracks to smoke them out.

>>97885717
If they're already more than 5% of the population, it's probably sufficient enough that any given factory construction just needs to put up an ad offering jobs to Beastkin (with blood donations being part of the job) and they won't have any problems with expansion. Much easier to offer some employees 10% extra pay than to hire who knows how many extra people for maintaining werewolf security.

How much sway the church has in this situation is really just a matter of how effective their magic is, though really the Magitech itself requiring beast blood in the creation process is the sort of thing that would probably cause a religious schism. Schisms have been caused by less, and I could easily see a sect of luddites who try to reject all the Magitech forming, while a faction who doesn't want to get left behind would come up with some excuses and contrivances and primarily push against infecting people to create more Beasts for farming, since that would be increasing the numbers of the most actively dangerous threats.

Such a split would ultimately reduce exactly how much impact religion would have in the unfolding events. Putting aside what their magic might do, you would probably have some fairly straightforward religious violence from random mobs against Beastkin for taking so many great new jobs (and typically getting more pay). And if the government doesn't intervene in a strong way, I could easily see that resulting in company towns and possibly some more cyberpunk-style elements depending on how things evolve.
Factoring in what the magic might do, I against end up questioning how the industrialization got that far. As far as the church would know early on, it was incredible inventions that require a constant supply of monster blood to keep functioning. They shouldn't need to wait for someone to build a vampire farm to start objecting.

>>97884998
I've never been particularly interested in published TTRPGs, not after my experience with D&D 5e, anyway.
It isn't "how interesting a setting is", it's "how interested in a setting a particular person is", because interesting isn't universal, and everyone has their own reasons to be interested in the things that catch their favor.
Published TTRPGs bore me, especially their settings. They're just products pumped out for money, and for their fans to say "well just rewrite what you don't like" to anyone with criticisms of them. I'm not interested in them, nor am I interested in talking about them; I'd much rather focus on what I'm doing.

>>97885103
are you able to read?
>Vexia, one of the premade settings of WARDEN, an RPG based on Pathfinder 2e

>>97885925
He's trying to get the phrase filtered because he kept seeing it in his off-topic or tangentially-relevant history and settings and worldbuilding threads, and it mind-broke him because he doesn't want to talk about actual tabletop games on the board for discussing tabletop games.
Know the difference.

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>>97885817

While we have rules for divine magic in this game, we know little about what the Church of the Ancients is actually like, or how it allowed the industrialization to get this far.

It is another factor to think about if running this setting, I suppose. Thank you.

>>97885975
>the guy spamming "Traditional games?" now is obviously another guy false flagging, not the one that has been spamming for ages
The questfag is just eternally butthurt, that's all

>>97885990
There is a very obvious difference between asking about a game in question to a topic not about games and asking about a game in question to a topic about games.
The fact you ignore this difference and instead mentioned some "questfag" unprompted reveals the chip on your delicate shoulder.

>>97886029
He is the one with a chip on his shoulder, has been for years, and he openly said so. Occam's razor says the guys that has been shitposting for years is still shitposting now. You say it's someone else, can you provide proof or explanation? If you do, take it to the mod team, thank you.

>>97885925
and what's so traditional about it?

>>97886072
The RPG part?

>>97884998
I think it's a terrible filler thread, while your professed tastes are shit.

>>97884998
This is just another shitty copy of Delta Green. What's up with morons thinking that some piece of shit HFY of the thousands that already exist is special?

>>97885000

Get of truth. If anything, it's a very small detail for a character to think of, nothing more.