Blast from the Past: Steampunk Ports-of-Call

Once upon a time, I developed a steampunk roleplaying game called Renegade Jennys and Boilerplate Jacks. It never got past playtesting for various reasons.

One of the parts that did get finished were six “Ports of Call,” basically little snippets of setting ready for the picaros (the PCs) to swagger into, knock stuff over, and generally get into (good) trouble. I released them monthly on the patreon back in 2014 and 2015. I really enjoyed writing these, and I do think they are some of my best setting work.

Each port-of-call is system agnostic, heavy with background detail, and presenting a central conflict that is primed and ready for wandering adventurers to set off. There are some mechanical hooks for the never-quite-published Renny Jennys game, but they are both easy to ignore and easy to adapt to whatever you might use. They’re also, if I do say so myself, just fun to read and daydream about.

With the website migration-slash-construction, a lot of old work got unearthed, dusted off, its bylines updated, and posted here in the new digs. I thought I’d toss off this quick post to draw attention to these gems, buried in the deep back catalog.