Post originally by Skinner's Pigeon at 2004-06-25 07:02:14
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I flipped through a friend's copy of Doom Striders. I thought it looked pretty cool--the mecha were definitely distinctive (much better looking than the hideous ones on the front cover), and overall they seemed to be made with fantasy in mind. They really answer the question, "what would a giant robot built using magic and clockwork look and act like?"

But I could never use Doom Striders in a fantasy game, because while they're cool, they wind up asking more questions than they answer. The "arcane furnaces" most of them have on their backs are obviously an incredible power source. Why not put them to more practical use-- assembly lines, transport vehicles, a magical-industrial revolution? How could Doom Striders possibly come into being without any other major, world-changing technological advancements? Why WOULDN'T the world turn into the "painfully diluted shadow" that you mention?

I just can't wrap my brain around it. Only if you came up with some incredibly convoluted story (salvaged precursor technology, religious stigma, etc.) could you have such a technical disparity. And even then it would only last for a brief period of time. You would have to set all your campaigns in this small window of a couple years to run this particular world. After that, everybody's got arcanotrucks and flamestrike pistols, and it's just like modern day or sci-fi drivel. For an example, note the differences between tech levels in Final Fantasy X and FF X-2. X-2 seems like modern day set in a fantasy world, complete with camcorders, guns, computers, cellphones...

In short, I love the concept, but it would just make more work for me to design a world instead of less. So no thanks. I have a hard enough time with vanilla D&D.