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I've had this book for a few months now, but I've found it hard to review. I bought it on the strength of two of Fantasy Flight's previous releases (Traps and Treachery, Spells and Spellcraft), with the expectation that I'd get loads of material I could plug into my low-magic, renaissance-themed campaign. Fine, I got that, and I'm happy. But the book says on the back that it is "The definitive d20 System resource for steampunk fantasy settings and adventures." But it isn't, and that's probably the major problem with this book.
The book opens with a chapter called "Steampunk Campaigns.", and name-drops Wells, Verne and a few more contemporary authors. Opposite is an introduction with a picture of Fritz Lang's Metropolis robot. This book's soul rests firmly in the 19th and early 20th centuries and that time period's associated literature. Okay, that's the origin of steampunk (and science fiction), but this book seems to ignore any developments from that time. I'd have liked a proper bibliography; but if something says it's "definitive steampunk", then what I'd expect, apart from Wells and Verne, is some of the peripheral works by Michael Moorcock, HP Lovecraft, Robert A Heinlein (early stuff like Starman Jones), Edgar Rice Burroughs (though his work seems to be an influence later on in the text), maybe even CS Lewis (The Cosmic Trilogy) and Terry Pratchett. I'd expect acknowledgement of Japanese sources as well, including early Hayao Miyazaki (Castle in the Sky, Valley of the Winds) and Kawamori Shoji (Vision of Escaflowne). Some reference to modern games with steampunk themes - Final Fantasy, Warcraft, even Magic: the Gathering would not be amiss.
So Sorcery & Steam is more of an alternative history sourcebook, and admits that much in the first few pages. It then goes on to justify this position with a well written section called "Introducing Steampunk". This is what Fantasy Flight do well - a whole set of ideas and campaign hooks of how to introduce 19th century technology into your campaign, followed by adventure ideas. Impressed as I was with this section, I still felt something was missing - the fantasy.
Chapter 2 is Character Classes. It starts with the standard classes and how to adapt them to a steampunk - sorry, a Victorian - campaign. Urban Druids and Rangers, munitions skill for Rogues, that sort of thing. After that are 3 new core classes. The first is the Animal Lord, which is straight out of Burroughs. You pick which animal raised you (choice of Ape, Bear, Boar, Cheetah, Lion, Wolf), and the class seems balanced for this or a standard campaign. Then there's the Artificer, which is more appropriate to the book, but actually comes across as a specialist Rogue. The power of an Artificer seems directly linked to how much technology is present in your campaign. Last is the Musketeer. Given the power of firearms in Sorcery and Steam (I'll cover that later), I'd say these are overpowered; they get three bonus feats by 2nd level, and can shoot without drawing an attack of oppurtunity at 4th.
Prestige classes follow. Each one has a section about an organisation whose main members belong to the prestige class. The classes themselves are mixed; the Arcane Airman is far too powerful, the Physician is too weak unless your campaign has no magical healing, the Gun Glyph is a firearms orientated Arcane Archer. Several seem only useful as one-off NPCs.
Chapter three is Skills, Feats and Spells. Finally some stuff I'll use. There's injections, which are like potions, but you inject them. The recipient doesn't have to be concious or willing, in case you were wondering. There's a Drive, a Munitions and a Use Steamcraft skill. There's an interesting feat called Jinx (opponents using firearms, clockworks or steamcraft items against you malfunction twice as often), and some fencing-inspired feats that might be useful in normal campaign. The spells are less interesting, further showing that the authors are more interested in science than fantasy. They're mainly themed around steam, electricity (though none of the technology in here uses electricity) and iron.
Chapter four is Steamcraft & Black Powder - equipment, weapons and armour. This is what I really bought the book for, and this is the best section. There's concise and emminently workable rules for calculating engines, lie detectors, pseudo-scientific devices for detecting and neutralising magic, rocket packs, diving suits and grenades. Then there's Steamcraft Armour. This is heavy armour with a built-in steam engine. It's expensive, you need a feat to use it, and it occaisionally goes wrong, but you can get upto +15 non-magical armour bonus and more accessories than a luxury car, including a shoulder mounted rocket launcher.
Steamcraft armour also gives its full armour bonus against firearms. This is were the author gets really enthusiastic (five are credited, I don't know who wrote this section). Short, well written histories of firearms and field guns are given. He knows his stuff, and it sounds like he reenacts American Civil War battles in his free time. Good for him, good for the book. Firearms are lethal (1d8 to 2d12 damage with a x3 crit and a huge range increments), cheap and ignore non-steamcraft armour. In short, they'll do for your campaign world what they did for the real world. Both historically accurate and realistic, and that's probably the first and last time you'll hear those two phrases applied to Dungeons and Dragons combat! Oh, and cannons make evokers obscelete. Some of the figures look dodgy, however. Grape shot has 80ft blast radius?
The final chapter is Steamcraft Vehicles. I'm not keen on this section, everything seems hastily put together.
I've got one final gripe - the editing. It took me several reads to find out how much it costs to maintain steamcraft armour, and I'm still not certain how much coal the vehicles take. There are also some mysterious asterisks, which presumeably refer to missing footnotes. That 80ft blast radius mentioned above has one, for example, which hopefully explains what that 80ft actually refers too.
In conclusion, this is a reasonable book if you want some technology for your campaign. It's a bit too specific for general D&D, and a bit too off-the-wall for d20 Cthulhu. If you want something more fantastical, I'd say wait for the Iron Kingdoms books or Eberron.
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