Hey
As my student projekt work I am doing an RPG and evaluating the problems while making an RPG
for my homemade game I have chosen a mix of D&D, Shadowrunner and Warhammer
where as the world is in a total chaos between the mage alliance and the engineers guild.
The world is set as two islands which are connected by a string of artificial land.

Being influenced by warhammer I want a game where everyone is fighting in the war or in someway help to contribute so that someone else can fight in the war, that makes spoils of war a very vital key to my game. and merchants and sort are not that plenty of.
but now for the feedback that I need.
If anyone could give me some advice to how I could:
1: Input Religion that somewhat can work together for the mages and for the engineers, but rather not one religion for both "sides"
2: How the damage system might work so the engineers or mages doesn´t overpower the other side.
well seeing how this is still my work i do not want you to do all the work :)
but any ideas are greatly appreciated
Thank you beforehand.

One approach to religion that has been applied successfully in this sort of context is to have each side a partially true view of their religious belief, and then have a third synthesis viewpoint, which you can only get by understanding both the truths of the contending factions.  Because the factions are in conflict, they never talk long enough to see this insight.  Because players often move across these borders, they can then serve as the agents of resolution.  Alternately, the synthesis points to an even more villainous but as yet secret enemy against which both sides must unite.

Damage can be approached by, for example, having one arbitrary damage scale and then allowing each faction different ways of achieving a given damage level.  Then what matters is the frequency with which they achieve it, which can be governed systematically.

Religion, perhaps an interesting way to handle the religion is that the religion IS one unified religion with the church as a semi-faction, playable or non-playable depending on how you want to handle it.  The church as a whole condemns the violence but takes no active role in stopping it as they dare not lose the support of an entire faction and thus the worshippers and tithe that come with it.  Church leaders might come from either faction, side with their homeland, and there you have internal conflict.  This would add a level of intrigue and even a connection for intergroup parties sent together on missions.  Why is the engineer working with a mage?  The church told them to, I'd stay back though who knows when they'll go off on each other!?

As far as damage, magicians are supposed to be very dangerous.  In most games a mage can smush a character of equivalent "level", as long as the victim doesn't get too close.  Casting times, spell ranges, saving throws, a general weakness in close combat, are all things that are traditionally used to weaken mages and make them a little more equal to their allies or enemies.  Engineers may not do as much damage, but their equipment may be more quickly used.  Let's compare a fireball to a gun, a wizard's fireball may take some time to cast but it'll hurt bad.  An engineers gun may just need to have the trigger pulled and it'll go off.  So the engineers bullet may not cause as much damage but he can shoot a couple times before the mage's spell is done.  To help you better with this question though, is EVERY character a mage or an engineer, or will there be your typical fighters, rogues, etc too?  If there are members of each faction that are neither mages nor engineers then you have to consider them as well when balancing.

Hope this helps, the game sounds rather steampunk, a particular favorite genre of mine so let me know if I can be of any further help.

As to religion, you always have the option of creating a small Pantheon of deities worshiped in common but touting varied agendas. Certainly your mages and engineers will have faction favorites based on which gods better support their point of view, but the actual agendas of the gods need not have anything to do with the conflict at hand. With the setting that you seem to be describing, these gods will need subtle agendas and some concept/object/principal around which to hang their unity as a pantheon. It could potentially solve your problem and thicken the plot-richness of your world

As to damage between factions, a possible solution could consider mages as individually more powerful than engineers, while engineers are collectively more powerful than mages. Give a single mage the ability to fry a number of engineers in most circumstances.  In turn, enough engineers with resources and time to prepare, can create single objects and circumstances of tremendous power and danger. Your mages may be able to cast a type of ritual magic that provides them with powerful effects, but it will never compare with the maximum potential of the engineers, and engineers can build small scale arms and equipment that take some steps to even the odds between single combatants but do not provide the flexibility of magic.

I hope that these suggestions are helpful to you!

As this is my first post, I can't resist the urge to express my happiness at finding this oasis of RPG thought, and the opportunity to be a part of it.

Woah, I am utterly amazed by the skill you people possess to be able to come up with all those great ideas, almost as if I would want you to finish my game ;) nah, just kidding, doing this game is absolutely the most fun I have in ages.
I will try to help out in the other posts if I can provide any help as a sort of general thank you for the great ideas

As for the damage system between a high ranking mage and a high ranking engineer is sort of something that I thought different than what you came up with

My idea with the mage is that a high ranking mage will have an bit of problem with an high ranking engineer, but my problem is coming up with a way for an engineer to be equal powerful to that of an mage, I thought maybe giving the engineer an armoured assault robot that gives him some sort of artifical magic to use against the mage

as for the mage and engineer thing, I want the mage and engineer to a somewhat oddidity in the battlefield, where as the normal footsoldiers will still be the backbone of the army while being lead by a small group of mages/engineers.

any idea how to make an engineer equally deadly and frightful on the battlefield as a high ranking mage is greatly appreciated

Welcome Tubbybottom and Satanman--I'm Christian :)

Tubby, what's the technology level of your engineering? There are many things you can do with tools and mechanics that might look a lot like magic.

Robots are one thing. If you're already going all steampunk, it might be a battlesuit. That way the engineer is a powerhouse him/herself and not as vulnerable.
Then we've got bombs, artillery, flying machines, and on and on.

I'm assuming here that combat will be a major part of your game, and that you want crunchy rules for it in the more traditional vein (as the games you've mentioned). Your damage system will vastly depend on the overall structure of your system. Do you deal in hit points, wounds, handicaps, etc.? Is the magic going to be direct (fireballs), indirect (cursing, buffing), both, something completely different?

Here's the simplest thing in the world you can use to make engineers on an equal level of wizards.

Wizard:  "Mighty warrior, go forth with this might vorpal sword which I spent a year forging!"

Engineer: "Hey peasants, here's 40 rifles, go shoot the crap out of them.  Oh so that's what hero guts look like."

Simply enough the advantage of the engineer is he can shell out gadgets to his buddies where the mage's ability to do so could be far more restricted.  If an engineer wants his items to be simple enough for the common man to utilize he can suddenly field a whole lot more destructive power, individually not as nasty, in a group much more so.

I'm reminded of Warmachine, the elves throw magic around like mad but you give a hundred peasants rifles and stick a warjack behind them and suddenly you've got yourself a fight no matter how many fireballs the pointy eared guy can hurl.  Personally I think it best to try and steer engineering as far away from magic as you can, that way the parallel is that much stronger and people aren't asking themselves "what's the difference?"

Tubbybottom wrote: any idea how to make an engineer equally deadly and frightful on the battlefield as a high ranking mage is greatly appreciated

I personally like the idea of the engineers being able to equip lots of guys and the mages being the equivalent of artillery.  Suddenly each groups tactics are defined, the engineers bumrush you with hundreds of heavily armed infantry and have several specialized unites while the mages hide behind their grunts and blast anything they can to powder, they have less units but the ones who aren't basic infantry are individually much nastier than most engineer units.

The engineers' being able to make lots of rifles wouldn't stop them from making big artillery pieces as well. So both sides could have grossly similar artillery and only engineers would have the personal firearms advantage. Personal firearms underpower the enemy's cavalry, which rules the battlefield in their absence.

Question for Tubbybotton: What stops the engineers from dabbling with magic, or the mages to endeavour in technology? Religious or customary sacred beliefs? I think religion should influence this, because otherwise it doesn't make sense that each faction uses one single way. This would imply that there can't be one single religion, there must be two of them: the mages' one considers technology sinful, and the engineers' one considers sorcery sinful.

If that's the case, maybe there are outlaw bands that include proscrite mages and engineers together, and leaded by generals who have developed all tactics regardless or both sides' morality. Maybe if one of the two sides is in dire straits they temporarily forget their scruples and hire those bands, gaining an advantage. The winning side would claim holy war because of the losing side's twisted ways, but they would get defeated in battle unless they had enough men to just swarm them. Also existing gods may be angered by the offending side's (the gods' own side actually) unholy ways.

That would justify the strange neverending stalemate between both sides, maybe as soon as they manage to prevent their immediate demise the offending side would sack the sinful bands. The outlaw bands would dwell at every moment in whatever losing side's territory, safe from prosecution; they would actually amount to a third but minor faction, and I guess they would need their own small, rugged territory, for when the war is tied or peacetime when they're not hired by any faction. The gods would kind of totally hate those bands, although they could have their own religion.

Twist (balancing one?): Magic can be drawn by a mage into himself at any place. But gunpowder and stuff are made from resources not available everywhere, and deposits will have huge strategic importance: engineers will want to occupy and defend them, and mages will want to negate them just that. (Plus iron, wood, and possibly coal are important for both sides' non-tech weapons. [You need coal to refine iron, although until the XVIIIth century it was used charcoal obtained from wood.])

I think this discussion is great, because most people don't think of this kind of implications and ther settings are thus lame.

To Japo
The reason why mages don´t want to dabble into the arts of science and technology is quite simple.
Being how the Mages are the first one who had risen to an high social status due to their "unnatural" ability to dwell into the magical arts I would rather say that the engineers are an rebelling front that also want their piece of the cake where as Mages can be looked upon like traditional High elves
the oldest, wisest and so on and so forth

where as the engineers are uprisers that want to compensate for their lack in magic capability and henche they started to expand their own form of magic.  and as the engineers started to hold their own and being more and more independent the mages became upset with this and wanted science to be banned. but of course the engineers didn´t want to leave their beloved craft and therefore they began to fight each other.

I also went and tried to come up with a way to make the two "basic" armies consist of the same thing, swordsmen, archers, knights and so on
but where the engineers might have some sort of highly trained rifle squad
and the only thing being able to defeat this rifle squad would either be an awful lot of ordinary cannonfooder
or perhaps if I gave the mages some sort of special unit, like mutated superhumans or humans infused with magical power beyond their capability to control and thus being very powerful and at the same time very unstable.

I must say, I really think you've got a neat concept going here. 

I'm not sure if I understood the first part of your last post:

Being how the Mages are the first one who had risen to an high social status due to their "unnatural" ability to dwell into the magical arts I would rather say that the engineers are an rebelling front that also want their piece of the cake where as Mages can be looked upon like traditional High elves
the oldest, wisest and so on and so forth

well Simons to try to make the last post a bit clear:

I want the mages to be the oldest "class" in the world and henche adding to the natural steampunk of old magic versus new technology theme.
but with a bit twist.
and yes to answer your question about mages using technology. seeing how mages often are too egocentric to be able to focus their time on anything else but their magic is quite a common thing  in most games that apply mages, but my mages must focus their time to control their inner power or else they will be consumed by it.
and therefore I your "theft theory" might not be able to apply to my game because if a mage wants to wield his "Awesome staff of engineer butt kicking" he would have to summon it from a piece of himself, not to sure if this piece is a piece of his mind, his flesh or his soul, but either way it will require mages to have a great deal of will power to be able to maintain both their weapons that will later on allow them to cast more powerful magic spells while having their weapons as a sort of medium for their spells.

while the engineers won´t require this willpower to wield their guns or to control their machines, and thus making the engineers the "new young race" so to speak while the mages are rather the "old highborn elves" that where there from the beginning.

hope that this made it a bit more clear and didn´t just make everything a whole lot more confusing right now :)

Tubbybottom wrote:
To Japo
The reason why mages don´t want to dabble into the arts of science and technology is quite simple.
Being how the Mages are the first one who had risen to an high social status due to their "unnatural" ability to dwell into the magical arts I would rather say that the engineers are an rebelling front that also want their piece of the cake where as Mages can be looked upon like traditional High elves
the oldest, wisest and so on and so forth

where as the engineers are uprisers that want to compensate for their lack in magic capability.

I also went and tried to come up with a way to make the two "basic" armies consist of the same thing, swordsmen, archers, knights and so on
but where the engineers might have some sort of highly trained rifle squad
and the only thing being able to defeat this rifle squad would either be an awful lot of ordinary cannonfooder
or perhaps if I gave the mages some sort of special unit, like mutated superhumans or humans infused with magical power beyond their capability to control and thus being very powerful and at the same time very unstable.

Hi Tubby,

Do you imagine there being an ending for this game? I mean in a groups individual campaign? From your concern with one side over powering the other, it sounds like your not interested in a campaign resolving.

If you don't imagine it ending, it might be good to look at how your base situation is static - the apparent war between the two sides needs to never change or the game ends. So if the war cannot change, what will change each session?

Well that the war doesn't end within one campaign doesn't mean it's static. Think about the Thirty Years' War. Think about the Hundred Years' War, that lasted quite more than what its name implied years. In the old times war weren't so intensive, and still nowadays intense wars can last years, and open hostility can last decades.

Sorry for answering to a question directed at someone else, just trying to contribute. I guess Callan would still like to hear Tubby's answer.

For some reason my mind broke this down into four basic power levels, each one about an order of magnitude more powerful than the last.

1. Grunt. Individually very weak (power 1).
2. Trooper. A trooper can hold his own against several grunts (power 10).
3. Tank. (power 100).
4. Dreadnought (power 1000).

If you make each group significantly better at staggered factions, they would have significantly different feels. Perhaps the wizards can summon up hoards of elementals and lesser spirits (grunts) and then they themselves can sling around fireballs and lightning (tanks). The engineers can outfit their soldiers with mecharmor and guns (troopers) and create enormous mobile battle stations (dreadnoughts).

Each side can make things of the other powers, but they are not as good at it or must spend sub-optimal resources. As you add more axises that one side is better at than the other, the game gets more distinct. Maybe the wizards happen to have good flying troopers (greater spirits), while the engineers have good flying tanks (gunships).

If you want more personal combat, take a page from Dune and invent some kind of (plot) device that doesn't allow anyone to use long range weapons safely. If I, for example, was a mage, the first thing I would do moving against an army of engineers would be to figure out some spell to stop bullets. Likewise, the engineers would try to work anti-magic materials into their armor.

What scale combat were you thinking? Armies, units, or skirmishes?