Pitch Session

Last night I was trying to come up with a genre for the game. I started to latch onto this idea that the air ship was like an Ironclad that has gyrocopter propulsion. This means that the air ship is ocean worthy, and can fly. It runs on coal, much like a locomotive. This means the airship, and everyone thing on it is covered in black soot all the time. There is no such thing as being clean. You must wear goggles, you probably should wear a large overcoat to keep the soot off of you, you should wear a hat like a conductor.

That alone creates an awful amount of interest. We now know how the airship works, and have a general idea of the situation it would be like to be on one. But I still wanted to put a name to the genre so I can read a book or two about it, watch a film, or find a comic book that will help me fill in the blanks.

I found the genre, it’s called Steampunk, much like cyberpunk (The Matrix, or Neuromancer), but set in an industrial revolution (or Victorian) time period.

I still think the idea of creatures is worth keeping, and Janelle helped me out with finding some literary examples of creatures or animals in fiction. Rats of Nimh jumped to mind immediately, and she led me to the series called Redwall, there is also another classic book called Watership down which I have read half of (but put it down because it didn’t interest me all that much). All these examples use animals and then give them human emotion, features, and language. I think it may be easier to pick an animal than to create a whole species.

Example:
Rats are evil, they are dirty, scheming, vicious, and militaristic. They can also see in the dark really well and  can survive on just about any food source.

I think it would be wise to stick to woodland animal, small animals too. A raccoon or beaver is about as big as we should go. Don’t pick something smaller than a mouse, unless you have some really strong reason. Oh, and no birds! Remember the story revolves around the airship…

I need to speak with you Janz about your role. If you are going to be the islander who’s property the aeronaut crashes onto we need to figure out how you can refuel his ship. Perhaps you are a coal miner, or own a coal mine.

Below I put some links to site relating to Steampunk. The Youtube link is for a 30 minute short animated film that looks really interesting. Think about this genre, think about the stark difference between the pastoral life (clean, open fields, fresh air, working the land) in juxtaposition with city life (dirty, industrial, factories, machines). Pick an animal that suits your role, and would also have some aspects that lend themselves to being an aeronaut or miner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vORsKyopHyM