New Project: Steam Ships Battle Game.

The new rules I have been working on is a set of rules for steam powered ships, so something on a similar line to the Spartan Games Dystopian Wars game.

For those that don’t know Dystopian Wars was a game set in an alternative Victorian timeline where technology had advanced about a hundred years before it should have after advanced technology was found and this impacted on the wars in that timeline, allowing the many factions to build and fight with some crazy and weird stuff.

So a friend has been asking me to write something for this type of game and well I thought that I would make a start.

I have three fleets from the original game, the French, Australian and the Antarctic Coalition, so I will be hoping to use some of those with the rules when they are done.

But I know that these fleets are expensive to buy and to be honest I will not be doing a complete replacement for the Spartan rules, so as well as using some of the ships above I am looking at producing some ships of my own to use with the rules.

These will be STL files that anyone can print out for the game, I am working on the two main factions of the game at the moment.

The first is the Valtoris Imperium, their fleet is renowned for its resilience—massive, heavily armoured steam-powered ships bristling with firepower. Even their smallest vessels carry formidable weapons.

The second faction is the Zephyros Coalition, the Zephyros fleet favours speed and manoeuvrability more, with their ships being lighter they are able to strike swiftly and evade danger just as quickly.

I still need to add more detail to the ships and design some fighters for both fleets, but they are coming along nicely.

Ok so on to the rules themselves, well they are based on my normal D20 system and the bulk of the rules will be from the Blood Sweat & Iron rule set, which means it will be a simple to learn and fun to play game.

At the moment I am designing some of the more “weird science” weapons and odds and sods that the ships will be using in the game, stuff like Energy Beam Projector’s, Heat Throwers, Rapid Firing Cannons and Rockets and Torpedoes, there a few more which at the moment are just some basic notes on paper.

I am working on different shield systems as well and a maybe even some different armours etc, when they are all done they will hopefully add a weird “Victorian Steam Punk” feel to the game.

Here is a closer look at a couple of the ships, first we have one from the Valtoris Imperium fleet, a Battleship with big guns and heavy armour.

Next we have one from the Zephyros Coalition fleet, again a battleship, this time with big guns but with lighter armour.

So that’s what I have been up to over the last few weeks.

Not sure when the rules will be finished, but watch out over the next month or two for game updates and maybe even a playtest battle report.

Pop over to my Discord server to see more game updates or just to chat about any of my games, you will find the link on the Communities tab on this site.