Harnessing the Natural Laws: Technology in Your Game

A Web Enhancement for Chaositech

Chaositech is the result of harnessing raw chaos to accomplish seemingly impossible deed, or at least impossible without magic. Chaositech has an opposite, however—and it’s not magic. Whether you call it “steamtech” or “science,” or even something like “ordertech,” chaositech’s opposite involves accomplishing impressive deeds using the natural order of things. Science is far more reliable than chaos-itech but less powerful, bound as it is by the laws of physics.

You don't have to own the Chaositech sourcebook to use this free 8-page web enhancement—in fact, this article discusses the very opposite of chaositech: order-based technology. However, if you do ownChaositech, you will find that the weapons, armor, and other devices discussed in this web enhancement are the perfect tools to wield agains chaos cultists and creatures of the Galchutt.

Obviously, the most common sources of inspiration for fantasy gaming—Tolkien, Moorcock, Burroughs, and so on—don’t have their heroes using much in the way of technology. Generally, fantasy connotes an early Medieval Europe level of technology. If you want to incorporate a higher tech level, you can first look at real-world Europe a few hundred years later. The late Medieval and early Renaissance had firearms, spyglasses, magnetic compasses, and so on.

Taking this a step further, you can wonder what would have happened if the steam engine had been discovered at that time. What sorts of devices would people have created? And, since this is a fantasy setting, we can extrapolate all sorts of interesting fantastic applications, some perhaps created with the assistance of magic (or at least a magically assisted or divinely inspired insight). Steam-powered constructs, dangerous weapons, and even mechanically assisted armor becomes possible in such a setting. It would be embraced by the followers of order and law, thus becoming the perfect foil for chaositech-wielding cultists.

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