What is this?
It could have been so different. Who knows, if Niccolo Machiavelli, military commissioner of the Republic of Florence, had not truly understood the scale of Leonardo da Vinci’s genius, he might simply have wasted his time painting portraits of women and doodling. Instead, Florence’s screwcopters, gun-turtles and organ-guns make it secure against the armies of the Pope, Milan and the French, and a haven for radical thinkers, artists and other inventors inspired by his example. Of course, though, success breeds jealousy amongst the city states of Renaissance Italy and beyond. The city’s winding alleys and cobbled squares swarm with sinister Venetian spies, sour-faced priests bearing secret Papal instructions, Milanese mercenaries hoping to earn the king’s ransom the Sforzas have promised for da Vinci’s secrets and even emissaries from France, England and the Ottoman Empire… Exciting times, but dangerous ones, too.
What if all da Vinci’s inventions worked as he had hoped? What if they had been enthusiastically adopted and that their successes had sparked a different kind of industrial revolution? Think of Gibson and Sterling’s ‘The Difference Engine,’ but amidst the sunlit artistic ferment of the Italian Renaissance instead of the smogs and fogs of Victorian England; think of primitive computers running on water clocks and embellished with cupids; think of swashbuckling swordplay as an army of robot knights marches past on their way to the Vatican; think of crossing wits with Machiavelli, avoiding the dangerous charms of Lucretia Borgia, hearing Christopher Columbus tell you about the new world he has discovered…
I am toying with a setting for the Wordplay roleplaying game system, one set in a version of the Italian Renaissance being transformed by weird and wonderful clockpunk technologies sparked by Leonardo da Vinci's genius. This blog is essentially a design journal, in which I'll note down random thoughts, plothooks, links to interesting images and websites, notes on play sessions and anything else which comes to mind...
Who am I?
Mark Galeotti, who'd love to be a Renaissance man. You can also find my Mythic Russia game blog @ http://mythicrussia.wordpress.com/What is Wordplay?
An excellent, simple and intuitive d6-based roleplaying game system - you can find out more about the system and other settings @ http://www.wordplaygames.co.uk/wordplay.html and http://d101games.co.uk/books/wordplay/Blogroll
Meta
Category Archives: General
Hans Schlottheim’s Mechanical Galleon
The splendid BBC/British Museum series A History of the World in 100 Objects has a great program on this amazing piece of late-sixteenth century clockwork, a moving, music-playing, clock and table ornament, made for Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. This … Continue reading
Posted in General
2 Comments
The 1510 Amazon aStore
I’ve opened a 1510 store on Amazon, available though this link or by clicking the appropriate tab at the top of the blog. It’s really a place for me to add various books I find useful or inspirational as I … Continue reading
Posted in General
Leave a comment
Wordplay Core Rules Available Again!
Excellent news! The revised core rules for Wordplay, with a few tweaks and a splendid new cover are now available as a print-on-demand hardcopy or PDF download from the publisher’s site on Lulu.
Posted in General
Leave a comment
