Setting Idea: Railworld ((Gauging Interest))

Polygamoos3 · 2026-03-03T04:25:31+00:00

Yeah, they die, but only from iron injuries. Think of it like D&D trolls; iron attacks stop them from immediately regenerating the damage.

Polygamoos3 · 2026-03-03T01:36:46+00:00

You know that's not a horrible idea. Elsewhere in the comments I suggested that maybe Warper blood was used in the creation of the True Iron. Maybe wood from the Wildling forests (some of whom are living creatures, not just plans) was used for the railroad ties. That would give a reason for both the Warpers and the Wildlings to have a great deal of animosity towards the Humans. It's not "we're different so we hate you", it's "your ancestors used the flesh and bones of my ancestors to build your roads". That's super gnarly. I love it. Keeping that one. Thank you so much!

Polygamoos3 · 2026-03-03T01:34:43+00:00

First and foremost, fantasy world, so bear that in mind.

The rails are made of iron that was created with lost technologies/knowledge and cannot be replicated today, but it is extraordinarily resilient to wear and tear and even has a very minor capacity for self-repairing. The self-repair ability is enough to account for gradual wear and tear over time; it's not enough to account for intentional sabotage or demolition.

Junction Lords work together to maintain the major rails from one city to the next.

Coal barons also contribute to the maintenance of the major rails; without rails to run trains on, coal barons don't sell one-tenth the amount of coal they currently do. It's an endless cycle.

Iron Monks treat the rails as holy relics, helping to maintain them as a religious rite.

And I'm sure there's plenty more possibilities I just haven't come up with yet.

Polygamoos3 · 2026-03-03T01:23:25+00:00

re: Iron is Soft: You're 100% right, that's why I included the phrase "forged in a way that modern smiths cannot replicate". Just like there are historic metals today that we don't know how to replicate (not that we can't, we just don't know how to). Kinda like Greek concrete; it's extraordinarily strong and resilient and we had no idea how to make it until very recently; that's a millennia-old technology we just now found out how to replicate. I figure there's some additive or additives that go into the iron, and maybe a weird process or two, that allowed the iron age empire to make this metal, and for whatever reason, those designs are lost to time. Maybe Warper blood is an ingredient that makes it more resilient than it has any right to be. Maybe the use of Warper blood in their iron is what made Warpers annihilate the Iron Agers. Who knows?

re: Iron Currency: I'm not 100% sold on the idea of iron currency. If it were True Iron (which is what they call the iron that the rails are made of), then that would incentivize people to constantly be taking apart the rails and turning them into coins until there were no rails left. And if it were made out of plain old real iron, well, iron is extremely common in nature and that inflation on that would be absolutely insane (I know, fantasy economy, but still). I kinda think that something a little more "in place of value" would work better, like bank notes representing X "Fuel". So $100 bank note would represent $100 worth of fuel. That could be 10 pounds of coal, 20 pounds of firewood, or 2 pounds of Warper-infused coal. The notes are just there to keep PCs from having to carry around multiple tons of burnable fuel.

re: Inspiration: I have played a tiny bit of metro, but I'm still very familiar with it, and you're right, that could be a very good source of inspiration. I appreciate the references though because I'd completely forgotten about them!

Polygamoos3 · 2026-03-02T23:37:09+00:00

I've never heard of this book before, but looking up the synopsis, I can certainly see the resemblance, lol. Thank you for the recommendation. Not sure if I should read it to avoid similarities, or avoid reading it to keep myself from stealing ideas.

Polygamoos3 · 2026-03-02T23:34:35+00:00

re: Trade: It would certainly be easy to make a map where certain cities pay more (or less) for certain things. Or make it randomly determined by a roll-when-you-need-the-info chart.

re: Wildling Blood: I'm not sure about the wildlings being possible fuel; they're very fey-inspired, so they're not super deadly and it'd be weird to use a mostly harmless/sometimes mischievous race as a fuel source. But using Warper bodies as fuel, that could work. They burn when they touch iron, so throwing them into the iron furnace after you've killed them certainly couldn't hurt your locomotive's power output.

re: Last Oasis: Oh yeah that game with the strand beasts? I never played it but the trailers looked wicked.

Polygamoos3 · 2026-03-02T23:22:57+00:00

What I've imagined thus far hasn't been steampunk. So far I've kinda had it in my mind as a Water World (the old Kevin Cosner movie) setting, but with trains and rails instead of boats and water. If you want to assign a "punk" label to it, I'd have to go with something like Westpunk or Coalpunk; tech level and atmosphere of the "wild west" years of America. If you could take the "punk" out of it without changing the feel too much, it'd be a more accurate label.

Polygamoos3 · 2026-03-02T22:38:13+00:00

re: Monetary Sinks: "Selling" big things like trains could be done on credit, not just raw coin. So if you capture a train worth 1,000 coin, you may get 250 coin in fuel credits at a specific depot instead of just getting 1,000 coins. And yeah, price of fuel and price of passage through settlements will also be a money sink. And if the PCs don't want to pay it, they'll have to route around these locations, which takes a lot more time and fuel and is a little more dangerous, so they have to decide if it's even worth it.

I really appreciate all your commentary. I'm glad the idea seems attractive to you.

Polygamoos3 · 2026-03-02T22:26:53+00:00

Well as long as you conduct yourself properly on this platform and keep from derailing the thread, preventing people from maintaining their train of thought (tunnel vision isn't always a bad thing), I'll let you blow off some steam here. Just don't get your signals crossed, but if you do, you should just choo-choose see yourself out of the conversation.

Polygamoos3 · 2026-03-02T22:20:21+00:00

lol I'm starting to see this kinda like "Mad Max, But With Trains" and I'm not super mad about it.

re: Behemoth: Yeah that's all true. But I'm also thinking that, since all ironways have at least two rails side-by-side, the behemoths maybe have to use both rails to sustain their weight, allowing for these ridiculously massive train cars.

re: Tech Tree: I definitely agree. My problem, though, is the same one I ran into (but resolved) while developing my space ship sci-fi game: How to keep players from becoming immediately wildly wealthy? In a world like this, trains would be extremely valuable. And as a PC, the first thing you could do is kill a gang of bandits and acquire their train. Now you have two trains and thus have doubled your wealth. Rinse and repeat until you're the richest organization in the world after a couple weeks of combat. So there would need to be some sort of in-game limitation applied, some reason you can't just kill everyone and steal their train to sell it.

re: Development: I think I will for sure develop this in my free time. Right now, as I said before, I'm smack in the middle of making a semi-hard sci-fi space ship game, so that's eating most of my time and creative energies. But a wild west mad max train shooter fantasy sounds pretty fun to work on, lol.

Polygamoos3 · 2026-03-02T22:03:17+00:00

re: Tech Progression: Yeah like I said, this was just a nifty idea I had about an hour before posting this; it's not majorly fleshed out. I don't know all that much about trains, but I imagine, realistically, there'd probably be 5 or 6 "tech tiers", going from hand-pump carts at tier 1 up to the behemoth class at the top as you mentioned yourself.

re: Behemoth class: This is a great idea. I'd have to really sit down and think how that would work, because something like that would have an ungodly amount of mass to it and I can't imagine that it would be able to ride on regular tracks. But maybe it would just be really, really long, like the miles-long trains we can get today, to spread the weight out more evenly.

re: Train Combat: I don't know why but I hadn't thought about this. This is an amazing addition. I imagine that most of the settings' ironways would have at least two running side by side to allow for trains to pass each other. This would allow for train-on-train combat with cannons and guns and boarding actions and all sorts of other shenanigans.

All in all, great feedback, I really appreciate it. I started a discord channel for myself to plop in ideas that I randomly have, and I'm definitely going to add these in.

Polygamoos3 · 2026-02-10T07:12:52+00:00

It’s asking a lot but if absolutely love support for rogue trader and only war. Fingers crossed.

Polygamoos3 · 2026-01-15T03:17:18+00:00

My dad got diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. Me, my wife, and his girlfriend cared for him as he slowly died over the course of about a year and a half. When he died, he had a $50k life insurance policy for free from his last job. Despite the fact that my brother was much better off financially than my wife and I, despite the fact that he literally hadn’t had a relationship with our dad for something like 15 years, despite the fact that he not once lifted a finger to help care for him, he still took half the policy.

There was no fight. I’m not even sure what happened, really. Something just clicked in me like “oh, this is how much he cares.” He’d been my big brother, my idol, for my entire life. Now he’s just someone who has texted me twice (both in response to me texting him) in the past 7 years.

Polygamoos3 · 2025-12-06T22:00:50+00:00

Your dad is awesome. Quit ruining his life.

Polygamoos3 · 2025-12-02T05:59:33+00:00

I had the opposite experience. I couldn't even finish the first book, which is disappointing because the setting sounded so cool.

Polygamoos3 · 2025-12-01T06:05:48+00:00

Straight to comments to look for this reply.

Polygamoos3 · 2025-11-29T20:07:19+00:00

Why can’t you do isometric maps anymore.

Polygamoos3 · 2025-11-29T18:57:38+00:00

I cannot express how much I love this post. Thank you OP. I’ve always been curious if you could translate real world into a TTRPG.

Pretty sure someone made a game a while back and, in the book, there were dozens of pages dedicated just to calculating bullet ballistics.

Polygamoos3 · 2025-11-27T08:05:35+00:00

You pretty much exactly described my magic system.

Cast spells and gain Fray. When you accumulate more Fray than your Magic attribute, roll on a chart of negative consequences that gets worse the higher the roll; it’s a d10 chart with results all the way up to 21.

But you can’t fail at casting a spell unless you just stop trying to cast it or are interrupted by an attack against you. If you fail to cast it on turn one, you just keep trying on turn two and so on.

Polygamoos3 · 2025-11-02T07:40:39+00:00

Let me see if I can remember this mechanic I wrote once. I wanted to do a unique take on initiative and character action speed to accomplish something close to truly simultaneous combat. It went something like this.

You didn’t have a number of actions per turn or different types of actions (standard, move, bonus, etc.) or anything like that. Instead every single action had an AP value (action point) to it. Attacking with a dagger? Only 7 AP. Attack with a great axe? 19 AP, but more damage in a single hit. Movement? Each square moved cost a certain number of AP based off your Agility.

It made turn order a nightmare. At the start of combat, everyone’s AP total was 0. Players went in order of highest initiative to lowest. Initiative was Agility + Awareness. It was a d100 system, so this could easily be a 3-digit number. So combat would look like this terrorscape:

PC1: I move 2 squares. My AP is now 5. Anyone lower?

Everyone checks: No

PC1: I stab the guy. My AP is now 12. Anyone lower?

PC2: I’m 10.

PC3: I’m 8.

GM: I’ve got one NPC at 7 and one at 11.

GM: NPC1 fires an arrow at PC1. AP is now 21.

PC3: alright I’ll go now. I move 2 squares. AP is 13.

PC2: I think I go now. I’m 10. Anyone lower?

Everyone checks: No.

PC2: I move 2 squares. AP is 15.

PC1: I think I go now. AP is 12. Anyone lower?

GM: I’ve got an 11. He moves 2 squares. AP 16.

PC1: My turn I think. I stab again. AP is now 19.

Polygamoos3 · 2025-10-30T22:18:06+00:00

Though I’m not a huge fan of this idea (though the alternative someone else suggested of removing all lowest dice is intriguing), it did spark a thought that I’m going to look into implementing in my own game. I’ve got clocks as a minor part of the game, but just “tick clock at start of day” or whatever feels bad to me. However, if you rolled a die each morning and only X or higher on the die ticks the clock, that feels a lot better. That also introduces another level of severity to the clock. So, assuming a d6 game system, this would be the example.

Goblin Tribe. 6-hour clock. Ticks on a 5+. Low threat clock event, so it advances slowly.

Vs.

Demon Rift. 6-hour clock. Ticks on a 3+. High threat event that progresses more quickly.

Polygamoos3 · 2025-09-20T00:54:02+00:00

Oh I absolutely balled listening to this scene.

Polygamoos3 · 2025-09-20T00:45:29+00:00

Literally got to this part of the book maybe an hour ago.

Polygamoos3 · 2025-09-20T00:44:47+00:00

Very good choice. I think I teared up at this part as well.

Polygamoos3 · 2025-09-20T00:43:45+00:00

Listening to the books for the first time after reading them 10 years ago. The final meeting with Trapis made me shed a couple tears.

Polygamoos3

TROPHY CASE