Electric Bastionland: First Thoughts

I put in a spot of money for the Electric Bastionland Kickstarter, and was duly rewarded with a PDF. So then, a few words on it, for the general discussion.

The book is roughly divided into three section: An Introduction with details of the Into the Odd rules, a list of character Failed Careers backgrounds and advice for play, involving details of the setting.

A presumed party of would-be adventurers automatically start with a debt and someone (or something) to whom they owe money. This skips neatly over the improbabilities of player characterisation and, frankly, allows a probable cause for the dangerous work of dungeon crawling in a city buzzing with money and possibility. Also, it adds an automatic contact - a mentor or benefactor, though also a predator. It's an elegant source of motivation.

This is bolstered by a list of Failed Careers and people you owe money to. It gives superb variety; there are about a hundred careers, each with unique items and skills attached. The city of Bastion, much like (for instance) Virconium or Gormenghast does not really have an official map or set of parameters. So the list of careers is the meat of the setting - setting up the main flavour of Bastionland. On top of that, the black and white art, full of blank faces and thin lines gives a very good impression of squalor, shabbiness, brash fashion and detached stylish opulence. There is a deliberate urban 'cool' to it in places.

Following this, as I said, is a set of advice for play. This is good, frankly. Neatly laid out, with bullet points grouped into threes. The advice for play and for the Conductor (GM or similar) seems sound - and, even if were you disagree with the philosophy, it is nearly laid out and comprehensible.

Electric Bastionland is not a toolkit for describing cities. Yes, as it says, Nobody's Bastion is incorrect, but Bastion is not a description of early-mid 20th century city life (and how to use that for tabletop RPGs). It is a more poetic rendering of the city, where the world is divided into Bastion, Deep Country, the Underground and the Living Stars. Other cities exist, but none can compete with Bastion. The City is moves and changes at astonishing rate - with nothing like a central authority, the Country is supremely hidebound, the Underground spectacularly dark.

One principles of the city boroughs of Bastion is that there is always a crowd; that if possible, a problem or obstacle should always be a human being. 'Mastery of People is Mastery of Bastion'. The city is always crowded, always living. Bastion has no business districts deserted at the weekend, no vibrant provincial towns with artistic colonies, no stifling domestic suburbs, no demands of a central government, no national spirit (nationalism within Bastion seems possible, but probably not of any simple type).  Maybe I am thinking too much of the late twentieth century, mass communication and mass transit - but Metro-land and the Holloway of Diary of a Nobody certainly predate this.

It is a poetic cityscape, an archetype put into formal, almost ritualised terms for use on the tabletop. That isn't automatically bad - I've never felt that RPGs have to be simulations - but I like some of my wider context to be a little granular. It is so unremittingly urban-centric that I want to rejig my anti-urban setting to act as a mental counterweight. It works, and can work for a great many things.

I suppose I would square the circle by having Bastion as the metropole of a larger empire/alliance/federation &c, rather than the literal City beyond all Cities, even if it is that for all intents and purposes.

I like Electric Bastionland. I want to use Electric Bastionland. You may do so as well. I might post a few worked examples here. But remember what it is before you try to use the setting as it is on the page.