#chariots of steel

[prokopetz]

— Chariots of Steel v1.0 by @open-sketchbook, p. 72

This is very possibly the best explanation for lack of realism in a tabletop RPG I've ever read.

[kaelor0409]

A fun thing I noticed about Flying Circus and its Chariots of Steel expansion is that in both systems combat is extremely isolating, but they isolate in opposite ways.

Combat in Flying Circus is agoraphobic (or more accurately it is kenophobic). You might be part of a team, but you are alone in a vast blue void. It's so big that getting lost in a clear sky is a genuine possibility. Things appear as if from nowhere and disappear the moment you take your eyes off them. Someone who was in your gun sights one minute might be on your tail the next, and you have no idea how they got there. Even if you are lucky enough to have a backseater, you can't really talk to them unless you shell out for an intercom. Unless everyone installs expensive and bulky radio equipment you can't talk to the rest of your team either. If things go far enough off script you can literally go down in flames and your friends won't know until they find your smoking crater...if they ever do.

In contrast, Chariots of Steel is claustrophobic. If you are a tanker, you are stuck in a cramped metal box. You can't hear anything over the engine, and you can barely see anything out of the tiny vision slits. Sure you have crew, but unless you pay extra for an intercom your only means of talking with your crew will be strategic kicks. Infantry have it just as bad. Soldiers in the open are better known as "target practice", so you'll spend a lot of time huddled behind stuff with your head down, praying that there isn't someone sneaking closer with a grenade. This status quo of blind terror is enforced through the Suppression and Morale mechanics, which are critical to how fights work in CoS.

The extent of this isolation is obviously going to vary based on the tone of your game, but it's baked into the rules of both systems. Even figuring out where people are and what is going on usually requires a roll, and communication is complex and crude unless you jump through a lot of hoops. Teamwork is still possible and often key to success, but this isn't D&D where everything is laid out neatly on a grid and talking is a free action. When the bullets start flying it's just you and your instrument-shaped character sheet. You can't focus on the entire battle, just your little corner of it.

It's a truly unique approach, and I really like it.

[open-sketchbook]

FLYING CIRCUS - CHARIOTS OF STEEL IS OUT!!!

This absolutely ludicrous 314 page expansion for Flying Circus adds so much content for ground combat you could use it to run a whole campaign without ever leaving the ground!

[star-goose]

My character for a Chariots of Steel game, Pauline Dekker

And one of her Squamates, Emelie Wolf

Very excited for this game!

Now just have to draw Four more of these </3

[bionicle-necron]

I'm being VERY NORMAL about Chariots of Steel.

IM NOT FREAKING OUT ABOUT THE FT-17 BEING RIGHT THERE. WHAT DO YOU MEAN IM HOLDING IT TOO HARD ITS A TANK.

[wrecksalot]

Okay, so one of my favorite indie ttrpgs, flying circus just released an expansion recently.

This got me thinking about that post I made where I said what planes the undersiders would fly if they were flying circus characters, and that got me thinking about the Slaughterhouse nine and what they would be in this universe.

With the new expansion, Chariots of Steel we no longer need to wonder. They are ground pounders, able to launch attacks on aerodromes and towns alike that their air militia and any circus pilots might find hard to handle.

Mannequin obviously has a squad of clockworks, heavy armor and the skirmisher mastery, so he can pull his classic moves of creeping around vents and having an uncanny valley vibe

Shatterbird has a Flaktraktor and the fire section mastery, preventing their victims from scrambling a proper defence and generally filling the air with projectiles.

Burnscar has a squad with carbines and landflammenwerfers and the shock trooper mastery. She can plink away at you from a decent distance, but y the time you start fighting back she is already in your face and commiting war crimes.

Crawler has a Drakentoter, the biggest tank in the game, heavily armed and with heavy armor

Cherish has a Nashorn, an artillery vehicle that can reach out and touch you anywhere in the city

Siberian has an SRW gletsher, which plows through walls like they aren't even there.

Bonesaw drives a Mannschaftwagon with the driver mastery and a few clockworks kitted for capture.

If things go south on any given raid she can use those prisoners as hostages to ensure the nine get a clean getaway and of course she's a medic so if you want to injure one of the nine you had better make it hurt, you better kill them in one shot because otherwise bonesaw can just patch them up good as new.

Jack Slash has a Feldmaus, a slippery light tank that struggles to deal with infantry

And because I felt bad for leaving her out of my last post,

Green Eyes drives a Fischtraktor, an extra spooky submersible tank that's hard to keep down. She offers to let Blake and Evan be her gunner and loader, but since it achieves submersible status by filling entirely with water they haven't taken her up on the offer yet.

[kaelor0409]

Point of order!

What you've described is clearly the famous VM-96b "Flakstampfer", but the image you've included is instead of the later VM-96c "Stahlofant"!

The actual VM-96b looks like this:

Note the different weapons, plus the lack of arms and forward-facing machine-gun.

If you look carefully you'll also note that the upper edges of the vehicles look different. This is because the C variant doesn't have an anti-air shell and was instead intended for ground combat. It has an extra machine-gun in the front (the distinctive "snowman" nose in the original image), and it trades the two heavy machine-guns for a repeating cannon and an infantry mortar.

While the 96b focuses on waving "hi!" to passing aircraft in a way they won't soon forget, the 96c allows you to introduce any new friends you meet on the ground to the wonders of 20mm high explosive and white phosphorus (though 20mm HE is also a nice gift for airborne guests if they linger long enough). It also includes wire cutters (the "arms") in case your tourist destination of choice invested in any hostile architecture, because fuck that shit. People should be free to go where they want, man!

[carrotcakecrumble]

Idk how Laurie held out as long as he did, if someone pulled the ‘Come and say goodbye to me, then.” On me, every ounce of self-respect I’ve cultivated over 2 decades would be GONE kaboom bye

[companionwolf]

me tomorrow at the neighborhood garage/yard sales:

[pinkrose05]

Folks, if you know a Ren main who watched the concert today, you should probably check up on them.

[kaelor0409]

It says something that the VM-96 is straight up scifi bullshit that looks like it just walked out of Castle Wolfenstein...

...and it still seems more plausible than this.

“Killer Can!”/“Better Than No Tank I Guess”

Macchi had been working on a variety of light walkers and had deployed several for trial runs. The original Model A was an infantry support vehicle carrying a 37mm cannon and an aircraft rotary engine on the underside, but as the Macchi Republics began to lose air superiority, the vehicle was redesigned into a mobile machine-gun carrier. Production of these models soon outstripped the Model A and became by far the most common walker in service.

It quickly became clear that the production rate for the VM-94 was not going to meet demand, and the issue was the locomotive mechanism. At the height of the issue, three sets of hulls were produced per walker chassis. Rather than waste this excess industrial potential, it was ordered these excess hulls be converted into cheaper conventional “Victory Tanks”. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the “Carro della Vittoria” did not go as planned. Tracks even theoretically capable of crossing trenches required extending the hulls, which negated much of the built-up reserve chassis. The resulting tank was clumsy, sluggish, and had a tendency to flounder in most terrain. Still, it was all Macchi had.

[prokopetz]

Me: *flips tabletop RPG open to a random page*

The game: *a two-page spread discussing various engine failure modes and the perils of carbon monoxide poisoning, accompanied by an inset illustration of a jumpsuited soldier desperately attempting to crank-start a First World War tank; bullets spark off the tank’s hull and pass mere inches from the soldier’s head, while the soldier’s tears cut tracks through the diesel-grime caking their cheeks; the soldier has adorable cat ears*

[kaelor0409]

I swore I'd be normal about Chariots of Steel. I really did.

But "Wilhelm and Josef" got me.

[open-sketchbook]

CHARIOTS OF STEEL RELEASE DATE

AFTER THREE YEARS OF WORK I FINALLY HAVE A RELEASE DATE

Chariots of Steel, the ground combat & tank expansion for Flying Circus, comes out on Friday, May 17th!

This absolutely ridiculous expansion both gives far more depth and guidelines for when your pilots end up in shootouts in the Wild or in town, plus gives you an entirely new way of playing, as landsknecht, the ground counterparts to Flying Circuses. These mercenary companies with tanks and rifles do dirty jobs in the places of Himmilgard where the Wild is thin.

To make that interesting, it also includes extensive new Threat guidelines, with a large array of GM moves for the ground and a variety of new and expanded enemies, from the clockwerk constructs to the armies of post-apocalyptic warlords.

The game has 20 premade tanks, a flexible ground vehicle builder with examples, a bunch of new firearms and equipment, and six new Mastery sets for ground combat. The tanks a mix of historical and original vehicles, with lots of variants for each one.

Also... there's way, way too much art in this book. Way too much! I drew so so, so many arts!

[star-goose]

Flying Circus made us plural…

[girlbossa-nova]

the moon in paintings. x