DungeonWorld

The Largest Turn-Based Fantasy Adventure Game In The World

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The Province Of Derwent


DungeonWorld is a character-based multiplayer
turn-based fantasy adventure game.

It is set in an epic world full of monsters,
mayhem, swords and sorcery.

Steamworx is a module set in the distant Province of Derwent.

Deep Forests and Mitsy Bogs

The Province Of Derwent, which is the setting for Steamworx, is a huge expanse of wilderness dominated by massive evergreen forests, wild rushing rivers, dark misty bogs and wild untamed heathland.

If you imagine a cross between Eastern Europe in the dark ages, with a bit of Scotland and Ireland thrown in for good measure you get an idea of the terrain here. The populate that area with a weird evil version of Victorian England and you have the full flavour.

Unlike the other DungeonWorld settings, Derwent could be considered, in some ways, an evil place. Not everybody, certainly, but the history and culture have made its morals very different from its heroic neighbour, the Kingdom of Bereny.

Steamworx is a place of skullduggery, intrigue, and mystery. A place of shadows and secrets.


The Province of Derwent - Evil Home of Steam and Clockwork.

Steamworx is not a separate module of DungeonWorld. It is simply a vast new area to explore, with more character options, items and monsters. It has a unique flavour featuring strange and fantastic devices of steam and clockwork and a setting as dark and evil as has ever been seen in the DungeonWorld Game.

Giant Tin Robots, strange guns whch fire blasts of hot smoke, lobotomised dwarves with tick tock brains, all this and much more twisted mayhem can be found in Derwent, the home of the Steamworx module.

A Fresh Start

New players in DungeonWorld are especially welcome in Derwent, though the module is recommended for adults. There is always some worry that joining a large and well-established game like DungeonWorld will mean "competing" with long-time players. While this actually isn't the case in DungeonWorld, you can set your minds entirely at rest by joining Derwent, where everybody gets in at exactly the same starting point.

Rules Of Participation

Each player can control up to three adventuring positions in Steamworx. Each position can have up to ten main characters and an unlimited amount of sub-characters. It is entirely possible to play and thoroughly enjoy Steamworx with only two characters, so don't feel you must have a big position to have fun. Options for larger positions are only there to satisfy people who like big turns. Steamworx is an adventure game and a roleplaying game, not a competitive game, so different people's position sizes need have no bearing on one another.

Although Steamworx is part of the main DungeonWorld module (Module 5), players of that module who wish to start Steamworx characters must start a new position to do so. It is possible to travel to and from Derwent, but the distance is great and the journey difficult, which prevents easy access.

Political Correctness

Derwent is extremely un-politically correct. Given its setting, it has slaves, monstrous experiments, women in subservient lifestyles, mistreatment of the poor, corporal punishment, terrible state secrets, you name it. <grin> Anybody who finds this sort of thing offensive in a fantasy setting is asked to please abstain from participation. It's only a game. The opinions of the evil folk in Derwent do not reflect those of the Madhouse staff. With the exception of lobotomised dwarves. That sounds very fair ; )



Mainland

Derwent, where Steamworx is set, is a large mass of land to the North-West of Bereny. It is bordered on its South-Eastern tip by the wastelands known as the Broken Lands and along its Eastern side by the impressive Spirit Mountains. The Capital City of Derwent, called (imaginatively) the City of Derwent, is also the ONLY city. All the residents of the Province live there, or in small villages nestled nearby. The majority of Derwent is completely unexplored. And for good reason.

Derwent is a large of immense black forests harbouring creatures and races thus far unknown to man. Its people have preferred to lock themselves behind their massive walls and live a cloistered but comfortable life of prosperity... at least for the idle rich.

Increasing pollution from smoke and alchemicals heave meant that the Derwentians must push further afield, to open up more of their lands for expansion and population.

Kriegmund

Hundreds of miles away, on the far Western edge of the province lies the brooding Kingdom of Kriegmund, a place which is rumoured to be even blacker and more unpleasant that Derwent. Only a handful even claim to have visited or traded with Kriegmund, but the people of Derwent have begun suggesting that more links might be useful. Especially since Bereny are so distrustful...

The province of Derwent, the long-established enemy of the ‘good’ Kingdom of Bereny, is the setting for Steamworx. A land of corruption, evil and darkness. A land where forgotten ‘science’ takes the place of familiar magic, where the gods give no power to their half-hearted worshippers and where the pinnacle of glory is to rise to be the ruler of a Faction, to build factories which spew black smoke into the air, to pollute the waters with alchemicals, to twist and mould the mind of ‘slave’ races to the whims of their tyrannical masters.

Derwent, a land where goodness is seen as weakness. Where you are only on top until somebody stabs you in the back. A land where the rules favour the strong rather than the just.

Derwent, a province torn apart by its own mistakes. Its wild animals driven insane and made into terrible monsters by a mysterious ‘plague’. It’s fertile lands made bad by sewage and waste. A place abandoned by its own people... Until now.

Derwent. A place of shadowy conspiracies which resist penetration and revelation. A place of awful secrets waiting to be revealed...

The Characters
Characters can choose from all Berenian classes except Dwarves and Elves. (They can still come here, but cannot START here.) Also, eight new Derwentian Classes (four of which are available to free-play positions.)

Main Module Links
Derwent is part of DungeonWorld Main Module (5). You can travel between the two lands across the Spirit Mountains, although the journey is long and treacherous. Since Derwent is now being reclaimed with assistance from Bereny, Berenian’s are ‘welcome’ in Derwent. At least for now...