Cogs, Cakes and Swordsticks is Lynne Hardy's game of steampunk pulp adventure, designed to be played in the comfort of your favourite tea shop with your friends, and requiring nothing more than your imagination, a pen, napkins and a sugar cube (should a six-sided die not be readily forthcoming).
Inside you will find a nice, simple introductory guide to get you playing as quickly as possible (including a short adventure with its own pregenerated characters), as well as ever so slightly more detailed rules on how to create characters of your own, and how to run a full game of Cogs, Cakes and Swordsticks. Also contained within are details of the fantastical world in which the game takes place, and another, longer adventure, set against the backdrop of the British Museum.
So grab the cake of your choice and a piping hot cup of tea, settle down and allow us to welcome you to the Empire of Steam - an age of marvellous gizmos and mad inventors, Babbage Engines and flying steamships, dashing heroes and femme fatales, and the odd fiendish villian for good measure. In short: a time of exploration, intrigue and high adventure! We’re glad you could join us.
55 pages of Steampunk pulp adventure
Introduction to The Empire of Steam setting
Introductory & full rules
2 Adventures with 4 pregenerated characters to get you playing immediately
Fabulous steampunk art by Geof Banyard & Richard Hardy
Layout & Interior design by Michal E Cross
Tea! Cake!! Adventure!!! *
*Actually we couldn't fit the tea and cake inside as it was getting frightfully messy!
Atlantis: City in the Clouds - Included in Cogs, Cakes & Swordsticks Revised Ed.
A marvel of the modern age, Her Majesty’s Flying Steam City Atlantis (known to her inhabitants simply as ‘The Cog’) hovers above the Atlantic Ocean like a proud, floating galleon. Well, a gigantic, metal galleon that doesn’t actually go anywhere, but I’m sure you get the general idea. Welcome to this new jewel of Her Majesty’s Empire, a place where goggle-eyed tourists stop-off on their way to the New World, where diplomats from a whole host ofnations meet to cement international relationships, and where intrepid merchants ply their trade at dizzying heights above the ocean’s swell. But beware the dashing pirates (or dastardly ones, depending on your point of view) who patrol the skies, always on the lookout for easy pickings...
Atlantis: City in the Clouds is a sourcebook for Cogs, Cakes & Swordsticks which provides an in-depth look at this fantastical flying city. So grab your Earl Grey – it’s time for High Tea!
Insight into the history and construction of Brunel and Stephenson's engineering marvel, HMFSC Atlantis
Details on the layout of the city and its environs, including notable businesses and personalities
A full-length adventure of sky-high intrigue set aboard The Cog
Six pregenerated characters ready for you to pick up and play
Even more Attributes to help build your own adventurers in the Empire of Steam
"Cogs, Cakes and Swordsticks is a simple, narrative-style game of steampunk pulp adventure inspired by the scientific romances of the Victorian and Edwardian age, designed to be played in the comfort of your favourite tea shop with your friends, with nothing more than a pen, napkins and sugar cubes (should a six-sided die not be available). In the world of Cogs, Cakes & Swordsticks the age of clockwork and steam never made way for the age of electronics and microchips. Think of it as an alternative history, where Charles Babbage did manage to invent the very first computer - machines which now run Her Majesty Queen Victoria’s Empire with calculated efficiency. Items we would recognise as modern technology do exist, thanks to Babbage’s engines speeding up the pace of scientific discovery, but they are beautifully created from brass and mahogany, and powered by steam (although that American chap Edison is apparently looking into this new-fangled electricity malarkey).
So grab the cake of your choice, settle down and allow us to welcome you to the Empire of Steam - an age of marvellous gizmos and flying steamships, a time of exploration, intrigue and adventure!"
Featuring artwork by Geof Banyard
Welcome to The Cog!
Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Robert Stephenson were first commissioned in 1851, after the triumph of the Great Exhibition, to design and build a flying metropolis that celebrated the might of Her Majesty’s Empire.
The aim was to astound her political rivals, as well as to provide a forum for commerce and trade conveniently located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The project was to be called Her Majesty’s Flying Steam CityAtlantis, affectionately known by all those who now live on her as“The Cog”.
When both Stephenson and Brunel died in 1859, many in positions of authority feared that HMFSC Atlantis would never leave the drawing board to grace the skies. Only the Prince Consort’s dying wish ensured its continued funding. After Prince Albert’s death in 1861, Her Majesty decreed that any and all monies necessary were to be made available to Brunel’s son, Henri Marc, to see to fruition the project that her beloved husband had taken so great an interest in.
With all of the necessary components in place, work began on HMFSC Atlantisin the summer of 1864. Due to some rather inclement weather and a few unfortunate fracas in distant parts of the Her Majesty’s Empire, the overall construction of the Atlantis took a little over ten years. Although Her Majesty did not attend the opening ceremony, having become a virtual recluse since her husband’s death, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli conveyed Her Majesty’s pleasure at the completion of this epic engineering task at the official launch in the summer of 1875.