Ok, I realise that I am new here and slowly getting to grips with the game and its mechanics but an interesting thought has occurred to me - has anyone considered intergrating aspects of Burning Sands Jihad into Iron Empires?
I mean, Iron Empires is sci-fi and Burning Sands is loosely based on Dune which is also a sci-fi. Seems to me that the two fit into the same genre. I imagined one of the empires being of a middle-eastern persuasion and having a fanatical militant religion. Imagine playing these fanatics fighting against the Vaylen.
It also raises the interesting concept of the inter-faith wars which would have taken place prior to and during the Vaylen invasion.
Just a thought…
There is a very Persian flavored (at least from the artwork) empire (Comroran worlds?) and there are currently (in the introduction of the Burning Empires book) two or three empires that are going at it because of doctrinal differences.
The theology setting seems to cover fanatics, I’m sure with a little bit of re-texturing the lifepaths and liberal use of Arabic script you can get the Jihad feel.
Given what the Vaylen like I can only imagine them going ga-ga over Salt…and the same for the psychologists.
In the current game (Burning Xero) that I’m in we almost went with a “Near Future Psudo-Ottoman (or Holy Roman) Empire” vibe which I think would have had something like that. We ended up with…a corporate dominated world with psychologists and Kerrn and anarchists…
…and Kerrn fast roping out of V-22 while Predator like drones move in overhead.
Depending on what you’re wanting to do, either a sandbox game or a full on “Narratist Wargame” (which I consider BE to be), you maybe adding too many ingredients to the broth.
That’s one of the points of Burning Empires is that there is a LOT to choose from and you get to pick what you want for the setting, the overarching conflict is “will the world end up being plucked by the Valen,” in Burning Sands it’s focused on “The Nobility are fighting the Jihad…who will win” I think thematically you’re going to have to find some way to bring those together.
The thought of a psychologist pulling on Ancestry or Fanaticism to lay down some serious mind bending, or putting the Jihad or Nobility in the place of having to work with the Valen or loose, I think that could work, but you’d have to stay focused.
Just my $0.02
Burning Empires ruleset was very much based on the Jihad game. Jihad came first, and then they expanded the concepts from that game (Firefight!, propaganda wars, etc. to make Burning Empires). that being said, the flavor is picture perfect with each individually, and they each rock on their own, so i wouldn’t bother meshing them. just choose to play one or the other. it’ll be more fun that way and less work.
Hmm… Ottoman aye…
A Persian/Ottoman/Byzantine blend would be quite flavoursome - a state religion which is theocratically oppowsed to the Humanis Mundanis.
Interesting…
I am not suggesting completely meshing the two settings but simply taking a few aspects (lifepaths, etc) and applying them to Iron Empires.
Whilst I appreciate that the whole thrill of the game is the war with the Valyen, I wonder about other conflicts. There are a number of different religions throughout the empires. The Humanis Mundanis ultimately represent the Catholic Church during the time of the inquisition and even the crusades.
A romantic yet fanatic religion with a certain “Islamic” feel would be quite characteristic.
You could also explore some of the other religions too.
What about using the concept of salt and fanaticism to represent a technophile cult which implants its acolytes with Stimplants which send the acolyte into a fanatical frenzy but are highly adictive like salt and can lead to the recipiant’s death. Imagine terrorists juiced up on stimulant combat drugs, guns blazing and blowing stuff up! 
Just a few thoughts:
- Burning Wheel and Burning Empires use different resource mechanics, so you’d need to hack the Burning Sands lifepaths to make them compatable with how Burning Empire does things.
- If you’re looking for religious fanatics with drugs… http://www.burningempires.com/wiki/index.php?title=Combat_Drugs you could easily burn up stimulant combat drugs. Or http://www.burningempires.com/wiki/index.php?title=Black
- What is it about an Islamic feel that intrigues you?
I think its how it was always elluded to in Dune and other settings but generally avoided.
There is a certain romanticism to certain islamic cultures like Persia in the first century, tenth century Arabia and ninteenth century Morroco.
I’m not talking about the hard-line Shias of todays terrorism but the educated arabs of the ancient world and the noble arabs of the holy crusades.
Muslim terrorists are nothing new. They start in the 7th century, right along with Islam.
The 1st C Persians were polytheists/pantheonists and Zoroastrians. Islam didn’t exist.
10th C Arabia was dominated by the caliphs; probably the lowest period of violence in Arabia ever… because a muslim minority was in charge of a christian majority, and a small and rapidl dying out minority of. The terrorism was on the edges of the caliphate system: Byzantium, north africa, India. Terror of the muslim invaders causes lots of places to simply surrender.
A quick LP sketch of a Municiple Offical for the theocratic group:
Born to Fire (Born on the Wheel)
Devoted to Fire (Devoted to Fire)
Soladis x 2 (Anvil Trained, Loyal)
Soldalis-Captain (Sworn to the Fire)
Professional Officer (No-Nonsense)
Municipl Official (City Official)
Governer (Public Face)
I’ll leave it to the reader to see eactly what this guy is like, but he has 4d (I think) in affiliations from his traits, has connections with the head military guy in the area and is now a provincial governer. He can be set up as either the benveloent leader over squabbling masses, or a tyrant maintaining the status quo.