I’m working on and off on writing new content for Opus Anima (only available in German) which has an amazing steampunk horror setting and a very simple but flexible D2 pool system but sadly got abandoned by the publisher after only the core rulebook and a softcover book with an alternate subsetting.

*The world that Opus Anima is set in used to be an outer space colony, so aside from humans, we get several other sentient species such as the Brunad (spider centaurs), Abara (genetically engineered humanoids with four insect-like arms on their backs), Sanherib (somewhere between frogs and flightless birds) and Tel’Pathar (hybrids between humans and an unknown humanoid alien race that can read other peoples’ feelings). A few centuries ago, the planet almost got destroyed and now people live on huge shards that float around what’s left of the planet’s core. In the post-war charos and because of the dense cloud of dust and debris (called the aether) around those shards, all outside contact was lost and most technology regressed to about the late 19th/early 20th century. The setting draws a lot from Victorian England and the German Empire. Technology is mostly driven by steam, scientists constantly (re)discover the secrets of the world, aethership captains explore and colonize the world beyond their home shard and engineers have built a huge steel scaffold that connects several shards to form a thriving empire.

But the planet’s destruction has also caused some less obvious changes. What used to be lower layers of the planet’s crust is now just the underside of a shard and can be mined for fibrite, a metal that seems to be able to react to emotions and occasionally change its form on its own. A broken tool made out of fibrite might mend itself if its owner has always treated it with respect. Fibrite has become an important resource for all sorts of technology from cameras to steampowered robots that have reached almost human-like sentience and are currently protesting in the streets to be accepted as first class citizens. *