The recent attention to Barsoom etc., victorian martian hoo-haw, reminded me of this.  Of how its one of those few games I've had on my to-do list of wanting badly to run a serious campaign of it for a long time.  And yet I never seem to be able to.

That is all.

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Quote from: RPGPundit;522021The recent attention to Barsoom etc., victorian martian hoo-haw, reminded me of this.  Of how its one of those few games I've had on my to-do list of wanting badly to run a serious campaign of it for a long time.  And yet I never seem to be able to.

That is all.

RPGPundit

Ditto. There's a copy of the original rules in my loft, and I've never played. I'm a sucker for Victorian adventures. I treasure, like every good gentleman, a full set of Flashman novels. And in my collection of stuff I have a much cherished selection of original Victorian military pith helmets. A Martini-Henry graces my dining room.

'Martians, Sir. Tharsands of 'em....'

It's not one I can usually get a casual group together for, I can run a one-shot or a demo. Or I can run some Sky Galleons and do a few sessions as a novelty add-on. Or can recruit from folks I've played with for a long time, and run a short campaign.

But if I post an open invitation for a casual game, I get a bunch of steampunkers who don't want to come back the next time, because it wasn't what they thought it was. I do better with that crowd running Castle Falkenstein. My Space:1889 is way more steam than punk.

I got Space 1889 way back in the day.  I was extremely enthusiastic about it.  Sadly, my group at the time didn't have any interest in it at all, and the dick of the group made a point to berate the game and "prove" it was stupid.  That's the only time it ever got close to gaming use as opposed to simple reading use.  That was over 20 years ago.

I kept the game when I purged half my collection not too long ago.  I still enjoy thumbing through it and reading it.  I'm not fond of the system, but a d6 Adventure conversion shouldn't be too hard.  I love the idea and have jumped at games with similar setups such as Castle Falkenstein and Victoriana.  But the simple truth is that I don't know what I'd run with it.  If I tried, it would probably just end up as something flavorless, but with funny costumes.  The other problem is that no one other than me seems to think it's cool, so no one wants to play.

One problem that the game has is that there are almost too many possilbe ways to approach it. It's hard to decide on what to focus on. First off, you've got all of the inner planets to play on. Then, what's the campaign goint to be like? Will it be about colonists? Politics? War? Espionage? Treasure hunting? Scientific expeditions? Large scale engineering projects? What? The players might not have same ideas either. Though really, that's a problem with any setting.

Lucky for me that I just have to mention Space 1889 and I get players lining up.

My 'always meant to run' Victorian-Edwardian game is Forgotten Futures also by Marcus L Rowland. It's a more Earth based set of inter-related games and the novels of Edwardian SF that inspire them. Always had a hankering to play the Tsar Wars campaign.

I always think of Barsoom and John Carter as very North American.

http://www.forgottenfutures.com/

Anyway, lots of actual adventures in the freely distributed stuff.

Frank Chadwick did a Space 1889 seminar at the CelestiCon convention last year. I understand he is premiering a new steampunk minis game this year.

http://www.celesticon.com/seminars.php

Quote from: RPGPundit;522021The recent attention to Barsoom etc., victorian martian hoo-haw, reminded me of this.  Of how its one of those few games I've had on my to-do list of wanting badly to run a serious campaign of it for a long time.  And yet I never seem to be able to.

One of my mates has just started doing prep for a game.

Quote from: jadrax;522357One of my mates has just started doing prep for a game.

A pox on him then!!

RPGPundit

I've run a Space 1889 campaign for awhile. I started off the campaign with a murder mystery on board the ether flyer that took the PCs to Mars. This let them get a chance to make alliances among the party as well as with some of the NPCs on board who would later be useful. It also introduced an early villain character (the killer amongst them, who later escaped from his cell on Mars while awaiting trial).

At the end of the introductory adventure they had some allies, the party had formed a few bonds within its structure and they had been recruited by the Foreign Office as sort of 'freelance' agents of the crown.

Further adventures included intercepting several crates of experimental lightning guns which were being smuggled by Martian separatists into the Brittish colonies for an attempted revolt. They also helped with an excavation of a Martian temple, which turned out to be a secret Cult of Worm hideout, was part of a crew to test an experimental atom-powered ether flyer to Jupiter, fought in the colonial wars against the Belgian powers on Mars and lots more.

One thing that helped a lot was the players all came into the game with good strong character concepts. These players all had reasons to be on Mars so when the time came to start expanding the campaign there was plenty of material to use from everyone's back stories.

The couple of times I have sat down to think of a Space 1889 campaign, I keep thinkng Colonialism plotlines would be more fitting and easier to explain to my players as a more straight-up alt-history Earth Colonialism in Africa, India, Middle East, East Asia with the flying ships thrown in for a little pizzaz.  To me, the space part actively hinders campaign ideas.

Caveat that all I have is the Savage Worlds version, never having perused the original.

Quote from: Old One Eye;522616To me, the space part actively hinders campaign ideas.

How so? Characters can practically build their own spaceships in their barns. Well, given the right skills and if you're playing the original system.

Quote from: Machinegun Blue;522701How so? Characters can practically build their own spaceships in their barns. Well, given the right skills and if you're playing the original system.

Any cool campaign ideas I have come up with are based around Colonialism or exploring mysterious lands on Mars or Venus.  Then I think, why dither with Martians and Venusians?  The exact same Colonialism ideas work just as well in, say, East Asia wherein I can broker a much, much, much greater wealth of information.  Why come up with some Venusian Angor Wat facsimile when I can use the real thing?

Quote from: Old One Eye;522616The couple of times I have sat down to think of a Space 1889 campaign, I keep thinkng Colonialism plotlines would be more fitting and easier to explain to my players as a more straight-up alt-history Earth Colonialism in Africa, India, Middle East, East Asia with the flying ships thrown in for a little pizzaz.  To me, the space part actively hinders campaign ideas.

Caveat that all I have is the Savage Worlds version, never having perused the original.

You know, Conklin's atlas has huge amounts of info on EARTH in this setting, including spectacular hexmaps of victorian earth and all kinds of other info. You can easily run a Space:1889 campaign set entirely on Earth.

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