This game (I think) came out during my 'no-gaming' life (i.e., 1991-2000; exceptions made for RC D&D and RM, for reasons irrelevant, but I think that the word 'hangover' will suffice).

As far as I can tell, this looks like an incredibly brilliant game.

My impression is that this game is, essentially, the late 19thC colonial race turned up to 11.  19th colonialism & imperialism on Mars.  

Tell me about it!  And what are the rules like?  What would I need to run it?

And the setting ... so, 'Rule Brittania' or what?

Thanks!  

The rules are dead-ass simple.

Your basic impression of "colonialism turned way up" is basically correct.

It's by Frank Chadwick, and the whole piece comes across as very fundamental - that is, it talks about basic gaming, and does it damn well.  It hasn't 'dated' much at all.

It came out in 1989, actually.

RPGPundit

One of my favorite games. The basic rules themselves aren't my favorite, but they're OK. You don't need anything beyond the core book, although Conklins Atlas has some useful info and Sky Galleons provides really cool aerial combat rules.

The rules are a bit clunky... it pre-dates such concepts as an integrated resolution system so if you want to shoot a guy it'll involve a completely different system to if you want to slash at him with a sword.

The character creation system's great fun as there are no dump stats and they include social class, you pick your favourite of the 10 and give it a 10 and then subtract one each time till you're left with 1.  Obviously I created an officer with social class of 10 and an intelligence of 1.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalThe rules are a bit clunky... it pre-dates such concepts as an integrated resolution system so if you want to shoot a guy it'll involve a completely different system to if you want to slash at him with a sword.

The character creation system's great fun as there are no dump stats and they include social class, you pick your favourite of the 10 and give it a 10 and then subtract one each time till you're left with 1.  Obviously I created an officer with social class of 10 and an intelligence of 1.

Actually the stats range from 6 to 1. (there's six stats; alternately, you can also just roll a D6 for each of them, or split a certain number of points between them).

RPGPundit

Space 1889 is one of my favorite games.  I collected the marketing material before it came out.

Heliograph (http://www.heliograph.com/space1889/ ) had the rights to reprint a lot of the books recently, so it's fairly easy to find them.  They also used to publish a magazine for S89, titled 'Transactions of the Royal Martian Geographical Society', which was pretty good - three volumes of the collected magazine are available.  They unfortunately didn't sell well enough to publish the fourth volume, but it's available on the web instead.

And if you like Space 1889, remember to check out Forgotten Futures by Marcus Rowland (who wrote Canal Priests of Mars, among other things):-

http://www.forgottenfutures.com

Masses of quality material for similar things. I like:-

http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff2/advent2.htm#ad30

"I see, sir, that there is to be a flying competition in this area next week."

My man Jeeves is an amazing chap. Put him down on a desert island, and within hours he'd know what was going on for hundreds of miles around. There we were, riding a train through the depths of Ohio, of all places, and he was right on top of things. "How the deuce do you know that, Jeeves? Been eating fish again?"

"No, sir, it's in this newspaper." He held the thing up. It was the usual type of rag you see in these out-of-the-way places; pictures of burning haystacks and outlaws, advertisements for patent medicine, circuses, lynchings, and so on. "There, sir." He pointed at the headline, which didn't mean much to me.

"'WRIGHT BROTHERS CHALLENGE THE WORLD', is that what you mean?"

"Yes, sir. The Wright brothers have built a so-called aeroplane, a glider propelled by an internal combustion engine. I believe that it utilises Bernoulli's principle to fly."

"What, not the jolly old R. force, or those levitating magnetic carriages they use on Ganymede?"

"No, sir. It's more like the machines designed by Da Vinci, I believe."

"The artist chap?"

"The same, sir. He was also an engineer."

"A real Renaissance man."

"I believe that the phrase may have been coined to describe him, sir. To return to the Wright brothers, apparently the machine they have designed is considerably cheaper than other systems. Now they are claiming that it has other advantages, and are offering a thousand dollars to anyone whose flying machine can beat theirs around an obstacle course. The competition is apparently intended to attract investors."

"Anyone taking them up on it?"

"Lord Redgrave, also Monsieur Santos-Dumont, Professor Tesla, and Mister Edison. And others the newspaper doesn't name."

"Hmm, sounds fun. Might be a few bob in it if we back the right horse, so to speak, someone's bound to be running a book. I say... Aunt Agatha isn't expecting to see us back in New York for a couple of weeks. We'll stop off for a few days!"

"I have already taken the liberty of reserving rooms, sir."

Yes, no doubt about it; an absolutely amazing chap.

and

http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff9/hussars.htm

for, but not exclusively,



anti vampire ammo.

I played in a couple of demos of Sky Galleons of Mars (in which I won a copy of the game) and Space 1889 back when the games first came out.

I thought the setting was pretty cool, and it's actually gotten cooler with age as steam-punk is the new hotness right now.  I like the collonial stuff, but I wasn't too fussy about the Martians.  I liked their canals though.

I can't really comment on the game system much because the guy running the game might as well have been running a D&D game -- we were travelling by wagon... no Space 1889 coolness anywhere to be seen, etc. In retrospect, I'm sure he just adapted something from a non 1889 RPG.

He also made people roll ability checks for things like "running across a living room" to see if you trip over the carpet.  Hopefully that's not in the rulebook, because the game more-or-less broke down there when people started getting annoyed at their characters not being able to do normal human actions without rolling to see if they fail.

Sky Galleons was the tactical boardgame companion to Space 1889.  Mars has special wood that lets you build flying ships, so it's steam powered naval monitors in the sky.  Scoring a direct hit on another ship's bolier is a good thing.

Quote from: Erik Boielle*SNIP EXPLOSIVE COOLNESS*

Holy screaming sheepshit that is cool.

Quote from: StuartI played in a couple of demos of Sky Galleons of Mars (in which I won a copy of the game) and Space 1889 back when the games first came out.

I thought the setting was pretty cool, and it's actually gotten cooler with age as steam-punk is the new hotness right now.  

Yes, sadly in many respects Space:1889 was a game before its time.

RPGPundit

Quote from: fonkaygarryHoly screaming sheepshit that is cool.

It's the coolest game I've never run

Quote from: RPGPunditYes, sadly in many respects Space:1889 was a game before its time.

I'm not so sure.

It was certainly a pretty solid step forward in terms of having clearly explained, reliably intelligent procedures for play - the kind of thing that Vampire failed in when it spend time talking about "advanced techniques" without laying any kind of good basic groundwork.

I always thought of it as being in the class of games that was starting to move the hobby on into having actual manuals that contained real and reliable game advice - a process that sadly fell apart when White Wolf first came to the fore.

But that shows my bias pretty heavily.

[Threadcrap] Someone should do a timeline or something regarding the bad advice that WW foisted on the hobby in the 90s.  I was like ten when I first ran into VtM, so my memories of that whole bidness are pretty faint. [/threadcrap]

Were all the PCs in S:1889 supposed to be British, or could you have Boers and Americans rocking through the Ether?

QuoteWere all the PCs in S:1889 supposed to be British, or could you have Boers and Americans rocking through the Ether?

British, American, French, German -- not sure about Japanese, Spanish and Dutch... but I think so.  I don't think their were any Boers... mainly due to Mars being a substitute Africa. Martians came in lowland (civilized) and highland (barbarian) varieties.  They had their own flying ships, but favoured wind power to steam. I think the highland martians could fly as well.

It's been a long time... but I think one of the other countries (Germany?) was collonizing Venus as well.