Ingenious Engines & Clockwork Enigmas

Being in the main a utile and eclectic compendium of information and resources for simulating the fantastical adventures and speculative conflicts using vigorous imagination, miniature figurines, and scenics cunningly crafted.

Victorian Science Fiction (hereafter VSF) records the vision of the future by writers at the turn of the last century and their followers into the present day. My definition of VSF is a loose one. I include the scientific romances of H.G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle (Martians and lost worlds), the adventure fiction of H. Rider Haggard (lost races and ancient treasures), alternate historical works such as that of the modern Harry Turtledove (the other side won the war), and the steampunk visions of Gibson and Stirling (Charles Babbage made a computer). Some of the rules I include are “straight” colonial or exploration games which can easily be adapted to VSF by incorporating the themes and accoutrements of the genre.

Inspiration

Adventure Gaming in a Kinder, Gentler Time by Walt O’Hara. A VSF page by a true genius. Walt is responsible for one of my favorite games, Le Grand Cirque and the upcoming Circus World.

DyeHard’s VSF by Bryan Broocks. Nicely illustrated with a number of detailed how-to articles. Bryan’s site was instrumental in my choice to try VSF with 15mm figures.

Darkest Gaia by Jim Stuht. Recounts the adventures of Sir Peter de Gee across the globe. Loads of inspirational photos, including an amazing collection of vehicles cobbled together from toys and such.

Felix’s Gaming Pages — Space:1889 by James Clay. A nice collection of links and inspiring photos of minis. Of particular note is an article about gaming in the world of the Difference Engine.

Frank Reade’s Victorian Airships by Paul Guinan. Scans of the covers of Frank Reade Weekly Magazine. Paul Guinan is the creative gent behind Big Red Hair, and the creator of Boilerplate the Victorian Era Robot.

GASLIGHT Page by the Dogs of War Gaming Club. Features a particularly nice scratch-built airship project.

Morval Earth by John Mumford and Alan Hamilton. Morval Earth is fascinating because it is home to both a fantasy and VSF campaign. There are some excellent pictures of scratch-built flying conveyances.

Parroom Station by Robert Charrette. VSF of the Englishmen on Mars school. Offers a line of 28mm miniatures, including some League of Extraordinary Gentlemen figs.

Ponape! Victorian Piracy and Adventure in the South Pacific by B.C. O’Leary. “The setting is a Spanish held island in the Pacific, loosely in the 1890’s, full of native headhunters, rivaling military factions, pirates, black birders, unscrupulous opportunists, and those adventuresome settlers (somebody has to be the targets).” A lavishly illustrated site which is sure to inspire and astound. Includes some nice scratchbuilding suggestions.

Rivets & Steam by Al. A smashing VSF resource using GASLIGHT, including some house rules. There are GASLIGHT stats and rules for dinosaur hunting and now zombies!

The Steam and the Flame by Rob Beattie. Copiously illustrated inspiration for putting The Sword and the Flame through VSF paces.

SteamTrek by Stephen Vossler. “These are the voyages of Her Majesty’s Æther Ship Dauntless. Our mission, to explore romantic new worlds, seek out life, and expand civilization, to boldly go where no gentleman has gone before. ” A PBEM game with a nice supporting website. This is what I had in mind when I wrote the Pangæa Prophesy setting for my NAGS Society Worldbook (scroll down a bit to get to the free download).

Tales of Zimdar by Scott Mathews. An extremely nice VSF page. Features an online GASLIGHT character creator that prints to business cards. Lots of battle reports and some helpful terrain building advice.

The rpg member of the GASLIGHT family. Purports to require the GASLIGHT core rules, but I imagine one could muddle through without them. Essentially a guide to fleshing out your GASLIGHT Main Characters for a roleplaying experience. I like the Newsman Experience system, which reminds me of Jim Wright’s battle reports from Jimland. Includes a number of adventure ideas and one complete adventure, “The Curious Case of the Desert Submarine.”

Setting, presentation, and rules combine to render this an original. While the core rules are currently out of print (save in the GURPS incarnation), the supplements are still available. The players’ book Comme il Faut provides excellent guidance for getting into authentic Nineteenth century character — even dressing like one, should you care to. The Lost Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci and Steam Age will inspire. Six Guns and Sorcery is simply one of the best RPG supplements I have ever read.

Dark Continent is an excellent guide for organizing expeditions into Darkest Africa. The boxed set includes a Players and GM Guide, (108 and 140 pp.), digest sized Catalogue of Goods and Gazetteer of Zanzibar and two lovely 11x17 maps to record one’s discoveries. Well-researched and thorough, VSF elements would have to be imported though DC does feature an African magic system. DC is an excellent resource to flesh out your excursions into Jimland or Ubonga.

A fascinating steampunk setting, with an alternate Victorian timeline advanced to 1984. Uses the d20 system, thus making it useful for any Victorian setting.

Based upon the science fiction (properly termed Scientific Romance) of Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, and others. The core rules include advice on game mastering and campaign design, copious period illustrations, and detailed adventures. The books serve as examples of literature skillfully adapted to the RPG genre. You can purchase the text files as shareware. Currently being published in trade paperback format by Heliograph Incorporated.

I’ve not seen this one yet. Looks to have an anime-meets-Æronef vibe going for it. The preview looks interesting, though….

GURPS Steampunk is an excellent resource for the Victorian era and its more fantastic imaginations. Lots of history, personages, gadgetry, and four sample campaigns. GURPS Steam-Tech provides more inventions while GURPS Screampunk adds gothic horror to the mix.

Hollow Earth Expedition by Jeff Combos (Exile Game Studio, 2006, $39.99 for hardcover, $24.99 for pdf).

Pulp rpg with simple premise (and therefore lending itself to depth) — adventurers explore the Hollow Earth.

This is really a “fantasy” steampunk sourcebook rather than standard Victorian fare, but still useful for inspiration as it is based on d20.

Passages by Justin D. Jacobson and Richard Farrese (Blue Devil Games, 2006, $32.95 in print, $13.95 for pdf).

Space:1889 by Frank Chadwick (Game Designer’s Workshop, 1988; reprinted by Heliograph, Inc., 2000).

The original hardcover is one of the most beautifully produced rulebooks I have ever encountered. Space: 1889 is a science fiction game based upon the same literature as Forgotten Futures in which explorers achieved space travel in the Victorian Age. The rulebook is interspersed with tidbits about Victorian culture, politics, and personalities. The illustrated equipment list is gorgeous. Space: 1889 is a perfect example of how an alternate world can integrate history and literary speculation. Heliograph plans to reprint the entire Space: 1889 oeuvre.

Terra Incognita is a roleplaying games of exploration, intrigue, and mystery, featuring adventurer-scholars whose exploits span the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries. Armed with extensive training, unpredictable technology, and unimpeachable discretion, NAGS Society Members travel to the Four Corners of the globe — exploring unknown lands, investigating mysteries, and uncovering ancient knowledge. I wrote this one, so I’m not exactly impartial. I include it on this list for completeness.

Voyages Extraordinaires by Matthew Hartley, Steve Blease and Mike Baumann. (Wessex Games, £6.50).

A roleplaying complement to Aeronef. From the website: “The basic rules for adventures in distant realms and a combat system that allows for human characters to successfully battle large beasts such as elephants and dinosaurs, as well as the inhabitants of Mars and Venus. An optional complete exploration timeline from 1788 to 1899, mixing fact and fiction. Character templates for over a hundred different character types with their unique traits. Three introductory scenarios following the adventures of Professor Peterson, the most noted scientist in the Empire.”

Jim has written hundreds of pages of fiction regarding the exciting goings-on in Jimland, “Where anything can happen.” The rules describe an excellent, simple game for exploring a mysterious saurian-infested corner of the Dark Continent. Far and away my current favorite game. See my Jimland Scrapbook for some daguerreotypes of the First Bly Expedition.

Rules for 1:1200 æthership combat, a la Space:1889. According to the website: “Whereas other Victorian Science Fiction games have tended to concentrate on detailed one-on-one battles with a single ship per side, Aeronef puts you in command of up to a dozen flyers, ranging from nippy aerial gunboats, to massive dirigible bombers. Aeronef challenges you ability as a tabletop commander. Do you send your aeronef in to challenge your opponents gunboats and risk letting his bombers slip through and destroy targets on the ground? Or do you go after the bombers and hope you get them, before the escorting gunboats get you?” Both Wessex and Irregular Miniatures, among others, sell appropriate miniatures, though it would be relatively easy to scratch build some as well. Has a related rpg — Voyages Extraordinaires.

Afriboria by Rudi Geudens (from the Antwerp Fusiliers, free). Based in Richard Borg’s Battle Cry & Memoir '44, and therefore, the new Battlelore as well. Lost of testimony to how fun it is. Rudi created beautiful cards and stickers for you to print out for your dice.

Available on the By Jingo! website. Vying with GASLIGHT for the Best-Really-Long-Title-for-a-VSF-Game.

“Being a lively distraction for gentlemen and ladies not of a nervous disposition, involving cards and miniature figures.” Available from HLBS or RLBPS in the US. Malcolm Randle’s article from Ragnarok 31, Back to Bog-a-Ten (freely available online), does an excellent job of describing the rules, clearer in many ways than the published rules. And there are some lovely photos of Bog-a-Ten scenery on Terragenesis.

Rules for playing the Martian invasion in five time periods: 1890s, WWI, 1920s, WWII, and the modern day. Uses Ty’s Fistful of TOWs rules.

G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. by Christopher Palmer & John R. “Buck” Surdu (LMW Works, 2000, $16).

Properly Glorious Adventures in Science Loosely Involving Generally Historical Times. A popular set of skirmish rules for VSF. The GASLIGHT family now includes the Journals of Victoria Hawkes: The American Civil War by GASLIGHT (scenarios, rather good fiction, terrain building tips), Battles by GASLIGHT (rules supplement for large scale battles) and Adventures and Expeditions by G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. (the rpg). All supplements require the core rulebook. Michael R. Blair has collected a useful GASLIGHT Q & A page.

Available from HLBS or RLBPS in the US. These rules were originally published in Wargames Illustrated and then were posted to the Foundry website where they are available still, save with missing images and a crucial combat table.

Iron Stars by Daniel Kast (Majestic XXII Games, 2004, $17.95 softcover, $9.95 pdf)

An Æronef-style game of warring Edwardian spacecraft. The book comes with paper counters (or, if you buy the pdf, pages to print out on cardstock) so you don’t need to have miniatures to get started.

A VSF racing game run at many conventions through the years. Pick your contraption and be the first to complete Le Grand Cirque. As the pictures on the main page will not load for me, I'll add this link to an extensive photo report on Le Grand Cirque du Yucatan from Historicon ’03. Here’s one in a different setting: Le Grand Cirque du Cowtown from Historicon ’01.

“Wargames rules for big-game hunting prehistoric, modern and mythological.” Available from HLBS or RLBPS in the US. I don’t have this one yet.

Martian Empires by Mike Lewis (Black Hat Miniatures, link is a direct pdf download).

A playtest version of a Redcoats (and French Foreign Legion) on Mars wargame. Black Hat Miniatures and Regiment Games do 15mm figures in support.

Available from HLBS or RLBPS in the US. These rules perform as advertised — straightforward guidelines for hunting and killing dinosaurs. Even if you don’t use the system, the description of dinos and their characteristics is helpful.

Sir Harry & the Dinosaurs by Roger Webb (Society of Fantasy and Science Fiction Wargamers, Ragnarok 39, 2003).

An entertaining variation on Tusk (below). As there are no back issues of 39 (the Society now prints just enough issues for members and retail orders) one could wait for the rules to come online or, as I did, join the Society and beseech the author to email the rules.

The Sword and the Flame, 20th Anniversary Edition by Larry Brom (And That’s the Way it Was, 1999, $25).

Strictly speaking, TSATF is a colonial wargames ruleset, but it is the founding father of Victorian wargames and has been adapted in countless variants. The Sword in Africa variant included is wonderful for conducting safaris into terra incognita and includes VSF elements which can be emphasized. See Rob Beattie’s Steam and the Flame for inspiration. The Virtual Armchair General now publishes a variety of supplements (The Kris and the Flame, Boilers and Breechloaders, and The Sun Never Sets) and stand alone games (Astounding Tales and B’hoys), which, while not VSF, can serve as inspiration.

Like everything about Irregular Miniatures, these rules are unpolished, quirky, but a joy to play. One plays a hunter, from Og the caveman to brave Sir Harry, out to pot prehistoric prey. The dinos move or attack according to reaction tables, making Tusk an excellent solo game. Irregular makes figures for Tusk in 6mm and 15mm scales, and one can find appropriate 25-28mm minis from any number of sources.