Thirty Days Of Space 1889

For the April 2  Saturday Night Space Opera game, I'll be running the Ubiquity system version of the Space 1889 RPG.  I actually ran a Ubiquity-based Space 1889 game once before at a convention. I had to use the Ubiquity-based Leagues of Adventure RPG for that event, due to issues with the Kickstarter for the new game. Players had a lot of fun with that convention game, and I am sure that running Space 1889 with the official Space 1889 Ubiquity rules is going to go just fine.

Over the next 30 days or so, I am planning to write a series of posts on the RPG and game world as I prepare the scenario. This will be partly reflections based on reading the book, and partly exploration of themes related to the setting.

This version of the Space 1889 setting was written by Europeans, and there are subtle changes which are intriguing to me, such as the existance of a revolutionary government in France due to the victorious Paris Commune. That detail alone is pretty cool, and creates all sorts of possibilities for "Agents of the Commune" style international, interplanetary, and even anti-colonial intrigue.

Hopefully I'll get some reading done on the Commune this month. I have two classic histories of the Commune sitting on shelves less than five feet away from me, just waiting to be read.

Dinosaur Hunt on Venus; Or, More Civilized Times?

"Are you saying that is a Buddhist dinosaur?"

You can't make quotes like that up! Now imagine that being said by a military scientist with a German accent. Welcome to Space: 1889!

At Con of the North this year, I ran six hours of Ubiquity-based Space: 1889 gaming. The PDF of the new RPG from Chronicle City isn't out yet, so we reverse engineered everything for "Dinosaur Hunt on Venus" from Hollow Earth Expedition and Leagues of Adventure.

I was going to run two linked adventures - one set on Venus and another on Mars - but I opted to run the Venus adventure twice. I used to think that sort of thing was cheating - and, well, inauthentic since it breaks verisimilitude (the logic being, "if you do it twice it's not real") - but I actually kind of enjoy seeing the different directions groups take with a story.

The first version of the scenario was for a two hour game slot. The players were four adults and one child - a boy of about eight. It was really fun. I started out with a brief exposition about how the Victorians traveled between worlds in Space: 1889. As the veterans know, etherflyers use solar powered steam boilers to drive a propellers through the ether. As I explained this, the eight year old had a look on his face like "this dude is crazy, that's not how things work in space!" He obviously knew his science.

This wasn't your everyday dinosaur hunt in the jungles of Venus either. One of the PCs had a secret mission. He was a Lao royal pretender of the Setthatirath lineage, and sought to secure a dinosaur egg during the hunt in order to bring it back to Laos and hatch it. His family's thinking was that having hold of a Nak-like reptilian creature would lend great legitimacy and prestige to their leadership claims. The prince brought a trusted Hmong hunter along to help with his secret mission.

One fun part of the wind-up to the actual hunt was that the eight year old, who was playing the Big Game Hunter (a key character, as he has an elephant gun), wanted to get a riding tiger for the expedition. The party encountered such a beast - albeit forlorn and bedraggled - in a zoological exhibition in Venusstadt, the German colonial capital in the still-sweltering highlands at Venus's northern pole. They paid the zookeeper to let them have it. So the kid got his riding tiger!

Janet Ausilio's illustration of the Martian Steppe Tiger

Soon thereafter, the party headed south by airship for the lowland shores. They found a brontosaurus and engaged it. These creatures are hard to kill! They have roughly 5-6x the Health Points of a human, and a thick hide which it is hard for bullets to penetrate. One needs an elephant gun, and if possible, explosives to go up against these creatures. But the party got their dinosaur and got their eggs.

***

The second iteration of the scenario was a four hour game. The party had more time to explore Venusstadt, and engaged in some intrigue involving the German intelligence services and a Russian Okhrana espionage cell using a French hotel as their base of operations. 

There was funny banter about the scene in the German airship officer's club:

-German military scientist PC: "Are there any intellectuals here?"

-GM: "There are a couple of officers reciting German Romantic poetry."

-German military scientist PC: "That's not what I meant!"

Herr Vogt, the expedition guide hired by the players, took them by airship to the Italian colony in the south. Here, the PCs made camp in the marsh, and turned in for the night. Herr Vogt was standing watch when he discovered a herd of brontosaurs perilously close to the camp; he tried to awaken the PCs, only to be rebuffed by one, and to be handed concussive explosives by the German scientist in an effort to "scare away" the great beast.

This ended poorly; Herr Vogt was trampled into the steaming Venusian bog by a mildly perturbed brontosaurus.

The PCs engaged the bronto, and were soon surprised to learn how much abuse a brontosaurus can take and still stay standing. But eventually PCs prevailed with a mix of conventional weaponry, explosives, and some improvisation based on classic hunting tools. In particular, the German military scientist's over-sized "boar spear" proved especially helpful in hampering the brontosaurus' movements, so that firepower could be concentrated upon it. The boar spear first had to be hammered into the creature for it to be truly effective as an impediment to the creature's movement! 

The PCs left the carcass to sit until morning, until pictures could be taken with their trophy. Then they began to hunt for dinosaur eggs. During their hunt, they encountered a seven headed serpentine species that was a dead ringer for a Nak. It seemed intelligent too. 

They tracked the creature to a lair in the forest. It's home was a stupa-like structure with a subterranean hatchery/incubator. This led to more adventures, including a massacre of lizard folk villagers living in proximity to the stupa, and a follow-on massacre of lizard folk who had come to relieve the besieged villages. 

"The horror! The horror!"

Nak eggs were recovered from the stupa. The PCs narrowly escaped being slaughtered by angry Nak. The eggs were carefully packed for the etherflyer journey back to Earth. As the curtains drew to a close on the adventure, one egg's shell began to crack...

Con of the North Begins

No Deck of Fridays today, because today we're actually using the Deck of Fate at the gaming table!  It's the first day of Con of the North in the Twin Cities, the largest gaming convention in the Upper Midwest.  Today we are running six hours of Ubiquity Space: 1889 content, and a two hour Fate Freeport session. 

We have quite a cast of characters for Space: 1889, including a:

• Gunslinging French anarchist with a penchant for Verne and anti-colonialism
• Vengeful German armaments inventor
• Venusian lizard man scout
• Itinerant Martian aristocrat-scholar
• Ambitious Lao Prince/Princess from Vientiane
• Skillful but very superstitious Hmong hunter
• British Big Game Hunter
• Ruritanian etherflyer pilot
• Intriguing British adventuress from the Ladies Speculative Society  

Should be fun.

Space: 1889

A cover treatment for the Ubiquity Edition

This weekend, we read most of the the original Space: 1889 RPG, published by GDW in 1988. That was GM prep, because on Friday afternoon of this week, we are running two back-to-back Space: 1889 adventures at Con of the North. My original plan was to use Chronicle City's forthcoming Ubiquity-based Space: 1889 game, which is a translation from the German edition, but the release of the PDF has been delayed.

My Plan B for Friday is to use the Leagues of Adventure RPG (steampunk Victoriana powered by Ubiquity) as the game engine for the scenarios. The game's baseline assumptions (SF-based steampunk inspired by Wells and Verne) are close enough to Space: 1889's that this should be a pretty easy conversion. There are still four days before the game though, so if the new PDF arrives, we'll incorporate it!

One thing I will be carrying over from the German edition are the changes to France. About all I know is that in the German edition, France has a progressive republic based on a victorious Paris Commune. That's all I know, but that seems pretty cool. It has the potential to cut across the static Great Power rivalries in new and interesting ways. A French state with a relatively empowered working class could be out there making alliances with unions, and with anarchist federations and socialist parties in other states. That could really upset the apple cart a bit, in ways that the Russian Revolution did in our world a few decades later.

My impressions of the original Space: 1889 RPG are rather positive, after a careful reading. The system seems simple enough, at least for skills, and I'd imagine characters can be generated quite quickly. The combat system I'd have to really playtest a bit to have a strong opinion on; the way it handles a variable number of player actions per turn might bog things down, but maybe not. It certainly doesn't seem THAT top heavy for an 80s game system. I've heard people complain about the game system, but again it seems pretty straightforward to run. I don't see any reason why you couldn't run the setting with the original system out-of-the-box, and if I hadn't promised convention registrants that I'd be running Ubiquity, I probably would use the original system.

The content on the Victorian period is good, and accompanied by plenty of illustrations, particularly for period technology and weaponry. The descriptions of both Mars and Venus are interesting and look like places with plenty of room for adventure. I could have done without the references to "savages" and "savagery" in exposition when describing tribal peoples on Mars and Venus. If used at all, those terms would have been better placed using in-character or in-world quotes.

One surprise was the almost complete lack of any description of Martian religion, other than for a couple of Martian cults with anti-imperialist sentiments. I suppose that is reflective of the 80s, when there was little interest among SF gamers in the topic of religion/atheism, and when the domestic U.S. Right was itself busy courting religious fundamentalists at home and abroad, and playing a Great Game of its own in Afghanistan.

Ubiquity Space 1889 Marathon at Con of the North 2014

I am planning another Friday afternoon two-part Marathon for the first day of Con of the North in February 14, 2014. The Marathon will use the forthcoming Ubiquity system rules for the new edition of the classic interplanetary steampunk RPG, Space 1889.

Like last year's Ubiquity Marathon, the adventures will be linked thematically, but separate.  So people will be able to register to play in either Part I or Part II or both.

Part I will run from 12-2 PM: "Dinosaur Hunt on Venus" involves, naturally, dinosaurs, a strange discovery, and an encounter with...Germans!

Part II will run from 4-6 PM: "Intrigue on Mars" makes the leap from strange discoveries on Venus great power rivalries among the native nations - and ancient ruins - of Mars.

The Funnel Of Death

http://vianica.com/attraction/52/cosiguina-volcano

This is the second part of my Con of the North report on running a six hour marathon of the Ubiquity-based Leagues of Adventure RPG. The first part of the report was here. 

The PCs had commandeered a Royal Air Navy airship in London, and in spite of Nathaniel Walker's incredibly poor sense of direction had successfully piloted it to the vicinity of the Cosiguina volcano in Nicaragua. Cosiguina was where Nathaniel's brother, William Walker had departed for the Hollow Earth a few years earlier. It was a race against time to rescue him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelius_Vanderbilt

http://www.examiner.com/article/
on-tunnel-boring-machines-and-mole-men

In the way were the forces of none other than Walker's arch enemy, the shipping and railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt. Mr. Vanderbilt was hot on the trail of William Walker, and had constructed rail lines up the slope of the volcano which would be used to deploy a mole machine in a cave on the inner slope of the volcanic caldera.

Our heroes were determined to reach that cave - an opening to the Hollow Earth - first. So they crashed the airship on the inner slope of the caldera, and sledded part of the airship's gondola - and the pilot's personal ornithopter - right into the mouth of the cave. But the mole machine on rails continued its advance. 

The heroes were pursued by Vanderbilt's advance men who entered the cavern hot on the trail of the airship crew.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatling_gun

Before their pursuers could set up their Gatling gun, one of the PCs henchmen - a bomb-throwing anarchist - made short order of Vanderbilt's advance team by tossing an improvised bomb. Of course, this took care of our heroes' pursuers - as well as caving in the cavern's entrance.

From there, as the saying goes, there was nowhere to go but down. That involved a battle with a giant centipede, as well as with three pterodactyls. The pterodactyls were quite formidable, but through sheer luck and dogged persistence, our heroes - with a little help from Mays, the daring female aviator and Doctor Crisis, weird science inventor, they managed to get the entire party safely down a huge funnel made of cascading rivers and waterfalls, all the way down to the Hollow Earth. 

Oh yes, and the mechanical man Vanadine Ironsides managed to explore a bit of the underwater shoreline directly beneath the funnel. Walking the bottom, as it were. It was a fun adventure!

From London To The Hollow Earth

Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett's "Boilerplate":
The Vision for Vanadine Ironsides

The other big game - big as in 6 hours of play - that I ran at Con of the North was a marathon session of the Leagues of Adventure RPG, a steampunk RPG driven by the Ubiquity engine. The scenario was divided into two parts, the first of which was a two hour session set in London. In that session, the PCs were recruited by one Nathaniel Walker, the younger brother of the notorious filibustero William Walker, for a rescue mission to the Hollow Earth. 

Treason Broadside source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(abolitionist)

This was an alt history game. In this 19th Century, the American Civil War was a three way battle between the Union, the Confederacy, and the revolutionary Black Republic formed after John Brown and Harriet Tubman's successful raid on Harper's Ferry. (See Terry Bisson's Fire on the Mountain for my inspiration.)

Ed Harris as William Walker in Alex Cox's "Walker"

In this 19th Century, William Walker's second expedition to Central America was really an expedition to the Hollow Earth. He departed for there in 1859. The current year was 1861. After receiving a mysterious letter from his older brother written on a strange, scaly/leathery membranous parchment, Nathaniel Walker was determined to either rescue his brother from the Hollow Earth, or bring back evidence of his death (there is the matter of an inheritance to consider, after all).

Enter the PCs, a motley crew of Americans and Britishers, with one metallic French citizen and a Ruritanian military officer thrown in for good measure:

• Fury Grummersum, a British big game hunter and gourmand in search of Big Reptilian Meat; he was a member of the Epicurean Society
• Lady Cornelius, an female member of the Brittanic Ladies' Speculative Society, whose player-created background has more than a little in common with the late Kage Baker's Nell Gwynne's Scarlet Spy
• Doctor Crisis, an American inventor of intelligent automata and a member of the Armorers' Guild of Philadelphia
• Vanadine Ironsides*, one of Doctor Crises creations who escaped from him on a tour of Europe, secured refuge and citizenship in France, and has now patented himself. Vanadine Ironsides belongs to The 1848 Society, a League of anarchists, socialists, and advocates for the emancipation of the working class.
• Lieutenant Rudolf of Ruritania, one of the numerous and not-yet-united German statelets, and a member of the Dueling Club
• Mays, a daring American female aviator from the Eccentric Society 
• Nathaniel Walker, an American and a member of the Hollow Earth Society

The "Leagues" in Leagues of Adventures refers to the fact that each character belongs to some kind of social, political, reform, service, or academic club or society. This gives PCs access to additional skills and resources. Each character also had a henchman, a lesser NPC who was played by another player in the group. Some of these included: 

Svejk illustration by Josef Lada

• Pepe, Fury Grummersum's personal chef
• Schultz (yes!), a rather Svejk-ian "mule/gopher" 
• Nigel, a highly effective bomb-throwing anarchist (everyone should have one of these)
• Pip, a street urchin

The players' charge in the first two hours was to steal a Royal Air Navy airship. This would facilitate the journey to Central America where there was an opening to the Hollow Earth. The PCs succeeded. A lot of explosives were used. On a police station. That created quite a distraction. In the process,  the PCs disrupted the airship factory's extensive use of child labor. 

I think even Charles Stross might have approved of this adventure. Well, maybe.

More to come!

*This character was not only inspired by "Boilerplate"; it was inspired by "Take Your Time, Gentlemen" an amazing JonCon '08 convention scenario created by Jon Cazares.