Space 1889

Written by Frank Chadwick way back in 1988, Space 1889 is tough to classify. It isn't out and out steampunk - it lacks, mostly, the 'punk' aspects - the player characters are often well off, rarely oppressed, and pretty much heroic. Similarly, very little of the setting is 'steam' - most of the technology in use comes from more esoteric sources. Really, Space 1889 is what you get when you imagine what Jules Verne would write if he penned an RPG. You have colonial ambitions being played out on Venus (the jungle planet) and Mars (partly arid and sometimes lush - a stand in for Afghanistan and India), with technology remaining largely Victorian (the Maxim gun is the pinnacle of infantry weaponry, for example) with dashes of weirdness - inventors have introduced tripods (looking quite similar to those found in the War of the Worlds), electro-guns, and other strangeness. In amongst all this, ether-flyers - that is, spaceships - have been invented. The game treats aether theory as truth, and so these spaceships travel through the stuff using strange principles. They don't have the range to reach the outter system yet, but humanity is beginning to spread to the stars.

The games focus is unabashedly European. The player characters are assumed to be British or otherwise European, and the notes on social class are especially Victorian British. I don't know that it would be much trouble working in American player characters, but I think it might be missing the point, a little. While some information is provided on people and places on Earth to find adventure (especially in places like the far east, Africa, and the Americas), most of the setting information is on Venus (replete with dinosaurs, lizardmen, and ancient ruins) and Mars (with it's dying canal-building civilization now subjugated by the British), with some notes on adventures set on the Moon (still largely unexplored, as it has no atmosphere) and stranger places.

Diagram of an ether-flyer.

The game is very much sci-fi. No magic or telepathy of the like has been shoe-horned in. It's a game of pulp heroics and 'scientific' adventures - just writing this I had the epiphany that the first aether-flyer expedition to the moons of Jupiter could form the basis of an entire campaign - with a Victorian backdrop and a healthy degree of optimism. Though the PC's are expected to face terrible odds and strange cultures, they're equipped with the technology and the know-how (or the charm to acquire those things) from the get-go.

Space 1889 is an older game, and it shows. While the basic system is endearingly simple (attributes range from 1-6, as do skills, attributes affect how expensive related skills are, roll-under resolution), it becomes needlessly complex in several places - providing two entirely unrelated methods to resolve tasks, requiring a separate skill to determine initiative; the confusingly named "close combat". Additionally, while a good portion of the games art is excellent (with strongly drawn characters in black and white, with an appropriately 19th century feel), the color inserts art is atrociously bad, with hideously drawn damsels in distress being menaced by slimy phallicness or being rescued by oddly-proportioned heroic types.

But setting aside it's rules problems (largely fixable with a few quick house rules) and ignoring a few examples of crap art, Space 1889 manages to create a viable setting for pulp adventure in the vein of Verne and Wells without crossing into camp or excessive seriousness.