Hi I was wondering if anyone here on this forum could help with with my late 1860's Europe and Earth setting that is like Shadowrun with some Deadland and Mask of the Red Death as well.



This Earth the Crimea War is still going strong, there is Magic, Super Science and Supernatural creatures runing around since 1838 when Queen Victoria took the throne also the American Civil War hasn't happen yet.


So is anyone interested in helping me out?,



LW

Well, what are you wanting help with, really?

Are you familiar with the computer rpg Arcanum? It might be a good place to look for inspiration. It's basically a steampunk meets fantasy type setting.

Imagine a fantasy world which then undergoes an industrial revolution. Sure, there are still elf mages but you also have dwarf armies with muskets, steam powered airships, gnomish industrialists, orc sweatshop workers etc...

Two words: Ordo Maximus.

Arcanum was a good game,f or its time, i always got stuck at one spot though, trying to kill an iron golem or something

And also the, I believe out of print, pnp rpg Castle Falkenstein.

Well people first off I've got Castle Falkenstein but I don't want to seem that I'm ripping any other well known RPG settings out there, but I am inpsired by them.




Now in this setting players will be known as Gutter Runners, I borrowed that from Victoriana and it made me think about Shadowrun on how players characters have to work outside the system to do any good in the world also they sometimes do shades of grey style of work and life style. The Victorian Age was the same way now think of London of 1868 one of the largest citites in the world like Seattle is to Shadowrun, London of 1868 has it good parts the Georgian styles houses and the bad parts the Rookeries like St Giles also known as the Holy Land.



The tech level in this setting is this they have clockwork mechcanical limbs, powered by the mystical metal orricalcum and the limbs themselves are human sized not like in Deadlands were there the size of large pipes, also Charles Babbages punch card machcanical computer also has bin created as well making punch cards hot items for Gutter Runners to steal or ruin.



I should also point out that the Victorian era had the Class social system, like in Shadowrun's Seattle you couldn't mix with those of a inferior social class well officially that is but that doesn't mean the Upper Classes didn't have there vices they did the the lower Classes catered to there pleasure like Dog fighting, also this timeframe of the 1860's is when most of the social changes we think of the Victorian era didn't happen, so that another reason why the Gutter Runners assocate with others of differant classes and backgrounds they would want to change the old order of things.






LW

Arcanum is a great game now. Sure, the graphics were sacrificed, but in return you get more story than all the other RPGs from the last 5 years combined, way more character options, and about a thousand times the replayability.

Are you talking about the same arcanum I played? Because I tried as the technologist and found my back breaking under the bazillion tons of random trash I picked up, problems with finding ammo, XP scarcity, etc. Then I got frustrated and tried as a mage who could turn into a water elemental. I think I got two levels before getting off the starting screen (since you don't get XP by the kill, but by the number of times you hit something. Ergo, if you're the water elemental, you can get twice as much XP from every kill since you knock it unconscious first.)

Cool background, poor game play. I can't remember why I finally dropped the game, but I"m sure it was a good reason.

That seems to be sorta how i remembered it too nezumi, always having bits and peices of things, bt in the end, most of the little items you could make werent overly effective.

That was a good PC game, but my setting isn't a original fantasy world that's in there Victorian era it's the other way around. Now Elves and Dwaves started showning up in 1840 they were awoken out there deep sleep, the Elves started appearing in Ireland and the Dwaves in the Germanic states.





LW

I've been interested in a setting like this too. A good read to get an idea of victorian high-tech and cyberpunk elements in the 19th century is The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. I think The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the comics at least) offers some cool ideas.

I've just finished reading the Differance Engine and I know of the LXG comic series, both have good ideas for the setting does anyone else have any?.







LW

Perdido Street Station, the Scar and the Iron Council, all Bas-Lag novels by China Mieville.

Ah yes, the great Age of Steampunk. I actually did a story like that once...though I never followed it up properly. Scan for "Shadowrun by Clockwork" or some such.

um, settings and adventures, well you could do a search for jack the ripper, or use "Murders of the Rue Morgue" as adventures and settings, really any Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "Sherlock Holmes" novel would make a superb setting and adventure module.

I ran something similiar (in that it was an alternate SR timeline, not that it was Shadowrun by Gaslight or anything) a year or two ago, which I called WW2SR. The idea being that the Awakening had come in the year 1911, rather than 2011, and by the outbreak of the Second World War, metahumans and magic had become if not commonplace, then accepted and exploited.

Mechanically, there was no Cyber or Bioware to start, and the cost of Magic Powers for Phys Ads were doubled. Drain was calculated at full for Mages, instead of F/2. Metahumans were Priority A, as were Full Magicians, just like the old days. Cyberware, had I run the game long enough to introduce it, would have been at x2 Essence, and would have looked a heck of a lot like the stuff in Return to Castle Wolfenstein for the PS2. Which is not that far a cry from Steampunk.

I have thought from time to time of running other games, each time running the calendar back 100 years, having the world Awaken in 1811, 1711, or just whenever I felt like it. I like keeping it in the something_11, because its easier to update the timeline, and it gives the players something familiar to latch onto.

Some of my players grokked the idea, others it just made want to play normal SR since we had been on a break from it for awhile. So I only ran four or five sessions, starting out with the raid on Dieppe in 1942, the capture and escape(?) of Hess, and then to the Pacific. Other things I had wanted to run were Stalingrad, the Normandy Invasion, the Siege of Malta, and the Fall of Eagle's Nest. (At least, I think thats what they were called, its been a few years and I don't have my notes in front of me.)

Sometimes when we're making adventures, these leaps in logic or creativity seem natural to us. Combine playing RtCW on the PS2 with renting Band of Brothers and Enemy at the Gates and the idea of mages landing in Normandy seems fairly natural. It is sometimes a harder leap for the players to make, especially if they are more familiar with one part than the other. I don't want to be a naysayer, but its a hurdle I ran into, so I thought I'd mention it.

As for inspiration, I get a lot of inspiration from the movies. Wild Wild West and Van Helsing were both horrible, but Steampunk and Gothic Horror are the new Fantasy Movies, meaning that they all suck but what choice do we have? I'd also include From Hell and LXG, even though you'd probably do better and go read the originals. (I considered LXG to be the most disappointing movie of that year for me, not that it was horrible, just that I had expected so much more, which is my own damn fault. From Hell I liked, all except for Heather Graham, who was about as convincing as a turn of the century prostitute as my dog would be, albeit for different reasons.)

There was a Batman Graphic Novel called Gotham by Gaslight, I only read that one and I don't know if there were any others, and it was just okay.

One suggestion, borrowing from the LXG graphic novels, is it would be neat to see various literary and historical figures done up in SR style. I'd be tempted to make Sherlock Holmes as an immortal elf, myself. Perhaps Dr. Jekyll invented a serum that would turn him into a troll for a short period of time. Dracula and the wolfman already have stats (vampire and loup-garous), the Frankenstein monster is a cyberzombie... as a side note, in my WW2SR game Max Shrek was a real nosferatu and the head of some Nazi Special Weapons Bureau, making vampiric pawns to compete with the SuperSoldat cyberzombie program. Continuing on, I could see making Tarzan a phys ad. Its tricky to fit the metahumans in, but I guess all it requires is making a leap of faith. I could see making Van Helsing a dwarf or an ork, likewise I could see Frankenstein's monster starting off as a troll (it would satisfy the doctor's requirement of needing a big body to work with, and it wouldn't do to have pc's bigger than the monster.)

Anyhoo, I'm rambling. Sort of brainstorming by scattergun effect, firing wildly and hoping something hits.