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Space 1889

Space 1889

Role-Playing In A More Civilized Time. Everything Jules Verne should have written. Everything H. G. Wells could have written. Everything A. Conan Doyle thought of, but never published because it was too fantastic. Everything you need for adventures of the century! The Space 1889 role-playing game covers the exciting background of Victorian science fiction: ether flyers and Martian cloudships, the canals and ancient civilizations of the red planet, Venus' swamps and dinosaurs, the honeycombed interior of Luna, and the thrills of inventions and inventors: the driving force behind Victoria's multiworld empire!

Space 1889 was originally produced by Game Designers Workshop between 1988 and 1991 (then reprinted by Heliograph in 2000-2001, who then went on to produce some material of their own as well). The game presents an alternate history in which Victorian innovation led to the exploration of space when Thomas Edison invented an "ether propeller" which could propel ships through the "luminiferous aether" (the universal medium that permeates space, according to scientific theory of the day, since discarded), and travelled to Mars in 1870 accompanied by Scottish soldier of fortune Jack Armstrong, where they discovered that the planet was inhabited. By 1889, the Great Powers have colonised not just Mars but also Venus - Venus and Mars have been colonized by the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Russia. Belgium has only colonized Mars and Italy has only colonized Venus whilst Japan and the United States maintain economic and scientific enclaves on Mars. The UK maintains a small scientific outpost on Mercury. The Moon has been neglected in this spate of exploration, probably due to being airless - other planets had atmospheres and indigenous life in this reality.

In February 2013 Chronicle City and Uhrwerk Verlag/Clockwork Publishing combined to produce a revised edition using the Ubiquity ruleset, based on a German-language version of 2011, but by December 2014 Chronicle City had dropped out leaving Clockwork Publising to bring out the new version by themselves. 2014 also saw an adaptation of Space 1889 for the Savage Worlds ruleset.

Space 1889 1e Space 1889 2e Space 1889 Savage Worlds Edition
Links Transactions Of The Royal Martian Geographical Society Resources

Page last updated: 26 April 2018