Wednesday, May 24, 2023

Retrospective: Space: 1889

Seeing Frank Chadwick's letter in issue #75 of White Dwarf reminded me that he was one of GDW's top designers during that storied game company's nearly quarter-century of existence. While he's probably best known for his work on board and miniatures wargames like Command Decision and Europa, he was also responsible for, either solely or in part, many of GDW's roleplaying games, starting with En Garde!

I first encountered Chadwick's name in connection with Traveller and, later, with Twilight: 2000, both of which I played a great deal in my younger days (and nowadays too, as it turns out). In addition, Chadwick designed another of GDW's RPGs, Space: 1889, which first appeared, ironically, in 1988. This is only a year after SF author K.W. Jeter first coined the term "steampunk," though I don't recall its being widely used at the time. Certainly, Space: 1889 never makes use of it, instead referring players to the works of Verne, Wells, and other late 19th century science fiction pioneers as its sources of inspiration.

The premise of the game is that, in 1870, Thomas Edison succeeded – somewhat accidentally – in demonstrating the possibility of navigating the "luminiferous ether" between the planets of our solar system. In doing so, Edison not only opened up new frontiers for exploration (and exploitation), he also made possible contact between human beings and the intelligent inhabitants of Venus, Mars, and even the Moon. By 1889, the Great Powers of Earth were vying with one another for control of these new worlds with a zeal that made the scramble for Africa seem halfhearted by comparison. 

One of the things that makes Space: 1889 so interesting is that its setting isn't merely an alternate history where space travel is possible in the Victorian Age. Rather, it's a full-fledge alternate reality where the 1887 Michaelson-Morley experiment did not suggest, as it actually did, that there was no such thing as ether. Chadwick makes use of earlier, now-rejected scientific theories to construct an alternate model of physics for the game's setting, one conducive to the great tales of scientific romance whose echoes can be heard even today in the pulpier corners of science fiction and fantasy. This approach gives Space: 1889 an oddly "grounded" feel to it, because it's clear that thought went into its idiosyncratic "scientific" principles, which are used to good effect throughout.

Indeed, it's the setting that made Space: 1889 so compelling to me at the time of its release – and it's the setting that continues to fascinate me, even today. Like all good wargamers, Chadwick knows his history and the game does a good job, I think, of presenting the late 19th century, warts and all, as an interesting place for science fiction adventure. The rivalries of the Great Powers, for example, serve as the backdrop to much of what happens in the setting, albeit from a decidedly Anglocentric perspective. For instance, Germany is portrayed in a negative light, as is, to a lesser extent, Belgium. That said, the British Empire is not presented in an unambiguously positive light. Like any honest portrayal, its vices are as significant as its virtues.

Even more interesting than the game's use of real aspects of the 19th century is its use of purely imaginative one, such as the various non-human beings that dwell on other worlds. Mars gets a lot of attention in the game, no doubt due to its importance in early science fiction. As often the case in those tales, the Martians of 1889 are an ancient, dying people, heirs to 35,000 years of civilization, at once contemptuous of Earthmen for their comparative barbarism and envious of their expansionist vigor. During the few short years that GDW published Space: 1889 – 1988 to 1991 – Mars received a fair bit of development through adventures and supplements. One of the best, Canal Priests of Mars was written, amusingly enough, by Marcus L. Rowland, the man responsible for the scathingly negative review of Chadwick's Twilight: 2000 in issue #68 of White Dwarf. Rowland would later go on to produce the Forgotten Futures series that looked at Victorian SF as potential settings for roleplaying.

Unfortunately, the cleverness and promise of Space: 1889's setting was hampered by a less than stellar system that, by turns, is either too simplistic or too complex for its purpose. This was something I recognized immediately upon reading the book; it was confirmed in multiple attempts to play the game with friends who were just as enthusiastic about the setting as I. It's a great shame, because the game's setting is well done and ripe with potential, but the game's mechanics were actively off-putting – so much so that I never succeeded in playing Space: 1889 for very long. I understand that, in the years since, there have been a couple of attempts to revive the setting with new rules, though I know nothing of how successful these attempts proved.

In the end, Space: 1889 is one of those roleplaying games that comes along every so often that grabs my attention because of what I see as its promise, but which I eventually discover is somehow inadequate to it in some way. Calling it a "disappointment" is not completely fair, since I nevertheless find many aspects of it genuinely praiseworthy. At the same time, I can think of no other way to sum up my feelings toward it without damning it with faint praise. A pity!

32 comments:

  1. I agree with your assessment. Great setting, lousy system.

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    1. I've thought about trying to use the setting with FATE or some other simple universal system. It really cries out to be used, but the provided system is just awful.

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    2. Yes, a FATE version would be good!

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    3. I found the Savage Worlds 1889 port worked fine. Fate would be a bit lighter but SW does handle pulp-y action settings well.

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    4. The way the stats were arranged it was easy enough to port in West End's D6 System mechanics; played an entire summer-long campaign and we hardly ever worried about the game mechanics.

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    5. I think if were ever to run it, I would definitely follow Peter S's lead and use D6 System, probably Mini Six.

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    6. System has worked fine for me for 30 years. The Savage Worlds version, on the other hand....

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  2. Then there is the ubiquity series from clockwork publishing

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  3. I share your feelings about the system, and so did my friends. For our steampunk adventures we ended up playing Castle Falkenstein more than 1889, although its system is not without issues of his own.

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  4. Back in the mid 90's a friend ran a game of Space:1889 for me and his wife. It's one of my favorite campaigns from my past. I played a British army doctor who went native and she a French courtesan who was a con artist. Great fun.

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  5. I quite liked Forgotten Futures, and found it more playable than Space: 1889. IIRC Rowland also contributed some material to the transactions of the Royal Martian Geographic Society magazine, which was mostly 1889-centric but covered other VSF roleplaying.

    That said, Chadwick was noted more as a wargame designer than for his RPGs, and every one of the 1889 wargames were excellent. We played a ton of Ironclads & Ether Flyers/Sky Galleons of Mars back in the day and really enjoyed the ship design system. Temple of the Beastmen was an enjoyable dungeoncrawl in an era before that was a common terms - sort of reminded me of Asteroid, another of Chadwick's designs. And Soldier's Companion is still a popular set of ground combat rules for my circle, both for the Space: 1889 setting and historical wargaming. My memories of the non-RPG games are fond ones, and showed Chadwick's strengths as a designer better than the RPG did.

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  6. I was so excited when Space 1889 came out. Bought the rulebook and tried to sell the concept to my group.

    'That sounds so boring,' they said.

    And that was the end of that.

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  7. By far and away the best setting I've ever encountered, and while I understand his desire to change things up the setting, see "The Forever Engine" and later licensed editions, I find the original is just about perfect. Around 2000, Heliograph, who produced "Forgotten Futures" did a series of reprints of the whole product line, save "Temple of the Beastmen".

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    1. Still available AFAIK:

      http://www.heliograph.com/buy.shtml

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  8. Great setting, confusing system. I own most if not all of the supplements.

    We set up, and began to run, a 3rd edition GURPS Space:1889 game. We had lots of imaginative characters with excellent hooks . . . but it depended on two players attending who just couldn't reliably show up. It sadly died there. But I can still remember the details of the PCs even after only a couple of sessions. I couldn't imagine running the game as written but the setting is legitimately great.

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  9. I just loved the premise of this game but never got a chance to play it. If I can find a good VTT, I could probably just run it as GURPS or just classic Traveller with a few mods.

    I did a number of British Imperial history classes in university and so wanted to put some of that to use. There was a brand of soap in England - Pear's - that was some of the earliest modern advertising. They had a series of images of British explorers finding that advertisements for Pear's Soap had proceeded them into the deepest parts of Africa. I always wanted to run - either as a character or an NPC - a Pear's Soap hype/advert man trying to put advertisements for Pear's Soap in the deepest unexplored parts of Mars, Venus, etc.

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  10. Even Marcus L Rowland advocated an alternate set of rules. he used Call of Cthulhu, which made sense since Cthulhu by Gaslight was available. He wrote one scenario for the setting using the rules which I think appeared in Challenge magazine and Transactions of the Royal Martian Geographical Society.

    (If you have Heliograph's reprints of Transactions of the Royal Martian Geographical Society, they are an absolute treasure for Victorian era Science Fiction roleplaying.)

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    1. They're still available through Heliograph AFAIK:

      http://www.heliograph.com/buy.shtml

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  11. I never looked into this game but the setting sounds fantastic. I'll have to check it out.

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  12. Anyone know of any Sir Harry Flashman-Space 1889 crossovers?

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    1. Sir Harry Flashman is mentioned in Castle Falkenstein and the Mythic Ireland & Britain supplement for Vaesen. For fiction try the Space Captain Smith by Toby Frost.

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    2. Not Space: 1889 directly, but there was a TRMGS article about him those years ago. http://www.heliograph.com/trmgs/trmgs4/flashy.shtml

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  13. WETA (the New Zealand visual fx house) has a 5e setting called "Dr. Grordbort's Scientific Adventure Violence" that seems to be pretty similar in to Space 1889 and should be out in a month or two.

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  14. Another of my favorite games, especially the setting and the wargames. I've run the setting with at least three alternate rulesets, and had fun nearly every time. One of my favorite memories is of a single-player campaign with my wife, who played a Red Captain privateer over Mars. I was discovering the Aubrey-Maturin novels at the same time, so there was a lot of sail-based action.

    Between this, Twilight:2000, Europa, and the Third World War series, I became a GDW junkie and Chadwick fan.

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  15. Both critique and comments track. Let's not forget "Space:1889" was a miniatures game first, with Sky Galleons of Mars, and even had a line of 25mm figures. (In fact, the one and only time I ever met Frank Chadwick was when he rolled out the miniature rules at Historicon with a table of gorgeous bespoke sky galleons in 25mm scale. It was... epic.)

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  16. There was also a "Space 1889" computer game back in the day, or maybe I dreamt it. Anyway, it didn't play like a dream. Agree with James the setting was brilliant and promised a great deal in the John Carter and Alan Quartermain vein.

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    1. CRPG Addict has an extensive review of the computer game!

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  17. I guess great minds do think alike: within a few months of starting my own 1889 campaign in 1990 or thereabouts, I decided that the West End D6 system was a lot better than the 1889 mechanics. I always wondered if maybe Chadwick used Star Wars as the playtest rules and then had to come up with something else for the published game for legal reasons.

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    1. While I've not yet run D6 Space: 1889, I did run a D6/Mini Six Primeval Thule campaign in which two Space: 1889 NPCs, Mathilda Van Cleef (Alice Simms) & Professor Otto Strabismas appeared as time travellers. Strabismas had used his wild and discredited theories of 'wave particle duality' to build the (oddly familiar looking) 'Strabismas Device' and travel 25,000 years back in time...

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  18. "...Space: 1889, which first appeared, ironically, in 1988..."

    How is that ironic? Did you mean "amusingly" or perhaps "coincidentally"?

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