Pyramid Review
Etherscope
Published by Goodman Games
Written by Nigel McClelland & Ben Redmond with Christopher F. Allen, Chris Durham, Mark Charke, & David Schwartz
Cover by Jonathan Hill
Illustrated by Ilya Astrakhan, James Cosper, Eduardo Herrera, Alex Kosakowski, Jeremy Mohler, Ethan Pasternack, Alex Shiekman, & Chris Watkins
304-page b&w softcover; $24.99
Most Victoriana RPGs mix in another element with those of 19th century history, imperialism, industrialism, chaos based society and so on. Usually based around a new discovery this catapults society forward encompassing several changes, but still remaining with the 19th century and still with the base genre both recognizable and gameable. Etherscope, an OGL RPG from Goodman Games, the publisher of DragonMech and the Dungeon Crawl Classic lines is different.
True, Etherscope is a steampunk RPG and it is a Victorian age set RPG, but it is not set during the 19th century. Rather, it is set in the 20th Century, specifically 1984. The discovery of the Ether in 1874 gave another avenue for Victorian inventiveness and industry, through the discipline of Ether Science. Innovations and inventions enabled smaller steam engines, more powerful weaponry, advanced lighter, tougher metals, and both cybernetic limbs and implants. Not only is Ether a ready source of energy, it can be manipulated directly, and via an ingested drug or an implanted device, has become a frontier into which the user projects his mind . . .
Britain is of course still . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: December 14, 2007
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