Gaslamps pour fitful light through the fog-shrouded streets of 19th century London. Menacing figures lurk in darkened alleyways; desperate men with nothing to lose and the determination to take what they can from others. Mutterings abound at the local pubs, workingmen who can’t even afford their daily bread wish for more and listen to radicals and anarchists preaching fire and revolution. Parentless children, called “Street Arabs” in the East End vernacular, pick pockets and snatch purses from those not wily enough to protect their meager funds. In these dangerous streets Saucy Jack, known to the papers as “Jack the Ripper” slew with impunity while Sherlock Holmes battled crime from petty larceny to the machinations of the mastermind Dr. James Moriarty himself. Chinese Tongs battle east End mobs for control of Opium dens and other rackets, all at the behest of their shadowy master, the Devil Doctor.
Meanwhile on the high seas Captain Nemo and his Submarine The Nautilus wage a one-man war against British imperialism and perhaps war itself. In the skies Robur the Conqueror makes elaborate plans to rule the world with powerful airships, and who knows what secret powers lurk beneath the Earth’s surface or watch our globe from the sandy wastes of Mars; planning the death of Humanity itself?
All the while, the gentry and social elite live glittering lives amongst champagne and Worth gowns, silk suits and noble titles, living lives of idleness and comfort; thinking nothing of the people beyond their glittering manors and opulent mansions. Whether the Robber Barons of the United States, the Old Nobility of Europe or the teetering monarchies of the Royal Houses themselves the world at the end of the 19th century was a time fraught with change.
Compounded upon this are the emergence of the self styled “Super Mankind”; those of the far future who have found themselves stranded in a past that is and yet isn’t their own. Unable to return to their hone time of the 21st century, they attempt to make a place for themselves in this world alongside Steampunk technologies and those Supernaturals who are at home in the 19th century. Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde, the Invisible Man, Frankenstein’s Monster and others. Baba Yaga haunts the barren steppes of Russia, and ancient gods of the Near East and America rouse from their millennial slumbers to again walk as gods upon the Earth. Add to this the threats of Dracula, The Martian Invaders and prehistoric worlds and lands that time forgot, and the milieu is a rich panoply of adventure indeed!
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The Victorious Role-playing Game is a Siege-Engine game that allows players to take on the persona of intrepid adventurers and vigilantes determined to use their unique gifts to strike at the heart of evil and villainy that plague the streets of tier city. Unlike other superhero games, the world of Victorious is that of the late Nineteenth century Britain/America; where the evils of both industrial terror and literary monsters run amok. Players can either choose to be one of the natives of this literary Victorian era, or instead play a modern-day character who due to the vagarities of fate find themselves lost in a past that both is and isn’t the one they remember.
The director of the game (called the Genteel Magistrate or GM) is free to determine the level of the Supernatural and Steampunk involved in their chronicle as well as the mysteries their players will investigate. Is there a desire for costumed mystery men/women lurking the night to strike down the aberrant? Are the heroes instead normal people with perhaps a unique gift for deduction like Sherlock Holmes? Do the adventurers battle megalomaniacal villains determined to use Vernian-style science to rule the world? Are cults, unspeakable horrors from beyond our dimension, or simply criminal rackets within the seedier side of town? All this and more can be played in the world of Victorious!
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Ok, enough flavor text; what’s the game like? Without giving much away, I can say that the system is based on the TLG Siege Engine system for combat and attribute check/saves. Skills are also resolved in much the same way as in Castles & Crusades. There are more skills of course, and those are listed in detail. Unlike C&C, while there are classes (templates) that players can use to base their character’s persona upon, the character can just as easily be built from scratch. Skills are available to gain at the start of the game, and they improve as the hero(ine) advances in level. New skills are possible as well as one advances.
Supernatural powers are also available, as one might expect from the above description of the milieu. These are chosen by the player with slightly more available by the use of Shortcomings to be added to the character; though the extent of each are dependent upon the Genteel Magistrate’s view of their Chronicle. A “Grand” Chronicle is four-color adventure as portrayed in the best “Penny Dreadfuls” of the era as well as today’s comic books. The “Gilded” adventures are less black and white, with many issues of dubious results and a world that has many moral quandaries for the players to consider. A “Grim” adventure is very dark, with hero(ines) frequently the last hope of a doomed earth. Where good and evil are usually more a matter of viewpoint instead of moral absolutes. Any of these three types of milieu can be portrayed within Victorious, and future adventures will be advertised as Grand, Gilded, or Grim so the purchaser will know ahead of time what kind of background that the adventure anticipates.
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Right…any questions? I can answer some, but you’ll have to understand some will have to wait for the game’s publication…
Mike
Yep, and I still remember the "2 Venezuelan pounds!"...Which was a good out there; and you didn't miss a beat. 
D.
) to see the evolution of the game from its first conception up to now. So for instance, instead of the power Teleportation you have Translocation, or Mesmerism rather than Mind Control.
