What flavor, your Victorian Adventuring?

[ushistoryprof]

I agree with all the above.  This is VSF and anything and everything has its place somewhere in the universe.

[Donpimpom]

VSF for me is big mix all the styles you mention.
But i had a great time playing a rpg campaing directly inspired in a great book from Philip Jose Farmer, The other log of Phileas Fogg. http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/f/philip-jose-farmer/other-log-of-phileas-fogg.htm

The main idea of the campaing was everything looks like a 100% historically accurate Victorian game but on the background of that "reality" all it's a huge VSF conspiration. Everything looks like "normal" but VSF stuff exist and keeps hidden from people knowledge by secrets societies, steamlords and governements.

[gloriousbattle]

VSF for me is big mix all the styles you mention.
But i had a great time playing a rpg campaing directly inspired in a great book from Philip Jose Farmer, The other log of Phileas Fogg. http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/f/philip-jose-farmer/other-log-of-phileas-fogg.htm

The main idea of the campaing was everything looks like a 100% historically accurate Victorian game but on the background of that "reality" all it's a huge VSF conspiration. Everything looks like "normal" but VSF stuff exist and keeps hidden from people knowledge by secrets societies, steamlords and governements.

I have that novel, and must finally get around to reading it!

[SBRPearce]

For myself, I think "my" VSF-code would read:

F2/S7/H0/R8

• Fantasy: 2 out of 10. "Mysteries of the East" and "Unknown Tales of Mars" sort of thing.
• SciFi: 7 out of 10. Ether, yes. Lightning cannons, yes. Freeze rays, hell yes. But also Martini-Henry rifles and Maxim guns too.
• Horror: 0 out of 10. Not  in VSF -I prefer my horror modern and apocalyptic, thanks.
• Reality: 8 out of 10. The question of whether Bismark would regard extra-terrestrial colonies as he did African and Asian ones is an interesting one. With Edison making the best etherships in the world, will this advance the cause of American naval modernisation so an earlier president thean Teddy Roosevelt launches the Great White (Aerial) Fleet?  And, as much as "Bad Germans" is part of the modern gamer zeitgeist, the British in the 1880s were more concerned about France as their Next Big Rival, so a lot of published stuff is, well, weird...

Hanging out with professional military historians tends to do this sort of thing... We spent an entire evening running "what-if" from the suggestion that the swamps of Venus produced an elixir effective at halting the spread of cancer - leading to a much longer reign by Kaiser Frederick of Germany, with all the carry-on changes that might have brought...

[jamesmanto]

I remember in University finding a reprint of an old SF novel called "The Great War of 189_", it was a 19th century version of those 1980s books detailing how WW3 was going to unfold.

But it had Great Britain coming in on the side of Germany!

The German rivalry came with the dreadnought race and that whole business in South Africa.

James

[rob_the_robgoblin]

I think it's 1898, they're meant to be very good. I would love to read it.