Re: Death to Space:1889

[Adjusted subject line & resent to TML broadcast address -- JamesP ]

>I've read Verne and Burroughs, but that doesn't mean I think their
>universes would be interesting to wander about in.  I prefer playing
>in a world where things have evolved, not regressed.  For example, are
>there any female characters allowed in Space:1889?  If there are, there
>shouldn't be (for internal consistency) and if there aren't, probably half
>the likely players have just put that game back on the shelf and picked up
>the next Cyberpunk game.

I have to disagree with this.  Verne may not have had female characters,
but others could and did.  They were "Victorian" ladies - they wore long
skirts on their adventures - but they were female nonetheless.  They must
have a "Victorian" reason for not staying home with the children - carrying
on their father's work, or searching for their long-lost husband, or some
such justifying claptrap, but they can still work as characters.  You need
to have a feel and fondness for the genre.  If you have read Wells, Verne,
Doyle, Burroughs, Kline, or the others from this period then Space:1889 has
a _lot_ of charm.  If not, and most gamers today have not, then it is totally
incomprehensible.  I think the earlier poster was right on the mark: this stuff
is no longer read.

>I take it as a sign of the maturity of the gaming public that games like
>Space:1889 die out rather than a sign of their illiteracy.

Space:1889 was not intended to be "mature" - far from it.  It was intended to
simulate Victorian-era heroic fiction, and it does a pretty good job of it.
It's too bad that there is only a tiny slice of the relatively-small gaming
market that have read and appreciate such fiction, and therefore might enjoy
the game - seldom enough for critical mass in any one place, _no_ one I know
has played it.

Larry Smith
[email removed]