Comments on: Beekeeper Goggles

By: Ish

Ish — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 15:54:57 +0000

I’m all for an open timeline, but think that Hornblower is just a bit generous… The Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, and soceity and culture was a great deal different in the dawn of the 19th Century than at the end. I like to inject detail into my settings, especially ones that have a veneer of history or historical setting to them – wouldn’t make sense to set Sons of Liberty in 1706, or World War II Heroes in 1914.

Yeah, the rules and story could be adapted, and it’s be fun, but I think my Victorianna should be set in Victoria’s day.

By: Josh Roby

Josh Roby — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 18:09:30 +0000

The timing is very intentionally obscured. The solography certainly spans a few decades, and assuming the other world-info fiction bits come from the same range, the game has a pretty broad period in which it is set. This allows you to play early-victorian where you might as well name your PC Horatio Hornblower, and also play late-victorian or even edwardian, with the balance of power inevitably slipping towards World War (Solar System War?). I’ve found that a numerical date just tends to get players hung up on details, and playing without really unleashes creativity.

By: Ish

Ish — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:32:37 +0000

Another small question that has been bugging me: when is FLFS set? At least nominally?

I know the game ought not be played as a precise historical reenactment (We’d lose all our wonderful spaceships!), but it might be nice to know some of those little details.

I get the impression its meant to be at least 30 years after the Crimean War and that Queen Victoria is still alive. So thats sometime between 1880 and 1901… Are we trying to avoid setting our Victorian game in space, 1889?

(See what I did there?)

By: Ish

Ish — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 14:57:54 +0000

It is an incredibly common misconception. Don’t feel bad, Josh Whedon turned it into a plot point for one episode of Firefly.

Actually, I was a little misleading when I said they don’t need oxygen. They do need it, but it is containined in the poweder itself. Every form of powder that’s been used for firearms contains some sort of nitro functional groups (NO2). The 02 in there should be familar enough to anyone who knows what H2O is. Oxygen.

They say everytime you bring up real science in a science-fiction roleplaying game, God kills a catgirl… But, well, this is a meme that needs to die.

By: Josh Roby

Josh Roby — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:47:33 +0000

Ish, that’s all news to me. I just assumed black powder needed oxygen to burn. When and if there’s a revised edition, I’ll be sure to amend the firearms blurb!

By: Ish

Ish — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 21:28:01 +0000

The only thing I find disappointing with FLFS is the author’s instance that firearms don’t function in space. This is a silly meme which needs to be squished.

Guns that use black powder or smokeless power do not need oxygen to fire. They’ll work in a vacum, a non-oxygen atmosphere, or even underwater. The problem lies in getting semiautomatics or automatics to eject the spent shell and load the next, you can’t rely on gas systems or recoil systems.

Guns that don’t use self-contained cartridges would be a bitch in microgravity, but they’ll still fire.

A self-contained cartridge, loaded and unloaded one shot at a time? Works perfectly.

Given that the leading British smallarm of the Victorian Era were single shot, breech loading Martini-Henry and Boxer-Henry (of Zulu fame). I see no reason why the solar steamer ships of Full Light Full Steam couldn’t use firearms.

This would be a remarkably easy thing to correct. Simply amend the sidebar that says firearms won’t work in an airless enviroment, and justify their absence on Royal Astronautical Navy vessels by some other means. The simple explaination is that the ammunition requires too much space, were the snap cannons require no ammunition at all (and do the job just fine.)