Guest Blog from Patric Götz of Uhrwerk Verlag

As I'm sure all of you know, the German-language edition of the Space: 1889 role-playing game from Uhrwerk Verlag hit the streets a couple months ago. It's a beautiful prodution and is selling well. I'd told Patric Götz before that if the German-language edition was a success we'd talk about an English-language version as well. And we are.

Today Patric joins us with a guest blog about how he came to the game in the first plae.

Patric writes  . .

I started playing RPGs in 1984 and up until 1989 I played mostly D&D, DSA (Germany’s most successful RPG) and a little bit of Star Frontier and Traveller. Vanilla Fantasy and SF so to say.

I started reading the novels of Jules Verne at the age of 14 and was immediately hooked by the tone and “feel” of his stories. I didn’t only read the well-known novels like 20.000 Leagues and Journey to the Centre of the Earth but also a lot of the less known ones.

Imagine my excitement as I saw the advertisement for a RPG called Space: 1889. I literally couldn’t sleep the night before I planned to journey to my friendly not-so-local game store to take a look at that book (English RPGs weren’t easy to find these days in Germany and there were only a couple of specialized shops spread out across Germany back then).

I wasn’t disappointed at all. The premise of the game was exactly what I was looking for in a RPG. I immediately bought all the stuff that was available over the next couple of months with my not so freely disposable pocket money.

Fast forward a couple of years… Due to a chain of events I never could have anticipated, I now work in the so-called RPG-industry, which is even harder to do in Germany than in the USA or UK I guess.

So after publishing a couple of quite successful (and some not so successful) RPGs, I remembered my old love Space: 1889. The license seemed dead and gone at that time, except for the nice reprints done by the folks at Heliographic Press – but no new material had been published since the early 90ties.

I contacted Mr. Chadwick anyhow about the possibility of doing a new German version of the game. Not just a translation of the old material, but a completely new interpretation of the game – with new texts, new illustrations and new rules.

Imagine my surprise as I got a very positive answer. So we started doing “our” version of Space:1889 and after the usual delays we finally managed to publish the new rulebook in July 2012.

It was an immediate success (well – that is for a RPG in Germany ;) ) and more books are planned right now to further supplement and support this fine RPG-line.

So we now have the very strange situation that the latest version of an American RPG which is mostly centered around the British Empire is now only available in German. ;)

But fear not… there are things going on in the background that may change this fact in a not so distant future…

 

Transactions of the Royal Martian Geographical Society

The Heliograph, Inc. has prduced, under license from me, facsimile versions of the original Space: 1889 game line for a number of years. Before that Mark Clark published Transactions of the Royal Martian Geographical Society (TRMGS), a wonderful magazine devoted to Space: 1889, and in about 2000 The Heliograph took over the magazine. Each issue contained a broad mix of articles -- historical weaponry, technology,and social mores,  historical characters, Space: 1889 short fiction, campaign reports, and additional world background.

Here are the feature articles found in issue six of TRMGS

The Syrtis Star

Tsarist Mars

Raum: 1889 – Germans in the Ether

Tools of Ill-Omen

The British Honour System

Martian Thunder Jugs

Gatling Guns and Camels

The New French Ether-Cruiser

Xavier Crumb and the Black Gang

The Trap Door Springfield

Death From Above: Units for Steampunk 1920

The Absent-Minded Inventor

The French on Mars

Every issue was like that -- full of little nuggets and gemstones. If you missed it the first time around, you should give yourself a treat. These are available as collections -- each volume has four issues -- and are available in hard copy or electronic PDFs. I just picked up a couple of the PDFs because when I'm working on Space: 1889 stuff it's a lot more convenient to have all the reference material on my hard drive than it is to haul around a bunch of books and still never have the one I need when I need it. You know what I mean.

Check out the Heliograph link.