Review Airship

Product: Fantasy Maps - Airship
Publisher: D20 Cartographer
People: Joshua Bennett
Price: $2.99

Yet another map from D20 Cartographer that is absolutely beautiful. The map comes in five sections including the main deck, lower decks, and two rooms in the stern representing the captain's quarters and an officer's area.

The write-ups for the maps were nice as well. Too often map packs contain only maps. D20 Cartographer does an excellent job of providing some written flare to guide that GM in the direction of adventure.

For VTT users, the package comes with 48 jpgs representing the decks and various items found on the ship, from ballistas to the captain's bed. The reusable objects can stay in your graphics library for future use on other maps. The artwork is fantastic but D20 Cartographer added a little something extra for MapTool, a campaign file complete with teleport pads which take you from deck to deck.

Note that although this is a fantasy map, it would make a great Martian Sky Galleon for Space 1889, either the classic version or the Savage Worlds version, Red Sands.

Overall a superlative effort and well worth the price of $2.99.

Related Links
D20 Cartographer Reviews
D20 Cartographer on DriveThru
Space 1889: Red Sands

The Space: 1889 Planet Project

Space 1889 is a Steampunk role-playing game set in a fictional Victorian Era of the Earth. With the help of steam-powered spaceships, human explorers flew through the ether and colonized Mars, Venus, and Mercury.

To support the new German edition of Space: 1889, a German fangroup created the Space: 1889 planet project which currently is in it's beta phase. The project uses Google Earth to project Space:1889 maps onto a planetary sphere which is movable and searchable by users. 

Check it out the promo video here depicting Mars:

See the Der Globus home page for ways to support the project and check on its progress.

You can learn more about Space:1889 and the Victorian Era by visiting our review of Space:1889 - Red Sands or from Frank Chadwick's blog. Our review of The Kerberos Club contains additional Victorian background. 

Links:

Frank Chadwick's Space 1889 Blog

Review: Space 1889 - Red Sands

Space:1889 Links Page

Review: The Kerberos Club

Das Space 1889 Planeten Projekt

The Space 1889 Ship Builder

As teased earlier, Savage Troll Publications is proud to present the SPACE:1889 - Red Sands Cloudship, Gunboat, and Ether Ship builder for the Savage Worlds rule system.

You can download the trial version and give it a try. The link is to a zip file which must be extracted to your PC or Mac. The zip contains two Excel spreadsheets, one containing macros the other does not, along with 21 ship images from the original SPACE:1889 material.

One word of warning, Excel will complain to high heaven that there are macros that might be harmful to your computer. This is a standard warning it gives for any spreadsheet you download from the Internet. The macros it complains about are buttons on the spreadsheet that reset the data, print the first page, take you to the Weapons page and back, and one that places a ship's image on the spreadsheet.

Instructions for the spreadsheet can be found on the new Savage Tools page on this blog.

Good luck and let us know if you find any errors.

Included in the download are the ships from Sky Galleons of Mars. It's a great supplement I recommend purchasing.

If you just want the ship images for Map Tool tokens, you can download them without the spreadsheet.

Tools: Space 1889 Ship Builder

I'm creating some new campaigns with Cloud Ships for Space:1889 - Red Sands. Part of the effort involved porting over my old Cloud Ship designs to the new Savage Worlds format. Part way through I decided to create a tool to allow for the rapid creation of the ships. Of course, the development of the tool took longer than converting the four ships in question but at least now I have a tool for future efforts.

I decided to share this in case others wanted to build their own Ether Ships, Sky Galleons, or Cloud Ships. The tool is a spreadsheet originally developed in Open Office. I ported it to Excel but sometimes that causes problems. So far the worksheet seems to work fine.

The Spreadsheet is protected, meaning you can only change certain portions of the sheet (yellowish cells). There is a second sheet containing the weapons available for your ships. Only the 'Number' column is editable. The Sheet 1 is updated with the crew requirements, cost, and weight reflecting changes to Sheet 2.

I recieved permission from Shane Hensley and Frank Chadwick to release the spreadsheet. I'm putting the finishing touched on now add a few macro buttons for convenience.

Below I included a preview of the Blood Runner ported from Sky Galleons of Mars.

My only issue right now is the ability to allow the users to add their own image next to the ship description. I've had some initial luck but the formatting still isn't quite right. I should have it ready by Friday along with a BIG announcement for next Tuesday.

My SPACE:1889 efforts continue. Next up is the MapTool campaign file for aerial ship battles. I have a number of tokens done already. Here are a few samples. Soon the screw galley Pride of Texas will ply the skies of Mars again. Belgians beware!

Clearsight

Endtime

Hullcutter

Sky Runner

SPACE:1889 - The Burning Desert

The Savage Troll is proud to present a new MapTool/Savage Worlds module set in Frank Chadwick's SPACE:1889 setting which was Savaged by Pinnacle Entertainment Group in Space:1889 - Red Sands. The module comes from Tales from the Ether, a SPACE:1889 supplement available on DriveThruRPG.

The adventure begins as one of the characters receives a letter from an old school chum requesting help on Princess Christiana Station on Mercury. Attached to the letter is a newspaper article concerning tin prices. Foul things are afoot and he needs your help. The characters must survive the bitter cold, tropical river, and burning desert of Mercury if they wish to solve the mystery.

The MapTool campaign file comes complete with all handouts from the original module, a detailed map of Princess Christiana Station, two vehicle tokens, 5 player character tokens, and over 8 NPC tokens for use in this and other SPACE:1889 - Red Sands adventures.

The Burning Desert requires both Space:1889 - Red Sands and Tales from the Ether to play.

To download the adventure, simply right click on the download link, 'Save As' to the directory of your choice, launch MapTool (yes, it's just that easy), and load the campaign file in MapTool. If you have any questions, visit the Framework page followed by the FAQ page.

Related Links:
Review of Space:1889 - Red Sands
The Making of The Burning Desert
Space 1889 Pregen characters from The Savage Troll
Space 1889 Pregen characters from Pinnacle Entertainment Group

Products of Interest

Tales from the Ether ($3.95 for 5 adventures easily converted to Savage Worlds/Red Sands)

Space 1889 Adventure Bundle ($7.95 all 4 adventure products for 1889 including Tales from the Ether)

Space 1889 Product Bundle ($39.95 for everything published by GDW for Space 1889)

Red Sands Players Guide ($14.95 all the rules you should need for this adventure)

Red Sands ($24.99 full rule book)

Space 1889 Pregen Character Paper Minis (Free)

Our friend Scarecrow has been at it again. He's created a new set of paper miniatures for use with Pinnacle's Space 1889 pregenerated characters.

You can download the PDF from his Crow Stuff page.

He has other Space:1889 paper minis as well that you can find on the Pinnacle Forums.

The characters above are meant for Space 1889: Red Sands, Their stats are available on the Pinnacle download site for free at 1889 Red Sands PreGens.pdf

Thanks Scarecrow for making this available to the Red Sands players.

Related Links:
Space: 1889 on The Savage Troll
Review of Space: 1889 Red Sands

Space 1889 Paper Models (Free)

Mayhem in Paper is a web site devoted to 3D, Space 1889 paper models. It has over 30 kits of liftwood ships, iron clads, forts, mesas, and tanks. VTT users could easily GIMP these into Savage Worlds chase tokens.

You can find more of these gems at Squirmydad's Page-o-Creations and Ramblings under the download section.

Related Space 1889 Links:

Space 1889 - Red Sands Review
Space 1889 Links Page
Space 1889 on The Savage Troll
Space 1889 Pregen Characters (The Savage Troll)
Space 1889 Pregen Character (Pinnacle)
The BIG Space 1889 Product Bundle - contains every Space 1889 product from GDW for $50

Frank Chadwick's Space 1889 Blog

Regular readers of The Savage Troll know of our affection for the Victorian genre. The Kerberos Club ranks high in our favored Steam Punk settings but the first such game to capture our imagination was Space: 1889. The concept of colonial, Victorian England in space and Liftwood ships over Mars was too juicy to pass over.

I discovered the original book 25 years ago. Its blue cover  featured a Victorian Era British soldier on the cover fighting off gold-skinned ape men with fin ears. The logo had "SPACE" drawn as riveted metal with a stylized "1889" below it. I picked up the blue book and read the back cover.

Role-Playing In A More Civilized Time. Everything Jules Verne should have written. Everything H. G. Wells could have written. Everything A. Conan Doyle thought of, but never published because it was too fantastic. Everything you need for adventures of the century! The Space 1889 role-playing game covers the exciting background of Victorian science fiction: ether fliers and Martian cloud ships, the canals and ancient civilizations of the red planet, Venus' swamps and dinosaurs, the honeycombed interior of Luna, and the thrills of inventions and inventors; the driving force behind Victoria's multi-world empire!

I was hooked. Through Space: 1889 I discovered period of time which was as rich in history and change as it was in literature and invention. The War of 1812, The American Civil War, and the Crimean War changed forever the way nation fought nation while inventions like the railroad, telegraph, photography, gas light, cars and even aircraft changed the very fabric of society. Science grew into the discipline we know today with Universities and companies devoting ever increasing resources to new discoveries. Occultism and Secret Societies became popular as it seemed there was no limit to what man could understand and do and no mystery too deep to uncover.

AP: Space 1889 - Date Night - Pt. 2 Alexander's Mark

By Neville Duck

Spoiler Alert! - Alexander's Mark is the first Savage Tale in the Space 1889: Red Sands. If you plan to play it, don't read this. Just enjoy part 1 for now until you do get a chance to play.

The Cast

Nicolette LeBrun. (Main Player Character) - Junior Society member, budding archaeologist, linguist, and tutor to the social elite.

Sir Chester, Lord of Windon, patron of the London Museum of Antiquities, and member of the Explorer's Society noticed Nicolette during his son's tutoring session. Her mastery of language and history was apparent.

Lord Windon decided to test Nicolette's knowledge of antiquities whereupon he discovered, much to his dismay, his 300 pound sterling vase was a forgery. It seems modern Greek syntax wasn't used during the early stoic period despite the clever pun written upon his prize vase. Lord Windon insisted the Society induct Nicolette with the task of reviewing the Society's ever-growing collections from India, Syria, of course, Greece.

Space 1889 - Date Night, Newbie GM and First Time Adventurer Pt 1 of 2

Duck is a long time friend of mine. He, I and three others form the core of a 30 year old gaming group called the UEDSS. Duck's been working on the blog behind the scenes helping proofread, suggesting content, and developing a podcast titled Stop, Duck, and Troll. (first episode out soon). Duck is an excellent figure painter and builds scale models as well as any professional I've seen.

His wife recently volunteered to play a RPG for the first time. You can read his first official blog entry titled 'Date Night'

Enjoy,

RP Troll

The Making of Space 1889 - The Burning Desert

This post is a companion post to AP - Space 1889: The Burning Desert. In it I detail how the scenario was developed, what Maptool modifications were needed to run it, how the maps were created, and what other resources were used in the final product.

Adventure Source
I used the first scenario in Frank Chadwick's original Tales from the Ether. The adventure used the original Space 1889 rules and so I had to convert the NPCs into Savage Worlds.

The conversion was amazingly simple. In Space 1889 the attributes and skills go from 1 to 6. I simply doubled the score to give values from d4 to d12 (counting 1s and 2s). The skills matched Savage Worlds fairly well but I fudged them a bit here and there as needed.

The handouts I pulled directly from the pdf using GIMP's screen capture utility (File->Create->Screenshot). There were quite a few of these which included letters, newspaper articles, and a detailed description of Mercury. The hand-written letters were a bit hard to read in the source material and this remained true once I moved them into Maptool.

AP - Space 1889: The Burning Desert

On Sunday, September 19th, I ran another Savage Worlds/Maptool introductory game using the Space 1889 setting from Pinnacle Entertainment Group.  We had three participants who played Adventurer Tex Chapman (ChiTownRoy), Naval Petty Officer Aku (Aku), and Inventor Alexander Setsu (rstehwien). Unfortunately ChiTownRoy had technical problems and left before the final battle.

The characters started in London at the Explorer's Society. One of the characters received a letter from a friend on Mercury describing a plot that could harm the economy of England. The letter included a Times article about the falling price of tin due to flooding of the tin markets from a small Pacific island. The letter ended with a plea for the character to come to Mercury to help root out the conspiracy.

Space 1889 Player Characters

Below are a few Player Characters for use in the Savage Worlds Space 1889 Red Sands setting. They can be used as a group or individually.

Adventurer

The Adventurer is an American thrill seeker who's traveled the Ether in search of fame, fortune, and, of course, adventure. He carries a Winchester rifle, six shooter, and a Bowie knife. He's nearly as dangerous with his fists as he his with his pistols being an accomplished hand-to-hand fighter. He spouts off in battle letting everyone know that ass-kicking they are about to receive. His boisterous personality is better suited to the wilds of Africa or the deserts of Mars than in a more confined 'civilized' setting with all it rules and expected social behaviors. The adventurer is a little dashing and a lot cocky, making his way through life on charm and braggadocio.

The Explorer's Society recruited the Adventurer after he single-handily stopped a plot by the Brotherhood of Luxor while on a tiger hunt in India.

Rank/Race: Novice (0 xps)/Human

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d6, Spirit d4, Strength d6, Vigor d8,
Skills: Climbing d4, Fighting d6, Guts d4, Notice d4, Riding d4, Shooting d6, Stealth d4, Survival d6+2, Swimming d4, Throwing d6, Tracking d4

Languages: English, French, Koline

Derived: Pace 6, Parry 5, Charisma 0, Toughness 6, Bennies 3, Status 1, Favors 0
Hindrances: Major: Cocky, Minor: Loyal, Disowned
Edges: Pugilist, Explorer
Gear: Dagger, Pistol, Winchester, Bulletsx100

Review: Space 1889 - Red Sands

Years ago I picked up a game book with a Victorian Era British soldier on the cover fighting off gold-skinned ape men with fin ears. The logo had "SPACE" drawn as riveted metal with a stylized "1889" below it. I picked up the blue book and read the back cover.

Role-Playing In A More Civilized Time. Everything Jules Verne should have written. Everything H. G. Wells could have written. Everything A. Conan Doyle thought of, but never published because it was too fantastic. Everything you need for adventures of the century! The Space 1889 role-playing game covers the exciting background of Victorian science fiction: ether fliers and Martian cloud ships, the canals and ancient civilizations of the red planet, Venus' swamps and dinosaurs, the honeycombed interior of Luna, and the thrills of inventions and inventors; the driving force behind Victoria's multi-world empire!

Savage Space: 1889 Coming Soon

Space: 1889 and its companion Sky Galleons of Mars comprise one of the most memorable settings I've ever played. The character combat system wasn't great but the ship-to-ship rules were awesome. The book gave you atlases of Mars, Venus, the Moon, and Mercury along with the indigenous races for each planet. I fought the cursed Belgians from one end of Mars to the other and knew victory captaining the Screw Galley Texan's Pride. Now THAT was a setting!

This work, more than any other, inspired my pulp SciFi solar system for Space Nazis. Chadwick's vision of a hot and steamy Venus, a Mars in decline, and the world river of Mercury were all amazing. I admit I still love the setting after all these years.

Pinnacle Entertainment Group will release its own version of Space: 1889 at Gen Con this year melding my favorite setting with my favorite game system. If you're interested in learning more, you can download the free Introduction to Space: 1889 to tide you over until Pinnacle releases Red Sands to the rest of us who weren't able to attend Gen Con. (honest, I'm not grumbling.... much)