Victoriana RPG

Victorian London is a popular setting for role-playing games, and fantasy is popular in role-playing games, so the combination was almost inevitable.

In Victoriana, a fantasy RPG from Cubicle 7 Games, a few things are different from our history books. Well, a lot of things. Queen Elysabeth was an Eldren (see Our Elves Are Better), the Royal College has a Guild of Sorcery, and some of the lower classes really aren't human...

Examples of:

• Council of Angels: The Heaven of the Aluminat (the local Expy of Christianity), is run this way. It's even possible to have an angel appear before you in answer to a plea for divine intervention. It's usually a bad idea, however.
• Fallen Angel: The Eloim. No wings left, and getting tossed out of Heaven is about as mind-destroying as you'd expect. The few sane ones are actually pretty nice, though...
• Fantastic Racism: Beastmen, Ogres and Halflings can never be upper class in England. Admittedly, the reasons vary... Ogres are completely gullible, Halflings are known thieves... but Beastmen are simply NOKD... Not Our Kind, Dear.
  • It does not, however, replace real world racism, which is alive and well. The only thing worse than being a beastman/halfing/ogre is being a foreigner (or worse a foreign beastman/halfling/ogre)
• Mars Needs Women: Justified. Among Beastmen, four males are born for every female, so they really have to look outside the line...
• Nightmare Fuel: Those who follow Paline tend to wind up this way...
• Our Angels Are Different: Half-averted. While classical white-winged angels are around, they're in the minority; most angels look nothing like them. In fact, most angels of the Aluminat look more like a Clockwork Creature than a servant of goodness and light due to having become tarnished by dogma.
• Our Demons Are Different: While nearly every kind of demon can be found in the Pale, from Eldritch Horror to the classic horned and hoofed, most demons appear rather humanoid. This includes a large selection of seductive succubi... after all, given the sexual mores of the Victorian Age, plus the classical sorcerer tendency not to have much experience with women, how better to tempt someone?
• Petting Zoo People: The Beastmen are a perfect example. While their heads are completely animalistic, their bodies are human (if hairy) and tails are optional.
• Vancian Magic: Victoriana uses the power point system.
• What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: The lowest of the low among the Beastmen in England are those who resemble rats and weasels; the highest-ranked resemble lions, with dogs close behind (no pun intended).
  • Lampshaded by the rulebook, which points out that the descriptions of the animal races have little to do with what the animals are actually like and everything to do with how they're perceived.