Space 1889 is coming back!

Frank Chadwick announced on his blog yesterday that a new edition of Space 1889 is in the works. This will be an English translation of the new German edition which came out last year from Clockwork Publishing. It is probably more than a little ironic that this announcement is made at the same time as the Curiosity Space Rover team postulate that Mars did once have an atmosphere.

I was going to post this week about a certain degree of disillusionment about Kickstarter, especially as I've yet to receive my hard copy of Deadlands Noir, which was the very first Kickstarter I backed (although I understand copies are now in the mail). Now, of course, the new Space 1889 is going to be on Kickstarter. Do I back it?

I am probably being a little unfair, as some of the other projects I have supported have been turned around relatively quickly, even the Battle of the Bulge game on the iPad from Shenandoah Studios. I'm still waiting for the new Shadowrun online game to debut, but I fully understand that launching an MMO is a lot more complex than an RPG. But where is Ken Hite's Hill Folk, eh?



Still, I find myself severely tempted by the new Space 1889 rules, even though they will not use the same rules system as the original, but instead the Ubiquity engine from Hollow Earth Expedition. I also have the Savage Worlds version of the setting, Red Sands, which I've hardly looked at. Will I get time to play this, I ask myself? There is interest in playing the game from my son, as he particularly enjoyed Philip Reeve's Larklight series of books, and can see the similarities in the settings, so it could be an easy sell domestically.

I keep getting the itch for steampunk gaming. I've got a fleet of Russian ships for Dystopian Wars on the painting table (I've been distracted from these by my son's demand that we get our Bretonnian and Lizardmen armies completed). We played a single game of Deadlands in January. But with the imminent arrival of an army of Lizardmen for Warhammer (my son and his friends are currently painting the Saurus Cold One riders), I'm speculating about a Venusian jungle campaign using my hordes of Skinks, my Zulu War British, and a copy of the Soldiers' Companion written by Frank Chadwick himself, which can be used for both straight colonial battles and steampunk actions. Cold Ones charging a British square in the jungle? It could work...

I'm going to have to put my thinking cap on for this one, but the autumn might well see the redcoats struggling through the swamps of Venus. In the meantime, I may be tempted into backing the English version of the new Space 1889, especially as the game is to all intents and purposes there, it just needs translation.