Victorian Space Opera. Plus Demons
About a year ago, I had the idea that is the seed of the Hellspace project: what if scientists opened a portal to a Hell dimension and instead of being instantly overrun by demons, we totally kicked their asses? I started to write a short story in that vein, but because I happened to be reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel at the time, it came out as a sort of Victoriana space thing.
I brought this idea, along with a rough timeline for how England conquers the solar system with the help of space-bending portals into Hell, to ISS with the question, “How do we make this a game? Should we even bother?” Epidiah and Jim were rather receptive and eventually we came up with the idea to tinker around with FATE and use that. I just finished running a short Spirit of the Century campaign, so the idea was appealing. We then bantered a bit about power levels and how to make a Victorian character and what exactly a Hellspace adventure might look like.
There’s still much to do, between fleshing out the setting and hammering out rules, so we might not get to playstorm this one for a few months. However, in the meantime, I’d like to make one thing abundantly clear—I don’t want this to be another “steampunk” game. The technology of the setting will be pretty modern and the tone more “space opera” than anything else. Plus demons.