D&D 5E Cubicle 7 Announces Victoriana for 5E

Cubicle 7's Victoriana was one of their first games (before them it was published by Heresy Games, back in 2003, using the Fuzion system, before Cubicle 7 bought the company). It mixes the 1800s London with steampunk and magic, with dwarves, ogres, beastfolk, and more living alongside humans. It was described by Shannon Appelcline as "Victorian Shadowrun" in his book Designers & Dragons. And now it's coming to 5th Edition (by which they mean compatible with D&D 5th Edition -- the last Victoriana RPG was its 3rd Edition).

The 2nd Edition, from Cubicle 7, was published in 2009, and the 3rd Edition in 2013. This will be the fourth iteration.

Cubicle 7 is delighted to share some awesome news: we are currently working on Victoriana for Fifth Edition, which will launch under the Open Gaming License later this year!
Victoriana was one of the first games we published, so we are terrifically excited to be bringing it to a wider gamer audience. Victoriana is a diverse game world deeply imbued with Victorian period feel, gothic fantasy magic, and steampunk engineering.

Victoriana takes place in a fantastic alternate world of 1887, where the old ways of magic and tradition are losing ground to science, revolution, and the cloying smoke of industrialisation. The player characters, or Associates, navigate this dangerous world, solving mysteries, making social connections, and confronting horrors, while uncovering the secret conspiracies that operate in the shadows. Whether the Associates fight them or join them remains to be seen…

A Victoriana Player’s Guide will be the first release, but watch out for incoming telegrams about an accompanying adventure book filled with macabre mysteries, and a bestiary of the bizarre monsters and vile villains that haunt the Big Smoke.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Cthulu By Gaslight is the OG Victorian RPG setting, as far as I know, though too much horror and not enough Steampunk, even if the system is a better known one.

 

[wellis]

Having looked through Castle Falkenstein stuff, which this reminds me of, how integrated are the fantasy races in Victoriana?

Are they like hiding in the shadows or do they interact openly within society?

 

[Emmetation]

Having looked through Castle Falkenstein stuff, which this reminds me of, how integrated are the fantasy races in Victoriana?

Are they like hiding in the shadows or do they interact openly within society?

They're out in the open. There's no "monoculture", instead the big divides are by social class. All races/lineages are found in all social classes

 

[John R Davis]

Cthulu By Gaslight is the OG Victorian RPG setting, as far as I know, though too much horror and not enough Steampunk, even if the system is a better known one.

Actually Victorian Adventure from 1984-ish was the first one. Ignited my love of RPG in that era and a driver for some of my own publication.

 

[ruemere]

I have owned/played a few Victorian era games. While I have read Victoriana, I have never picked for playing because:
1. Too many tropes with little thought given to the consequences - if you have a high magic setting and industrial revolution, you get Perdido Street Station not a Verne novel.
2. Social strata + multiple races mean you get Calcutta instead of London. Victorian era was dominated by a set of top-of-food-chain people (Victorian era | History, Society, & Culture) who disliked foreigners.
3. Mechanical issues: melee, xp, gunpowder, healing. You don't get clerics a plenty, melee is always an inferior choice in a clash, etc.
4. Educated multiskilled characters should be the driving force of the narration - not a party of niche specialists.

So, it's hard to create a believable setting if the basic premise crumbles under typical D&Disms. It's not impossible, though.

I'll hope for the best.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The gaslight fantasy may be interesting, but the D&D classes focused into hand-to-hand combat (barbarians, monks, paladins) could be lesser useful in settings with gunpowder. A d20 Modern 2.0. is totally possible, and even there are fan-made versions, but adding firearms into D&D 5th Ed could break the power balance too easily. To design a totally retrocompatible new edition of "the masque of the red mask" may be a serious challenge for game designers.

And there is a serious and potential risk of colonial age become politically incorrect by fault of the cancel culture.

 

[Morrus]

And there is a serious and potential risk of colonial age become politically incorrect by fault of the cancel culture.

I know English isn't your first language, and I hope that this is merely a poor translation, but even if it is, talking about 'cancel culture' and the like is specifically against the rules. Please do not post again in this thread.

 

[Umbran]

And there is a serious and potential risk of colonial age become politically incorrect by fault of the cancel culture.

Mod Note:
You may be up against language barriers, but I must officially note that dismissing criticism by lumping it into "political correctness" or "cancel culture" is in violation of the rules, as it acts as personal and political dismissal, rather than addressing the ideas in question.

 

[Sunsword]

EDIT: found my old copy, and I was indeed misremembering here. The orcs = Africans setting must have been something else, probably some long-lost product of the d20 glut. Sorry for confusing the issue.

That sounds like Sovereign Stone.

 

[wellis]

That sounds like Sovereign Stone.

Sovereign Stone had the orcs be badass sailors, the horsed dwarves as Mongol-style raiders, the unhorsed dwarves as surface-living dwarves (good at blacksmithing and typical fantasy dwarf stuff), the elves as the Japanese analogue (tons of intrigue between noble houses while they wield katanas and such) and the pecwae as healers.