Victorian Era Adventure

[MonsterMash]

Have you looked at Hopkirk's Setting the East Ablaze? Astonishing true stories of the later stages of the Great Game in the post-WWI era on the roof of the world. Full of brave spies, mad aristocrats, scheming warlords, nationalists, communists, etc. Great Stuff.

Edit: have a look too at the brilliant figures produces at Copplestone Castings (http://gisby.org/copplestone.htm) for this era and these settings.

Dave

This is a good era for games with so much scope for RP as an agent of one of the powers, and the mad count (Von Ungern-Sternberg - spelling?).

 

[Wombat]

The Foundry also has some very nice Victorian era figures:

http://www.wargamesfoundry.com/collections/Victoriana.asp

 

[Krieg]

French Foreign Legion & Arabs

Zulus & British soldiers

Boxer Rebellion

 

[ledded]

The Foundry also has some very nice Victorian era figures:

http://www.wargamesfoundry.com/collections/Victoriana.asp

Copplestone and Foundry Victorian/Pulp miniatures are great. Also, if you want to have miniatures for Victorian adventures you have to take a look at:

B'hoys Town, Victorian era Gangs and paper buildings:
http://fauxtoys.com/tvag/200-bhoys.html

The INCREDIBLE Pulp Figures of Bob Murch. Absolutely great pulp stuff. I'm getting some of his figs to crew a Zeppelin that I'm scratch building.
http://www.pulpfigures.com/main.php

Parroom Station has some very nice VSF figs that will work well, but they are "true 25mm" so while being good sculpts they are a bit small compared to most modern 28mm+ figs.
http://www.parroomstation.net/

West Wind productions has several lines in their Gothic Horror set of miniatures that would work very well for Victorians, and also has a few good choices for civilians as well as armed heros/villains.
http://www.westwindproductions.co.uk/catalog/

Jeff Valent's Deadlands minis have a few good usable miniatures, though most are very western in feel/appearance.
http://jeffvalentstudios.com/home.htm

Brigade Games has a very nice line of Historicals, as well as carrying a lot of the above manufacturers. Their Victorian Age has some "Gangs of New York" style that are very nice, as well as some good WWI, Gaslight (VSF) and others. A good company.
http://www.brigadegames.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Store_Code=BGAHSL&Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=BGHM

That's just a few of my personal favorites. You can also pick up some nice colonials, Victorians, WWI and others on ebay that are out of print fairly cheaply if you look enough. I recently picked up a set of OOP character miniatures for the Space 1889 game for just a few dollars that came with a nice complement of Victorians.

 

[GMSkarka]

No mention of Victorian-era miniatures can pass without the presentation of this link:

Major General Tremorden Rederring's Colonial-era Wargames Page

-A bunch of guys who play colonial wargames in a fictional setting ("Ouargistan") with occasional steampunkesque fictional elements (landships, etc.). Phenominal site, great links, etc.

 

[Gomez]

Reminds me of the days when I played "The Sword and the Flame" miniature wargame. Man that was fun. Zulu verse the British at Rorkes Drift. The Mahd's forces attacking Kartoom. Indian and British troops fighting Afgan tribesmen. My friend had over a thousand professionally painted mini's and lots of great custom made terran. It was a blast to play.

 

[Aethelstan]

Thanks to all for the great Mini links! I found figures that will be perfect for my in-the-works "quasi-Victorian, slightly magical England-like nation explores Lost Continent" campaign.

 

[The Shaman]

Some excellent minis out there!

Of course, if I had unlimited Wealth and lots of storage space, I would get a couple hundred of these li'l fellas for my tabletop: Wm. Hocker

 

[mmadsen]

So, our Victorian adventure reading list might include:

H. Rider Haggard
C.J. Cutliffe Hyne
Joseph Conrad
P.C. Wren
Kim, Rudyard Kipling
The Great Game, Hopkirk
King - of the Khyber Rifles and Caves of Terror, Talbot Mundy
El-Borak stories, Robert E. Howard
The Washing of Spears, Donald R. Morris
Tournament of Shadows, Meyer and Brisac
The Silk Road, Wood
Raj, Lawrence James
The Great Mutiny, Hibbert

That looks like quite a start!

 

[ledded]

So, our Victorian adventure reading list might include:

H. Rider Haggard
C.J. Cutliffe Hyne
Joseph Conrad
P.C. Wren
Kim, Rudyard Kipling
The Great Game, Hopkirk
King - of the Khyber Rifles and Caves of Terror, Talbot Mundy
El-Borak stories, Robert E. Howard
The Washing of Spears, Donald R. Morris
Tournament of Shadows, Meyer and Brisac
The Silk Road, Wood
Raj, Lawrence James
The Great Mutiny, Hibbert

That looks like quite a start!

For more recent books also, I might add:

The Difference Engine by William Gibson (not Victorian really, but gives a really good feel and flavor for a Victorian-ish campaign).

The Peshawar Lancers by S.M. Stirling (also not really Victorian, but like a post-end-of-the-world Victorian revival. Red-coated, white helmeted Brits with sabers and revolvers fighting off the Bad Guys with their Trusty Sihk Companions on Horseback and Airship. A darn good Victorian-flavored adventure yarn).

It wouldnt hurt to toss in a little Edgar Rice Burroughs either.

There are a few others I've read recently that are much more Steampunk than Victorian or even VSF, so I'll leave it at those two.