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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hella_Tellah" data-source="post: 4369622" data-attributes="member: 52669">Thanks for the suggestions!  I took some time to look over the systems you guys suggested, and although I'm inspired by each of them, I feel like they're all missing a few key notes for me.Victoriana is achingly close to what I want, but it has two liabilities for me.  First, it's very much a game of fantasy, whereas I had envisioned a more Jules Verne science fiction vibe.  Second, it has no rules for steampunk gadgetry.  The first is easily patched up by requiring players to play as humans, or to describe their non-human characters as humans with special characteristics, but the second is a pretty tough thing to fix.  I absolutely love the amount of detail that's gone into the setting, the emphasis on social class, and the excellent sections on Victorian ethics and ways of thinking, so I'm going to consider this my most promising option for now.  Really good suggestion, xechnao!d20 Modern's Past supplement approaches what I want, but I find that d20 Modern's combat mechanics are less cinematic (or free-form, if you like) than I'd prefer.  It's a very mechanics-heavy system, and although my players are well-versed in d20 mechanics, combat is just too focused on number-crunching for my liking.  It also lacks steampunk gadgetry.  On the other hand, my players wouldn't need much study to be proficient, so it's worth a closer look.I hadn't really thought about using Mutants and Masterminds to do this game, but it's a really intriguing idea.  The Device and Gadget powers in particular really capture the feel I'm looking for.  Still, the lack of pre-existing monsters means more prep-work on my end, and I fear that using a system built for something else will leave my players without a book full of Victorian-era fluff to round out their characters.  Maybe I could hand them the Victoriana book for reference and use M&M mechanics otherwise.<img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/ponder.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":hmm:" title="Hmmm    :hmm:" data-shortname=":hmm:" />vs. Monsters is very impressive for a game designed in 24 hours, but it just doesn't have the depth I want.  4 attributes, "stuff", and no equipment doesn't really give my players a lot to hang their hats on.  That kind of stripped-down system works for a game like Nobilis, where things are so far into the realm of myth, but I think I need a more robust system to get a really gritty feel.  I think it would be a cool pickup game, but I couldn't stretch it into a campaign.I think Spirit of the Century could do this decently well, if I were to strip it of its basic premise that everyone was born on January 1st, 1901.  It has the same problems as the others, though, in lacking that steampunk element I want, and I think the characters are, by default, a bit too powerful.Thanks again, and please post if you have any other system recommendations.  I love reading new RPG books, and I'm certainly not opposed to cobbling together rules from various systems to make my dream game.<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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