"Lace Wars Sci-Fi?" Topic

In echo to recent threads on this forum (Anyone Ever Tried 18th Century Air Balloon Wars? Sep 02, 18th Century Sci Fi, Jul 20), I just posted on my blog
link
several illustrations of what would be ‘futuristic weapons and engines' in a mid-18°C setting.
The posts are entitled MC Mil R&D I to IV and labelled LaceW SciFI .
Actually 5 only may be of some general interest: a Thomas Rowlandson etching depicting ‘Sadler's Flying Artillery' (1798), a Bonapartist ‘Seelöwe' dream is represntated by 3 early 19°C drawings together with a contemporary vision of balloons shooting in direct support of land troops.; unfortunately the originals in the books were quite small.
Otherwise you'll merely recognize the Ferguson rifle, Puckle & Reffye machineguns, caronade, Cugnot's and Fulton's steam-driven vehicle, ‘Turtle' submarine.…
In the ‘What if' History genre, I also posted a short overview of a fictitious North America in the mid-18°C.

A few comments.

LACEPUNK?
With reference to ‘steampunk' (Victorian Sci-Fi = Sci-Fi in the Age of Steam), Lace Wars settings including Sci-Fi elements can well be labelled ‘Lacepunk'.

I like Lace Wars warfare and wargaming as they are, and would not add Sci-Fi elements in an unrestricted manner. If you introduce historical or Sci-Fi victorian technologies in a mid-18°C background, you'll merely end wargaming historical or Sci-Fi victorian battles, or even WW1, with minis wearing tricorns: may be fun once, but no more. If I wished to play late 19°C wargames I'd merely do so, albeit probably using fictitious minicountries as proxies of the historical Powers (some 40 years of Cold War were fought in that way by at least one side, yet with real countries and casualties): thus I would not put a sacrilegious hand on History, nor change in any blasmephous way the Holly records and battle honours of historical units (to design fictitious uniforms similar enough to historical ones to make ‘identification' obvious, yet at the same time original, would be an additional pleasure).
Then, I'm not to the slighest hostile to spicing a Lace Wars background with a pinch of Sci-Fi. As a matter of fact, in the height of my gaming days, I ‘masterized' a ‘Spies vs Counterspies' RPG campaign set in 1745 (using the D&D rules with some input from ‘En Garde', specially to proprtionate the characteristics of gunpowder weapons). ‘Advanced technologies' were the object of most of the errands: «Your mission, if you accept it, is to steal /retrieve the prototype /working scale model /plans of the Puckle machine-gun /Paixhans howitzer /Chassepot rifle / Babbage computing engine. This paper will autoignite in 5 seconds». Of course descriptive designations were substituted to historical names, e.g. ‘Fusil Culassier a Repetition' to ‘Chassepot rifle'. Actually the background itself was fictitious, the adventures being of the ‘Cloack & Rapier' genre (3 Musketeers… ): I had to suppose that the Fronde of the nobles had be so successful that by the mid-18°C France was no more centralized, policed and the nobility no more under royal control than historically a century and a half earlier. The whole idea sprang from the collision between my fondness for the WAS period and the discovery of victorian ‘James Bondesque gadgetry' in the ‘Wild Wild West' TV series.

Indeed all is a question of *scale*: the few Ferguson rifles and the single ‘Turtle' submarine did not change the nature of warfare during the AWI, because they were used on a very limited scale. Gamong-wise, they could appear in a RPG, make a cameo in a skirmish game, but would be ignored in at battle scale. Thus IMHO historically victorian and steampunk technologies can well be already present in a Lace Wars setting, but at a so limited scale they could not change in any way everyday life and the nature of warfare. Weapons as well as engines and machines of common use by historical or Sci-Fi victorian times should only exist as single prototypes, working models or drawings, according to their degree of ‘futurism': they can spice a RPG, appear as minor elements in a skirmish game, and would be totally ignored in a large battle.

COSMOS 1745?
Another possibility is to introduce Sci-Fi technologies allowing interplanenaty travel (typically to Mars) but perfectly useless in a planetary atmosphere, leaving both everyday life and warfare totally unaffected. For instance, suppose that the antigrav capacity of ‘Lightwood' at sea level (barely) balances its own weight: useless on Earth, Lightwood not being hard enough to be used in cabinetmaking, carpentry or ship building, and being anyway extremely rare and expensive. But let the antigravity increase with the cube of the distance: you'll just have to rise your airtight capsule high enough with a balloon ( *not* a dirigible, so the vehicle can emphatically not be used as an airboat). In the upper levels of the atmosphere the balloon will be progressively emptied (interestingly Jules Vernes uses water electrolysis to furnish both oxygen and hydrogen) and in the void will be used as a sail catching the ‘aether wind'. As a spaceship the machine is perfectly manoeuvrable, and if the aether wind moves fast enough and gives constant *accelaration* (then, why not?) can reach a respectable speed. Nonetheless to keep crew and passengers well and alive during the interminable travel, they would have to be in some ‘hypersleep', perhaps obtained by the combination of voodoo drugs and electric mesmerism (fitting well in a 18°C background). Landing would be rather uncontrolled, as for our earliest space capsules, the partly refilled balloon acting as a parachute/ delta wing? Better to ‘land' on water –on our Mars its indeed fills the canals, which intersect at very large lakes– then to finish the journey using the emptied balloon as a (collapsible) sail, complemented by oars or a manpowered screw-propeller (the ‘boat' can be the size of a galeasse).

Given the distance, time of travel and cost, settlement on Mars would be extremely limited. Indeed only rulers of very powerful and overwealthy countries would tempt the adventure, and only if obsessed by a world-conqueror passion or a paranoid fear to be outraced in a domain that could one day turn out to be important. Thus at most you'll play the FIW, or skirmishes between small rival explorating columns like during the early stages of 19°C exploration /colonization of deep Africa, with Martians (e.g. the excellent Parroom Station minis) as natives. May be quite enjoyable and refreshing, and without any interference with wargame campaigns on Earth (unless you bother to check the Treasury of your waring countries, of course). While I suggested in a previous post to endvisage the appearance on a mythical 18°C european theatre of operations of a few native oversea units, here the distance and cost are such that even myself wavers… Then if your small unit of Martian light infantry beheaves on the tabletop just like any historical body of Croats, Grenzers or Jägers, why not?

CASTLE FALKENSTEIN 1745?
Can Fantasy be an alternative to Sci-Fi? It can be argued that Sorcery fits as well as Science in a 18°C setting. It was the Age of Reason, the Century of Enlighenment, yet most people still believed in spells and charms. Just before the Revolution the French Court was enthralled by the astrologer Cagliostro who followed the steps of de Saint-Germain, an advanturer who claimed to be an immortal alchemist.

Actually the problem is exactly the same: in Keyes' «Empire of Unreason» series, Issac Newton discovers the Laws of Alchemy and soon his Malburian world is full of Victorian Sci-Fi marvels: huge airboats, propelled warships, submarines… It makes no practical difference whether your character uses a magical ‘kraftpistole' or a Dragoon Colt revolver, your airboats are propelled by sylphs or aether winds, weapons of mass destruction use High Magic or antimatter (as in the ‘Anti-Ice' military steampunk novel), and a ‘Fireball' spell is quite equivalent to a Byzantine fire siphon or an incendiary grenade. Indeed any Science advanced enough (with regard to the references of the viewer) cannot be distingushed from Magic. In any fiction (and wargames are a type of fiction) the difference is purely semantic: if the explication is ‘scientific' you are in the domain of Sci-Fi, if supranatural in that of Fantasy. Thus ‘Frankeinstein' and ‘Dr Jekyll' are Sci-Fi, while ‘Dracula' is Fantasy –but Matheson's ‘I am a legend' is Science-Fiction, vampirism being a microbial disease transmitted by biting. This leads to three conclusions:

-If you want the nature of your games to be unchanged, be as cautious with Fantasy additions as with Sci-Fi ones: keep them at the very rare individual (RPG, skirmish game at most) level.
-Fantasy and Sci-Fi are totally redundant. For this reason I'm personally allergic to their co-occurrence in a campaign background (as in ‘Shadowrun' or ‘Castle Falkenstein'). Yet you can play on the ignorance of the characters (and players) of the real origin of the ‘abnomarl'. In my Sci-Fi minded Lace Wars RPG the ‘unknown' sometimes intruded: was the mindless flesh golem a living man controlled by Voodoo drugs /thunderbolt power or really a corpse reanimated by necromantic magic? Was the man always wearing a full mask and gloves, with fur disclosed sometimes, the victim of a ‘Dr Jekyll' experiment gone wrong or os a ‘Beauty and the Beast' type of bespelling? Nobody knew, not even me.
-Gamers who allow a little paranormal in their background would be benevolent toward those who prefer to add a few Sci-Fi elements. Many gamers playing a campaign run (in the pure Tony Bath Hyborian tradition) some kind of RPG campaign in parallel. Even among the more historically minded, some playing in a Lace Wars setting introduce a little sorcery in their RPG, feeling it in accordance with the popular beliefs of the era. Thus, following the use by a hostile agent of ‘evil eye' / bewitchment, a character has too much ‘bad luck' fore amere coincidence. Such gamers would be sympathetic with those adding a little Sci-Fi spice.

-Fantasy and Sci-Fi are totally redundant. For this reason I'm personally allergic to their co-occurrence in a campaign background (as in ‘Shadowrun' or ‘Castle Falkenstein').

Science Fiction covers the possible. Fantasy covers the impossible.

If the world changes so that the impossible suddenly intrudes on the possible, then settings like Shadowrun (magic reintroduced to a futuristic world) make perfect sense. If you shift your time-based POV regarding the possible in a setting that already embraces the impossible, then you get settings like Castle Falkenstein and Immoren(magical worlds entering the steam age).

thus I would not put a sacrilegious hand on History

Everyone else in this hobby does. Don't limit yourself. As long as you don't pass your changes (which are for the sake of a *game*, remember) off as real history, no one can make the "sacrilege" charge stick.

Cyrano de Bergerac vs. Baron Munchausen!

A perfect match!

We've never seen the two of them together, they might very well be the same person. :)

One had a big nose and the other had I big mouth.

Venetians in Space. Imagine the Intrigue!
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Farstar ,
indeed every battle*game* IS a Fantasy /Sci-Fi game. To remain strictly historical, one can only move its troops and remove casualties in strict accordance with the successsive stages of an historical battle. An animated historical display, that can be both instructive and an eye-candy, but not a *game* at all. As soon as you *play*, allow some freedom to the players, introduce random /chance factors of any kind, you fall through a Warp Portal in some 'Alternate History' universe where the Prince Pretender can win at Culloden, Frederick be taken prisoner or killed during the 1st Silesian War, Wolfe or Washington be killed early in the FIW…

Yet many historically-minded wargamers claim to be serious people playing serious, 'adult' games, 'historical games' or 'tactical simulations' as they called them. Historically accurate indeed they are in the minutely researched uniforms and flags of their troops, often OOB and initial deployment of their tabletop army. (Too often 'historicity' allows them to advance 'national characteristics' as a justification to field supermen facing retarded cripples.) And yet, they eagerly wish to totally change History when refighting a battle 'their' army historically lost.

In the same time they scorn and criticize the 'childish' behavior of those wargamers taking more overly some liberty with History, e.g. fielding an army in fictitious uniforms from some mythical country of their own design. Not even to speak of spicing the campaign background with a pinch of Sci-Fi or Fantasy elements, even if purely cosmetic! According to many historical gamers, such practices are the discredit and shame of the hobby.

IMHO one cannot tax such integrist historical gamers with hypocrisy, only with self-delusions. Maybe they merely refuse to recognize they are adults playing with toy soldiers, thus denying themselves the freedom, creativity, even implied poetry of children games?

Cyrano de Bergerac / Baron Munchausen: we've never seen the two of them together, they might very well be the same person….
One had a big nose and the other had I big mouth.

"The unfortunate Hazards of Metempsychosis"?
(sounds like the title of some gothic music album; I should bettercopyright it).
Cheers!

On sep 20 ‘The Gray Ghost' wrote on the TMP Victorian SF Message Board : « An 18th Century Castle Falkenstein would be cool ».
Grey Ghost (and all other potentially intrigued / interested by the idea),
Some suggestions on that matter in the post ‘Lace Wars Sci-Fi?'on the Monte-Cristan blog: tinyurl.com/38vezk
The 5 other post labelled ‘LaceW SciFi' – describing contrivances elucubrated by the engineers of the Institut Munchausen of Monte-Cristo! – are relevant to such a background. Posts recently updated – I prefer to keep together all info relevant to a given topic by editing / adding to old posts.

Thanks to "Yours in a White Wine Sauce!" pauljamesog.blogspot.com : H&M Sci-Fi (Napoleonic) rather than 18th C. -the shakos & also the 'jet' propellers are too 'modern' for the Lace Wars- but enjoyable and potentially inspirational nonetheless: link
[3Dmark 2006 rendered ! (Cannon Flight)]
Jean-Louis

Somehow relevant to this topic, I added at the end of the correspong post on my blog:
link
= tinyurl.com/3b4dvr
a short description of a French comics series set in 'Napolonic Sci-Fi': «Empire»: in the very late 18th C. Bonaparte marched East from Egypt and conquered most of India. But, additionally and chiefly, technology had evolved sooner and faster than in ‘our' History : STREAM powers artillery tractors, warships and dirigibles; improved Puckle's MACHINE GUNS are not uncommon, and an ‘Enigma' CODING MACHINE uses perforated cards –Babbage's computer is not far away. The major conflicy between France & Great Britain takes place in India, with Russian ± undercover interference and Prussia waiting for the mutual exhaustion of the major protagonigsts.
Not bad, imho. Note that here 'comics! are ±A4 size and have a hard cover.

In not so older days it could have been unavailable outside France; now i suppose that with Amazon it may be ordered worldwide, but (besides the -overestimated- €/$ ratio and postage), being in French will drastically limit its diffusion, I guess.

Best to all,
Jean-Louis