Campaign Toybox
The Story: Between 1813 and 1907, England and Russia were involved in a cold war for supremacy in Asia that they called the Great Game. Like any good espionage war, it was fought not just with guns and knives but with embassy balls and gymkhanas. And in those latter arenas, the men of the Victorian era were often quite hopeless, while the female of the species was built from birth to rule them. We might assume that the men would have kept their wives from such serious business but we know from history that there were a great many female spies throughout the 18th and 19th century, so it is certainly a sensible speculation that there were plenty in the Great Game.
Although the redoubtable Ms Austen published her last book posthumously in 1818, the world she was describing was far from over, and she also leaves the fates of her heroines free for sensible speculation. Most of Austen’s male protagonists are military men, and given the times of war, it is almost assured that Mr Darcy would have been posted overseas. Which allows us very easily to arrive at Lizzie Darcy-Bennett: Spymistress of the Punjabi Heights.
Style and Structure: Why Austen? Because it provides a very strong genre to add to the espionage mix. You don’t want your female spies to just be male spies in dresses; they should have their own style and form about them, and Ms Austen provides an excellent touchstone on character and temperament of ladies of the period, both in terms of what was expected of them, and what they thought about it. This is also important to establish because without a baseline of what you do between jobs, high-spying hijinks on the job have less meaning. Even if it is only for a few establishing shots before Lizzie lights the metaphorical bat-signal, it helps to ground things.
As for espionage, well, if James Bond can still be doing it, it can’t be that hard. Of course, you don’t have to do James Bond – you can do Burn Notice or George Smiley or Spooks or GI Joe or anything in between. As always, you’ll need to set your dials clearly from the beginning, making sure the players know just how the levels are set when it comes to their abilities, the grittiness of the world (both physically and morally) and how much trust they can feel safe giving and so forth. Also make sure to let them know how much you want them exchanging glances at gymkhanas and how much you want them kung-fu fighting on rooftops. Obviously you want some of both, the question is just how much. A rough guide so they can stat appropriately.
PCs and NPCs: Not all your PCs need be ladies – someone has to carry the bags, after all. But it is a fun twist to set most of your adventures in places men simply cannot go, or would be extremely unwelcome, since we’ve spent so many RPGs in worlds where women had to dress like men, or all but. Of course, a man dressed as a woman might even make a good character, and there could be good reasons to do so, psychological or infiltrational. Of course, there were plenty of places certain men could go that gentlemen could not: women did have male grooms, equerries, porters, butlers and footmen and would not be allowed out in the Punjabi highlands without guards, guides, translators and local agents. And while ladies were expected to marry and raise a household (and a garden), they were also experimenting with being riders, explorers, naturalists, nurses, scientists, writers and artists.
Your NPCs can of course be your favourite Austen cast members, in whichever positions you prefer (Mary Bennett would make an excellent code-breaker, I think). Of course, only do this if your players are going to get the references. There’s nothing more unctuous than a GM laughing quietly to himself about how clever he’s been.
Plots and Villains: At the beginning of the 19th century, Russia is the largest country in the world, and its empire easily rivals, if not exceeds, that of Britain, in land area and population. It stretches from Central Europe to Alaska. Ultimately, it failed to compete with Britain because it insisted on maintaining its serf population and its cultural conservatism, as Tsar Nicholas 1 rebelled against the liberal progressiveness of his older brother. Just as would happen a century later, Russia dug in its heels against the free-thinking, immoral, individualist world of Britian. Which means you can transplant any plot and villain ideas from the Cold War straight into this battle between the Lion and Bear. The prize was the Indian Ocean: the British could hold the Atlantic since they could blockade the North Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean was still in the hands of the crumbling Ottoman Empire; the Russians had the Pacific. In the middle, India was not only a massive source of British trade dollars but England’s direct line to controlling both Africa and Asia. And British rule in India was by no means secure, especially since the Duke of Wellington was no longer leading the efforts to conquer the rogue states. If the Ottoman Empire falls mostly to Russia (and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t in your game) and the Holy Land follows suit, then India becomes a last outpost. Stopping Russia from taking it puts the fate of the entire world in the hands of your PCs.
Sources: For Austen, I should hardly need to list her works, and thanks to the recent (and now seemingly endless) revival, the film and TV adaptions are legion. Emma Thompson’s Academy Award winning conversion of Sense and Sensibility is very accessible to even the most resistant of macho men, and the presence of Keira Knightley in a wet frock may also convince them to see the recent version of Pride and Prejudice, although for my money it is far inferior to the Bollywood version Bride and Prejudice, featuring the alluring Aishwarya Rai. I’ve heard that the Austen rewrites with supernatural creatures are extremely tedious but they might get hold-outs into the fold. For the Great Game you want Kim, and pretty much everything else by Kipling, because he spent half his life working and living in India in the period. I particularly like “The Young British Soldier” for setting the mood. Several of George Macdonald Fraser’s Flashman books feature the Great Game, notably Flashman in the Great Game. For non-fiction, I enjoyed Niall Ferguson’s Empire series, or you could go right to the source: Archive.org has a copy of the 1795 Directory of the East Indies
RPGs: Well, Wit and Willfulness, an Austen RPG, never made its kickstart total (not least because it was badly presented), and the old Wuthering Heights RPG is just ashes in the net, but there are options. The Kerberos Club is an excellent guide to the entire Victorian Era, although it focuses on the homefront, of course. So does GURPS Goblins, and the various Napoleonic games tend to focus on Europe or the Atlantic, naturally. Forgotten Futures and Space 1889 have the attitude right although are more late Victorian. There’s an excellently researched late-19th century guide to India developed for D20 Modern and published by Adamant Entertainment, which is worth getting even if you despise D20. Going beyond Colonial India, there’s GURPS India and Green Ronin published Mindshadows, which was to Indian history what D&D is to medieval history. Closer to actual history is Suryamaya, if you can find it. Finally, the Aberrant and Trinity universe feature India as a key world player and have plenty of rules and hooks for intrigue, and by adding Adventure you can turn back the clock some of the way. Indian myth was also a big influence on Exalted, and also Empire of the Petal Throne. There’s some lifting to be done, but the groundwork has been laid.
