Burial Clubs- Making Death Pay

For many in Victorian Britain, a funeral was their last chance to show their worth on earth. As important as a memorializing funeral was to the upper classes, it was even more important to the lower. A family too poor to afford a funeral doomed their loved one to a burial “on the Parish”. A pauper’s burial was the lowest disgrace a Victorian could face. No coffin tastefully obscured covered by a pall. Only a linen shroud covered the corpse. No procession of pallbearers and solemn service. Instead, they laid the deceased into a massed grave with no headstone on undesirable land. Worse still, these uncared and unnoticed cadavers were a banquet for anatomists desiring to procure corpses cheaply and legally for dissection.

To avoid this ignominious departure, many among the working poor of England scraped out enough weekly savings for membership in a burial club.  Burial clubs (or more grandly “burial societies”) provided a subscription service, similar to insurance, guaranteeing to pay funeral costs no matter how long the deceased had been a member. Many burial clubs were run independently by entrepreneurs. Quite a few headquartered in the neighborhood pub or some other public gathering place key to local life.

Costs varied based on the desired quality of the funeral. Most plans paid out £2- £10 for an adult and £1-£4 for a child. The more expensive plans paid out for more expensive funerals. An average £5 funeral for a monthly two pence subscription looks a bit like this:

-One fine elm coffin decorated with black nails, a metal nameplate, flower embellishment, and four handles,

-One velvet pall to cover the coffin

-Three black cloaks, three black hat bands, three black scarves, and six pairs of gloves

-Two porters to help at the funeral

-One man to attend the funeral in mourning dress

Further luxuries such as brass nameplates, crepe paper banners, mourning jewelry, additional hired mourners, a hearse, and black feathers for the hearse increased the cost of the Burial Club’s premiums.

 The bigger burial clubs were part of Friendly Societies, broader benevolent organizations. For a small monthly fee, friendly societies also covered injury, illness, and pensions. Some even worked as saving and investment groups on behalf of their subscribers. They ranged from small clubs consisting of a single village to massive organizations with chapters all across Briton. The biggest and oldest friendly societies functioned similarly to a fraternal order right down to official regalia and ceremonies. Almost all friendship societies are grouped by a common vocation, such as the Gardeners’ Royal Benevolent Institution or the Railway Guards’ Universal Friendly Society.

Membership in these organizations grew every year. In 1815, almost a million working men subscribed to a Friendly Society. By 1870, these organizations had over 4 million confirmed members. For those unable to afford insurance, paying a few pence to a Burial Club or Friendly Society bought peace of mind knowing their funeral would not burden their families, and disgrace themselves.

Example Names of Benevolent Societies:

Benevolent Society of St. Patrick

The Burial Institution

Friends’ Provident Institution

Governesses’ Benevolent Institution

London Friendly Institution

Loyal Order of Ancient Shepherds

Provident Association of Warehousemen, Travelers, and Clerks

Stock Exchange Clerks’ Provident Fund

Wesleyan Methodist Local Preachers’ Mutual Aid Association

That’s enough of the basic facts. Next week, we’ll start examining the shady side of combining financial gains with death by talking about fraud in Burial Clubs.

House Rules and Habits- Surviving Character Creation

When I started this series, I had no idea how many idiosyncrasies I’ve developed to help me run Victoriana. As I thought over my house rules and started a brand new campaign, more and more came to mind. This week I’m stepping off my soapbox with a little advice for players about to start building their characters. Certainly, the most complex series of rules for almost any role-playing game is character creation, and that process in Victoriana especially lengthy and detailed. The multitude of options spread through the core rulebook can leave players confused, frustrated, or worse left with a character they don’t want to play.

One simple step streamlines the entire process and can make sense of all the wonderful madness of Victoriana character creations. Try to come into character generation with a strong concept. You don’t need all the blanks filled in, just a few key ideas such as occupation, subspecies, personality, and most importantly their class. Victoriana is a class-based game, but you’re not choosing between rogue, paladin, and warlock, you’re choosing your character’s place in society. Class dominates every aspect of your character and defines your options. Combined with a couple other specific details in mind, you will be able to navigate character generation and bring your character to the table.

Starting blank and writing down whichever options sound like fun at the time to can work but I do not recommend it. In my epicene, players that try this get overwhelmed or end up with a bundle of disconnected ideas and rules that don’t spark play. Having a few key ideas helps to quickly shave away anything that doesn’t reinforce your character’s concept. As long as you are making a character suitable to adventuring in gaslight fantasy you will find options befitting your concept during Victoriana Character Generation.

To simplify it further, I recommend my first-time players think of a cliché Victoriana archetype and a fantasy trope and then combine the two. That mixture can’t help but start ideas flowing or at least suggest a direction they could go. For example, go ahead and pick something from the Victorian Trope and the Fantasy Trope tables below:

Victorian Trope

Anatomist

Detective

 Gasfitter

Aristocrat

Ladies Maid

Stage Magician

Pickpocket

Music Hall Singer

Fantasy Trope

Animal Loving Druid

The Lost Prince

Uncivilized Barbarian

Peasant Hero

Tavern keeper

Balladeer Bard

Righteous Paladin

Bookish Wizard

Some of these ideas connect very naturally, for example, balladeer bard and music hall singer, done. Others are more interesting such as aristocrat and uncivilized barbarian. That strange juxtaposition is enough to get us thinking. I’m picturing a stranger to England with strange habits, a royal pedigree, and a keenness for hunting monsters. Or take gasfitter and bookish wizard. What modern convenience (or modern for the 1850s) would a wizard come to a middle-class house and install? Sigils, wards, or homunculi servants bound to the home?

Combining fantasy and the Victorian era lies at the heart of what makes Victoriana special, and it’s a great place to start building a character. Don’t let the plethora of options get you down. Start with an idea and chip away everything that doesn’t’ match what you want to play.

That finishes up this self-aggrandizing look at my house rules and habits. I hope this encourages those of you who haven’t had great experiences with Victoriana to give it another try, and give a long time Victoriana veterans food for thought. Next week we will start our multipart examination of Burial Clubs.

House Rules and Habits- Huldus and Halflings

As is inevitable with any series about house rules, we move on to discuss something that isn’t necessarily wrong. I just don’t like it. The corebook of Victoriana 3^rd edition avoids reinventing the classic fantasy races in favor of letting it’s unique mid-1800s setting bring out interesting juxtapositions and niches. Adventuring in the class-based society of London pulls these fantasy tropes into new places without requiring any additional reinvigoration. The familiar faces of the fantastic help pull players into the rich world of Victorian England.

So why change their names? Dwarves remain dwarves, gnomes remain gnomes, but calling “Halflings” and “Elves” “Huldus” and “Eldren” annoys me a bit. With the “Eldren” it’s not so bad. That name has been around since 2nd Edition and it perfectly evokes the subspecies place in Victorian society. On the other hand, “Huldu” derives from “Huldufolk”, creatures from Icelandic mythology roughly analogous to fairies. They live in specific stones set aside for their homes, and young Icelandic children are taught to never throw rocks for fear of hitting the hidden people. While there are some interesting connections between Huldufolk and Halflings, Halflings are already a fantasy trope so calling them Huldu just takes actual Huldu out of the game, and makes the Victoriana subspecies less accessible to new players. The name “Halfling” captures exactly what these creatures are, defines how they fit in society, and leaves the world wide open for stone-dwelling Icelandic elves.

I know this is nitpicking, but I do think it’s a good example of a problem with adapting real-world folklore for role-playing games. If you’re going to take folklore concept A and put it into your role-playing game as fantasy trope B, I think A should be as close to B as possible or B has to be made at least as interesting as A. I see this happen a lot. If werewolves are the result one curse and they live in one single forest, that’s very lame to me. Using these legends should make your world bigger, not smaller. In Victoriana’s case, it’s not so egregious, but I’m still calling them Halflings.

In case this rant left a bad taste in your mouth, I leave you with a few adventure ideas about Huldus and Halflings as your reward for reading this far.

Adventure Ideas:
A halfling master perfumer uses his naturally gifted nose to create the finest odors this side of the English channel. He detects certain charnel undertones in his competitor’s latest scent and notices those wearing the scent have a knack for bending others to their will.

Halflings' high fertility makes for large families. The miserly uncle of a halfling family died recently leaving his comfortable fortune to his nieces and nephews, or rather to the last surviving niece or nephew. Twelve of the inheritors mysteriously died. Is an heir killing off their competition to live as much their naturally short life span in luxury as they can? Or is the inheritance cursed from beyond the grave?

In the center of the tightly packed slums of London, an ancient stone sits surrounded by dilapidated houses. No windows look out over the stone, and no one ever takes the shortcut through the small courtyard. Locals know to leave the stone alone, but as the city grows and old houses crumble, progress demands the stone’s removal.

House Rules and Habits- Complications and Fate Points

Victoriana’s baroque and elegant rules fit the Victorian age, but certain jumbles of rules need simplification. Some mechanics have too many exceptions and specifics, while others seem completely contradictory. I think one of the worst snarls of rules in the book is Fate Points. There are too many clauses and seemingly unnecessary sidebars for something so small in the game.
I propose the following simplification:

Player Characters start each session with 3 Fate Points which may be spent before rolling dice to add one automatic success per fate point to the result of the roll. These successes can still be negated by success on black dice. Up to three fate points may be spent this way on a single roll. Fate Points can be spent on skill, attribute, or damage rolls.

Players earn more Fate Points from their Complications. A Complication earns it’s player a Fate Point the first time it is invoked by the Gamemaster each session. A player may earn one Fate Point for each of their Complications in this way. Gamemasters may also reward a player with Fate Points for good role-play, furthering the story, helping others play etc. as they see fit. Fate points do not carry over into the following sessions. At the start of each session, a PC’s Fate Points refresh back to three.

This simplified version of the rules works well in my games. No Script Dice or the other applications of Fate Points. I’ve added nothing new here. I’m only streamlining, but I’m not done meddling yet. I also have a simplified system for Complications. A Victoriana character has enough going on without every Complication having its own mechanics.  Instead of remembering all those specific rules for each Complication, there are two effects in the game for a Complication’s baleful handicap.

A Complication can be woven narratively into the adventure as an obstacle or to pull the PC into a certain direction. If a high class PC’s meddling parents demand they host a banquet for a visiting bigwig, rescuing a famous chef from mummies becomes a much more desirable adventure. Or a PC with the “Wanted Criminal” complication will have obvious problems sneaking past the constables into the crime scene.

In both scenarios, the player gets to act out their character’s flaws and dreads and the Gamemaster get’s easy player buy-in for the next step in the story. It’s good for everybody.

The other use is a simple and quick penalty. Gamemasters (and players with Gamemaster approval) can invoke a complication to give a PC 3 black dice (or six if the circumstances are particularly dire) to any relevant rolls until the circumstance is resolved. If a PC with a “Bad Temper” Complication is already angry when they try a Hide and Sneak test, the Gamemaster could invoke the complication for a 3 black dice penalty. This represents them spitefully muttering to themselves or being incautious in their rage.

Making a complication more like an NPC Trait frees the Gamemaster to use complications in adventure creation or on the fly at the table, and let’s players come up with Complications that fit their character. Slimming down these two mechanics gives the rest of the game room to breathe and help the session flow. 

House Rules and Habits- The First Adventure

Creating the first adventure in a new Victoriana campaign is a very daunting task to me, and I imagine most Gamemasters feel the same way. There is no momentum, no clue how the new Player Characters are going to mesh, no obvious starting point and that’s just the start of the headache.

Fortunately, the slate isn’t completely blank. The Skills, Talents, Assets, Privileges, and Complications the players give their characters tell the Gamemaster how the players want to solve their problems and what sorts of problems they want to encounter. A brief examination of the character sheet can inspire themes, obstacles, locations, and starting points of the adventure.

Most obviously, players want to solve problems utilizing their PC’s highest skills. They paid the points at character creation so they want to use those skills the most. Take the hint and make those skills important in the first adventure. This is even more important and helpful to GMs formulating the first adventure if the skill doesn’t come up very often. When the players max out the Legal Matters and Accounting skills that should lead to more interesting and specific investigations. Is the mysterious money that keeps arriving in the mail embezzled from the crime boss? Does anyone know when would be the easiest time to free a friend from police custody?

Similarly, Talents like Eidetic Memory and Drink like a Fish suggest alternative problem-solving methods.

Assets can be very helpful because they give the GM resources that the PC’s care about. For example, if a PC takes the Shop or Barge Asset, the GM has a starting location for the adventure. They are all on the barge when something strange swims past. The butcher next door to the PC’s shop thinks’ his assistant is acting suspicious.
The same goes for Privileges. If a PC takes the Gang Member Privilege, the lucky GM has an entire criminal gang in play. What rumor did they hear? What is the rival gang up to? What strange danger stalks their territory? This doesn’t mean the Gamemaster should endanger these resources in the first adventure. They should be integrated into the story, not negated. That’s important to keep in mind.

Building an adventure around PC Complications requires a bit more care and tact. You don’t want their flaws to be pulled up again and again in the first adventure, but you can add flavor by putting a few specific obstacles tailored to these qualities. Phobias work nicely this way. If a PC is afraid of dogs, throw in a watchdog, or task them with tracking down a lost dog. Other Complications such as Rebel, Watched, or Theological Debate set up antagonists which could be behind the inciting incident starting the adventure. The office of a heretical publisher of religious tracts has been ransacked, or the police have a fellow member of the rebellion trapped on a rooftop.

Finally and most helpfully, every PC starts with Contacts, people they know who are willing to help out on occasion. These are fantastically useful for planning a starting adventure. If a Contact comes to their PC for help, the player is already invested and excited to see their GM use an NPC they made.

A canny GM could make an adventure by picking two or three of these elements inspired by the PCs and seeing what evolves out of mixing them together. Best of all, the PCs have both a personal attachment to the problem and the pertinent skill to solve it. 

House Rules and Habits- NPC Traits

When I started running Victoriana, it was the Second Edition. All the bits and pieces were identifiably present in that version but Third Edition cleaned up the game, making it a lot more cohesive. It’s much easier to read and understand but there are a couple of great pieces of Second Edition that got lost. One of these is NPC Traits.

Player characters in Victoriana are very complicated and comprehensive with lists of skills, talents, assets, privileges, and spells. It’s just too much to go through that for every Non-Player Character, so I use Competencies and Traits. While NPC Traits are mentioned in 3^rd Edition, they deserve to be a more integral part of an NPC’s stat block. I think these quick descriptions can do so much more than they currently do.

The three main stats of an NPC are the Competencies: Physical, Mental, and Social. These are analogous to the attributes of a Player Character (Strength, Dexterity, Fortitude etc). They provide 90% of the mechanics needed, but I go a bit further for named NPCs that needs to react and interact with the player characters.  Here is an NPC as an example:

Jeroboam Hinge (Orc Chimney Sweep)

Initiative: 4

Physical: 4

Mental: 2

Social: 4

Health: 10

Combat: Work knife (4)

It’s not bad, but there is nothing distinctive about Jeroboam Hinge, nothing about how to portray him or his modus operandi. Instead of skills, privileges, and talents, a couple of descriptive traits give me exactly what I need. These traits give bonus dice just like skills when Jeroboam Hinge performs any action to which the traits might apply. So Jeroboam has:

Traits: Things go missing around him +3, Protective of his apprentices +2

Now Hinge has some life in him. He’s a sneak thief, but he watches out for the people in his care. These traits tell me exactly what kinds of choices he’ll make around the player characters. He steals small things when people aren't looking while gaining +2 dice to his pickpocket, Conceal,  and Hide and Sneak pools. These might also be more than just bonus dice. If Hinge has to make a mental competency test against a player character threatening one of his apprentices to make Hinge surrender, that +2 bonus could become a +2 black dice penalty or he may just automatically give in.

Traits can also differentiate characters with very similar stats. If I make another chimney sweep keeping all of the competencies the same but give the character new traits, such as Good judge of horseflesh at the track +2 and Small frame +3, they become a completely different character without requiring looking up skills and talents. Mind you, if I still need some special rules, I can still add special rules. I don’t want to have to remember how a monster’s regeneration works or how to calculate their speed burrowing underground. I’ll write down whatever details I need about a monster’s rules, but in general, traits boil down an NPC’s stats down to what I really need and give me quick reminders how they operate. Traits simplify creating NPCs and make them easier to use at the table.

House Rules and Habits- Notations for Initiative

As the New Year sees me about to start running Victoriana again, I thought it might be helpful to share some of the idiosyncrasies and shortcuts I usein my games. Victoriana is my favorite role-playing game (hence this blog), however, I can still see the rules are as clunky as they are elegant. Certain rules I simplify, and others I ignore. We’ll begin with a piece of mechanics central of what makes Victoriana special: Initiative.

In Victoriana, the character who rolled the lowest initiative declares their actions for the round first, then we proceed with everyone else in ascending order. Once everyone has stated their action for the round we resolve their actions starting with the person with the highest initiative. This is pretty unique and knowing what your slower opponents are going to do gives interesting strategic options, however, without a little bookkeeping it will slow down your game. I have developed a couple of shortcuts to help keep track of actions and oppositions to keep the combat flowing. 

Here is my list of participants in the fight listed in the order of their initiatives, highest on top and descending. PC 1 had the most successes on their initiative roll, and a PC 3 rolled the least. We have three player characters fighting three monsters. This is pretty standard so far, however in Victoriana, we start with the character with the lowest initiative declaring their actions for the round.

In this example, PC 3 rolled the lowest initiative and declares she’s going to attack monster 2. To keep track of this in shorthand, I draw an arrow from PC 3 to Monster 2 in my initiative order. Remember we don’t resolve these actions until everyone declares their actions for the round. Next, it’s Monster 3’s turn.

As Gamemaster, I decided Monster 3 will attack PC 2, so I draw another arrow from Monster 3 to PC 2. Then it’s time for Monster 3 to choose a victim.

I decided Monster 2 will attack back at PC 3, making their combat contested, meaning they will both roll against each other on their turns. I note this by adding another arrowhead to the arrow connecting Monster 2 and PC 3. Exciting stuff, I know, but it helps me keep a complicated system straight in my head. Now it’s PC 2's turn.

PC 2 chooses to ignore Monster 3’s assault and instead piles another attack on Monster 2. Monster 2 already declared their action so the attacks of PC 2 will go uncontested, however so will the attacks of Monster 3 on PC 2. The arrows quickly remind me which combats have already happened, which ones are about to happen, and which are contested, but we can do more.

Monster 1 breaks the mold and chooses to run off and do something instead of attack a PC. I note this with a line pointing straight out, away from all of the fight’s participants and if I need more information I‘ll write a short one-word descriptor with more specific information. In this case, he plans to spend his turn pulling a lever releasing a horde of hungry rats into the room. Only PC 1 has a chance to stop this from happening.

But No, PC 1 follows the example of PC 2 and PC 3 and attacks Monster 2. Monster 2 will probably not live through the round, but there will be a horde of rats to fight instead. Now that everyone has declared their actions, we proceed to resolve their actions starting with PC 1, then Monster 1, PC 2, Monster 2 (if he lasts that long), Monster 3, and finally PC 3. Once all surviving participants complete their turns, a new round begins with a fresh initiative roll. 

Once everyone understands these basic notations, you can start adding in your own short hand symbols, such as a square for defensive actions, a circle for reloading, or a frown face for running away. These are basic examples, but the system holds up well when characters take multiple actions. The game master doesn’t have to remember everything. The players should be able to remember what they are doing, but it helps to smooth out the wrinkles if everyone can quickly grasp what comes next. This is my system for doing just that.