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Agents of the Crown! Victorian Superhero Adventure for Basic Roleplaying: The Chaosium Roleplaying System

By Scott R. Pyle

Short Fiction: Danny Certo

Interior Art, Layout, and Logo Design: Joseph Urban

Cover Art: Anne Moffa

Editing and Additional Material: Aaron Tobul and Joseph Dragovich

Rules Assist: Jason Durall

Special Thanks: JoAnn Rizzo and Annabelle Rizzo

copyright © 2009 by chaosium inc. and the author. Basic Roleplaying is the registered trademark of Chaosium Inc.

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Table of Contents

Chapter I: The Origins of Agents

Chapter II. The AotC Campaign

Chapter III. The Victorian World in Brief

Chapter IV. Friends and Foes

Chapter V. The Affair of the Jade Skull!

Appendix I. Additional Rules and Notes

Appendix II. Bibliography

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Agents of the Crown! Victorian†Superhero Adventure for Basic Roleplaying: The Chaosium Roleplaying System

IntroductionAgents of the Crown (AotC) combines Victorian heroic action in the tradition of pulp stories, comic books, and the Penny Dreadfuls of the 19th century with the solid play and tremendous versatility of the Basic Roleplaying (BRP) system. AotC allows players to take the roles of super-agents in Victorian England serv-ing Queen and Country combating evil in a myriad of forms. Whether foiling assassination attempts against the country’s Royals or members of Parliament, or rooting out vile cult activity amidst the sweat and squalor of London’s Bain-bridge Rookery, the operatives of her Royal Majesty Queen Victoria know the truth. Evil is out there.

Its minions are legion. They inhabit the edges of England’s vast, world-spanning empire, corrupting, waiting for their chance to sew chaos and disorder. And so the Agents of the Crown must face these threats as they come. Their lives are sometimes lost in the cause, but never given cheaply. Indeed, the Agents possess powers and skills beyond the average man or woman’s. Whether by accident of birth, or from the borne of the world’s brave new sciences, they are often more than human. Yet still it is their courage that most sets them apart from ordinary citizens, for they must endure hardships that run the gamut of human experi-ence and beyond. One day it might be a terrible threat from beyond space and time, while the next it might be an all too human killer who stalks the innocent along rain-slicked cobblestone streets.

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About the Victorian Era The Victorian era of English history spanned the years 1837 - 1901, and began with Queen Victoria’s accession to the throne on June 20, 1837, at the age of 18. Born on May 24, 1819, in Kensington Pal-ace, London, Victoria was the daughter of Victoria Mary Louisa (1786ñ1861), daughter of the duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. Her father, Edward Augustus (1767ñ1820), was duke of Kent and Strathern, and boasted an impressive lineage himself, as the fourth son of George III and youngest brother of George IV and William IV, kings of Great Britain. In 1840 Victoria married†her first cousin, Albert, prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. This marriage of state soon blossomed into one of romance as the two fell deeply in love. Queen Victoria and HRH Prince Albert presided over a period of incredible progress and prosperity for England and the British Empire. The Empire’s holdings abroad produced conditions for the development of a large middle class, although extreme poverty and cruelty still held sway among the lower classes. Along with great leaps in the economic conditions came advances in technology with the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Fashions and attitudes also began to change, with writers like Charles Dickens and many social reformers calling for better conditions for the working poor. The worlds of science, religion, and philosophy collided in 1859 when Charles Darwin published his _On the Origin of Species_, a treatise on the theory of evolution. While citizens of the British Empire wrestled at home with issues of humanity’s place in the nature of things, their armies fought wars abroad to maintain the sovereignty of a nation on whom the sun never set.

Amidst all of this chaos and upheaval step the aether-men. This monograph provides players an oppor-tunity to explore what might happen if a race of super-men arose in the Victorian world. Would they be greeted as as heroes, treated as the next phase in mankind’s evolution, or seen as a threat to status quo by those in power?† In AotC the government of Great Britain has chosen to use these super-humans as weapons to guard the security of the Empire. Some (the player characters) have chosen to accept this role, while others have rejected it and chosen to make their own way.†Still others have become threats to the Empire, working with her greatest enemies to engineer her destruction.

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