Play the heroes and villains of a Strange century! Doctor Archibald Monroe, the erudite chemist and physician-chimpanzee . . . "Stony" Joe Smithson, the honest London boxer, transformed into living rock . . . Maeve O'Connel, Queen of the Mudlarks, the eternal child touched by Faerie . . . the Lady Mirabel, who by darkness defends Whitechapel as the terrifying Night Hag. . . . When the victims and enthusiasts of magic and bizarre science meet in an infamous club for "the Strange," thrilling action is sure to follow! "The Kerberos Club" is a "Wild Talents" sourcebook for superheroic roleplaying in Victorian London. It includes a detailed history and thorough treatment of Victorian society in its every particular, especially the incredible and sometimes awful changes that "the Strangeness" comes to wreak upon Queen and Country alike. "The Kerberos Club" gives "Wild Talents" players every tool they need to create new heroes and villains in a world that is at the same time familiar and alien-a world made more of both by the Strangeness that grips it and the dangers that threaten it. There is, after all, every good reason for the club's motto: "MALUM NECESSARIUM."
| ||||||||||||
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Stange and Wonderful Alt Victorian History RPG Setting,
By
This review is from: The Kerberos Club (Paperback)
The Kerberos Club is a 334 page steampunk Victorian campaign sourcebook for Wild Talents, the superhero role playing game. Most of this very well-written sourcebook isn't system specific though, so if you're not a Wild Talents fan but the setting sounds interesting, please keep reading. In this supplement, Benjamin Baugh, who also wrote the excellent Monsters and Other Childish Things, has skillfully blended fantastic technology, magic, real history, and a large dash of scientific romance to create an alternate world which is at once both familiar and fantastic. London is this sourcebook's focus, but important events in the rest of The Empire, Western Europe, North America and elsewhere are also discussed, so the reader gets a fairly good sense of what is going on in other parts of the world too. The Kerberos Club includes a 54 page timeline which describes over a century's worth of the history of this imaginative, divergent Victorian setting. This book also provides 30 pages which explain what Great Britain was like during the period, and what it was like then to be a member of the upper class, middle class, working class, and under class. The lives of members of these levels of society were quite different, so this background information is invaluable for any player who wants to role play their PCs well but who is unfamiliar with Victorian Britain and its culture. There is also a handy, four page guide to sources of information about Victorian Britain. There is a new, innovative skills system, and a new system of personal motivations, which can be used instead of the Loyalties and Passions found in Wild Talents. Oh yes, a scenario is included too. I have not yet run it, but looks like a very good one.
In this rich setting, at the dawn of the 19th Century, the world is much like our own, though Strange beings and weird gadgets have already started to emerge upon the scene. During the early years of her reign, Queen Victoria becomes mysteriously imbued with supernatural energy, and her unearthly and temporal power both continue to grow over the course of her reign. By the middle of Victoria's Century, Strangeness in the world has started to become far more apparent, as deadly land ironclads prowl battlefields, fleets of airships sail the skies, mechanical computers direct industrial production, whirring clockwork automata toil tirelessly for the affluent, and ruthless, resourceful criminals wield electrical blast-pistols in treacherous slums. Radical, new technologies also permit audacious explorers to plumb the oceans' depths, and to make their way into other uncanny frontiers, leading to the discovery of alien civilizations. Otherworldly forces have also started to manifest more obviously by mid-century, when The Empire has colonized part of faerie, and strange, supernatural creatures lurk Great Britain's long, dark shadows. By the Century's end, the mad, multifarious pace of change has created a chaotic new world much different than our own. This alternate world is extremely interesting and its design is strongly internally consistent. So, what is The Kerberos Club? It is a mysterious London club, with an ancient, shadowy history, which attracts members of the most unusual sort. Included among this number are eccentric fringe inventors, weird beings produced by bizarre scientific experiments, obsessed magicians teetering on the edge of sanity, sole survivors of alien races, bloody trolls and dark faeries cloaked in illusion, bold, driven adventurers, and other extraordinary individuals. The Club provides a refuge for those who don't fit in well in normal society and also acts as a source of mutual aid for members. As such, this is an excellent meeting place for player characters. Club members receive covert favor from the Crown for their efforts to keep Strangeness from having too disruptive an impact on the world. As such, despite whatever personal flaws members may possess, their activities tend to place them in the role of heroes. The Kerberos Club might be thought of as a permanent League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or a dark, steampunk Avengers. A GM could easily use this versatile setting to run anything from a Call of Cthulhu or X-Files style campaign to a low or moderate power supers game, and the setting could easily be used for gritty, pulpish, or cinematic style play. As previously mentioned, this book is written for use with Wild Talents, the One-Roll Engine's supers' rule set, but the majority of the book is not system specific. Still, for O.R.E fans, there are numerous useful NPC and gadget write-ups, and some alternate rules. Among these are guidelines for buying skills that are sweeping in scope, somewhat like those used in Unknown Armies or Over the Edge. O.R.E's basic skill system involves rolling a number of d10s equal to a stat's number plus a number of extra dice equal to the skill's level. Success is based on the height and number of matching dice rolled. This does not change under the new, option skill rules. As with most RPGS, skills are narrowly defined under the basic Wild Talent rules. Under them, you can buy a Sword skill, for example, but not a more versatile skill like "Struggle" or "Getting Medieval." The new, optional rules in The Kerberos Club changes this. While you can still use the narrow skills as found in the Wild Talent rules, you can now also buy much more versatile skills for a slightly higher cost. These more versatile skills are purchased with one or more of the Qualities of Broad, Flexible, or Influence. Basic skills cost one point per die, and the cost goes up by one extra point per die for each Quality added to the skill. Skills purchased with the Broad Quality can be applied in a more open manner with a particular stat; for example, instead of a skill in Sword (used with the Body stat), you could create and buy a slightly more expensive Melee Weapon skill, which would still be employed with Body, but which would give a character more options as far as the sort of weapons they might choose to wield. A skill can be Flexible, which means that it can be used with any stat; a Flexible Handgun skill could be used with Body if a PC is trying to break a pistol, with Coordination when trying to hit a target, with Sense when listening to determine what sort of weapon had just been fired nearby, with Brains to know facts about a weapon, with Charm when trying to ingratiate oneself with a firearm collector, and with Command when making an effort to remain fearless in the face of enemy pistol fire. Using both the Broad and Flexible Qualities, instead of buying several combat related skills and riding, a PC with a background as a cavalry officer might create a single custom skill of "Won a Medal or Two in the Crimea" and buy several dice in it. This would allow the PC to do such things as hit a target with a pistol or rifle, use a sword effectively, calm a fearful horse, ride well, identify military equipment, know effective tactics, lead troops in combat, and maintain composure when under fire. Skills can also be bought with the Influence Quality. For example, if a character has a skill in Old Boys Club with Influence because of connections earned as a result of an elite education, they can gain information or call in other favors from those with whom they attended university. If the PC with the Won a Medal or Two in the Crimea skill has the Influence Quality, they can also gain useful information from other veterans or even call on military comrades for aid in an upcoming fight. Mixing and match Qualities allows you to truly customize PC and NPC skills. For example, if you buy "Famous Consulting Detective" with the Broad, Flexible, and Influence Qualities, this would cost four points per die, but you could apply the skill in combination with any stat in any way that fits the concept, and Influence can be used to call on help from NPCs that admire you or that you might have helped at some time in the past. Being able to customize skills so freely is a very clever way of doing things, and a welcome innovation. Skills can stack too, by the way, so if you have a Body of three, a skill of one in Sword, a skill of two in Weapon Expert, and a skill of three in Won a Medal or Two in the Crimea, you'd roll nine dice total when swinging your big blade. The stacked skills must fit together well though, so if you switched to using a dagger, you'd only be able to combine Body and Weapon Expert, for a total of five dice, unless you had another skill that clearly fit the bill too. Based on write-ups in The Kerberos Club, most characters will end up having only five to ten skills, so keeping track of what skills you can stack is unlikely to be difficult, and may in fact be quite easy. I distrust any review that is entirely positive, as nothing created by human beings is utterly perfect. Even an honest salesman can point out ways in which one product may be less desirable than another. So what is it about The Kerberos Club that is open to criticism? Well, if you're a purist who utterly detests the mixing of supernatural elements with steampunk-flavored science, this sourcebook may not be for you. Magic is a basic part of the setting, though it would be easily to deemphasize it during play. The art is very good, but I'd have liked to have seen a bit more of it. From a rules standpoint, I dislike the design of the previously mentioned electrical blast-pistol, as this weapon will always hit its target and render them unconscious - unless the intended victim has just the right sort of superhuman defenses or the player has absolutely amazing luck when making his PC's dodge roll. I basically just don't like the idea of a gun that a normal human cannot miss with, particularly when it will automatically knock out just about any foe when it hits. It took me... Read more ›
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Impressive and Ambitious,
This review is from: The Kerberos Club (Paperback)
For those who have never heard of it, The Kerberos Club is a source-book written by Benjamin Baugh which uses the rules from Wild Talents 2nd Ed and takes a spin of a glorious Arc Dream conceit: What if individuals with super-powers cropped up in different times? GODLIKE took a punt for WW2, and This Favoured Land takes the American Civil War.
The Kerberos Club is superpowers developing within Victorian England, particularly London, together with the wider Empire. You will need the WT 2nd Ed rules to get full use out of the book, but fortunately the Arc Dream crew have anticipated this issue, and so if nothing else you can get the core 2nd Ed rules within Wild Talents Essential Edition for a mere $10 USD. It's extremely good. Take shots of Victorian pulp to taste, like `Oliver Twist,' `Sherlock Holmes' and the `League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.' Mix well, and pour over world-and-society-changing super-powers and the fact that Queen Victoria seems to be turning into a god. In other words? Sex on toast. That said, it should be noted that the `League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' link isn't precisely accurate: The theory behind LoEG was that fictional characters existed in Victorian England. In The Kerberos Club, fictional characters are fictional - but the logic is that one of the characters might be the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, even though Holmes himself is off the table. For the record, I should also frontload my biases: It's by Benjamin Baugh, the author of Monsters and Other Childish Things and The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor. I am genetically predisposed to love his books. The core concept is that the players are members of the titular group, a "gentlemen's club" of deeply questionable reputation due to the deeply eccentric views held by its members, such as the notion that women, people of colour and the poor are human beings, and that respect should be accorded by merit rather than status. The very idea! *Monocle drops out over outraged, quivering walrus moustache.* This is a very elegant framework for getting the PCs together, providing an excuse for PCs of very different backgrounds to work with each other, and allowing players with modern perspectives on race, gender and the like to band together against the savage and ruthless Victorian world. Here is a link to where Shane Ivey of Arc Dream kindly provided a good chunk of the Introduction to the book as a teaser excerpt: [...] It should give you a good impression of the setting and the vibe of the writing. I'm going to arrange this review a little differently than I normally do. The scheme is that I'll open with breaking down all of the axis on which different Cool Things exist that sets the game apart, and then go into more detail on a chapter-by-chapter basis. Because really? There's a lot of cool stuff to talk about for this book, and front-loading that information among the rest of my noise seems fair - otherwise I might TL;DR people away from the gloriousness. And we can't have that. The three or four individual distinct things I can see a book like this being used for are these: 1) New rules mechanics to add to the ORE stable. As some will recall from various ranting, the riot rules from Unknown Armies are something which I love to bits. The rules were incredibly elegant - and based in one roll! - together with an incredible story seed. Well, The Kerberos Club introduces an ORE variant of those rules. They are Delicious. They can also be easily lifted out and applied to any other ORE setting, with a bare minimum of recontextualisation. (My NEMESIS game, I am looking in your direction!) An entirely different system for building skills, reminiscient of building powers in WT 2nd Ed. Basically, there are four qualities a skill can have, and people build their own skills. `Basic' skills attach to one stat - chosen by the player - and are quite narrow. `Broad' skills attach to one stat, but cover more territory. It's the difference between having a Pistols skill and a Firearms skill. `Flexible' skills can be attached to more than one stat. For example, you could roll Mind + Pistols or Mind + Firearms to know stuff contextually associated with those weapons, if you had a Flexible version of the skill. And then you have `Influential' skills, which are things your character is well-known for in certain circles - and can thus use to open doors, make social connections, or generally influence people with. Having a Firearms skill which is Influential might mean you're known as a gunfighter - or a patron of gunfighting contests, maybe, if your skill isn't in itself that high. People who know guns are likely to have heard of you, and in a Victorian context, status is very important. Influential skills are ways in which you have status - except, of course, that being influential in gunfighting circles might not cut much ice with the clergy. I love this system. It means that, shifting contexts away from The Kerberos Club for a moment, Batman could have a Broad, Flexible, and Influential skill called "I'm Batman," with a bunch of dice in it. Chemistry problem? He's Batman. Jungle survival? He's Batman. Car racing? Still Batman. Obviously as with any situation where the players are building skills, the GM and other players need to be on-side. However, within the context they're happy with, the skill applies. I, for example, would assume that "I'm Batman" isn't a combat skill. Nonetheless, you get the idea. Skills which combine a range of Broad, Flexible and Influence are biiiig signs proclaiming both: "This is core to who the character is," and "These are challenges which would be awesome to get into." This is also readily lifted out of The Kerberos Club context and applied to the rest of the ORE. I can already think of some folks it would have been useful for in my NEMESIS game. Finally, there are Convictions, which is a different way of handling Willpower - replacing Loyalties and Passions. The player creates things which are core to who the character is, and has to invest numbers equal to their whole Base Will. Whenever the character takes meaningful action towards that Conviction, they get Willpower equal to the points invested in it. Downside: Whenever they are forced by circumstances not to take action following a Conviction, they lose Willpower equal to the investment. It's intuitive and another way of specifically defining who the character is, in a way I think is similar to the Passions in Unknown Armies, since I like the player's ability to make up what works for them. Once more, can be applied to anything using the WT 2nd Ed rule-set. In short? There are delicious rules gems within this book, together with all of the rest of the nourishing goodness. Nourishing goodness such as... 2) Setting details for Victorian era campaigns - not necessarily tied to the ORE There's a wealth of information here which could be valuably applied to any Victorian game. There's details for the history, and a vast wealth of information about how characters in different social strata will view the world and what they will value. Useful for a lot of games I can think of, leaving The Kerberos Club entirely aside. 3) Elements which can be used either in Kerberos Club or in other campaigns, once their serial numbers have been filed off. The Kerberos Club as an entity could exist in contexts outside of the Victorian - although it does fit there very nicely. Alternatively, there are some glorious pre-written characters designed to be either NPCs or pregen PCs, using the WT 2nd Ed rules. They exist as beautiful examples of what can be done with the system, together with characters which can be lifted out of context. I particularly appreciate that all the write-ups in The Kerberos Club contain notes about how to play the character as either a protagonist or a villain. It's a nice touch. 4) The synergy of all the above. Overall? The final word? This is a really good book. It's evocative enough that I read it as if it were fiction, chortling all the while - which is one of my benchmarks for a damned good RPG. The integration of the setting and fluff content with the rules is smooth and comprehensible, and everything feels pretty damned intuitive to me. This is rare. Also? There's a great index for finding things. The Kerberos Club Chapter Breakdown. The Introduction Provides a solid, brief discussion of the Victorian era as a setting, who the characters are and what they do, together with material from fiction, actual sources, television and other media which could usefully inform games. As you can see from the excerpt above, it's evocative and grounded in getting people on their feet quickly. Chapter 1: The Kerberos Club As a book, The Kerberos Club impressed me with the sheer scale of detail and information you're provided, and Chapter 1 is a good example. It explores the Kerberos Club as an entity, using titles such as the delightful "Cloak of Lies, Waistcoat of Obscurity, and Opera Hat of Exaggeration." There are the Traditions of the club, including how it is viewed in contemporary Victorian society - even going to far as to note how the way it is seen changes in different `contemporary' Victorian societies throughout the 18th Century - because it's a century with a whole lot of change going on. There is the Challenge, which is how prospective members of the Club are tested - introducing tantalising campaign elements and tabling the... Read more ›
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Kerberos Club (Paperback)
This is an absolutely amazing product that actually manages to capture a victorian feel. It starts out as a relatively low end cover up the weirdness campaign that quickly turns into a combination of pulp, steampunk, mystical, super hero alternate history what ifs. I happen to be a cautious fan of the wild talent system(I've only played it once), but I would recommend this setting book to anyone. Even a die hard no superhero games friend couldnt wait to play after one read. My only real issue with the game came at the end of the established timeline, but I wont spoil anybody else's fun. If you're into any of the genre's I've mentioned then this book is definately for you
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Inside This Book
(learn more)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
