Etherscope (published by Goodman Games in 2006) is a steampunk role-playing game based on the d20 system. It uses the d20 Modern rules.
Setting The setting is a Steampunk fantasy world in which the fifth Platonic element, Ether (cosmic energy), is discovered and tapped as an energy source. Using their cutting-edge knowledge of this force allows the British empire to flourish and the culture and values of the Victorian Age to be artificially prolonged.
Etherspace Technology In the 1950s, American inventors created the Etherscope, a "difference engine" that could interact with Etherspace. Etherscopes are hand-crafted by technicians and are therefore prohibitively expensive items that are owned by the rich and powerful. Users vary from upper-class dilettantes to massive government bureaucracies and wealthy corporations.
Enginaughts were originally the trained technicians that created, maintained, programmed, and used "difference engines" (mechanical computers). The term was later extended to the clerks who programmed and used Etherscopes and the workers that fashioned Etherstuff into usable objects or structures.
Cybernaughts are human beings who utilize interface technologies. The simplest representation of the concept are the maimed people who have installed mechanical "limbs" or sensor "eyes" to replace the ones they have lost or sickly people who implant mechanical devices to replace failed or failing internal organs. The more complex concept extends to the interface technologies that allow a user to interact with a system indirectly (via keyboards, consoles, or Etheric gauntlets) or directly (via an Etherjack implant).
Etheric gauntlets allow a person to interact with Etherspace remotely. It is a common method of manipulating and fashioning Etherstuff.
The Etherjack is a cybernautic implant that allows users to interface directly with the Etheric plane (a process called Scope Immersion). Its purchase is unregulated in America but is highly controlled or banned elsewhere.
Etheric avatars are etheric constructs that are created by Etherscope users to represent them in Etherspace. The only limits are a user's skill and imagination - though off-the-rack or custom-made avatars are available from Enginauts.
Etheric Domains, Etherspace constructs resembling sprawling cities, have been created by Etherspace users to perform clerical tasks and consolidate centralized information libraries. They are bounded by security "walls" to keep out intruders. Usually the product of a powerful nation or a rich corporation, informal communities of users have begun to spring up. Haven - a hidden Domain created by Scope Riders - is home to such a community; Havenites often use detailed avatars and use a series of pseudonyms and cover identities when Immersed.
Scope Riders are a sub-culture of self-taught Etherscope users who use the Etherspace for a variety of purposes. Some explore the Domains or uncharted Etherspace for amusement or to sate their curiosity. Others use it to further criminal or political goals by stealing, altering, or even deleting stored information or forging hideouts or communication networks in the Etherscape to avoid the authorities.
System Agents, violent and bizarre etherspace beings, are a major mystery. Some think they are government or corporate Scope Riders hired to police their patron's Domains or hunt down subversives and thieves. Some think they are new programs or etheric constructs that either act on pre-programmed instructions or have even attained sentience. Some think the scope riders themselves subconsciously create them as materializations of their fears and worries or a product of their imaginations running away from them. Others posit that perhaps they were always there in the Etherspace and that the presence of other lifeforms has just drawn their interest.
Recreational use of Scope Tabs, a drug compound that grants the user access to the Etheric realm, have become a common form of escape for both bored workers and jaded aristocrats alike.
What is Etherspace? The exact opinion varies, as nothing is known precisely about it. Scientists conjecture that Ether is the substance between the stars and that Etherspace is a realm of pure energy. Artists and writers say it is the realm of dreams, thoughts, and imagination. Dreamers say it is the magical "faerieland" from folktales, myths, and legends.
History The world wars of the 20th Century were resolved differently, leaving the British Empire and the European powers largely intact.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a technology race between Britain and France made the British Empire more leery of French intentions than German saber-rattling. The United States was not involved in European affairs and wasn't considered a major power, which kept the powers of Europe from developing alliances (or even cordial relations) with it. These factors would shape the rest of the century.
The Pan-European War (1914–1922 in this timeline) is similar to World War One. The Alliance was composed of France, Italy and Russia and the Axis Powers were composed of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire. The British Empire and United States stayed neutral. In the West, the Axis Powers quickly defeated France in a matter of months and defeated Italy by the end of 1915. In the East the Germans and Austro-Hungarians invaded Russia and gradually captured a swath of territory from the Crimea to Moscow bounded by the Volga (recognized as Südrussland by the Treaty of Berlin in 1922). Kaiser Wilhelm II opposed the ending of the war in Russia until it was completely conquered. Although still loyal, the military confronted the Kaiser and steadfastly refused to do so in what was later called the Herrenvolk Putche. He was forced to quietly abdicate in 1922 and his grandson Prince Wilhelm of Prussia became Kaiser Wilhelm III [reign 1924–1946]. Bulgaria was given Romania. Austria-Hungary was granted the other Balkan states of Transylvania, Serbia, Montenegro, and Albania. The Ottoman Empire kept Armenia, Greece and Cyprus and took possession of Italy's colonies in Africa (Libya, Eritrea and Somalia). Britain used its colonial forces and navy to confiscate France's African, North African, and Asian colonies to keep them out of Neu Reich's hands, making it very unpopular. Germany received Ukraine, Ruthenia (modern-day Belarus), Sudrussland (southwestern Russia), the Crimea, and Georgia. Japan, a German ally, was granted France's Chinese concessions along with a series of small islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Portugal, a neutral party in the war, grabbed Madagascar from the French in 1914 and was allowed to keep it. The Scandinavian state of Finland; the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, Livonia, and Lithuania; and the Russian state of Ukraine were given independence from Russia and the boundaries of the nation of Poland were set by treaty. The German state of East Prussia was expanded through the Danzig Corridor (current-day northern Poland) from Königsberg (current-day Kaliningrad) in the east to the German border in the west, cutting Poland completely off from the Baltic Sea). They were later incorporated into what would become the Neu Reich. Since the British navy never defeated the German navy at the Battle of Jutland, the German navy was intact at war's end. Also, because the disused navy didn't riot and march on Berlin, the Kaiser never fled and abdicated, meaning the Prussian monarchy stayed intact. A strong government and powerful military deterred the unrest of the 1920s and 1930s and therefore Socialism, Communism, and Fascism never got a strong toehold in Europe. However, reactionary conservatism is the norm throughout European culture.
The Irish Revolt of 1914 (1914–1926 in this timeline), similar to the Irish War of Independence, had a different outcome as well. In the 1900s in Ireland there were two major factions. The Republicans, made up mostly of Irish Catholics, wanted independence for Ireland. The Unionists, made up almost exclusively of Protestants, wanted Ireland to stay part of the United Kingdom of Britain, Scotland & Ireland. Although both sides had a long history of conflict, they tended to view the question as a political one and violence and armed struggle were only embraced by extreme elements. Those armed elements, however, were well-organized, well-funded and had access to modern weaponry. Without a war in Europe to distract them, the Republicans and Unionists began fighting all across Ireland. The British Empire intervened on the side of the Unionists in 1916 and used regular troops alongside Irish militia and paramilitary forces to crush the Republicans' main force conventional troops. The Republican irregular forces held out as long as they could, but a ruthless counterinsurgency program coupled with the use of cutting-edge Ethertech weapons and devices forced the Republicans to sue for peace and disarm. The major motivation for the Republicans' surrender was not a lack of will but a loss of clandestine materiel support. The Neu Reich supplied Republican agents in Europe with aid to keep the British Empire out of the Pan-European War. Then the Russian Communist Party began picking up the slack to keep Great Britain from siding with the more conservative factions in the Russian Civil War. This was stopped once the Bolsheviks were firmly in power. The Irish bitterly refer to the Revolt of 1914 as "The 'Fourteen". The violence discredited the legitimate efforts of the Irish to use political reform to ease relations with the Empire, rollback oppressive British laws, and gain self-governance. The Republican movement, although factionalized along political lines, is more centralized and unified in this world than in ours but it has less public sympathy and little direct support outside of the Irish emigre communities abroad. Indirect support comes from the other power blocs, who use the movement to either support their espionage and subversion efforts in the Empire or as catspaws to achieve their goals obliquely.
The Russian Civil War (1922–1925 in this timeline) was similar in its outcome but had different effects. During The Pan-European War, the shorter lines of communication due to Germany's rapid invasion of Russia in 1914 initially made it easier for Russia to manage supply lines and maintain large reserves to counterattack Axis thrusts. The loss of the farmlands of the Ukraine and the Black Sea region, however, caused a famine that triggered unrest. When Russia collapsed in 1922, a series of political movements (Constitutionalists, Democrats, Anarchists, Socialists, etc.) fought for control, ending in the Communists under party secretary Joseph Stalin gaining nominal control by 1925. Loss of its "breadbasket" and industrial heartlands in the Eurasian west forced the Soviet Union to set up factories and transport networks in their Asian eastern provinces. They developed a policy of trading finished goods and raw materials for food.