Forgotten Futures

Forgotten Futures is a table-top role playing game distributed as shareware. It's based on scientific romances, the predecessors of science fiction that were published in the late 19th and early 20th century. Some are intelligent predictions of possible futures, others are at best wild dreams, at worst nightmares.

Publishing the game in this form ensures that the stories will stay in circulation into the 21st century, and introduces them to a new generation of readers. Each collection contains at least two period stories, a worldbook for the stories, adventures, and illustrations.

Since the earlier collections were originally published I have received many suggestions on additional material that should be mentioned, errata, etc., have made some changes to the game rules, and had second thoughts on some of the background details. I've done my best to edit these changes into the text as seamlessly as possible, but some small contradictions may remain.

• The Forgotten Futures game rules
• Multiple file version of the rules
• Summary version of the game rules
  The latest version of the rules plus a shorter summary, tables etc.

• Taking The Tunnel
  An introductory adventure; as Queen Victoria opens the Channel Tunnel she becomes the focus of a sinister plot that threatens the Queen, Britain, and the Empire.

• Forgotten Futures I: The A.B.C. Files
  A role playing game set in Kipling's 21st century airship utopia. Contains the text of With The Night Mail and As Easy As A.B.C., a worldbook, an adventure, a spreadsheet of airship data, and numerous illustrations. Now includes colour illustrations from the chap-book publication of With The Night Mail and improved images of the "advertising" accompanying the story.

• Forgotten Futures II: The Log of the Astronef
  A comprehensive guide to the exploration of the Solar System in 1900 AD. Based on George Griffith's Stories Of Other Worlds, it contains six stories, the illustrations from their original publication, a worldbook taking the story forward to 1920, a spaceship design spreadsheet, five adventures, and more.

  This revised collection also includes material previously released as The Astronef Collection, which added larger versions of the graphics for the stories, and the full text of their novelisation A Honeymoon In Space.

• Forgotten Futures III: George E. Challenger's Mysterious World
  Adventures with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's scientific hero, including the full text of The Lost World, The Poison Belt, When The World Screamed, The Land Of Mist, The Horror Of The Heights, and The Disintegration Machine, a worldbook, four adventures, and a wargames scenario.

  This collection has now been expanded by the inclusion of all of the illustrations from the magazine publication of The Lost World, and the original foreword to the novel.

• Forgotten Futures IV: The Carnacki Cylinders
  Horror and the supernatural in Edwardian England, including the original text and illustrations for William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki The Ghost Finder, a worldbook with rules for magic and the Ab-natural, three adventures and two long outlines, a story-telling card game, and much more.

• Forgotten Futures V: Goodbye Piccadilly...
  The destruction of London, as seen by a variety of authors around the turn of the century. See London succumb to volcanoes, snow, fire, Yankee commercialism, and other disasters. Contents include two long adventures, at least 15 adventure outlines (I've lost count since they are at various points in two large files!), ten stories and articles, etc. etc.

  This version adds links to larger versions of many of the illustrations, and improves navigation within and between the documents. It also adds one extra story which had to be omitted from the original collection to save disk space. In this release it has also been revised to include the complete text of a story which was previously heavily abridged.

• Forgotten Futures VI: Victorian Villainy
  A source collection for melodramatic adventures, including three plays, a novel, the first Raffles stories, and more. It includes printable paper figures representing most of the characters in the adventures.

  For the CD-ROM links to more stories and to fully illustrated versions of the stories have been added. It is otherwise unchanged.

• Forgotten Futures VII: Tsar Wars
  Adventures in the World of George Griffith's future history novels, The Angel of the Revolution and Olga Romanoff, from 1904 to 2037 AD.

• Forgotten Futures VIII: Fables and Frolics
  Adventures in the World of Edith Nesbit's children's fantasy. Includes magic rules, expanded rules for Victorian and Edwardian child characters, and three novels and two short story collections by Nesbit.
• BONUS! Release 4.1 adds another Nesbit novel, Wet Magic, and printable figures for the story.

• Forgotten Futures IX: It's My Own Invention...
  Weird Gadgets, their inventors, and the worlds they create. Includes flight, automata and calculating engines, space travel, and time travel. Not to mention vampires and dinosaurs...

• Forgotten Futures X: The Tooth and Claw Role Playing Game
  A new departure for Forgotten Futures, an authorised game based on Jo Walton's World Fantasy Award-Winning novel, with rules for dragon adventurers, a guide to the setting, adventures, and much more. With additional material by Jo Walton and illustrations by Hugo-winning artist Sue Mason.

• The Forgotten Futures Compendium
  A collection of material that for one reason or another never made it into the main Forgotten Futures releases. Includes adventures by Marcus Rowland and Alex Stewart, and a collection of Victorian advertisements and adventure outlines they inspired.

• Spreadsheet Templates
  The FF rules, and several of the worldbooks, incorporate spreadsheets for character and vehicle design, currency conversion, etc. For convenience they are now accessible directly if you have appropriate software, and have been converted for use with most popular spreadsheets.

• Character Generator
  A small Java character generation program by Andrew Coombes. It should run with most recent web browsers, but this is NOT guaranteed!