Victorian Street Urchins

Recently I was listening to an audiobook called Baker Street Four, a Sherlock Holmes inspired tale of street urchins solving dastardly crimes in victorian London’s smog filled streets. My kids enjoyed it very much and the story did a good job of leading you onwards, invested in the characters and hating the villains.

Thinking about it afterwards it occurred to me that the adventure would have made an excellent role playing game - four characters finding their way through a dangerous mystery with satisfying motivated villains to thwart.

At the same time I’ve been reading a lot about the (PDF download warning!) Year Zero Engine (aka YZE) by Free League Publishing. It’s a fast, flexible, elegant system using only six sided dice and powers many of their products. Their Tales from the Loop game is about kids in an alternative 1980s discovering weird stuff and the YZE implementation is very lightweight and fast.

Enter Streetwise… (working title!). Streetwise is a YZE hack for victorian London street urchin adventures. The first draft is almost done and ready for playtesting. If you like a bit of Sherlock Holmes style action in grimy London streets during the 1890s, check back soon!