This is one of the better Fate implementations I’ve seen, providing a very flexible framework for storytelling at power levels ranging from mundane to epic. Fate normally has a set of skills that each have several trappings, and then stunts that modify how the skills work. The variant in The Kerberos Club provides a system for rearranging the trappings into different skills, and spending the stunt slots on changing the “power tier” of a skill or adding particular “gifts”, chosen from a list of half a dozen, that provide anything from loyal companions to extra skills to special equipment. Mechanically, this would be superb for a supers game.

The game also has a splendidly visualized steampunk setting, with a variant 19th century that starts out similar to our own history and then begins to gradually go off the rails as the “Strange” phenomena in the game begin to come into the light. The blending of inspiration from numerous sources is just as much fun as Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula, with the strangeness of the story centering around Queen Victoria displaying her own peculiar powers— I suspect as an avatar of Britannia, though the writer leaves it mysterious. The game facilitates classic tropes ranging from occultism to mad science, as well as reflections of ideas from our own era (such as Lady Ada Lovelace developing punchcard-driven humanoid automata that go horribly awry in ways clearly inspired by modern computers).

The Dresden Files RPG is an excellent one for its setting, but needs adaptation to fit other ones; this one is much easier to generalize, and has all the delightful pulpness of Spirit of the Century. ( )