What Is All This Ruritanian Nonsense?

[Graf Falke von Falkenhorst]

I am sharing a few thoughts from the dark depths of my mind. The origin of Ruritania is to be found in a series of novels written by Anthony Hope in the 1890s. They are, of course, set in a fictional country located in the heart of Europe and were never meant to be expanded into any sort of basis for the strange, obsessive imaginations of others. Naturally, I accepted the challenge because I am strange and obsessive. What emerged was intended to be background material for use in any number of entertainment and speculative fiction genres. My focus was on role playing games. As such, Ruritania could be played as straight-on Victorian alternate history, charming and fairly conventional. Also considered were settings for horror genre games, crime solving games, etc. Then came an interest in Steampunk as a new obsession and a twisted part of my psyche said, "Why not all of the above and more?". Thus emerged the rather enhanced, some might say over-enhanced, Ruritanian Übermaus (super-mouse), with a few hints of the "The Mouse That Roared" thrown in just to make the soup spicy. Feel free to use this material as you see fit, just read the warning labels and don't blame me if some form of psychosis results.