I explained something about Dandies & Dandyzettes yesterday on Twitter, and I thought I should explain it here as well.
The title card says “Roleplaying Game”, and it is a roleplaying game, but I want to stress that the emphasis is on “roleplaying” more than “game”. If you’re not into very complicated game mechanics or competing for a win, this will be a great game for you! I have some instructions for using dice to determine success, character traits, action, romance, and so on, but they’re totally optional.
It does open with a very gamey directive - you need to choose a theme so that everyone’s on the same page as to the story that’s going to collaboratively unroll. Austen, Heyer, Bronte, Wollstonecraft,* Clarke … the information that you’re going to need will depend on the type of story you’re telling and where you set it. So 95% (or more) of the book is an in-depth guide to English life, politics, and culture in the 1810s.
So it goes into:
The nuances of the class system, including not just how aristocratic titles work but the relative social standing of different professions and the rank systems within the military and clergy
The details of different neighborhoods/parishes of London at the time, whether fashionable, middle-class, or working-class
How pre-decimal currency worked (bizarrely, I’ll tell you that for free)
The rules of attending court, the etiquette of the ballroom, and the code of dueling - and in all three cases, more of the culture surrounding these than just “be announced and bow to the king,” “ladies may decline a request to dance but not ask a man,” and so on
How local authorities dealt with crime, and what exactly “quarter sessions” and “assizes” are
and a whole lot more!
And as a result, it works equally well as a guide to the period for anyone who wants to write a novel set in the Regency. It’s multi-purpose!
While the history is in some cases given in brief (there’s a large appendix with further reading at the end for anyone who wants to learn more about the press, Brighton, Catholic emancipation, the Black population of the time, etc.), it isn’t sensationalized or simplified for gaming purposes. GMs and players can decide to simplify or ignore some of the history, as can authors, but it is up to them to choose what to include and what not to! If you like the information about how holidays affected hiring and renting but want divorces to be easier to get, go ahead with that. If you want divorce to still be a complicated and difficult process but want to ignore the rules of paying calls on your entry into a neighborhood, that’s easily done (as long as everyone else in the game is aware, of course).
* Mary Wollstonecraft was not advocating for complete gender equality so this isn’t quite accurate, but her name seemed like the best choice for a theme where you tell all gender roles to suck it
These miniature portraits will be appearing in the book alongside the discussion of different social classes - aristocracy, landed gentry, military, clergy, and trade.
The Kickstarter is actually fully funded, but now we’re looking at hitting the first stretch goal to have these each paired with another of a different gender!
Here’s almost all of my artwork I did for Dandies and Dandyzettes!
It’s March 25th! I’s happy Bridgerton day— and I’m excited to show you my new project!! I’m an illustrator for this amazing new RPG set in Regency England, DANDIES AND DANDYZETTES, written by the one and only Cassidy Percoco (@mimicofmodes). It’s going to be awesome— check out all our rewards. And there’s more artwork to come, so look out for that!
In Regency England, where does a gentleman’s income come from?
It depends on the gentleman, but in general, the majority of his income would derive from interest on invested wealth: the family money would be invested in the government funds, which delivered varying amounts of interest ranging from 3% to 5%. This interest would be held separate from the capital, and the responsible gentleman would consider that account of collecting interest his income, only drawing from that rather than uninvesting capital; in the case of an entailed property, he might legally only be allowed to access the interest. A gentleman’s wife would typically bring her own capital sum to the marriage, invested similarly to bring a yearly income that was her husband’s property, and the marriage contract usually stipulated that some amount of invested capital and its interest would devolve back to her when she was widowed, and/or to her children when she died, which is how even a younger son could have a small income.
However, yes, rents played a part. Many farms around a country estate would be rented from the landowner, as would homes in the villages. These rents were typically monetary, and were collected by the landowner’s agent on a quarterly basis - March 25 (Lady Day), June 24 (Midsummer), September 29 (Michaelmas), and Christmas.
The clergy, on the other hand, got paid a little more creatively. While they might have one of those younger-son inheritances mentioned above - this was a common career path for sons who weren’t going to inherit the main estate, like Edmund Bertram or Henry Tilney - they were also sustained by the parish, which is why there was a lot of competition for lucrative livings in prosperous villages and towns. Basically, every parish had greater and lesser tithes: the former was 10% of all the wheat produced, and the latter was 10% of all the non-wheat crops and livestock. If the local living was a rectory, the appointed clergyman would get both of these, and if it were a vicarage, the vicar would get the lesser tithes while the landowner got the greater ones. Vicars and rectors also had a “glebe”, a piece of land to farm, which they could either use for their own produce or rent out to earn more money.
I explained something about Dandies & Dandyzettes yesterday on Twitter, and I thought I should explain it here as well.
The title card says “Roleplaying Game”, and it is a roleplaying game, but I want to stress that the emphasis is on “roleplaying” more than “game”. If you’re not into very complicated game mechanics or competing for a win, this will be a great game for you! I have some instructions for using dice to determine success, character traits, action, romance, and so on, but they’re totally optional.
It does open with a very gamey directive - you need to choose a theme so that everyone’s on the same page as to the story that’s going to collaboratively unroll. Austen, Heyer, Bronte, Wollstonecraft,* Clarke … the information that you’re going to need will depend on the type of story you’re telling and where you set it. So 95% (or more) of the book is an in-depth guide to English life, politics, and culture in the 1810s.
So it goes into:
The nuances of the class system, including not just how aristocratic titles work but the relative social standing of different professions and the rank systems within the military and clergy
The details of different neighborhoods/parishes of London at the time, whether fashionable, middle-class, or working-class
How pre-decimal currency worked (bizarrely, I’ll tell you that for free)
The rules of attending court, the etiquette of the ballroom, and the code of dueling - and in all three cases, more of the culture surrounding these than just “be announced and bow to the king,” “ladies may decline a request to dance but not ask a man,” and so on
How local authorities dealt with crime, and what exactly “quarter sessions” and “assizes” are
and a whole lot more!
And as a result, it works equally well as a guide to the period for anyone who wants to write a novel set in the Regency. It’s multi-purpose!
While the history is in some cases given in brief (there’s a large appendix with further reading at the end for anyone who wants to learn more about the press, Brighton, Catholic emancipation, the Black population of the time, etc.), it isn’t sensationalized or simplified for gaming purposes. GMs and players can decide to simplify or ignore some of the history, as can authors, but it is up to them to choose what to include and what not to! If you like the information about how holidays affected hiring and renting but want divorces to be easier to get, go ahead with that. If you want divorce to still be a complicated and difficult process but want to ignore the rules of paying calls on your entry into a neighborhood, that’s easily done (as long as everyone else in the game is aware, of course).
* Mary Wollstonecraft was not advocating for complete gender equality so this isn’t quite accurate, but her name seemed like the best choice for a theme where you tell all gender roles to suck it
He was never going to ride a horse or climb a tree or stride purposefully across a room and sweep a lady off her feet. There were a thousand things he’d never do, and you’d think it would have been a man who’d reminded him of this—an able-bodied man who could hunt and box and do all those bloody things a man was meant to do, but no, it was her, Lady Sarah Pleinsworth, with her fine eyes and nimble feet, and every bloody smile she’d bestowed upon her dance partners that morning.
He didn’t like her. He really didn’t, but by God, he’d have sold a piece of his soul right then to dance with her.”
This is one of my favourite passages from The Sum of All Kisses by Julia Quinn. It is Book 3 of The Smythe Smith Series. I HIGHLY recommend the books!
