Sherlock Holmes RPG

London, England, in the early 1880s.

The Victorian capital is a city of immense wealth and crushing poverty, of elegant drawing rooms and filthy alleyways, of aristocratic estates, crowded tenements, fog-bound streets, hospitals, railway stations, criminal dens, and countless secrets hidden behind respectable doors. The Metropolitan Police and its Criminal Investigation Department work tirelessly to keep order, yet there remain cases too strange, complicated, or embarrassing to be solved by conventional means.

Among London’s growing number of private investigators is a young and largely unknown consulting detective named Sherlock Holmes.

Holmes is brilliant, eccentric, intensely observant, and already possessed of an extraordinary talent for deduction, but he is not yet the legendary detective he will one day become. His reputation is small, his methods are unconventional, and many within Scotland Yard regard him as little more than an eccentric young man playing at detective work. Holmes himself is still refining his methods, learning from his mistakes, and discovering exactly what sort of detective he intends to become.

His closest companion is Dr. Watson, a young physician whose medical knowledge, practical judgment, and very different temperament make her an invaluable counterpart to Holmes. Their partnership began after an unlikely meeting brought them together, eventually leading them to share rooms at 221B Baker Street.

Together, Holmes and Watson have begun taking cases from private citizens, investigators, and occasionally the police themselves. Their investigations carry them throughout London—from respectable parlours and grand estates to hospitals, railway platforms, docks, pubs, slums, criminal underworlds, and the headquarters of Scotland Yard.

They are not yet masters of their professions.

They are young detectives at the beginning of their careers, building a reputation case by case while encountering the people, criminals, investigators, and mysteries that will shape their futures.

The familiar world of Sherlock Holmes exists here, but it is not bound entirely to the history of the original stories. Certain people, relationships, circumstances, and events may differ from the familiar canon, while the atmosphere and spirit of Victorian detective fiction remain intact.

Somewhere in London, a criminal mind capable of challenging Holmes is beginning to emerge.

The name Moriarty has not yet become synonymous with the greatest criminal intellect in England.