Robert Poppe

Terra Nova is a game about the disastrous end of Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s 1912 Antarctic expedition. In it, the players will assume the roles of Scott’s team. They will be forced to make brutal decisions that balance the immutable laws of nature with the facile laws of men. In the end, they will fall one by one.

Robert Falcon Scott continually referred to his men as hard – these were seasoned polar veterans who volunteered for a journey into the most dangerous and inhospitable terrain on earth. Their resolve, their toughness, their steel is, in retrospect, astonishing. They walked to the south pole. In 1912. And almost returned alive.

The four of them were chosen as much for their compatibility as for their physical prowess and technical expertise. A year of laying dep?ts, working with sledge and ski, had galvanized them into a tightly-knit team of single-minded professionals. Although each had a role and specialty, by necessity they thought and acted as one when it counted.

The Terra Nova expedition was governed by two sets of contradictory but immutable laws. The first were the laws of nature – merciless and implacable, utterly inimical to human survival, and incontrovertible. The second were the laws of civilization – more specifically, the laws of His Majesty King George V. The men who followed Scott to the south pole lived and died by a moral code that ignored the harsh realities of Antarctica when they interfered with the prerogatives and obligations of an English gentleman. In the end, it could be argued that this is what killed them all.