Playing with an off the wall concept - a Regency setting for Pathfinder.

Not sure yet if I want to aim at an historical setting or an analog setting, possibly tied to my earlier Elf & Orc War setting.

What do folks consider the primary characteristics of the English Regency?

So far:
Really silly fashions. (Thought silly, even at the time. Beau Brummel actually simplified things.)
Barking Mad King. The Madness of George III....
An unpopular Prince Regent - spending vast amounts of money in the most decadent ways he could find....
The Peninsular Campaign (I am aiming at 1810 - the War of 1812 has not yet begun, but Napoleon is on the march through Spain.)
Smuggling - Five and twenty ponies, trotting through the dark.... Not yet sure if I want them as villains or scoundrels.
Extreme divide between poor and privileged. (The same kind of thing that will lead to the French Revolution, across the Channel.)
Highwaymen - yes, England still has highwaymen in 1810....
Assassination of the Prime Minister - I really need to look this up - I remember that it happened, not certain of even the year.
Dueling - illegal, if I recall properly, but still fairly common.

Theaters of espionage include the Americas, France, and Russia.

Inspiration:
Sharpe's Rifles
Horatio Hornblower
Blackadder III
Sorcery & Cecelia: or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot
A Matter of Magic

And this whole train of thought began when I started reading the Captain Lacey series of mysteries by Ashley Gardner. (It started with a )

The Auld Grump

You've got a great list already.

Some things to add:
- The Industrial revolution (which was transforming swathes of the countryside with factories, beam engines, canals and eventually railway)
- Regional dialects and accents
- Explorers and the exotic animals, exotic people (often confused with animals), foods and goods they brought back
- Pirates and Privateers (and those that did both)
- The Dutch East Indies and the spice trade
- Chinese embassies, traders and early opium dens
- Continental spies from all nations (e.g. the Italians)
- The pox
- Chemical poisoning (both deliberate and from the cosmetics used to cover the pox marks)

The Bow Street Runners.
Chocolate houses. (Cocoa was big business.)

Le Comte de Saint Germain was already deceased by 1810... otherwise....

I keep thinking that Robert Louis Stevenson was earlier than he was - he wasn't even born until 1850, then died in 1894.

Though she died in 1797 Mary Wollstonecraft's following is still gathering steam. Feminism has begun both in England and in the New World. (Benjamin Franklin was very outspoken in regards to women's rights - and was very much of the sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.) Sadly, her posthumously published papers were too controversial for the time, and destroyed her reputation - though her husband was very much in her corner.

Her daughter is perhaps more famous - the writer Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein. (1818, a little too late.)

Ah, well... still time to think upon it.

The Auld Grump

Grump, your mention of smuggling immediately made me think of Dr. Syn alias "The Scarecrow."
[Dang it, now I have to dig that out of my collection and watch it. BTW, 2 or 3 versions were filmed - only one by Disney!]

A few more:
- The Peterloo Massacre: British cavalry charge a 60000+ gathering in Manchester resutlign in 11 civilians dead approx 500 wounded. The British parliament back the military action, try and jail the organisers for sedition, and prosecute journalists and editors of the Manchester Observer for sedition. The public reaction among the already dissatisfied working class fires a number of abortive uprisings and plots against parliament. Parliament responds by cracking down on working class meetings, publications and leaders.
- Beethoven
- Tambora Eruption and the subsequent catastrophic winter/missing summer of 1815/16
- Shaka Zulu
- Redrawing/recolouring the political map of the Americas (the USA even went to war with North Africa!)
- The Great Game (the British and Russian Empires vie for control of central Asia)

Grump, my first reaction when you mentioned basing a game in Regency England was "Jane Austen country - how exciting can that be? Wasn't all the conflict offshore at that time?" But put the volatile domestic environment of the Peterloo Massacre into the time frame and it becomes a wonderful setting for a game - I get it now.

p.s. your comment about Frankenstein being a bit late also cuts out the Peterloo Massacre - although the environment in which it occurred was there right through that period.

Are you planning to keep it historically accurate?

Or are you thinking of letting the characters influence the course of history? If so, does that allow you the freedom to shift the timing of some things for dramatic effect?

I am totally down for a Regency game, but no players that I can game it out with...

Still waffling on how historic to make the setting - though I am leaning toward using the actual Regency instead of an analog.

And then I ran into mention of - Archaeologist, engineer, barber, circus strongman.... A man that died too damned young.

Almack's
White's
Boodle's.

In regards to the Peterloo Massacre (St. Peter's Field + Waterloo = Peterloo) - people do not realize how close England came to having a second, secular, Civil War. There were a large number of disaffected ex-military, a vast number of people that had their wages cut because of decreased demand for product, rising prices, and a government crackdown.

It was one of the inspirations for Terry Pratchett's Night Watch.

An ugly, ugly event... and one of the reasons that I decided on 1810 - I want to have it, eventually, but a lot of groundwork needs to be built.

People also do not realize just how many riots that London has seen - including one in 1809 that lasted three month, over the price of theater tickets. (Not what I was looking for when I found it.... But the Covent Garden theater went from being affordable by all to something only for the ton.)

Heck - the ton themselves.... A term not used much anymore.
Whigs.
Tories.

And, of course - The Matter of Ireland.... (There is always The matter of Ireland....)

The Auld Grump