Exceptional Story for February: A Deadly Custard

Fallen London
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Exceptional Story for February: A Deadly Custard

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“This round, you’ve been tasked with baking a Traitor’s Sponge – a rumoured favourite of the Empress. Your ingredients are arrayed in front of you. The usual: flour, eggs, milk, butter… and a small ornate silver box. Inside is a fine, grey-brown powder. This must be… a traitor?”

Gazebos spring up in the centre of London. The smell of cake winds through the streets. The Lady Pockets, alongside her enigmatic butlers, is holding a baking competition – and you’ve been entered as a participant. Never mind that you didn’t apply. Never mind that your rivals are more suspicious than a mouldy macaron, or that nobody will tell you what you’re competing for. If you want answers, you’ll need to stay in the game – so get set and ready to bake.

  • Writing: Kate Gray

  • Additional Writing, Editing and QA: James Chew and Luke van den Barselaar

  • Art: Paul Arendt

EXCEPTIONAL FRIENDSHIP

All Exceptional Friends receive:

  • A new Exceptional Story every month

  • Memories of a Tale from each story to spend on exclusive companions and items

  • A second candle (up to 40 actions at once)

  • An expanded opportunity deck: ten cards instead of six

  • Three additional outfit slots

  • Access to the House of Chimes, including monthly gameplay perks

Enhanced Exceptional Friends receive all of the above, plus:

  • A past story, or two resets of stories you’ve played from a monthly menu

  • Memories of a Tale from every past story or reset

  • Extra monthly perks in the House of Chimes

  • Three seven-action refreshes per month

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Ha, it actually is a custard! :cupfl:

Context:

Summary

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Alright yeah, that’s definitely an ongoing trend. There’s a lot of ESes recently that feel like they’re 1. kind of giving you a quick summary of FL as it simultaneously showcases the narrative and 2. written in such a way that the character has only one meaningful response but all roads lead to it. I don’t like that. It makes me feel like I have less skin in the game, and in my opinion deprives FL of it’s greatest strength: Creating atmospheric, immersive, character-driven narratives. Contrast that to back when we had Seasons, and the narrative just threw you in the deep end without going “ah yes, these are the Neddy Men, rough-looking sorts who are the minions of Mr. Fires. Now, where did that baker go?” or “You can definitely trust me, me, the character you can trust, oh won’t you just cooperate with me to raise a stat to a certain level so you can unlock the good ending? My ending? Our ending, rather?”.

From a business point of view I can see the intent to make the ESes more accessible to newer players, but I just feel like that deprives them of a lot of the charm that got me into the game in the first place.

Anyway, if I can look past those glaring caveats I can at least say I enjoyed this one more than the last one. It’s no The Waltz that Moved the World, but it’s short, sweet and leaves no bad aftertaste. Like the custard I didn’t make.

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