Fallen London is 15

Today is Fallen London’s official 15th birthday, and the date Failbetter was incorporated! Happy birthday to us.

Fallen London: The Roleplaying Game first look

Magpie Games are the very able creators behind Fallen London: The Roleplaying Game, and they’re now at a point where they’re ready to share a first look at the game itself!

They’re running free online sessions for people to try the new system today, Saturday the 11th of January. This is the first time the system will have been seen anywhere, in advance of the Quickstart guide being published and the Kickstarter launching! There are seventy (!) ready and willing game masters, a cadre of pre-prepared characters, and an enticing example Venture all waiting for you.

To find out timings and sign up to play, join the Magpie Games discord. We’re filling slots ad hoc so even if it looks busy, drop in and see if there’s space!

We’re also doing a panel on twitch at 9pm GMT/4pm Eastern with Mark and Brandon from Magpie and yours truly. Hope to see you there!

Celebrating Fallen London on her 15th birthday

I first came across Fallen London when I was working at an art gallery, making games about art for their website. My boss at the time was playing this new online game. She loved it so much, I remember her shouting aloud about some achievement, and slapping her bank card on the table in excitement to support this weird, new thing.

That was in 2009, when Echo Bazaar (as it was then known) was a few thousand words in total. Actions regenerated at a rate of one every seven minutes, and capped at ten. By that December, there were 70,000 words in the game, death had been introduced, and Londoners were enjoying the first Christmas in the Neath.

On the 11th of January 2010, Failbetter was incorporated. With it all being official, that’s the date we consider to be Fallen London’s birthday.

Fallen London now contains over 4.5 million words, which is about five complete Shakespeares. It’s spawned multiple other games and enabled us to pay our bills for a decade and a half; a feat which has eluded many of our contemporaries. I’ve been going through the thousands of responses to the Fallen London player survey this week, which included so many stories of the ways our game has helped people through difficult times; we’re honoured to have a small place in your lives.

This niche game has thrived thanks to the very specific talents of its many contributors; I invite you to take a look at the credits page if you haven’t before.

Thank you to all of them, and to you, delicious friend.

(I’m indebted to the wiki Fallen London timeline for some of the details above. It contains much more historical detail about the game if you’re interested.)

Tea and Treasures

In celebration of the 15th birthday, some of our creator friends from down the years have reissued some very special treats:

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Happy Birthday!!!

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Happy Birthday!
And congrats on getting this far. That is no small feat. Y’all have good reason to be happy and proud.

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Happy days! Here’s to 15 more, eh?

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Neat! Looking back on that timeline, I’ve been here for almost the whole time! I played from 2010 to about 2013 or 2014. I( joined shortly after Mrs Plenty’s Carnival was introduced and stat caps became 80, quit during the pre-sunless-sea content drought), tTen rejoined back when seeking was reintroduced (2016??) on a new account and have been playing since!

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Happy Birthday, FBG and other friends! I can’t believe I’m still playing this game after 15 years, but I have had a lot of enjoyment with it hand hope to have more for years to come.

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Happy birthday FL!
Even though I’ve been playing less than a year I’m happy to be here for this milestone, and I’m really glad that I decided to try it out, it’s probably one of my favorite ways to pass the time now. Fallen London has been so much fun to explore and I can’t wait to see how it’ll continue to grow and change.
Excited for what the future will bring - Penea

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Happy Birthday FL! Judging by the timeline I think I joined in early 2012–the game was no longer called Echo Bazaar by the time I signed up, and didn’t require a twitter but both things were still very much recent memory among the playerbase (it looks like on the forums here in 2015 I claimed I’d been playing for three years so that lines up)

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If you look in the Account section (top right of the playing screen), it lists the date you joined. I got here on February 10th 2016, half way through the Feast of the Exceptional Rose.
Looking at the timeline, I had no idea so many of the features I took for granted were so recent! (And arriving in the middle of the feast was really a particularly unfortunate introduction – it’s still my least favourite after all this time!)

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I am a bit disappointed that such a milestone has kind of passed by with nothing really to commemorate it. Thought there would be a celebratory companion/ storylet or even just a complementary feast item giveaway… :frowning:

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maybe no one remembers down here?
… in all honesty this time of year feels so packed with events (Calendar, Mr. Sacks, Penstock and when all of this is over it’s almost already Feast of the Rose), that a small Birthday-whatever in between might have been rather anticlimactic?

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I was expecting a new game announcement. But all we got was advertising for new merchandise (tabletop game) and old merchandise. I’m a bit worried about the financial prospects of the company, with all those price raises and no projects ready for release.

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I mean… a tabletop game is a new game. That’s why it has ‘game’ in the title.

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I hope it’s a success, but it’s a new sector of the gaming market, and I do wonder whether it addresses a rather smaller group of possible players. (Not a necessarily a smaller number of kickstarter supporters, of course.)

I did address this in the FB questionnaire. I’ve only ever once been in a situation where playing tabletop games has even been an option. How many other players might well be in the same boat? It presumably involves organising / joining / promoting players to take part in games. I’d be happy to join something like that – but how many players live in reasonable proximity?

But maybe my thinking is stuck in the past – and we’re not actually talking about a physical box with people around a table? Is this a notional tabletop-type game played on line? Easier perhaps to organise, but still surely a smaller possible group to draw on.

I have not seen any news about the initial try-out and wasn’t able to look in on the day. But more information would be welcome.

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I’m not a huge TTRPG player, but I’ve played in-person games and online games and they’ve both worked pretty good. You don’t need dedicated software to play online - depending on the rules, you might be able to do it with just a chat programme.

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Going by previous ttrpgs made by Magpie Games, it will be compatible and available on quite a number of virtual platforms, including some free and extremely light ones like roll20 (a website, not a software).

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The preview sessions last weekend were done over Discord.

Lots of people seem to be doing tie-in RPGs. (Of other stuff I follow, I know there’s also a Gloomhaven RPG now, and a Cosmere RPG coming out soon). I don’t know about the economics of these but presumably if everyone’s doing them then they’re recouping costs and doing well?

But it’s I think it fits with how FBG has approached their games - taking the same universe and making different genres of things in there (Fallen London, then Sunless Seas & Skies, then Mask of the Rose, now the RPG).

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As a tabletop fan (mostly over discord and not an actual table lol) I am definitely interested in the game, and it seems like a good fit for the Fallen London world

I also hope that not just will it introduce some current FL players to tabletop, but it will also serve as a good introduction to FL for tabletop gamers

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There’s no need to worry about our financial prospects. Bear in mind that the 10th birthday took the full year to celebrate, and that this year we’ve opted to try and be a little more surprising and devious. :slightly_smiling_face:

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