I’ve seen interest in such a thing pop up occasionally, along with one or two cryptic messages. Which leads me to having to ask the following question.
Taking into account the setting and lore provided by the game, would an official release of a Fallen-London tabletop RPG (something akin to Call of Cthulhu for example) not be something worth looking into/forward to?
There was an attempt at an official licensed tabletop game, called Knife & Candle (if I recall correctly), but it fell through. It might happen again, but I imagine it would take a considerable investment of time and labour to ensure it adequately represents the setting. In the meantime, there are a lot of fan-brewed systems - I played in one for a while myself.
So i’ve heard. However due to the lack of information regarding that game i haven’t been able if it was supposed to be an actual tabletop RPG or something entirely different. That being said, i’d definitely jump at the opportunity to play an official Fallen London Tabletop RPG.
I wonder why the official project got cancelled. I know of some tabletop rpg being crowfounded on kickstarter and working perfectly fine. I can’t see where the problem lies.
There’s quite a lot of things that can go wrong. Everything from a poor representation of the scenery in terms of associated game mechanics to having an overly simple/complicated ruleset can affect the end result.
In the end I believe they never actually released any information regarding the game itself and refused to release its bare-bones as well.
I honestly think some form of crowdfunding would be an excellent way to get money for it and gauge interest to boot (seeing as both factors are related to one another).
[quote=Professor Arkham]I’ve seen interest in such a thing pop up occasionally, along with one or two cryptic messages. Which leads me to having to ask the following question.
Taking into account the setting and lore provided by the game, would an official release of a Fallen-London tabletop RPG (something akin to Call of Cthulhu for example) not be something worth looking into/forward to?[/quote]
Recently I stumbled across this: http://community.failbettergames.com/topic10055-a-fanmade-fallen-london-rpg.aspx
However, I know very little about the FATE system. I was considering perhaps putting one together for Savage Worlds, but CoC seems a brilliant fit - especially with the madness element. Best of luck if anyone here decides to make one.
Wow, just last week I was thinking how I’d like to run a FL Fate game. And here it is, already figured out. Time to get my group back together.
[quote=LovelessSpectre]
Recently I stumbled across this: http://community.failbettergames.com/topic10055-a-fanmade-fallen-london-rpg.aspx
However, I know very little about the FATE system. I was considering perhaps putting one together for Savage Worlds, but CoC seems a brilliant fit - especially with the madness element. Best of luck if anyone here decides to make one.[/quote]
I’ve seen it too. Not really familiar with the system either, and, unfortunately, I haven’t had the time to look too deeply into it.
I feel something along the lines of CoC would serve nicely as a basis for an Official/Unofficial FL game (an official version could easily ditch the entire insanity mechanic and have it work around what we already have in the game, such as nightmares or scandal). CoC also has the advantage of not being too combat-centered, allowing the players to focus a bit more on actual roleplaying.
The official project, Knife & Candle, wasn’t just "let’s release a RPG book with the Echo Bazaar setting." It was a co-production with Vincent Baker and Elizabeth Shoemaker Sampat, who’re something of auteurs as RPG designers go – they make storygames, which are unique, focused games of a very distinctive style, brief artworks with minimal mechanics around the service of a specific theme. Very late into the development of Knife & Candle, VB discovered some critical flaw in it, spent a long time "circling around and around the same dead hole in design", and ended up scrapping the project when he was unable to resolve it.
So Failbetter could start developing another Fallen London RPG, but back when K&C was announced, EB was HUGE in the storygame community, and they had one of the most critically-acclaimed creators in the genre attached. Nowadays things are a bit different.
edited by Wormwood on 2/25/2016
That does explain a lot… A real shame though…
Still, I feel that something along the lines of a FL tabletop game would be wonderful, be it something more along the lines of an RPG with the setting or otherwise. After all, with all the game already has, I’m sure that it would not only be a hit, but also serve to introduce potential new players to the world of FL.
You sent me on a chase! But here is a bit on the project (from 2011!)
Http://story-games.com/forums/discussion/comment/352069/
And a whole lot more importantly:
edited by Parelle on 2/25/2016
[quote=Parelle]You sent me on a chase! But here is a bit on the project (from 2011!)
Http://story-games.com/forums/discussion/comment/352069/
And a whole lot more importantly:
[/quote]
I did some research on the Knife and Candle game before making this thread (I like to do at least some of my homework before starting a discussion) and found the apocalypse world forum section. I did, however, manage to miss the story-games thread completely. You have my thanks for posting it here.
Oh, ok, thank you for the information ! Now I’m taking a look at VB and ESS creations.
edited by Emain Ablach on 2/25/2016
I ended up running a Fallen London game based on GUMSHOE, which has the lovely property of being largely quality-driven like StoryNexus, and being well-suited to story-driven mysteries. The big problems we ran into (other than choosing to make the player characters outsiders, which meant that players were never quite sure whether the weirdness around them was an important clue or just life in the Neath) was that GUMSHOE’s combat system is not particularly good and the health system needed some work. Still, promising.
Our group doesn’t particularly care for FATE, so we’re unlikely to use the Fallen London adaptation.
edited by merusdraconis on 2/26/2016
Four stats, different menaces, and while I doubt the game would work through collecting as many resources as in the real game it would be relatively easy to expand what the Bazaar sells and then simply allow people to convert resources gathered into echoes and then into items.
Opposed dice rolls could function as stat checks between encounters, but that might be too simple. For instance rolling a d100 and then adding in your stat for D/S/P/W challenges or a d10 for your B/D/R challenges. Of course the problem is when you have multiple people, how many successes are needed to win an encounter? To accomplish a task? In a duel to the death, does everyone die at 8 wounds? But only humans are that durable, what about other creatures with a great/lesser resistance to the call of the Boatman? Would a spider council need 10 wounds? A snuffer need only 4?
It would require work but its certainly doable. Combat would probably end up as just another challenge.
The cool thing about call of cthulhu is that most checks make use of d100 and are based on a players % of mastery of a specific skill. Something tells me that with some work it could be tuned to serve the roleplaying section of the game.
Combat however would indeed be a challenge…
I’d totally buy the player’s guide just to read, not even to play. Count me as a “yes”.
After seeing a similar question about this on tumblr I ended up toying with a mockup using White Wolf’s Storyteller system, using a variation on New World of Darkness 2nd Ed/GMC. While resources like in the game are unaddressed at the moment, and there’s still a few things I’m unsure of how to deal with even before playtesting, it looks like it could work well. The character sheet would be only vaguely familiar to NWoD players though, being twisted so severely away from the stats it normally would hold; even still the barebones of the ST system seems a good enough fit for me and is generally focused on just that: storytelling.