[color=#0066ff]Hey gang! Paul has just announced that Sunless Skies will be released on 31st January 2019. To celebrate and keep you going until release, we’ve partnered with Grant Howitt and Chris Taylor to create a pen and paper RPG system for Sunless Skies, which you can download exclusively from tabletopgaming.co.uk.[/color]
It’s about time. I would have preferred this be made for an established system like FATE instead of a unique one, but I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
This sounds like a good idea.
I wish there was a wider FL one . . .
I’m very happy. The system is simple and easy to understand. It focuses on the narrative aspect of this kind of game, which I appreciate.
I hope one day we’ll see a complete Fallen London tabletop game sold in stores, and by complete I mean with lore, places, descriptions and such. :p
Thank you for Skyfarer ! :'D
This is good. Powered by the apocalypse world systems are very easy to customize and are ones I have a lot of familiarity with. I’m planning to run a game today with one group of friends and another game next week with a different set of friends. We’ll be making minor tweaks to Skyfarer to focus on the Sunless Sea setting since its a lot more familiar to us.Our adventure tag line is going to be "A group of neathy postal workers based out of Nuncio who deliver the mail, no matter what!". I figure that by making it a large organization like the mail service, we can shift players in and out between sessions easily depending on player availability without affecting the overall narrative (like an adventurers guild).
I’m also going to be modding it with elements from other games. For example, instead of auto-dying on a failed In Danger, I’m thinking of sending the players into a "darkest self" mode to try and replicate the Fallen London menace states a bit. I’m going to play around with temporary conditions and maybe tie them to a degrees of success and failure system likely based on shifts increments of 2 (ex. critical failure, minor failure, major success, etc). FATE elements like making one integrity relationship based would be good to throw in too so that each character has a bond and a reason they are all on-board this voyage. Integrities feel a lot like fate abilities tbh.
Largely, we will be winging it and play testing these various ideas over the next few games as one-shots. I think I’d like to maybe write an adventure module for the system to share if it turns out to be a good time. Like, maybe a random encounters table, a "shuffling map" roll table, and maybe a few NPCs and motives. We’ll see how it goes. But I’m glad this supplement laid out the ground work for getting these games started in the first place. I might use some of the adventure module elements Chris published on his twitter: http://www.failbettergames.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Skyfarer_SkyStories_Supplement.pdf
Lastly, for a bit of fun I wrote a re-skin of Honey Heist but set in Sunless Sea, you can check it out here if interested :-)
http://britetimes.tumblr.com/post/178356693934/postal-rat-heist-rpg
I’ll do the same. I understand why the setting takes place in SSkies, but I’m not familiar enough with this universe to run a game in the Heavens.
It’s funny, I’ve had the very same idea, for the same reasons. :)
Since you’ll run some playtests, I’d like to know how the random aspect of the game feels. A maximum bonus of +3 on a D10 dice throw seems too random to me, so I’m curious to read what others think about it.
Very nice idea. And thanks for pointing out the mini-supplement from Chris, I hadn’t seen it. It’s useful ! :)
edited by Emain Ablach on 9/23/2018
I just finished my game session, and it was a lot of fun. I did a lot of homebrew stuff, but the core idea of the game was still there and we used the character sheets and such. I wrote some session notes down telling the story of our crew’s first adventure if anyone is interested in reading about how it went: http://britetimes.tumblr.com/post/178394562249/skyfarer-dicey-adventures-session-1
Edit: as for the +3 max, I basically ignored that and implemented a degree of success chart and an auto-conditions award system (for advantages and disadvantages). As can be seen in my linked story :-)
[spoiler]Target
-5 to -6+: Critical failure - the captain describes how your action backfires spectacularly. Gain a peril and then either gain a disadvantageous condition or lose an advantageous condition.
-3 to -4: Normal Failure - the action fails. Gain a peril. Conditions do not change.
- 1 to -2: Minor failure - the action fails, but you almost succeed. Gain a peril and then either advantageous condition or remove a disadvantageous condition
0: A tie. the action neither succeeds or fails. The player may alter or create one condition affecting themself.
+1 to +2: Minor success - the action succeeds, but you almost failed. Gain a disadvantageous condition or remove an advantageous condition.
+3 to +4: Normal success - the action succeeds. conditions do not change.
+5 to +6+: Critical success - the player describes how their action succeeds spectacularly. Gain an advantageous condition[/spoiler]
edited by NiteBrite on 9/24/2018
Ok, my players really really reaaally like the Integrities, and I have to say I do as well. It’s quite subtle, in fact, because of how simple and powerful it is in game.
Before, I was using a “Hope/Fear/Source of pride/Regret” system, but the Integrities as depicted (I love/hate, I will always/never) work better and my players seem to find and use them easily.
I’m going to try running a scenario with pre-generated characters at Student Nationals this year.
If there’s enough interest I might write up the notes for it and see if I can get it online. Is there a good place to share stuff like this?
great rpg. i’ll use it with a new group and they are eager to conquer the sky.
BTW: for Fallen London i am working on a more Cthulhu like RPG because that system works very well with the FL Background.
Has anyone made and good scenarios for this. Thinking of doing one with some mates but they have never done one before and was wondering if anyone had written a good pre made scenario so it would be easier to GM, Thanks.
I wanna play Skyfarer games, any available?
Don’t suppose anyone feels like running a play-by-post game in this setting?