Yeah, that Vincent. From what I can tell, he was more looking to Apocalypse World, turning it to a sort of exploration game.
Currently, I’m musing on how to warp the GUMSHOE system (which just went open-license) to the game, since it’s a system premised around uncovering secrets and putting them together to reveal the greater truth beneath the surface.
Oh, yes. A role-playing game would be exceptonally delicious (and would serve to tempt my role-playing friends who are keen on reading, but are complete and total luddites when it comes to computer games of any kind).
It’s disappointing that the game fell through, as Vincent Baker’s a designer whose works I am rather fond of, so when I saw his name in the FAQ I was excited.
Topic of that, does anyone happen to have a copy of what was made of Knife and Candle, by any chance? I tried the link above but while the front page is up inputting my email and such gets a 404. Between that and the project no longer being on the one.seven front page, I have to assume it isn’t available there anymore.[li]
Edit: That said, before I found out there was a project already in the works (and thus also before I found out that the project’s progress ceased) I was musing on the idea of an FL RPG, and was leaning towards AW’s system myself. Was thinking of starting with replacing AW’s attribute’s with FL’s (though only four stats seemed a bit questionable and was another topic I was musing on; last idea was either a +2 +1 +0 -1 spread or a +1 +1 0 -1 one rather than trying to fabricate a fifth stat) and was wondering what to use instead of AW’s highly-lethal Harm Clock, given how hard it is to actually die in the Neath. The AW system seems pretty good for a game like this, to me.
edited by Roland Jones on 1/8/2014
[quote=Roland Jones]It’s disappointing that the game fell through, as Vincent Baker’s a designer whose works I am rather fond of, so when I saw his name in the FAQ I was excited.
Topic of that, does anyone happen to have a copy of what was made of Knife and Candle, by any chance? I tried the link above but while the front page is up inputting my email and such gets a 404. Between that and the project no longer being on the one.seven front page, I have to assume it isn’t available there anymore.[li][/quote][/li][li]Second link in my post. :) Here was a brainstorming forum that shows you some of what it might’ve looked like. Very, very scattered. A lot of this actually predates the licensing, I believe? When they were punting around the idea just for fun.
[quote]Edit: That said, before I found out there was a project already in the works (and thus also before I found out that the project’s progress ceased) I was musing on the idea of an FL RPG, and was leaning towards AW’s system myself. Was thinking of starting with replacing AW’s attribute’s with FL’s (though only four stats seemed a bit questionable and was another topic I was musing on; last idea was either a +2 +1 +0 -1 spread or a +1 +1 0 -1 one rather than trying to fabricate a fifth stat) and was wondering what to use instead of AW’s highly-lethal Harm Clock, given how hard it is to actually die in the Neath. The AW system seems pretty good for a game like this, to me.
edited by Roland Jones on 1/8/2014[/quote]
Well, Fallen London has its own form of Harm, really…you could say it’s a menacing form of Harm, a nightmarish, suspiciously scandalous and wounding sort of harm. ;)[/li][li][/li][li]
edited by Playersideblog on 1/9/2014
I love the idea, but I wonder how one would balance giving enough information about the world with not giving too many spoilers. I would not like to be spoiled to much by the source book, and it would be even worse for friends that I try to attract to the game with the RPG, and who also want to master.
So, one thought I had would be to write a very powerful framework about how to build your own lore. Fallen London is about giving you hints of things at lower levels, and then tying them together (while giving more hints) as you rise through the game. If you could do that with a game, that would empower the GM to build their own cohesive lore, so that even seasoned players would be surprised by how it turned out.
(GUMSHOE-based roleplaying games like Trail of Cthulhu or Night’s Black Agents use this a bit, that’s one of the reasons I think it would make a great fit.)
[quote=Playersideblog][quote=Roland Jones]It’s disappointing that the game fell through, as Vincent Baker’s a designer whose works I am rather fond of, so when I saw his name in the FAQ I was excited.
Topic of that, does anyone happen to have a copy of what was made of Knife and Candle, by any chance? I tried the link above but while the front page is up inputting my email and such gets a 404. Between that and the project no longer being on the one.seven front page, I have to assume it isn’t available there anymore.[li][/quote][/li][li]Second link in my post. :) Here was a brainstorming forum that shows you some of what it might’ve looked like. Very, very scattered. A lot of this actually predates the licensing, I believe? When they were punting around the idea just for fun.
[quote]Edit: That said, before I found out there was a project already in the works (and thus also before I found out that the project’s progress ceased) I was musing on the idea of an FL RPG, and was leaning towards AW’s system myself. Was thinking of starting with replacing AW’s attribute’s with FL’s (though only four stats seemed a bit questionable and was another topic I was musing on; last idea was either a +2 +1 +0 -1 spread or a +1 +1 0 -1 one rather than trying to fabricate a fifth stat) and was wondering what to use instead of AW’s highly-lethal Harm Clock, given how hard it is to actually die in the Neath. The AW system seems pretty good for a game like this, to me.
edited by Roland Jones on 1/8/2014[/quote]
Well, Fallen London has its own form of Harm, really…you could say it’s a menacing form of Harm, a nightmarish, suspiciously scandalous and wounding sort of harm. ;)[/li][li][/li][li]
edited by Playersideblog on 1/9/2014[/quote]
Missed the link; the colors for links on this forum are too close to the regular text. And yes, I am aware of what Menaces are; the issue is how to represent them well in an RPG, mechanics-wise. As I said, the Harm Clock is far too permanently lethal for Fallen London, and doesn’t fit the mood besides. And it’s only a concern for Wounds; the other Menaces can be abstracted more in a medium that isn’t complete digital. Theoretically, at least; some games do in fact use non-damage threat tracks of varying sorts rather well. The main issue is how to handle it in a way that isn’t just putting more numbers on a sheet, since making a game like this more fiddly and mechanically-complex is not ideal.[/li][li]
edited by Roland Jones on 1/9/2014
One way to do menaces as Harm is to have a Harm Clock for each, and different ‘times’ add new GM moves. So when your Nightmares reach 9’o’clock, the GM can deceive the player about what their character is seeing and hearing. At 12, the GM can send the character to the Royal Beth.
Apocalypse World ‘love letters’ would be a good way to handle menace states without taking up table time.
That’s actually a really interesting idea. Definitely better than making them binary okay-"dead" tracks. Still think a clock isn’t the best motif for Fallen London (it’s meant to evoke the Doomsday Clock in Apocalypse World, which, while appropriate there, isn’t as fitting in Victorian London), but, yeah. I like it.[li]
edited by Roland Jones on 1/9/2014
[quote=Roland Jones]That’s actually a really interesting idea. Definitely better than making them binary okay-"dead" tracks. Still think a clock isn’t the best motif for Fallen London (it’s meant to evoke the Doomsday Clock in Apocalypse World, which, while appropriate there, isn’t as fitting in Victorian London), but, yeah. I like it.[li]
edited by Roland Jones on 1/9/2014[/quote]
Obviously in Fallen London World they’d be harm candles. :)[/li][li]
Well, you could still keep the Harm track as-is…you just change what happens when it tops out. Instead of dying, you take a little trip. ;-)
I signed up for a forum account specifically to come looking for a thread like this.
Yes, I would be absolutely thrilled to purchase a pen and paper RPG of this setting.
What about using a Cortex / Smallvile system hack?
We can substitute the stresses with (Injured, Scandalous, Suspicious, Nightmare-ridden) they are both gradual and impermanent, as the one in fallen london.
I think Unknown Armies could also be an interesting choise, what with the Madness Meters and Obsession Skills. Plus the Archetype system, that could be modded into all sorts of Neathy goodness.
More or less ripping off Lacuna in how things could work, but, for the basis of a Fallen London storyteller…
You have four categories, ranked from 1-5. You have a set amount of dots, divisible by 4 to allocate among your highway stats. Enough to put 2-3 dots into each stat, or split unevenly. You roll dice equal to that stat, and add your total roll to what we could call Dramatic Tension. Rolls of 1-3 are failures. 4-6 is a success, and a 6 can add a "rare success" to your collection. Rare successes can be spent in various ways, either allowing a re-roll, activation of skills, or be banked to improve your abilities between sessions or storylets. When dramatic tension hits a certain point, you can roll as many dice as you want. Outside of that window, you’re stuck with what you’ve got for stats. When things are really risky, such as when injury, humiliation, or worse are on the line, your rolls are Risky. Risky stat-rolls will penalize your stat for the duration of the story on failure, possibly worse depending on how bad a situation was. Apart from that, there are special things you earn with rare successes, be they special skills (professions, maybe?) that can let you do all kinds of neat things. "Master Thief" lets you get to places you couldn’t. "A Fearsome Duelist" lets you spend rare successes in place of successful rolls in combat. Just as a few examples. Thoughts?
Actually it is quite possible to play Fallen London-like on slightly homeruled Fate mechanics with addition of about stack or two of cards (we used homebrew ‘Tarot’ for that); the main threshold is that if a player came, say, from DnD, and you as DM don’t want to run the intricate Fallen London to ground by presenting it in the same way as usual setting is usually presented (i.e. monster stats, a lot of solid information etc, route to adventure) it will be quite hard to make it work. Not mechanic-wise, but player-wise.
I would love to see a setting book/world book that either had the mechanics separated or didn’t specifically tie into any one system. Most people who want the setting will be adapting it to their own groups/system anyway; I’d rather see the bulk of the text aimed at the setting, with a smaller portion aimed at mechanics or suggestions in how to use it with various systems.
The mechanics of any pen and paper RPG are actually pretty important, they can prove a hindrance to the story, or they can really enhance the feeling of the world. Take the 7th Sea system for example, which is one of my favourite systems. The mechanics really succeed at making the game feel like the high seas, high drama, swashbuckling experience that it’s meant to be. Or alternately something like RuneQuest, where I (personally) found the mechanics to be clunky, and got in the way of the experience rather than adding to it.
Original Deadlands (not Savage Worlds or d20) very much fit this bill for me.
I’ve been looking for a way to add the setting of Fallen London to Fate-Core, a pay-what-you-want RPG ruleset that’s really easy to play with (http://www.evilhat.com/home/fate-core/). I think it’s possible and the rules would work fairly well with the setting as well.
edited by Bunisher on 7/8/2014