Champions, In Nomine, Mutants & Masterminds, etc. Would this be something Failbetter Games could approach the creators about to have Fallen London added as a supported world?
After rediscovering fallen london for the 3rd time… Partly because of the hype I had heard about the sunless sea, and I needed a good browser game to take up my downtime at work.
But anyway, I have been trying to get my friends to try out a pen and paper RPG for years. The only one that interests them is Star Wars, partly because, well, Star Wars, and I’ve played it before, years and years ago with my brother.
My problem is, I am the only person I know that could possibly DM a game. And as I know next to nothing, it would be a ton of time checking rules and the fun would drop.
If I can take the wiki available info from EB/FL with my knowledge of how the game works, and have a simple "table top" RPG system. I think I can get a trial run going with at least 3 players+DM.
My problem is coming up with story, fallen london MORE than makes up for that. I just need a simplish table game system to build off of, and I think I can do this.
Any and all commentary is welcome, and you can friend me or whatever it is in this game. edited by Donny Brown on 9/10/2014
I created an account for this forum because of this thread.
I would simply like to make one-hundred percent clear that, I. Want. This.
Please? what dark rites must be performed to render this idea into a thing I can touch? Stroke. Love.
I lean at first blush towards a gorgeous little source book for FATE core, the stress tracks mechanic would translate wonderfully.
Regardless a tome like this given form would easily take a place beside my other favorite settings like call of cthululu, Numenera, or good old Planescape. It would be filled with the most inspirational lies, rumors and half truths, Because the answer to the concern that a PnP book would destroy the awesome mysteries of Fallen London Is also the best thing about the setting. The actual truth of the mysteries should be of less import then what people think the truth is. As a GM the vital things are why people think, believe and act the way they do. So just let us know what people belive, give us a few reasons they are wrong and let the GM’s put the rest together.
Point is, my rambling aside is that an rpg setting book is wanted
I’ve been considering running a campaign for my group with Fallen London as the setting. FATE seems a particularly delicious choice. With Aspects already baked in (The Traitor Empress, The Once-Dashing Smuggler, His Amused Lordship, et al) it just seems like such a natural fit to me. An official FL RPG would be even better, though, and something I would gladly support.
I was just thinking that you could probably rough out a Savage Worlds hack for Fallen London fairly easily, with Shadowy/Dangerous/Watchful/Persuasive taking the place of the regular stats.
A bit off topic, but that Storium thingamajig that Entropyrat linked looks REALLLLY interesting and if anyone would be interested in getting a group together for that, we should talk.
I’d buy (and translate for my own use, since me and my players are french). :)
Fallen London (and Night Circus) has influenced some of my own games in a very good way, I keep talking about your neathy world to my friends. So a tabletop game about Fallen London… _ my dream…
For what it’s worth, I’m an indie tabletop RPG designer. I have two published games. I reached out to the powers that be on this topic and was told that there are no plans to ever do a tabletop game. Which makes sense - they got burned before and licensing out an IP can be problematic. On the other hand, there’s VERY little profit in tabletop RPGs, so it also makes sense that they’d rather focus on online/video gaming from their end.
That’s sad. I can’t blame them, they must live and as you say Toran tabletop RPGs aren’t really profitable. But the neathyverse is very interesting and my creative/imaginative part really wanted it to be playable on table. n_n
I second the suggestion above to try out Storium as a possible platform, actually. They are still in development but due for a public launch later this year with a much expanded functionality
I’ve been working on a tabletop rpg engine that could potentially run Fallen London. The players are lucid dreamers, and can visit the global-unconscious version of fictional universes, as well as player created ones. The big advantage/disadvantage (depending on how you look at it) is that the things that no one knows literally do not exist in the dream, and have to be filled in by the actions of the players or the antagonists.
Nothing playable yet, unfortunately, mostly because I’m trying to avoid the “all tabletops are about combat” trope. I’ll post again when I get it in presentable shape.
When you say “things that no one knows do not exist and have to be filled in by the players”, is it some kind of narrative way of playing, where the players create parts of the world while playing ? (like : i want to go east, the DM didn’t prepare anything for east and ask me “what is east, dear player ?”)
Well, that’s the part I’m ironing out, but basically yes.
It’s not just “make up what you want” though. It’s the central conflict minigame (like how in many tabletop games, the central minigame is combat.)
The exact mechanics are still up in the air, but I’m hoping to get them play-testable over the weekend and try them out with my local gaming group.
I thought I’d bump this thread to discuss the Fallen London adventure I ran this weekend with my friends. I used a modified version of Trail of Cthulhu, which is a Gumshoe-derived game. Gumshoe and its derivatives have an interesting setup, where characters have a suite of things they know about - it works more like an ‘unlock’ system than a series of stats on which you roll. Very useful for storytelling games, because players know the difference between something they haven’t figured out and something that’ll never be fruitful.
I chose to make the players agents of the Surface, and decided I wasn’t going to be too faithful to the setting, so I could, say, make finding Wilmot’s End a more complex scene rather than it just being tucked in the corner of Tyrant’s Gardens.
I made a couple of other adjustments - I made Connection abilities for the various factions, which let me absorb a few default abilities (like Cop Talk) but because players didn’t know the factions well, it mostly got confusing. Notability and Unaccountably Peckish are standing in for Sanity, as a stat that slowly erodes until your character is lost (liquidated for love stories/Seeking).
Honestly I think a setting book would be fantastic - I’m having trouble fitting all the stories I want to do, and I got a bizarre and entertaining four hour adventure out of a relatively sedate zee voyage, the Great Game and a surprise appearance by Jack-of-Smiles. I’m basing the overarching thread on In Search of a Stiff Drink, with appearances from the Comtessa, the Battle for Wolfstack Docks and Jasper and Frank. edited by merusdraconis on 9/21/2015