The Fallen London community is Bizarre.

Now lemme preface this, of course, with my saying that Bizarre is in no way a bad thing. I mean, for one, it lets you get notability easier, which is always a plus.

But It is most definitely unusual.

I have been here for…well, somewhere around…well I started playing in late April at some point if I recall, so it’s just a tad shy of four months.

And since then I have lurked and occasionally participated in various community engagements, on and off.

And I have witnessed…well, some peculiar things. Most notably the way the community kind of…revolves?

I would be willing to wager Fallen London’s community is one of the most stable I have ever encountered. Many, if not the majority of the people I see here have been playing this game, and participating in this community for what may as well be eons. They’ve carved out a nook in this, and many other community based websites and they’re bunkered down for the long haul.

Because of this, there also seems to be a lot of…recgonition. Many of you have accomplished your own desired feats, shared content and have participated various forms of hijinks, and many of the other people, who similarly have been here long enough to witness it, remember the fact. There is an enormous amount of familiarity, and in some cases, a players actions will be so extensive, that they will reach near celebrity status. (The big players in the Eaten content sit quite happily in this basket) And not only will many players recognize them, but it will be expected that if their name is mentioned, others will recognize it in turn. The mods, admins and even game developers also seem to join in, with similar levels of familiarity, to the point where traditions developed to send rats en mass to Alexis for the explicit purpose of &quotslightly bothering him&quot.

Now, this is occasionally seen in other, but what strikes me as astounding, is that despite the fact that it has a very sedentary userbase based on large amounts of familiarity and common understanding; it strikes me as lacking the cliquey nature that leads to communities feeling closed off and unapproachable.

When I originally entered into the forums, I noticed very little of what I am now describing, the majority of posts seem to be on point and functional. It’s only when you dig into one of those threads, that you can excavate the raw untamed intimacy of a community that has had years of bonding time shared throughout tiny fleeting moments of friendly connection spread through thousands of posts in hundreds of threads.

…Or I might be imagining the whole thing and am just overthinking what is actually just basic friendly communication.

Side note: DAMN WHAT AN APPROPRIATE TIME FOR A 100th POST!!
edited by Neonir on 8/3/2016

I feel exactly the same: this is one of the more unusual communities on the web, but unusual only in good ways ;)

I like seeing these kind of posts. It’s true FL community is quite weird. People help each other, they are polite and friendly, very creative, and the admins/devs are present and easy to reach.

I’m happy to be part of it, and always have a little smile when I see a player talking about it like you do. We’re lucky. :’)

I have to admit, it was one of the most welcoming communities I’ve participated in. Which isn’t many admittedly, I usually just lurk.

I agree. The community here is far more welcoming and full of such warmth than most I tend to visit or even lurk.

Also happy 100th post! What a nice reflection to have for the 100th.

Fallen London is kind of a bizarre game to start with. Text based and narrative driven, it’s fueled by curiosity and rewards patience. Themes of passion and love are woven throughout the game and it’s nice to see those themes reflected in the community that’s grown around it.

Well, by it’s very nature Fallen London does a few things that are fairly unusual in gaming:

[ul][li]Players advance by progressing a written story, so the game is more literate than purely click-happy.[/li]
[li]While players can achieve a wide range of personal goals, this isn’t a game that’s &quotwon&quot or &quotlost&quot so much as a journey that’s enjoyed.[/li]
[li]While the gameplay is not generally challenging, certain mechanics aren’t obvious and finding some things can be challenging. This gives players who explore obsessively or love unraveling mechanics an opportunity to contribute to the community, since not everything is laid out cut and dried.[/li]
[li]Gameplay is mostly non-competitive, ergo there’s little incentive to hoard resources or knowledge, or develop animosities with other players. No one player’s style of gameplay can inhibit any other player’s progress or choice of gameplay (unless they voluntarily opt into it via social actions, K&C, etc.)[/li]
[li]There’s no way to really &quotrush&quot through the game (though there are more optimal approaches to certain goals), and the volume of content and limited pace of gameplay encourage players to stick around for at least a year (or more likely 2-3) to play through the content.[/li][/ul]

So with a game that’s more attractive to the literate and curious than people looking for something to &quotwin&quot at, and where there’s no particular incentive towards knowledge-hoarding or ruleset-lobbying, where griefing opportunities don’t really exist, most of the things that encourage communities to turn toxic just don’t exist.

I honestly think a large part of it is also because of the way the nature of the game pans out the further in you get.

When you first start, it’s actually remarkably fast paced. It’s fairly involved and you go from one wild activity to the next with little regard for what’s going on.

But as you go on, and get more invested in the game, hoo boy does it slow down. It becomes a fairly passive and casual grind, interlaced with occasional bonus stories and little tangents as people work on whatever goal they have at the time.

As a result, a lot of these people, as they do their casual grinds, look to the forums to find other people who are having more complex issues in the game, or maybe just share their grinding experiences/achievements. This leads to a userbase of a lot of long term players with huge long term goals exploring the forums looking for whatever, wherever. These are people with a wealth of knowledge, a large amount of time spent on the forums and a desire to experience more fallen london stories while they make their way through the less interesting parts of their own stories.

Thus: Helpful, genuinely interested, long term and consistant users prowling around on the forums on a regular basis.

There is also the fact that there is a specific kind of people that this game attracts. This is sort of content that either grabs your attention in the first five days, and never lets go, or you lose your interest very soon. Patience, litteracy, love for the period and mythology, exploration, theories of conspiracy and everything that is not mundane in general…those are some of the traits that most of the community posess, no matter where we come from.

I very much agree that the FL community is very special, and I very much enjoy being here. While I admittedly do not contribute much to the forums as I feel a bit hindered by my less-than-perfect grasp of the English language, I love reading what you all are writing. Even though I have only been playing since June last year, I have had great fun learning all about former times in Fallen London too, be it by reading old forum entries or blogs by shining personalities such as NiteBrite and Spacemarine9.

So, with the risk of sounding quite a bit soppy: I am truly happy to have found, and descended to, Fallen London. Erm. And now back to stabbing, lying and carousing with devils.

I’d like to add to that that an immense amount of people here share similar interests. I can’t name many specifics, but I was delighted to find out a shared knowledge and love for and of several games, artists, and pieces of literature, communities, etcetera. I’m nearly always a lurker, but I really got drawn in by the community.

I only recently joined, and after a mere week, I can honestly say that this is the best community I’ve ever seen. I very much hope it stays this way!

I’ve been here for about a year now, and I agree, it is truly very Bizarre. Just earlier this week, I was honored to have the privilege of being beaten in a sparring bout by the famous NiteBrite after I made a few inadvisable boasts on tumblr. Needless to say, my character learned a little something about humility.

We’re not just bizarre - we’re -Echo- Bizarre!

Okay, but seriously, you guys are great. Keep on being you.

The FL community remembers me of many little RP communities I was in - usually play-by-post games, inhabited by 30-40 players at maximum, all very close and friendly. The fact that a fandom as big as FL can have the same atmosphere of those little games truly is amazing.
I think it’s just that this type of literary games attract a very definite kind of people - the kind of people that just want to sit, read books and be nice with each other. Hell, we even took a personality test and almost everyone got the same result.

So yeah, basically thanks everyone for existing and being lovely.

Don’t give all the credit to the game alone. We do get our share of bad eggs every now and then if you can believe it. The community is made great by its stewards as well. Shout out to the folks who work hard out there every day to make our community great like Fred and Sara, the forums mods. Hannah and Haley, the social media crew. Me and Spacemarine9, the IRC crew. Cammy and Theresa, the discord crew. And don’t forget that this is all made possible by participating community members like you :-)
edited by NiteBrite on 8/4/2016

[quote=Neonir]I honestly think a large part of it is also because of the way the nature of the game pans out the further in you get.

When you first start, it’s actually remarkably fast paced. It’s fairly involved and you go from one wild activity to the next with little regard for what’s going on.

But as you go on, and get more invested in the game, hoo boy does it slow down. It becomes a fairly passive and casual grind, interlaced with occasional bonus stories and little tangents as people work on whatever goal they have at the time.

As a result, a lot of these people, as they do their casual grinds, look to the forums to find other people who are having more complex issues in the game, or maybe just share their grinding experiences/achievements. This leads to a userbase of a lot of long term players with huge long term goals exploring the forums looking for whatever, wherever. These are people with a wealth of knowledge, a large amount of time spent on the forums and a desire to experience more fallen london stories while they make their way through the less interesting parts of their own stories.

Thus: Helpful, genuinely interested, long term and consistant users prowling around on the forums on a regular basis.[/quote]
This is a really great insight.

I read/watched (I can’t remember now) an apologia for RPG-like leveling trees a while back. It’s premise was that giving players a system to explore/plan through gives them something to think about when not playing. For games with &quotenergy systems&quot this would be doubly useful.

Forums (such as this one) and blogs could provide a similar benefit. The biggest limit for them would be their integration with the main game.

I shall admit, without hesitation that I tend to be the quiet one.

If I posted, most places I’d just be asking blunt, to the point, mechanical questions.

This is one of those excellent places that has drawn me to speculation and deep thought, and for that I will always be thankful.

… before that, for me, it was glitch.

Funny you should have posted this because I was thinking along the same lines just this morning. Actually, I was marveling that the forum here is what I wish all online forums could be: literate, respectful, helpful, and funny. Many thanks to all the moderators and participants for your help in keeping this forum such a nice place to visit.

I think it is helped by the fact it scratches a fairly unique itch gaming wise and the setting is most delicious!