What would you want the Sixth City to be?

Fallen London
1

If we get a follow-up to Sunless Skies that returns to the Neath and depicts the events following London’s departure for the High Wilderness, what Surface city would you like to take its place as home of the Bazaar?

Personally, I think Fallen Chicago has a nice ring to it. Taken in '31 after Mayor Thompson sold it make himself President for life, Chicago brings tommy guns and Model As to the Neath, along with All Capone and the Untouchables.

As for the name of this hypothetical game?

Sunless Streets.

2

[quote=Drake Dynamo]First and foremost, London is not leaving. It’s just some folks going their own way.

Second, Paris is the sixth city. This is known.

Thirdly, this would mean the end of Fallen London as a game.

Fourth, gangsters and tommy-guns are not Failbetter’s style.

Finally, if you’re going to take a US city take DC and get this messed up government out of our lives.
edited by Drake Dynamo on 10/25/2016[/quote]

Actually, didn’t one exceptional story basically say Paris is most likely not going to be the 6th city?

3

It said the masters are going to try, but it gave you an option to try to stop it.

4

[quote=Drake Dynamo]First and foremost, London is not leaving. It’s just some folks going their own way.

Second, Paris is the sixth city. This is known.

Thirdly, this would mean the end of Fallen London as a game.

Fourth, gangsters and tommy-guns are not Failbetter’s style.

Finally, if you’re going to take a US city take DC and get this messed up government out of our lives.
edited by Drake Dynamo on 10/25/2016[/quote]

  1. Eh, the Sunless Skies announcement pretty much said that the Traitor Empress is packing up the whole city and taking it with her. That tells me most of the population, if not the streets and buildings themselves, are going.

  2. According to one storyline, which also indicates that it can be averted. Also, Fallen Paris wouldn’t really be all that different from Fallen London unless you advanced the timeline significantly.

  3. Since Fallen London is set in 1894 and apparently the calendar advances roughly in real time, it would take about 40 years for it to catch up to this hypothetical scenario. Furthermore, a Sixth City game would no more mean the end of FL than Sunless Skies will, story-wise, or than The Silver Tree would have if it had been successful, in terms of self-competition. And I’d definitely rather see another SS-type game than a browser RPG.

  4. Based on their repertoire of … 3 whole games based on the in-house IP, one of which is a half-finished flop? I don’t think that’s nearly enough data points to draw a definitive conclusion as to what constitutes their &quotstyle&quot.

  5. D.C. isn’t really a commercial center, which is what the Bazaar is after.
    edited by Xenu’s_Paradox on 10/26/2016

5

Their other games don’t matter here, and it’s not a question of Failbetter’s overall writing style - it’s a question of Fallen London’s, which does have a very definitive style. More Pratchett, more Gaiman, than Facebook’s ‘Mob Wars,’ really, so I can’t see a way in which a Chicago mafia game about Capone and the prohibition would bring about the same witty whimsy and absurdist humor as Fallen London is host to.
edited by The Atumian Sputum on 10/26/2016

6

If the writing style for other games don’t matter here, then the writing for the chicago game wouldn’t matter either. It’s not fallen london.

7

I think the sequel for a game like Fallen London should at least be written in the same style.

8

[quote=Xenu’s Paradox][quote=Drake Dynamo]First and foremost, London is not leaving. It’s just some folks going their own way.

Second, Paris is the sixth city. This is known.

Thirdly, this would mean the end of Fallen London as a game.

Fourth, gangsters and tommy-guns are not Failbetter’s style.

Finally, if you’re going to take a US city take DC and get this messed up government out of our lives.
edited by Drake Dynamo on 10/25/2016[/quote]

  1. Eh, the Sunless Skies announcement pretty much said that the Traitor Empress is packing up the whole city and taking it with her. That tells me most of the population, if not the streets and buildings themselves, are going.

  2. According to one storyline, which also indicates that it can be averted. Also, Fallen Paris wouldn’t really be all that different from Fallen London unless you advanced the timeline significantly.

  3. Since Fallen London is set in 1894 and apparently the calendar advances roughly in real time, it would take about 40 years for it to catch up to this hypothetical scenario. Furthermore, a Sixth City game would no more mean the end of FL than Sunless Skies will, story-wise, or than The Silver Tree would have if it had been successful, in terms of self-competition. And I’d definitely rather see another SS-type game than a browser RPG.

  4. Based on their repertoire of … 3 whole games based on the in-house IP, one of which is a half-finished flop? I don’t think that’s nearly enough data points to draw a definitive conclusion as to what constitutes their &quotstyle&quot.

  5. D.C. isn’t really a commercial center, which is what the Bazaar is after.
    edited by Xenu’s_Paradox on 10/26/2016[/quote]

The Bazaar is not, to my knowledge, interested in commercial centers per se (Karakorum wasn’t one, even if the Silk Road as a whole was a commercial route). What the Bazaar is interested in is love stories, preferably stories of tragic love, and love is rather thin on the ground in Washington D.C., I think.

9

Leaving aside the question of wether or not the future is predetermined (I’m looking at you, Paris), I think a fallen New Orleans would be splendid: Neathy voodoo, Rubbery Lump po’ boys, Things in the surrounding swamps, the Stolen Delta, Neathy Mardi Gras (think of the floats!) …

10

I have my money on New York after the FL timeline’s equivalent of the 1929 Wall Street crash.

11

Personally, I would love to see a fallen city with a hardboiled, neathy-noir kind of atmosphere, private investigators, femme fatales, maybe some 20’s slang thrown into the mix. And fedoras, mustn’t forget the fedoras.
edited by The Masked Felon on 10/26/2016

12

I’d like to see Berlin. Without the British Empire in the game, Germany would almost certainly have done a lot better in WWI. And Wilson would have found it a lot more difficult to come up with a reason for entering.

Nonsense.

The &quotgangsters&quot part is ridiculous on the face of it. There are already gangsters in Fallen london.

Tommy guns-wise: Failbetter goes loud and brash all the time. Bombings, canon fire, shootouts, etc. It’s not their primary focus… But then, the gangsters wouldn’t be either.
edited by Snowskeeper on 10/26/2016

13

London. Bring it back to the Surface and have it fall again.

14

I imagine whoever pulls off that bit of trickery on the Masters and Bazaar will certainly earn themselves a trip down a well.

15

The New Rome perhaps?

16

I imagine whoever pulls off that bit of trickery on the Masters and Bazaar will certainly earn themselves a trip down a well.[/quote]
Given how well the last well worked- and you know how well that was, given that eaten is still around- there is no way they’d risk a reprise of that. They’ll come up with something creatively cruel and new.

Maybe sticking you half-through a mirror, then feeding you prisoner’s honey? That would be fun. Or just red honey-ing you until your mind is ripped to shreds.

I rather like the idea of the sixth city being something faintly absurd. The entirety of Mexico? Some very tiny backwater that holds less population than there are non-seekers on mutton island? Parabola? Amador city, population 7,793 according to wikipedia?
edited by Grenem on 10/26/2016

17

I love the idea of New York in the Neath, but would like to see it as the 7th and final City, possibly in a game set in the near future.

18

Heck, I’d play Fallen New York. Heck, I’d LIVE Fallen New York, as long as my favorite coffeehouse still stands. Do spacebats prevent the spread of gentrification?

19

I think there are a number of qualities that make the Bazaar consider claiming a city. Among these are epic romances, of course, but they also seem to focus on large cities of great, even era-defining civilizations. The First City was from the Levant, where humankind’s earliest empires sprouted, the Second from Egypt, one of the dominating Mediterranean nations, the Third from the Mayan Empire, and the only one from the Americas, the Fourth from Mongolia, whose riders threatened even Rome, and the Fifth from Britain, who eventually fought back against the other European powers during a competition of rapid colonization. I have a few favorite candidates for a Sixth City that I think fit these criteria (all of these are American; I apologize for my bias):

New York. It’s much like London, in several respects. A massive metropolis (America’s largest), home to millions of citizens, a prominent seaport which could easily connect to the Unterzee, and brimming with artistic and theatrical endeavor. I love Anne Auclair’s vision of a 1930’s Depression-era Neathy New York. The times were certainly dark enough to suit the dark of the Neath.

Las Vegas. In &quotAmusing Ourselves to Death,&quot Neil Postman posits that Las Vegas embodies late-twentieth century America’s spirit: entertainment-obsessed, gluttony mixed with glitz, glamor, and gambling. And as the Bazaar always looks to love, the Masters may find Sin City interesting, at least. But even as I suggest it, I personally think this choice unlikely, due to its situation in the desert and improbably connection to the zee and the rest of the Neath. That said, I doubt Karakorum had any seaports either. At least, modern Mongolia doesn’t have a coastline. So maybe Vegas is a possibility after all.

Finally, Los Angeles. Much like Las Vegas, this is a city that embodies the spirit of modern America: love of entertainment, especially film, as well as international business and trade. It has a seaport, like London, and a significantly higher population than Las Vegas. If I could choose one city that embodies the 21st-century world, it’d be Los Angeles.

As for a futuristic city, as Catherine Raymond suggested, I haven’t the foggiest idea. We’ll have to wait and see which nations, and which cities, take defining roles in the future. China is certainly a major economic power, and Japan is certainly a major cultural influence, at least in the gaming world. Maybe Beijing or Tokyo? Or something I haven’t considered?
edited by Sam Stephens on 10/26/2016

20

Good God, that was longer than I originally intended. If only my upcoming Physics paper were as easy as lore speculation, haha.