Fallen London/ Sunless Sea RPG

Aspects are taken from FATE, but modified under HotB.
It's a dicepool system, but you add up the total. You can spend style points to tag aspects of yourself, the target, or the scene, to add dice (default 2).
You can also compell or be compelled to act by paying/being paid style. Refusal requires paying a style point.

aspects can be a word, or short phrase.
Taking a bit from HotB, I recommend each aspect have one broad 'thing' used for an Invoke (tagging yourself for something possitive) Tag (used by others in the negative) and Compell (what you can be forced).

I'm kinda working on the details for the North/South/East/West bound.

The games very loose and story focused. and Very player driven.

Alright, gotcha. So I'll frame my Aspects like so:
Northbound
Dreaming of the Winter Zee
Seeking the Name (yyyup)
Searching for Storms (literally a meteorologist of the Neath, natural philosopher-style)

Mirrors 4
Pages 3
Veils 3
Iron 3
Heart 2

well that can only end badly.
So perfect.

The idea is 2-4 players, and then set things up and generally have them start trouble.
I'm MUCH more aware of the setting then they are, so I think surprises wil be fun.

Sweet, let us know how it goes sometime. Just how much of FL/SS do these guys know about?

the two page overview I was able to find, and stories of a weird shit that happened to me during sunless sea. So the general idea, but very little of the secrets, which will be awesome to give them a chance to explore.
One of them said "so kinda A Study in Emerald, as a comedy written by Phillip K Dick." So I think he gets the theme.

I'm impressed you managed to sell them on it without any prior experience of the franchise. Have you considered directing them to FL to get more of a feel for the setting, or are you concerned they'll stumble on something you'd rather reveal in a session?

Well they like the idea of a fun victorian london romp, and I'd sold one of them on the game I'd based it off of, and narrative games in general.
I also sold them on "Hey, I'll basically do all the running work, just show up".

To tired always GMs, that's like saying "I'll get blow you well you drink scotch and eat dark chocolate", so that was one of them down.

I'm familiar with HotB, are these what you're replacing the basic attributes with?

>Fallen London/Sunless Sea
This is what my friend calls "book setting" - great to use for a novel, absolutely abysmal for actual playing it. Which is ironic, given this started as a setting for a text-based game.

The problem with the game is that it's set up to have these dark mysteries to reveal and revolutions to run, but cannot shake the status quo because it's a multi user thing. Also it's super grindy, which was the turn-off for me. Lovely writing though!

I dunno, you can upset the status quo in Sunless Sea if you play it through to one of its endings. It doesn't become 'canon' in the wider Fallen London setting, but the same could be said about pretty much every established franchise's setting, surely? I think if you were running an RPG in it you could do whatever the fuck you wanted and nobody outside of your table would care.

Not really, since like the user said, it's a shared user setting. Unless you keep "your" advances for yourself, you literally can't touch the status quo. Which defeats the purpose of the game.

I'm more interested about the plot you have in mind. Fallen London have such possibilities for making the game.

Sunless Sea isn't multi user, it's a single player game.

>Missing the point this hard

Huge fan of FL/SS here. If you write down something, OP, please share it!

I MUST GO NORTH

I'mma just leave this here in case anyone else wants to use the setting.
Any port that doesn't appear to be tied to a landmass is a zubmarine port. Needless to say, you can't just walk into them unless you're a drownie or something.

then what was the point.
That you can't advance the entire setting faster than the game designers want you to? That's the case in every video game, and has nothing to do with the 'shared user setting'.
For your own personal game you can advance the settting in the single player version of the game.

So I've got a few ideas depending on what the players are interested in.
First question is if they want to go to Zea early, or mess around london for a bit.
If they go to Zea I'm going to treat it like a exploration adventure. Unless one of them comes out and says "I want to be captain" and the others agree, the captain is going to be an NPC who dies real early and far from London. Spice things up.

If they want to start in London, I'm probably going to have them start as American (I live in the US) who were invited there, to some party. Spend a while at introducing them to people at the party, then have them all be murdered.
Which being FL/SS isn't a big deal, they were very clean kills, and no reason to go to the Tomb Colonies. Of course they can't go back to the surface now.
First adventure would be, Why the hell did someone kill me? and of course having to settle into the city.

OMG, someone who is familiar with HotB!
Well yes I'm replacing the attributes with those, but they came from Sunless Sea, so they don't match up perfectly, but the same theme of them being very broad categories.

Irons is anything violent or dangerous, toughness, strength, weapons, speed.
Mirrors is any sort of observation, cleverness, awareness.
Pages is knowledge, so basically a straight replacement for Snake. What you know, what you've read, studying, deep insight, etc.
Veils is anything hidden or secret. Stealth, lies, subtlety.
Heart is compassion, empathy, honest persuation, art.

A big part I'm working on is the economy.
Which will be very different if they do Sea or City.
Sea it will be mainly about keeping their ship supplied and in good repair, and some trade goods.
Buy and selling will probably be more of a barter system, with some ideas taken from the acquistion/requistion rules from the Rogue Trader. I don't want the players wasting time counting pennies. Individual treasures will be handled in seperately, but for the most part they'll see if they can resupply, and if they can then they'll have a chance to get something extra based on how good they did.
One shopping trip per time in port, and basically resetting each time they go out, thought they can invest towards large purchases, but again that's spend down.

In City I want to play up the 'secrets as currency' thing more. Stuff will be either found, or bought or spent with favors and secrets. I'm going to have them discover their surface money is basically worthless, and have the economy of the Neath and the Bazaar seem very strange. Their are bills of currency, but they rarely seem used, a lot of whispers and nods and winking and enchanging of closed bags

system wise I'm going to use a horrid mishmash of FATE proper and HotB wagger/priority system.

Rolls are either simple or story. Simple uses the stats like they are FATE, against a basic difficulty with fudge dice. This is never used for opposed roles, and is basically for situtation where the players wouldn't bother putting wagers anyways. One tag max for a +2 before the roll, no rerolling.

Story rolls use the HotB system, which for those unfamiliar is pure narrative gaming sex.
Each person invovled determines the stat used, and how many tags etc for their total dice pool of d6s. Then secretely wagers, ie sets aside, a number of dice. Then all roll.
Whoever gets the highest result gets prevelage, the get to determine whether the first statement is true for false. Then the wagers are resolved to complicate this.
Everyone who rolled at least 10 gets to keep have their wagers (round up) with the winner keeping all. Going in order of their rolled total, they take turns adding an extra "AND" statement per wager they have left.

You'll need to address some things the browser game never touches upon if you're to use secrets as currency. (That's assuming they're not just pennies with a fancy name, which is pointless in a RPG where players can ask "so what did we learn, exactly").
And by secrets I mean any information you can buy things with, from mysteries to intelligence to love stories.
If they're real, substantial information, there will need to be an explanation as to why you can't sell the fact devils are __bees__ to the Church, then to Criminals, then to Summerset students, etc.

The hardest part about the wager system is probably remember to phrase the intial statment as a single statement about the setting.

You don't roll Mirrors to say "Do I find a clue?" you say "I find a weaon" or "I notice a pattern in the bloodstain". You declare things.

Let me give an examle, the three players (A,B,C) are all looking at the scene of the party where they were all killed trying to find clues. Player A starts with "I roll Mirrors to find a pattern in the bloodstain", B and C also want to be looking so they will make their own Mirrors rolls to be involved. The Reff decides that the Mysterious Killer should get a say in this despite not being present (possibly) so rolls Veils for him.
A rolls 4 wagers 2. B Rolls 3 wagers 1. C has bad mirrors so can only roll 2 wager 1. The mysterious figure rolls 3 but wagers 3.

C fails and thus isn't involved.
B actual wins, but want A to succeed, so uses privalege to say the statement is true. Then gets the first wager. Adding that the bloodstain is covering some very expensive table cloths.
A is next, getting at least 10, but since he didn't win loses half his wagers, so he only gets to add one statement. He adds that some of the bloodstains were added after the murders.

Then the Mysterious Kill gets to go, he lost a wager, but gets to keep 2, and since the others are done gets to add both in a row.
So he says that there is a human shaped gap in the blood stains from the murder.
And that the blood stains from after form a symbol in an strange alphabet.

working on it.
Having the players being partly suppllied and cared for by Londoners from the party who are terribly embarrassed they were murdered at their party will let me fudge around this for a bit.

I am going to have secrets and such seem to have a value despite their relevance. Like it's really good if you can sell a secret to a person who might use it, but people in the Neath seem to value just learning secrets, hints, and gossip, even if it has nothing to do with their lives.
They''ll just explain that the Bazarr is hungry for those things.

Basic barter will fill in a lot of the gaps, strange shinny stones for shoes for honey for a ravenglass knife.

I also of course reserve the right to change the setting and make things up as I see fit.
Like I already decided that it's not Jack, but Jacks, and sometimes Jacquelines, and they're a rather celebrities in the right circles, even if their idenities must be kept secret.

As anyone made a GURPS pdf for playing in this setting yet?

Eagerly monitoring this thread OP. Please post once you've run it. A Fallen London RPG where you can actually change things sounds amazing.

>No reason to go to the Tomb Colonies.
The Curator would like a word with you. I mean, sure it's not too creative to crib campaigns straight from the game, but it's a pretty useful point for developing your own.

it will probably be a couple of weeks before I get the first session off.
Right now I've gathered interest and working out potential problem.
It's going to be a very loose system, and to be honest I doubt the players will change things too much unless the campaign really goes off. First part will just be about exploring.

Am I misremembering that a nice clean stap to the heart or similar doesn't involve a trip to the Tomb Colonies?
I thought that was for when the wounds started to pile up and get distressing to look at.

OH. Oh that's what you meant, my apologies. Yes, you're right, it's once the wounds get too... publicly distressing that one gets sent off to Venderbight or the other places.

>Tomb-Colonies
Your players might want to hide there if they find themselves neck deep in scandal. You could also send them there to investigate the Grand Sanatorium for information, like in Ambition: Nemesis.

>Why the hell did someone kill me?

You clearly haven't gotten far enough in Fallen London based on that interpretation of how Jack of Smiles works. That change your are proposing is already canon. I won't spoil anything else.

How will death at Zee be handled?

You may be aware that there's a Fallen London system out there. Too bad it's FATE/FUDGE-based.

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it more about Jack I got the the part of FL with the knives.
But I want to do my own thing, and tie it back to the idea of the Game of Knives and Candles which was a thing and then stopped.
Basically I'd had the idea of a Celebrity serial killer story I'd been brewing, then I realized that this setting is kinda perfect for it. Because whould people be so okay with fawning over murders, than a city where murder is not such a big deal.

Also, the imagry I always had was basically perfect for Fallen London, so fuck it I'm using it.

If they go for a Zee based campaign I'm to have Bad Things be much more serious. And advice them not to treat there characters a bit like Call of Cthulhu one shot characters.

I follow now! I was going to say you're in for a treat in FL.

Figure out how someone can kill a Master in your game because one day sooner than you think, at least one of your players will probably get the bright idea to try.

Maybe some Unclear Bomb/Revolutionary bulldickery? Actually, the whole bomb might be a bit overkill. Unclear hand grenade?

I think K&C is still a thing in FL

It was killed because the mobile app allowed cheating in it. Weddings were also removed. Basically mobile allows you to not sync and thus save scum, along with issues with proper synchronization, and issues reaping the benefits of message actions when accepting them via mobile.

>Unclear Bomb

I love Fallen London's wordplays and weird spellings.

Gifting fate and notability is also out now.

welp fuck

For all the shit the app does, the glitches are actually really useful if you want to see the ramifications of things, or are sick and tired of grindan for days for a 10% chance.

It's pretty handy.
I'm using it on my seeking account to speed the process up slightly, although it's still slow-going.

It makes seeking so much better.

Maybe, though the most likely players are pretty non-combat happy, and I have lots of other ideas to distract them with.
I mean I've got devils and fingerkings.

If things go well I can send them to sunless Sea locations and have them spend more time exploring those in depth than you do in SS.

I'm also taking a page out of the game and labeling a few things as "This is a bad idea" in bright red text.

Mr sacks was pretty useful for seeking today. And almost sent me to the hotel.

I am so hype for the wicket to open tomorrow. Going to upgrade to CRAB HAUS SPIRE.

>Almost
I'm currently chatting to cats and finding mushrooms in my bath because of that. Hit SMEN 9 though, so that's something.

Luckily I had my badass cane on, rather by accident.
I'd paused SMEN to try and get some notibility. Given that I'm using my brass embassy room for this, I realize my character is quickly becoming a bad person