Fallen London

Hey elegan/tg/entleman. I've finally gotten a group together for a game set in Fallen London. IE echo bazaar and Sunless Seas.
fallenlondon.wikia.com/wiki/Echo_Bazaar_Wiki

The game isn't going to start until November, so I'm using this time to come to you for advice and to polish the system I'm going to use. Also to discuss using Fallen London as a setting.

The basic system is going to be FATE, with the wager system from Houses of the Blooded added on.

In basic FATE you roll your stat, plus bonuses from aspects, modified by a Fudge roll (4d3-8 basically), against a difficulty.

The wager system is something else and is basically pure narrative sex imho. Will describe next post

Other urls found in this thread:

thefifthcity.wikia.com/wiki/The_Fifth_City:_the_Neath's_Lore_Wiki
docs.google.com/document/d/1CpnhakUKxFeXzONYyccrrWhvc7kZeIK4q7gcEtK6sQo/edit
reddit.com/r/fallenlondon/comments/5a22or/a_spoilerlight_lore_guide_to_fallen_london/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

So in Houses of the Blooded, your stat modified by aspects and other bonuses is a pool of d6 you roll against a difficulty. In HotB that difficulty is 10, but I'm using 7 for various reasons.

If you succeed and roll the highest you have 'priority' in deciding if the basic action gets a yes or no. But their is more than that, because after generating your dice pool each player secretly wagers any number of dice.

If you get the highest number you keep all your wagers, but if you don't and still succeed you still keep half your wagers rounded up.

What does a wager do? Basically you add an AND statement to the initial action statement (or possibly a but).

"I confince the footman to let me into the party"
"AND to forget to announce me"
"BUT I promise him a future favor".
Wager statements are made in turns, going from highest to lowest result.

Here is a more complete example.

The players investigate a murder scene looking for clues. The basic question is 'Do the players find a clue about the murder'. Player 1, 2 and 3 each roll their mirrors stat to investigate, and the (unknown) murderer rolls his veils to conceal. Player 1 and 2 both have pools of 5 and wager 2, player 3 has a pool of 3 and wagers 1, and the murderer has a pool of 5 and wagers 3.
Player 3 fails to get 7, so his wager is lost. Player 1 rolls the highest, can decide if the basic statement succeeds and keeps both wagers, the murder gets the next highest and get 2 wagers (3/2 rounded up), player 2 still succeeds and gets to keep one wager.

Player 1 say “yes we find a clue about the murder”
his first wagers is “and something written in the blood”
The killers first wager is “the writing is to smeared to be ledgable”
Player 2 uses her one wager to say “which is odd because the writing was hidden in a corner”
It goes back to player one who uses a wager to add “the writing was done with a fingertip”
The killer uses the final wager to conclude “a fingertip too big for a human”.

For this game we'll use a both systems. Simple actions were the normal FATE system. But complex story actions, and actions where people oppose each other, will use the Wager system.

So Character Creation.

Technically I suppose you should start with your concept and ambition aspect, but fuck that noise.

STATS.

There are Five character classes in Fallen London:
Irons: Used for doing anything physically dangerous, violent, or using strenght.
Pages: Used for knowing, planning, deducing.
Mirrors: Used for detecting, observing, investigating.
Hearts: Used for connecting, courage, supporting.
Veils: Used for hiding and deceiving.

To start you put three 3's and two 2's among these stats.

Next Pick your main character concept as an aspect.
Describe a invoke (what it helps with), tag (what it makes you vulnerable at), and a compel (what it causes you to do).
Then pick an ambition as an aspect. Create invoke, tag, and compel

Finally pick a direction your destiny is bound to. North, South, East, West, or Neath.
The invoke, tag and compel for these is set.

Northbound
+1 Iron and Mirrors
Invoke: When seeking something that is likely to hurt you
Tag: When putting something valuable at risk
Compel: To ignore good advice

Westbound: London, The path to Europe, The Iron Republic
+1 Heart and Pages
Invoke: When Social climbing
Tag: When constrained by socialital norms
Compel: to act on their alligence

Eastbound: Salt (memory and the past), Dreams, the unexplored
+1 Mirrors and Veils
Invoke: When going or doing somewhere unknown (but perhaps half-remembered)
Tag: When ones past hunts you
Compel: To forget for a moment

Southbound: The elder continent, Stone, Tigers
+1 Iron and Heart
Invoke: When acting with daring
Tags: When they might be found strange and scandalous
Compel: To act openly
Neathbound: Away from the Surface, the Sun, The Bazaar
+1 Veils and Pages
Invoke: When trading secrets
Tags:
Compell: To withhold secrets

Finally add a free extra point to any stat.

Next combat.

So for this system, combat covers not just physical attacks, but any sort of attack. Reputation, sanity, legal, it's all the same system.

There are 4 tracks that can be attacked, which are called Menaces (more on this latter). Wounds, Scandal, Suspicion, and Nightmares. Whatever is being attacked uses the same system, but the stats used, and the time frame for rounds might differ.

Combat is always a Plot roll, with the opponent involved. Unlike most plot rolls, the effects and wagers are limited. Players are encourage to describe these effects in more detail, but for rules purposes they are identical.
The both sides roll their pool. The priority question is who gets one damage. From there those involved take turns adding wagers from the list
Strike: Increase damage by one. Defenders can do damage this way, consider it a ‘repost’.
Defend: Decrease damage received by one
Feint: Remove one of your opponent’s remaining wagers.
Evade: End the conflict after this roll
Pursue: Cancel an evade
If the combat roll does not end in an evade, the combat. If the combat does end in an evade, the pursuer must, using whatever means are necessary for that form of combat in the narrative.
Depending on circumstances, certain wager types might be prevented, or might start in play. For example if the combat is a one sided attack, then the attacker would get a free defend, and the defender cannot use strikes. Surpise attack would give the defender a free defend.

Weapons, defined broadly, give the user free wagers, either always or when they with the roll.
Examples: a deadly skyglass knife might give +2 strike on success.
A gun might give a free pursue or evade, with a free strike on success.
A 'very anonymous letter to the editor' might give a free defense and evade.
A 'planted murder weapon' might give +1 strike, with another +1 on success.

got to run to class for a bit, hopefully this will still be up when I get back.

This sounds very interesting, I've always loved the Fallen London universe and I think it has lots of potential campaigns to be made from it.
There could be made campaigns about seeking, the Khanate, the cave of nadir, pretty much any of the factions and the list goes on.

The people I'm playing with like what they know of the setting, but don't know much as they don't play the games themselves.

So for the start I'm going to have them be surface visitors to the Neath, so I them not really knowing what's going on will work with the characters.
Besides, exploring and discovering the world was a lot of the fun. I am going to give them opportunities to explore and influence various places and peoples as the game goes on.

Starting with the basics, a social party in London with unusual guests.

So the menaces are the thing I'm most unsure of how they would work.

Here's the working idea.

Menaces:
There are 4 menaces: Wounds, Scandal, Suspicion, and Nightmares. Each have a track of 7 dots.
By default a menace is an aspect that can be tagged for a bonus equal to half it's value round up. Only one menace aspect can be tagged per roll.
Your menaces can also roll against you in narrative rolls. In this case their pull is the full value, with the referee running the menace.
Menaces values of 3 or less clear at the end of each scene. Menace values 4-6 create unique aspects that must receive treatment. Their values are the half the menace round up (so 4, 5, 6, correspond to 2,3, 3) These aspects are Free aspects, so can be tagged in addition to other aspects, but not other Menaces.
When treated they then become a lesser aspect (values 1, 1, 2). Theses are still free aspects, but still count as the one menace aspect limit. In time these aspects will be cleared.

If you get to 7 of a menace, Something Very Bad Happens.


The only thing I'm really liking for keeping is having your menaces able to roll against you.

Remember that everyone in Fallen London has a title. "The Traitor Queen", "The Northbound Parliamentarian", "The Gracious Widow"...

It'd be mighty thematic for them to sum up their character like that - maybe tie it into their High Aspect?

Sounds cool, I'm currently about 75% through building a stat+skill dice pool system for it, mostly focused on buying advantages and disadvantages. I wasn't happy with how light the FATE conversions are.

good idea. I'll have that mixed in with core concept aspect idea.

yeah FATE is pretty light, but I'm kinda keeping that intentional as I want it to be more story driven than trying to find the best stats.

Also wanted to use the wager system again since trying it once and loving it. HotB is very out there game to get people into, but damn that system.

Yeah, the wager system loos good for a lite, narrative sort of thing!

hmm, now I need more Fallen London style art.
Or at least some dark victorian with some funny elements.

another idea i had was to have the characters, in character, get a Tarot card reading to determine an effect based fortune tied to Salt, Stone, and Storm in the first session.

But I'm not really sure what I'm doing with that other than a general idea.

Might as well post the rule book and character sheet for my groups Fallen London campaign since it may help

and now the rule book

Will you do anything with the inventory system - will the players ever add together Drops of Prisoner's Honey until they have a Touching Love Story?

I like this thread, I wish I had more to post. But goddamn OP I want to run A sunless sea camapign since it came put. thanks for the PDF.
I'm stealing it. By storm you can't stop me.

I love Fallen London, Glad to see someone doing something with it. I only play it sparingly since I'm capped out on a lot of content and don't have much to do anymore Besides...Seeking.

thank god i tuned into tg at this late hour.

I know right?

I'm a massive fan of Sunless Sea and getting my game group to run something akin to Fallen London or Blades in the Dark is such a dream of mine.

(Honestly, I have have a mind to just merge much of BitD's lore with Sunless Sea)

the user that posted the pdf and the character sheet here.
I'd never heard of Sunless Sea until my GM friend told me he was putting together the campaign, but I've fallen in love with the setting. I'm a Procurer for the Labyrinth of Tigers and it's lead to so much pain, suffering, and fun.

Anyone here tried the SSkies early alpha? I kickstarted it and it's good (BUT REALLY EARLY)

It was, as you said, Super early but seemed pretty good.

Some other person's FATE ruleset for Fallen London.

...

Definitely

Why name them after the Masters and not Watchful, Shadowy, Dangerous, Persuasive?

The separation between Pages and Mirrors seems completely arbitrary and means you can end up with a character who is incredibly skilled at taking apart a crime scene, but has no ability to understand what happened.

Sunless Sea uses the masters, so I figure OP is taking it from there.

And what's wrong with someone being able to spot every potential clue in a crime scene without being able to put them together? Good perception without the intelligence to back it up is totally a thing.

This does remind me need to make a character sheet.
What program did you use to make yours?

Other bit I'm working on is the economy aspect.
My players aren't penny pinchers in games, so I'm not going for high detail in tracking. Also I felt it was thematic to focus on trading as the bigger deal. And trading of secrets above all.

A bit I'm going to add to my PDF will be about how "information trading in the neath can seem odd to surfacers, as secrets and mysteries appear to have value simply for being secrets and mysteries. Even if that information has no practical use to the traders, or indeed to anyone, it is treasured and exchanged in whispers and code".

the wheel was made using microsoft word and the rest was thrown together in Gimp

That bitch stole my goddamn soul.

Thing I'm looking forward to is having them meet an NPC who is a tiger and just being completely nonchalant about that.

Don't know anything about mechanics, but you should definitely start in prison.

I'm going with a slight variant on that.
Without too much spoilers, after the first night party, the PCs will find it quite difficult to return their lives on the surface.

Isn't it kinda impossible to stay in the daylight for long after you spend a bit too much time in Neath?

Thinking about it, combining Extraordinary Implications can get pretty Unknown Armies pretty quick.

>Admiral, the Duchess slaughtered these rat mechanics, and the Khanate is trading in Prisoner's Honey!

>...My god.

Why did you trust a demon? She is the embodiment of evil, not your waifu.

Yes. In Sunless Sea, being a a native, you can only go to the surface long enough to catch a bit of sunlight in a box before you need to return.

That's not gonna stop us user

To my understanding, its only a problem if you're born there or die there.

I never got very far in the game, is there a canon explanation why death doesn't stick there or is it left as a mystery?

Well there is, kinda, but spoilers
The stars, like our sun are actually gods who are named Judgements, they rule over everything below them i.e under their light and maku up our regular laws of nature like gravity and death, in the Neath these laws still apply, but some, like death, are weaker. That's at least how I understand it. It's also why people who live too long in the Neath die because of sunlight, because Judgements dislike when something goes against their laws and destroy it.

>embodiment of evil
Been playing FL on and off for over a year now, and I still haven't worked out what the deal is with the devils, including whether they're actually evil. On the one hand, we know they're not actually devils, just bees from the dream-realm of parabola, and they kicked out all the actual princes of hell. On the other, they don't have many morals, were a right bunch of nasty bastards in the war, and quite enjoy hunting people in the forgotten quarter like toffs do with foxes. As for the whole collecting souls thing, I've been wondering if it's to save people from themselves, by preventing them fucking about on the great chain of being (which is difficult to do without a soul AIUI) and thus getting into SERIOUS trouble. Also preventing Seeking, which is also not a good thing for a person to do. So, yeah, I dunno. In my mind they're less evil and just like that person you don't lend money to because they'll never pay you back: providing you're not horribly naive you know where you stand with them, and that's fine, is what I'm saying.

Maybe I should splash out on some Fate finally to really get to the bottom of this shit.

Is there somewhere that collects the whole FL/SS lore, preferably in an ordered way similar to a splatbook?
I really like the lore, but I find both vidya terribly boring to play.

Well there's unofficial lore-wiki, the fifth city. Here's a link thefifthcity.wikia.com/wiki/The_Fifth_City:_the_Neath's_Lore_Wiki
But that's about all I know where to find it. I do agree that they are too grindy, especially FL

Sunless Seas deviless quest does a great example of devilish morality.

You can betray a deviless, and if you do she's civil but tells you how you fuckef her over. You can apologize, and then she gets pissed, and slaps you.

If you do the other devil's send you a note complimenting you on being so cruel.

Thanks user.
What killed them for me (especially in the case of SS) wasn't the grind, but the absence of "meaty" gameplay mechanics. I come from stuff like roguelikes of Aurora4x.

There's this:
docs.google.com/document/d/1CpnhakUKxFeXzONYyccrrWhvc7kZeIK4q7gcEtK6sQo/edit
...although a lot of the links go to that saint-arthur blog, the author of which really bought into not giving away all the mysteries of the setting, so sometimes the information isn't that useful.

For anyone wanting a general overview, there's this (if linking That Website doesn't trigger people too much):
reddit.com/r/fallenlondon/comments/5a22or/a_spoilerlight_lore_guide_to_fallen_london/

The early game play I sunless sea was alright.
Exploring the dark unknown. Managing resources. Fighting things to get supplies or survive. Trying to chart safe courses further out.
But by the time you get half the content there isn't any more of that.

I'm jelly

So how exactly did Thief-of-Faces get child with Stone? Did he put it in or...

I guess that's an alternate explanation for that wound she's got.