Fallen London’s tabletop RPG is an intriguing but muddy collection of systems
Mechanics appropriately feel like a magpie’s nest of shiny trinkets.
Quickstarts are funny things. I always appreciate when a crowdfunding campaign offers prospective backers the opportunity to play a vertical slice of game design. It’s much better — and more honest — than relying on hype and sales pitches alone. But quickstarts are just as much an advertising tool, a guided tour of a theme park or a walk through the model home.
Expecting the quickstart to touch on every bit of a tabletop RPG’s breadth is silly, but it should communicate the core premise. I want to read through it and come away knowing what kind of stories it facilitates and how my group will tell them. And, if I’m lucky, some novel mechanic or interaction will catch my eye like a gorgeous pile of croissants tempting me from the window display into the bakery.
Having now read through Fallen London: The Roleplaying Game’s quickstart, I feel dazzled by flavor but ultimately unsure if what I ate could support a meal. Magpie Games, the studio behind Avatar Legends and the just-released Urban Shadows 2E, has left their tried-and-true Powered by the Apocalypse design sensibilities behind in favor of the new Ædana System. It uses a d6 dice pool, player character obsessions, and an ornate conflict subsystem to adapt Failbetter Games’ Weird Victorian browser game into collaborative roleplay.
Or, at least that’s the sell.
