In case anyone wants to play BitD in Fallen London, a gothic, industrial fantasy setting very much like Duskwall, but with a bit more levity: http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com
Blades in the Neathy Dark:
Welcome, delicious friend.
Since a great deal of Fallen London‘s appeal lies precisely in discovering what the blazes is going on in the setting, detailed knowledge of the following and therefore your use of them depend on how much of the game (or spoilers) you have encountered. Likewise, I am probably missing plenty, since I doubt I have seen even half.
Factions (sorted by tier and then hold rather than by type)
Masters of the Bazaar IV-10
The Constables III-9
Hell/Devils III-8
The Duchess (and the Court) III-7
The Great Game III-6
Society III-5
Criminals III-4
Bohemians III-4
The Church III-4
New Newgate Prison II-8
Velocipede Squad II-8
Unterzee Zailors II-7
Dockers II-6
The Relickers II-6
Secret vendors II-5
Ambitious Journalists II-4
Clay Men II-4
The University II-4
Rats II-3
Tomb-Colonists II-2
Black Ribbon Society I-7
Unfinished Men I-7
Mr. Inch’s Hunters of Dangerous Prey I-5
Revolutionaries I-4
The Fisher King I-3
Urchins I-3
Rubbery Men I-2
Story-ripe Locations
Watchmakers Hill
Wolfstack Docks
Labyrinth of Tigers
Ladybones Road
The Forgotten Quarter
The University
Veilgarden
The Shuttered Palace
Empress’ Court
Spite
The Flit
Mahogany Hall
House of Chimes
The Echo Bazaar
Mrs Plenty’s Most Distracting Carnival
Broad Unterzee (including various islands)
Tomb Colonies
The Mirror Marches
Royal Bethlehem Hotel
A fun additional tidbit: Fallen London’s main stats of Dangerous, Watchful, Shadowy, Persuasive equate swimmingly with BitD’s action categories: Blade, Book, Cloak, Mask respectively. That doesn’t equate to any mechanical significance, it just informs the approaches and emphases of various factions and locations.
A world of yes.
As to the stat categories: What a strange… coincidence. Yes. Mere happenstance, to be sure.
The long-term projects clocks and the progress clocks are so utterly, totally coincidentally similar to how Echo Bazaar (I’m old, shut up) tracks progress, too. I would never have expected it to work in an RPG like it does in Echo Bazaar, but it works fantastically (in theory, I’m waiting to get my group together to see how it works in practice).
Very cool 🙂
Ha John Harper. 🙂
Bryan Chavez I had not considered that actually but your definitely right. Most story paths also string together like long-term projects. “Seeking Spider Council”, “On the Hunt”, Wooing [anyone]”, “Tracking Jack-of-Smiles”, “Feverishly completing an epic literary work”
Likewise the Menace stats (Wounds, Nightmares, Scandal, Suspicion) work well enough as categories of lasting effects.
Ooh, I forgot to add the faction Neddy Men! (Though they may just be the gangs of the Masters)
(Can you tell I was mostly Dangerous/Persuasive?)
For a glimpse into a world that might have been — the (now dead) forum where Vincent and I worked on the Echo Bazaar RPG:
http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?PHPSESSID=258aee48f3967ec2a5538890767c6859&board=13.0
Can’t access the thread now, but I think I was reading it back when it was happening.
Thinking more about Fallen London, I was appreciating the varied currencies in the setting. While they basically equate to various forms of story-grinding in the original game, in BitD it might make scores much more interesting if you’re stealing various options among the following, rather than just coin or generic expensive stuff:
Secrets/gossip, blackmail, souls, valuable wines, rostygold, amber, moon pearls, Nevercold brass, relics from the previous cities, infernal contracts, rats-on-a-string, candle stubs, memories, map portions, glim, secluded addresses, passwords, mysteries of the elder continent, favours in high places, prisoner’s honey, romantic notions, rag scraps, primordial shrieks, etc.