Magpie Games brings the spooky world of Fallen London to the table with new RPG — two days left on Kickstarter!

When you’re running a tabletop RPG, an intriguing setting — whether that’s something like the romance and robots of Sentai and Sensibility or or the broad and detailed fantasy world of Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere — can go a long way towards sparking the imagination of players and GMs alike. That’s why we were very excited when Magpie Games announced they’d be collaborating with Failbetter Games to bring the setting of Fallen London, a long-running text-based RPG with acclaimed spinoffs like Mask of the Rose and Sunless Sea, to a tabletop RPG. Finally, the Kickstarter for Fallen London: The Roleplaying Game has arrived, and we can get a peek at the game to see what it’s all about. There are two more days on the Kickstarter, so if you want to support it, we’re closing in on your last chance.

If you aren’t familiar with the setting of Fallen London, it’s set in an alternate 1899 in which, forty years ago, the city of London fell into a gigantic cavern beneath the Earth, where it is known as the Fifth City (because it rests atop the Fourth City, which presumably rests atop what came before). London is next to a massive underground sea of impossible color, Hell is close to the west, immortality is cheap, and the Traitor Empress Victoria reigns — although the true rulers, the Masters of the Bazaar, work in the shadows and control all trade in the city. Time and causality don’t always work like you’d expect in the Neath; death is no longer permanent for most humans. You have to specify humans, of course, because we’re not alone down there — the tentacled, squid-headed Rubbery Men, the intelligent and mechanically-inclined Rattus Faber, the living stoneware Clay Men, and even Devils are common sights in the streets of London.

Players in Fallen London: The Roleplaying Game play as members of a concern. Your concern has some grand ambition of its own which, while grand, doesn’t necessarily have to be good: maybe you want to unseat the Masters, open a permanent door into the realm of dreams, destroy death itself entirely, or restore London to the surface of the Earth. Your characters also each have an obsession of their own that can empower them when all else is bleak, and your concern also has an important NPC with a ruling share in your operations — your principal. They don’t participate in the day-to-day operations of the concern, but for whatever reason, you need to keep them around — maybe your artists’ collective concern needs their money, or maybe your surface-goods import cartel requires their protection from prying eyes. Your concern provides you with opportunities and leads, eventually leading you on a venture: an attempt to follow a lead, capitalize on an opportunity, and thereby further your concern’s grand ambition!

The system itself will seem familiar if you’ve any expeience with Powered by the Apocalypse or Forged in the Dark Systems, although Magpie is calling their spin on it the Ædana System. The gist of it is assembling a pool of six-sided dice — 0-4 for an appropriate attribute, another if you have a trained and appropriate skill, another for a useful asset, and possibly one more for beneficial circumstances — then rolling them and looking for as many 5-6 results as you can, called hits. The more hits the better: 3 is a critical success, 2 is a success, 1 is success at a cost or a defeat (player’s choice if they’re unwilling to pay the cost), and 0 hits is a defeat. However, if the dice don’t go your way, you can fall back on that obsession of yours mentioned earlier to boost your roll — but if you sink too far into your obsession, you risk becoming unmoored and becoming an NPC — and a dangerous one at that.

If you’re interested in checking out Fallen London: The Roleplaying Game, the Kickstarter is fully funded but ending soon , and there is a Quickstart available now for the low, low price of free on DriveThruRPG.