#falkenstein castle

[wgm-beautiful-world]

FALKENSTEIN Medieval Castle by Vladimir Stana - CZECH REPUBLIC

[postcard-from-the-past]

Ruins of the Falkenstein Castle, Bavaria, Germany

German vintage postcard, mailed in 1906 to France

[solvingpuzzles-savingtheday]

Steampunk Airship Base: Modded this base for a steampunk feel. Added plank boards. Molded bag of wrenches and connection point. Added fun gauge piece. And a friend said if I want steampunk then I need more gears. So instead of my usual felt only I added a gear piece and cut the felt in double layers so it could still give it a soft landing. All set to combine with my castle falkenstein character.

[kitty-rivers]

It only took a month to make all four of these, but I just forgot to post it in Tumblr.

[athelind]

I recall that Castle Falkenstein made fairly good use of cards as the primary randomizer, including many of the ideas noted above.

The application to the magic system was particularly interesting, since the deck represented the finite amount of magical energy available in the immediate area.

If I remember correctly, the one big issue we ran into was that there wasn't a practical limit on how many cards you could play at once, because every time you played a card, you got to immediately refresh your hand from the deck -- there wasn't really any downside to just slapping down your whole hand at once, every time.

Ultimately an RPG that uses playing cards as a randomizer but doesn't actually utilize the cards for. You know. The things that cards can do. Is just using them as a fancy, weirdly shaped die.

A few things that cards can do that dice can't:

You know that dice superstition that people have about how if they roll enough low numbers they're bound to get a high one? That sort of actually works with cards provided cards aren't immediately returned to the deck and the deck reshuffled. Because there's a limited number of each "roll," good or bad.

You can hold them in your hand. It's basically like pre-rolling a bunch of numbers and then getting to spend those numbers as they become relevant. Maybe you only get to draw more cards by playing all your cards, meaning that if you don't conserve your good cards your character's luck is eventually bound to run out.

You can make poker hands with them. Added to the previous point, maybe you will be forced to play a worse hand and have your character flub a non-critical roll because you're hoping for that better hand that'll turn the tide.

There's suits as an added bit of information that can be utilized for some mechanics. Maybe matching suit with an action type results in an extra benefit?

[winnistravels]

Castle Falkenstein in Germany

[vintagerpg]

Is Deadlands (1996) a horror game? I dunno, but it certainly uses enough orange in its trade dress to get a Halloween season post.

It uses the template set out by Shadowrun and dominant for many RPGs in the ‘90s — a single core book with a bunch of interesting classes, each governed by their own unique mechanics, let loose in an unusual world, in this case an alternate version of the mid-1800s. The core mechanics make use of dice, of course (which can explode), but the game also incorporates playing cards, poker chips and a good deal of card-playing nomenclature. Hucksters, my favorite class, use the arcane secrets of Hoyle’s Book of Games to cast spells, which is accomplished at the table by putting together a good poker hand. There are undead and demons trying to drown the world in fear and the Civil War is dragging on and California fell into the sea. There weren’t a ton of Weird West games in 1996, or maybe even any, so Deadlands cornered the market for a good long while (though in typical ‘90s fashion, its handling of both Native American affairs and the Civil War could be better). It’s also one of the first RPGs, along with Castle Falkenstein, that can easily be classified as Steampunk.

It remained pretty popular until publisher Pinnacle accidentally killed it (and itself) by making a D20 version of the game. That’s OK though; that surprising turn of events led to the development of Savage Worlds and, arguably, a superior version of Deadlands using that system, Deadlands: Reloaded.

For more on Deadlands, you can read the chapter dedicated to it in my book, out yesterday! That feels so weird to say!

[theresattrpgforthat]

this might be a big ask, but do you know of any fantasy adventure RPGs that does idk fantasy napolionics, not nesesarily actual napolionics with fantasy elements, but sorta 18th very early 19th century tech + magic and other fantasy stuff, pre/peri-industrial but only just, whfrpg leans (allover the place but) earlier, and a lot of other fantasy stuff with guns leans eather Piracy, or steapunk?

THEME: Fantasy Napoleonics.

Hello friend, there's a lot of different elements going on here, so I"m casting a pretty wide net to show you what's out there. I hope something in here strikes your fancy! I primarily looked for games that felt like they fell within the right time frame, but I also threw in some games that maybe fall just outside your parameters in the hopes they spark something for you.

Castle Falkenstein, by R. Talsorian Games.

When computer game designer Tom Olam found himself sorcerously shanghaied by a rogue Wizard and a Faerie Lord, little did he suspect that he would soon become the pivotal force in the struggle to control an alternate Victorian Universe. But before the deadly game could end, he would first have to battle gigantic Landfortresses, outwit Dragons, romance a beautiful Adventuress, and defeat the Evil legions of a Dark Court determined to destroy him at all costs.  Then maybe, just maybe, he could find a way home again …

Originally published in 1994, Castle Falkenstein is set in the Victorian era, but with a magical twist. This is a world of swashbuckling and adventure, complete with elves, dwarves and magic - but also submarines, Sherlock Holmes, and England’s courtly sensibilities.

There’s going to be many different kinds of roleplaying options in this kind of game, including combat, feats of derring-do, and diplomacy! The thing that possibly makes this game a bit far from what you’re looking for is the ruleset. Rather than using dice, this game uses a deck of cards, with different suits being suitable for different tasks, while card value determines skill or difficulty.

When it comes to setting, however, you’re going to have a lot of great things to look at. The supplements for this game include The Lost Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, Curious Creatures, Steam Age, and more!

17th Century Minimalist, by Games Omnivorous.

Welcome to the 17th century minimalist.

This is a fast-paced and highly-deadly game with a pinch of black humour that puts characters as wanderers in 17th century Europe. You will play as tricksters, thieves, former soldiers, bankrupt swashbucklers and petty physicians, roaming the Old Continent in search of coin and glory. The system is designed to allow fast character creation, compatibility with other games (mostly in the OSR community) and a reckless style of play. 

The closest thing to magic in this game is an illusionist, but that doesn't stop this game from pushing your imagination. Games Omnivorous is pretty well-regarded in the OSR community. 17th Century Minimalist is meant to be simplified, fast-paced, and deadly, with technology like flintlock fire-arms, and goals like searching for treasure and glory. If you want to see a fuller review of this game, I’d recommend looking at Questing Beast’s video that covers the rules and the layout of the game.

A Guide to Casting Phantoms in the Revolution, by World Champ Games Co.

A Guide to Casting Phantoms in the Revolution is a single-session roleplaying game, in which players work together to summon specters to fight the aristocracy during the French Revolution. Featuring the pentacrawl system, Guide is different every time you play. Played on a story map in the shape of a pentagram, create a cast of characters, interpret symbols to create unique moments, and have the phantoms do you bidding—or you’ll do theirs!

This is a game with a number of physical, in-person components required to play. However, if you just have the pdf, the creator also directs you to online resources that you can print for the full experience. You are members of a secret cabal, casting phantoms to help you fight. This is a game that evokes the feeling of a ritual, and might feel magical or personal depending on how you play. It’s a strange mix of thematic storytelling and complex mechanics, so it might not be for everyone, but if you want to feel like a cult enacting revenge through eldritch rituals, I’d recommend checking this out!

Tales from the Aerosphere, by EfanGamez.

Tales from the Aerosphere is an original steampunk TTRPG that is powered by the Neon Nights system, a system that prioritizes seemingly limitless character creation freedom. From medics, to assassins, to mechanics, to a literal barbarian, there are THOUSANDS of character combinations you can play in Tales from the Aerosphere.

This game has its own setting, but all of the set pieces could be dropped, altered or changed if you like. The focus on this game is on character creation: the creator has outlined a number of discrete parts that you can use to not just put a unique character together, but tell you something about the world you’re in. If you’re a Spy, then there’s some kind of international conflict that hasn’t blown open into full-out war yet - perhaps there’s technology being developed that some nations don’t want others to learn about.

The game is extremely steampunk, with airships, CogWare that gives you exceptional abilities, and Tesla technology. It’s going to be on the more fantastical side of things, so if you really want to immerse yourself in another world, why not give it a go?

Shot & Splinters, by Tom Mecredy.

Shot & Splinters is a tabletop roleplaying game of naval adventure, inspired by Horatio Hornblower, Aubrey & Maturin, and Richard Sharpe. Drawing on history but not beholden to it, the game is set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, thrusting your characters into the heart of the conflict. 

If you want seafaring and piracy, this is probably the game for you. It’s set in a napoleonic time frame, but it has strange creatures located upon uncharted waters. The mechanics are OSR, so expect simple stats, tables upon tables of gear, and a hex crawl map of the uncharted seas. If you want more adventure in this world, you can also check out Beneath the Battlements, a city crawl that brings your characters through a city under invasion. Honestly, I think this game might be the closest on the list of what you're looking for in terms of technology level, and possibly theme.

Games I’ve Recommended in the Past

Lady Blackbird, by John Harper.

[arsene-inc]

A TTRPG collection retrospective

And so my TTRPG in book format collection has reached 70...not books......licences.... and a lot of them are complete. I miss when I had space to tidy stuff.

So here are all my books :

The PBTA and adjacent games

The first style of games that really hooked me

Monster of the week , the first game I ever gm'd

World Wide Wrestling

Masks, my most played game this year

Urban Shadows

Dungeon World, bought because I did not have any "generic" fantasy system.

Apocalypse Keys

Blades in the dark , the game that bought me where I am, introduce me to french ttrpg content creators when I responded to an ad for a player.

Band of Blades

Brinkwood

Sig, City of Blades

City of Mist

English Import

Agon 2nd edition, still a favorite

Kids on broom

Slayers ( and a one)

Nova ( and a two)

Rune ( and a three for GilaRPGs)

DIE RPG ( really need to choose a good group to play this)

Heart the city beneath (yeah i like Rowan, Rook & Deckart)

Dragonbane ( A friend is a die hard Free League fan)

Wildsea

DotDungeon

Liminal

Tattered Magick

International Games translated in French

Mausritter

Thousand year Old Vampire

The Magus

Colostle

Warpland

Troika, my cursed game, the sessions are always canceled

Paleomythic

Vaesen

Spire, the city must fall

Genesys

Dragons conquer America

Sins of the father

Fate core

Nobilis 2nd edition, the big beautiful white book

Mage 20th

Castle Falkenstein

Cryptomancer, the 70th game

French indies ( with quick pitch)

Etoiles - a Stargate game

Aventures a Plumes/ Feathered Adventures - Play diceless Ducktales

Cités abimés / Broken Cities - 30's surrealism the game

Anime was a mistake - play every anime

Prosopopée - Mushishi the game

De mauvais reves - a cursed family in the Great North

Glorieuses - housewives in the 80's trying to escape boredom with wrestling

Temple des vents / Colosse de Grisantre - solo game of a fantasy wanderer

Les veilleurs - solo game / You are the Hero book, with Titan cults

Bois Dormant - post apocalyptic hopepunk gmless game inspired by Sleeping Beauty

Explorateur des Bruines/Libretés - Kids trying to survive an alternate dimension of murderous mermaids hiding in the rain

Les Héritiers de l'Hypogryphe Saoul - Urban fantasy where magic was just revealed to the world, along with things so old even the magicals forgot about them

Argyropée - Renaissance fantasy in a city where murder is impossible and leaving too long makes you die of depression

Speedrun - a system to speedrun TTRPG sessions and campaign

Bigger/Mainstream? French Games

Insectopia - Medfan but you are all insects

Cats la mascarade - Cats are secretly psychic

Donjons et Chatons - medfan but you're kittens and a cartoon planned for 2025

Donjon & Cie / Dungeon, Inc. - Monsters in the dungeon are just corporate employees

Terre 2 - scifi I don't really care about, i just told my parents to buy it when they saw it a -70% in a thrift shop

Nautilus - Play Jules Verne Hundred Leagues under the sea

Meute - French werewolfes with 2 souls : mortal human and immortal wolf

Rotting Christ - The Band. A ttrpg for metalheads

Knight - Epic Horror, The Arthurian Myth with mechas. It's great

Nephilim - the urban fantasy occult french game (basically The Secret World as a ttrpg)

Chroniques Oubliés Contemporain - generic system for modern adventures

Les Héritiers - All sorts of fae in 1901 dreaming of the end of the world in 1914

Ecryme - translation funded on KS, coming soon : Steampunk where the water rose, leaving only small islands, plus the water is highly acidic, melting everything except stone and steel

Les Oubliés - Korrigans & little people the size of a finger in a french city during the Religion Wars

Subabysse - sorta pulpy scifi where water rose so humanity went to live under the sea

Waiting for (dear god all the crowdfunding)

Fabula Ultima translation

Nephilim supplements

Arc Doom translation

Eat the Reich

Meute campaign

Babel, french game of book magic

Break!

Monsterhearts translation

Dragonbane bestiary

Triangle Agency

Wilderfeast

The Hidden Isle

[tindomielthings]

historical_castle

Falkenstein Castle,  Obervellach, Austria

[lawfulgoodness]

Experimental campaign idea

I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain my next campaign setting/idea in a brief, sensible way.  It’s really silly, but also really ambitious, and we’re about to have the second session, which means I really need to get a firmer grasp on all the moving parts.  To that end, here are the 3 main things I’m doing with it:

Self-insert PCs - All Player Characters are self-insert, so everybody’s just literally themselves.

Reality is a simulation - The players are “pulled out” of our world, and “plugged into” another one.  They are thrown back and forth with little explanation, hopefully motivating them to investigate why.

A Multiverse of RPGs -  Initially the world they are thrown into will be Shadowrun, since it already has an understanding of “jacking into the matrix.”  However, the goal is for them to try and find a way to escape from the world of Shadowrun, only to find themselves trapped in the world of Earthdawn instead.  The levels of reality are nested, so escaping one simulation leads them to discover what they thought was “reality” is in fact another simulation.

It’s basically “Sliders” meets “eXistenZ”

If you’re interested in the currently planned nesting realities, click the “Read More”:

World 0x0800:  Fake Shadowrun, but a very glitchy VR video game, simulating the world of Shadowrun.  It is so glitchy, that the players are able to exploit it in a way that creates a rift in the underlying simulation of all worlds, allowing them to begin traveling between worlds.  

World 0x0700: Real The world of Shadowrun.  The players were hired to pull a series of jobs in a popular video game, but after the first few jobs, the world of Shadowrun started to demonstrate weird glitches just like the video game.  Players try to escape to get back to their “real lives.”

World 0x0600: Spawn point.  No system/setting.  This is the world players initially find themselves in when the campaign starts.  It is clear that 0x0800 isn’t real, it is also implied that 0x0700 may not be real.  All but one player is currently assuming that 0x0600 is probably “real.”

World 0x0500: Earthdawn  After finally realizing 0x0600 is not real, the players escape and find themselves in Earthdawn.  In the world of Earthdawn, the players are welcomed as rescued heroes that had been trapped by the Horrors of Barsaive.  They are finally awake, and all of their previous adventures are considered nightmares, but not real.  Other nightmares and astral adventures will occur from here, throwing the adventurers into 0x0610 (d&d), 0x0620 (pathfinder), and 0x0630 (Golden Sky).  Once the players find out 0x0500 isn’t real either, they escape to...

World 0x0400: Trail of Cthulhu  Players find themselves to be mental patients in a late-30s mental asylum, locked up for their insane ramblings about the future, and for being suspects in the murder of a local business magnate.  Lovecraftian Whodunit to follow, giving them the ability to travel to other worlds, such as 0x510 (Solomon Kane) and 0x520 (Castle Falkenstein), which forces them to collect powerful magical items in order to escape to...

World 0x0300: GURPS Cyberpunk - Players find themselves to be unwitting contestants on a reality game show, where their simulated adventures are a form of public entertainment.  In addition to worlds 0x4000 - 0x8000, the players will now be throw into additional fictional settings for one-shot adventures to entertain the masses.  These adventures include 0x410 (Star Wars), 0x420 (TMNT), 0x430 (BtVS), and other popular franchises.  If they are able to escape this world, they find themselves in...

World 0x0200: Android RPG by Fantasy Flight Games.  They are recently activated androids, designed to replace a series of violent malfunctioning androids.  They have to hunt down their counterparts and stop them.  If they succeed in escaping the world the enter....

World 0x0100: A Tron-like world, probably using d20 mechanics of Horizon:Virtual, unless I can find something better.  Players find out they are each distinct AI/ML processes being groomed for placement in the “real world” to infiltrate & replace humanity.  All of their adventures up to this point is to help them simulate being actual humans, but able to understand why humans must be replaced.

“Ascend” as AI/ML constructs in synthetic bodies and step out into the real world for the first time.

Destroy the Master Control Program that’s been pulling the strings behind the entire campaign, but trapping themselves in the simulated environment in the process

Return to what they originally thought was the real world (Planet Earth in the 2020s)

Something else that I haven’t thought of that the players do instead.  Obviously, this is going to be the one that actually happens and I can’t wait to find out what it is.

Root 0x0000 // The game’s actual reality.  

[wgm-beautiful-world]

Falkenstein Castle (Niederfalkenstein) - AUSTRIA

[postcard-from-the-past]

Ruins of the 13th-century Falkenstein Castle in Pfronten, Bavaria, Germany

German vintage postcard

[solvingpuzzles-savingtheday]

Meilin Kong: Got this mini (wolsung) and decided it reminded me of my first rpg character from a castle falkenstein one shot back in 2010. Heiress to Kong Corporate Empire, skilled in small talk and corporate espionage, and despite being a melee character spent way too much time in game throwing iron wrenches with 'range' disadvantage at faeries with friend during airship escape.

So modded a bit. Molded giant wrench in hand and added garter wrench with the leggy pose. I technically did this first then the base. But ready to combine for final mini.

If you like steampunk minis. Wolsung is a not really played anymore steampunk skirmish game from the UK that has a lot of fun miniatures in their series.

[bimbinis]

i don't know if i said this already but a few months ago when people were talking about Mike Pondsmith and giving him his dues for being a foundational figure of tabletop w games like Cyberpunk and Castle Falkenstein i remember being very surprised to find out that he's black less so bc i didn't think a hobby's founding figure could be black (i didn't even know he was a big deal) and moreso bc i'd already known castle falkenstein from randomly perusing the sourcebook after finding it in a brazilian tabletop piracy site and i remember thinking "wow this is the most racist game i've ever seen"

[athelind]

One of the best uses I've seen of a lifepath system¹ was in Mike Pondsmith's Mekton RPG from R. Talsorian Games.

Mekton was an anime-inspired RPG² about giant robot combat that came out in 1985, before the anime boom really hit the US. US anime at that time was almost entirely relegated to small fan groups adding fan subtitles and occasional dubs to bootleg videos. Carl Macek's Robotech, flawed as it may have been, was just hitting the airwaves when Mekton hit the shelves.

I love Mekton's Lifepath™, because it set your character up with the distinctive character beats and tropes of anime in general and giant robot anime in particular, and did it in such a way as to make it a perfect introduction to the genre for people who had little or no contact with it before.

"Maximum Mike" pulled the same thing off when he used Lifepath™ in the Cyberpunk RPG (later and better known as Cyberpunk 2020). Both games pulled the players into new and unfamiliar genre settings by giving them "hooks" into the settings based on its tropes.³

I've always thought it was unfortunate that Mike didn't see fit to include a lifepath of some kind in Castle Falkenstein, since the "Retro Ruritanian Romance" genre that was only just becoming "steampunk"⁴ was just as unfamiliar to many players, and navigating one's character creation through a list of genre-appropriate tropes would have helped a great deal.

=====

¹Or, properly, Lifepath™, since Mekton was the first time that term was used, and they did trademark it.

²A previous release of Mekton was strictly a tabletop wargame with giant robots and few if any RP elements.

³It's arguable that Mike's Cyberpunk setting is what really crystallized the look and feel of the then-nascent genre into what we now think of as "Cyberpunk style", combining the concepts of the original cyberpunks with visuals drawn from movies like Blade Runner and TRON, anime like Bubblegum Crisis, and manga like Akira into a single aesthetic whole.

⁴And yes, this is yet another instance where Mike got in on the ground floor of a genre before it had really crystalized into a genre. The man isn't just a legend, he shaped legends.

I'm really curious but hesitant to actually dive into Rolemaster but I just love roll tables. What are the tables like? Are they all just weird crit results? Do that have good encounter and character building tables?

On that note, what are some of your encounter and character tables? I wish more games had lifepath systems. Stuff like the Central Casting books (which both aged badly and hilariously)

Sadly, Rolemaster character creation does not involve a lot of tables, which is a terrible oversight on the part of the designers. Similarly, the encounter tables are pretty elementary, being basically D&D style random encounter tables but much more granular (an initial roll might yield a result of "Universal Monster" which leads to that table, or "Vegetation" which calls for a roll on the appropriate table reflecting the Vegetation of the area). In Rolemaster Classic there are some character-creation related tables, but these are for background options that are not exactly a holistic part of the character creation process. You might spend a background option on a random roll on a table and discover that your Dwarf is allergic to Mentalism. It's a fun table, but not as well-integrated as some lifepath systems are.

There are gameplay-related tables that are more than just fun crit results: spellcasting and moving maneuvers are handled via tables that yield results beyond just pass/fail, and in Rolemaster Fantasy Role-playing almost every category of maneuver (by skill category) gets its own action table! This has also been maintained in Rolemaster Unified.

Oh and there's a table for purchasing stuff where possible results include getting swindled or attracting the authorities or potentially getting robbed. So that's fun!

Actually now that I think about it, Rolemaster Fantasy Role-playing did have a lifepath system of sorts that worked in parallel with its level+skills style character advancement. You could use development points to buy career packages for your character, and these took a certain amount of time off of your character's life and always netted them a certain number of skill ranks, BUT also often came with a series of random rolls for finding out if your character had any special experiences during their career. Sadly, no such system in Rolemaster Unified.

(I definitely agree that we need more lifepath systems, and I'm also very fond of the Central Casting books for all their quirks and of-their-timeness.)