Restart of CF website

I have started to work on the Castle Falkenstein website that I had put together some years back, and then moved to Google Sites. Because of people's schedule and one person's refusal to game in a 3 person game, I have not had neither the time nor the players to make any gaming possible.

Mainly I have been doing work on a D20 conversion of the idea of Castle Falkenstein. You still need the rules to run magic, and I have not included any form of the very impressive background information of the world except where necessary. Right now I have been putting together a large Victorian equipment list taken from several sites on the cost of living in various time periods. I did take some factual information on prices from an OGL D20 game, but now I cannot remember which one it was. Once I find out I will list it in the credits.

*Update*

I went back and did some searching in Google History search and pulled some of the inspiration for my list.

• The Great Net Equipment List (http://strolen.com/netbooks/index.php)
• Cost of Living - Victorian England (http://logicmgmt.com/1876/living/livingcost.htm)
• Enworld (http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-legacy-discussion/123823-my-growing-equipment-list.html) Login required to download the list.
• victorianlondon.org (http://www.victorianlondon.org/finance/money.htm)

Fish & Chips at Bonefish Grill

Today we went to the Bonefish Grill with some friends. We are technically flush with the Obama mandated money from Social Security that is a bribe for my non-citizen wife to vote for him, but that is another story. My friends got things such as a pad thai dish, lobster tails, scallops and shrimps (my wife's), and a sirloin. Overall the place actually did fairly poorly on the meal. The waiter was decent, but the food was eh.

Mine was a rather good Sir Will's Fish & Chips. Three pieces of fish and an adequate number of fries for $10. The good thing was that once I asked for Malt Vinegar twice I got a full bottle that was liberally applied. I probably used three ounces for my meal astounding my friends, and revolting those that could not stand the Malty goodness.

The reason for the CASTLE FALKENSTEIN tag is that I put a decent amount of work into the food that I use for the game especially during banquets and other fancy meals. One thing I have not done is put much work into street food. Fish and chips took of with the working class of London during the middle 18th century. Joseph Malin opened the first opened an official Fish and Chips Shop in 1860 that was a version of fast food. This is quite a ways before the start of most Castle Falkenstein games so should fit well. The first higher class restaurant, meaning they had carpet, was opened in 1896 at the tail of the Castle Falkenstein era.

There is the claim that the chipped potatoes were given away with the fish since they used them to maintain the frying oil at a good temperature. I find this unlikely as the price of the chips would have been included in the overhead cost of maintaining the shop. Anything else would have been taken directly out of profit and cause the shop to go under. But economics is not studied by even collage students now a days with communists being more important than capitalists. And capitalits will actually help people such as in the Victorian era.

Edinburgh is considered the location for a the increased popularity of Malt Vinegar!!! This is perhaps the greatest thing of fish and chips, and I would just drink the Malt Vinegar but people look at me weird. I probably go through two to three ounces of Malt Vinegar in a single F&C meal. It will make sense that Malt Vinegar is used quite heavily there as Malt Whiskey is also popular. The malt not used in the distilling process would of course be perfectly good for making a vinegar.

Edinburgh's preferred condiment for the meal is a chippy sauce made from a fruity brown sauce, salt, and Malt Vinegar. In 1896 the HP Foods company started to produce the HP Sauce that is used throughout the country. It is now owned by Heinz and their UK website does not even mention the sauce. At the very same time as HP Foods, the "Fish Restaurant" was introduced by Samuel Isaacs in London. His "Fish Restaurant" changed the ways many of the middle class looked at the extravagant ellegance of eating out.

This was a very nice restaurant that was several steps up from a C.M.O.T. Dibbler style street vendor and even had waited service, table clothes, flowers, china, and cutlery. This made a take the wife and kids out on Friday a possibility that was previously only available to the rich upper class of England. It was the Applebee's of the time (only good) allowing the working class to experience a higher class of eating without a massive increase in price beyond their station.I have been looking for possibilities of "Fast Food" to use in Falkenstein, but have only found Sushi and Fish and Chips as official fast food. Others I found here at Fast Food in Victorian London.


And for those who wish to try making it yourself:
Chippy Sauce:

First you make something called an HP Brown Sauce:

Ingredients

Apples - 1.8 kg (4 lb), peeled, cored and sliced
Prunes - 450g (1 lb) stoned and sliced
Onions - 2 large, peeled and diced
Malt vinegar - 1.7 litres (3 pints)
Ground ginger - 2 tsp
Grated nutmeg - 1 tsp
Ground allspice - 1 tsp
Cayenne pepper - 1 tsp
Salt - 8 tbsp
Sugar - 900g (2 lb)
Preparation:

Put the fruit and onions into a large pan and cover with water.
Cook until tender. Liquidise or sieve into a large saucepan.
Add the malt vinegar, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cayenne pepper, salt, and sugar. Cook on a low heat until reduced and thick.
To make “chippie” sauce - add about a third of the total volume of white vinegar. (after cooking - add to existing stock)
This sauce can be filled into sterilised jars or kept in fridge indefinitely.

Falkentein Weekend Party

I ran the group through the Weekend with Enrico Falgore a few weeks ago. The post on it was deleted accidentally and not noticed by me. I have now recreated it from the tiny information in the draft mode of the blog. Guess I was pretty lazy. They went through the game pretty quickly without stumbling over too much along the way. We started at 3:00 PM and ended at 1:30 AM. Since no one played the part of Chris that night (our constantly late friend) it was not

I had set it up as a birthday party for Falgore and the players were invited since they had confronted Evil with the host. He hopes to see them as friends and continue with the good will. The problem was that for the past several days Falgore was the victim of a series of accidents that would most likely have killed him were it not for circumstance and the players. Most of the adventure was a series of subtle clues with some of them pointing the the Awnshidhe farie. He looked like the bad guy and until the very end the group strongly suspected him. Falgore was saved and now owes the group a large favor. The group think little of this as they know him only as a bit of an annoying artist.

However, one of the characters treated the wounds of Falgore on a previous adventure and found that the wound patterns matched that of faeries and iron. She had no idea why this would be especially as the skin looked not to be broken. He later explained who and what he was: a knight champion of the Seelie Court, asking for her to honor a silence on this, whose glamour and shape changing abilities were strangely unaffected by normal steel and iron. He had taken the disguise of boisterous human opera singer to be allowed to sing and gain fame without the use of his glamour abilities. No one is as impressed with a Fay singer as they can always use magic to improve their voice, but a human one that good is truly impressive. "And obviously Signor Falgore is a human good sir as he just picked up that steel cigar case and did not grow pointy ears. No faerie could abide the touch of steel and keep an illusion of humanity crafted no could he?"

So at this point one player knows about him owing a major favor to the players, and exactly how useful he will be in the future. However, she has been sick or really tired the last several sessions and has not been able to explain what happened. For now the characters only suspect him of being something he is not since he was so skilled at Adventure!!!

Steampunk Dead?

I have been going about reading some of the steampunk blogs and sites that I have not been at since my computer died hideously. One of them, Voyages Extrodinaires, had an article on the rise and current death of steampunk. To many of the core followers of the movement see the embrace of steampunk by the mass media and "fringe groups" as the harbinger of doom for the genre. Personally I just cannot see that, and think that the supposed core followers are just sad gits.

The steampunk or Victorian science romance has been with us for over 150 years. I like to think that the big start was with the first publication of Verne with Five Weeks in a Balloon. The balloon had a device that allowed to to generate hydrogen from water through electrolysis loosely making it a scientific adventure. There is Man exploring nature and conquering adversity giving it the sense of a romantic adventure of the soul. The idea that Africa will be the next basket of civilization after the fall if the United States gives us a steampunk dystopian atmosphere with an aura of hope around it that the Victorian society embodied. Just the fact that a person would only be limited to their ability to gather food and water for survival for the distance that their explorations would carry them is incredible for the time. Not having to go back for coal or other fuel while maintaining such high speeds would make me long for adventure had I been in the time period. Heck it makes me yearn for adventure now!!!

As the steampunk movement progressed very slowly it seemed that only the cream of the crop was presented to the consumer of the genre. We did not see the large amounts of crap and clutter that is produced when something becomes popular and everyone tries to latch on. This crap and clutter may be bad, but a true connoisseur can select the gold from the dross. For every 10 bad items that will be produced there will be that one glint of purity that will be the excellence that we look for. With so many people working in the genre the amount of gold will dramatically increase along with everything else. We just have to look for it.

This is the case of the Castle Falkenstein RPG. It was published to early and did not get the attention that it deserved. If it were released now it would have a number of additional gamers playing it now. The only thing that could keep it from succeeding for a while would be WoW. Perhaps if there were a MMORPG it might draw a lot of people. I truly hope that Atlus Online will be able to get the MMORPG players hooked on to something like reading Verne or some wild thing like that. They can even get it from Project Gutenberg for the fancy digital copy for their steam powered iphones.

WoW has drawn away to many pen and paper gamers as it is. I got started with Castle Falkenstein when it came out. I own every source book and run a game now and then. I have even gone on to create alternative rules for the game using dice to make it easier for new players. Not that anyone will ever notice my site Mot's Castle Falkenstein, but hey I needed to put it up there for my other player so I might as well make it available for everyone.

I go out to find new steampunk, Victorian sci-fi, Victorian adventure, and the like quite a bit. With the Internet I can find quite a bit and sort through to get what I like out. Those who complain about the acceptance of the movement by the Mass Media are just lazy or stuck up wanting staying with their individualism just like everyone else. I say share with everyone else you want to, let people decide what they like on their own, and keep your version of steampunk true to yourself. Perhaps the merging of genres will create something really great and freaky.

Catsmas went well.

So I managed to survive Christmas with my family. Actually I like all but one of my family. I will not say which one so they can wonder if they ever read the blog ... not likely. We were not able to give many presents due loss of job and illness. We were able to get all the children something and at least a book for the others. That makes it OK. All of our friends agreed to not exchange gifts. That messed up one friend who always gets her presents ahead of time. She will however be able to give them as birthday gifts later.

Everyone else was generous with us. A number of gift certificates and clothing items. My wife got three hats which she needed. One looks very 20s so she can wear it during my friend's 1920's adventure game. I got a nice tea set with good tasting tea. My wife hates tea so it is all mine. Now we will eat all the chocolate and fruit that we got. Sadly we got no no monkeys as they are so delicious.

We both got sick this holiday and had to hide in the bedroom and cancel a plan to go to dinner at a family member's house. I have fully recovered, but my wife still feels bad. Hopefully we can go to her sister's tomorrow and hit the bookstore with our 5$ off coupon at Borders. We got 40% off one book and got a coupon for five off another. This is buy one get one free basically. I wish I had bought more to get more coupons.

I do plan to go to Costco next week to look at 1TB external hard drives. This way I can perform better backups of my laptop and have a place to store my torrents.

But we did not get a cat this year so it is not truly Catsmas. Ours ran out when my wife was in the hospital this year. I think she wants one, but I cannot think of a way to get one into the house. Oh well, I can try something next year.

In the mean time I will continue to work on my Castle Falkenstein campaign. I feel I will be the only one running any role playing games for the next six months. I will need to get to work on the next three adventures to keep up with everything. I plan to do a lot of planning to get real Victorian culture and history into the game.

Castle Falkenstein Game

I ran a CF game last Saturday. Sadly two of the players could not make it, so I switched games on the rest of the game. The original game was to be a weekend gathering on the birthday of Enrico Falgori the famed CF opera singer. I ended up using a single player adventure for my wife and altering it to include the other 3 players.

They did well with the game. I think I threw one person when I had a Guild of Calamitous Intent handbook under their pillow. They had not seen the Venture Brothers, so they were real wary of the entirety of it. I just thought it was cool to put in, but I had wanted to put more sword fighting in the game. I put in a rule that caused the players to be in trouble if they used firearms in a fight with the guild. This way I can have more of a swashbuckling feel to the game while still allowing the players to use guns against non-guild forces.

I also introduced their guild assigned nemesis: the Night Baron.

The game only took seven hours with a food break. Very quick for our group. Had they known that the meeting with the Night Baron at the end would turn into a tea party they may have gone through much quicker. The group will travel back to Alexandria and pick up the rest of the group. Once that happens they will travel to Napels for Falgori's party. Most likely to be run in Janurary 2009.

And yes the Night Baron was taken from Detective Conan. I changed the outfit to white, but I just liked the look.

Starting Post

OK, I am starting this blog, just to rant and complain about standard stupid things. The main reason is to get my Castle Falkenstein Role Playing game some higher page ranking on the good ole' Google.

I am just trying to get higher on the search for "Castle Falkenstein alternative rules". It does not even show in the regular search for "Castle Falkenstein". With the blog I can discuss our attempts to game and what ever may strike me. Pretty sad and pathetic is it not?

My search for Falkenstein stuff was frustrated when a lot of the archived material was removed from a HDD when I sent in a lap top to be repaired. Fancy HP gaming lap top with 2 hard drives. The techs did not understand that HDD1 is the second hard drive, with HDD0 being the first. They then reloaded the OS on top of HDD1, noticed that it was not correct half way through and reloaded 32-bit Vista on a 64-bit processor.

I used a fancy undelete program at work to recover most of the information, but my anime in MKV and OGG was a loss along with some of my Castle Falkenstein stuff. I will be avoiding Mico Medics from now on.

Now I will start to back up to the web with the Castle Falkenstein web site. Please take a look at it. I would like to see Castle Falkenstein prosper even if the publishers only have an electronic copy available.

Check out the R. Talsorian CF website. They have to be good they have an Anime Mecha.