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.