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 What's this bullshit? Flying Circus is a roleplaying game I've been working on for the last three years (jesus), which is... So... there's like twenty different pitches for this game depending on who I'm talking to, so let's cover our bases I guess?
Okay, the first one. How'd you pull that one off, brain genius? Okay, so basically, the problem with all those other games that have tried to do airplane combat over the years is they either went all one way and made a top-down 2d map and made you use a loving protractor to do turns and resolving five seconds of gameplay takes two hours, or they go all the other way and completely ignore all sense of spacial relationships, treating it as pure theater of the mind fluff. Flying Circus is based on a different idea: treating altitude and airspeed as currency.  So while the game is theater of the mind, you are still constrained. You know how fast you are going, and you know how high up you are, so things are instantly grounded. Climbing costs you speed, diving returns it. Run your engine hot to make up the air speed you lost in turns, then watch the cylinders explode because you were pushing it too hard. Go into a long dive until the rushing air shatters your crankshaft and breaks your wings like twigs. Pass out from high G forces in extended turns. Spin out of control as your rotary engine sends you off balance. Survive, and go up to do it again. But I thought this was a PbtA game? Design orthodoxy is for cowards. This game has like six billion moves, and I'm not apologizing. Also, don't worry too much about it. The game has a solid structure that segments off moves to different phases of a cycle, so you aren't always interacting with all the moves. Right, but who do you actually play as? In Flying Circus, you play as... a Flying Circus, which is the in-universe term for an air mercenary company. Basically, Himmilgard is a world where flight is everything: we've been flying since before we invented the wheel, the forests are filled with horrible Fae so walking is not an option, airplanes are cool. Twenty years earlier, the big Totally Not Fantasy World War 1 ended with all the cities drowning in poison gas, leaving only a landscape of cute-rear end Ghibli towns. But there's monsters, bandits, clockwork demons, and fascists running around out there, so people form mercenary companies, take up refurbished wartime aircraft, and try to get rich protecting people. That's you guys. More specifically, the game has ten playbooks, each representing a kind of settlement in the world. You can be a regular farmboy or soldier or whatever, but also a cute Cthulhu cultist, a balloon nomad in a wingsuit, a witch, or a gas mask wearing survivor of one of the cities, among other options.  These playbooks are not the rigid archetypes of most PbtA games, but instead fairly sprawling character frameworks with piles of moves and special abilities. The game also has a pretty deep advancement system, being designed with long campaigns in mind. Characters can learn moves from one another, rearrange their stats as their worldview changes, advance both as pilots and as people, and eventually retire or meet their destiny. A fun detail is that every playbook has a core move they start with that limits them in some way. Some are simple, like the Soldier's unwillingness to open up to people or the Scion's high living costs, while others are complicated. A few, like the Survivor and Skyborn, have multi-session arcs built into them: these two playbooks are about the messy process of coming out and the experience of assimilation, respectively. Everyone lands in the story with motivations and every character is stuffed with details. And then you pick an airplane, either a total fantasy machine or one based on real-world aircraft, and you get flying! Alright, when can I play? The game is coming out April 15th! Until then... I dunno, follow my twitter for updates, I post all the art there. And all the complaints about my hand hurting because of the art. After the core game comes out, I'm going to be launching into a pile of small expansions covering different ideas and time periods, from a historical WW1 simulator, to WW2 era alien invasions, to magical girls flying jet fighters! Feel free to ask me questions or whatever, I'll be hanging around and following the thread. open_sketchbook fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Apr 11, 2020 |
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Apr 3, 2020 13:59
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There's a lot more guidance now in the material I have. I finally did an updated reference sheet just recently which'll make it a lot easier to pick up and play despite all the complex stuff, as its basically a quick like "Look at this page when this happens" list.
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Apr 3, 2020 15:36
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I wish I could tell you when the physical copies will go out, but the printing company is current out due to Virus. 
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Apr 3, 2020 17:33
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Golden Bee posted:How easily can it be ported to Crimson skies? I haven’t found anything but fate they can do that game justice. You'll need to use the plane design rules to make some wacky Interwar aircraft instead of wacky WW1 aircraft, and then you'll need to prune or modify some playbooks. Like, Witch and Fisher don't really belong, and Survivor will need some changes. But then it'll run it just fine: a Sky Pirate team like the Fortune Hunters in Crimson Skies is basically exactly what your average Flying Circus is. Everything else you need is there: armed zeppelins, taking jobs, daring wingwalking, drinking yourself silly in New Orleans while waiting for the contact that has a map to buried treasure that the Third Reich is also after...
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Apr 4, 2020 07:14
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PinheadSlim posted:How much can I expect to pay once the game releases? The current plan is a 25 dollar digital release, which will contain the rulebook (314 pages), playbooks (10 backgrounds and 45 planes), plus the engineering guide as it becomes available and is updated. I know that's a bit steep for an indie game, but again, I've worked on this full time for three years. I assure you it'll be well worth it.
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Apr 4, 2020 11:11
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Absolutely. The game calls it Freelancer Mode, the only difference being it encourages the GM to track the NPC employees a bit more (giving them Backgrounds and Stress tracks) and give them more personality to supplement the social drama. One of the classes (the Farmer) even has an alternate move mechanic for their core move to make it work without other PCs in the party. I'm a big fan of one on one play (thanks to my friend Jeff Stormer of the Party of One podcast introducing me to the possibilities) so I always try to make sure it's a component.
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Apr 4, 2020 13:17
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Yeah, this setting is def... super super self indulgent. It's not gonna be for everyone, but I hope you can have fun flying.
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Apr 4, 2020 17:38
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Vulpes Vulpes posted:I feel like this is a super dumb question, but it came up last time we played and I had no idea- is there an average "cruising" altitude for most planes? My players wanted to know what kind of altitude would be standard and I didn't really have an answer for them. I added a note about this in the book now: a decent cruising altitude is 1500 meters. Elendil004 posted:Can one GM who owns the stuff run the game for people who don't? I mean can they grasp the rules and stuff easily or does everybody need a copy? The answer is... um, yes, but? Like... this is not a simple game, and it requires a degree of mastery and understanding for the air stuff. You'll need to go over what all the stats are with your players, but yes, the GM can run it all with the players just having their playbook and sheet. The new quick reference stuff should make it easier for players and GMs alike.
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Apr 5, 2020 00:56
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Liquid Communism posted:I've been loving watching you drop the art on Twitter, and look forward to seeing this thing done! You and me both. I am so done with this. I am going to sleep for a loving week when I finally finish it.
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Apr 7, 2020 19:41
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Zurui posted:Is there enough variation in the playbooks to make it interesting if everyone flies the same/similar model of aircraft? If, for example, I wanted to run a more military group? None of the playbooks are very similar at all. Even before you get to actual playbooks, you have the four Aircraft Masteries, which are all vastly different ways of flying. One player could take Bushwack and be heavily encouraged by it to never attack except with surprise and to pull up and away the moment its not going their way, while the Dogfighter wins by literally wearing the enemy down in turn fights. Then... like, you might play a Witch who doesn't even both firing her guns because she's got magic, a Fisher whose demonically possessed airplane allows them to take their hands off the controls to do midair blood rituals, or maybe you're just playing a Skyborn and you punch on an autopilot and jump out the plane to wingsuit to the enemy and defeat the enemy pilot at swordpoint. Or even among the more conventional classes, the Farmer can push their machine beyond the limits of reason while the Believer's basic mechanic demands they take stupid risks on the regular. So, absolutely. One of my projects after this, though, is to do a more explicitly historical and military game, using the air rules but a new set of ground rules that brings it closer to Night Witches in many ways. It's been drafted and I'll be testing it after the game is out.
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Apr 9, 2020 22:13
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Zurui posted:That's rad. Is there a system for breakdowns, repairs, maintenance, and overhauls? Or is that pretty much left to the MC? There's rules for in air malfunction and repair, a basic engine wear mechanic, and while repair is generally handled abstractly (your pilot hands the plane off to the hanger mechanics with a handful of cash and tells them to make it go again) some backgrounds can play with it more. Used planes have special drawbacks that can make them clunkers, and working the kinks out will usually take several missions.
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Apr 9, 2020 22:57
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GAME IS OUT! I'm going to sleep for a week now. DriveThruRPG Link Itch.io Link Have fun, pilots.
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Apr 15, 2020 13:52
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I get more money on Itch, but sales on DTRPG drive more visibility on that extremely trafficked platform, so it pretty much evens out.
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Apr 15, 2020 15:14
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Flying Circus is currently the #1 game on DriveThruRPG, and the #1 physical game on Itch.io. Needless to say, I'm blown away. I wasn't actually expecting anything like this...
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Apr 16, 2020 11:32
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Holy poo poo yeah, that's 100% rad.
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Apr 16, 2020 12:44
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So I've started putting together a list for airplanes to release in future content packs, the usual mix of weird fantasy stuff and real world aircraft. Does anyone have any ideas or favourite aircraft they'd like to see in an upcoming plane pack?
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Apr 18, 2020 19:30
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EverettLO posted:You really hit on a market that I didn't realize was there. I thought of airplanes as a quirk of my own childhood, but it turns out it's way more common than I thought for the RPG nerd demographic. Apparently! Airplanes are super cool, though... I think we all go through a phase of being obsessed with them.  My phase has just lasted about 30 years.
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Apr 19, 2020 05:12
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PinheadSlim posted:I've been with my wife for ten years, and she's been incredibly patient as I dragged her along to aviation museums and listened intently and kindly while I talk about my Uncle who served as a pilot in WW2, but over all those years aviation never really took her interest. This is incredibly touching, thank you!
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Apr 19, 2020 11:16
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I weirdly just finished writing next week's patreon post about the presentation of fascism in Flying Circus and why I did stuff, but... But yeah basically flying circus has fascists you can punch, and in other places touches on bigotry, social hierarchy, assimilation, gender essentialism, and other heavy topics, but i tried to pay a lot of attention to doing so in a way that won't hurt players while still like... accomplishing my goals politically of making the fascists you punch actually fascists instead of toothlessly affecting the aesthetics of fascism while not actually having an ideology, if that makes sense? The world isn't utopian, basically, it's a broken place that's healing, and I tried to be frank about it while keeping things safe for players. EDIT: To be clear, there is absolutely no way of playing as the fascists. open_sketchbook fucked around with this message at 12:24 on Apr 20, 2020 |
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Apr 20, 2020 12:18
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PinheadSlim posted:Will there be a supplement or something where we get bigger pictures of all the different planes? I feel like you put in a ton of effort into designing unique and fun planes and it's hard to fully appreciate them while I'm squinting at them in the playbook. Although zooming in a ton helps lol, still I can't wait for the supplements to come out. I've got a few ideas on that front, though I'm not sure what I'll go with just yet. We're going to have supplements of additional plane profiles hopefully Soon, so we'll likely do a free one that contains all the default planes at higher resolution and with more lore and stuff? Idk. I'm a bit scatterbrained right now, having published the thing I've spent three years on and worked on basically non-stop, so figuring out how to tackle the next steps has been wild. Though I'm rapidly crunching on two expansions already, so we'll see...
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Apr 26, 2020 14:01
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Yeah, a World War Two aircraft in regular Flying Circus would win all its fights forever and then you'd have to pay a kings ransom in engine upkeep every routine and you'd go broke.
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Apr 26, 2020 18:07
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SelenicMartian posted:Then I guess SPAD A.1/2 and S.XII are also there. Gotta have that 37mm artillery piece. Also, yes, it gives a good bonus to visibility because you can see through your own plane, but there are none in the premades. In part because I wasn't sure how to make it in the art style...
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Apr 27, 2020 16:19
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SelenicMartian posted:Oh, have you got the Coanda? As it never flew and I have no idea how to even start making systems for it, nope.
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Apr 27, 2020 17:10
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Gnoman posted:As far as I could tell, there's no quad-decker aircraft in the game at the moment. There were a few such aircraft prototyped in WWI. Due in the next premade plane pack, and will be easily buildable on your own when the rules are out. SelenicMartian posted:A foldable Mosca-Bystritsky MBbis for your garden? We currently don't have rules for foldable airplanes simply because the rules as currently written do not have a use case, but I'm sure we'll figure out something.
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Apr 27, 2020 17:36
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They are, its the result of not having much room on the profiles. Though I'm about to make things weird in the patch when Ideal and Max altitudes are broken apart to better represent things like altitude throttles...
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Apr 30, 2020 16:31
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Y'all will be very happy to know I intend to do just that: this form was just to make them quickly printable and, frankly, to finish it for my deadline. There will be a Volume 0 plane guide with more details on each of these planes, and a Volume 1 with 50ish additional planes soon!
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May 1, 2020 04:51
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We didn't have any premade planes with it, but there *is* a recoilless cannon in the book for a reason, and we hope to build something using it soon.
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May 1, 2020 19:29
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Zurui posted:Regarding the Collision move, for a head-on collision you roll a total number of d20 equal to the combined Speed Factors of both aircraft. Since the Speed Factor is the hundreds digit of the airspeed, this means that any two aircraft headbutting each other at a speed less than 100 knots will always do zero damage. In fact, they could both be at 90 knots and still, no damage. Should the minimum damage be set to 1 die, or should it be SF+1, or is this intentional to prevent pilots from playing derby plane roundup? Oof, that's an oversight! I'll have to fix it in the patch.
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May 1, 2020 22:34
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I'd make it Speed Factor +1.
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May 1, 2020 23:51
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Yeah, gliders basically have a max speed of 0, so you start with whatever speed you were released from the aircraft with and lose it to Energy Loss and Turn Bleed until you stall or touch the ground. That's all there is to it. Authority is a stat that... shouldn't be in the game anymore. I'll make sure it's removed.
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May 3, 2020 07:04
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It's a synergy thing, though: the Skyborn's other abilities all play very well with it. The Witch basically only uses her broom as a plane substitute, while the Skyborn's wingsuit synergizes with a bunch of their other abilities. Here, look. All Skyborn planes have programmable autopilots, right? And Skyborn profiles and abilities basically make wing walking and close combat a breeze. So you can do a lot of nonsense with that, like boarding enemy planes or airships, switching planes in mid-flight, dueling Goth boarding crews while your plane holds steady, etc. A witch is just as good as any other pilot in melee (ie: bad), but Skyborn turns melee from 'muddy knife fight in the bottom of a trench at the Somme' to 'The Princess Bride', so you have a lot of wiggle room to do wild poo poo. A thing you can do is program your plane to enter a slow diving turn to a specific altitude, jump out to do something stupid, and then glide back to your plane and get back in control, even if you had to bleed some speed and altitude doing the nonsense. Basically, don't think of your wingsuit as a plane. Think of it as a bridge between your plane and their planes, so you can make their planes your planes. It's actually part of the reason most Skyborn guns are pneumatic too: because they jam when you rapid-fire, it gives you a lot of time to think "Man, I could be gliding over there punching them right now." Also, free reusable parachute!
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May 3, 2020 09:03
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Tricky posted:It seems at that point you're playing a different game entirely than the crunchy aerial combat. Which, hey, I'm down for, but why is it even statted out as a plane in that case? It seems like it might as well be a set of narrative permissions. All that kind of stuff depends on what's happening. The profile kicks in and starts to really matter if they miss and find themselves gliding through a dogfight, basically.
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May 4, 2020 01:21
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The easiest way would just be like... I jump out, Dogfight +Hard to swoop in on a plane (or Chase, depending), land on them (wingwalk, probably), and then roll Seize the Initiative. That would be the most basic pattern.
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May 4, 2020 01:54
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Yeah, trying to use models or anything just... will actively make it worse. If players are having difficulty, remove more elements with the object permanence thing.Subjunctive posted:I backed this lovely thing somewhat on a whim a few years ago and it’s a real treat to see how it’s turned out. I hope you’re very proud! Here's a big ol' file of typos! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Mb3F4Sn3vqqKvvs7Xle8OHn7Neom5U7lkBy3UGSZjX8/edit
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May 6, 2020 22:54
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StratGoatCom posted:How would an late model spitfire or a hurricane star up under this system, and how much of a 'ITS A GUNDUM' moment would it be for whichever poor bastard had to fight the thing? Speed 55+ and only gets faster with altitude, Energy Loss 0, handling in the low 80s or high 70s. 60+ strain. Does enough damage to one shot most planes in a single run. If you can somehow convince it to turnfight with you at low speeds you have the advantage. In all other situations you just die forever.
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May 7, 2020 04:06
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Tricky posted:How do G-Forces work with the Broom and the Wingsuit? The Broom makes it clear in the detailed writeup that it has infinite effective strain, so it seems reasonable that it just never triggers overstrain. Is the same true for the Wingsuit, since it's also working on the "you only take damage on a crit, but it automatically hits you" principle? Yep, the G-forces just apply to the pilot. Also, I'm working on the next version right now, and adding more pages strictly featuring tactics!
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May 7, 2020 23:53
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I'll put more page number references around that area to make it clearer, as I've seen people get confused.
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May 8, 2020 02:20
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Zurui posted:I know it's a lot of work but an index would really be brilliant. Jesus yeah that'd suck. I'll make one but I'll make it a separate document (save time flipping back and forth anyway), I'm running at the edge of pagespace here.
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May 8, 2020 03:29
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Thank you! I try to be the kind of creator I want to see in the world and whatever. I'm currently midway through implementing the changes for Version 1.1. It's going to be a pretty substantial overhaul of a lot of stuff, including rebuilding one of the Backgrounds to a pretty serious degree in light of feedback. I'm also going to be taking a pass on the Witch to give the spells a bit more of a mechanical basis when they get involved in the crunchy dogfights bits.
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May 8, 2020 03:36
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xthetenth posted:For advancement, "Add +1 to a stat above 3 (max +5)" feels kind of oddly phrased. Does this mean going from 3 to 4 as well as going from 4 to 5? Yes. Will clarify. Zurui posted:For Move Exchange, you do have to actually know the move before you give it to someone else, right? The rules don't actually make this clear. Nope! It's any move from your Background, even if you don't personally know it. You're sharing cultural knowledge and its manifesting as a move, basically. I once fluffed a Fisher sharing Whispered Answers with a Soldier as the Fisher just giving the Soldier the confidence to listen to herself instead of her old rules and regulations, and the Fisher didn't have Whispered Answers at the time.
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May 8, 2020 05:50
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