- Location
- Titan
Spare is a penal squadron. The sin lines show severity of crime.
Trigger has three because he was falsely convicted of assasinating a retired president in the middle of a battle.
Flying Circus - Ghibli Inspired Aviation Fantasy RPG!
- Thread starter open_sketch
- Start date
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
Yeah, I wouldn't try to run pure historical with this. The playbooks are fairly specific.
I'm working on Historical now, and I think you'll like it. It goes even harder on some technical stuff.
- Location
- Kiel; Germany
Yeah, I know and can't wait for it. Be it WW1 or WW2, i beat it will be a blast. But I've players that are negging me about Flying Circus. It doesn't need to be 100% realistic, from what I remember from Aircraft Design Company the flying is simple. I'm just not so sure how much supernatrual aspects come into play. Can I ignore that or is it an important part of the rules?
- Location
- Somewhere in the stacks
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Theoretically you could just leave the Witch playbook out I think. And nothing says you have to include Fae, sky whales, or dragons?
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- Location
- Soviet Canuckistan
Fisher and Skyborn would probably need to sit it out; since they get pretty supernatural, and Survivor would need refluffing, but yeah, if you're willing to do some fiddling and handwaving it's entirely doable.
- Location
- Kiel; Germany
Yeah, thought so and brought it.^^
- Location
- Somewhere in the stacks
- Pronouns
- She/Her
You would need to figure out why the land between towns is so inhospitable but you could always fluff that to be like, roving bands of bandits, unexploded ordnance, and land too poisoned by chemical weapons to be safe to traverse--make it more heavy on the post-apoc flavor instead where communities only tenuous connection with the outside world is through air and riverine travel.
grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
Consider the Zone Rouge in northeastern France, where in places, a whole century has been insufficient for the land to become fit for human habitation due to a mixture of industrial pollution and chemical and conventional bombardment.
Or Gruinard Island, off the west coast of Scotland, where the British government (in WW2) experimented with anthrax spores as a weapon in 1942 and rendered the area uninhabitable to mammals. The decontamination in 1986 required over a tonne of formaldehyde (dissolved in a considerably greater mass of water) per hectare.
My continent's history, sadly, provides plenty of material to inspire Flying Circus's eldritch and malevolently persistent Gas.
Or Gruinard Island, off the west coast of Scotland, where the British government (in WW2) experimented with anthrax spores as a weapon in 1942 and rendered the area uninhabitable to mammals. The decontamination in 1986 required over a tonne of formaldehyde (dissolved in a considerably greater mass of water) per hectare.
My continent's history, sadly, provides plenty of material to inspire Flying Circus's eldritch and malevolently persistent Gas.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
It depends.
If someone just wants to take the core mechanics and adapt them to a World War One setting, well... that's basically what Aircraft Design Company Quest already does. Just strip out any specific fantastic bits and what's left is a viable air combat simulator for mundane piston-engine aircraft.
What's more problematic is the part of the mechanics that revolves around the pilots being a motley crew of mercenaries flying between isolated towns that are, as noted, connected only by air and riverine travel. That may be in some ways kept and in some ways dropped, of course.
Today we learned two things.
1. When you dont give a fuck and dive 1100 meters to hit a dude with a wingblade you can absolutely destroy an enemy plane.
2. Enemy's with a refacing turret will fuck you up if you pull up real close behind them and they can shoot you.
Yes both lessons were learned by the same pilot.
1. When you dont give a fuck and dive 1100 meters to hit a dude with a wingblade you can absolutely destroy an enemy plane.
2. Enemy's with a refacing turret will fuck you up if you pull up real close behind them and they can shoot you.
Yes both lessons were learned by the same pilot.
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
Yes! I have to meet the kickstarter obligation and ship the books out first, but the moment that is done I'll be putting them up.
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
I totally understand. If you wanna wait, that's fine, though I'll be giving a discount to everyone who bought a PDF for the print version so I'm not double-dipping.
- Location
- Somewhere in the stacks
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It's honestly not all that crunchy--it's super simple once the dashboard and cards are filled out on the table in front of you ime. It makes figuring out what you want to do and what happens when you do it really intuitive.
One thing that was interesting to learn by actually playing the game was my group learned that maybe starting off with everyone one at their flight ceiling isn't always the best option.
The First Mission I threw at them they ended up following a Skyborn Airship waiting for Pirates to try and attack it. The Airship was at 1500m so I started the Pirates at 1800m as they were focused on the airship not the party. So most of the group spent a lot of time making careful descent to so as to not fuck up their engines.
The Believer shouted out "Witness Me!" and dove 1100 meters towards the lead fighter and cut it in half with his wing blade while going over 300 kph and ended up dealing 210 damage to a plane that only had 30 toughness.
The First Mission I threw at them they ended up following a Skyborn Airship waiting for Pirates to try and attack it. The Airship was at 1500m so I started the Pirates at 1800m as they were focused on the airship not the party. So most of the group spent a lot of time making careful descent to so as to not fuck up their engines.
The Believer shouted out "Witness Me!" and dove 1100 meters towards the lead fighter and cut it in half with his wing blade while going over 300 kph and ended up dealing 210 damage to a plane that only had 30 toughness.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Huh, the book actually says if you aren't sure that 1500m is a good cruising height? Why would you want to start at the flight ceiling?
That said, yeah, hrm.
One thing I do know is that in our game, as a future bit of advice? When the Soldier said, "I dive" the GM then spent five or so minutes talking her through the rules, so that she could find an exact level of dive-bomb that would allow it all to work, rather than going, "Okay, your plane is fucked."
...of course, that requires the player to be willing to listen to, "You will literally die."
I asked them what height they wanted to start at and they all agreed to start at the flight ceiling, including the player who had read the entire book so I said okay.
As for the dive bomb we worked out the math so that he could actually attempt it. it basically ended up being a 50/50 either the enemy plane dies or both planes die and he was okay with it.
edit: Like before combat started I told them what height the airship, and the pirate planes were at and they collectively decided to start way higher than both. they decided to start at a lower height for the second mission.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
Ah, gotcha. Well, it was their choice. A weird choice in the case of the height, but that's how it goes sometimes? Flight's dangerous, and it seems like you did your job as GM/etc pretty well? People learn things.
Smithsguild
The third monkey...
- Location
- Somewhere 'near' Atlanta Ga
@open_sketch I just purchased my copy, and noticed in the early pages of the PDF you mention a "free Aircraft Engineering PDF" but I see no link leading to it and it won't return on a search at DrivethruRPG.
The completionist in me is now clambering for me to obtain it. Can you point me where it might be found?
The completionist in me is now clambering for me to obtain it. Can you point me where it might be found?
- Location
- Soviet Canuckistan
I'm given to understand they're giving the design rules some polish to get it ready to go; still debugging a few things. That said, the beta is up along with a handy webtool attached to aircraft design company quest, available at this handy link. The specific design rules are in the info pages attached, and the page does the heavy maths, which is handy.
Playing with the design rules is scratching the same itch the BT design rules scratch for me; it's tiding me over until my group gets its own game started. And looking forward to the finalized rules, too.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Yeah, version 1.1 changes a lot of things, both about the design process, and honestly also the planes as well? I think the biggest difference I've noted to actual play is that Toughness is going to be markedly lower for a lot of the stock planes in Flying Circuses WWI-ish era under the new set of rules, since the original calculations created planes that could stand up to more than intended.
Though that's just one thing I noticed, there's a rather long list of changes going on behind the scenes, done in part to balance things, and in part to create a plane creation system that will allow Sketch to use it, without changes (just additions) up to and through WWII era planes.
Though that's just one thing I noticed, there's a rather long list of changes going on behind the scenes, done in part to balance things, and in part to create a plane creation system that will allow Sketch to use it, without changes (just additions) up to and through WWII era planes.