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[Graven]

http://www.fallenlondon.com

Welcome to Fallen London, delicious friend!

Three decades ago, London was stolen by bats. Dragged deep into the earth by the Echo Bazaar. The sun is gone. All we have is the gas-light of Mr Fires. But Londoners can get used to anything. And it's quiet down here with the devils and the darkness and the mushroom wine. Peaceful.

But then YOU arrived.

What is Fallen London?

It's a web-based RPG/Adventure, created by a company called Failbetter Games. Set in Fallen London, a bizarre gothic fantasy Victorian London, ruled by the mysterious Masters of the Bazaar, with devils, cats, golems, poets and worse roaming the gloomy streets. The game also requires a Twitter or Facebook account to log in, I suppose because the devs want as much publicity as possible. Believe me, it's worth it.

How do I play?

The game includes a wonderful tutorial/intro, as well as help section, but apart from that :

Each day you get 40 actions total, though you can have no more than 10 at a time. After using up one, it restores in about 6 minutes. The developers have stated they don't want players rushing through the content exhausting it too quickly, although they are working on adding new content. You can also buy more actions. In the beginning you may receive Fate as a reward for this or that. Don't spend it! You can later on use it to buy new content.

The game includes 4 main stats, or traits:

Dangerous
Persuasive
Shadowy
Watchful

With these traits you unlock and participate in so called "storylets", mini-adventures for you to solve. Each storylet also rewards you with items, other, uncommon traits or improvement of your main traits. As you progress you unlock more and more storylets, with some very expansive, well-written and genuinely funny pieces among them. Storylets can also come from your opportunities deck : a deck of cars from which you draw storylets unconnected with your traits. Beware though, failure in some storylets can be dangerous!

Well-written can be called the game's main quality and it's main draw; along with Echo Bazaar being of the rare and fabled "non-combat" gameplay. Or at least, as far from it as possible. You explore, swindle, cheat and sneak your way through the storylets, enjoying the wonderful world and imaginative situations and make tough choices about your future, present... and past.

You can also select one of four "ambitions" - massive and encompassing adventures which focus on two of your traits and apparently span the entire length of the game, as well as unlock unique areas of the game. So be careful when you select an ambition.

Also there is a wiki : http://echobazaar.wikidot.com/ Never browsed it, but a wiki is always useful.

How do I play with friends?

As noted, the game requires facebook/twitter login, and, as far as I know, there is no way to befriend someone in-game. If you're following someone on twitter, or he is a friend in facebook, the main page lets you view their profile. You can (and at a certain point HAVE to) also invite them to your home for various interesting and beneficial activities, mostly focusing on decreasing/removing negative traits - wounds, nightmares and such.

As I'm playing with twitter, I can, if you desire, maintain a list of twitters so we can form a powerful shadowy network spanning the entire length and breadth of Fallen London, from the grimy gutters to the richest businessmen, rivaling the power even the Bazaar Masters have, and... you know, invite each other to play chess, and stuff. Because my nightmares are starting to bother me, and I have been seeing the cheerful gentleman with the stovepipe hat more and more often... and there's something worrying about his jovial demeanor.

Twitter people :

my twitter is : Nathariel Graven
Follow me and I shall spam you with random Echo Bazaar facts as this way you can regain 10 actions instantly once every 24 hours.
Ronald Miasma - here is Baruk
Corin T - here is Jack A T
GlyphGryph - Here is GlyphGryph
Meganleb - Here is Sappho
Joshua_Mcneely - Here is Theodolus
JeffTesto - Here is Gimlet
YuukoFox - Here is The Merchant of Menace
SignorePalazzo - Here is Il Palazzo
DF_Interus - Here is Interus
hpmons - Here is Hpmons
Dwarmin - Here is Dwarmin
Kingmadagascar- Here is lemon10
ROFLHead - Here is Quinnr
niudna - Here is Pnx
Bdthemag - Here is Bdthemag
Tillaalbion - Here is Tilla
jame334 - Here is Vagel7
Facebook people :

Ronald Miasma - here is Baruk
Iris Looming - friend of above
Kym Hamill - friend of above
Nolan Tomlinson - friend of above
Jeff Bart - here is Gimlet
Dustin Jones - Here is Dwarmin

!! CURRENTLY ACTIVE PLAYERS !!

B12 name	Fallen London
Gravenous	Gravenous
Nenjin	Nenjin
Hugehead	Hugehead
Rabid_Cog	Rabidmuskrat
Unusedname	Juan Daba
Isdar	Isdar
CognitiveDissonance	Disarcade
Shakerag	Somina
Sappho	Kotshka [old]/Aira Vidzej
HopFlash	HopFlash
Rumpel	Mykitten
Aklyon	Aklyon
Antur	Antur
E. Albright	Vide
Sjm9876	Sjm9876
Shooer	Shooer
Baruk	Ronald Miasma
Theodolus	Theodolus
BlindKitty	BlindKitty

[squeakyReaper]

Used to play, but the game got irritating when it started penalizing me.  It can't make up its mind- you get much more experience for failing on hard missions, nut at one point you start gaining scandal/nightmares/etc.  After o-so-many visits to the hotel, I gave up.  (Had no reasonable missions for my level, no friends to lower those things)

[Graven]

See that's why we (and by we, I mean me) want to start a friend network, so we can help each other out and not have what happened to you

[gimlet]

Huh, looks somewhat interesting - I'm gonna give it a shot for a bit.  I even finally registered a twitter for this :p  It's jefftesto, and I'm Blackadder in the game.  Spent the first batch of actions mostly failing hard challenges to improve stats, heh.

[baruk]

Good work Graven! I'm not sure if Echo Bazaar is entirely Lovecraftian, though there's a hint of it with the rubbery men. Perhaps a Neil Gaimanesque horror/fantasy is a closer description. My character, Ronald Miasma, is well on his way to becoming horribly broken and crippled through my suicidal curiousity eg. taking home strange idols offered to me by dying men and the like.

Anyway, Ronald Miasma is on Facebook. Certain possibilities are opened up if you have friends on Facebook also playing Echo Bazaar - in particular I need someone to talk to about my nightmares..
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/profile.php?id=1493471059

Furthermore, I'm compiling a "Good Egg" list of active players from Facebook who have accepted my actions (if you challenge someone to a sparring bout, say, it costs you one action, and they have to accept before it can happen).
Good Eggs:
Iris Looming
Kym Hamill

 I'm not sure how Echo Bazaar manages Twitter and Facebook interactions yet - will I have to set up a Twitter to use actions on Twitter users?

[gimlet]

I have a "Travel" card - is that a good one to keep around for a while?  I got it very early, how hard is it to travel around the city without it?

ed: Also sent you a facebook friend request from Jeff Bart.

[Graven]

Stop playing from facebook people I need someone on twitter to talk about my horrible nightmares! Also, if you want, I can also add the names to the OP, preferably if people bold them when they post so they're easier to notice.

edit : I'd have gone for Chyna Mieville for the title, but figured people are more familiar with Lovecraft. It's still quite Lovecraftian in my opinion

[Dr. Johbson]

So it requires either a twitter-thing or a facebook-thing? Because I REALLY don't want to use facebook just to play a mildly interesting game. Twitter is at least less terrible for me.

[Graven]

Yes, it does. It's also absolutely worth it. And if you make a twitter I can add you and badger you about helping me with nightmares and stuff 

[Bluerobin]

It's pretty fun and the writing is quite good, I just tend to lose interest in browser games. This one gets my vote though.

Also, http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=88124.0
The other Echo Bazaar thread that I know about.
Edit: Turns out there's a third thread linked in that one. http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=62237

[Graven]

Yeah, but the relevant one is old as hell, and the other one has quite a strange title that doesn't reference the game itself - I also asked in it if I should make a new one

And yeah, I'm only in it for the writing, I adore the atmosphere and the storylets, hell even the item descriptions are sometimes really amusing. I'm a sucker for that kind of weird-ish, dark-ish atmosphere.

[Dr. Johbson]

Ehh. I don't think I'll miss much if I don't play this. If I'm bored later today I might look into making a twitter account, because it does at least sound, as noted before, mildly interesting.

[lordcooper]

It held my interest for a few days, although I feel it would work better as an interactive novel.

[baruk]

Graven - I made a Twitter account (Ronald_Miasma), and after following Gravenous I was able to use actions on you. I've invited you over for a confession of fears, which ought to reduce my nightmares (you should do the same).

gimlet/JeffTesto/Blackadder - I just challenged you to a game of chess. Note that we both benefit whatever the result - we both get Sudden Insights which can be used to reduce nightmares.

A note about my Good Eggs list: if you friend these people on Facebook, be sure to add the message "Echo Bazaar" in order to distinguish yourself from the random nutters..

[Graven]

Yeah, I followed you on twitter too, then spent a night listening to your dreadful nightmarish tales. And beat you at chess  Hopefully I won't have to invite you over to whine about my nightmares as I also spent a while ignoring the cheery gentleman and that seemed to help.

Come on, people! We need more twitter-people here to play chess with