The Inside Scoop on Gaming

NOTE- I was surprised to find no reviews for Castle Falkenstein sourcebooks on RPGnet, despite the game's popularity and critical acclaim. Therefore, I have made it my mission to review all of them, though I make no promises as to when I'll get to them...

The full title of this book is "Comme Il Faut- All Things Right & Proper: A Castle Falkenstein Companion." Just in case you were wondering, "comme il faut" means...well, it implies a certain je ne sais quoi. ;-)

Anyway, this book is basically an all-purpose resource for running a Castle Falkenstein game set in New Europa, the "default" setting for the game. If you are not familiar with the overall concept or setting of Castle Falkenstein, then check out one of the reviews of the main book available on RPG.net. It contains heaps of setting information, "how to run a game"-type content, and even a fair bit of refined game mechanics. All-in-all, I'd say that this is the most useful sourcebook for Castle Falkenstein, and I would even go as far as to say that it is an indespensible resource for any Castle Falkenstein GM who is not an expert on the Victorian Era.

I will summarize and evaluate the book by section. There is no index, but the book is short and the granularity of the table of contents is pretty fine, so you shouldn't really need one.

The Style of a Lost Age

This section defines proper behavior and dress for the era, and even provides a guide for creating your own period costumes. Conveniently enough, a sidebar includes a list of catalogues and magazines that can provide inspiration and materials for assembling your own costume. This list of sources may be out-of-date, however.

This short section closes with an account of a "typical day in the life" of a Steam Age gentleman, and what a Steam Age home would look like.

Personally, I love this sort of section in RPGs. Some people feel that the "typical day" information is restrictive or "dead weight." If you are one of those people, you will probably not care for this book, as there is only more of that sort of thing down the line.

I wish all games with non-contemporary settings would give us this type of insight into the nitty-gritty of daily life.

Modes, Manners & Morals from A to Z

This section, the largest in the book, is jam-packed with more information on the "nitty-gritty" I referred to above. It includes more information that is essential if you wish to give your game a proper Victorian atmosphere and keep society from behaving like ours except with fantasy elements, steam technology, and funny clothes. For example, it describes the types of entertainments that high society people enjoyed at parties, it explains the "social calendar" concept, how to set up a "date" with someone, how to use callign cards, how to address a faerie, etc. It even provides more technical information, such a map of a typical gentleman's club and a typical country house, and extensive information on different modes of travel, including common rail and sea routes, and travel fares.

Again, many people may find this level of detail to be uneccessary, but I enjoyed it, and I suspect that most Castle Falkenstein fans enjoy the game largely to immerse themselves in the "proper atmosphere."

Rules of Engagement or Rules of the Game (the table of contents and the chapter heading disagree...tsk, tsk)

This section starts with a FAQ, answering questions which I thought were rather obvious, but maybe that's just me. It is short, in any case.

It also provides a few new abilities/skills and some new roles/professions, which are nice but nothing spectacular.

One innovative suggestion is the use of tarot cards to augment the usual playing-card mechanics of the game. Tarot cards can be included as "bonus" cards that provide special abilities. For example, the "Death" card allows the PC to cheat death once, and the "Lovers" card can make one NPC fall in love with the PC. This looks like it might be a fun thing to try if you're into that sort of "plot manipulation through game mechanics" thing.

Additionally, there is a bit about using the face cards of a regular playing card deck to randomly determine the race and basic personality of an NPC by looking at the suit and the face. I thought that this was a quick and clever way to create NPCs, especially in a game where "stats" and combat ability are not essential to most interactions.

Next we have some alternate "simplified" rules. They are simple in the sense that it eliminates the (very small amount of) number crunching involved in task resolution and damage calculation in Castle Falkenstein, and replaces it with two charts. One one chart, the y-axis is the difficulty of a task and the x-axis is your ability rank. Where they meet is the result of your attempt at the action. If you fail, it tells you what sort of card (or cards, I suppose) you need to succeed. The other chart cross-references the new "damage rank" of a weapon with one's Physique and hit location, and where they meet is the result in terms of how hurt you are ("wounded" or "scratched" instead of "5 hit points"). Whether you consider this more or less complicated than the standard mechanic is up to you. I don't think the default game mechanic is all that hard, and having to consult a chart seems as easy or as hard as adding up a few numbers to me. However, I think maximizing options without making fundamental changes to the game is always cool, as more options means the game will be palatable to more people.

That section is followed by an exhaustive list of period firearms, which is handy.

We also have conversions to and from the Interlock system of Mekton Z and Cyberpunk, which will probably be useful for some of you.

What follows is, IMHO, the most indespensible bit of game mechanic info in the book, the more detailed magic rules. Personally, I think that the section on magic in this book is far more useful than "The Book of Sigils" sourcebook. It explains how to determine the Thaumic Energy cost of spells based on things like range, # of targets, familiarity with the target (Very "magical"!), and basically how a spellcaster can use his or her knowledge.

Basically, a sorcerer can achieve almost anything in Castle Falkenstein...if it can be extrapolated from existing spells he or she is familiar with and if her or she can absorb the requisite amount of Thaumic Energy. This is no small limitation, because a given "spell region" around a ley line nexus will only have so much Thaumic Energy floating around at a given time, and other spellcasters could very well be drawing from the same pool.

There is also a small bit on cantrips (easy, small spells that all sorcerers automatically know) and wards, all of which look like useful additions to Castle Falkenstein to me.

At the end of the magic section, we are provided with a few "blue-collar" magical professions, if you will. These are practical-minded sorcerors that work for the Police, the Military, or as Healers. A logical extension of the existence of magic, IMHO.

Next up is an explanation of how one can run a "cardless" game of Castle Falkenstein, bascially comapring ability ranks to dificulty and using common sense to decide the result. The bulk of the section is taken up with descriptions of what a character with a given rank in a given common ability can do, which I found quite useful for running my game even though I used the system. (For example, with a "Connections" of [GR] you can "Get into any exclusive club. Know all of the local figures, officials, and luminaries. Know a few royalty by sight, but not personally.")

This section ends with a guide to running LARP events, including tips on such mundane (but important) things as choosing a location and LARp ettiquete. As Falkenstein is a popular LARP game, I suspect that many aspiring Hosts would find this useful.

Themes

This section describes several differen "themes" or "flavors" one can give a CF campaign. Genres such as sci-fi, horror, and military thriller are covered, and adventure ideas and sub-genres are included. Since CF can support many different genres, this section has good idea fodder and is useful for helping the Host focus a campaign a bit in a diverse setting like New Europa.

Maps

The final section includes late 19th-century maps of Munchen, Vienna, Paris, Berlin, and London. The maps are quite attractive, and very useful if you're like me and hate running a game in a city without a map in front of you.

Other Stuff

The art in this book is of very high quality, and very consistent because it is by one illustrator, Charles Dana Gibson. It fits the style of the game like a glove, because it looks very Victorian. The art fits the book so perfectly, what more can I say? I suppose I should mention that the book is entirely in white and shades of blue, so no color illustrations, but that didn't bother me at all.

There are a few typos here and there, but not nearly enough to be noticable (except two in the table of contents...) unless you're writing a review and looking for such things.

The book is pretty well-made, and unlike the main book, has not fallen apart and shows no sign of doing so.

Overall

I think that this is far and away the best CF supplement, so if you're only going to buy one of the books, buy this one. The setting content is excellent (thought I'm not an expert, so I can't make any claims about its accuracy) and my opinion of the game mechanics ranges from "that sounds like a cool idea but I'll stick to the usual way for now" to "wow, this makes magic so much clearer!" At the very least, Comme Il Faut provides elegant, optional ways to play without changing basic things like how characters are made.

If you don't play Castle Falkenstein, but are interested in any game with a Victorian or quasi-Victorian setting, you should find this book valuable as well. Heck, you could incorporate elements of the culture into an alien culture in a sci-fi game if you wanted.

Plus, it's less than $20 (I forget the price, I bought it some time ago) and packs all of that useful stuff into a mere 120 pages. Sadly, it is out of print, but I suspect they printed a lot of copies because it (along with "The Lost Notebooks of Leonardo DaVinci" and "The Steam Age," which are at the opposite end of the popularity scale) is the CF book I see most often on the shelves of gaming stores. Don't hold your breath looking for a CF section on the shelves, but poke around for it in the R.Talsorian section and anywhere that slim softcover gaming books are tucked away and you may get lucky.

Other game designers take note- This sort of cultural detail and "daily life" info would be a welcome addition to other games! It is probably more difficult to write something like this when writing about an entirely fictional culture, but this book is a great guide to what sorts of things make a gaming environment come alive.

Style: 5 (Excellent!)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Castle Falkenstein: Comme Il Faut
Author: Michael Pondsmith, Barrie Rosen, Hilary Ayers, Gilbert Milner, Ross Winn Category: game Company/Publisher: R. Talsorian Games Line: Castle Falkenstein Cost: $16 (?) Page count: 128 ISBN: 0-937279-55-2 SKU: CF6011 Playtest Review by The Metallian on 04/06/00. Genre tags: Fantasy Science_fiction Historical Horror Espionage Diceless Live-action	NOTE- I was surprised to find no reviews for Castle Falkenstein sourcebooks on RPGnet, despite the game's popularity and critical acclaim. Therefore, I have made it my mission to review all of them, though I make no promises as to when I'll get to them... The full title of this book is "Comme Il Faut- All Things Right & Proper: A Castle Falkenstein Companion." Just in case you were wondering, "comme il faut" means...well, it implies a certain je ne sais quoi. ;-) Anyway, this book is basically an all-purpose resource for running a Castle Falkenstein game set in New Europa, the "default" setting for the game. If you are not familiar with the overall concept or setting of Castle Falkenstein, then check out one of the reviews of the main book available on RPG.net. It contains heaps of setting information, "how to run a game"-type content, and even a fair bit of refined game mechanics. All-in-all, I'd say that this is the most useful sourcebook for Castle Falkenstein, and I would even go as far as to say that it is an indespensible resource for any Castle Falkenstein GM who is not an expert on the Victorian Era. I will summarize and evaluate the book by section. There is no index, but the book is short and the granularity of the table of contents is pretty fine, so you shouldn't really need one. The Style of a Lost Age This section defines proper behavior and dress for the era, and even provides a guide for creating your own period costumes. Conveniently enough, a sidebar includes a list of catalogues and magazines that can provide inspiration and materials for assembling your own costume. This list of sources may be out-of-date, however. This short section closes with an account of a "typical day in the life" of a Steam Age gentleman, and what a Steam Age home would look like. Personally, I love this sort of section in RPGs. Some people feel that the "typical day" information is restrictive or "dead weight." If you are one of those people, you will probably not care for this book, as there is only more of that sort of thing down the line. I wish all games with non-contemporary settings would give us this type of insight into the nitty-gritty of daily life. Modes, Manners & Morals from A to Z This section, the largest in the book, is jam-packed with more information on the "nitty-gritty" I referred to above. It includes more information that is essential if you wish to give your game a proper Victorian atmosphere and keep society from behaving like ours except with fantasy elements, steam technology, and funny clothes. For example, it describes the types of entertainments that high society people enjoyed at parties, it explains the "social calendar" concept, how to set up a "date" with someone, how to use callign cards, how to address a faerie, etc. It even provides more technical information, such a map of a typical gentleman's club and a typical country house, and extensive information on different modes of travel, including common rail and sea routes, and travel fares. Again, many people may find this level of detail to be uneccessary, but I enjoyed it, and I suspect that most Castle Falkenstein fans enjoy the game largely to immerse themselves in the "proper atmosphere." Rules of Engagement or Rules of the Game (the table of contents and the chapter heading disagree...tsk, tsk) This section starts with a FAQ, answering questions which I thought were rather obvious, but maybe that's just me. It is short, in any case. It also provides a few new abilities/skills and some new roles/professions, which are nice but nothing spectacular. One innovative suggestion is the use of tarot cards to augment the usual playing-card mechanics of the game. Tarot cards can be included as "bonus" cards that provide special abilities. For example, the "Death" card allows the PC to cheat death once, and the "Lovers" card can make one NPC fall in love with the PC. This looks like it might be a fun thing to try if you're into that sort of "plot manipulation through game mechanics" thing. Additionally, there is a bit about using the face cards of a regular playing card deck to randomly determine the race and basic personality of an NPC by looking at the suit and the face. I thought that this was a quick and clever way to create NPCs, especially in a game where "stats" and combat ability are not essential to most interactions. Next we have some alternate "simplified" rules. They are simple in the sense that it eliminates the (very small amount of) number crunching involved in task resolution and damage calculation in Castle Falkenstein, and replaces it with two charts. One one chart, the y-axis is the difficulty of a task and the x-axis is your ability rank. Where they meet is the result of your attempt at the action. If you fail, it tells you what sort of card (or cards, I suppose) you need to succeed. The other chart cross-references the new "damage rank" of a weapon with one's Physique and hit location, and where they meet is the result in terms of how hurt you are ("wounded" or "scratched" instead of "5 hit points"). Whether you consider this more or less complicated than the standard mechanic is up to you. I don't think the default game mechanic is all that hard, and having to consult a chart seems as easy or as hard as adding up a few numbers to me. However, I think maximizing options without making fundamental changes to the game is always cool, as more options means the game will be palatable to more people. That section is followed by an exhaustive list of period firearms, which is handy. We also have conversions to and from the Interlock system of Mekton Z and Cyberpunk, which will probably be useful for some of you. What follows is, IMHO, the most indespensible bit of game mechanic info in the book, the more detailed magic rules. Personally, I think that the section on magic in this book is far more useful than "The Book of Sigils" sourcebook. It explains how to determine the Thaumic Energy cost of spells based on things like range, # of targets, familiarity with the target (Very "magical"!), and basically how a spellcaster can use his or her knowledge. Basically, a sorcerer can achieve almost anything in Castle Falkenstein...if it can be extrapolated from existing spells he or she is familiar with and if her or she can absorb the requisite amount of Thaumic Energy. This is no small limitation, because a given "spell region" around a ley line nexus will only have so much Thaumic Energy floating around at a given time, and other spellcasters could very well be drawing from the same pool. There is also a small bit on cantrips (easy, small spells that all sorcerers automatically know) and wards, all of which look like useful additions to Castle Falkenstein to me. At the end of the magic section, we are provided with a few "blue-collar" magical professions, if you will. These are practical-minded sorcerors that work for the Police, the Military, or as Healers. A logical extension of the existence of magic, IMHO. Next up is an explanation of how one can run a "cardless" game of Castle Falkenstein, bascially comapring ability ranks to dificulty and using common sense to decide the result. The bulk of the section is taken up with descriptions of what a character with a given rank in a given common ability can do, which I found quite useful for running my game even though I used the system. (For example, with a "Connections" of [GR] you can "Get into any exclusive club. Know all of the local figures, officials, and luminaries. Know a few royalty by sight, but not personally.") This section ends with a guide to running LARP events, including tips on such mundane (but important) things as choosing a location and LARp ettiquete. As Falkenstein is a popular LARP game, I suspect that many aspiring Hosts would find this useful. Themes This section describes several differen "themes" or "flavors" one can give a CF campaign. Genres such as sci-fi, horror, and military thriller are covered, and adventure ideas and sub-genres are included. Since CF can support many different genres, this section has good idea fodder and is useful for helping the Host focus a campaign a bit in a diverse setting like New Europa. Maps The final section includes late 19th-century maps of Munchen, Vienna, Paris, Berlin, and London. The maps are quite attractive, and very useful if you're like me and hate running a game in a city without a map in front of you. Other Stuff The art in this book is of very high quality, and very consistent because it is by one illustrator, Charles Dana Gibson. It fits the style of the game like a glove, because it looks very Victorian. The art fits the book so perfectly, what more can I say? I suppose I should mention that the book is entirely in white and shades of blue, so no color illustrations, but that didn't bother me at all. There are a few typos here and there, but not nearly enough to be noticable (except two in the table of contents...) unless you're writing a review and looking for such things. The book is pretty well-made, and unlike the main book, has not fallen apart and shows no sign of doing so. Overall I think that this is far and away the best CF supplement, so if you're only going to buy one of the books, buy this one. The setting content is excellent (thought I'm not an expert, so I can't make any claims about its accuracy) and my opinion of the game mechanics ranges from "that sounds like a cool idea but I'll stick to the usual way for now" to "wow, this makes magic so much clearer!" At the very least, Comme Il Faut provides elegant, optional ways to play without changing basic things like how characters are made. If you don't play Castle Falkenstein, but are interested in any game with a Victorian or quasi-Victorian setting, you should find this book valuable as well. Heck, you could incorporate elements of the culture into an alien culture in a sci-fi game if you wanted. Plus, it's less than $20 (I forget the price, I bought it some time ago) and packs all of that useful stuff into a mere 120 pages. Sadly, it is out of print, but I suspect they printed a lot of copies because it (along with "The Lost Notebooks of Leonardo DaVinci" and "The Steam Age," which are at the opposite end of the popularity scale) is the CF book I see most often on the shelves of gaming stores. Don't hold your breath looking for a CF section on the shelves, but poke around for it in the R.Talsorian section and anywhere that slim softcover gaming books are tucked away and you may get lucky. Other game designers take note- This sort of cultural detail and "daily life" info would be a welcome addition to other games! It is probably more difficult to write something like this when writing about an entirely fictional culture, but this book is a great guide to what sorts of things make a gaming environment come alive. Style: 5 (Excellent!) Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Castle Falkenstein: Comme Il Faut