Full Light, Full Steam

Full Light, Full Steam (FLFS) is an independent role-playing game by Joshua BishopRoby. Its tagline is, "A roleplaying game with character," and it has it on several levels. The setting of the game is a post-Victorian space opera with steam-powered ships and life on Mercury, Venus, and Mars.

In the interest of full disclosure, BishopRoby and I have swapped reviews. His is of my game Super Console. Our goal was to give others an honest look at both games, and I have tried to be as objective as I can in this review. This is a review of the PDF version of the book, which you get along with the printed version for $30.

The book is arranged as follows, and I intend to go through it chapter by chapter.

• An introductory section
• For Queen and Country
• A Daring Tourist's Solagraphy
• Layman's Reports from the Royal Society
• The First Session
• Engineering the Situation
• Roleplay
• Checks
• Between Sessions
• Appendices

Introduction: to the genre, the book, and gaming, including a bit on what makes this game different.

For Queen and Country talks about the naval conventions and terminology that will be in common use in the Royal Astronomical Navy. There's also a good amount on other solar powers, the presence of women in the Navy, and the Tycho Accords that keep the peace. The pervasive Victorian viewpoint (such as women officers needing escorts at all times) was a very nice touch. This section and the two that follow are written from the point of view of characters inside the game. Some folks don't like game fiction used in such ways, but in my opinion it doesn't get in the way, and it's informative. It isn't the sort of imagery-laden stuff you see in Tribe 8, but it works well enough.

A Daring Tourist's Solagraphy is the story of a young woman officer as she travels across the solar system: Venus, Luna, Mars, Mercury, Vulcan, and the Belt. (For those unfamiliar with Vulcan, it's a once-proposed innermost planet that would take care of the irregularities in Mercury's orbit that come, in the real world, from corrections due to general relativity and the sun's quadrupole moment.) One can live on the surface of every one of these but the Moon and some smaller asteroids. The major powers on Earth all have their own territories and colonies around the inner system, and many places have their own indigenous life as well.

Layman's Reports from the Royal Society is a set of accounts of different technologies that are in common use on board the ships of Her Royal Majesty. The luminiferous ether, analytical engines ("Beehives," for BEs: Binary Elements), oxygen-maintaining horticulture, and other elements are discussed. This will no doubt come in useful for those playing engineers. I was a little disappointed that beekeeping did not involve actual bees, but I'll get over it.

The First Session is the start of the book's game mechanics. This section discusses character and team creation, which also covers making the group's ship or station, and their commanding officer - both done by the group as a whole. Characters have attributes and skills, as in most games, but the big thing here is thematic batteries. These are, in the game's own words, "a word or phrase, which describes an aspect of the character's personality, place in society, or role in the unfolding story." Each one is player-defined, and must have both positive and negative aspects. A few examples are given, like Competitive, Fever Genius, Gentleman, or Inquisitive. Batteries start off uncharged; you charge it by having it screw with your character's life, and discharge it for in-game benefits - you have to get yourself in trouble a little if you're going to show off later. The commanding officer has these as well, and even the ship, which is pretty cool. Thematic batteries are one of the best innovations to come out of FLFS, and I suspect that a few other games will pick them up in upcoming years and do similar things.

I should break for a second to mention something: FLFS promotes team play at every stage. There are not always specific mechanics to encourage this (unlike, say, Donjon or Universalis), and there's still a GM/Player separation, but everyone is encouraged to work together to create characters, spaceships, situations, and even antagonists. It's not just a one-time suggestion as many books have; it's in every single example and at all levels.

As much as I like the idea of thematic batteries, Engineering the Situation is perhaps the best, most helpful section in the entire book. I was quite happy that even an experienced GM like myself found many useful things in here about designing an adventure. The First Session gives a lot of ideas about different ways one might play the game, but this chapter tells you how to actually put them into action. There is some really solid advice for creating conflicts out of various character's thematic batteries, creating NPCs and other plot elements, and tying them together in interesting ways. This was not just abstract stuff, either - there were concrete, step-by-step methods to use that made a lot of sense. This beats out almost every GM advice section I've read.

The Roleplay chapter covers a few different areas. First are some suggestsion for your narration, whether you're playing or GMing. Second is the game's XP system, the Spoils Scrip (not a typo). It's an odd system that ties into the characters' thematic batteries, requires participation from all players, and also serves as a way to set the beginning and ends of a scene. Third is a discussion of direction, which gives suggestions as to when and how to hand off narration between players and GMs. While everyone gets to narrate, only the GM gets to interrupt without calling for a check of some kind. This chapter as a whole seems weaker than the last one, and I think I'd need to see some of the suggestions in action (especially setting scene lengths with the Scrip) before I made a final decision on it.

The Checks chapter hits the heavy-duty rules for conflict, the stuff one normally sees in most RPGs. FLFS uses stakes-based resolution, and uses a single roll to determine success or failure. The dangers of a check are always explicitly stated beforehand. Rolls are always done on four six-siders, with better attributes letting you pick higher numbers from your roll. There are some examples of both contested and uncontested rolls, difficulty levels for the uncontested ones, the effects of using thematic batteries (they let you pick higher dice), situational modifiers, and what happens when you fail a roll (you reduce your Health, Grace, Will, or the ship's Hull, to varying degrees depending on how badly you lost).

Note that this system resolves all contested events with single rolls, including combat. You can narrate all you like, but it all comes down to a single roll, so you had better get your narration to a climactic point before making that roll! On the plus side, no one dies on that single roll - your character might be in a temporary coma, but he or she will not die without your consent, and will no doubt be back in a later scene even if thrown out the airlock. Ditto for defeated antagonists, which really helps the game in my mind. There's nothing more annoying for a GM than creating a major "recurring" antagonist that the PCs kill in three seconds flat. As the game puts it, killing your opponents is "just not British." Ha.

The two-page Between Sessions is just that; what you can do between games and in the aftermath of your session. Feedback for the GM, changing your thematic batteries, spending spoils, etc.

The Appendices include some thanks and some inspirations. There's also an index (a welcome rarity these days), a character sheet, and a few sample characters. Oh, and ads for like a dozen other games.

The layout of the book is clean. There's more white space than it might need on the outer margin, but sidebars fit in there pretty well when they appear. The fonts work well. It looks like it would print out without a huge amount of stress on one's ink cartridge, but it's in 6x9 format, so there would either be some scaling or a lot of blank space. I imagine that the physical copy would work just fine. The art is somewhat cartoony; I think the book might benefit from a slightly more serious style.

Final Impressions

Full Light, Full Steam is a niche game with a lot of good writing and interesting mechanics. The Engineering the Situation chapter is, as I've said, one of the best advice sections I've ever seen. While there are other games (such as Space: 1889 and Forgotten Futures) that cover this same sort of genre, FLFS does it with more... well, more character. If you're not up for the reduced GM role or can't wrap your head around single-roll combat, you might want to pass on it until you can get in on a playtest and see whether it works for you. However, if you like the idea of the British navy in space, or if you're a game designer looking for good ways to write advice, this book is worth your money.

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