Just days into its Kickstarter campaign, Sunless Sea developer Failbetter’s Fallen London tabletop RPG adaptation has smashed its crowdfunding goal, raising over half a million pounds.
Fallen London, if you’re unfamiliar, is a free-to-play browser-based narrative adventure that’s been steadily expanding since its launch in 2009. At its heart is an alternate-universe version of Victorian London that was stolen by bats and carried to a vast underground cavern system deep beneath the Earth’s surface – the centre of a darkly whimsical universe Failbetter has revisited in three standalone games: Sunless Sea, Sunless Sky, and Mask of Rose.
All three of those titles started life as Kickstarter campaigns, but for its latest crowdfunding endeavour, Failbetter is doing something a little bit different. Working in conjunction with Magpie Games, it’s stepping away from the digital realm to crowdfund an officially licensed tabletop roleplaying game based on the Fallen London universe.
Being a Kickstarter, there are a variety of stretch goals and reward tiers, but the meat of the campaign consists of the Fallen London roleplaying game Core Book and the Guide to London supplement. Between them both, players can find all the rules, setting details, plot hooks, character types, conflicts, concerns, and dynamic systems – plus a sample ‘venture’ – they’ll need as they start and chart their journey through the cavernous Neath.
There’s obviously a lot more nuance to the Fallen London tabletop RPG than a single paragraph can do justice to, and there’s plenty more detail (alongside a video play-through) on its crowdfunding page. And what’s there is clearly resonating with potential backers; the campaign has already smashed its $50K funding target – raising more than $626K, or a little over half a million pounds – at the time of writing. And that’s with 28 days still to go.
As to what Failbetter might be planning next in the world of video games following 2023’s darkly romantic visual novel Mask of the Rose, the developer hasn’t yet said. But the studio, which recently celebrated its 15th birthday, continues to expand Fallen London and it’s also confirmed an unannounced game is in the works.