Customer Reviews

Castle Falkenstein: High Adventure in the Steam Age

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I just got home from an enjoyable evening of Castle Falkenstein. At some point, I realized that we had been playing happily for a few hours, and nobody had cracked a rulebook. We did end up consulting the books a few times, but it never interfered with the flow of the game. Having used several other roleplaying systems, starting with the original AD&D way back when, I was accustomed to lots of charts, tables, and arguments about the rules. Rules-heavy gaming systems may strive to make the game more realistic, but can make it more complicated instead. The CF rules are so simple, so elegant, that as players can concentrate on the actual ROLEPLAYING of their roleplaying game. How wonderful! How novel! If you don't like the Steam Age setting of Castle Falkenstein, the rules are quite adaptable to other milieu-- our game is a 1930s pulp adventure, and the CF rules are serving quite nicely. In short, you should look elsewhere if you want a lot of rules, but new and experienced gamers alike should check out Castle Falkenstein if they want to focus on good roleplaying.

The game is excellet - the kind of great game that sadly does not sell as well as it should just because it's not mainstream. Lacking to get 5 stars is some better layout (some text is unreadable because it overlaps images), but I still very much recommend the game - if you like anything steampunk, victorian or just want a different roleplaying game - make sure this one is in your collection.

CF is quite revolutionary. It doesn't follow the standard format: it's presented as the journal of Tom Olam, a graphics designer from our world who gets dragged to New Europa (the game's setting) by a powerful sorcerer and the King of the Fae. It uses dice in place of cards, which really helps to set a Victorian flavor. For God's sake, it doesn't use standard Attributes and Skills!

The setting, New Europa, is fantastic: the year is 1870, but magic, faeries and steamtech make it quite different to our own Europe. Bayer is a significant power in New Europa's political scenario thanks to it's alliance with the faerie and its control over magitech. Prussia is the Big Villain, trying to conquer smaller nations such as Bayer. France is ruled by a descendant of Napoleon and has Jules Verne as its Science Minister.

If there's a problem with the book, it's the lack of info on Southern Europe (Spain, Portugal and Italy) and the rest of the world.