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Flying Circus - Core Rulebook $35.00
Average Rating:4.9 / 5
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Flying Circus - Core Rulebook
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Flying Circus - Core Rulebook
Publisher: Newstand Press
by Brenton [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/16/2023 02:55:00

The author clearly loves planes and the study of early air combat, and it shows in the builder, combat rules, and gorgeous plane renderings. There's a beautiful Miyazaki-style flying adventure game in this book.

Unfortunately, that game is buried under a lot of questionable worldbuilding choices--why are there nazis in this emphatically-WWI-era game? Why are they described as "monsters" when the Fishers are supposed to be about proudly reclaiming the "monstrous", and all the cited sources emphasize the importance of humanizing the enemy?--along with some truly terrible art (conveniently missing from the preview). The one Miyazaki-style image of a woman falling out of a plane only serves as a reminder of what this game should have been; the rest (again, aside from the excellent rendered planes) is straight off DeviantArt.

Fortunately, the setting is easy to swap out for something more in line with the sources, and the few bits of out-of-place magic are confined to the setting and a playbook or two. The core of the game remains intact, though I do wish the aircraft construction rules were included in the books and not on a third-party website with a necessarily limited lifespan.

I highly recommend reading through a copy of this game: the dogfighting and stress mechanics because they form a genuinely good core gameplay loop, and the rest as a cautionary tale. I do not recommend anything but the PDF copy unless you strongly prefer physical media and it'd cost more to print yourself.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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Flying Circus - Core Rulebook
Publisher: Newstand Press
by Callum R. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/12/2023 22:16:26

TL;DR -- I advise trying this game: but aware; it can be pretty heavy going when it doesn’t really need to be. There are a lot of moving parts to learn: some of those moving parts don’t mix very well with some of the other parts, but as an experience, it is interesting enough that I definitely suggest giving it a go!

This is an interesting title that I want to love, but find my opinion of it lowered every time I play and butt up against random walls of needless complexity that feel out of place with the tone of the game and the engine it runs on.

The most glaring issue is that, while the silumationst style air combat is gritty and detailed... it is heavy: I'm sure you could achieve the exactly same level of air combat fun with fewer rules.

As an example from the manual, "I dive in, Attack, and pull up afterwards" requires six moves to pull off: Altitude Adjustment, Open Fire, Pull Up, and Altitude Adjustment, Extend, Cool Off..... why!? Is it more fun than just using one or two moves? It’s certainly more simulationist - but is simulationism necessary for a tabletop roleplaying game?

The answer is "maybe". Some folk like simulationism. Heck, even I like it - but when I play a PbtA game, I want a PbtA Narratively driven experience. I don't necessarily want to track how much speed I gained during the decent and how that impacted the engine and how that affected the performance and how that performance translated to G-forces and how that G-forces affected certain moves (and the speed factor (the 10's place in the speed dial) and altitude factor (10's place in the altitude dial) affected the performance of the engine.

These are all things that could have EASILY have been handled by the partial and complete success conditions on a single move. Clearly, in this case, the author wanted to create a detailed, rule-heavy system for dogfighting, and that is alright... but I still ask whether it is better than the alternative. Why is it this complicated? What does it bring to the table?

I can see why they used the underlying PbtA engine: it works amazingly for the "down time" in between the sorties. You gain stress flying your plane and you destress to gain experience on the ground, and it's mostly a narrative experience, and PbtA is PERFECT for this. You then get narrative>simulationist whiplash as soon as you're in the air again and you need to use six moves to dive and attack someone.

So... Now that you've flown a few sorties and got some money behind you from your mercenary work, you decide you want to upgrade your plane...

Well... remember how the air combat is simulationist? There is so much number crunching behind the scenes, that they need an entire applet to handle creating a plane.

It is safe to say that this is really a "Powered by the Plane Builder" game. The builder is incredibly granular, incredibly detailed, and very dense. It is a very powerful tool to design your aircraft... you can design every aspect of your aircraft - let me quickly run through one I just made. My plane has a windscreen, x1 collimated gunsight and telescopic sight, uses a custom engine with power 50, mass 3, drag 3, reliability 12, cooling 13, overspeed 128, fuel consumption 1, altitude 0-49, torque 4, rumble 0, and cost 23 - when combined with the radiator and no cowls (it is a pod mounted engine of course) with a gear(4) propeller, it has 50 power, a mass of 3, drag 11, reliability 8, visibility -2, overspeed 384, cost 27, raw strain 0, and requires 2 sections of aircraft. The radiator, if you're wondering, is a box-type, and is inline, uses mineral oil, and is hardened. The aircraft is made from four sections, using wooden spars as the frame type, and moulded plywood for the skin. The tail is also wooden spars and moulded plywood - this is a monologue design. This gives it 33 structure, 9 drag, and cost 9. The wings, while we are on the subject, are unstaggered, and shoulder mounted plywood wings with an area of 19 and a span of 11, 0 dihedral and 0 anhedral. They also have a gear-level wing which is made from cloth canvas (rather than plywood and has an area of 9 and a span of 8. I'm not sure why. It has 1 tailplane and 1 tailfin (drag 9 total) and for control surfaces uses flaps in all categories except flaps and slats. It has 2 steel N-struts and 1 wooden V strut providing reinforcement, and is wire supported too, giving a raw strain of 93, a structure of 24, drag 14, mass 3, cost 5, and an aircraft max strain of 36. It uses 1 internal fuselage tank, and.... somehow has 125 fuel. Not sure how it worked that out but it did. It has a boat hull, and, to summarise, the final aircraft costs 55, with 5 upkeep costs. It has a full fuel boost stat of 8, 96 handling, a rate of climb of 10, a stall speed of 5, and a top speed of 28. At half fuel, the boost increases to 9, handling remains unchanged, and the rate of climb increases by 1. Propulsion-wise, it has a drop-off of 11, overspeed of 100 (WOAH! that is high), 125 fuel uses (also very high. 7 is what you'd generally use in real game terms), 8 reliability (cool!) and an ideal altitude of 0-49. Aerodynamics, stability is -1, energy loss is 5, turn bleed is 1, and uses a boat hull for landing and it's flammable. Survivability the crash safety is -1; toughness 12, max strain of 36, and communications is loud yelling. It is a sesquiplane. It has 1/0 crew members, with a visibility of -5, attack modifier of 1, escape 2, flight stress 1.

Try saying that on one breath. There is no way you could have made that plane without that builder.

That was sarcasm; I was able to make my own condensed plane builder using a single table and a modularised design system to make it fit on two A4 pages.

I done that because it turns out my players don't need the level of detail the plane builder provides. It turns out they don't want that level of detail... because it turns out they will immediately abstractify the aircraft into some simple, game-specific terms that means they never needed that level of detail in the first place… not for this game. If they wanted that level of simulationism, they’d have gone elsewhere.

"So, if the aircraft builder is so complicated... and you get a good 50 odd aircraft in the free aircraft catalogue... why bother with the builder?"

Well, the problem is that you need the builder to upgrade your aircraft... to quote the manual: Upgrade your plane by making the changes you want in the Aircraft Builder. The cost of the upgrade is the difference between your plane’s price new and the post-upgrade price, minus any parts you provided. There’s a minimum charge of 5þ: either labour cost or rent on a hangar.

You might think you could simply swap out a gun or two and call it a day, but technically speaking, doing so would change your plane's stats. Let’s just upgrade our basic machinegun to a light machinegun (slightly lighter... probably... it doesn't actually say how much lighter it is in the manual)... Here we are! So... Boost went from 8 to 10, the stall speed decreased by 1, the rate of climb increased by 2, and the max strain went up by 1. I have notably changed the specs plane by swapping out the MG for an LMG.

Those were weapons… those are simple – woe betides anyone even trying to guess how many changes you need to make if you change the engine out! It's great! It's detailed and very well developed... is it what my players want for a tabletop game? An online applet that I guarantee you will not last forever? Nope. They wanted a game for the tabletop.

How can it be that a game like "Infinite Galaxies" allows you to build entire spaceships using only a few pages of parts and a character sheet for it - but building a wooden frame with paper wings is no numbers-heavy that it needs an app to handle the calculations?

The answer is that "somebody wanted a simulation of aircraft and then glued it onto a PbtA system to try and provide a framework for it”. There is the kernel of something great here... The setting is great... the on-the-ground stuff is great... the cycle of gaining stress in flight and destressing is great... and then there is a cumbersome air combat system that doesn't really add anything tacked on top of an online builder that you need if you want to get the most out of this game. The airborne combat is granular enough that it undermines the narrative power of the PbtA style moves – and the narrative power of the PbtA style moves is hampered by the number crunching of the simulation side. Neither play to the strengths of the other – they feel at odds at each other, and the complexity of the plane builder exemplifies this disparity very well.

The thing to remember is that, while I may prefer lighter rules, and feel the tone of the game would improve by simplifying the air combat rules and making them even more narrative driven (dungeonworld or infinite galaxies level of lightweight), the author clearly didn't. The author felt their medium-to-heavyweight ruleset for air combat is what they wanted - and credit to them, it is a robust air combat system that is really good - one of the best I've ever experienced, in fact... and I respect them for that

Despite my criticisms, I heartily advise trying this Powered-by-the-Airplane-Builder game; but be aware, it can be pretty heavy going when it doesn’t really need to be. There are a lot of moving parts to learn: some of those moving parts don’t neccesarily mix well with some of the other parts, but as an experience, it is interesting and exciting enough that I intend to run it again (with a few house mods to replace the plane builder… just to make the experience of "playing with planes" less of a chore.)

--EDIT-- I decided that everything I said is both a pro and a con. It is heavy and it is definitely "a lot" - but I'm not sure that "a lot" is actually better...

Pros: can be simulationist. Cons: can be simulationist.

The game is very, very good, but not neccesarily great - your mileage may vary!

Happy flying!

CONTACT! SWITCH ON! ::makes airplane noises as I fly off into the distance::



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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Flying Circus - Core Rulebook
Publisher: Newstand Press
by M a. h. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/20/2022 07:10:44

best PBTA playbook Ive even seen. all the characters have their own specific niche and playstyle. aerial combat is also fantacticly simulated without the use of grids and maps



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Flying Circus - Core Rulebook
Publisher: Newstand Press
by John R. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/28/2022 08:06:48

I really love airplanes. In real life, I work on aircraft as a mechanic, and I am also deeply intrested in aircraft and aircraft history. I really love the way this was put together, from the strain of flying the old byplanes to the types of characters to gas masks and there's a lot of space in here for some really good stories. It really allows players to zero in on the personal struggles of their own characters.

My one gripe was going to be with the plane builder. I was a little dubious about all these links to a program which may not exist in a few years, so I went to the plane builder and looked over all the rules. What I found was a fairly complex but well put together system (which is still in development) that allows anyone to build any plane.

And I do mean any plane (well, nearly)

Like I mentioned, the web app for the plane builder is still in testing, but it does work right now and has all of the aircraft in this book, but there's space to create your own whole aircraft with it. If you have enough time and access to a Jane's book or some other archive of WWI-WWII planes, I think you could probably make some of those aircraft from other Eras, or some Crimson Skies aircraft if you're into that universe. Really well put together so far.

I should back this up by saying you don't actually need the plane builder to play the game you can totally just play the game with the rules presented in the main book and the plane catologue and the weapons list. You don't need to bother with trying to build your own engines. The game stands on its own, but there's a highly crunchy system to let you homebrew some planes.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Flying Circus - Core Rulebook
Publisher: Newstand Press
by Kai M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/26/2021 14:39:42

A truly impressive tabletop role-playing game that manages to combine excellent air combat rules with mechanics that really support character- and narrative-driven storytelling. Overall, it does a great job of explaining the rules in a way that makes them fairly intuitive to play with even though they're significantly more complex than most other Powered by the Apocalypse games. Overall, quite well made; and the setting and premise of the system are very compelling, too. I also want to note that its handling of queer, poc, &c. characters and themes is quite possibly the best I've ever seen any TTRPG do.

And the physical book is not only beautiful, it's also a convenient size and shape to hold in your hand, which I've found to be quite the blessing.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Flying Circus - Core Rulebook
Publisher: Newstand Press
by Roderick H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/24/2021 05:08:14

I'm really impressed by this game.

The core concept is great - the beauty of a Ghibli movie, emotional messiness of Skins and nail-biting, thrilling early air combat - and while there are a few points where I trip over rule phrasing somewhat (particularly exotic weapons) it's 99% beautifully well executed.

In fact, if you are a crunch-minded person who's not got that much time, it's the perfect game for you because it requires almost no game prep; although a little campaign prep is a good idea to make things more satisfying, individual missions and enemies can be created on the fly with minimum fuss.

The playbooks for PC's are designed to gradually get closer to each other, through emotional (and optional physical) intimacy, whilst simultaneously causing great heartache and drama at every turn and wrecking up every town the players go to. being a total hot mess is compulsory, and leaning into the drama really ups the fun.

The core of air combat - carefully manage your altitude and speed, lose track of the foe through tunnel vision, hope that your plane doesn't fall apart from maneuvering too hard - are incredibly true to the era being emulated, as is the stress generated from flying in those conditions. The fact that the game revolves around building and relieving stress is just perfectly illustrative of the life of young people under those circumstances, and the fact it's about gradually forming a super-bond of friendship whilst living like a total trainwreck is just so very true to one's late teens/early 20's. Not enough games care about characters emotions, bonds, and mental health.

This game really does.

the book is gorgeous, the emotional heart of the game shines through, and the free online tools are incredibly handy.

Oh, and did I mention that the planes are awesome? because they are Super Goddamn Cool.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Flying Circus - Core Rulebook
Publisher: Newstand Press
by CHRISTIAN M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/10/2021 13:59:58

Flying Circus is a game that combines in depth aerial combat in a fantastic world, brought to life with beautiful artwork. It's a world of adventure, where the great industrial cities are now poisoned and ruined, leaving a world of small towns and villages linked together by daring pilots.

Flying Circus captures the daring and transgressive nature of aviation pioneers. Whether you want to deliver mail while dodging giant eagles and dragons, or battle against aces high above fae haunted forests, Flying Circus can do it all.

Plus you can be a fish person.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Flying Circus - Core Rulebook
Publisher: Newstand Press
by Jeffrey S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/08/2021 09:32:53

a wonderful setting, that I find does characher led stories easily and is fun and original and easy to tune to your groups taste. Erika has made a crunchy PbtA game, and I can not praise it highly enough



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Flying Circus - Core Rulebook
Publisher: Newstand Press
by Charles F. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/07/2021 20:51:18

This is such an awesome game; loads of fun and lots of potential to play with fun ideas. I've had a blast with it already; looking forward to pick up a hardback for myself, and a couple others for the local library.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Flying Circus - Core Rulebook
Publisher: Newstand Press
by Brian J. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/01/2021 00:12:38

Flying Circus is a breath of fresh air in RPGs. Not just to mention the excellent air combat system, which gives a good sense of tension and feels nice to run, gives good vibes of turning and burning. But the well-thought out pacing and session loop, and especially top marks for a creative and compelling world to back drop the Party's adventures.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Flying Circus - Core Rulebook
Publisher: Newstand Press
by Roy B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/28/2021 18:36:35

The setting is the first thing that drew me in. A light fantasy post apocalypse world where you fly biplanes! Count me in!

At first, the gameplay may seem a little crunchy and overwhelming but once you get to playing, it has an amazing flow.

Overall, I totally recommend this great game.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Flying Circus - Core Rulebook
Publisher: Newstand Press
by Michael B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/28/2021 16:38:33

Flying Circus is a heavily customized Powered by the Apocalypse game about being a dashing flying ace and also being a queer as hell kid in a fantastic interwar Europe inspired by the soft apocalypse aesthetic of Studio Ghibli films. It's clearly a labor of love, with design, writing, and art almost entirely done by Erika Chappell (other artists did a handful of the pictures), and is physically a gorgeous book. I backed it on Kickstarter ages ago, and I'm quite happy with the final product. The game is fantastical, creative, and hits its themes square on. So how about we take our shirts off and play some volleyball, Iceman?

There's a lot to love about this game. The art is great, the writing has a wonderful level of snark. One of my favorites is an aside that pilots, like babies, lack object permanence, so feel free to have threats disappear and reappear as needed. The setting is eminently playable, a hostile wilderness surrounding isolated towns in the wreckage of a Great War which smashed all the nations of the world with poison gas and autonomous superweapons. Magic is real, and fae ask for cruel bargains while dragons patrol the skies. The old is dead and discredited, and the young are picking up the pieces. Flying Circuses are mercenary bands who shoot trouble and carry out jobs of relative morality. The arc of the game is divided between flying missions and on the ground drama, blowing off stress with wild parties and brawls until they burn through the good will of the locals and have to move on.

That said, this is also a solo project, and there is a little turbulence. To have an aside for a moment, my typology of RPG player motivations breaks down to Explorers, Masters, and Dramatists. Explorers want to experience a cool story, with plot twists, interesting characters, and fantastic vistas. Masters want to choose cleverly, picking the right options and tactics to crush their enemies and earn victory. And Dramatists want to experience emotional states which are risky or inaccessible in mundane life. Any pbtA game is heavy on Explore and Drama, and Flying Circus has enough new mechanics to make it at least medium on Mastery.

The twin beating hearts of the game are clearly Dogfight and Indulging in Vice. There is a whole detailed subsystem of altitude, speed, ordinance, maneuverability, and damage, but it mostly boils down to Dogfight and some ancillary moves around Dogfight. Tactical aerial combat is very hard to do well, and admittedly it might play better than it reads. I don't expect the game to break out a full X-Wing tactical dogfight subsystem, and while it seems like both maneuverability fighters and energy fighters are possible in the system, I was hoping for a little bit more depth along the lines of John Boyd's Aerial Attack Study . As with all narrative games, it comes down to the creativity and skill of the GM, which can be hard if combat is supposed to be a regular thing. The best escape from this trap are missions with a focus other than downing the other side.

Indulge Vice is one of those ideas which I have mixed feelings about. It's a core part of Blades in the Dark, where it's a d6 used to replenish a Stress track. Go over, and you overindulge with a consequence. In play with BitD, I tend to abstract out downtime more than I should, so Vice doesn't get centered properly. In Flying Circus, you get up to 5 chances to Indulge Vice, and each chance gives a flat 1d20 roll, where results above 10 remove stress, and 3 or more results below 10 results in a consequence. Removing stress gives you XP, which can be spent on advances. Since there's more involved mechanics on Vice, it's harder to skip (good), but it's also less reliable than BitD's Stress, and it's tied to advancement (bad). And from a historical note, the life expectancy of World War I pilots was measured in days. Your PCs are much more durable, in fact they won't die without explicit permission. While one of the ptbA Agendas here is to show that glory and tragedy are two sides of the same coin, mechanical support for that theme is on the lighter side.

One of the strengths of ptbA is the system's laser focus on the Conversation At The Table (caps intended). The 2d6+k system, and the outcomes for each move, structure how the game works and gets the system out of the way. Flying Circus uses 2d10+k, and there are a lot more Hold X Forwards and special cases than is typical in the genre. The system is definitely more; I'm not sure that it's better.

I had a ton of fun reading Flying Circus, and I'm definitely more likely to play it than Night Witches. If you're willing to buy into the premise, it's looks like a solid game. But there are spots where I look a little askance. And I recognize it's not entirely fair criticism, I Have Opinions About Game Mechanics and air power. My favorite pilots are the jet-propelled renegades of The Right Stuff and When Thunder Rolled, not the barnstormers of WW1. I wish I could say Flying Circus is perfect, but very good will have to suffice.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Flying Circus - Core Rulebook
Publisher: Newstand Press
by Iv R. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/01/2020 11:02:57

This game is big and crunchy and if you are into big and crunchy games it will be amazing and more than you expect. The author has constantly updated the text polishing specific details and rebalancing, which is amazing. And you get so much content. From the art to the many many pre made airplanes, or the online plane builder. It really is an amazing game



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Flying Circus - Core Rulebook
Publisher: Newstand Press
by Whit C. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/27/2020 17:05:14

This game is simply amazing! It pushes so many specific buttons of mine in the right way. Story-forward, imaginative, inclusive, with super detailed flight simulation rules. Who doesn't want to be a magical fishperson flying a biplane against dragons and sky pirates!?



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Flying Circus - Core Rulebook
Publisher: Newstand Press
by Ferrell R. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/21/2020 11:50:01

Loving the imagry and i'm excited to get this on the table online!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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