"but wait, David," I hear you cry. "Why five stars for a PBTA game? Did you not swear an ETERNAL BLOOD OATH against PBTA when it killed your parents?"

It's true, PBTA did kill my parents and burned down my family farm, then chained me to the wheel of pain for 20 years. But Flying Circus has finally broken me free, not only of my physical chains, but the chains of hatred as well. And to explain how, lets disregard the setting (which is fantastic, but many PBTA games have fantastic settings) and instead look at what makes this game so much better than the average PBTA game and, in fact, better than MOST roleplaying games period.

Firstly, lets talk about resources. In this game, you are playing bisexual biplane b'pilots (who may or may not be thiny vieled She-Ra expies), doing merc work in a soft-apocalpyse (so, the cities are destroyed, but the rural countryside is mostly untouched - if overrun by brigands and pirates and monsters.) The primary focus of the game is those flying combat. Where a great deal of PBTA games would have a move like, say...

Roll 2d6+Fuckill. On a hit, you fucking kill a vaugely defined amorphous chunk of bad guys that may be one guy or an entire army depending on whether the GM's blowing north by northwest. On a partial hit, you do the same, but worse. On a miss, the GM sets your hair on fire. Not your character's hair. Yours. And the way most of the probability curves work out for PBTA style games, you've got, like, a pretty good shot per roll to let the GM set your hair on fire or explode the puppy orphanage. And that's if you're good at your stat. Heaven help you if you have a +0 or a -1!

Flying Circus ditches 2d6s in favor of 2d10s, and has stats as high as 10. It also has multiple systems by which you can get advantage (far more generously than I've seen in many PBTA games.) But what's more important, it TIES A LOT OF ROLLS TO RESOURCES. The go to move for killing a motherfucker in the sky is "Dogfight", which requires you to expend Speed. You get Speed by losing altitude or pushing your engine (which have their own interesting subsystems as engines take wear, and as the ground gets closer.) The more speed you spend, the more you can lean into a turn, the higher your bonuses, the more likely you'll drop yourself right on some Goth bastard's tail to shoot him to pieces.

The combination of a more generous probabiltiy curve (I don't actually know if it is from a mathy perspective, all I can say is that it felt more fair, which is what actually matters!) and the ability to wager resources to improve your chances already creates a delightful tension in the mechanics that is just...missing from most PBTA games I've played. In those games, the tension is only "will the dice fuck me, or will I manage to not die." Which isn't a good feeling. I like rolling dice, and game systems that discourage you from rolling dice aren't my cup of dice.

But wait, the mechanical excellence continues: Once you actually SHOOT at the bad guys, gunfire has a delightfully wide liminal space of effectiveness to ineffectiveness - it's very rarely a "complete miss" or a "complete hit" happens, and even those possibilities are modified yet more by more interesting, engaging choices. Did you focus purely on the enemy (thus opening yourself up to a hard move from the GM) and thus get a to choose where your crit location is? Did you load your machine guns with incindiary bullets, so your shots through the wing set the enemy plane on fire? Do you have FREAKING LASERS on your plane? Cause you can have LASERS too, those are helpful.

The end result of these mechanical choices - and a bunch of similarly well thought out systems - turns air combat into a high flying, high thrills, high stake adventure where you have meaningful choices every round, get stuck into dangerous situations with regularity, but you also never feel like you're being cheated. The game also sidesteps a thematic issue that can crop up in some PBTA games where a previously undescribed threat (bears) snaps into or out of the quantum substrate depending on your rolls. Whiff the perception check, bears. Succeed the perception check, no bears. Well, unlike, say, a game where you're a bunch of boring "adventurers" on this "ground" i've heard so much about, in Flying Cirucs, you're sexy BIPLANE pilots in the SKY. That's the exact kind of place you expect to have some fucker in a red triplane to come dropping out of the clouds when you least expect him before putting a spread of bullets into your radiator, forcing you to wingwalk while your observer desperately holds the stick steady and the fucker in the red triplane keeps buzzing you. He's not even shooting, he's just flying past, waggling his wings, not that I'm bitter or anything.

So, the flying combat is great! But it's also supported by a deeply fun mechanic for building up stress and then burning it off when you touch tarmack (this is inaccurate, most of these planes land on grassy fields.) Basically, the more traumatizing your mission (what causes trauma varies upon your character archetype), the more stress you get. The more stress you get, the more fun you need to have on the ground to burn the stress off (1 stress becomes 1 XP, so this is actually important for character advancement.)

FUN INCLUDES

• Drugs
• Sex
• Rock and roll
• Getting into a fist fight with that asshole from Rosetta Squadron who keeps making cracks about your plane
• Deciding to wager your entire wardrobe on a straight flush in the hopes of seeing your rival pilot get naked
• "Borrowing" an automobile for a drunken joyride through a sleepy rural village
• Communing with the Old Ones who slumber eternally beneath the sea.

And more!

The stress mechanic is really the glue that holds the game together and creates a marvelous push and pull of character actions. Your pilots aren't responsible adults - most of them are barely twenty. They're hopped up adrenaline junky teenagers, usually on the run from shitty homes or shitty towns, who are finding themselves in a big, scary, wonderful world. Every other day, they almost die. They DO NOT MAKE GOOD DECISIONS. At first, at least. The game includes a mechanical and narrative system for learning to vent your stress more responsibility, and even has a really sweet mechanic for retiring a character at the end of their adventures. Everyone's gotta grow up some day, after all.

And this leads into the last part of the system: The upkeep. Fun is expensive. Planes are more expensive. Medical care for the time a Gremlin pulled out your alternator mid flight and you had to put down without an engine and you rolled, snapped your wing and shattered your arm in six places is also expensive. All this stuff comes out of the paycheck you got for your LAST mission - and it's pretty clear the creator of the game has worked pretty hard to give PCs a razor fine edge of profit and loss, requiring careful selection of jobs (there's a handy random job table for GMs who can't think of anything) and negotiations before taking to the air. Usually, you will constantly be scrambling for just one more measly thaler, and if you fall behind, your employees might start to unionize. I know, just because they haven't been paid in weeks, the expect some kind of "compensation" for their labor. What ingrates!

(Serious note: Anyone who employs strike breakers in this game is officially a bastard.)

The end result is a routine of flight, combat, daring heroics, partying hard, regretting your choices in the morning, getting paid, slapping down funds for repairs and bills, maybe saving up for that sexy as fuck new engine you've been eying, then you get a new job: 20 thalers for flying some cargo to a town? Sounds too good to be true! OH FUCK! DRAGONS! DRAGONS EVERYWHERE! Then you land with your tail still on fire and get drunk and sleep with your wingman, even though he's dating your mechanic, and you get caught trying to sneak out and it's a whole THING...

Throw into this a fantastically detailed setting of high fantasy and exciting diselpunk technology (anyone who refers to the advanced technology in this setting as "steampunk" will report for disciplinary action) and you have a crackling, lightning bottle of adventure and excitement.

Buy it now!

This was an enjoyable book to read on its own merits, with amazing art and a brilliant idea behind it. The design very much conveys the themes the author set out, creating a setting that is recognizably similar to real world history but steeped in fantastic elements that make it stand on its own. The system is a heavily modified take on the Apocalypse World engine, which focuses the gameplay around the actions of the characters as they relate to the narrative rather than on the mechanics, while still being mechancially complex enough to provide a really compelling abstraction of early fighter combat.

The thing that stands out most to me is how much emphasis is put on making sure the downtime for the characters, when they aren't flying, matters as much if not more than their escapades in the air. This makes for great opportunites to make characters more than just a collection of combat stats, and really get the players invested in the highs and lows of the often insanely dangerous life of a early pilot.

Flying Circus is a hell of a game. The core book is fun to read and loaded with incredible art. The fantasy setting is fascinating and the attention to detail both in air combat and inclusion is wonderful. The dashboards for player aircraft are a very fun way to engage with a system that is granular without being frustrating. I cannot wait to get a campaign going!

This is extremely well-written. I poured over the rules pretty much all night. The only areas where I had any difficulty was in the theater-of-the-mind approach to air combat. Perhaps an extended example might be in order. Basically, my problem is that I'm used to pushing models around and it gives me a better feel for positioning and range. The rules do say that range bands are important, so perhaps a simple range band distance table and a set of top down counters would do. Erika has done an astonishing job of capturing the technical aspects of period air combat and the mystical aspects of a Ghibli world. I can't wait to see how this is developed further.

I've practically purchased Erika's entire catalogue and Flying Circus is an obvious labour of love that I'm happy to see has come to fruition! The book is filled with hand drawn original art and a creativly constructed world with plenty of notes and explanations for why background details are the way they are. I'm eagerly awaiting the free supliment for in depth airplane construction for a possible future campaign, as well as the future "real-world historical" version of the game's rules. If you're looking for something new, I highly encourage you pick up Flying Circus.

The theme is clever -- quasi-post-apocalyptic biplane mercenary pilots in a Germanic fairy-tale inspired world.

The art is phenomenal -- color art all the way through, well-executed both of people AND machines.

The writing is crisp, clear, and still maintains a witty conversational tone without. It sets a strong tone on how to view the game, but explains the rules clearly every step of the way. It neither shies away from in-jokes nor makes the whole thing silly -- it confronts potential dark sides to its work clearly and honestly.

The worldbuilding is clever.

In short, there's nothing about this that I dislike, and a very great much that I do. I don't normally go for PbtA and I love this and want to play it, soon.

lying Circus is an absolute delight. Imagine, if you will, that the Ghibli classic Porco Rosso and Mad Max had a child together. Throw in some fairy tale magic, the forboding and primeval forests of Princess Mononoke and you have Himmelgard, the main setting of Flying Circus's home setting.

In this game, the players take on the roles of mercenary air pilots who fly WW1-era fighters and bombers at the behest of who has coin for a job (or maybe doesn't have coin for the job, but has a good sob story. Each pilot comes from a distinct background and each pilot has something in common with their fellow pilots. They all feel the call to slip the surly bonds of Earth and all of them didn't quite fit in at home.

Aside from being a game about flying planes and going 'nyoom' this is also a game about relationships, found families, intimacy, and the things that young people who risk their lives in motorized kites do to deal with the stress and terror of the job. It has unabashed queer themes running throughout the book, which I count as a selling point.

Mechanically, the game is deceptively straightforward. The way that everything is broken into moves, in the PbtA style is helpful in outlining how you do the thing you want to do at a dramatically appropriate moment, whether that thing is having it out with your best friend, trying to outturn the enemy in a life or death aerial dogfight, or whatever else. Underlying these is an in depth number of stats and numbers to keep track of in your airplane, via the charming and helpfully provided instrument panel print out.

All in all, Flying Circus is a fantastic concept and Ms. Chappelle has done an amazing job bringing it to the page in an earnest, heartfelt way that oozes character and love, along with some very gorgeous art of aircraft in flight. I encourage anyone interested in the concept to pick up the game and share it with your friends.

Flying Circus is an absolutely phenominal game!

If there's an award for the best vehicle combat game ever made, this game deserves it.

It's writing and tone are a joy to read! The level of humanity packed into every square inch of this game is truly incredible. The art is gorgeous! The mechanics are a master class in how to use crunch in a way that puts narrative first!

I truly cannot say all the good things about this game. It delivers on everything it says on the tin and more!

Seriously, this game is worth buying!