Flying Circus - Core Rulebook & Playbooks
A downloadable game
EXPANSIONS
PLANE PACKS
NOVELS
Flying Circus is an in-depth, highly detailed Powered by the Apocalypse-derived roleplaying game of aviation fantasy, set in a world of machines and magic inspired by the works of Hayao Miyazaki.
In the aftermath of a massive industrial war, the world is slowly pulling itself back together, but danger still lurks in the skies of Himmilgard. The only thing standing between the world and chaos are the brave pilots of the Flying Circuses, indepedent mercenary companies known for the bright and unique liveries of their salvaged aircraft. No mission is too bold, no monster too big, no foe too dangerous... if you can afford it.
Flying Circus uses a unique system for air combat, eschewing top-down maps and treating Altitude and Air Speed as currency to be spent in daring and realistic dogfights. Climb to gain the advantage, dive to regain speed, pull your plane into dizzying turns to get on their tail. But you also face realistic limitations, as your engine burns out, your wings crack and break, and you lose consciousness in a high-G turn.
In addition to the powerful air combat engine, Flying Circus has robust systems for battles and daring escapes on foot, for pilots to blow off steam in between missions, and for the financial and social aspects of running the company. Pilots always live on the edge: between excess and stress, between riches and ruin, between victory in the skies and impact with the ground.
Flying Circus features ten unique playbooks, with both strong hooks to get started immediately and considerable framework for customization and progression over the course of a long campaign. The playbooks also come packed with 48 unique aircraft, both historical and fantastical, to populate your games, as well as a variety of threats, mission prompts, advanced rules, and GM advice.
Content Warning
This game touches on mature themes regarding violence, sexuality, and drug use. There is a degree of illustrated nudity.
Note
If you purchase a PDF now, you will get a discount on the print version when it becomes avaliable.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $35 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Download demo
Development log
- Flying Circus 1.3.1Jan 19, 2022
- Flying Circus in Print!Aug 08, 2021
- Oops all Flying Circus 1.3Apr 28, 2021
- Flying Circus - Horrors of the Heights!Dec 01, 2020
- Flying Circus 1.11Aug 19, 2020
Comments
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I can see your love for this game on every page, thank you for sharing it with the world.
I would love to play this on Roll20 but sadly it seems you don't have anything put on there. Do you have plans in the future to install it to Roll20?
11/10 would kiss a Sopwith Camel
Cool game, Erika.
if you like [FLYING CIRCUS RPG]
you should also try [ESTROGEN]
I'm just here to say I love this game and everything about it. It really works with my style of GMing, and I'm a fan of early aviation history. Building airplanes and engines in the online builder tools has been my obsession lately. Right now, I'm putting together some early diesels.
Erika, please keep the good stuff coming!
I'm super excited to try my hand at GMing this game! I got a printed copy made for my birthday, and am slowly making my way through it. I also modified the awesome player book to make a staple-free booklet for my players! I'm happy to share the file and assembly instructions if that's cool with the creators.
Alright, testing testing.
Apparently posting video review here can cause a spike on the algorithm, so I'm just gonna post my one year old Flying Circus review here and see what's going to happen.
Was waiting off to leave a review until i had a chance to actually run the game. While it is super fun to just theory craft, especially with the amazing plane builder tool, it really doesn't compare to actually getting into it. The game itself is a little intimidating at first because of all the moves, but they are pretty separated, you're never really dealing with all of them at once. After you get over that initial hurdle, the game runs so smoothly. The play cycle is cut up perfectly, i've legitimately never played a game that felt as perfectly paced as Flying Circus.
As a GM it's so easy to get into the crunchier mechanics of the game, you really only need to add as many layers of crunch as you are comfortable running, and you can always add more as you get a hang of the mechanics.
10/10 Would watch in horror as all my players attach wingblades to their planes again.
This game is simply amazing. I love everything about it. From the modifications it has made to the PBtA engine, to the amazing plane combat mechanics, to its politics to its queerness. Oh and the art. Wow. The art. So yeah. Just phenomenal.
Is it intentional that the Ground Moves are absent from the Playbooks document? It seems a little odd, since it has a reference for all the other player facing moves?
Also, is there a Discord for discussion or anything like that? :)
hey is the 1.21 that is on DTRPG on here too?
Congrats on 1.2!
I'm really sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the Aircraft Catalogue still has a bunch of bugs, both old and new, and are you still accepting reports? There's planes listed with Dropoff 1, or Fuel 1, and it looks like you made a balance patch to the Bahadur Escort's weapons that only appears in the new builder link but not on the page...
Urgh, of course. The way the plane and core book typos were intermixed and out of order just completely wrecked my ability to actually deal with both.
Here's a typo doc.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wWVwxJW75GoVYR14pAqX3SKirCgl_cd0uthVrkcm9fo/...
Thanks! I'm trying really hard to make a focused report for the Catalogue exclusively, starting with just the important numbers bugs.
The fruits of my hyperfixation are now in the doc. <3
I've scoured the stats, proposed a few fixes, and collated all the old typos that slipped by in the clutter of the last doc. Rules bugs first, by plane, then non-rule typos by page #. Hope that's more helpful. :)
Thank you so much.
Glad I can help! Making a 2nd pass right now, found some more rogue gunsight discrepancies, I'm commenting on the edits so they'll stand out.
Hi, sorry if I've missed something obvious: when PCs are attacked in a ground combat using Personal Attack, what does taking listed damage do to them? Do they take Injuries as they would on a Crit, or do they only take injuries when the roll Crits?
They take Injury equal to Damage!
Thanks!
I'm loving this and can't wait to play, but as I dive into the finer details I'm hitting a few artefacts of earlier versions, particularly with the aircraft catalogue & plane builder; almost every plane has some different stats in the plane builder to the catalogue, and the Markgraf Attentäter C links to the Cheetal Fighter profile instead. The plane builder seems to be using an older version of the weapons rules too.
Is there somewhere I can submit typo reports and the like?
Argh! I thought I caught it all!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HZeIIRMCSu6Dlwwhn73Z_utetRqZwUF_-1y1Jl9-xvA/edit
Please submit here and I'll get it fixed ASAP!
Thanks so much! I'm doing my best to catch everything, hope it helps!
Just saw your tweet that 1.12 will be the final version, does this mean it's too late to get any more reports in?
Going to keep adding them anyway, hope I'm not too late!
*proofreading intensifies*
Added a few more reports, sorry they're so late.
Frankly amazing, but could use another editing pass. I am in love with the aesthetic and the play, but the mechanics are sometimes presented in an odd order that makes them hard to understand without skipping three chapters ahead or back. That said, I adore how it gives us nuts and bolts folks the ability to build our own planes (or other weirder flying machines) from the ground up.
Can't wait to see how this goes!
I did a lot of trials of different order to present things in, but unfortunate the way the system loops together makes it very difficult to order the mechanics in a way that is absolutely clear: something always depends on something else, so I just did my best to theme sections by use case.
It's a little more complex and containing additionally fiddly bits than other PBtA-type games, So printing out some of the summary or reference sheets to keep handy is *very* helpful. But I loved the air combat? It really felt more....appropriate.
Within a single mission, my Fischervolk pilot made contact with the spirits of dead Gothan soldiers and found herself tasked with the job of returning their remains back to their families.....regardless of the fact that Gothans might not take well to some random fishlady showing up with a body bag. Oh well!!
And our shy Survivor ended up demanding, 'fuck you, pay us' to our patron and we found ourselves trying to collect the money we were owed...at bayonet-point.
Now we have to figure out how to recoup costs! By....finding a buyer....for the highly dangerous (and possibly self-willed???) clockwerk soldiers. You know. Those weapons of war that fucked up our homes. Yeah. Let's give *THOSE* to somebody because we need the money.
I'd love to play it again.....and I....kinda...wanna.....try hacking it to do sci-fi games like Cowboy Bebop and ragtag bands of space truckers+revolutionaries.
My single regret is that I cannot YET purchase a physical copy. Or give this 6 stars.
This book is frankly brilliant, and I haven't seen a group jump to play something from just the pitch as quickly as they have for this. If I have one criticism, it's that the book takes a lot of time telling you what the fluff is, or what the subtext for a playbook is. RPG's are about finding what resonates with you in what's there, but I doubt Erika is going to break down my door when I use the Witch playbook for a Zen Monk or what have you.
I'm so glad this is doing well, Erika! Highly recc this game to everyone if they like planes!