Before we start with the questions, who'd like some new content?

Ever since the conclusion of our initial University story players have asked to return to the misty courtyards of academia. From today players with a ship can re-establish their academic credentials by mounting a scientific expedition to lost isles of the Unterzee. Make new discoveries. Battle the forces of ignorance! Advance your Watchful to 130! The Scientific Expedition sees the return of a familiar rival in matters of the Correspondence and opens two new Unterzee islands replete with subterranean phenomena!

To launch an expedition you'll need Watchful 120, to have finished your business at the University and to be acquainted with the Dilmun club. Look for a storylet around the city featuring a Sneering Gentleman.

In addition, players will now find a handy new feature at their lodgings. A number of helpful local citizens will point the way to different locations and storylines, making it easier to decide what to do next and how to access it.

Now, onto the second batch of questions from the Echo Bazaar community. Those who missed the previous installment can find it here.

Matt Cramp asked:
If it's not too painful to talk about, what was the biggest mistake you made with Echo Bazaar?

A lot becomes clear in hindsight - it took experimentation and iteration to get where we are, and stuff that seems blindingly obvious now was a fog-bank back in 2009.

Our key mistake was was assuming that word-of-mouth was going to be enough to spread the game. We’re a cult hit, but we’d have much more resource to spend on the game if we had baked in recruitment mechanisms properly from the start.

Something else we struggled with was narrative debt. It is fantastically easy, especially in a narrative with different outcomes, to leave a placeholder to be filled in later and then find other concerns get prioritised over it. We are very careful about incurring content debt these days - we have a lot of loose ends to tie up (and plenty of ideas about how to do that).

Mortimer Blunt asked:
How does travel between the surface and the Neath work? Dirigible? Is there a hole in the top of the Neath?

Two thoroughfares connect the Neath to the surface: the Travertine Spiral and the Cumaean Canal. If you're looking for the direct route, take the Spiral. Those of modest means must trudge the stair that winds through a conjoined stalagtite and stalagmite, while the more well-to-do rattle briskly by on a comfortable funicular. If you'd prefer a more stately journey (and you've got someone to handle the locks for you) the Cumaean Canal is the route for you. It is a miracle of contemporary engineering, and a journey of dark, Plutonian beauty from the little Italian cave where it begins to the shores of the Unterzee. These will both be featuring in upcoming content.

Alexis Royce asked:
I'm really interested in the unfallen world's reactions to the thefts of the cities. Do other places attempt to take precautions against metro-napping, or do they have no idea what's been going on?

Oh, who knows what’s going on up there. Everything interesting happens down here.

Read the surface news in the back pages of the Gazette sometime: a declaration from Ruskin that he intends to paint the Unterzee despite his recent collapse; a human interest piece on a lady from Prague unable to pay for the ticket she needs to join her fiancé in the Neath; a fire-and-trumpets Roman priest preaching that his city has already fallen. There’s a theme. If the people of the surface would all rather be here than there, there’s clearly nothing up there to concern us.

Melanie Keeler asked:
Can you recommend any traditional novels for Fallen Londoners? Any other games?

One or two.

Novels

Practically anything by G. K. Chesterton, but in particular The Club of Queer Trades, The Napolean of Notting Hill and, most of all, The Man Who Was Thursday
Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus
Roger Zelazny's A Night in the Lonesome October
Sarah Waters' Affinity
Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates
Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast
Phillip Pullman's Sally Lockhart series: The Ruby in the Smoke, The Shadow in the North, and The Tiger in the Well, The Tin Princess
K. J. Parker's Devices and Desires
Alan Campbell's Scar Night
Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London
Charles Dickens' Bleak House
Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora
Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind
Chris Wooding's Retribution Falls

Games

Skyrim has swept through Failbetter Towers like a plague. Few are immune.
Planescape: Torment
King of Dragon Pass
Bastion and Beyond Good and Evil HD, for effective and unique methods of storytelling
Deus Ex and Deus Ex: Human Revolution
System Shock 1 and 2
Thief
Left4Dead, which creates endless narratives through slick mechanics, near-subliminal storytelling and the simple mathematics of applying four friends to a world of zombies

Nicholas Di Penna asked:
My question pertains to the revolutionaries. Will we see more of them? What is their motivation? Did they harbor this same revolutionary fervor before the Fall of London?

We have grand plans for the Revolutionaries, who have grand plans of their own. Future story arcs will reveal the machinations of the Calendar Council, the divisions in their ranks, and the awful ramifications of the Christmas Card List.

Patrick Reding asked:
How many iterations does a story or standalone storylet generally go through internally before you release it into the wild? For that matter, what does your internal narrative testing process look like?

Yasmeen wrote a trilogy of posts on how we plan and write content here, here, and here. Since then we've beefed up the initial design phase considerably, but those posts still give a comprehensive picture of how we work.

Someone tragically unnameable asked:
What's with the toothy hat? Did it start off as a studio mascot or something?

The toothy hat is what happens when your initial art order to our Chief Illuminating Officer asks for "menacing headwear" with no elaboration.

You ask for menacing headwear, you get a hat with teeth. And you like it.

Theodor Gylden asked:
Is there more to come of Parabola? Will Schlomo's theories bear fruit in the Mirror Country?

There's lots more Parabola content planned, including opportunities to visit parts of the Mirror Country that you might have glimpsed in dreams. Schlomo takes a keen interest in them, but he's the pioneer of a new science and many accuse him of being ruled by his own fantasies.

A mysterious and extensive organisation known as #TeamOwl asked:
Why aren't there more owls in this game?

We contend that a Bifurcated Owl is more than enough owl for anyone.