Category: Blog

For stuff about the admirals and what’s happening in their lives.

Flotsam is live on Kickstarter!

I’m excited to announce that Flotsam: Adrift Amongst the Stars is now live on Kickstarter! Thankyou for all the support and encouragement you’ve given to the project so far.

The project is here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blackarmada/flotsam-adrift-amongst-the-stars

Flotsam is a roleplaying game about outcasts, renegades and misfits living in belly of a space station, in the shadow of a more prosperous society. You play through their everyday lives, interpersonal relationships and small-scale drama in the Below, a dangerous world where poverty, social strife and gang conflict sit side-by-side with alien technology and supernatural weirdness.

Imagine the Belters of the Expanse watching as Earth and Mars shape their lives, the civilians in Battlestar Galactica living with the decisions made by the military and the folk of Downbelow in Babylon 5, abandoned to destitution and squalor by those who built the station. This game is about characters like that.

The game is GMless and diceless, with rules that point your characters at each other and bring their relationships into sharp focus. They help you create a rich setting, flawed characters, and charged relationships which develop over time. You’ll watch your characters evolve and change before your eyes. It’s really cool.

“Josh has put together something really interesting here – there’s glimpses of a larger setting through the world, but it only comes out through the lenses of the characters. Very clever stuff.” 

– Grant Howitt, co-designer of The Spire RPG

You can get Flotsam for as little as £9 / $12 for the PDF.

You can back Flotsam on Kickstarter, here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blackarmada/flotsam-adrift-amongst-the-stars

Flotsam: Adrift Amongst the Stars – kickstarter in July

I’ve been working hard to get Flotsam ready for kickstarter, and it looks like it’ll be ready to launch some time in July.

Flotsam is a game for 3-5 people about outcasts, renegades and misfits living in the belly of a space station, in the shadow of a more prosperous society. You focus on their everyday lives, their relationships and small-scale, interpersonal drama.

You could play:

The cast-off, an ordinary person fallen on bad times;

The Thunder, a tough ganger who makes the rules down here;

The Voice, the charismatic leader of a cult or community;

The Spider, a ruthless trader or spymaster;

The Sybyl, a prophetess with uncanny powers; or

The Hybrid, part human and part something else (alien, AI, god… there are lots of options).

The game is GMless: Each player gets one Primary character to play, as well as one Situation that they help to develop and push forward when not playing their Primary. That can be a lot to juggle, so the game has a simple, streamlined system that’s geared towards giving each player maximum control over the pacing of their own scenes, so you can have quiet, tense emotional scenes when you want them, or high-energy, threatening scenes when you feel like hitting the gas.

The game’s system pushes you to focus on your relationships and personal flaws, to move your character out of their comfort zone and develop them. Over time you’ll see those relationships and flaws change, and your characters grow. As such, it’s designed to work best in campaign mode. Over a handful of sessions, you’ll get to see real evolution of your character and their relationships.

Nonetheless, I wanted the game to be playable as a one-shot, so the game will include rules for quick-start play, using simple scenarios with pre-generated characters and situations. These will be designed to kickstart play with relationships that are already on the point of change, and problems at the point of exploding. It’ll mean you can play the game in 3-4 hours.

I’m excited to share the game with you! If you’re interested in this project you might want to follow the Black Armada kickstarter account here, so you’ll get a notification when the campaign launches. If you have questions or would like to talk to me about the project, you can comment here or contact me at flotsam (at) vapourspace (dot) net.

Finally, I couldn’t end this article without sharing the work-in-progress cover art by Anna Landin. It’s only a sketch and it’s already looking great! Honestly, commissioning art is one of my favourite things about being a game designer.

Four people stand around a makeshift table converted from a piece of industrial machinery. One of them leans forward, entreating another, who watches with interest. In the background we can see a round window, through which is stars and space, and a spaceship flying by.
OMG I love this sketch

Artist wanted

Hi everyone! I’m planning to kickstart my roleplaying game Flotsam: Adrift Amongst the Stars in the nearish future, and am looking for artists (recommendations / expressions of interest). Women, LGBTQ, non-binary, PoC and artists with disabilities all expressly encouraged to apply.

What sort of thing am I looking for? Well:
– The focal characters are “outcasts, renegades and misfits” and the game focuses on their relationships, so I want scenes of social interactions, intense and emotional through to nuanced and understated.
– I want to capture a feel of riotous cultural diversity – imagined religions, ethnicities, castes, and so forth. Mostly human, but there should be some obviously non-human characters too. (It’s fine to draw on real-world cultures for inspiration, but I strongly want to avoid creating cultures that look like exoticised versions of real-world cultures.)
– The game is set in a community that lives in the dark and overlooked underbelly of a space station. I’d like to see scenes that show we’re in space, but not (much) vast spacescapes – it’s in the space station, not around it.
– The game is set in space, so there will be tech. But that could vary from 21c-like through to advanced stuff, alien tech etc. The emphasis is on the people, not the technology.
– There will be gods, spirits, demons and other mysterious (e.g. magic and psi) stuff but again, emphasis on people rather than cool weird shit.
– I want to see the same mix of faces you’d see in a cosmopolitan city. There will be people of all gender expressions, diverse romantic relationships, faces and skin tones that could be seen in all different parts of our own world, differently able people (with and without cool prosthetics)

I’d be initially looking to commission a cover image, and perhaps one or two internal images, to showcase on the kickstarter campaign page. Subject to successful funding, there would be potential for much more.

If the above sounds like you, or if you know someone who could do that, I’d like to hear from you. I’d like to see samples of your work – link to e.g. deviantart is fine, or if you prefer drop me an email via the contact form and we can talk there.

Flotsam: Adrift Amongst the Stars – playtesting

I’ve just completed a full version of Flotsam for external playtesting!

Flotsam is a roleplaying game about outcasts, misfits and renegades living in the belly of a space station, in the shadow of a more prosperous society. The focus of the game is on interpersonal relationships and the day-to-day lives and struggles of a community that lacks the basic structures of civilisation.

System-wise, it was originally a Dream Askew hack, but has wandered a great deal from those roots. It owes quite a bit to Hillfolk and Archipelago, too. Everyone gets to act like a GM some of the time, controlling one aspect of the game setting and the threats it contains, and everyone gets to play a Primary character some of the time, exploring their life and relationships.

If you like the sound of that, and you think you might like to give the game a try, please get in touch by commenting here or emailling me at flotsam (at) vapourspace (dot) net.

Lovecraftesque scenario competition – winners

Lovecraftesque can be played entirely from the febrile imaginations of your group of players. However, it also has the option to use short scenarios to kickstart things with an enticing menu of inspiring elements that you throw into the bubbling cauldron of your story.

The rulebook contains a host of excellent scenarios. With our scenario competition we aimed to expand that, and we were delighted with the results: 20 varied and flavourful packs of story seeds for your group. I’d urge you to go and check them all out.

Even so, this was a competition. We anonymised the scenarios and shared them with two independent judges, Cat Tobin and Mo Holkar, and compared notes. With the coming of the solstice, we are now ready to declare some winners. Let’s start with the runners up:

– Bringing New Life by Elizabeth Lovegrove. The setting for this scenario – the maternity ward of a hospital – is hardly a traditional one for a Lovecraftian tale, but instantly conjures ideas of horror. The scenario delivers on this promise.

– Cold Steel by Fred Bednarski. A Nazi-occupied Polish town is the location, an evocative setting which is supported by a compelling set of steely clues.

– Rare Antiquities by Oli Jeffery. Exploring the labyrinthine back-streets of Brighton, this scenario gives a pungent sense of place, and a unique set of rather sordid themes for a Lovecraftian tale.

– The Huston Veil by Devon Apple. In 19th-century London, an East India Company ship returns from distant lands. We loved the way this twisted a fairly traditional Lovecraftian premise into something fresh and different.

All four runners-up are terrific scenarios. There was, however, one stand-out winner, which was unanimously selected by the judges:

– The Wilder Parts of the Forest by Oli Jeffery. This was a completely unexpected concept for a Lovecraftesque scenario: Narnia. And yet, reading it you can immediately see how suited it is to creeping cosmic horror. Oli twists the elements found in a children’s fantasy story and leaves you wondering if, indeed, HPL was the secret author of the tale.

Congratulations to the winners!

Roleplaying in Chesterfield, Derbyshire

With apologies to regular readers, this is an advert for my local gaming club.

Refugees from Reality
We are a Roleplaying and Board Gaming club in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. We enjoy a wide variety of games, from indie to the big names. We welcome new players and are always open to trying something different. Find out more on our website or drop us a line if you’re interested in coming along.
www.refugeesfromreality.co.uk
refugeesfromreality@gmail.com
facebook.com/refugeesfromreality

Lovecraftesque competition

To celebrate the fact that Lovecraftesque is now a physical product you can hold in your hands, and since Halloween is coming up, we’re running a competition to design a scenario for the game. You don’t need to have read the game, you just need some creepy ideas and a little time.

Lovecraftesque scenarios are short – like, a couple of pages – and their role is to provide inspirational material linked by a common location and theme. They provide ingredients someone could use to make an eldritch horror tale, but the players choose which ingredients to use, they add ideas of their own, and build a story for themselves. You can find a bunch of examples from the kickstarter here.

You have until 11:59pm (UTC-11) on Monday the 7th November to submit your scenario(s) by commenting here with a link or emailling us at lovecraftesque at vapourspace dot net. Each person can submit up to three entries for consideration. The winner, chosen from among the entries by us, will receive a copy of Lovecraftesque softcover and cards for themselves or a friend (which we will ship to you wherever you are), and the runners-up will receive the PDF of the game (again, you can give to a friend instead).

We recommend that you follow these guidelines; we’ll accept variations but the scenario must be an inspirational set of ingredients, not a pre-cooked story or situation.

You retain your copyright over your entry/entries but unless you tell us not to we’ll publish your work on the Black Armada website for free download. We won’t use it any other way without your permission. We reserve the right not to publish anything which we deem distasteful or in breach of someone else’s intellectual property.

Designer Diary: Space Askew

I’ve long had an interest in designing a Dream Askew hack, thanks to very positive experiences playing the game tempered by some issues that I wanted to address. I’ve been tinkering around with this concept for quite a while, and finally managed to get a working prototype to a playtest this weekend.

The game is currently a fairly thinly reskinned version of the original, since I want to concentrate on streamlining and reworking the design framework. But I didn’t want to just copy Avery’s game, so I’ve changed the setting. Space Askew is set in the belly of a space station, where outcasts and misfits live in the shadows below a more prosperous settlement.

What’s changed?

  • I felt that DA would benefit from some more in the way of relationship-building in setup. I’ve added a set of Hx-style relationship seeds to choose from, and some Hillfolk-style unrequited desires. In both cases the process involves choosing something yourself, then asking another player a question, the answer to which provides a completed background element.
  • I wanted a clearer and more intuitive set of MCing guidelines for running the Situations. I’ve brought the MCing system a bit more back towards the way Apocalypse World works, supplementing each Situation’s Principles and Moves with a set of general Principles and Moves, and giving clear guidance for when an MC makes Moves. The Principles are a bit different from AW’s, focused more on small-scale interpersonal drama than constantly shifting external threats.
  • I’ve placed question-asking at the heart of the system. When you want to create a bit of content for the world (a character, a location, a piece of technology, a rumour…) you don’t create it yourself; you ask someone else about it. This is true in setup and during play.
  • I’ve created a more developed process for deciding what scenes should focus on, and for deciding who is MCing at any given time.
  • I added a very simple harm system. Whenever someone tries to inflict harm on another character, they say what they’re doing in the fiction, then ask someone else what the outcome is. I want harm to be kept simple and fiction-based, and I want the decision to inflict harm to recognise that, once the bullets start to fly, you can’t entirely control the resulting pain and injury.
  • I’ve switched the psychic maelstrom to a Battlestar Galactica-esque set of gods who you make sacrifices to and petition for aid.
  • I’ve added a new skin called The Foundling, who was once part of a networked hive mind connected to a parent AI and has somehow become separated from the parent. They’re a bit like the Hollow in Monsterhearts, lacking a clear identity and anxious to understand humanity.

How did the playtest go?

  • Character gen was fantastic. Beyond my wildest dreams, really. It took 45 minutes and yielded well-realised characters with charged relationships but plenty of undefined space to explore in play.
  • The play itself went well, but I think that was more a testament to the quality of my players than the system I wrote. I suspect people were relying on their own habits of running fairly systemless games rather than my rules. (The excellent setup will have helped, of course.)
  • This was partly the result of my failure to effectively teach the rules, and I’m clear that the game needs a Lovecraftesque-style teaching guide that guides you through the rules systematically.
  • It was also partly the result of information overload. I should have realised this would be a problem, because I think DA was already pretty hard work and Space Askew added a bunch of extra stuff.
  • I hadn’t fully appreciated how Play to find out and Ask questions aren’t particularly obvious or intuitive ways to play. As the only person who had read the rules outside the playsheets, I needed to do more to explain this (and the teacing guide would need to include this).

So what am I doing next?

  • I’ve already begun work to streamline the amount of information in the game, reducing the number of Principles and Moves to a manageable level, and focusing on what is really core to the game.
  • I’m going to write a teaching guide which ensures certain rules that aren’t on the playsheets gets mentioned, that key principles are explained in more detail, and that character gen is more structured.
  • I’m going to turn the Situation sheets into something a bit more resembling a character sheet, complete with setup questions.

Watch this space!

Lovecraftesque’s sinister influences

So I read on G Plus recently that nobody ever credits the designers who influence them. I don’t know if that’s true, but we’re really keen to acknowledge the debt Lovecraftesque owes to previous games.

[*turns to camera* Lovecraftesque! The GMless storytelling game of creeping cosmic horror. Back it now on kickstarter!]

There are three influences which really loomed large in our thinking.

  • The big one is Graham Walmsley’s Stealing Cthulhu. Graham forensically analyses the style, structure and atmosphere of Lovecraftian stories and how you can replicate them in a roleplaying game. Once we had read this, we couldn’t stop thinking about how you could make a game system which would do some of that work for you – which would feel just like a Lovecraft story.
  • Ben Robbins’ Microscope is another major influence. The game gives you the structure to create a shared world, while abolishing tedious discussion of what should happen next. In so doing, it ensures that all the players contribute to the story; that was inspirational. The “leaping to conclusions” rule in Lovecraftesque was influenced by our desire to  duplicate that discussion-free story creation.
  • Jason Morningstar’s Fiasco is obviously a very well-known indie game, and one of the first indie games that we played. The use of in-built story structure, guiding the story from initial scenes through the tilt and on to the ending and aftermath, stayed with us. The Journey into Darkness in Lovecraftesque is a direct descendant of the aftermath in Fiasco.

We’d also like to mention the indie design community, who have provided fertile territory to develop our design thinking in general. Members of that community have shaped our thinking around how games should strive not to perpetuate harmful stereotypes and, indeed, promote diversity and inclusivity. This was crucial in developing our desire to create a Lovecraft game with a specific design objective to tackle the issues of racism and mental illness. We wanted to include a list of community members who were particularly instrumental, but the truth is there are so many of you that the list became unwieldy. Even so, Anna Kreider and Chris Chinn deserve special mention.

The Lovecraftesque kickstarter is go!

Edit: The kickstarter is now closed. It funded at over 300%! Many thanks to everyone who backed it. Once the remaining writing, editing, layout, art and printing are done, we’ll send books to our backers and, eventually, they’ll be available to buy.

After 9 months of hard work, the Lovecraftesque kickstarter has just launched.

Sample interior art by Robin Scott
Sample interior art by Robin Scott

 

 

 

What is Lovecraftesque?

Lovecraftesque is a GMless storytelling game of brooding cosmic horror. You and your friends will each contribute strange clues to a slow-building mystery, culminating in a journey into darkness that ends in a climactic scene of horror. You will be surprised and creeped out by your friends’ contributions, but the game is designed so that it will feel like one person was GMing it, even though you never had to break the tension by pausing for discussion. In short, Lovecraftesque is the GMless, indie-style Lovecraft game you’ve been waiting for.

The game focuses on a single Witness, who is at the mercy of strange and terrifying events. Lovecraft’s stories rarely featured parties of investigators, and the hero rarely wins – that’s how our game works, too. You rotate responsibility for playing the Witness, but the role is much more about revealing their inner thoughts and fears than solving the mystery or beating up cultists.

When you play Lovecraftesque you’ll be creating your own mystery, and your own unique monsters that will feel like something out of Lovecraft’s notebook. There won’t be any Mi-Go or Deep Ones – you’ll get a completely fresh take on the genre.

Where can I find out more?

You can find out more about the game, including a stripped down version of the rules and samples of the art and layout, on the kickstarter page.