Black Armada Games is run by Joshua Fox and Becky Annison. We create roleplaying games that unlock the creativity of your group, bring your favourite genres to life and give you feelings in your heart. We lovingly craft our games to provide memorable experiences, and work with awesome artists and printers to create beautiful physical books. You can find all our games in our store or, if you really love our stuff, back our Patreon to get regular games from us.
Last Fleet is a PBTA game about a rag-tag fleet, fleeing across space from the merciless inhuman foe that destroyed human civilisation. You play brave pilots, officers, engineers, politicians and journalists fighting to keep the fleet – and themselves – in one piece.
The game is focused on action, intrigue and drama in this high-pressure setting. The game’s setting, situation and mechanics push the theme of pressure, whether it’s through white knuckle space battles, tense hunts for infiltrators on the fleet, or the social fallout when your characters finally crack. It excels at the classic PBTA rhythm of switching between action and interpersonal drama.
If you like the sound of that, please do check out the Kickstarter page where you can see previews of the art, read more about the game, download the reference sheets, and of course back the campaign.
Are you interested in selling games at UK conventions, but
want to avoid the cost and loneliness of doing it by yourself? Then you’re
going to be interested in this.
The UK Indie League is recruiting. We’re a group of friends who go to conventions together to sell our tabletop roleplaying games. We share convention costs, and we staff the stall together, so we have friendly company and can take breaks without abandoning the stall. It’s a chance to meet fans of our games and sell stuff to people who might otherwise not see it. Plus you get free entry to the conventions, which is nice.
We’re looking for new members. You’d join us at conventions, bring your stuff, and help us to sell our stuff and yours. You keep your share of the profits, and you pay a fair share of the stall costs based on how much space your products take up and how much you sell. You’d also need to cover your own transport and accommodation costs. It’s on a trial basis initially, because we need to know we like each other before we commit to something more long-term.
The next convention we’ve got coming up is UK Games Expo. It runs from Friday 29 to Sunday 31 May 2020 at the Birmingham NEC. If you’re not interested in UKGE, it’s still worth getting in touch, and we’ll consider you for future events, but right now we’re prioritising getting people who can help with that.
If that sounds good, we’d love to hear from you. We have to limit numbers to keep things manageable, so we can’t guarantee we’ll say yes, but we’ll look seriously at every application. Please fill in this Google Form to register your interest. We’re happy to talk about what’s involved in more detail, just drop us a line at indieleague(at)vapourspace[dot]net.
We would like to emphasise that KSRU have not called for a boycott of Kickstarter, and doing so unilaterally at this stage is likely to undermine efforts to secure recognition. We are not boycotting Kickstarter. With that said, we support individual choice and nobody should be attacked for choosing to stay away from the platform at this time.
Below is an email we have sent to Kickstarter senior management (kickstarter-sot(at)kickstarter.com) and to thoughts(at)kickstarterunited.org. We’d urge all creators and backers to make your support known too.
To whom it may concern
We are writing as co-owners of Black Armada Games. We are three-time creators on Kickstarter. We have backed dozens of projects ourselves. We truly appreciate the service that Kickstarter and its workers provide to help entrepreneurs and individuals alike bring their dreams to life. We are substantial beneficiaries of that service, and we would like to use it again. Indeed, we have a campaign coming up in early 2020 that we would like to put on Kickstarter.
However, your company’s position on recognition of Kickstarter United has put us in a very difficult position. We support employees’ right to unionise as a matter of principle. We support the aims that KSRU have put forward – honestly, we struggle to see how anyone could disagree with them. It seems to us that those aims, and the support for workers to be able to unionise, is strongly consistent with Kickstarter’s stated values, not least as Kickstarter is a public benefit corporation.
It is clear that Kickstarter’s actions have been to oppose unionisation. While you have claimed to take a neutral position, in practice you have argued against forming a union, you have pushed for a process (NLRB elections) which will impede the speed and likelihood of the union being recognised. And that is without even considering the sacking of KSRU organisers, an action which looks deeply suspicious. We are horrified by these actions and, were KSRU to call for a boycott, they would have our wholehearted support and compliance.
With all that said, we have a decision to make as to whether to put our next campaign on Kickstarter or choose one of your many rival crowdfunding sites. We imagine we are not alone in reconsidering whether Kickstarter is the best platform for our brand and our values. We do not wish to undermine KSRU and we are not boycotting your site, but as a business we have to choose the best platform for our work. We may yet decide to continue with Kickstarter, but this issue weighs heavily in our minds.
And so we call on you to voluntarily recognise KSRU. End your oppositional behaviour. Redeem your reputation and move on from this PR disaster. Live your values and those of countless creators and backers. And selfishly, we’d ask you to do it swiftly so as to make our decision about our campaign an easy one.
We’ve sent Bite Marks off to the printers, which means it’s now available for pre-order if you missed the Kickstarter campaign.
Bite Marks is a PBTA game of werewolf pack dynamics. This is a game about being a werewolf, in a Pack. The Pack is a deeply intimate and close family; like a family, sometimes it is full of love and happiness and sometimes it is brutal and dysfunctional. But love it or hate it, you can’t ignore it – it will shape you. Fearless Alpha, dedicated foot soldier, pacifist scholar or rebellious cub – your relationship with the Pack is the cornerstone of who and what you are.
You might notice the game’s name has changed – we had some difficulty with a similarly-named board game, hence the change. We hope you like it!
And we’re uploading the games we’ve offered through our patreon. The first two games, Soap Bubble and What the Water Gave Me are already up there, with more coming soon. Of course, if you like these then you should consider backing the patreon, where you’ll regularly get games like this, before they show up on itchio.
Last Fleet playtest
The first two rounds of Last Fleet playtests are complete. As a reminder, Last Fleet is a PBTA game where you play brave pilots, officers, engineers and politicians on board a rag-tag fleet of ships, fleeing across space from an implacable, inhuman adversary.
The game is in great shape, but there have been some tweaks which need further playtesting. If you’d like to take it out for a spin, drop us a line at lastfleet@vapourspace.net and we’ll send you a playtest pack.
Vincent Sammy is illustrating the game … gorgeous.
As you know I love Werewolves and werewolf packs especially and this is a labour of love which I’ve talked about before on the blog. I wanted a game which combined all the tropes of Werewolves like control, domination and hyper-violence and used that to fuel messy relationships and explore pack dynamics. This is that game.
The campaign is funded and we have hit the first stretch goal but I really would love to get to the stretch goals by Whitney Delaglio, Kelley Armstrong and Paul Czege if we can.
If you’ve backed or shared already then thank you so much and if you have been thinking about it then there is 48 hours to make your move!
We’ve started a new Actual Play podcast where game designers play each other’s games! This is the first series: we’re playing Bite Me!, our game of werewolf pack dynamics that’s currently on Kickstarter.
The game is being GM’d by me (Josh), with an august group of designer-players including Becky Annison (the designer of Bite Me!), Grant Howitt, Jay Iles and Chris Longhurst. I’m really happy with how it’s turned out – feral werewolf action and intense relationships, just like the game intends.
Here’s the episode blurb:
A werewolf pack in suburban England walks a razor-thin line between the hunters of the city and the things that live in the forest. It’s a tough life, but made a lot harder when your pack alpha is bleeding out on your kitchen table…
Note: we went through game setup in a bonus episode. It’s not needed to enjoy this, but check it out if you want to hear more about Bite Me!
Listen to the first episode above, and back the Kickstarter campaign here.
By the way, the podcast is being created under the auspices of the UK Indie RPG League, a band of game designers who are sharing our knowledge, supporting each other and attending conventions as a group. Watch out for future episodes, where you’ll hear the hottest new and pre-release indie games being played by their designers.
If you missed the Flotsam: Adrift Amongst the Stars Kickstarter, you can now get in on the action by Pre-ordering on Backerkit.
Flotsam: Adrift Amongst the Stars is a roleplaying game about outcasts, renegades and misfits living in the 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.
Flotsam: Adrift Amongst the Stars is now available to buy in our store. You can also find it on DrivethruRPG, on itch.io and in gaming stores worldwide.
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.”
Last Fleet£15.00 – £40.00
Lovecraftesque£3.00 – £26.00
Flotsam: Adrift Amongst the Stars£9.00 – £30.00
Bite Marks£10.00 – £25.00
