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.”
If you’d like to get news about Black Armada’s games, including forthcoming products like Wreck This Deck and Lovecraftesque second edition, you can subscribe to our mailing list using the form below. We send out emails to the list around once a month.
We treat your data with respect and won’t share it with anyone else. See our privacy policy here.
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.
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.
X Marks the Spot is a game of pedantry and quick-thinking repartee about drunken pirates planning a daring voyage to a dangerous land where buried treasure awaits you. I’ve just finished the latest version, following the first round of playtesting, and I’m keen to find people to playtest the new rules.
It requires 3-5 players, and takes about 2 hours to play. You’ll need paper and pencils, something to drink (which might be alcoholic) and some sort of dry cracker to eat.
The main changes are that the game has been simplified and streamlined a little. There is also now a win condition – you accumulate Doubloons when you win Challenges, and the person with the most Doubloons at the end wins.
If you’d be interested in giving it a try, please drop me an email (xmarkstheshot at vapourspace dot net) or comment here.
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.
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
