8 tabletop RPGs for Bridgerton and Our Flag Means Death fans

Interval fiction is having fun with a popular culture second, whether or not followers are hanging on the intrigue among the many queen’s le bon ton in Bridgerton or clamoring on social media for a second season of Our Flag Means Dying. Our urge for food for tales set in Regency England, the Golden Age of Piracy, or every other level of dominant historic tradition is as previous as written fiction. The distinction now’s we will strategy these tales on the desk, in addition to between the pages of a guide.

Portrayal of tabletop RPGs usually tie them to swords and sorcery, ignoring a wealthy vein of titles whose purview stretches the breadth of human historical past. These video games take various rule units, comparable to Vincent and Meguey Baker’s Cellular Body Zero: Firebrands and Alex Robert’s For the Queen, and channel by means of them passionate explorations of the extra buttoned-up cultures of instances previous — largely so gamers can subvert these norms in attention-grabbing and “scandalous” methods.

Very similar to the favored tv exhibits talked about above, period-themed tabletop RPGs enable gamers to deliberately reframe historical past. They don’t ignore the ugly bigotry shot by means of our previous, however as an alternative create an area to inform tales with extra racially inclusive and queer casts, utilizing a interval’s aesthetics and stylistic markers. This may be liberating, in addition to satisfying, and under are a number of tabletop RPGs tailor-made for simply such an event.

Good Society: A Jane Austen RPG

Storybrewers’ recreation of romance, rivals, and social intrigue has been the gold normal of Regency role-play since its launch in 2018. Because the identify implies, it attracts closely on Austen’s novels. Like Austen protagonists, gamers should navigate English gentry’s thorny gardens whereas looking — or staunchly avoiding — love.

Participant characters in Good Society commerce each rumors with their social betters and wistful glances with their coronary heart’s needs. Highly effective resolve and monologue tokens enable gamers to take management of the narrative in pivotal moments, skewering a rival’s popularity or creating the proper hidden rendezvous. This collaborative RPG animates Austen’s plot with sufficient confidence and verve to final a number of periods.

Good Society: A Jane Austen RPG is out there on Storybrewers’ web site.

Virtues & Scandals

These wishing to spend a short evening of their very own among the many ton can use Virtues & Scandals, which condenses all of the machinations of the queen’s social court docket right into a single web page of guidelines. It is a hack of John Harper’s (Blades within the Darkish) Lasers & Emotions, which implies characters solely have two stats: advantage and scandal. Gamers roll with the previous when counting on their poise and upbringing, whereas the latter powers seduction and deceit. The individual working the sport solely must ad-lib a situation after which fill the ton with juicy gossip, courtesy of The Rag, earlier than setting the group unfastened in a playground of excessive society and low morals.

Virtues & Scandals is out there on Itch.io.

Ocean Tides

Picture: Annie Johnston-Glick

The excessive seas are anathema to courts and royalty, however it nonetheless holds loads of potential for relationship drama. Ocean Tides lets three gamers discover the fraught connections between naval officers, pirates, and mermaids utilizing the role-play minigame construction from Cellular Body Zero: Firebrands. Quite than a standard narrative, these minigames present home windows into vital (and intimate) moments that create an emotional arc when strung collectively. Brief however intense, this recreation lends itself to a gaggle keen to leap straight into the deep finish.

Ocean Tides is explicitly romantic, however ends in tragedy. All three character sorts discover themselves removed from any social authority which may right their impulses, leaving them weak to needs they may not even admit to themselves.

Dueling Fops of Vindamere

For those who spent your complete runtime of Bridgerton wishing somebody would pull out a dueling saber and lob a problem on the foot of some upstart, Dueling Fops of Vindamere could be the proper recreation. A decidedly tongue-in-cheek tackle the social season, it gives a stage for fencing instructors to court docket their beloved and put together for an end-of-year event constructed from a desk of prompts and dice-based challenges. Within the metropolis of Vindamere, love is gained and misplaced on the tip of a blade.

Dueling Fops of Vindamere is out there on Itch.io and DriveThruRPG.

Bro, Is It Homosexual to Dock?

Picture: Willem van der Velde II/Wikimedia Commons

Typically, a pirate RPG must be loudly, brazenly queer and Bro, Is It Homosexual To Dock? dutifully fulfills that want. How else would you describe a gaggle of swabbies who lust after the legendary buccaneer who saved all of them from sure demise? It’s that episode of Our Flag Means Dying the place the crew of The Revenge fall over themselves to help Blackbeard and earn his favor, however your weekly group will get to do the lusting.

It’s the proper instance of how tabletop video games can excel just by providing a framework and guidelines to reside out very particular fantasies. The fan response to David Jenkins’ nautical romcom — together with a bevy of fan artwork of Taika Waititi and Rhys Darby’s characters — revealed an viewers clamoring for extra salty, smoldering romance.

Bro, Is It Homosexual to Dock? is out there on Itch.io.

All Fingers on Deck

A subgenre of tabletop RPGs skip the 200-page guide in favor of prompt-based video games that allow gamers reveal an emergent setting by collaboratively answering questions. All Fingers on Deck follows that precept, utilizing a deck of playing cards to energy a story a couple of ship, its crew and the ties that bind them collectively.

All Fingers on Deck periods can steer in any route, following the whims and pursuits of its gamers. By the top, the group may have an internet of connections between sailors in addition to the historical past and intention of the vessel they crew. What outcomes might develop into the inspiration for a complete marketing campaign in a brand new setting, or it’d stay a group of coulds and maybes for an additional day.

All Fingers on Deck is out there on Itch.io.

Girl Blackbird

Picture: Annie Johnston-Glick

This steampunk-flavored journey recreation, one other John Harper joint, is a little bit of an outlier on this checklist. Broader and crunchier, the place the remainder depend on freeform role-play and distinct settings, Girl Blackbird deserves to be included if solely to be an on-ramp for the curious-but-hesitant.

It wouldn’t be a listing of indie tabletop RPGs and not using a name to step outdoors the programs that dominate this pastime, and the story of Girl Blackbird’s flight from an organized marriage in the direction of her lover, the pirate king Uriah Flint, deserves an opportunity to woo your desk with swashbuckling and elegance.

Girl Blackbird is accessible totally free on its official web site.

Collectively We Write Personal Cathedrals

The strongest thread of Our Flag Means Dying’s ardent fan group is the celebration of the homosexual romance that blossomed between Edward Educate and Stede Bonnett over the course of the primary season. This queering of an actual historic determine is the precise topic of Collectively We Write Personal Cathedrals, an epistolary recreation performed by writing letters between two gamers within the position of lovers whose affections are condemned by society.

Relying on the roll of a die, the contents of a letter could be masked in euphemism or else outright censored, destroyed or hidden by the fingers of your forebears. Enjoying this recreation is a reminder that our historical past is written by hegemonic forces; and a vigil for the love tales blotted out underneath their pens.

Collectively We Write Personal Cathedrals is accessible on Itch.io