We hacked Flintlock in as a resolution mechanic while playing a longer GMless game (Archipelago by Matthijs Holter), and it worked great! It gives you just enough hooks to hang your narrative on to get an evocative, exciting scene. I'm excited to try it out as a stand alone game.
That's super cool, thanks for telling me! I've always thought of Flintlock as something I wanted to go back to and adapt into a bigger game, and it's great to know that it worked out for that!
Flintlock is a storytelling game about magical pirates fighting sea-monsters, and while it's only five pages long, those five pages are packed with phenomenal writing and worldbuilding.
There's a great built-in hook to the setting, as well. Your pirates get their powers by binding their souls to their ship. This means they are stuck in their trade, stuck in the middle of adventure, for as long as you care to play the game.
Also, even if you're not inclined to run Flintlock by itself, it comes with an excellent sea monster generation engine, which includes both the monster's details and relative location. Admittedly, some possible results are a little strange (a swarm of tiny humanoid merfolk that are damaging seafaring vessels due to misguided friendliness and that are in a well-defended symbiotic colony with your own ship), but they're not impossible to tell a story around.
The game's dice system is a little strange, you roll one of each die and it corresponds to an element in the current scene, but it works and feels both fluid and epic.
Overall, I'd strongly recommend this to anyone who likes tales of adventure on the high seas---especially ones that are quick to pick up and play, and that involve monsters.
Minor Issues:
-Page 4, "Use the dice to describe the action, as explained on the next page", this explanation never manifests
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We hacked Flintlock in as a resolution mechanic while playing a longer GMless game (Archipelago by Matthijs Holter), and it worked great! It gives you just enough hooks to hang your narrative on to get an evocative, exciting scene. I'm excited to try it out as a stand alone game.
That's super cool, thanks for telling me! I've always thought of Flintlock as something I wanted to go back to and adapt into a bigger game, and it's great to know that it worked out for that!
Flintlock is a storytelling game about magical pirates fighting sea-monsters, and while it's only five pages long, those five pages are packed with phenomenal writing and worldbuilding.
There's a great built-in hook to the setting, as well. Your pirates get their powers by binding their souls to their ship. This means they are stuck in their trade, stuck in the middle of adventure, for as long as you care to play the game.
Also, even if you're not inclined to run Flintlock by itself, it comes with an excellent sea monster generation engine, which includes both the monster's details and relative location. Admittedly, some possible results are a little strange (a swarm of tiny humanoid merfolk that are damaging seafaring vessels due to misguided friendliness and that are in a well-defended symbiotic colony with your own ship), but they're not impossible to tell a story around.
The game's dice system is a little strange, you roll one of each die and it corresponds to an element in the current scene, but it works and feels both fluid and epic.
Overall, I'd strongly recommend this to anyone who likes tales of adventure on the high seas---especially ones that are quick to pick up and play, and that involve monsters.
Minor Issues:
-Page 4, "Use the dice to describe the action, as explained on the next page", this explanation never manifests