Beneath Pirate Flags
A downloadable game
Dear Mother,
I write to you with news. I do not know if my former Epistles have reached you, or in what Status, or at what Cost, but I must presume in this hour that you are well-acquainted with the saga of my Mistreatment, that is of the Tyranny we—that is, the crew of the Mermaid Hunter—have suffered at the hands of our former Captain, Sir J. William Moore.
No longer.
Mama, we have done It. We have slain the Captain, cut down the King’s Banner, and sail now Beneath Pirate Flags, beneath our own Flags—Flags Red and Flags Black and Flags Beautiful. I dream of them.
The Law shall call us Mutineers, and perhaps I shall rue this letter when I stand some day before the Court. Nonetheless, I could crow. We are Free. Free. The word rolls off the mind. An indescribable possibility. Free—and, though I know not whither our Journey shall lead, I know this: the journey will be ours, and ours alone.
I am become a Pirate, mama. Farewell! I shall not be home at the duration of my term. Even now old grim Sam gives the call—I must end this letter with love for you, and the knowledge that this perhaps must be the last news you have by my hand. Indeed, should you hear of me again, I suspect the Circumstance will be Strange indeed.
Yet I Remain
Your daughter,
Kelley.
Jan 18, 1716
BENEATH PIRATE FLAGS is a ttrpg set in a swashbuckling world of pirates and adventure. Inspired by colorful works of queer pirate fiction, BENEATH PIRATE FLAGS is about intimacy, about adventure, about escape, and about building a tangled web of a family on the Somewhere-Sea.
BENEATH PIRATE FLAGS runs on a GMless, Belonging Outside Belong mechanical framework. In order to play, all you'll need are the files on this page, a pile of tokens (gold coins or teeth work best), pens and paper, and friends to play with.
I also made a playlist.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $15 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Exclusive content
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community copies
if you'd like to play this game and the price is restrictive, take a community copy, no questions asked. pirates should be pirates, my friend.
Development log
- 1.0 release :)Oct 30, 2023
- big rework!Oct 04, 2023
- environmental playbooks update!Jun 21, 2022
Comments
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Embarking on this with my group and very excited. Very strong and vibrant and evocative writing. I do wish I could copy-paste excerpts from the text but they come out jumbled. I would be interested in a plain text version.
Additionally, I could not locate the setting element text for "The Mercantile Array".
Hey! NO idea what is happening with the PDF not being searchable — as far as I can tell the file I'm uploading works fine, but if I download a copy from itch I can't seem to search for it either. I'm traveling for the holidays at the moment, but I'll look into that (and probably do a plaintext option) once I'm home.
As for the Mercantile Array: that was an old setting element that ended up getting cut (and folded into the Gilded Cage) in revision. The old setting element list somehow managed to sneak through — oops!
Thanks Che!
This game pulls one of my favorite moves for building a picklist, which is making you pick things you ARE and ARE NOT from a single set of objects. There’s some really juicy ideas to put next to each other here! It also has some excellent “advancement/retirement” scenes for how each character’s story might end.
I also really liked the emphasis you put on how the environmental elements can present themselves differently for different maps/ships/seas/etc. I see it as, the same element can present itself in different ways and with different goals, rather than a setting element that permeates the world wearing various different forms.
I look forward to seeing how this game develops!