Beneath Pirate Flags
A downloadable game
BENEATH PIRATE FLAGS gives us high seas and cannonfire, glittering treasure, flashing cutlasses, disguises, stowaways, romance, gunpowder, revolution, and bright colors flying high over a dreamlike seascape, always asking: “What do you do next?”
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 a game about intimacy, adventure, escape, and building a tangled web of a community on the Somewhere-Sea.
BENEATH PIRATE FLAGS is a gmless belonging outside belonging / no dice no masters game, in which you'll take on the role of one of seven larger-than-life pirate archetypes like the famous LEGEND, the overworked OFFICER, or the paranoid DISGUISE. 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 good friends.
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
Support this game at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
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
- i guess we call this 1.1?Jun 28, 2024
- 1.0 release :)Oct 30, 2023
- big rework!Oct 04, 2023
- environmental playbooks update!Jun 21, 2022
Comments
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I love love love the finale options for each playbook. Hoping to bring this to my indie gaming club soon!
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!