Crossed pistols and crossed fingers
We are off to a great start with the call for play-testers going out and getting a really good response. The Facebook Group Tabletop RPG Gamers has been very supportive. Five groups are going to move forward with the plat-testing and the nice thing is that those five come from Europe, the USA and Asia.
Obviously, as a Hong Kong company we are keen to promote our hobby here at home, but we are also delighted to get as international a perspective as possible on our games. Gaming cultures are different around the world and what one continent thinks is great might be the pits for another; we learned that during the development of Honour.
Anyway, the next step is to get the draft out to those groups and get them creating characters, testing task resolution and trying out the combat system.
As well as being a game that celebrates the anti-hero and encourages subversion of the standard gender roles, The Flintlock Role-playing Game (FLock) is currently using a combat system which is deliberately design ed to make death a very real outcome of physical combat. The system means it is easier to kill an opponent than it is to wound them.
Why have we done this? Well, we think that it is more realistic, it takes immense skill to use a sword or pistol to disable someone, it is far easier to kill them, even if that is "by accident". A flintlock pistol or musket packed a very similar punch to a modern day shotgun, great for dispatching enemies, not so useful at suppressing them.
We also want to create a game where every encounter, every disagreement, every conflict need not descend into combat, that players will try to get their player-characters (PCs) to try every other means of reconciling differences before resorting to violence.
Will this be a popular decision, we can't know for sure, but we are anticipating some resistance, that's ok, that's what play-testing is for.
Dom P HK
