A Roaring 1920s tabletop RPG titled Flabbergasted! I’m a fan of what kinds of stories we can pull out of different eras of history so that was pitch enough to intrigue me. Fortunately, creators Fleur and Chelsea Sciortino of The Wanderer’s Tome were kind enough to answer my about the project, how it works, what projects they worked on to prepare for this, and how they’re making this era more inclusive.
EGG EMBRY (EGG): I appreciate both of you for talking about your project. What is Flabbergasted!?
FLEUR & CHELSEA SCIORTINO (FLEUR & CHELSEA): Flabbergasted is our debut tabletop roleplaying game!
It uses a narrative-driven and rules-lite system that we developed just for this game and is equally accessible to first-time players as well as seasoned ones that want to focus on the social aspect of roleplay and not get bogged down with rules and combat.
The game is set in the 1920s. Together, you and your friends will create a social club and get up to all manner of mischief and shenanigans. On the way, you’ll cultivate either a dignified or a scandalous reputation for your character.
We wanted to create a game that is lighthearted and embraced the comedic moments in roleplaying. A game where failure is part of the fun!
“Flabbergasted is a comedy of manners, mishaps and misunderstandings.”
EGG: What kinds of characters can you play?
FLEUR & CHELSEA: There are four archetypes in this game. You’ll take on the role of either an affable aristocrat, an entrepreneurial well-to-do, an idealistic bohemian, or one of the ever-ready and stalwart help.
So perhaps you’ll play a duke or a countess as the aristocrat, a lady’s companion or chauffeur as the help, a doctor or an archaeologist as the well-to-do, a painter or poet as the bohemian. Just some examples of what you could be playing! Your title and job are completely up to you. All archetypes are equally important (and equally fun!).
EGG: Is this intended for one-shots or campaign play or both?
FLEUR & CHELSEA: Both! Our intention for Flabbergasted is to accommodate long-form campaigns that we refer to as seasons. The game includes a guide that helps you structure multiple episodes that will formulate an entire season. But we also found that this episode structure is great for one-shots! Since the system is so quick to learn and character sheets are easily filled out, you can sit down at a table, learn the rules as players, create your characters and have a full session all in one afternoon.
EGG: What kinds of adventures will the characters have?
FLEUR & CHELSEA: When we say adventure, we don’t mean grand quests, like delving into underground dungeons and fighting in epic battles. The adventures you’ll have in Flabbergasted are more social based. Your social club might be dared to travel across the entire country with nothing but a bicycle and along the way you’ll get up to all manner of mishaps. Or you might have to plan the perfect party to host your friends’ disgruntled relatives who are looking for any chance to disapprove of you and your group. You will come across parties, sporting events, theatre shows, hot air balloon chases and more in the city of Peccadillo.
EGG: How does the system work for this RPG?
FLEUR & CHELSEA: A lot of the humor will come from the social club portion of the game. You can design a social club to be around any particular theme with no limitations – investigative, fine dining, bird watching, occult – whatever club you want to make, you can do it and it will greatly influence your game. You’ll have a rival club that is always trying to one-up you and they will issue this thing called a Public challenge – an event or activity that you need to try and accomplish or do better at than them.
Flabbergasted also introduces a new mechanic called Scene cues. Every archetype has a list of 15 scene cues that are essentially narrative abilities that allow you to directly influence a scenario that you are in without needing to roll a dice and see if you are successful. For example, the scene cue “I heard a Rumour” which allows your character to effectively spread gossip like wildfire and use it to slander the name of a rival club member, or draw unwanted attention from yourself onto someone else. There’s no one way to use a scene cue – if you find a way to make it work narratively, you can use it.
EGG: Who is providing the art? What made them right for this project?
FLEUR & CHELSEA: Before we began to write, we knew who we wanted to work with straight away. We worked with Andy Bennett, who is also a close friend of ours, so we knew this collaboration would go well. His style was perfect to capture the tone and setting. His art is expressive and stylised, and the clean sleek lines perfectly capture the stylistic sensibilities of the 1920s – whilst still looking modern and inviting!
We’re also in love with our cover! Not only is it beautifully drawn by our cover artist Ricardo Bessa, but it has a subtle reference to one of our favourite illustrators of the 1920s – JC Leyndecker. Having all of these ideas and historical references fall into place together feels very satisfying.
Both these artists also have also perfectly captured the clothing and hairstyles of the period in their art, but with a good range of diversity. This was important to us when selecting artists and providing briefs as historical settings tend to be very white-washed and we consciously wanted to counter that completely.
EGG: While the Roaring 20s is a romanticized era, the reality involved limited human rights and opportunities for non-cis white males. How does Flabbergasted! make that setting inclusive for all types of gamers so no one feels isolated?
FLEUR & CHELSEA: Our setting, while very obviously inspired by the 1920’s, does not actually take place in our world nor is it affixed to a particular location. This is why we explicitly state in our book that this is an alternate version of the 1920’s and set in our own fictional city of Peccadillo, one that still celebrates the art, music and fashion of the 1920’s, whilst matching our modern-day sensibilities. We made sure the art and characters we feature in the book are diverse and encourage inclusivity.
Our game also takes a parodic approach to the time period and is meant to poke fun at the class system. That’s the intended tone of the game. We draw inspiration from similar parodies like Jeeves and Wooster or Blackadder.
We took great care and consideration into how to utilise the 1920’s period, which is why we also consulted with editors and a sensitivity reader to ensure this.
EGG: Before this project you did murder mysteries and more. What games have you designed?
FLEUR & CHELSEA: We’ve been involved in a few other game projects. In our earlier years, we were more into digital games. We’ve got a demo for a point-and-click adventure game and we also have about eight game jam entries. It was only since we got more into tabletop roleplaying that we started to find our stride with game development. We love narrative-driven games, so over the past eight years, we got more involved in the TTRPG and LARPing scene. Our first attempts were homebrew style roleplaying games, like developing a complete Mass Effect hack of Green Ronin’s Fantasy AGE system, as well as a sea-faring and pirating addition for the Dragon Age RPG.
We started writing our own murder mysteries as a way to introduce LARPing to our friends. They were a big hit with our friends, as well as a few other groups that got to try it out. With a couple of murder mysteries written, we realised it won’t take much more work to package them up and release them for others online. When we realised how well we worked together, during the whole process of writing, design, editing etc… we decided to try our hands at something a bit meatier, resulting in Flabbergasted!
EGG: Beyond Flabbergasted!, what else are you working on?
FLEUR & CHELSEA: We have more tabletop RPGs in the work, but none that we’re ready to announce yet. Depending on how things go with Flabbgerasted, we’ll be able to determine which project to work on next. With that being said, we definitely want to keep building a lineup of comedic and roleplay-centric games.
EGG: Thanks again for talking with me. Where can fans learn more about your project?
FLEUR & CHELSEA: You can visit our website where you’ll find links to all our social channels. You can follow and back the game before its launch on our Kickstarter and subscribe on our backerkit prelaunch page where you can get a free bookmark when you pledge.
Thanks for the support!
Flabbergasted! A comedic tabletop RPG from The Wanderer’s Tome
“A comedic tabletop RPG set in the roaring 20s! Join a social club & get up to mischief & mayhem – all before your afternoon tea!”
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