8 tabletop RPGs for Bridgerton and Our Flag Means Death fans

Period fiction is enjoying a pop culture moment, whether fans are hanging on the intrigue among the queen’s le bon ton in Bridgerton or clamoring on social media for a second season of Our Flag Means Death. As old as fiction written, our desire to read stories about Regency England or the Golden Age of Piracy is. We can now approach these stories both at the table and between the pages in a book.

Portrayal of tabletop RPGs often tie them to swords and sorcery, ignoring a rich vein of titles whose purview stretches the breadth of human history. These games take alternative rule sets, such as Vincent and Meguey Baker’s Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands and Alex Robert’s For the Queen, and channel through them passionate explorations of the more buttoned-up cultures of times past — largely so players can subvert those norms in interesting and “scandalous” ways.

Much like popular TV shows, tabletop RPGs with period themes allow you to reframe the history. The tabletop RPGs don’t overlook the ugly racism that has permeated our history, but rather create an environment for stories featuring more diverse and queer characters, while retaining the period’s stylistic and aesthetic markers. This can be liberating, as well as enjoyable, and below are several tabletop RPGs tailored for just such an occasion.

Good Society: A Jane Austen RPG

Image: Raven Warner/Storybrewers Roleplaying

Storybrewers‘ game of romance, rivals, and social intrigue has been the gold standard of Regency role-play since its release in 2018. It heavily draws from Austen’s novels, as the title suggests. Like Austen protagonists, players must navigate English gentry’s thorny gardens while searching — or staunchly avoiding — love.

Player characters in Good Society trade both rumors with their social betters and wistful glances with their heart’s desires. Monologue tokens and powerful resolve allow players to control the story in crucial moments. They can skewer a rival’s reputation, or create the perfect secret rendezvous. The collaborative RPG animates Austen’s story with enough verve and confidence to last for several sessions.

Good Society: A Jane Austen RPG is available on Storybrewers’ website.

Virtues & Scandals

Those wishing to spend a brief night of their own among the ton can use Virtues & Scandals, which condenses all the machinations of the queen’s social court into a single page of rules. This is a hack of John Harper’s (Blades in the Dark) Lasers & Feelings, which means characters only have two stats: virtue and scandal. The former is based on their upbringing and poise, and the latter can seduce and deceive. Players choose to play with them. The person running the game only needs to ad-lib a scenario and then fill the ton with juicy gossip, courtesy of The Rag, before setting the group loose in a playground of high society and low morals.

Virtues & Scandals is available on Itch.io.

Ocean Tides

Image: Annie Johnston-Glick

The high seas are anathema to courts and royalty, but it still holds plenty of potential for relationship drama. Ocean Tides lets three players explore the fraught connections between naval officers, pirates, and mermaids using the role-play minigame structure from Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands. Rather than a traditional narrative, these minigames provide windows into important (and intimate) moments that create an emotional arc when strung together. This game is short and intense. It’s great for groups who want to dive right into the depths.

Ocean Tides is explicitly romantic, but ends in tragedy. The three characters are far removed from any authority to correct their impulses. This leaves them open to the possibility of falling for desires that they may not be able to admit.

Dueling Fops of Vindamere

If you spent the entire runtime of Bridgerton wishing someone would pull out a dueling saber and lob a challenge at the foot of some upstart, Dueling Fops of Vindamere might be the perfect game. A decidedly tongue-in-cheek take on the social season, it provides a stage for fencing instructors to court their beloved and prepare for an end-of-year tournament built from a table of prompts and dice-based challenges. Vindamere is a city where love can be won or lost with a single blade.

Dueling Fops of Vindamere is available on Itch.io and DriveThruRPG.

Bro, Is It Gay to Dock?

Image: Willem van der Velde II/Wikimedia Commons

Sometimes, a pirate RPG needs to be loudly, openly queer and Bro, Is It Gay To Dock? dutifully fulfills that need. What else could you use to describe the group of drunkies that lust after the legend buccaneer, who saved their lives from certain death. It’s that episode of Our Flag Means Death where the crew of The Revenge fall over themselves to assist Blackbeard and earn his favor, but your weekly group gets to do the lusting.

It’s the perfect example of how tabletop games can excel simply by offering a framework and rules to live out very specific fantasies. The fan response to David Jenkins’ nautical romcom — including a bevy of fan art of Taika Waititi and Rhys Darby’s characters — revealed an audience clamoring for more salty, smoldering romance.

Bro – Is it Gay to Dock? is available on Itch.io.

All Hands on Deck

A subgenre of tabletop RPGs skip the 200-page book in favor of prompt-based games that let players reveal an emergent setting by collaboratively answering questions. All Hands On Deck uses a deck to create a story about a ship and its crew, as well as the bonds that unite them.

All Hands on Deck sessions can steer in any direction, following the whims and interests of its players. By the end, the group will have a web of connections between sailors as well as the history and intention of the vessel they crew. These results might become the basis for a whole campaign in another setting or remain as a series of “maybes” and “maybes”.

All Hands on Deck is available on Itch.io.

Lady Blackbird

Image: Annie Johnston-Glick

This steampunk-flavored adventure game, another John Harper joint, is a bit of an outlier on this list. Broader and crunchier, where the rest rely on freeform role-play and distinct settings, Lady Blackbird deserves to be included if only to be an on-ramp for the curious-but-hesitant.

It wouldn’t be a list of indie tabletop RPGs without a call to step outside the systems that dominate this hobby, and the story of Lady Blackbird’s flight from an arranged marriage towards her lover, the pirate king Uriah Flint, deserves a chance to woo your table with swashbuckling and style.

Lady Blackbird is available for free on its official website.

Together We Write Private Cathedrals

The strongest thread in Our Flag means Death ‘s passionate fan community is its celebration of the gay love that blossomed between Edward Teach (left) and Stede Bonnett (right), over the course the season. This queering of a real historical figure is the exact subject of Together We Write Private Cathedrals, an epistolary game played by writing letters between two players in the role of lovers whose affections are condemned by society.

Depending on the roll of a die, the contents of a letter might be masked in euphemism or else outright censored, destroyed or hidden by the hands of your forebears. This game serves as a reminder of how history is written and is also a reminder to keep an eye out for love stories that have been omitted by their pen.

Together We Write Private Cathedrals is available on Itch.io