So, welcome to Flintlock Fantasy, the umpteenth blog in the OSR-o-sphere championing player agency in roleplaying games while trying to provide an evocative and "fresh" setting. This blog is going to be a repository for the fantasy roleplaying ingredients of my own game of Old School Essentials, but if anyone else reading this gets inspiration from these ramblings: by all means swipe and copy and clone as you like!
The central thematic building blocks of Flintlock Fantasy are right there in the blog subtitle: Romantic flintlock fantasy gaming featuring Ghibli-esque spirits and nascent industrialisation in a war-torn land.
But what, you ask, does any of that mean? In the grand tradition of blogs like Against the Wicked City and Signs in the Wilderness, read here my thematic ingredients:
Romantic: not in the fashion of a love story, but in the sense that the stories of Flintlock Fantasy are about hope triumphing over despair, redemption over corruption, about courage and the human capacity for forgiveness. The battlefields of this world are horrible places, where a cannonball or a bayonet can kill a man or maim him for life, but no battle can truly bring an end to the corruption of kings, the evil forces crawling out from underground or dark sorcerers. Evil in this world can not be defeated by stabbing it in the face, it can only be redeemed - healed.
Flintlock: because flintlock muskets and pistols have replaced the sword and bow as the weapons of the age. Battles are waged by brigades of musket-wielding line infantry, squaring off against saber-wielding cavalry. There is also the genre "flintlock fantasy", being set in a world different from well-known medieval fantasy settings, closer to the modern age but not quite steampunk yet. It is a world where ideas like "democracy" and "liberty", flanked by concepts as "brotherhood" and "equality" are just emerging, alongside scientific methods we today call "modern" or "enlightened".
Fantasy: because for all the grand tactical battles filled with gunpowder smoke, and all the modern developments, the world of Flintlock Fantasy is still filled with peoples such as elves and dwarves alongside humans. Magic, both granted by living gods and researched by mages delving into obscure tomes, is real - though scarce. Adventurers plumb ruins from a forgotten age searching for gold and lost relics. Mystical forests, sparkling glades, misty bogs populated with spirits and monsters, fair and foul, are scattered about the land. The heroes wield flintlock firearms, but they do so in a magical world.
Ghibli: Studio Ghibli's animated movies are known for themes such as environmentalism, pacifism, feminism and family. The works also feature nature spirits or ancestral spirits, friendly and fair, but also corrupted or enraged. In Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind features a kingdom waging war against a jungle infested with giant mutant bugs - but the key to ending the threat of these bugs lies in acceptance and trust, which ends the bugs' rage. In Princess Mononoke supernatural forces are unleashed by human meddling. In the world of Flintlock Fantasy, spirits live in enchanted glades and misty bogs - more or less peaceably. But human expansion into heretofore unspoiled lands has upset the natural ways of life of these spirits, causing them to fight back against the encroachment of civilization. What acts of mercy will the heroes of the stories of Flintlock Fantasy undertake to bring harmony back to the lands?
Nascent industrialisation: Humans are makers and in recent centuries, the world of Flintlock Fantasy has seen remarkable bounds of progress. In a few cities, a new invention with steam-powered engines forms the basis of new industry and jobs in manufacturing. Across the continent, clockwork technology is on the rise as inventors and gadgeteers tinker in their workshops. But all this progress has a downside, as expansion into unspoiled nature upsets the delicate spiritual balance and pollution enrages the spirits.
War-torn: the years around the turn of the nineteenth century were tumultuous - disastrous even. The French Revolution first destabilized a sleepy country, then unleashed revolutionary fervor on its neighboring nations, to end in the Napoleonic wars which saw armies of hundreds of thousands fielded against each other on battlefields stretching for miles. War is hell. But it makes a great backdrop for a fantasy roleplaying campaign. In the world of Flintlock Fantasy, the adventurers start in an unstable republic, surrounded by enemy monarchies. What role will the heroes play in the spread of enlightened ideals - and at what cost?
So, this is what the stories of Flintlock Fantasy are about. Welcome to the blog.
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