Building In The Face Of Fate With Before The Flood
How much are you willing to invest in a world that is going to be destroyed?
Long ago, before our world, there was another.
How much are you willing to invest in a world that is going to be destroyed? When you have already seen the end, been cursed with the prophets foresight, can you truly do your best to struggle against the forces that seek to tear your world apart prematurely?
This is what Before the Flood asks of its players. A map making game for exactly six people, wrought by Clawhammer Games, Before the Flood starts by giving players the instructions on how to destroy the utopia that they came together to create.
But that’s jumping ahead, isn’t it? Turning to the last page before we’ve even started to read the book. Let’s start again.
There was a Flood once, or so I have heard. It was vast and terrible in the way that only the greatest of disasters can be, a cataclysm so total in its destruction that when it swept the world, there was nothing left.
Before the Flood is a game about creating a utopia. Each player takes on a distinct role, either Land or Legend, Nature or Nation, Weal or Woe.
Each role has its own mechanic which, through rounds of play, come together to create landmarks, flesh out the world, and keep the forces of nature and humanity balanced against the waves of ill fortune that wash over the land.
That is, until humanities hubris overwhelms, as it was always destined to do, and the Flood takes all.
However,
This is not the story of that Flood. This is not the story of how it came to pass, or what it broke, or what came after.
This is the story of the world that came before it, a world lost to the sands of time and the waters of inevitability. This is the story of when magic was material, and the ones like us were lions on the prairie. This is the story of Before the Flood.
Before the Flood is a collaboration between Sylvan Lawrence (Gravemire, Athanor) and Nicholas Ambrose (Indie Press Revolution, The Horned Sphinx), with art by Reese Hill (Gravemire, oldmaker picrews).
The zine will be funding on Backerkit starting on the 15th of July. Presave it now to help us hit the funding goal, along with stretch goals to improve the quality of paper and printing.
