With only one week into the campaign, we've passed the thousand backers mark. THANKKKKK YOU again for all the love. Lots of creativity surging over at the Discord as creators prep their content for the SWINGS HARD WITH FLAIL JAM. Check it out. To celebrate, let's talk FLAIL INSPIRATIONS. 

One of the bands could be very well be FLAIL's official soundtrack is the BUDOS BAND. The band combines doom, stoner rock with afrobeat, soul and jazz, all wrapped up in a sword & sorcery mythology. The track below is called LAIR OF 1,000 SERPENTS which is pretty much a FLAIL adventure begging to be written. What's even more incredible is that i actually contacted Brian Profilio, the drummer of this awesome ensemble, after finding out he’s also an illustrator and he ended up doing a couple of majestic pieces for FLAIL. Dream come true, and I wanna thank you publicly for this, Brian.

There are other bands that really live in the FLAIL headspace. This is the kind of stuff I had on repeat while writing it. THE SORCERERS is a must. Their second album basically plays out like an RPG session: a party searching for the lost city of the monkey god, and it ends with them actually summoning the deity. They’ve also got another record with a track called "Ancestral Machines", which feels like it exists in the same universe as the Undying Sands.

ANGINE DE POITRINE is another, because they are 333-year-old intergalactic explorers from outer space that travelled to "marvel at hot dogs, pyramids, and rock music in all its glorious excess". Errrr.... is there anything more FLAIL than this? Perhaps i should (must?) write SPACE FLAIL.

Jazz is absolutely not an obvious pick, which is probably why this works :D HORACEE ARNOLD'S album below is loose, weird, hypnotic, slightly off-kilter and full of strange momentum. Just like FLAIL i guess. Plusssssssssss, "Tales of the Exonerated Flea", this album's name, really feels like another FLAIL adventure waiting to be written. Can anyone write this module? Please?

There's a bunch of other media i consider FLAIL inspirational. I could do this all day. I kinda see the game as Cube (1997) meets A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (2026) directed by Fritz Leiber and set in the city of Lankhmar. What does that even mean?! you ask. Well, it means cool, weird, puzzly, trap-filled dungeons in a universe of anti-heroes and thieves and guilds and backstabbery and skullduggery - thinking of heists, drunken misadventures, revenge arcs, cursed treasures, and deals with questionable gods - all coated in that dry, slightly-awkward humour of Duncan the tall and the Egg. I mean, is there a better visual representation of a Warrior and their hireling than Dunk and the Egg? Maybe. Maybe not. Probably not?

What do YOU think FLAIL feels like? It's your game now so you tell me!

THANKS!
Andre.

JP Coovert just released an excellent review of FLAIL. If you're still on the fence and wanna take a deeper look into the game, behold.

All boxsets are officially coming with four Player Record Envelopes ! These are meant for the players to store their item cards and notes in between sessions. THANKKKKKKK YOUUUUUUUU

Now, we move onto the next Stretch Goal: the Hireling Tear Pad. If we reach the €100k mark, all boxsets will include a hireling tear pad.

THANK YOU THANK YOU 

Check out the "SWINGS HARD WITH FLAIL" GAME JAM  live right now on itch.io. FLAIL has a third-party license that allows fans and creators to make compatible content for the game, using its mechanics, rules, creatures, names, etc etc. Do whatever you want, we won't take a cut. I'm sure you've seen this around plenty, so you know how it works.

There's already a couple of entries and there's many more coming. One has a bunch of very cool alternative class skills, including new primal gifts for the Druid (plant, fungi!), new Warrior combat talents and new music instruments (my favourite Shawn of Pestilence has an effect "Conjure an indiscriminately hostile swarm of rats", nothing more added to that, which is the most FLAIL thing i've read all day). The second entry is a horror adventure inside a haunted country house.

There's an on going joke in the Discord Server about who's going to make the POKER DICE COOKING SYSTEM. Imagine that, whenever a player decides to use a cooking pot to generate some grub cards/tokens, they have to roll a bunch of d6s and we shall see how that goes exactly! Roll a pair: the food burns; Roll a triplet: uffff that troll liver was absolutely non-cookable (poisoned conditon to all who ate it); Roll a sequence: yay, it's delicious, everybody loves you, +1 to whatever on your next roll.

WHO'S DOING THIS FOR THE JAM? If nobody does it, i'll add it myself to the new Hexcrawl Toolbox guidebook. 

THANKS!

Massive thanks to Evan Diaz (creator of Nimble), Johan Nohr (creator of MÖRK BORG) and Yochai Gal (creator of Cairn) for sitting down with me and talking FLAIL. If you missed the stream, here's the recording. They said goods things about my little game, made me happy, so i need you to witness this. 

We have the extra Dry-Erase Markers ! Now your players won't have to brawl each other anymore for a pen. THANK YOUUUUUUUU TK YOUUUUUUUU TK YOU

Two more goals have been unlocked:

The Player Sheets are officially in! Every boxset will now come with two double-sided player-facing sheets. The first contains all basic FLAIL rules and a character creation summary on the other side. The second sheet contains tables with prices for everything. Easy access at the gaming table. THANK THANKKKKKKKKK YOU YOU YOU

Now, it's time for the extra DRY-ERASE MARKERS. We are only €5k away from hitting the goal. This one is extremely important because it prevents players from slaying one another in brutal gladiator matches at the gaming table (IRL). All for a pen. It has happened to me. Making sure it won't happen to you too. 

Early Bird ending soon. If you want a custom FLAIL d6 for free, act now. You have less than 8 hours.

THANKS THANKS