A Broken Man on a Halifax Pier
A downloadable game
The Year is 1778
You are a seventeen year old boy who has just signed up to be a privateer on The Antelope. Her captain, Elcid Barrett received a marque from the king and has promised an easy trip of raiding American ships for gold. You and the other nineteen fishermen that now make up the Antelope’s crew were told you’d fire no guns and shed no tears. You were not told what a sorry state the Antelope was in.
A Broken Man on a Halifax Pier is a solo GM-less journaling game in which you document your attempts to survive your journey. During the game you will roll dice, draw cards from the deck to perform the prompts associated with them, pull blocks from a tumbling block tower, place or remove tokens from the salvation card, and write about your experiences on the Antelope in character.
Content Warnings
A Broken Man on a Halifax Pier contains themes of drowning, starvation, naval combat, mutiny, poor working conditions and alcoholism.
You Will Need
- A standard deck of cards with the jokers removed
- A d6
- 10 coins
- A tumbling block tower
- Something to write in
What's Included
- a 20pg illustrated PDF zine
- a 10pg plain text PDF and Word document
Attribution
This work is based on The Wretched, product of Chris Bissette and Loot The Room, and licensed for our use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $10 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Community Copies
Support this game at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
Community Copies
If you'd like to play, but don't have the funds right now, feel free to take a community copy.
If you download a community copy, please consider returning to leave a review.
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Delighted to see something like this inspired by the song!
Thanks! It was a lot of fun to make.
A Broken Man on a Halifax Pier by Morgan Eilish is a solo journaling game inspired by a Canadian folk song about a perilous privateering journey. The player takes on the role of a seventeen year old who signed up to be a privateer on a decrepit sloop. To survive, the player has to repair the sloop, deal with the limited supplies, uplift the crew’s morale, and overcome enemy boats in naval combat. The mechanics is based on that of The Wretched, in which the player draws cards from a deck to see which problem they encounter, and pulls blocks from a Jenga tower to resolve them. The system suits very well to the perilous naval journey of the narrative, and I love the use of coins to represent the plundered American gold as a means to track progress. The writing is great and it really gives the reader/player a feeling of running a privateering boat that is falling apart. The layout design and use of public domain art are incredible. I would recommend this game to anyone who wants to read/play a thematic solo journaling game.
Thank you for your kinds words! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
This a really great journalling game.
Great mechanics.
Thanks! I'm glad you like it!
Hell yes, more Stan Rogers RPGs! And Wretched & Alone nonetheless!
Excited to check this out. I once made a smaller solo journaling game called God Damn Them All, it's here if you want to take a peek:
https://lari-assmuth.itch.io/god-damn-them-all
It seemed the perfect system for a game that takes place on the Antelope given the state of the ship and what happened to it. I’ll defs check yours out.