Dueling Fops of Vindamere is an RPG that’s “Bridgerton, only extremely violent”

Fall in love and try not to fall in a fight with Dueling Fops of Vindamere, an upcoming roleplaying game about fancy swordplay and flirting.

Described as being a game that’s “Bridgerton, only extremely violent” or “an extra-horny Cobra Kai, with swords,” Dueling Fops of Vindamere is a roleplaying game that sees players becoming ultra privileged aristocrats whose most beloved pastimes consist of making eyes at people during elaborate social events and running their rivals through with swords. Set in the fictional dreary and corrupt city-state of Vindamere, the RPG has players taking the role of the spoiled children of the wealthy who have little cares for the struggles of the common people.

Rather than featuring any grand or epic plots that many fantasy roleplaying games concern themselves with, a session of Dueling Fops of Vindamere focuses on the social year - from the Ye Midwinter Balle through to the Alle-Valley Fencinge Championeshippe - and could contain anything from a swooning romantic plot to a heated fight between two rakish cockscombs. Players are not confined to controlling a single character in Dueling Fops of Vindamere, instead they are able to become multiple people within their individual scenarios.

At the start of the game, players create a duelling instructor from “an illustrious dueling school,” with each instructor being able to use their four stats - foppish, serious, duelist and aristocrat - to influence the various scenes they’ll appear in. Each stat is part of an opposing set, with foppish being the opposite to serious and duelist being in contention with aristocrat, and whichever stat players choose to use depends on their inclinations of their individual instructors.

As well as their instructor, players can also choose to play as their beloveds - characters whom their instructor has an affection for - which will give them special modifiers to their stats. Players will have to be careful however, as the other player characters might have their eye on more than just their own beloveds and could potentially woo anyone. Throughout the game, players interact via scenes - which they set up by rolling on prompts or collaboratively deciding on what they want to do - wherein they roll a d20 alongside an appropriate stat to perform actions, with a 15 or higher equalling a success.

Dueling Fops of Vindamere was created by Crankshaft Constellation, an indie publishing studio run by Violet Kirk, Jose R Garcia, Lochlan Sudarshan and Greg Stolze.

The Kickstarter campaign for Dueling Fops of Vindamere is live until August 11th, with a pledge of $10 (£8) getting backers a PDF copy of the game in January 2022.