How Gallows Corner: A Peasant Revolt TTRPG Tries to 'Match Our Moment'

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This issue, we’re taking a closer look at Gallow's Corner, the latest TTRPG project from Three Sails Studios, best known as the makers of Mappa Mundi. The game describes itself as an “alternate historical system” that tells the story of how the lowest of people in the mid-to-late 14th century unite to push back against the powers of the day through collective action and political organization. The Gallows Corner is a real place in London, where the gallows hung for a time but has become a junction. That hasn’t eliminated its relevance to English history, however.

I spoke with game designer George Francis Bickers about what went into the game’s design, what inspired it, and why someone would want to play a game about being peasants in ye Olde England.

What's the story of Gallows Corner? What inspired you to make it?

It's difficult to say what inspired Gallows Corner directly, but it felt right from the start, and continues to feel, like the game I needed to make. I grew up a council estate kid in a single parent household, and to say there was little money about would be an understatement. I was born and raised in Essex (the county touching the north-eastern edge of London) to family who grew up in London (or had been moved out of the bombed out East End in the 50s and 60s), which used to be an incredibly radical place; the real Gallows Corner is in Essex. The Peasants' Revolt of 1381 broke out in Essex and that radical tradition continued for a long time.

But Essex isn't like that anymore, and hasn't been for around 45 years (longer than I've been alive). People are angry, everywhere, and I'm counted among that number. But for me, anger is only productive when it is marshalled in the service of others, in the service of your community. I wanted to create and write a game that spoke to the radical soul and history of the place I grew up; a game that spoke to my own anger and that of others, but offered solutions in the form of community and solidarity, rather than exclusion and (class/race/gender/sexuality) divisions.

Why a historical roleplay around peasantry and the proletariat? What do you hope to capture experientially for the players through this?

Honestly, Gallows Corner is a game about the contemporary moment. Not only here in England or the UK, but globally, I think. What struck me more and more as I was researching and writing was the confirmation of something I had felt for a long time: that things haven't changed much in the 650 years since the game is set (1371; five years before the Peasants' Revolt).

I wanted to create a game that was true to my experiences as a working-class person who feels that identity deeply, even if my life is now very different from how it was a few years ago. I want players to experience the sense of powerlessness that comes with living that kind of life, but also the sheer joy and beautiful power that comes from it, too, when you are surrounded by people who understand you, who will give you the last scrap of food from their table because they know what it is to go without. Gallows Corner will satisfy those fantasies of burning the manor and overthrowing the monarchy. But it will also show you the quiet pride that comes with standing alongside those people you've lived with and loved.

What stories do you hope players will explore? Is this an adventure of the everyday man rising above his station to defeat the proletariat? Is it about collective action? There's clearly a political element intertwined within the historical as well.

So this builds on the previous answer, I suppose! Gallows Corner definitely looks like a game that is all about pitchforks and burning torches, and of the masses marching on the seats of power. And it definitely is that game. But it is also so much more.

What I want players to experience is that change from below is not always, or even regularly, loud and instant. Change is incremental and quiet. This is not to say that people shouldn't raise their voices (and their fists), but that the change that feeds your neighbour when they're hungry, or puts clothes on the back of someone who is struggling, has a massive impact for an act that is often overlooked. I really hope players will feel that they can engage in those smaller moments of change, of community building, and of solidarity.

How does this contrast or compare with past projects from you like Mappa Mundi?

Well, Mappa Mundi is our only previous project, and on the surface Gallows Corner couldn't look more different (despite the incredible Joel Kilpatrick, one of our co-owners, being the artist on both projects). But, really, Gallows Corner is an evolution of the major theme we were exploring in Mappa Mundi: that everyday people, working people, can change the world in fundamental ways if only they stand up and act.

In Gallows Corner, like in Mappa Mundi, you play as working people thrown into extraordinary circumstances. For me, the most heroic thing a person can do is see a structure weighed almost totally against them and still say: I will go and do what needs to be done, in whatever way I can best do it.

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What tools do storytellers and players have to help make the player characters stand out? Is it a lethal game, or more narratively oriented?

That's a really interesting question. So, in Gallows Corner, all character are mechanically identical: each character has three Traits (Physical, Intellectual, and Emotional), a Trade, and a Job. No part of the system is closed off to any character. Everyone can do what everyone else can, mechanically.

But what makes characters stand out are those Trades and Jobs, the way they understand the world, and the way they interact with it. In all the games I've run of Gallows Corner, I've seen players empowered and bringing their characters to life through these two features. Players seem to very quickly embody the worker's life and naturally start to individualise their characters through a collective identity (Trade and Job) the character belongs to.

And the game is definitely deadly. After all, you're untrained peasants and workers taking on the full might of the crown, church, and nobility. But the game is narrative first, so combat (while having a mechanical base) is all about the story of the fight, whether you live or you die.

What sort of research and resources went into this? What work went into trying to capture your vision of England’s history?

There are two answers to this: a lot of research and no research at all.

I'm an ex-academic, so I'm well used to historical research, and there was plenty of it for Gallows Corner. I did a lot of research into the spatial and social organisation of England in the 14th century, including diving into some very obscure (and very hard to find!) academic texts from the early 20th century. I also did a lot of research into the working conditions of the period, the different types of jobs and their social importance, and obviously, a lot of research into the period running up to the Peasants' Revolt. I am indebted to the People of 1381 database for this last bit.

But in another sense, no research was conducted on it at all. I have written this game in my own voice, my authentic working-class voice, which Gallows Corner has helped me reaffirm and, in some cases, rediscover.

What's the short sales pitch? Why should someone try this game?

So if I was a GM trying to get my friends to play this game, my quick pitch would be: 'Do you want to play a Robin Hood TTRPG?' I think that folk hero fantasy we associate with Robin Hood is very clear and easy to understand, and is enough to give people a sense of what they're about to play. But what I love about this sales pitch is that, very quickly, those players are going to see that Gallows Corner takes them in so many more directions, and deeper into that folk hero role than they ever expected!

What's something you're excited for players to discover about Gallows Corner?

This is going to sound incredibly cheesy, but I don't care. I'm most excited about players discovering their own power through Gallows Corner, rather than discovering something about Gallows Corner itself. The game reflects our contemporary moment and all of us within it. It creates, through the game's structures, an exposure of the way power is organised in our contemporary society, and by playing it, experiencing it, and seeing that without those around us, we're all nothing, players will discover something essential about themselves, their community, and the spaces they live in.

You can check out Gallows Corner at their Kickstarter page here.

What are your thoughts? Send any scoops, tips or press releases to [email protected].