Building the World Beneath the Game
It has been a little while since our last full development update, and a tremendous amount has been happening beneath the surface of Fortune & Gallows.
Some of the most important work we are doing right now isn't a new button, screen, quest, or combat animation. We're building the world that makes all of those things matter.
Fortune & Gallows continues to grow from a historical text-based pirate RPG into something much more ambitious: a simulation where the world attempts to understand what the player is actually trying to do, determine what is physically and historically possible, and then allow the consequences to continue forward.
A WORLD OF SYSTEMS — NOT SCRIPTED CHOICES
One of our central design principles remains: Design from the intended player experience backward; program from authoritative world state outward.
Combat, injuries, illness, exhaustion, sleep, environmental exposure, physical actions, perception, knowledge, occupations, NPC behavior, reputation, law, economics, ships, geography, weather, and history cannot behave like isolated minigames. They have to interact.
If you decide to climb something, fight someone, work all night, sail into dangerous weather, ignore an injury, attempt an unfamiliar task, follow a rumor, or deliberately do something foolish, the game should not simply search for a prewritten response.
It should determine: What did you actually attempt? Could your character physically do it? What happened? Did you get hurt? Who witnessed it? What did they understand? What will they remember? And what happens next?
One surprisingly useful development test involved something as simple as a player deciding to poke hot coals with a bare finger. The game understood the action well enough to allow the burn—but that exposed a much larger question: what does being burned actually mean afterward?
That small test helped drive the design of a much deeper injury and physical-health system where wounds, burns, illness, exposure, fatigue, sleep, recovery, and sustained performance become persistent parts of the character rather than temporary lines of flavor text.
That is exactly why we keep trying strange things during development. If a player can think of it, we want the world to have a reasonable way of dealing with it.
RECONSTRUCTING THE WATER WORLD OF 1713
The historical world itself has also grown enormously. We are no longer researching ports simply as points on a map. We are reconstructing the physical maritime environment around them.
- Currents, tides, winds, and waves.
- River discharge, sediment, and salinity.
- Reefs, shoals, harbor approaches, and navigable channels.
- Changing coastlines and seasonal conditions.
- The interaction between all of those systems.
Modern coastlines cannot simply be dropped into 1713. Modern dredging, canals, seawalls, reservoirs, stabilized inlets, port construction, river modification, reclamation, and centuries of shoreline change all have to be separated from the world a sailor would actually have encountered.
Our expanding Regional Current Atlas is therefore becoming much more than a current map. It is helping answer a far more important question: What was the sea actually like to travel through?
HISTORY IS FIXED; KNOWLEDGE IS NOT
Our historical research continues to operate under another major project doctrine: HISTORY IS FIXED; KNOWLEDGE IS NOT.
Real historical events still happen. The player does not get to erase history simply by arriving in the Caribbean. But characters do not possess a magical encyclopedia of everything happening in the world.
Their knowledge depends on who they are. A sailor may know something a plantation laborer does not. A merchant may recognize information contained in a shipping notice. A clerk may understand a legal document that another character cannot read. A veteran seaman may recognize a dangerous current. Someone newly arrived from Scotland may know almost nothing about a rumor circulating in Havana.
News can arrive late. Rumors can be wrong. Witnesses can misunderstand what they saw. Two people can know completely different things about the same event.
The historical world is fixed. The human understanding of that world is not.
EVEN THE DATE CAN DEPEND ON WHO WROTE IT
One particularly interesting piece of research recently became a global historical safeguard for the entire project.
In 1713, Britain and its colonies were still using the Julian calendar, while Spain and France—and for our project period the Dutch world—used the Gregorian calendar. That creates situations where two documents can give different dates for the same physical day.
The game now preserves that distinction. A British record can retain its historically appropriate Old Style date. A Spanish record describing the same event can show its Gregorian date. Internally, the world understands that both refer to the same day.
But the characters themselves may not. A well-traveled merchant, navigator, diplomat, or shipmaster might recognize the discrepancy. Someone with little experience outside their home colony might not.
Even something as basic as asking “What day did this happen?” can therefore become part of historical world simulation.
FOLLOWING THE EVIDENCE — EVEN WHEN IT DOESN'T GIVE US AN ANSWER
Another major effort underway is historical source provenance. As the historical database grows, we want to know where claims came from—not merely which website displayed something or which modern book mentioned it, but, wherever possible, what surviving historical witness actually supports it.
That means tracing archival references, identifying original records, preserving disagreements between sources, and refusing to create certainty where the evidence does not provide it.
Sometimes the correct answer is simply: We don't know yet.
One current investigation is a perfect example. We have been following the documentary trail of a vessel called GALGO, connected with Juan de Acosta and sold in Havana in 1719. We know details of that sale. We know the buyer. We know the price. We have the notarial reference. But the original British or Jamaican vessel that became Galgo has not yet been securely identified.
Rather than simply selecting a plausible ship and filling the hole, the record remains open while the investigation continues.
That same rule applies across Fortune & Gallows: Missing history remains missing until evidence earns the answer.
RELIGION, CULTURE, AND EVERYDAY LIFE
Research has also continued far beyond ships and piracy. We are reconstructing the religious, cultural, occupational, economic, and social worlds surrounding the player.
Recent work on places such as Montserrat illustrates how detailed that can become. Instead of assuming that every religious community must have had a convenient church building and resident priest, we distinguish between what the evidence actually supports.
An established Anglican parish might have a physical church. A Catholic community might instead rely heavily on family practice, correspondence, cemeteries, overseas connections, and occasional visiting clergy. An institution documented decades later cannot simply be moved backward into 1715 because it would make the game easier to populate.
The same care applies to African and Afro-Caribbean religious life. We know enslaved and free African-descended communities possessed their own beliefs, memories, relationships, practices, and traditions. But we will not assign a later label or ceremony to a specific person in 1715 without evidence supporting it.
Historical people deserve more than being turned into scenery.
HUMANS ARE NOT PROPERTY
There is another historical subject the project cannot avoid. Slavery was deeply embedded in the Atlantic world in which Fortune & Gallows takes place. Pretending otherwise would create a false version of history.
But depicting slavery does not require turning enslaved human beings into another commodity for the player to collect, trade, or profit from.
Our position is simple: Humans are not property.
The game can depict the institution because the institution existed. The player will not participate in buying, selling, trading, or profiting from enslaved people.
Where circumstances allow, interactions involving enslaved people can instead lead toward voluntary employment, paid work, transportation to safety, maroon or free communities where historically plausible, escape, emancipation, or other outcomes consistent with the situation and the historical world.
We want the game itself to communicate that through its world and consequences rather than stopping the experience for a modern lecture.
THE ADVENTURE SHOULD COME FROM THE WORLD
The larger vision behind all of this is becoming clearer with every development pass. We are not trying to write thousands of scripted adventures and then wait for players to discover them.
We want to build a sufficiently deep world that adventures begin to emerge from it.
You might hear something in a tavern. A sailor might be lying. A map might be genuine, inaccurate, stolen, obsolete, incomplete—or a trap. A storm might alter your plans. An injury might force you into port. A ship you expected to find may already have sailed. Someone you offended weeks earlier may remember you. A historical event may suddenly change who controls a harbor. A rumor that sounded worthless might become important three towns later.
And sometimes nothing dramatic happens at all.
You simply worked. You sailed. You drank. You gambled. You repaired something. You listened. You survived another day.
Because the quiet parts of life are what make the dangerous parts feel real.
WHERE WE'RE GOING
There is still a tremendous amount of work ahead. But the project is reaching a point where systems that once existed as separate ideas are beginning to connect into the same underlying world.
History informs geography. Geography affects sailing. Weather affects ships. Work affects fatigue. Fatigue affects performance. Violence causes injuries. Injuries affect what a character can do. NPCs observe events. Knowledge spreads through people. Rumors distort knowledge. Time changes the world. And the player exists inside all of it.
That is the game we are trying to build.
Not a story where we tell you what your pirate did.
A world where you tell us what you attempt—and the world answers.
Fortune & Gallows
In development by Black Keel Games
Build the world. Trust the player. Let consequences tell the story.
