A guide to Flabbergasted: what is it and how to play

What is Flabbergasted?

Flabbergasted is a tabletop roleplaying game, or TTRPG, co-created by Fleur & Chelsea Sciortino and published by The Wanderer’s Tome.

Unlike many other TTRPGs - like Dungeons & Dragons - Flabbergasted is a rules-lite game that exchanges complicated mechanics for improvisation and storytelling. Rather than strategising to overcome an enemy or obstacle, Flabbergasted is about players working together to tell an entertaining story.

A screenshot from the TV adaptation of Jeeves and Wooster, featuring Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry.

This approach is reflected in Flabbergasted’s key inspirations, concept and setting. Flabbergasted was inspired by the likes of the Jeeves and Wooster stories by PG Wodehouse - and the TV adaptation starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie - period drama stories with class dynamics like Downton Abbey and classic British comedy shows like Fawlty Towers and Blackadder.

Flabbergasted takes place in a version of the 1920s, within the fictional city of Peccadillo, where plotlines are focused around various mishaps, shenanigans and humorous scenarios. This is primarily a game about poking fun at class disparity, and the extraordinarily privileged lives of the idle wealthy versus those of the exasperated working class.

How do you play Flabbergasted?

As a tabletop RPG, playing Flabbergasted involves a mixture of acting, improvising, imagining and some dice rolling mechanics.

There are two key roles in Flabbergasted: player and director. As a player, you’ll be creating and controlling a single character - or protagonist - within the story. As a director, you’ll be responsible for planning the initial story, narrating the events as they unfold and managing the game’s direction. Being a director is a much more involved role, so it’s suitable for someone with at least some RPG experience.

In Flabbergasted, the goal isn’t to ‘win’ the game but to enjoy the journey, make each other laugh and tell an engaging story.

Being a player

In Flabbergasted, your first job as a player is to create your protagonist. Doing this involves a number of steps, where you’ll gradually fill in the spaces of your protagonist’s character sheet.

Creating your protagonist

Before doing anything, you should consider what kind of character you want to play. As Flabbergasted is an entirely narrative-driven game, your choices won’t be affected by gameplay - like picking a character class in Dungeons & Dragons. Instead, the type of character you make depends on the sorts of characters you like and the story you want to tell. Maybe there’s a character in Jeeves & Wooster, Downton Abbey, Blackadder or another Flabbergasted-adjacent show that you can take some inspiration from?

Your first major choice will be picking your character’s archetype. You’ll be able to choose from an aristocrat (someone with a title and inheritance), a well-to-do (an entrepreneurial member of the middle-class), a bohemian (a creative type who relies on the generosity of a patron) or the Staff (someone who works an actual job). Your character will also have access to certain facets of society, locations and resources depending on their chosen archetype. For example, an aristocrat will have plenty of money to spare and can attend the most exclusive parties, whilst the staff will be able to better blend into different scenarios through their jobs.

Each of the different archetypes in Flabbergasted provide a unique player experience, with advantages and disadvantages to picking every one.

Which archetype you choose will also affect your traits and scene cues. Traits are key attributes you can call on when performing actions in Flabbergasted, which you’ll then use to overcome a challenge presented by the director. Each archetype will be more accomplished at certain types of traits - for instance, Bohemians are better at creativity & passion whilst well-to-do characters are more suited to bravado & persuasion. Scene cues are unique abilities you’ll be able to use to help influence events and push things in your favour. The number of scene cues you can use and the available options for scene cues will depend on your chosen archetype.

Other important aspects of your character include their main flaw - which is a trait that tends to get them into hot water - their dilemma, or the key issue your character wants to solve, their background (or origins) and the relationships they have with the other protagonists, which can change throughout the story. Finally, note down your protagonist’s name, age, a physical description, a memento (or precious possession), their profession (job) or title, and how many readies they begin each session with: which are expendable resources.

Creating a social club

Besides making your protagonist, you’ll also need to collaborate with your fellow protagonists to create your own social club. In Flabbergasted, the social club serves as the glue that binds your group of characters together, regardless of their class, background, culture etc…

The social club you create isn’t some boring gathering of old windbags smoking cigars and drinking brandy, but can be fueled by whatever you and the other players are interested in: whether that’s a shared love of literature, travel, sport, history, tea and more. Consider this social club to be the base you operate out of - a place for each storyline to start from, and the catalyst for many of your adventures as you attempt to prove that your social club is the superior one on Peccadillo.

Creating your social club will see you picking a theme, a name, where your club is based and its slogan and emblem, alongside the identity of your rival social club that will serve as an ongoing antagonist for your game (think of a club that’s either the antithesis of your club or a group that’s vying for the top spot in your field.) You’ll also be deciding on a first public challenge - or central event you’ll be working towards - as well as the big challenge, or major trouble that faces your social club and threatens to shut it down: both of these will serve to drive the overall plot of your storyline.

Which theme or activity your social club revolves around depends entirely on you - sports? arts? tea? birds? You name it.

Throughout the game, you’ll want to balance aspects like the social club funds by acquiring new investors, grow its member-base by convincing people to join and improve its general reputation.

Controlling your protagonist

Once you’ve made your character, you’re ready to play Flabbergasted as a protagonist! Your role in the game is to embody your character. As a character in Flabbergasted, one of your goals is to acquire more members and sponsors for the social club they manage with the other protagonists. Your other goals might revolve around your character’s dilemma and potentially improving their reputation: which is how much wider society approves or disapproves of them.

Throughout the game, your protagonist will be faced with various challenges that they’ll want to overcome to get closer to their goals. Overcoming these challenges will require you to choose a trait and roll as many d6 dice as you have points in that chosen trait, with the aim of reaching or surpassing the number of successes required (successes are 5s or 6s). Though success will enable your character to succeed at their intended action, failure does not mean that their progress is permanently halted. Instead, you and your fellow players - alongside the director - can find an alternate route to your goal, just maybe one involving more trouble than your character would have liked.

The most important thing to consider is where your character could go - both in terms of the plot and their personal growth - and how they can do that with the other protagonists. Creating a complex character with flaws and ambitions is key to this. A Flabbergasted story should contain both comedy and moments of genuine emotion, which will be easier with the right character and attitude.

Being a director

The term director is used quite literally in Flabbergasted, as you will be directing your protagonist players across a series of episodes within a season. Each episode of Flabbergasted is defined by a key scenario or problem that the protagonists face. An episode of Flabbergasted can take place over multiple play sessions, with a season representing a wider, overarching narrative. When an episode or season ends is entirely up to you, but - like any good TV series - it should be marked by a resolution and/or the introduction of a new narrative thread.

The city of Peccadillo features a collection of locations for the player characters to visit, from harbours to artist studios.

What exactly triggers your season and episode storylines depends on the sorts of narrative you want to tell. Think about the type of stories you like: mystery? adventure? action? romance? Consider how you can incorporate one or more of these genres into your storylines - perhaps through the disappearance of a shared associate or an incredible architectural discovery beneath a protagonist’s house.

During play itself, be sure to follow the key rule of good improv: which is ‘yes…and?’ This refers to the act of jumping onto another person’s prompt or suggestion and carrying it forward. Rather than shutting down any player’s ideas for progressing the story, consider playing along or tweaking it to work within the current scenario (players should be doing this too). By applying this rule to your directorial approach, you’ll encourage creativity in your players and achieve a more collaborative storytelling experience.

When you do want to implement some resistance, that’s where challenges come into play. Challenges are obstacles that the player characters will need to overcome in order to continue along their desired path. These challenges should draw from the game’s current narrative, as they shouldn’t just be obstacles for obstacles’ sake, but provide entertaining twists and turns in the story. For example, if a protagonist is attempting to charm an event host into becoming a sponsor for the social club, they’ll need to provide a convincing argument.

How the player characters approach each challenge should be entirely up to them, and consideration should be made to both the trait they choose to roll with, and what their character actually does in-game, when making a decision as to how difficult the challenge will be. Creative thinking and good roleplaying should be encouraged - it doesn’t have to reduce the difficulty of a challenge, but you should definitely acknowledge it.

Players will need to sometimes make challenge rolls whilst playing Flabbergasted, whose outcome can completely change the path of the story.

Challenges in Flabbergasted can be categorised into three levels of difficulty, depending on the number of successes (or 5s/6s) players need to roll in order to succeed: including moderate (one success), hard (two successes) and daunting (3 successes). Which level of difficulty you choose for what challenge should be based on the action itself, what potential factors could complicate it and the strengths and weaknesses of the character. For instance, a character who has a more scandalous reputation, is lower class and has recently embarrassed themselves, will find it much harder to gain entry into a very exclusive country club.

Flabbergasted golden rules

• Besides creating your character, learning how to roleplay and running the game itself, there are a few golden rules that will help you whilst playing Flabbergasted:

• Always be entertaining - prioritise good storytelling, interesting characterisation and funny situations over gameplay strategy and winning.

• Collaboration is key - players are not competing with the director or each other. They should also share the spotlight and enable each others’ ideas.

• Pay attention - whether you’re the director or a player, always pay attention even when you’re not talking. It’s not just polite but also important to collaborative storytelling.

• Embrace failure - relish in your character’s flaws, let them look stupid and allow them to make mistakes, as there’s nowhere to grow if there’s nothing to be bettered or learnt.

• Respect boundaries - some people might not be comfortable with certain subjects, themes, events and storylines, so be sensitive to this as a player and director.

• Most importantly, have fun together!