Gallows Corner - A Peasants' Revolt RPG

Update 4: Halfway Through + Combat Example and Sixty Second Stories
about 1 month ago – Tue, Feb 17, 2026 at 04:58:38 AM

Outlaws! We are halfway through (or will be, in an hour or two) the campaign for Gallows Corner and what a two weeks it has been! It's time for my weekly update. It's good to see you. I'm George, the creator and designer of Gallows Corner. Thanks for being here with us!

The Half Way Point

It's hard to believe we're only two weeks into the campaign. It feels like much longer and much shorter at the same time. Thankfully my sleep pattern has returned closer to normal, though I find myself dreaming about the campaign essentially every night.

At the time of this update, we have raised £58,272 from 1,088 backers! That brings us to a total of 582% funded, which is just mind-blowing. Thank you all so much for your support so far, and we hope you'll be with us to the end and beyond. England isn't going to change itself, after all!

A Backer Request: Examples of Combat

One or two of our backers have asked that I put together an example of how combat flows in Gallows Corner. I was going to do this in last week's update, but the subject got away from me. But I always keep my promises, so we'll tackle it this week.

For those who don't know, I put together a series of short videos teaching you how to play Gallows Corner. You can find them all on YouTube in a single playlist. Here, I'll share the video covering Combat so you can follow along with our example.

In this example, we're going to imagine we have a Player (P) and a Narrator (N) covering a scene outside a tavern in rural England. To start, we'll assume there has been an altercation in this tavern between the Player's character and a local hardman, who has taken exception to some perceived slight. 

A fistfight is about to begin.

Narrator: Okay, Robert, the local hardman, has pushed you outside. People are gathering around wanting to see how their local man can deal with you, an outsider and an outlaw.

Player: Got it. 

N: This guy, as you might expect, is pretty big and pretty tough. As he's pushed you through the door, a friend of his outside has tripped you up and you've fallen backwards. If combat were to begin right now, you'd start in the Down position and your opponent would have the Momentum.

Note: The Narrator could start combat here. But they are giving the player a moment to try and turn the situation in their favour. This is where Narrator's can incorporate Tests into combat. Tests can be used to start or end a combat, or during a combat to add some more narrative flair. It doesn't just need to be opposed Physical dice rolls throughout.

P: Understood. But, given that I'm down on the ground, I'd like to grab a handful of dirt and dust and throw it at Robert's face to try and buy myself some time to get back up.

N: Excellent idea. We'll start the combat with a Test, then! You are being Tested on your ability to grab this dust and hit your target, giving you a window to stand up and land the first punch.

Note: At this point, the player builds their Dice Pool for the Test. We won't go through that now, but for this sake of this example, we'll assume they were successful in the Test.

N: Excellent, you've hit your target and he goes reeling backwards, rubbing at his eyes with one hand and swinging wildly with the other. You've stood up and he's temporarily blinded. We'll start the Combat now, with you both in the Knocked Back position and you with the Momentum. Tell us the story of what you're trying to do next!

P: Okay, great! This bloke is much taller and stronger than me, so I'm going to try and remove his natural advantage by getting him flat on his back. My character avoids his swinging blow by trying to tackle him around the waist and get him down on the ground.

N: Great idea, let's roll to see who wins the round.

Here both the player and the Narrator roll Physical dice for each combatant. As they're both in the Knocked Back position, each subtracts 1 from their roll.

The Narrator rolls a D8, as this is a bigger fighter, and gets a 5. Subtracting the 1, they end with a 4.

The player rolls their D6 Physical dice, getting a 6. They subtract one for being Knocked Back, giving them a 5. They win the round!

N: You win the roll, meaning you've won this round! What action do you want to take? 

P: Rather than me trying to stand up, I'll stay Knocked Back. After all, this probably took the wind out of me a bit. But I will move my opponent one step around their Combat Diamond and put him in the Down position.

N: That makes sense! He'll roll at a -2 this round. Tell us what happens when you tackle this man, and then set us up for the next roll. You won, after all, so you keep the Momentum!

We'll end the example there!

As you can see, Combat in Gallows Corner is rooted in storytelling. Combat should never feel like two immovable objects hammering at each other until one breaks. Combat is fluid, dynamic, and a key part of the story of your character and the world around them.

I'm very happy with the Momentum mechanic and how that captures the sense of one person being 'in control' of a fight, right up until the moment that they aren't in control. 

Combat is quick, can be incredibly brutal, and is best avoided early in your character's journey (unless you're willing to surrender, of course)! 

If you want to see an example of Combat in action, I strongly suggest you check out Episode Two of the Gallows Corner  Actual Play. At around 58 minutes, our party find themselves in a dangerous situation that quickly devolves into combat:

Sixty Second Stories / Two-Hundred Word Tales - get involved!

One of the questions I get about Gallows Corner is: 'What kinds of stories can it tell?'

Gallows Corner definitely looks like a game that might only be about burning down manors and beheading kings. And it definitely is that game. But there's also much, much more to it.

Gallows Corner is a game that begins with intensely local struggles. You begin as a nobody; not even yet an outlaw. But you soon will be. And how that happens usually results from a local issue.

Perhaps you've stolen some seed to help a farmer recover after a terrible harvest. Perhaps you stood up against a local gang in the employ of the sheriff. Perhaps you were teaching kids how to read. 

Whatever it was, the stories that Gallows Corner can tell range from the quiet and the seditious to the loud and the bloody.

To give you a sense of these, I started writing and recording videos under the title Sixty Second Stories, each no more than two-hundred words long, to show the different ways a character can find themselves outlawed.

You can find them all at the Three Sails Studios Instagram by clicking here! 

And I wanted to give you an opportunity to flex your creative muscles and write a Two-Hundred Word Tale about a character of your creation!

All you need to do is leave a comment below and I'll assign you a Trade, a Job, and a character name. Then just respond to the comment with your Two-Hundred Word tale. I'll pick some of my favourite and maybe share them in the next update!

Signing Off: What's Coming This Week

Another busy week here at Three Sails Studios!

Tonight I am recording two interviews about Gallows Corner, both of which should be live later on this week or early next. I'll make sure to share them with you when they're live.

I was also on Inside the Rookery this weekend past, and got to answer some brilliant questions from their community about Gallows Corner. You can watch the stream back here:

Tonight also sees episode four, our penultimate episode, of the Gallows Corner Actual Play launch. It has been one hell of a ride so far, and I think things are going to get worse for our characters before they get better...

And I'll be continuing to write and record more Sixty Second Stories, so make sure you're following us on Instagram so you don't miss out.

Thanks for being with us, outlaws, and for reading down this far. We hope you'll stick alongside us for the rest of the campaign, and don't forget, if you want to upgrade your pledge, now is the best time! Get things while they're cheapest. Don't say we didn't warn you! :)

Until next week, stay safe and be excellent to each other.

In solidarity,

George
Gallows Corner creator and designer

Update 3: One Week Down. New Social Impact Stretch Goal Reached + the Impact of Hunger
about 2 months ago – Tue, Feb 10, 2026 at 05:00:31 AM

Greetings, outlaws. Hail and well met! George, here, the creator and designer of Gallows Corner with our weekly campaign update!

The End of Week One

What a week it has been! I feel like I haven't slept much at all, but the initial fear and nerves turned quite quickly to excitement and gratitude.

At the time of this update, we have raised £50,497 from 934 backers, each ready to take on the crown and bring about a new England from the ashes of the old. That is a total of 503% funded after one week live. Me, Jeremy, and Joel are incredibly grateful for your support and hope you'll stick with us until the end of the campaign and beyond.

A Peek Behind the Curtain

As anyone who has followed us for any amount of time knows, we at Three Sails are committed to radical transparency. I make it a point of principle to share with you as much as we can about our processes, our business, and our game design.

In that spirit, I thought I'd share some of the figures behind the pledges with you, one by one, to see where you've all decided to support the project. And hey, if you decide to upgrade your pledge after reading, we wouldn't be unhappy about it!

We have four pledge levels, in increasing order of price: Low Income, Digital, Physical, and All In. At the moment, the split of backers to money raised looks like this:

Pledge Level - Number of Backers - Amount Raised - Proportion of Total Raised

Low Income - 41 backers - £445 raised - 1% of total

Digital - 236 backers - £3,788 raised - 8% of total

Physical - 186 backers - £8,845 raised - 18% of total

All In - 461 backers - £37,310 raised - 74% of total

Why am I showing you these figures? Well, another core principle for Three Sails is around price accessibility. For our Mappa Mundi campaign, we included our Low Income tier. This is a no questions asked, self-declaration that you want the digital version of the game and need to pay a lower price for it. We accept these self declarations 100%.

Some people advised me, before Mappa Mundi launched, that people would 'abuse' this system; that those who could pay more would want to pay less and just go for that tier. They say this as a reason not to do it.

I didn't.

As someone who grew up poor, on benefits, in social housing, and stayed that way for a long time, I lived in a culture that demonised those living in those conditions. Benefits and support were cut, social programmes reduced and increasingly means tested, and life made harder because 'someone might abuse the system.'

Whether there was 'abuse' of it or not, those who suffered were those who needed this support. So my take on our Low Income tier? If even one person from current 41 backers is 'genuinely' low income and all the rest are not, mission accomplished.

That one person who needed to use this offer has used it and will receive the same game everyone else receives. No questions asked.

One of the messages of Gallows Corner that is very near and dear to me is exemplified in this low income pledge level: trust people, be generous and kind to them, and they'll do the same back. And if they don't, it was still the right thing to do.

So hey, if you need the Low Income pledge level, please use it. That's what it's there for! And if you want to support Gallows Corner and Three Sails at a higher pledge level, please do! Your support is helping us grow our small indie studio, keep making games with clear messages of solidarity and community power, and spread our good fortune to other people as much as we can.

I mean, hell, just look at how nice that All In box is.

New Social Impact Stretch Goal Tier Reached!

It has only been one week since the Gallows Corner campaign launched and we've already hit our next guaranteed tier for our Social Impact Stretch Goals!

Thanks to you all, we at Three Sails Studios will be making a solidarity contribution of £2,500 to one or more food banks here in the UK once the campaign finishes.

As someone who grew up in food poverty and has spent a lot of years finding ways to get money to food banks, I cannot state to you what the impact of this kind of money will be on families and on people living in food insecurity. 

A hungry person is a vulnerable person. They aren't just vulnerable to malnutrition, but also vulnerable to predation by those who seek to use their position to their own advantage. The rise of fascism and bigotry is linked to the rise in hunger. Those without food in their bellies can find themselves seduced by the promise of plenty (which never arrives) in return for a payment of anger (which is always taken).

You are helping us stand in solidarity with our communities. If we all stand together, we are harder to move. If we all help each other, we protect ourselves at the same time.

Our next target is £100,000 raised, at which point we'll up our solidarity contribution to £5,000. This seems like an ambitious target, and I'm not sure if we'll reach it or not, but the action is in the doing, so we'll keep trying!

Signing Off: What's Coming This Week

As we enter week two of the campaign, we at Three Sails continue to be busy!

Joel is hard at work getting the artwork for the game finished off. He'll carry this on right until we go to print, which will be right after the campaign concludes. Meanwhile, Jeremy has begun his final proofread of all the files (the core rulebook and the four zines), and I'll be incorporating those changes once they're made.

As for me, I'll be appearing on the Top Dice podcast tonight, which will release tomorrow (Wednesday). I'll also be on a livestream at 19:00 GMT on Saturday with the incredible crew at Inside the Rookery. You can tune in live (please do!) and ask any questions you have about the game (please do!) and get a live response during the stream. You'll find it here:

Last, but certainly not least, episode three of the Gallows Corner Actual Play series, produced by the amazing Who Hurt You? AP, goes live at 19:00 GMT tonight!

Episode two was absolutely incredible, ending on a brutal cliff-hanger that will change the flow of the story significantly, and I cannot wait to see what happens in episode three. You can watch episode two here: 

I've also been asked by one or two backers to provide an example of combat as it works in Gallows Corner. My intention was to do a write up of a combat example in this update, but it somewhat got away from me. But fear not! In next week's update, we'll have a video example of combat working in game that will show you exactly how it works around the table. I'll also make sure to cover the general structure of the game.

In the meantime, if you're interested in exactly how to play Gallows Corner, I put together a whole series of short videos that you can dive into right now. Check out the first one in the playlist here:

So, until next week, outlaws, keep spread the word of the insurrection. The more people who march with us, the more likely it is we'll topple the crown!

Be excellent to each other, and stay safe.

In solidarity,
George
Gallows Corner creator and designer

Update 2: 24 hours in, and the revolution continues!
about 2 months ago – Wed, Feb 04, 2026 at 04:58:51 AM

Gallows Corner is funded, but the revolt continues!

Thank you to everyone who backed Gallows Corner - A Peasants' Revolt RPG on day one!

At the time of writing, twenty-four hours in, 508 outlaws have joined the cause, pledging a total of £27,273. That brings us to 272% funded!

I'm happy to say that we've reached the first fixed donation amount on our Social Impact Stretch Goals. We'll be donating a fixed amount of £1,000 until we reach out next threshold at £50,000. With your help, our struggle will help make the struggles of others that little bit easier.

Want to join the revolution and take the fight to the crown?

Now's the time to back, to share with your friends, or to upgrade your pledge. Speaking of...

The All In Edition: fight alongside the Saint of the Gallows!

We loved a boxed game. Our first project, Mappa Mundi - An Exploration + Ecology RPG, came exclusively in a box. We needed a way to keep all those beautiful tarot cards safe, after all.

It seems that you, our outlaw community, also love a boxed game. Not only have copies of Mappa Mundi been selling as Add Ons (thank you to all who have chosen to pick up a copy), but the Gallows Corner All In pledge has proven to be our most popular by quite a margin!

Let's take a look at it.

In the All In pledge, you get the fully illustrated lidded box, featuring Joel's Saint of the Gallows illustration, rendered in a stained glass style, and inside you get the same beautiful black cloth-bound, silver foil embossed core rulebook, AND all four of the Tales of Old England zines in physical format.

A perfect starting place for any insurrectionary!

So, if you fancy upgrading your pledge, the All In is looking very tempting. Or if you fancy changing your digital pledge to a physical one and getting your hands on a physical version of the core rulebook, go for it!

Signing Off

I'll make every effort I can not to post too many updates during the campaign. For anyone who backed Mappa Mundi, you know I try to be as transparent, direct, and honest as I can, and you can expect that again in this campaign.

Expect to see a regular weekly update throughout the campaign every Tuesday at 1pm UK time, and I'll post ad-hoc updates as and when I think they're relevant.

In the meantime, please keep spreading the word, leave us a comment on the project page (we always love hearing from you!), and if you've got any questions, don't hesitate to let me know. I'm here to help!

(Oh, and while you're at it, watch episode two of the Gallows Corner actual play that released last night. If you want to see the game in action, it's an incredible way to do it. You can find it below!)

Until next time, outlaws, be excellent to each other and stay safe!

George
Gallows Corner creator and designer

Update 1: Gallows Corner funded in less than 90 minutes! Thank you, outlaws!
about 2 months ago – Tue, Feb 03, 2026 at 10:01:31 AM

Outlaws, you have set the struggle against the crown off to the strongest of starts. Thank you all so much!

Gallows Corner has been live for five hours, and at the time of writing, 302 backers have helped us raise £16,537 -- that's 165% funded!

We're well on our way to breaking through the first upgraded tier of our Social Impact Stretch Goals, too. As soon as we hit £25,000 raised, we'll be going from £1 per backer to a fixed £1,000 donation to food banks here in the UK. With your help, we're going to spread some solidarity out in the world.

From me, Jeremy, and Joel, let me say a huge thank you for your support so far.

The All In pledge has been the most popular so far, so I thought I'd share the box art with you here. We'll be making some final tweaks to this before we go to print (Joel is ever the perfectionist), but the illustration -- featuring The Saint of the Gallows -- deserves some love.

The All In pledge comes with the core rulebook (beautifully bound in black cloth and embossed with silver foil), this lidded, fully illustrated box, and physical editions of the four Tales of Old England zines.

Thank you again. I'll be back with regular updates as the campaign continues. And don't forget: the second episode of the Gallows Corner actual play series continues tonight, releasing in just one hour. You can watch it here:

In solidarity, outlaws,

George
Gallows Corner creator and designer.