This year, it felt more important than ever that we do a post for Pride Month. But we found ourselves racking our brains trying to think of something that would be respectful, personal, and worth reading. It wouldn’t be fair for us to speak on behalf of our LGBTQ+ friends and players, and it wouldn’t be fair to you, our readers, if we simply regurgitated advice we'd read elsewhere. We want to encourage people to engage with more queer content in gaming (and partaking in work by queer creators - which isn’t always one and the same), but we simply aren’t doing enough of it ourselves to speak confidently about it. So we thought we’d make that our starting point: rather than coming from a place of experience or (heaven help us) authority, we’d talk about what we’d like to do this June to celebrate Pride through our gaming, how we'd go about finding them, and why these might be a good fit for us and for our tables. And, in our own process of discovery, we can help out some other gamers looking to do the same. - B
B: The timing for this works out rather well for me - we’re having a friend stay with us next weekend and there was a request to run Thirsty Sword Lesbians, so I’ve been reading through the rules. While its relevance to the topic should be clear in the title (June being National Iced Tea Month, the thirsty lesbians should obviously have something cool and tasty on-hand for hydration between swordfights), but it’s both a different kind of RPG mechanically than I’ve previously run or even played (drawing influence from Powered by the Apocalypse games) and will be dealing with queer issues more directly than I have in previous games.(Friend Computer frowns equally on every kind of human romance, after all.) Exploring human interaction, something that the hectic pace of more traditional games rarely allows, is a major component of a lot of modern RPGs - particularly those in the PbtA family, and here I’ll need to be drawing from the experiences of others rather than my own. Fortunately, though, another aspect of these kinds of games is the incorporation of player imagination into the narrative - so it’s not just up to me to determine how queer the story should be. (Or how tense, or how funny, or how complex, or…)
Thirsty Sword Lesbians is a game I learned about through a Facebook group dedicated to discussing non D&D TTRPGs, where a number of the members had backed the game during its Kickstarter campaign, and here, I think, is one approach to finding games by queer creators. Even if, for plenty of legitimate reasons, you don't do Facebook, there are online communities dedicated to RPGs all over the place. If you take care to to find a diverse group dedicated to games made by equally diverse creators, keep your (metaphorical, unless you're using a screenreader) ears open as to what they've been playing and what excites them. Even if you aren't a member of a particular outgroup, don't be afraid to ask (respectful) questions! Just remember that no person is obligated to speak on behalf of their identity, and to take suggestions about tone and perspective seriously. We all love to talk about games (obviously, since we're writing and you're reading this), so be sure to make it about the games and the people who play and run them. We all have our own experiences, and the whole activity is about learning to see the world through other people's eyes - conversation is a fundamental part of that.
While I found out about the game through the Facebook group, I actually acquired it through an Itch.io bundle, and these are great ways to get access to games by diverse groups of creators. The Bundle Browser we've mentioned in previous posts also has a great feature where, in addition to format and genre, you can filter to games created by self-identified LGBTQ+ creators, and this is how I found the other games I thought to try in June. I wanted to try a solo RPG, a category I'd love to explore further and one that makes up a number of games in these bundles, and decided on The Creature by Armanda Haller, which draws on, amongst other things, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, to explore concepts of otherness and identity. I have a particular love for the original version of Frankenstein, and even wrote my undergrad seminar paper on the novel, so I hope there will be a lot to discover in this solo venture.
Finally, I also wanted to try an electronic game by a queer creator and will be going with A Normal Lost Phone, which was also part of an Itch.io bundle. I wanted something that would be an inverse of The Creature, presenting someone else's experience and giving me a glimpse of their life in the way I mentioned earlier. This game uses a smartphone as the central form of player interactivity, the kind of "hook" indie games can pull off both because their smaller scope allows for shorter games exploring a single concept, and also because they don't have the financial strings larger projects require. Through this, the game promises an exploration of identity, mental health, and queerness... exactly the kind of narrative experience I'm looking for this Pride Month.
A: The majority of my choices here don’t necessarily deal directly with the topic of queerness, the way Bugsy’s choices do. However, they do come from queer creators. First up on my list is Rodents with Guitars by Plot Bunny Games. Okay, it may only be a four page game, but we need to keep our goals to something we actually feel we will accomplish, right? Besides the fact that the rodent on the cover really seems to be rocking out, the game also calls itself a hack of Honey Heist, and I can’t say no to a game aspiring to be like something by Grant Howitt. Next up, I selected Accelerated Combat for D&D 5e by Connie Chang. I’ve had a number ideas on how to do this myself, and even implemented a few of them, but am always open to new perspectives. While I may be more into tactical combat than the average D&D player, I do want to see what different people think of making combat fast and entertaining. Hopefully, this pick will fit that. Finally, in my TTRPG related selections, I selected Case Closed: The Cold Case RPG by Wym Lawson. I’m a sucker for murder mysteries, but rarely get to include them at the tabletop. While this is a longer entry at 50 pages, almost half of that appears to be “case files” which I suppose to be the adventures of this system.
While I don’t typically have a ton of time for digital games, I couldn’t help but add a few selections to my list. While I doubt I’ll get to it at any point soon, I do want to add Dragon Age: Inquisition to my list. From what I hear, it's a fantastic game that has a large amount of LGBTQ+ characters. Given that the game takes about 48 hours to complete (and 127 hours to get 100%), it will have to be on my list for long haul games in the future. My other digital game selection is A Tavern at Night, which is yet another selection in the fantasy genre, leaving me a bit disappointed that I didn’t include at least some sci-fi. Maybe next year? Aside from the intriguing name, the logo and preview art really reminded me of Legend of the Red Dragon, a BBS game Bugsy and I both played in our youth. While I doubt the actual gameplay will be reminiscent of that BBS games, I do think I’ll give it a shot.
B: I hope this walkthrough of some of our thought processes helps encourage you to try and find some Pride-appropriate games to try out yourselves this month! Of course, anything we like we'll talk about in some future post, since we love to talk about the things we enjoy and it's always great to signal-boost indie creators. Speaking of which, the dice pictured in this post are available from Foam Brain Games and Games Unlimited. The cool pixel Pride flags below are by Caz Wolf, and available as a free download pack. And I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that our affiliate, Dice Envy, has their own set of awesome wooden rainbow dice, but they're currently sold out - the link does allow you to sign up to be notified when they become available. Happy Pride, now get out there and start dicin'!
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