I’ve been so excited to get to this one, but busyness with deadlines and life stuff over the weekend delayed it. The most recent game I bought was Thirsty Sword Lesbians and its expansion, Advanced Lovers & Lesbians. It’s the game I’m going to be running next, as I decided that I just really really wanted some queer escapist glittery fantasy with a heavy dose of swashbuckling.
It’s a Powered by the Apocalypse game (as so many of my favourites are) designed to encourage players to resolve their problems through angsty swordfighting, flirting and their characters’ personal dramas. Something I found really intriguing about it is that if you’re planning on homebrewing a setting for it (as I am), you have to pay attention to the playbooks as you create the setting. You could remove some of the playbooks if they really don’t fit, but I’m really enjoying how the playbooks define things about the setting.
Even if none of my players choose to be the Beast or the Spooky Witch, the fact that those playbooks are an option for them has spurred me to come up with a reason to have an underclass of monsters in my swashbuckling fantasy (which is typically a bit less monster-oriented as a genre). The Nature Witch introduces the concept of some sort of primal power or natural religion that has noticeable impacts on the world: as I am planning on the game largely being city-based, I have to think about how that has integrated with the move towards urbanisation. Who that move has hurt, and how people have adapted. What they kept alive and what has fallen by the wayside. How anger manifests, and what darker things might have risen to take advantage of it.
The Chosen essentially requires that the player who plays them takes a hand in worldbuilding: what is their destiny and what does that define about the world? Similarly, the Seeker requires an Authority to react to, and that has to have a dogmatic set of rules that restrict their freedoms or morality.
How does the Hologoddess work in a setting with limited and specific applications of magic, where the highest level of technology is clockpunk meets magitech? Does it imply an ancient civilisation with more advanced magitech? Does the Naga work in a setting that isn’t the one it was designed for?
If you haven’t checked out Thirsty Sword Lesbians and like PbtA games, I would highly recommend it. It has loads of different settings and adventures so you can pick it up and run something different every time if you want. And the playbooks are fabulous. It’s a diverse, wild, romantic RPG that uses the PbtA style to tell a high-action story of feelings and fights in a world where your community is a core part of your character group. I’m really looking forward to delving into it more and running it. It’s a good sign that I keep getting distracted by worldbuilding, and I’m raring to hear what kinds of characters my players want to play. Gonna sit down and write out suggestions for which bits of the world the different playbooks could reflect, to act as inspiration.
Stardust & Sigil 