Adventure games are written with the dick (RPGs by women)

[Prak]

I broached this subject that's been on my mind in the Animal People in Cities thread, but it's very off topic for that.

Because of the Zak S bullshit, at least so far as I can tell, someone on Twitter recently asked about games written by women, and I followed that because I'm a filthy man-hating socialist tranny and want all cultural contributions by men to be burned on the pyre of Western Civilization.

But no, I was genuinely curious, because I definitely couldn't think of any off the top of my head, and the only ones I could think of were fan hacks or very indie stuff made by Koumei. And *mumble grumble something-about-indie-stuff-that-only-exists-online-different-from-stuff-in-stores* But, no, honestly, I was pretty sure that's not what the OP was asking for to begin with.

Anyway, another person linked to this list and the thing that jumps out at me is that the individual people on it can be broken down into three groups-

• Worked on D&D or WoD
• Co-made an indie game with a Cisman
• Solely made a game that is almost entirely interpersonal drama

And there's nothing wrong, objectively, with those kind of games, and Alien Summit would be kinda fun as a party ice breaker sorta thing, but that's not what I play RPGs for. Like, even the Wraeththu game was made primarily by a man, it's just an adaptation of a novel series by and with input from a woman.

So anyway, I kinda find it interesting that games made solely by women tend to be heavy interpersonal drama with no adventuring or heist shenanigans, and when a game is primarily about adventuring or pulling heists, it seems to be headed by a cis dude. This was super disappointing in the moment, but now that disappointment is mainly gone by, and now I just want to make The Heist and Adventure Game Made By a Trans.

But, that all said, can anyone shed some additional light on these or other games, maybe a game that was co-made by a woman and a man was actually primarily made by the woman and the man was just a contributor, and I just don't know enough about the game in question to know that, or maybe someone on the board knows other games that aren't on the list (other than Koumei's stuff on the board. Tho now I'm tempted to submit those games to whoever made that list...)

[angelfromanotherpin]

Jenna Moran's Nobilis is very close to 'Gaiman's Sandman: The RPG.' It is much more interested in adventures than interpersonal drama. It's follow-up, Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, is more like a concept anime about an aggressively average kid who somehow builds a wish machine. The main interpersonal drama is that the kid's first wish was for a best friend who now exists and has existential issues. But the game itself is much more about wishes and wish-related problems.

I also notice your list doesn't mention Sarah Newton, whose solo credits include some very adventurous Fate hacks.

[DrPraetor]

Speaking of catgirls destroying Western Civilization: aren't some of the Japanese Pen and Paper RPGs written by women?

I can't find evidence of this on the interwebs, though, so maybe I have mis-remembered.

[Prak]

Jenna Moran's Nobilis is very close to 'Gaiman's Sandman: The RPG.' It is much more interested in adventures than interpersonal drama. It's follow-up, Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, is more like a concept anime about an aggressively average kid who somehow builds a wish machine. The main interpersonal drama is that the kid's first wish was for a best friend who now exists and has existential issues. But the game itself is much more about wishes and wish-related problems.

I also notice your list doesn't mention Sarah Newton, whose solo credits include some very adventurous Fate hacks.

Ok, I guess I sorta misconstrued Nobilis because it looked very magic tea party and the whole "we care about the consequence not the success your action" deal. But then I wasn't able to do much of a deep dive on these games.

Hacks of stuff are in a very weird space, at least in my mind, and it's hard for me to pin down whether I consider them a contribution, an adaptation, or what.

[maglag]

Speaking of catgirls destroying Western Civilization: aren't some of the Japanese Pen and Paper RPGs written by women?

I can't find evidence of this on the interwebs, though, so maybe I have mis-remembered.

CLAMP really looks like they would be really good at designing a RPG from their early series:

MKR-Start with mundane weapons and some spells, then get magic auto-scaling weapons and moar spells, then when even that doesn't cut it anymore gain personal magic mechas to take on the bigger bads. Secret twist: the princess you were trying to rescue all this time is actually the final boss!

CCS-Urban fantasy where you go around finding magic spirits that are causing trouble then enslaving them to help you find and capture more magic spirits pokemon style except before actual pokemon. Some room to play a mundane martial artist tactician or rich smart person as support.

[Korwin]

This was super disappointing in the moment, but now that disappointment is mainly gone by, and now I just want to make The Heist and Adventure Game Made By a Trans.

Will be interesting to see, if the finished (if it gets finished) game will be different than one made by an CIS male.

I imagine not, unless sex is an big part of the game.

[Prak]

I mean, really the only difference I would expect to see in a game written by someone who isn't a cis man is an attention to social justice/politics issues, and no "well that's, hopefully unintentionally, homophobic/misogynistic/queerphobic" etc stuff. But it's not an absolute by any means. In general, looking for a thing produced by a non-cisman is more about deciding where your dollar, or, if free, social capital, goes.

[Iduno]

This was super disappointing in the moment, but now that disappointment is mainly gone by, and now I just want to make The Heist and Adventure Game Made By a Trans.

Will be interesting to see, if the finished (if it gets finished) game will be different than one made by an CIS male.

I imagine not, unless sex is an big part of the game.

Unless it's another cyberpunk game about changing your body, or a noir-ish game about social issues, or what Prak said.

Wouldn't be much of a stretch, as heists are usually against people with money, and they're all dickheads in different ways. One or two of them will take special advantage of [insert disadvantaged group of choice here]. Probably by pretending to help them, or by passing dickhead laws.

[shinimasu]

I don't know off the top of my head any women creators (I think the person who wrote Monster Hearts is trans but I can't remember if MtF or FtM and Avery is an ambiguous name).

But I wanted to touch on the idea that a lot of the games you found did tend to be story games because I think that makes perfect sense. Not in a "women are more inclined to want narratives and complex interpersonal drama" sense (though I do also want that because I'm a basic bitch), but because when you're writing a game to serve your interests you're naturally first looking at the areas where you already feel under served.

Like if I wrote an RPG there would be no reason for me to make a rules heavy heist game because shadowrun already exists. D&D already exists. So many games about hitting people with sharp objects already exist. But games about talking and "emotional PvP" don't really exist and those are kind of the games I want more of. So those would probably be the kinds of games I wrote.

Until the industry re-balances to provide a broader mainstream range of play experiences I think "Narrative Heavy" games are going to be the indie female author trend for a while.

[Mask_De_H]

I didn't know Sarah Newton worked on LoA and made Mindjammer; that's pretty neat.

But yeah, writers either write to an existing market or fill an underserved niche they want to see. It also feels more impactful to me when you get a unique game perspective from a minority voice than when you get a heartbreaker by anybody. A minority voice providing something unique is a statement. A heartbreaker's a heartbreaker, regardless of color, race, creed or position on the sexual spectrum.

[Username17]

While working on Shadowrun, several of the people who I worked with were women and/or non-White. I don't recall who all was, because I didn't much care at the time.

Most big RPGs have a lot of contributors. So D&D, World of Darkness, or Shadowrun, there are a lot of people working on every book. And it would just be super weird if everyone working on a book was a white cis het male. Heck, even if just all the authors and major contributors were any one of those things, it would be notably odd.

But equally, it's highly unlikely that you're going to find an RPG with any significant number of contributors where none of those contributors are dudes. Any dudeless RPG is pretty much going to be just a single person's project, or possibly the collaboration of two people. No writing team is going to be all women or all trans or whatever in the RPG industry.

-Username17

[Guts]

Jenna Moran did Nobilis (1st, 2nd and 3rd editions) and Chuubo.
Avery Alder did Monsterhearts and Dream Askew.
Marissa Kelley did Bluebeard's Bride.

I would say these games tend to be different from cis males ones, as they're usually about story and drama rather than action or combat.

[Ancient History]

Teeuwynn Woodruff did World of Darkness: Gypsies.

[Guts]

This was super disappointing in the moment, but now that disappointment is mainly gone by, and now I just want to make The Heist and Adventure Game Made By a Trans.

Will be interesting to see, if the finished (if it gets finished) game will be different than one made by an CIS male.

I imagine not, unless sex is an big part of the game.

Not sure but I think Avery Alder (from Monsterhearts) is a trans?

[Korwin]

This was super disappointing in the moment, but now that disappointment is mainly gone by, and now I just want to make The Heist and Adventure Game Made By a Trans.

Will be interesting to see, if the finished (if it gets finished) game will be different than one made by an CIS male.

I imagine not, unless sex is an big part of the game.

Not sure but I think Avery Alder (from Monsterhearts) is a trans?

Hmm, Google says Monsterhearts is an Apocalypse World based game.
Did it improve on AW?

Monsterhearts is a role-playing game about "the messy lives of teenage monsters", developed from Apocalypse World. It is known for its handling of sexuality and queer content and its being nominated or shortlisted for five awards.

And it seems sex is an major part of the game?

[Prak]

Technically, Monsterhearts improved on AW by having the sex aspect upfront and explicitly part of the pitch, whereas AW springs it on you in the classes.

[Roog]

Jenna Moran's Nobilis is very close to 'Gaiman's Sandman: The RPG.' It is much more interested in adventures than interpersonal drama. It's follow-up, Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, is more like a concept anime about an aggressively average kid who somehow builds a wish machine. The main interpersonal drama is that the kid's first wish was for a best friend who now exists and has existential issues. But the game itself is much more about wishes and wish-related problems.

She was also the primary writer for Weapons of the Gods (with sole credit for rules design), under her previous name of Rebecca Sean Borgstrom.

[Omegonthesane]

Whereas Monster of the Week, my first exposure to the Bear World engine, improved on AW by not having the sex aspect at all if I remember right. I don't remember us having to form a mutual don't-use-the-sex-moves pact.

Feel like I've changed enough since Nine Worlds 2015 that another session of Monster Hearts would get different bits out of me. Still unclear why anyone would buy into the pitch other than "because group therapy costs money".

Jenna Moran also contributed a bunch to Exalted and I mainly know of her under her previous name working on In Nomine. The latter is probably a better example as she was a bigger fish in that particular pond and it explicitly wasn't trying to be a D&D knockoff.

[Prak]

I haven't looked much into Monsterhearts, but the pitch, as I understand it, ie, monsters in high school, is a game I've been wanting to make/play for a good while (er, basically since Monster High became a thing? And now that Monster Prom is a thing). So there's definitely an appeal there, but I haven't really bothered to look at it specifically because PbtA.

[Guts]

I haven't looked much into Monsterhearts, but the pitch, as I understand it, ie, monsters in high school, is a game I've been wanting to make/play for a good while

Hmm, Google says Monsterhearts is an Apocalypse World based game.
Did it improve on AW?

It depends on what you want to see improved. If it's the frantic pace of complications and twists and betrayals (it's PvP heavy) happening left and right, then yeah, it's an "improvement". It's Paranoia with perv teens on meth.

We dropped after a couple sessions. There are other PbtA that does the same frenemies stuff in slower, more nuanced fashion, which is more my groups thing (like Undying or Sagas of the Icelanders).

Until the industry re-balances to provide a broader mainstream range of play experiences I think "Narrative Heavy" games are going to be the indie female author trend for a while.

Yep, this.

[shinimasu]

So I enjoy monster hearts more than most bear world games for a couple reasons.

- Most of the 7-9 results have the Player (not the MC) picking from a list of 3-4 results. So you can decide what happens and how you react. If I roll a 7-9 on fleeing I can decide to leave something important behind for example, or if I'm feeling particularly bold I can give the MC permission to have me run into something worse than what I was initially fleeing from. And choosing the latter might actually have some tactical advantage depending on the scenario.

- The skins have a lot of mechanical incentives to lean into type. I normally have a hard time playing assholes, or characters who make bad life choices, but even if I know logically that the best thing for my Mortal is to ditch the dysfunctional lover, I don't get any experience or strings and I can't use most of my moves.

- Dying is hard and this encourages risk taking. Go into the spooky cave alone at night with nothing but a flashlight and some mace? Fuck no. But in this game? Well I get exp for being nosy and I probably won't die before I can run away so sure.

Basically if you love cheesy CW style soap operas this is I think probably the game that best emulates the feel of cheesy CW style soap operas. And I do love them, and there's something satisfying about going "Pssh the characters in these shows are so dumb, who acts like that" only to find yourself playing the same scenario, caught up in a love triangle none of you saw coming, three layers deep into a lot of bad decisions that made sense when you were making them, while also trying to figure out why eldritch things from beyond the stars are manifesting in gym class.

It's far from a perfect system, but I will put forth it's probably the PbtA hack that uses PbtA mechanics the most elegantly and consistently and aside from some break points (strings loose teeth if all the PCs are getting along, No Rest for the Wicked is broken as fuck because you can't die and dying is the only permanent failure state so it removes all threat from your character unless the MC just invents some kind of fate worse than death for you) I don't think I've ever had another system so efficiently get me to drop my usual rpg habits and play the way it wants me to.

I've played like, five games of this garbage so if you have specific questions I can probably field them.

[Guts]

I agree with you, Shinimasu, about MH being indeed great at making players act according to it's genre's cliches.

What I felt lacking (maybe for not being that familiar with the genre?) was some kinda central, strong premise for PCs to care about or entangle with. Ie: in AW you usually have one or two PCs with stuff to manage and protect that becomes central to the story, at least in a first moment: the Hardholder community, the Maestro'D bar/brothel/whatever, the Hocus cult, the Waterbearer oasis, etc. Sagas is the same with the clan and it's lands and everybody struggling for it to survive and prosper, etc.

In MH though, everybody is in same classroom caring for... what? Picking each other in pranks, fights, betrayals.. ? It felt kinda directionless and maybe hysterical?, with everything overly dependant on PCs initiative and propensity to mess with each other. Yeah, I know that's how it's supposed to be with PbtA games, but here it felt... exagerated somehow? (maybe the MC should have presented more common threats or enemies or something like that to give us a break from the constant "reality show" like bickering?)

What do you have to say about that? I actually found MH a good game, specially in the aspects you cited. But that lack of direction bothered us. I would probably play it again in the future.

[shinimasu]

So like most games direction tends to be up to the MC. Like how a sandbox game in D&D can devolve into "why are we here" without the DM pointing the PCs at interesting landmarks, Monsterhearts can do the same thing.

So yeah the MC should have presented an overarching Thing that you could focus on when you weren't at each other's throats.

Examples from past games:

- Something nasty is going on at the old farm where you have a summer job (instead of a class room it was a fictional 4H style group). So there was "solve mystery of creepy farm" lurking in the background.

- Something evil crashed into the town hundreds of years ago and it's started seeping up through the town mines.

- Your prestigious prep school feeds underachievers to the elder gods in order to maintain the school's reputation.

- Prom is coming up.

It can be as mundane or high stakes as you want but I think the ideal Monster Hearts plot should be A) Something that can be safely ignored right up until it can't and B) Intersect with the skins chosen by the players in interesting ways.

So for example in murder prep school one of the skins was a ghost who had died before the sacrifice bit and was essentially stuck in a time loop where she was "reset" at the beginning of each school year with no memory of the previous year and no memory of her own death.

In contrast the Evil Mine game wound up being 90% infighting with very little mine solving because the vampire and the Queen decided they hated each other and everyone wound up getting caught in the cross fire so we largely ignored that mystery until zombie miners started appearing on the roads.

It can go either way.

[Mask_De_H]

Fucking with each other was the driving conflict in the MH games I played, but having an establishing reason for the characters to be in the same scenes consistently was tricky. Preventing a Carrie situation with one of the NPCs half the group decided to fuck with ended up being the driving plot point near the end of the longest running game I played of it.

The cool thing about MH was the Strings gave players a good reason to fuck with each other and the genre encouraged it. It didn't work in Bear World because there's no reason to deal with the other players unless someone picked a Has Stuff playbook (Holder, Maestro, Waterbearer) or everyone was in on the Operative or Hocus' thing, so Hx/Sex moves felt like purely mechanical widgets.

[Guts]

Mask_De_H, what's a Carrie situation?

I find AW works best when there's this healthy combination of stuff-playbooks and loner-playbooks, like 1 Hardholder for 3 loners (say, a Lugger, a Skinner and a BB) or 2 for 2, or something like that. All stuff-playbooks and the game may end up a dysfunctional mess where each PC only care for it's own stuff; all loner-PBs, and it ends up ye olde "adventuring party" with best-friends-forever PCs kicking everybody's ass.

So like most games direction tends to be up to the MC. Like how a sandbox game in D&D can devolve into "why are we here" without the DM pointing the PCs at interesting landmarks, Monsterhearts can do the same thing.

So yeah the MC should have presented an overarching Thing that you could focus on when you weren't at each other's throats.

Examples from past games:

- Something nasty is going on at the old farm where you have a summer job (instead of a class room it was a fictional 4H style group). So there was "solve mystery of creepy farm" lurking in the background.

- Something evil crashed into the town hundreds of years ago and it's started seeping up through the town mines.

- Your prestigious prep school feeds underachievers to the elder gods in order to maintain the school's reputation.

- Prom is coming up.

It can be as mundane or high stakes as you want but I think the ideal Monster Hearts plot should be A) Something that can be safely ignored right up until it can't and B) Intersect with the skins chosen by the players in interesting ways.

So for example in murder prep school one of the skins was a ghost who had died before the sacrifice bit and was essentially stuck in a time loop where she was "reset" at the beginning of each school year with no memory of the previous year and no memory of her own death.

In contrast the Evil Mine game wound up being 90% infighting with very little mine solving because the vampire and the Queen decided they hated each other and everyone wound up getting caught in the cross fire so we largely ignored that mystery until zombie miners started appearing on the roads.

It can go either way.

Thanks. Looking back now, our problem was twofold: 1) lack of an external threat to give us a break from the constant PvP and take a breath, and 2) lack of interesting personal goals/issues for PCs to pursue - like in your ghost example - so the fights always felt shallow or directionless. "Ok, we're fighting and bickering for 2 hours.. but what are we fighting for again?" Maybe if one of the PCs had personal goals like "Finding out why I'm on this yearly loop" (the ghost) or "I want to make classroom 2B students my blood sheep so I'm fed up til graduation" (the vampire) or something, and pushed for it, it would've given weight to our conflicts and solve our problems.

...Which formula basically amounts to all "frenemies"-type PbtA games, right? AW, Sagas, Undying and Night Witches are like that in a way.

One last question: Shinimasu, are you a woman? Do you like more the frenemies/drama/story PbtA (like MH) or the more conventional/action/combat ones (like Dungeon World, Monster of the Week, The Sprawl) ? In other words, do you prefer the girl games or the boys games ?