Attention tabletop gamers! For July we are adding two TTRPG books to the library shelves so you can come on in and play in queer-created settings. These books won’t be available for check out, but rather will live in the Center for use during gaming events. There are even plans to start a Chippewa Valley Queer Gaming Guild, and if that sounds like something you want to be involved in, please fill out this interest survey.
Thirsty Sword Lesbians is a more traditional dice-based TTRPG setting, but the game itself is anything but traditional. Players choose from an array of disaster lesbian classes, with an emphasis on relationships, action, and fun. And while the title and emphasis is on thirsty sword lesbians, the game allows for players to make the game their own and feature people of any identity and in any setting, from space opera to cosmic horror.
From the description:
“Thirsty Sword Lesbians is a roleplaying game for telling queer stories with friends. If you love angsty disaster lesbians with swords, you have come to the right place.
In this book, you’ll find:
Flirting, sword-fighting, and zingers in a system designed for both narrative drama and player safety.
An innovative take on the Powered by the Apocalypse family of games.
Nine character types, each focusing on a particular emotional conflict: Beast, Chosen, Devoted, Infamous, Nature Witch, Scoundrel, Seeker, Spooky Witch, and Trickster.
Guidance and support for running the game, including how to make appealing adversaries, set the tone, pace the game, and structure play.
Tools to create your own settings and stories, alongside a dozen pre-written options including the cyberpunk Neon City 2099, steampunk poets battling oppression as Les Violettes Dangereuses, laser swords and intrigue in the Starcross Galaxy, and more.
World building worksheet for custom scenarios and starting scenario seeds to play with: Best Day of Their Lives, The Constellation Festival, Gal Paladins, and Sword Lesbians of the Three Houses.
Variant rules to highlight different identities, emotional connections, and setting elements.
Strategies to adapt any setting where swords cross and hearts race for Thirsty Sword Lesbians.
Ready? Let’s go!”
Dream Askew/Dream Apart is actually two separate games, each played without dice. Dream Askew focuses on a post-apocalyptic setting and a fledgling queer community, where players create a story together about what happens after the end, creating new beginnings for growth and belonging. Dream Apart is a Jewish Fantasy/Historical setting where characters explore and interact with a world familiar and shadowed. Both games feature themes of community and hope.
From the description:
“Dream Askew gives us ruined buildings and wet tarps, nervous faces in the campfire glow, strange new psychic powers, fierce queer love, and turbulent skies above a fledgling community, asking “What do you do next?”
Dream Apart gives us demons and wedding jesters; betrothals and pogroms; mystical ascensions and accusations of murder; the sounds of the shofar ringing through cramped and muddy streets, of cannon fire, of the wolf’s footfalls in the snowy pine forest; asking “What do you do next?”
This book contains two games of belonging outside belonging. Dream Askew explores the story of a queer enclave amid the collapse of civilization. Dream Apart explores the story of a Jewish shtetl in a fantastical version of nineteenth-century Eastern Europe.
Both games use a simple no dice, no masters system that puts the focus on relationships, community struggles, and player choice.
Build a community together, and then make trouble within it!”
This month we also have had a generous donation through Theresa Kemp as part of her 2020-2021 UWEC Summer Research Experiences for Undergraduates grant. The grant allowed students to create workshops for youth-serving administrators in the local K-12 schools and the Boys & Girls Club, but as those ended up being virtual, there were unused funds for physical materials that allowed for the purchasing of books for the Center. Big thanks to Theresa Kemp and all involved in that!