hi!!! i really love Dream Askew but can never find anyone to play. maybe because the GMless mechanic is intimidating, idk. can you recommend other games with similar themes of queerness and community?
oh my god, you have no idea how easy this one was, this is my shit.
Bump in the Dark (Revised Edition), by Jex J. Thomas.
It's 1994 in the region of the fictional Ontonagon Peninsula known as "Iron Country," a belt of mining towns barely clinging to life. These towns are surrounded on all sides by the Sylvan Wilds, a forest known for old-growth pines and strange happenings. All of Iron Country seems to be teeming with the supernatural, a fact those in power would like to conceal.
You are a hunter, and you’ve promised to keep regular people safe from the horrors in the darkness. You will investigate the strange happenings going on throughout Iron Country, attempting to put the pieces together and stop the monsters before people get hurt. Will you be able to stop the malevolent forces before their power grows too strong to contain? Will you stand strong with your found family and community or will you sacrifice yourself to spare the ones you love? Will you be lost trying to find solace wherever you can?
Inspired by media like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, X-Files, Twin Peaks, Supernatural, and more, Bump in the Dark: Revised Edition is a game of supernatural mystery and action-packed showdowns with regular folk caught in the middle. It's a game about chosen family, protecting your community, and standing up to the forces (mundane and supernatural alike) that want to tear down all you've built.
Bump in the Dark first caught my eye because it is all about monster-hunting, and monsters always make me perk up a little bit, but it also caught my interest because it marries the Theorize roll from games like External Containment Bureau and Apocalypse Keys with the Forged-in-the-Dark system, which, if you’ve followed my for any length of time, you’ll know I am a very very big fan of.
However, the game is also set in a place that feels abandoned and forgotten about by the powers that be, with the monsters acting as active opponents that threaten Last Pine’s ability to take care of itself. Your characters are all professional monster hunters, but you’re also a family, likely borne of necessity more than anything else, and that feels very queer to me.
Bump in the Dark is currently funding for it’s revised edition on Backerkit, but you can also find it in the TTRPGs for Palestine bundle!
Extreme Meatpunks Forever, by Sinister Beard Games.
"In the beginning, there was meat. A decaying chunk of flesh from a dying god, hurtling through the void of space, thousands of miles wide. A million eyes, a billion hands grasping for purchase against nothingness itself. This is where we live.
EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER is a tabletop roleplaying game where you’ll play as a gang of queer antifascists in a strange place called Meatworld. Spinning through space on the screaming corpse of a dead god under the glow of an absent sun, the people of Meatworld harvest its flesh to make their technology.
That tech includes meatmechs, giant flesh suits you can pilot. You’ve got one of these mechs, which is just as well, because Meatworld is full of monsters, old gods, a land that wants to eat you alive and so, so many fucking Nazis. You’ll play to bash the fash, explore the weirdness that is Meatworld, attack and dethrone god(s), solve mysteries like a gore dripping Scooby Gang, deal with trauma, and if you’re lucky, make out with your friends.
Extreme Meatpunks Forever is a game that includes high action and combat alongside your attempts to make connections with each-other. It’s a PbtA game that draws from games such as MASKS, Thirsty Sword Lesbians, and Monster of the Week, which means that even though you’ll be fighting fascists, you’ll also be pushing each-others buttons, revealing the most vulnerable parts of yourselves, and heavily making out. If you want drama, action, and more drama, you want Extreme Meatpunks Forever.
Under Hollow Hills, by Meguey & Vincent Baker.
There is a traveling circus under the Hollow Hills.
It travels by moonlight, small wagons creaking in the night silence. It travels lost roads, where fireflies and whisps hover to watch it pass, where goblins peer down from their treebranch perches, and owls. It travels the night world and the day world, fairyland and the living earth, and places otherwise, and no border can keep it. It has mysteries to pose, drama to perform, it has music, juggling, acts of death-defying peril, pratfall comedy. It has dangerous secrets to tell.
Step up, step up. Come great, come small, come revelers all!
Many of the roles of Under Hollow Hills feel like they are defined in relation to each-other; for example, the Crowned Stag is who they are because of who their parents are and who they have authority over. This game also expects much of what you do with each-other to matter; will you confront someone in order to get them to change their behaviour, or draw them out in order to understand how they are feeling?
Your identity in Under Hollow Hills is also defined in relation to something; the seasons. When it is Summer you are expected to have one presentation and set of pronouns; that presentation and pronouns may differ in Winter. This means that the role that you provide is much more constant than anything so easily changed as gender. Since your role is more permanent, this also means that character progression isn’t really expected in Under Hollow Hills; rather, the community that you participate in (the circus) is designed to grow and change. Under Hollow Hills creates subtle connections between players that encourages them to play with power, vulnerability, and identity, and I think that’s really beautiful.
Mutants in the Night, by Orion D Black.
Mutants have been struggling to survive since humanity divided in two, 10 years ago. They now live in Mutant Safe Zones; rundown slums and ghettos surrounded by mighty walls, to placate humanity's fear of the unknown.
The law stands against them. Enforcers stand above them. Opportunity stands before them.
Mutants are such a poignant metaphor for all kinds of marginalization. On top of that, the Crew aspect of Forged in the Dark games give your characters a reason to work together, as well as a common goal, which is why I think they work so well at giving you a community that you can care for.
I’m also interested in games that ask questions about community in a world that is not perfect - just like in Dream Askew, the characters of Mutants in the Night live in a world that at best, does not care about them, and at worst, desires to harm them. If you want a game that provides no easy answers and overwhelming odds, you might be interested in Mutants in the Night.
Dungeon Bitches, by Dungeon Bitches.
In Dungeon Bitches, the world is harsh and cold. “Polite” society has left you with no place, so you’ve struck out to find one of your own. Out into the dark cracks and forgotten margins. It’s not an easy life, but at least it won’t be a lonely one.
Dungeon Bitches is a game about queer women banding together. It’s about trauma. It’s about community. It’s about pain. It’s about survival. But most of all, it’s very gay.
This is a PbtA game that provides randomly-generated dungeons meant to freak out and push your Bitches to their limit, and therefore also push them closer together, demanding that they figure out how to talk to each-other and work together if they’re going to survive. This is a game about community forged in hardship, with plenty of ways to explore intimacy, whether that be sexual or non-sexual.
The creators of this game have a number of supplements to allow you to play the game in various settings, including Death Spiral (dieselpunk body-horror), Crooked Mile (90’s grunge), and The Wounded, Hungry & Forgotten (monsters).
Moonlight on Roseville Beach, by R. Rook Studio.
Queer pulp meets cosmic horror! It's 1979, and you're spending the summer working in Roseville Beach, the queerest little town on Rose Island. You might have come here looking for an escape, some fun, a little extra money, or even love, but now people are seeing phantasms, strange animals—and stranger old gods—wander the woods, mysterious monoliths appear randomly, and that strange music is coming from somewhere.
As a setting, Roseville Beach is a queer community on a small island, and because it’s a queer community, it’s kind of ignored by law enforcement. This means that your characters are the ones responsible for investigating the strange things happening around the community, as well as protecting their family and neighbours from whatever is lurking out there.
Characters are built from tropes, with customizable backgrounds that take the form of pick lists (and I love a good pick list). Each character also has their own specific problem, like the the Scandalous’ scandal, or the troubles associated with being a Shifter. Your session zero is also expected to be rather generative, with special strange events set up for each character that also give you a skill or ability. If you like pulp stories and tensions that are specific to the community you live in, you’ll want to check out Moonlight on Roseville Beach.
You can pick this game up as part of the TTRPGs for Palestine Bundle!
Of course, I’m also going to drop a quick plug for my game, Protect the Child, which is full of metaphors about queerness and found family. I've been ruminating on themes like marginalization, parenthood, and children's rights for this one, and so far the play-testing has had some really positive feedback! (Rules update coming out later this month!)
You might also be interested in some of the submissions to the Hot Mutant Summer Jam that ran last month!
Games I’ve Recommended in the Past
Here, There, be Monsters!, by Wendi yu.
Exceptionals, by Bramble Wolf Games.
Turn, by Beau Jágr Sheldon.
Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast, by Possum Creek Games.
Those Of Us Who Know Better, by C.J. Linton.
Apocalypse Keys, by Rae Nedjadi.
Past Recommendation Posts That Kinda Fit the Vibe
Post-Apocalyptic Community
*Romanticizes the Monstrous*
Lycanthropic and Transsexual
