#tdl2

Transgender Deathmatch Legend II is out now on Itch! A beat-em-up/fighting game that uses trick taking card play to resolve combat, designed for two players. Across seven scenarios fight for retribution, cash, justice, survival, glory and more!

Step into the shoes of a hard done by trans wrestler in the city of Slamchester, put the HRT in hurt, and put the hurt on anyone who tries you.

Featuring:

Easy to grasp and intuitively tactical rules

Four Unique Fighting Styles

Seven Hyperviolent Hexcrawl Scenarios

Vibrant and raw photography throughout

Templates and instructions for online play

Alternative Rules Accommodating More Players

Arcade Mode!

Tag Team Turmoil!

(You can still pre-order the physical edition and get your order folded into fulfilment of the initial campaign)

Cover Reveal Time! GeekNative has the exclusive plus a breakdown of some of what you can expect from the game.

Please follow the teaser page. I really want this game to reach as many people as possible.

"Crowd screaming like hounds in the heat of the chase

All the colors of the rainbow flood my face."

- Choked Out by the Mountain Goats

Some more photos from the Transgender Deathmatch Legend II shoot. I'm excited to start putting the cover together and I'll reveal that once we're at 100 follows over at gender.ratwave.uk

Woke up this morning and TDL2 is halfway to funding!

In spite of the games art being declared too outrageous and unsafe for the public, I'm clawing my way to success.

The campaign page has more details about stretch goals once we make it past the first line.

Transgender Deathmatch Legend II is live now! Step into the shoes of a downtrodden trans fighter in the city of Slamchester. The world is hard, you hit harder.

This is card-based beat-em-up for two players. A TTRPG exploring suffering and catharsis. A one of a kind game dripping heart and venom.

Containing seven exciting scenarios, four unique fighting styles, evocative and engaging character creation, a series of gripping personal essays and multiple alternative modes of play.

The campaign will fund the full book, illustrated by striking action photography, as well as making sure I am paid for all the blood, sweat and tears I've put into this. If we make it and start hitting stretch goals I'll be putting together a supplemental roster of playable characters illustrated by Hodag RPG and featuring a brilliant array of guest writers.

"This isn't a game about being a superstar. This isn't a game about championships. This isn't even a game about winning. It's a game about bleeding. Bleeding for the things you care about. Cause that's what I've been doing all my life and I'm not done bleeding yet."

Transgender Deathmatch Legend has a few solid facts about your player character (your Face). You're explicitly trans, you're explicitly a wrestler and implicitly you exist in a world that is hostile to you.

Character creation in the original TDL focused on key pick lists to fill in some of your backstory and then pulling cards to create a finisher. Character creation for the sequel builds on that while also adding questions that are intended to guide players towards creating more well rounded, full textured characters.

The ring names you can pick from got an overhaul (basically to keep things fresh for long term fans). The intention of those names is if you grab one from the picklist it's evocative enough you can start to build a whole character around that. If you decide to not pick one and just make your own hopefully the picklist has served as some inspiration. Here's four of the picklists names I think are particurlaly good:

Tiger Masc

“Hot Rod” Trinity

“Flaming” Blu Heatly

“The Consequence” Shelly Theodore 

Dominator 1

The two big picklists then focus on your shoot background and the gimmick you have. Similarly to how you pick a ring name and a gimmick name the character creation in Transgender Deathmatch Legend is reminding you that you are someone who puts on a persona. That persona might be a lot like you, or it might be an escape from parts of yourself. I think this an element where the game reminds you of that a lot and then assumes that someone used to roleplaying games should find something interesting in there.

(There's more explanation on how gimmicks are thought off and an outright blunt question of "how much of your real self is in this gimmick?" in TDL2 to help out people less used to thinking about performance and personas. It's a theme that compels me as someone who's been a wrestler, a comedian, and a teacher; areas where to different extents you're putting on a mask.)

Here's some of the shoot backgrounds:

Started learning the ropes after experiencing a hate crime

Introed to wrestling through an ex-best friend

Wrestling legacy blacksheep

And here's some gimmick starting points:

Flamboyant showboat who frustrates and flusters your opponents

An old-school throwback with a loud personality

A serious shooter with black trunks and black boots and a mean look

A tortured anti-hero who mines pain for pathos 

An in-your-face punk with skills honed in bar room brawls

(These are broad because you can match them up with the implications of the shoot name you've picked or created and that combination brings a gimmick to life)

More open questions in the game include stuff like "Describe your gender, both in the terms you use to yourself and to society." and "Did you realise you were trans before you became a wrestler?" as well as the aeformentioned real self/gimmick question. There's also a picklist for "what people say about you" which is obviously a very different question than what you're actually like. These questions are there to get players thinking about how their characters marginalisation affects how they interact with the world around them.

The drawing cards for a finisher mechanic is back, though expanded this time so there's a unique table for each different fighting style.

At the top of this page you can see that one of the scenarios (Fight Forever) involves doing a mirror image character creation for your rival, before playing out a series of fights through time that defined your relationship. I think the most interesting question there is the open one "Are you trans as well?". Like, this scenario specifically is about fighting/sport as a relationship. I think that question has a lot of repercussions about what that relationship is build on; is it something you have in common and connected over, where you placed together as the only two trans people in a way that feels semi patronising, or is there a tension in that one of you just has significantly more opportunities in the world than their creative partners.

So yeah, that's an overview of character creation. I'll probably do a layout sample of what it'll look like in the book proper sometime. The games launches on the 29th and things have been slower than I'd have liked (I worry that the games content has meant it hasn't been favoured by the algorithms of the world). If you're excited about the game giving the teaser page a pre-save would go a long way to ensuring the launch is successful. There's big exciting things coming for this as a campaign, but to get to any of that I need to hit that initial goal. I'm not down for the count yet.