A Game Where Disaster Lesbians Get Fucked Up in Dungeons
Let’s all admit it together: monsters girls are kinda their own genre now. Nothing wrong with that, of course–who doesn’t like exploring the fusion of human and beast, the otherworldly with the painfully familiar, horror and beauty–but it does carry a certain set of… expectations. With very rare exceptions, you don’t go into something focusing on monster girls for strong themes and a tear-jerking story. Dungeon Bitches takes those expectations and launches them right out the window. This is a game about trauma and pain, struggling to build a community among the truly outcast, and trying to find your place in the dark cracks and forgotten margins of the world. It’s about losing your humanity, piece by piece, in hopes of building yourself up better afterwards–or at least replacing your broken parts. It’s also very, very gay in all the best ways.
The kickstarter describes its world like this: “Dungeons are spaces where the normal rules don’t apply. Places where the restraints of society don’t hold anybody back, where the laws of nature become malleable, strange. Darkness conceals all sorts of dangers that can’t live on the surface. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t pockets in dungeons where you can find safety. In fact, many monsters in the book are, or once were, women just like you. The dungeon is harsh, but through cooperation and violence you can carve out a small space for yourselves in it. Cramped and reeking of death, but your own space nonetheless, away from the society which scorned you.”
Well, that’s a very evocative image. Why all the foul language, though? Again, Dying Stylishly Games has an answer: “because ‘Bitch’ is a word thrown at women who refuse to be compliant or subservient, and we wanted to embrace that. In this game, all player characters are Bitches – they’re women who will no longer sit down and shut up and do as they’re told.”
And what a colorful cast we have awaiting us. Each player will use one of ten archetypes–called Deals, as in, ‘what’s her deal?’–to build their character, choosing from a list which includes the undead Corpse Doll, the agonized Wounded Daughter, the adrift Lantern Girl, the vicious Amazon, and the creepy Witch. Every one of them is something other than human. Some of them were born that way, but others had monstrosity forced upon them. Either way, they’re all in the same boat now, trying to eke out a living in the only space they have left. The dungeons may be dangerous, but the towns definitely are.
Dungeon Bitches hit its funding goal in three hours and has already unlocked a plethora of stretch goals, including a 90s Riot Grrl supplement, a body-horror dieselpunk setting with even more gruesome monster girls to play as, an alternate history steampunk setting that wrings as much horror out of the industrial revolution as possible, and two new Deals–the Invisible Girl and the Virgin Huntress. Next up is a statless bestiary of the strange and monstrous women who live in the dark. The sketchy art of Sarah Carapace really brings this messy, desperate world to life.
If you’re interested in exploring what it’s like to be monstrous, both literally and in the eyes of polite society, we recommend you give this TTRPG a look. There may not be any happily ever afters here, but you have each other. For now, that’s enough.
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