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Play Thirsty Sword Lesbians

So on bird app I talked about how many community copies of Thirsty Sword Lesbians there was and now 100s of people have claimed community copies of the game [Note Community Copies are free copies of PDFs which are on many itch.io TTRPGs and even community made TSL playbooks]. Since a ton more people now have access to my favorite game and one I've worked on for every edition so far as well as making a fan playbook, I wanted to talk about what is special about the system, what makes me love it so much, and why you might want to give it a try.

Thirsty Sword Lesbians is a simple game to understand but it refines even the most simple parts of it's design to make a better experience. In Thirsty Sword Lesbian's there is no failure or success. You roll d26 plus your modifier then you are either given a down beat, a mixed beat, or an upbeat. None of these mean you did what you intended. You can have a down beat where you knocked out the guard you had been trying to knock out but it turns out she was your girlfriends sister and without the context she just witnessed you assaulting her family. You may get an upbeat trying to do something and trip and fall and end up landing perfectly knocking away the sacred stone that the villain needs to turn the world into skeletons, with witnesses now thinking your amazing where in truth you have never quite been good at this.

Playbooks are designed with great intentionality to them each is designed with an emotional conflict at the heart. Where classes and playbooks can often be more like picking your powerset, in TSL your picking a struggle. It's not that other things might not be also bothering you but the conflict is something internally you are dealing with that's standing above the rest of the other conflicts you might have. This is an element that just feels very queer, we all have our problems, our traumas, and we work through them together. Each playbook also has a core mechanic that makes it stand out from the others, these have a narrative weight and a textual weight. These core mechanics typically take the form as some advantageous ability but are also deeply rooted in your conflict. They encourage you as a player to roleplay just by using the most basic aspect of your character.

I have to be real though, the thing that first made me fall head over heels with Thirsty Sword Lesbians was how funny and cool the adventures were. When I was reading the playtest version of the game, before I was brought on to write Yuisa Revolution and later The Matriarch, I was just playing a one shot and thought the name sounded fun. I read Best Day Of Their Life and just knew, this game was gonna be utterly my shit. At first I was just skimming like I do with most TTRPGs at first glance, but I read the first couple lines of the setting and I decided "fuck, I have to read all of this." I read the whole thing, made a character for my one shot and right after that session signed up to run multiple one shots of the game so others could get to play it because I loved it so much.

I don't normally like to play in premade settings but each of these are simple enough to really build on with enough going on that made it easier to run if you didn't want to get super creative and make a bunch of new shit. It really made me fall in love with setting writing in a way I just didn't before. I had gotten asked to work on Mutants and Master Minds before I TSL but I thought it was so boring working on the setting I quit and left money on the table. However, when April approached me to write a setting, I said yes, right away, no hesitation and now I work in TTRPG design. I had done TTRPG design work before but I wasn't locked in after quitting comics, it was how exciting the settings were that got me so inspired to create.

While many refer to Thirsty Sword Lesbians as a Powered By The Apocalypse game and by all means it is in a lot of senses, I think Powered By Lesbians is a very distinct flavor. It cuts out everything bad about PBTA and adds so much to the table. Chiefly among them is the smitten mechanic which is a mechanic I wish like every game had. It is one of the most clever pieces of game design ever convinced of. Being smitten has you do a moment of dramatic introspection, while I am one for more bright and cheery and less drama focused stuff, it's amazingly juicy hooks for a GM to get into. It not only allows you to put out your characters personal doubts about a potential relationship but it also says to the GM and everyone playing "I like this character, I want to see more of them, I want to explore where this goes." It's also in addition a way for players to tell each other "I want to be romantic with your character" and if they chose to get smitten back it's mechanically saying without even needing an out of game chat "Let's roleplay some romance."

Thirsty Sword Lesbians is really something special, I could gush on and on but already a lot given I worked on it and am currently working on it but I just wanted to talk about why the system is special to me. I hope I got you interested and I don't make any royalties on TSL sales [yet] so like I am not really biased here outside of the pages I worked on and that I made friends with a lot of folks who worked on it over my time working on it and after. Go clash swords and cross hearts.

really not fucking around when i tell you to have a session 0 where everyone figures out PC relationships btw. in high school i played a game of dnd where i was a human rogue assassin from a murder cult and then found out on game day that there were two more human rogues and that those players had come up with their own murder cult.

@imcreativeiswear i did this to a dnd group, and it was really fun

My absolute favorite part about Control is Jesse’s nightmare at the end. It’s so fascinating, standing around and listening to what everyone has to say. Emily, giggling over the phone about boys. Underhill, scared to death that Marshall - now a secretary - has taken ill and can’t bring the Director his mail. Arish and Langston are crammed into the Exec security booth, blabbering on about how great Trench is (then how terrible, in the second iteration). 

And the imagery: in the second iteration, some of the Hiss-possessed employees will shift randomly into different forms if you stand around and watch long enough. It’s terrifying and grotesque. The mug on the table will shift into a skull, then into a book, then disappear. 

But most interesting to me is a small line of dialogue in the second iteration: Emily says something along the lines of, “oh, that’s the new girl. Rumor has it she was promoted from somewhere in Maintenance. She has no idea what she’s doing and has to have everything explained to her.”

fuck warlocks. i hate them. make them more different

Constantly thinking about gay blade from the Eric Andre show

I have come to the realization that I might be gay. A little bit. This is news and a struggle I have been working through since valentines day. It makes sense in the context of my struggles with relationships, but it also is another confusing thing in this transgender life. I can’t tell him how I feel. I don’t know who to tell this about that would understand. It is so freeing yet so complex at the same time.

[MtG Animatic] Little House of Horrors

"why don't you use card sleeves" because a fundamental part of my MTG game is psychological warfare. I have 0 interest in maintaining the value of my cards, i'm not concerned with their condition as long as they're playable, so when i get new ones i bend and stretch them to hell until the paper stock is well broken in, well enough that i can take all 80-odd cards and do a full-side riffle and bridge. I'll lock eyes with you across the table as I split my deck in half, and i will smile pleasantly, innocently, almost vacuously as I riffle the halves together in my hand, before I bend that shit back into a bridge and let the waterfall cascade down into my palms before I true them up and hit them with the old one-handed cut before plopping them in front of you. This is a card game girl, I'm not playing with collectable trinkets. I'll break you harder then i broke in my new phyrexia deck. I'll pin you down and bend your back 'till you damn near snap, before i crush you into the fucking sheets and let my toxins seep inside you. yeah, no, if you need to go jack off in the bathroom you'll have to forfeit.

um... hi? just checking how everything works in this app

yuri between a girl who seeds her torrents and a girl who leeches