Thirsty Sword Lesbians

Thirsty Sword Lesbians

by April Kit Walsh

Love, swords, and adventure.

Thirsty Sword Lesbians battle the Lady of Chains when her enforcers march down from the frosty north. They rocket through the stars to safeguard diplomats ending a generations-old conflict. Even when swords are crossed, they seek peace with their opponent—and sometimes connect more deeply than anyone expects.

A sword duel can end in kissing, a witch can gain her power by helping others find love, and an entire campaign can be built around wandering matchmakers flying from system to system.

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.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Fantasy, LGBT, Queer, Romance, Graphic Novels, Games

224 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2021

Reviews

[Juniper Karlsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I could rate this 6 stars I would. What an absolute gem this book is! It's well written, it has easy to understand mechanics, it's funny and full of love as well as thirst. The art is gorgeous and the language inclusive. I cannot wait to actually play this!

[Katarzyna · Rating 5 out of 5]

LESBIAN SWORDS

[Trina · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s taken me awhile to read this (I was on and off) but I really enjoyed this! I play a lot of DND and when I saw this kickstarter I really wanted to try DM-big! I’ve been too shy to… but this book has great tips for the GM, like scripts and assets! Also I love the safety tools, I think that is a fantastic idea if you’re playing with a group of people you’re unfamiliar with :) I overall love the ode to queer identities this book has, and enjoy that it has so much versatility. My only complaint: I wish more people would read it hahaha!

[Aveline Reynard · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/5 stars

Very cute and witty, with super gorgeous art! Like seriously, the art is SO fun and colorful. A really queer, flexible game structure. It'll definitely take a lot more creativity and just rolling with things as a GM rather D&D 5e - it has some strong resemblances to Spire and other similar formats (with things like dice rolls equating to full success, partial success, etc). A lot of laugh-out-loud moments at some of the puns and names. Depending on what your group wants to do or the tone they want to play, I can see things being done fairly seriously (epic!) or... very silly (e.g. Monster Queers of Castle Gayskull)

I particularly enjoyed the different playbooks (aka classes, or tropes) and the fact that each of them was central around a particular "conflict" that was reaaaally consistent with common tropes, like the Trickster wanting to feel closeness but fearing vulnerability. You got me, book.

There's also a decent mix of giving you the basic rules to play with, without making it too complex, and also adding several different world settings and campaign premises to choose from. The book also does a good job of making things accessible and easy to start playing from, with a glossary and a game start guide. Overall: queer, creative, thoughtful, and well-structured.

[Meredith Katz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A super-queer, rules-light (pbta-style) tabletop rpg which allows people to focus on telling stories that focus on the emotional moments with the characters through the story. As in, TSL asks you to put all the major beats on how the characters are feeling and what they do about it (with each other, or in general). One of the first notes is to remind you to "Feel Deeply, Powerfully, and Often".

Essentially, with genre conventions being what they are, this makes it an easy fit for genres like a lot of modern kids' cartoons, magical girls shows, and romances. If it's a story where the characters' feelings are allowed mechanical space to drive (both positive and negative) change in the world and the overarching plot as well as in each other, then it's a great fit. It can go toward action, obviously (Sword is in the title) but the swordplay is a vehicle for feelings and want and fears, so it's not a good fit if you want to be telling emotion-tertiary stories. I want to note this is a good thing! We have many, many game systems that focus on action-first with feelings outside of mechanics, and I think we're all a little thirsty (no joke intended) for being able to play in a system that scratches the feelings-as-vehicle itch that otherwise doesn't really have anywhere to go at the table.

This book is a great supplement, too: It offers the rules, nine playbooks, six settings, and six adventure scenarios, tips for running the game, tips on how to customize it to better suit your table's needs, and advice on how to adjust the premise if any part of the 'Thirsty', 'Sword', or 'Lesbian' title doesn't work fully for you and your group. It is also explicitly trans-friendly.

[Alyssa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I DMed a TTRPG for the first time back in September, and of course, it couldn't have been any TTRPG other than this one. Even though I'd only played it once before, a romance-focused TTRPG featuring sword lesbians with pink pages is so on-brand for me that I would have been making a grave error if I didn't make this my first DM experience.

DMing is quite hard for me. It literally gives me minor stress headaches when I do it, so it's not something I can do often. But the experience was fun and rewarding, especially when I got the ball rolling, and this book made it a lot easier for me! While I haven't exactly read any other TTRPG front to cover, the system seems well-designed to me, and I like how much focus it has not only on the players building relationships with each other and the sword-fighting, but the emotional toll that sword-fighting and dangerous situations can have on people. It's also nice that the character creation revolves not around straightforward DND-inspired classes, but around the inner conflict a thirsty sword lesbian character has to work through. It's so aggressively and fabulously queer-focused, and I'm here for it!

A wonderful concept and a wonderful system, which made for an all-around wonderful experience. If you ever get the opportunity to play this, do it!

[Maja · Rating 5 out of 5]

Somehow forgot to actually write a review for this, but it is soo fun! Love all the character ideas, the art and just the general vibes. I find PbtA games a bit difficult to run as a GM sometimes because of all the improv required, I kind of wish they would release more adventure prompts for this, since some are so specific I will never run them (looking at you Coffeeshop AU).

[Rin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it mostly (skimmed some parts for now) so i can gm. Will read things more specifically once the group decides on the game!

[Loki · Rating 5 out of 5]

You know, usually when I read an amazing new game, I can't wait to run it.

But not this time.

This time I really, really want to play it!

[Gretchen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Come for the disaster queers wielding swords and one-liners, stay for the ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS ARTWORK. Includes some really excellent content on how to make a feelings-focused RPG experience that's safe and enjoyable for everyone involved.

[Michael Perez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Came for the gorgeous art, stayed for the refined gameplay. Feels like a better take on some of the ideas in Monsterhearts, but without it being as restrained in genre. I've been running this for over a month, and I only have praise for it. It's a great Powered by the Apocalypse game that is brimming with love for the queer community that helped make this.

[BookMoss · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am rating this highly, less as a book and more as a system. It gives me everything that was missing with dungeons and dragons. It can be a narrative of queer liberation or an empowering power fantasy, it can be a nonbinary romance or an exploration on the horrors of structural oppression. This system allows for so mnay interesting stories

[Benjamin]

How? That Ukraine itch bundle I’m finally getting around to reading.

What? It’s a Powered by the Apocalypse-style game — so playbooks, moves, easy to roll mixed successes — where you play
* thirsty (i.e., craving some connection, probably romantic and/or sexual)
* sword (i.e., you are armed and will do combat — and then probably kiss)
* lesbians
* usually fighting against some oppressive/repressive force (patriarchy, heteronormativity, white feminism, etc.).

Wait, here’s the political heart of the game:

To play Thirsty Sword Lesbians, you must:
* Support racial liberation, intersectional feminism, and queer liberation
* Respect transgender people, nonbinary people, intersex people, and women
* Respect racialized people; respect Black, Indigenous, mixed-race people, and other people of color
* Respect sex workers
* Respect disabled people
* Respect immigrants
* Respect lesbians and other people with queer sexualities
* Respect people experiencing poverty or homelessness
* Respect neurodivergent people, such as those on the autism spectrum
* Respect fat people and people of all body types
* Not demand that anyone educate you about their marginalizations
If you don’t agree, fix your heart before sharing a table with other people.

Now, that seems like an awfully hard bill to pay, but as an ideal, I can’t fault it.

Yeah, so? If you're an old roleplayer, one argument you've seen before is whether D&D is a game about fighting -- because while there's the promise of doing anything you want, most of the books are about fighting. (Less so in 5th edition.) So if you're playing D&D (1st edition) and want to seduce the prince, you might have to kludge together some rules, rely solely on dramatic roleplaying, or hand-wave it.

TSL is a game about a lot of things but one of the big things is feelings and relationships and fitting in. Oh, sure, there's rules for fighting, but there's also rules around desire, giving in, compromising your feelings, dealing with society’s needs, etc.

There’s a bunch of settings and adventures here, and this being the core book, I found them to be unobjectionable and pretty middle of the road — a space opera with an evil empire, cyberpunk, a coffeehouse AU fighting off gentrification (maybe the most interesting setting, but also a clear outgrowth of some contemporary trends towards cosiness and a long-running tradition in fan-fic).

I like the emotional rules — like how you might fail a roll and gain the "angry" condition, which you can clear healthily (through emotional support) or unhealthily (through lashing out or breaking something).

Or maybe the most succinct description of this game's mechanics and aesthetics is: if after holding yourself back, you finally kiss the person you have the hots for (and has the hots for you, needless to add), then you both gain bonuses to survive whatever danger is coming. For me, that's right up there with the Feng Shui "extra damage if you mime a pump shotgun loading" for capturing the narrative moment that the game is going for.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This game has some very interesting ideas for gaming, not just the game itself, but also ideas for understanding other PbtA games, and even beyond.

The things I really liked:

1) Defining Full Success, Partial Success, and Failures as Up Beats, Mixed Beats, and Down Beats.

I already feel I had a pretty good grasp on adjudicating results in PbtA games, but this mental shorthand really appeals to the way my brain works. Especially after having read Robin D. Laws Hamlet's Hit Points and Beating the Story.

2) Countdowns instead of Clocks.

I don't have a problem with Clocks, but the idea of doing a Countdown with a noticeable effect after each tick is, I feel, a stronger option in many cases.

3) The addition of the Check-In card to the Safety Toolbox.

This is something I plan to add to my games in the future, and is applicable to any game, not just TSL or PbtL games in general.

4) Giving XP to the party for using safety tools.

I think this will go a long way to overcoming the stigma that's attached to using safety tools at the table, and making people more comfortable with them. I am considering incorporating this into other PbtA games I run.

5) The discussion of safety tools in general, both the benefits and potential problems, is probably the best I've seen yet in any game.

The rest of the game looks interesting to me, and I hope to try it out either as a player or a GM, but I do have some concerns about whether or not the game is focused enough. PbtA games are at their best when hyper-focused, and the broader the focus gets, the more they tend to lose their appeal. The focus here is on relationships between people who have relationship issues, and that's awesome, but with literally everything else in the game being optional or variable (including all three words in the title), will it hold up in play?

The fact that this is published by Evil Hat, and has a development consultant credit, and numerous playtester credits, is promising. The fact that it's based on Masks, possibly my favorite PbtA game, is also a good sign. Until I actually get the chance to sit down and play it for myself though, I remain concerned.

[Anibal · Rating 3 out of 5]

You can find a huge amount of products focused on LGBT+ RPG; most of them are well intentioned, they have heart but unfortunately the production values are not that impressive (most of the time due to lack of funding). This TSL is different!

A few years ago, Evil Hat Productions launched a quite successful kickstarter with a quircky title – yes, this book: Thirsty Sword Lesbians. The final product exceeded everyone’s expectations and won major awards including the ENNIE for best game and product of the year!!! Of course partially this success has a lot to do with contemporary political reasons, but it would be totally unfair to attribute that as the main reason for this success. The game is actually really good! The engine is Powered by the Apocalypse, and the playbooks are quite unique, with different challenges that reflect real world struggles for the depicted communities.

Here is the list of Playbooks you will find in this game: The Beloved, The Brute, The Fool, The Leader, The Protector, The Rebel, The Scholar.

The art is cartoonish and pure awesomeness; the rules are fast and leaves a lot to the imagination of the group; it includes specific rules such as physical and EMOTIOOOONAL DAMAGE, gaining relationship points, etc.

The game focus on melodramatic queer adventures struggling against unforgiving adversaries that lost their sparkle. Emotions, relationships and fights against inner demons, beasts and fears which are the core of this game.

Compared to Blades in the Dark or other products using the same engine, this product will demand a lot (Really A LOT) of work to actually start playing. It has only skeletons of several campaigns and adventures. The gaymaster (the GM or DM in this RPG) will have to invest a considerable amount of time to flesh out even the most basic encounters in the game. Instead of this approach, I believe the author could have selected one or two settings and provided more information which would enable novice and experienced storytellers to start playing with much less preparation time. The almost complete focus on socialist and anticapitalistic themes for the campaigns can also be unsettling, especially taking into consideration the terrible struggles the LGBT community faced during most of the Soviet Union; since 1933 being arrested or sent to mental health institutes.

There is already an expansion available for this game with a cover based on the iconic AD&D first edition core book – it’s titled Advanced Lesbians & Lovers.

[Matthew J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Holy crap. I think I finally understand Powered by the Apocalypse. I have never had a chance to play it, but having read several game books that use it as a core system, I've continued to be flummoxed by how it might work in practice. This book actually explains it better than any I've read to date, and now I have an idea of why the system is popular.
So, this game isn't made for me, and that's OK. I read it in hopes of getting ideas of how to make my gaming table more welcoming, and I think it helped. But I also got it because I was interested in how I might better add elements of romance and such into a game without making it awkward. I think the book has helped with both.
It's a setting neutral system made for telling queer stories. I can imagine this working well for doing something like the first few seasons of Xena: Warrior Princess, or something like Firefly, if you made it more gay. I was also thinking it would be good for some sort of film noir type game, where you'd replace swords with guns or something. There are recommended settings/campaign ideas, but it leaves a lot up to your group.
Anyway, the tabletop RPG hobby has been a haven for marginalized folks for a long time, even though creators in the hobby have rarely paid them any mind. This is one of many games that have come out in the last decade or so that have begun to redress that situation. I may not be the person to bring it to the table, but I'm glad it's out there and it had a lot of good ideas that I'll be lifting for my own games. Plus, finally, I think I get the appeal of Powered by the Apocalypse.

[Jason Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been running a custom campaign for 11-12 yos for three months.

The book is gorgeous and well-written. The playbooks (classes) are very interesting, and I love the level up mechanics where characters have a list they can cross off of what to take so every level is interesting.

Everyone at the table is a first time player, so the Powered by the Apocalypse inspired system is light enough that it doesn't get in the way which I love. My players are coming up with ideas for weird ass magic items or weapons all the time and it's no prob because I don't have to think about how to come up with mechanics for them.

The biggest issue I am having is because it's a younger crowd we aren't doing the thirsty parts. Although one of the players did learn that maybe you don't leave the Pink Pony Club with a brooding vampire named Silas without letting your friends know where you you're going. Luckily the party mom followed and they were able to summon the pirate crew for help.

For me the purpose of buying the game as a birthday gift was to lure my queer/ND/theatre kid into TTRPGs and that has been a huge success.

[Andy Hoover · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is not really for me, and that is OK. It uses the exceptionally good Blades in the Dark ruleset to great effect, and the themes, struggles, and trials in it are well thought out and explored, and I am glad they are and I am glad they are given a place at the table.

I found the focus on relationship building and emotional conflict extremely interesting to read, but I don't think it is a game I would want to play, but oddly, it did awaken something in me - an understanding I enjoy reading rulebooks without regard to actually playing them!

A solid book that is well laid out following the template set by other EvilHat publications. The art is stellar, flamboyant, and loud - a perfect fit - and the topic and genre handles itself accordingly and respectfully to all sides of the LGBT+ spectrum.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s difficult to write a book review for an RPG sourcebook. I shouldn’t review the game itself, that’s something entirely different. Rather, I should focus on the actual book itself. Which is sort of missing the forest for the trees.

In any case, the book is well designed, with good layout and easy to follow sections. The sections are broken up nicely and my goodness, the art is wonderful.

The story? There really isn’t one, other than what you create (and a module tucked in the back), so it’s hard to evaluate.

This book is great for folks interested in TTRPGs that aren’t D&D, with a focus on emotional narrative and quippy romance. I’m not sure when I’ll get to bring this to my table, but I hope it’s sometime soon.

[Freesia Perricone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really having a hard time imagining how actual play would go. The system seems okay but hard to grasp how it works in actual play, and it depends heavily on players and the GM all making stuff up in the moment (without the system's help) that is in line with the tone, which is also something I have a hard time to grasp (perhaps due to a lack of familiarity with some particular set of inspirational source material). Maybe I need to find an Actual Play. I love what they're trying to do, and everything they say about it, but I come away from the book not feeling encouraged at all that I am better able to do it than I was before I started.

[Agnès · Rating 4 out of 5]

Concepto muy divertido y en general bien escrito, con muchos ejemplos. Los libretos son muy evocativos, con sus dilemas, dan ganas de jugarlos todos. Se agradecen las propuestas de escenarios y aventuras, aunque algunas las vea más plausibles que otras, hay para todos los gustos. Hay unas pocas erratas y en algún punto se podrían haber explicado mejor, pero en general la presentación es muy buena. El arte es genial.

[Marlayne Genereux · Rating 5 out of 5]

I backed up this book during the Kickstarter, as my wife and I were super excited for a game system that was super queer. I was happy to see, during the kickstarter that the artists were being paid fairly and that there were good updates.

The book is super nice, well made and has gorgeous art. The characters, game system and pre-made stories are well written and well explained so it's easy to follow, even as a first time Game Master!

I highly recommend it :)

[Maya Malice · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing TTRPG pick up, and of my current reading list I started this last and finished it first. Honestly I love including queer stories in my table top games, and so this is a must. Very different vibe to most of the other things I run, with a cute and cozy feel to it, but one that works well with the mechanics.

Can't wait to finally get to run it!

[Rachel Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easy to follow with lots of fun options for character creation and preset modules (especially the fire emblem one LMAO) - I'll report back if I play! I really appreciated the attention to detail for safety tools within the game and the inclusion of GM moves for a lot of different situations, since this does seem like a system that is fairly rules-light on the GM side.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

LETS FREAKING GO. SWORD LESBIANS? THIRSTY sword lesbians?? ROLEPLAY?!? This book is an arrow straight to my HEART. A gift from the heavens themselves; can’t WAIT so dive into this new, character-intensive system! After 5 years of intermittent Dungeons and Dragons, this seems like the perfect way to dip my toes into other TTRPG systems!

[Ianire Garcia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un juego de rol que definitivamente quiero jugar como Gay Master.

No sólo es un gran manual sino que además es una pequeña guía introductoria LGTBIQ+ la mar de interesante escrita por una mujer trans.

¡Que vuelen las estocadas y los corazones se desboquen!

[Chloé Girard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very nice art pieces. The game is based in power by the apocalypse system. Despite the name it is not gender and orientation specific. Everything can be adapted but it still very queer-oriented story. Emotional based system, and loaded with safety features, I always had amazing play sessions.

[Claire (Book Blog Bird) · Rating 5 out of 5]

The finest RPG game ever written, no exceptions. Unbelievably queer and super in touch with its feelings, plus massive swords. So so good.

[Giorgia Battel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Non vedo l'ora di giocarlo!

[Wolgraugorimilir · Rating 4 out of 5]

A role playing game where two of the core character classes are being autistic. Doesn’t get much better than this.