Play Report: La Mirada de Gorgona

A Spanish larp group called Producciones Gorgona produced a weekend of games from #Feminism for some of their members.

The first part of their review is here. The second part of their review is here. We hope the third part will arrive soon!

They played multiple games from the collection, including Elsa Helin’s “My Sister Malala,” Kira Magrann’s “Selfie,” Susanne Vejdemo’s “So Mom I Made This Sex Tape,” Kajsa Greger’s “Mentioning the Unmentionables,” and Kat Jones’s “Glitzy Nails.”

We can’t wait to read more about this community and what they’re up to!

Muriel Algayres on “A Friend in Need”

Today, #Feminism’s own “A Friend in Need” designer, Muriel Algayres, tells us a little about her vision for the game.

Street harassment immediately came to my mind as a subject I wanted to handle for the anthology. In the previous year, it had become very topical in my home country of France, and the angle through which many started to discuss feminist issues. Many brilliant artists had addressed the subject, as my friend Juliette, photographer and activist, had on her Tumblr. Discussions spawned which offered the opportunity for a lot of women to find support and discuss these issues, sometimes for the first time ever.

Victim-blaming also came quickly to mind; I am still shocked by the way society, including victims themselves, sometimes feel they are to blame for the aggression they endured. This frame of mind is extremely pernicious and, I believe, has prevented many survivors from seeking help out of fear or shame.

So at the crossroads of these two preoccupations came “A Friend in Need,” which I wanted to be a very simple, down-to-earth discussion between friends after a street harassment incident, framed in such a way that people might see in it a common situation and recognize themselves, or others, in it. It certainly was a thought-provoking subject for some of the playtesters, so I hope the game will help shed some more light on these issues.

Have you played “A Friend in Need”? Have an street harassment situation you’d like to talk about? Share your experiences in the comments.

Siri Sandquist on “The Grey Zone”

Today, #Feminism’s own “The Grey Zone” designer, Siri Sandquist, tells us a little about her vision for the game.

“The Grey Zone” explores the internalized guilt that many women feel when they are subjected to a kind of sexual assault that balance on the borderline between rape and consensual sex. An important part of the problems in rape culture is that women often feel obligated to have sex with men due to power imbalance, social pressure, or just plain courtesy. While most people agree that rape is bad, the definition of rape is much harder to agree on.

For these reasons, “The Grey Zone” takes place completely inside a woman’s mind. The complex questions of verbal and physical consent, obligations felt in a relationship, victim blaming and self blaming become easier to express as characters who represent parts of the woman, each with their own version of what truly happened. She expresses emotions raging from desire to fear, and there are no easy answers. I hope the analysis of one’s own feeling in similar situations might be easier to understand when these clear shutters between the mixed emotions have been played out in a game. Grey zone sexual encounters are extremely common and we need to find a vocabulary for these situations, and a way to better understand the emotions they bring up. I hope “The Grey Zone” can help in that work.

Have you played “The Grey Zone”? Share your experiences in the comments.

Emily Care Boss on “Ma, Can I Help You With That?”

Today, #Feminism’s own “Ma, Can I Help You With That” designer, Emily Care Boss, tells us a little about her vision for the game.

There are so many places to come at writing a short game that focuses on feminist issues, I wasn’t sure where to start. Seeing Evan Torner’s game, “Something to Drink with That, Sir?” brought my game into view: a short, contained scenario, from real life, that would show how our traditional gender roles and the emotional labor that comes along with them, put pressure on individuals.

“Ma, Can I Help You With That?” came out of my own process of aging, and watching friends help and support their parents. So much energy is spent by families, unrecognized and unrewarded. And so many times (though not all) the lion’s share of the care falls to women–even when they are not the blood relative. Relationships become strained when resources are tapped out. The short timeframe of a nano-game gave a clue how to present this. Put the ways that our acculturation sets us all up for overwork and alienation into words. Each player gets scripts that represent how we are commonly trained to interact–men distanced from the emotions of themselves and others, women pushed into caring for others and placing our own needs and wants last. So what if we could tear up those scripts, and replace them? Or experiment with trading the blocking messages we receive with ones that allow for better communication?

Have you played “Ma, Can I Help You With That?” Share your experiences in the comments.

Jason Morningstar on “Shoutdown to Launch”

Today, #Feminism’s own “Shoutdown to Launch” designer, Jason Morningstar, tells us a little about his vision for the game.

When I sat down to really think about what form a game that addressed some aspect of feminism would take, my first thought was to build a game playable by a big group that offered empathy without being particularly grim. My guess was that the anthology would have plenty of small, very serious games. I wanted my game to be simple and easy to run but address a real issue in an active way. Working in academia, I’m acutely aware of and enormously irritated by gendered interruption, which seems endemic. The fact that I work in a nursing school that flips the traditional gender ratios and power dynamics among faculty put this into sharp relief for me. It seemed like a great topic for me to address since I encounter it frequently and often find myself deliberately countering it in meetings.

So–a big game about gendered interruption. The approach I arrived at was to sort the players into roles with discrete rules for communication that would illustrate the concept through play without being overly didactic. The basic rules sort of wrote themselves. For a theme, I combined my abiding love for the Rocketdyne J-2 engine, for which I happened to have wonderfully cryptic blueprints, with a scenario that conveniently provided built-in time pressure for the game. As a side note, I feel like “Shoutdown to Launch” also quietly honors badass engineers like Katherine Johnson and Galina Balashova who surely endured many, many meetings like the one the game presents.

Have you played “Shoutdown to Launch”? Share your experiences in the comments.

Sarah Bowman on “Curtain Call”

Today, #Feminism’s own “Curtain Call” designer, Sarah Bowman, tells us a little about her vision for the game.

“Curtain Call” is based on my reflections on the complex and often contradictory relationship between female musicians, their fans, and the gatekeepers who have control over the way they are portrayed and distributed in the media. I have followed the careers of women like Tori Amos, Amanda Palmer, and Lady Gaga, each of whom have dealt with intense scrutiny and discrimination from their labels and fans alike at various times in their lives and are brave enough to speak out about it.

I wanted to create a scenario that explores the way that women in the spotlight have to present themselves at various phases in their lives in order to remain relevant, how dependent they are upon the love of their supporters, and how crushing it can be when their bodies and music are scrutinized publicly.

The scenes are inspired by moments in Tori Amos’ career, but can also represent the ways in which women as a whole feel pressured by society to maintain the beauty ideal and their status as objects of desire. These issues are amplified by the spotlight of celebrity. These women develop a symbiotic relationship with their fans, upon whom they come to depend to help fuel their projects. However, the more an artist evolves, the more fans tend to react negatively, as they become attached to the musician during a particular phase in her life. They often want her to remain static, beautiful, desirable, and young indefinitely. They want her to pour her heart out in the way they prefer, not the way that best resonates with her during that phase. I think many women can relate to these pressures.

Have you played “Curtain Call”? Share your experiences in the comments.

Digital Download for Sale at DriveThruRPG

We’re thrilled to announce that the digital version of #Feminism is now available for sale at DriveThruRPG!

Rewards Fulfilled!

We’ve fulfilled all of our rewards for Indiegogo backers, except for the pickups at conventions that haven’t happened yet–Origins, Gen Con, DEXCON, Camp Nerdly, Living Games Austin, and Big Bad Con.

We mailed all copies to the US, Canada, and Brazil a few weeks ago, and copies to Europe, Asia, and Australia a few days ago. Enjoy!

Game Descriptions

Here are some short descriptions of the games in the collection, which are divided into nine themed sections.

Romance

First Date by Katrin Førde (Norway)
A game about a date gone wrong and a rant about the orgasm gap.
2–5 players; 30 mins; Intensity 1/5.

Flirt by Agata Swistak (Poland)
Flirt is an attempt to deconstruct the game almost everyone is playing — game of hook-ups, crushes, and scoring!
4–5 players; 60 minutes; Intensity 2/5.

Spin the Goddesses by Karin Edman (Sweden)
A kissing game of lesbian witches.
4–5 players; 30 minutes; Intensity 3/5.

Willful Disregard by Anna Westerling (Sweden)
A love story.
3 players; 60 minutes; Intensity 4/5.

 

Women in the Media

Manic Pixie Dream Girl Commandos by Lizzie Stark (US)
A military unit undertakes its last whimsical mission before retiring to civilian life.
3–5 players; 45 minutes; Intensity 1/5.

6016 by Elin Nilsen (Norway)
In 6016 the only historical source of the 21st century is a collection of clips from the soap opera Love, Lust and Lack of Trust.
3–6 players; 45 minutes, Intensity 1/5.

Tropes vs. Women by Ann Eriksen (Denmark)
Explore well-known movie clichés and tropes about women in a fun and not too serious way.
3–5 players; 20 minutes; Intensity 1/5.

Lipstick by Kaisa Kangas (Finland)
Sofia hesitates about whether to wear lipstick to a TV debate on feminism.
3 players; 40 minutes; Intensity 3/5.

You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby by Julia Ellingboe (US)
A game about gender, cultural, and ethnic representation in the movies.
5-6 players; 45 minutes; Intensity 3/5.

 

Body

Restrictions by Frida Karlsson Lindgren and Sofia Stenler (Sweden)
A non-verbal game on how we are and aren’t allowed to move together, as two genders.
3+ players; 45 minutes; Intensity 2/5.

Mentioning the Unmentionables by Kajsa Greger (Sweden)
Three games about the anatomy of women.
3–5 players; 60 minutes; Intensity 3/5.

#Flesh by Frederik Berg, Rebecka Eriksson, and Tobias Wrigstad (Sweden)
A physical game about the objectification of women or how women’s bodies are butchered into parts.
3–12 players; 60 minutes; Intensity 4/5.

 

The Digital Age

Selfie by Kira Magrann (US)
An intimate game about feelings in images.
3–5 players; 30 minutes; Intensity 2/5.

So Mom I Made This Sex Tape by Susanne Vejdemo (Sweden)
Different generations of feminists argue it out about sex, porn, and what the main point of feminism really is.
3–5 players; 40 minutes; Intensity 3/5.

My Sister, Malala by Elsa Helin (Sweden)
A game about freedom of thoughts and ideas for girls in Pakistan.
3 players; 45 minutes; Intensity 4/5.

 

On the Move

A Friend in Need by Muriel Algayres (France)
A nano-game about street harassment, victim-blaming and friendship. After a bad encounter on the street, can Ella get over victim-blaming with the help of her friends?
4 players; 45 minutes; Intensity 4/5.

Driving to Reunion by Laura Simpson (US)
An intergenerational game about four Black women trying to understand each other, as they drive back for college reunion.
4 players; 45 minutes; Intensity 4/5.

Catcalling by Tora de Boer (Denmark)
Street harassment feels different depending on whether bystanders support the harasser or the victim.
4 players; 30 minutes; Intensity 4/5.

 

Playing Well with Others

How to Be Ava White by Eva Wei (Sweden)
At a board meeting, parts of Ava White’s personality decide how to make her the perfect woman.
3+ players; 60 minutes; Intensity 4/5.

Shoutdown to Launch by Jason Morningstar (US)
In this game about gendered interruption, a bunch of engineers need to fix a problem with a rocket engine in the dwindling time before launch. It won’t go well.
4+ players; 30 minutes; Intensity 4/5.

“Something to Drink with That, Sir?” by Evan Torner (US)
A woman flight attendant performs emotional labor to serve three different male passengers.
4 players; 30 minutes; Intensity 3/5.

“Ma, Can I Help You with That?” by Emily Care Boss (US)
A game about family, age and the gendered nature of care-giving.
4 players; 30 minutes; Intensity 4/5.

 

At Work

Glitzy Nails by Kat Jones (US)
Glitzy Nails is a freeform scenario about intersectional feminism, interactions between women,
and nail salons.
2–4 players; 60 minutes; Intensity 3/5.

Stripped by Dominika Kovacova (UK)
A game about stripping off the stigma.
3–5 players; 40 minutes; Intensity 3/5.

President by Kaisa Kangas (Finland)
The war-waging Akhaian empire has elected its first female president, a very successful lady general, and feminists with conflicting agendas are trying to draft a press statement together.
4 players; 60 minutes; Intensity 3/5.

Curtain Call by Sarah Bowman (US)
A larp about the experiences of a woman in the music industry over the course of four decades.
3–10 players; 45 minutes; Intensity 4/5.

 

Difficult Decisions

The Grey Zone by Siri Sandquist (Sweden)
A larp about the grey zone between rape and consensual sex in a relationship.
5 players; 45 minutes; Intensity 4/5.

Family Planning Clinic by Baptiste Cazes and Leïla Teteau-Surel with Laura Guedes (France)
A game about women’s health where players will play short scenes from the daily life of a French family planning clinic inspired by real stories.
3–4 players; 45 minutes; Intensity 4/5.

First Joyful Mystery by Cathriona Tobin (Ireland)
Players examine the impact Ireland’s prohibitive abortion laws have on people who find themselves pregnant.
3–5 players; 60 minutes; Intensity 5/5.

 

Violent Encounters

Girl: A Game for by Livia von Sucro (Brazil)
A small exercise about empathy, designed for cis gendered men to take a glimpse of what it feels like to be a victim of violence against women.
3+ players; 50 minutes; Intensity 5/5.

Her Last Tweet by Rowan Cota (US)
A microgame exploring being a potential victim of a campus shooting event.
5 players; 45 minutes; Intensity 5/5.

Tour of Duty by Moyra Turkington (Canada)
A freeform nano-scenario about what it’s like to serve and defend as a woman in the US Military.
2–5 players; 45 minutes; Intensity 5/5.

The Books Have Arrived!

Great news! Our lovely books have arrived in Stockholm and Boston, and will soon be ready for mailing to our Indiegogo backers.

We are just putting the final touch on the digital edition and will send that out to backers soon.