Hi Reader, It's good to see you. Please, have a seat. Have some iced tea. On the table is a little succulent called, I shit you not, goblin fingers. Other name, for real: Gollum jade. It's the most tabletop role-playing game plant I've ever met. The Defy the Gods Kickstarter ends on Thursday. It's been a roller coaster. In these last four days, I need to tell as many people as possible about it. Expect a few more emails from me this week. If you don't want to get them, you can opt out here. Publicizing it has meant posting on social media every day. That's been work, but it's also made me think about the game from new angles. Here's what I wrote yesterday: You 100% don't gotta be queer or trans to play this game. No matter who you are, playing it will dip your mind into how it feels to me to be queer—all its wonders, terrors & invitations, thoroughly infused with sword & sorcery.
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Writing the Revenant, my last playbook, finally cracked my egg and helped me realize I was trans. That's how personal Defy the Gods is.
I wanted to show everyone the beating heart of the game. Not to turn off the majority audience who isn't queer. If that's you, this game is for you. And if you're queer, it's especially for you. Junot DÃaz says, "There’s this idea that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. And what I’ve always thought isn’t that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. It’s that if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves." Wrapped in this game's many layers of fun is a silver mirror. Like the one the Sorcerer uses to scry. I want you to see it. See yourself in it. See yourself differently. Especially if you really need to. Here's the last part of my post: I had to make this game for me, but now it's yours. I hope you all play the hell out of it. I hope a few of you play it out of hell. That's a lofty ambition, but I didn't get into this business by being realistic. Stories and games show mirrors, and—as every sorcerer knows—mirrors can make magic. Make monsters feel like people again. Open portals out of hell. If Defy the Gods helps one person see themself differently, or start to escape their private hell, this will have been worth it. Thanks for helping me make the mirror. xoxoxo P.S. That roller coaster is swooshing around its last bend here. I added one last deluxe stretch goal, where Ryan Khan makes a Sumerian recipe, and I write up a guide to the setting. Take a look! |
🌈🚀 Reliable wonder engine. I make narrative role-playing games that imagine a weirder, queerer, more connected world.
Hi Reader, What began as a silent shaking in the earth has grown to thunderous, resounding hoofbeats. The armies of Doom approach. Time to draw steel. That is—the Defy the Gods Kickstarter ends on Thursday! If you haven't read my emails for the last year, or I just didn't tell you, Defy the Gods is a queer sword & sorcery tabletop role-playing game set in fantasy ancient Mesopotamia—a game full of daring adventure, messy romance, and cursed power. It's a game where a single sword stroke or...
Hi Reader, Welcome! Please, come in. Sit down. We've got some cold fizzy water and some pizza from this place up the road. On the table and chairs there's an oiled bronze sword, a boiled leather shield, a skeleton key mottled in verdigris ... let me get all that out of the way. There. As you can tell by all the detritus—We're just a week and a half away from the end of the Defy the Gods Kickstarter! So far, we've unlocked an embroidered patch, a spot-gloss upgrade for the standard edition, a...
Hi Reader, Whew! Please come in, out of that gale. Here at the table, there's a tranquil bunch of violets and some herbal tea. Those winds are Origins Game Fair blowing through Columbus like a hurricane. Also—related—Defy the Gods blowing past its second stretch goal. This week has bowled me over. I sold out of all my raccoon dice and enamel pins. I sold over fifty Quick Starts for Defy the Gods. Several people also backed the Kickstarter right there at the booth. Since I don't have a...