You can find Dungeon Bitches on DriveThruRPG but only once you’ve registered with the site to promise that you’re an adult.
Correct. Dungeon Bitches is an adult game. Dungeon Bitches is a sexual game, dark and violent game. It also has safety mechanics and takes great pains to ensure everyone playing it wants to play in a dark, violent and sexual game.
Your character is a woman, by whatever definition you want, but absolutely you’re not playing a man in this OSR RPG.
You don’t fit into polite society in this game because if your character did, they wouldn’t be risking life, limb, and likely dying in a dungeon.
And, your character is attracted to other women, again, by whatever definition you want, but the most important thing is that there are no straight characters on these adventures.
Harsh? Well, those are the rules, and you don’t have to play Dungeon Bitches if you don’t want. I imagine some insecure people might have their feathers ruffled, but I’m a straight bloke, and I recognise that decades of gaming content has been made for me. Not only do I think it is appropriate for a game to try and level that balance, but I think it’s about time a game does so aggressively.
Let’s be clear, though. Dungeon Bitches isn’t a male fantasy wherein sexy lesbians encounter tentacle monsters and recover in the loving embrace of their bikini barbarian companion. It’s a game about disaster lesbians; the relationships forged, physical or otherwise, are what matter, and they’re part of the mechanics.
Dungeon Bitches system
Dungeon Bitches is based on Meguey and Vincent Baker’s Apocalypse World.
As a result, Dungeon Bitches uses triggers and moves. A trigger is simply when something happens to warrant dice, and the move is the framework that governs the roll.
There are sex and intimacy moves, resulting in rules you’re not likely to have in your other Powered by the Apocalypse games. Rules such as;
If multiple Bitches are fucking, all the sex moves trigger.
Characters have four stats;
- Hard – your ability to do harm and cope with it.
- Soft – your ability to be sensitive and heal.
- Subtle – your ability to deceive.
- Queer – your ability to seduce and break social norms.
These stats are rated from -3 to +3 and are checked by roll 2d6. If the total is 6 or less, your bitch has failed; if it’s 7 or more, then it’s a success, and that’s an overwhelming success if the total is over 10.
Damage is tracked by Hurt, of which you can take up to four points before things get messy. Hurt doesn’t have to be physical. Characters become Broken with their fifth point of Hurt and are Damaged forever if they recover.
While broken, you’re helpless, unable to act of your own volition, unable to see past the pain to interact with your surroundings. If anything tries to hurt you, and none of your companions stop it, you just fucking die.
A big chunk of the book and the system is the presentation of the character types, the moves they have and the stat modifiers they inherit. These archetypes are the dominant force in the RPG; they are the dungeon bitches.
The world of Dungeon Bitches
… is a dungeon.
The RPG begins by simply presenting the words “a faux-medieval gritty fantasy with all your standard crap hetero-patriarchal assumptions”.
That’s pretty much it until we get to the dungeon. Dungeon Bitches isn’t a dungeon crawl; it’s not a grind or a hex-crawl.
Emily F. Allen, the RPGs designer and author, instead recommends keeping the dungeon vague and jumping from a high impact scene to the next one.
You don’t have to ruse the dungeon generator, but some tables are presented if you want to. Dungeons are divided into zomes, which are essentially visual styles, and one might be a charnel-house with the dead and not-dead-enough while another might be a treasure vault. Dungeons have powers inside, such as a fallen titan or a fungal dream-mind.
Equally, the dungeons might have been created by mad architects, other dungeon bitches or serpent folk, and gladiatorial arenas, a tomb, or a place of sacrifice.
There’s no world setting hanging around outside that might put limits on the background of your dungeon, what it might look like, try and do or the surprises it might throw at the players.
The important thing is that no one is accepted by society, and the easy life would be in the dungeon. It’s a place where bad things will happen; people will die but not before forging (and breaking) connections on the way. Your dungeon is a crucible.
The look and feel of Dungeon Bitches
Dungeon Bitches oozes atmosphere, using custom made fonts by illustrator Sarah Carapce, who also did the illustrations, layout and some writing. Mxtress Khan is also credited with layout assistance, backer calligraphy and editing.
I think it’s primarily black pages with white text over the top, text that sometimes looks like carvings or fingernail scratched warnings.
Bodies hang from corners, blood oozes from the margin, and naked lesbians might be seen in embraces or dismemberment. This. Is. An. Adult. Game.
It’s an art book. I don’t have Mork Borg, but I’ve heard friends and fellow gamers gushing praise over the vibe of that black metal RPG in which you play in a doomed world. I hold Dungeon Bitches in that same regard, and it’s an experience to flick through.
“Feel” is different from “look”, although the two are connected. There’s a feeling from Dungeon Bitches that comes straight from the writing, and I sense tension there; actually – I detect anger. There’s a visceral “women versus world” vibe here, and if that doesn’t energise you (what will?), you may not like it.
Should you play Dungeon Bitches?
This isn’t the final section in the review, and this isn’t the wrap-up. This section is explicitly on whether you should play Dungeon Bitches.
- If you’re a kid, no, this isn’t the game for you (but it’s a game you should aspire to).
- If you don’t think social justice is worth fighting for, this isn’t your game.
- If you don’t think society has a truckload of changes due, then, I suspect, this isn’t the game for you.
- If you’re a thin-skinned chap, then, I’m sure, you might not enjoy the gauntlet Dungeon Bitches hits you with.
I’m a white straight guy, and I concede there’s a valid question about whether I should be playing the game. Dying Stylishly Games took my money for the Kickstarter, but that doesn’t mean I am the intended audience. I doubt the product team was hoping to please grumpy blokes who’ve been gaming for decades. But who am I to say?
I argue you should play Dungeon Bitches because either the game was written for you to enjoy or written to make you think and consider. Either way, I’m confident you’ll appreciate it.
Overall
Dungeon Bitches is a darkly atmospheric and adult Powered by the Apocalypse-based game.
If you don’t like Powered by the Apocalypse, it can’t be helped, but you won’t like Dungeon Bitches.
With that one exception, I recommend Dungeon Bitches as an impactful OSR-yet-not-fucking-nazi edgy-but-not-edgelord RPG. Find the right friends to play it with, and make that selection carefully, and you’ll enjoy the deadly game of disaster lesbians.
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