Some families believe things like "men bring home the bacon" and "women are caregivers." What if you belonged to a family with its own core gendered belief: Women are werewolves?
What if, on the full moon, your family went deep into the wilds to the Family Home so the women could transform and roam the night while the men stayed at the house?
In a family with such specific gender roles, what if you were nonbinary and neither of those expectations felt right for you?
Women are Werewolves is a card-based story game in which players take on the roles of nonbinary characters who belong to a family in which only the women transform into werewolves.
Throughout the game, characters explore their relationships to gendered spaces and family traditions. They also explore their relationships with their queer and non-queer family members. The game asks you to navigate the various gendered traditions your family engages in and deal with the awkward questions, misguided assumptions, and occasional microaggressions that come with it.
At its heart, Women are Werewolves is a game about discovering your boundaries and whether you can find, or make, a space for your authentic self within a family that might not understand you.
- All characters are nonbinary. Players determine whether their characters have a wolf form or not.
- Players build their own werewolf mythology as the game progresses.
- Players set the tone of the game by choosing whether the family is well-meaning or stubbornly refuses to understand them
- Make a place for yourself in the family that raised you, or choose to find family elsewhere. What will you decide?
What sort of werewolves?
That’s largely up to you! The only thing that must be true is the family believes that women, as defined by the family, transform into wolves on the full moon and men, as defined by the family, do not. Whether the family is correct, how the family defines men and women, and whether there are other werewolf families in the world who contradict that truth are up to the players. The game does not assume any other werewolf mythologies or tropes are true. Players are encouraged to draw inspiration from whichever sources they’d like or to make up their own.
What Do We Mean When We Say Nonbinary? Nonbinary is a term used to describe someone whose gender identity isn’t exclusively male or female. Nonbinary people can experience their gender as both male and female, as neither male nor female, or may include male and/or female as a part of their gender identity. Nonbinary identities fall outside the gender binary, but a nonbinary person’s experience of gender can include male, female, and other gender identities all encompassed in their nonbinary identity.
Nonbinary can also be used as an umbrella term, encompassing many gender identities that don’t fit into the male-female binary. Some nonbinary people identify as transgender, while others do not.
Who is this game for? Anyone who wants to tell a collaborative story that focuses on themes of gender, queerness, and family. This is a queer game about being nonbinary, but you don’t need to be queer or nonbinary to play it.
Women are Werewolves uses an exaggerated gender binary to explore the various ways people can fall outside of it. We hope that all players will use this game to help reflect on their relationship with their own gender.
Women are Werewolves is a storytelling game in which players draw and answer questions on prompt cards. Game play is expected to be approximately 90 minutes and supports 2-6 players over the age of thirteen.
The game is divided into phases and interludes. Each phase focuses on a different category of prompts.
- Werewolf
- Gender
- Family
During phases, each player will have a turn to answer one prompt card and other players at the table ask follow up questions to deepen their response. During interludes, each player takes a turn answering the same prompt.
Contents:
- 20 Rules Cards (Tarot-sized)
- 1 X-Card (Tarot-sized)
- 5 Transformation Milestone Cards (Tarot-sized)
- 39 Question Cards (Tarot-sized)
- 10 Interlude & Epilogue Cards (Tarot-sized)
- 10 Wilderness Location Cards (Tarot-sized)
- High Quality 2 piece box
