Role playing games are an emotional and immersive experience, and that’s often what makes them worth playing in the first place.
But...
This isn’t to say you shouldn’t engage with the game, and the themes and topics it deals with, in a way that’s emotionally safe and healthy.
- — Emily, on emotional safety in Dungeon Bitches
Emily Allen, A.K.A Cavegirl / Dying Stylishly Games (she/her fae/faer) is a queer an Ennie award winning british game designer mainly known in the indie Tabletop scene for original OSR-style game design with a distinctly queer approach.
Faer notable works include Dungeon Bitches, Esoteric Enterprises and of course the Stygian Library which got faer her Ennie.
Her most recent works indicate a shift towards a more narrative approach to game design, with Dungeon Bitches being powered by the apocalypse.
Her body of works often involve:
- Author Tract: Emily Allen has not shied away from politics in her games. Fae would also like you to know that fae does not like cops. Very often.
- Body Horror: As is often the case with trans authors (go figure) Cavegirl's games often involve gruesome alteration to one's body, willingly or not, in both empowering and terrifying ways, depending on point of view.
- Cast Full of Gay: For obvious reasons.
- My Girl Is a Slut: A lot of her works involve unrepentantly sexual female characters, especially Dungeon Bitches.
- Trans Tribulations: Although not all of her works deals with the harsher sides of the trans experience, Dungeon Bitches most notably involves both solutions for "easy" transition and a more "medical" one, offering the players and games mistress options for chosing their level of engagement with that trope
- Write What You Know: As fae puts it, fae "drew on a lot of real-world unpleasantness" making Dungeon Bitches and other games.
