In conversation with Dungeon Bitches creator Emily Allen

Tabletop RPGs offer a modern-day iteration of the ancient art of communal storytelling. Even the world-renowned poster child for the medium, Dungeons and Dragons, with its cookie-cutter fantasy and bland (if accessible) worldbuilding, allows players to engage in meaningful, expressive stories. 

However, amid systematized misogyny and queerphobia and a resurgence of fascist sentiment across the world, other TTRPGs have emerged in an effort to give players space to explicitly express dissent. Dungeon Bitches, from award-winning designer Emily Allen and Dying Stylishly Games, delivers on this goal in spades, offering an unapologetically brutal, feminist, counter-cultural fantasy experience designed to platform women who find themselves pushed out of the so-called "civilized world."

In Dungeon Bitches, marginalized women in a fantasy setting eke out an existence on the fringes of society, often from a literal dungeon, sustained by their interpersonal bonds and the pursuit of catharsis. 

In conversation with Allen, we touched on the impetus behind Dungeon Bitches, as well as Allen’s goals for the title. We also looked ahead to the future of TTRPGs, in anticipation of what she calls “the next big shakeup.” 

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. The dialogue contains discussions of sexuality, patriarchy, misogyny, queerphobia, and sexual assault. 

Cat Bussell: So, for the uninitiated, what is Dungeon Bitches, and what can players expect from it? 

Emily Allen: Dungeon Bitches looks at the question of, “Who would become an adventurer and mess around in horrible traps full of dungeons and monsters?” and concludes that it’s going to be people who don’t have a place in polite society. It then extrapolates from this and goes: “That’s going to be queer women.”  

It’s going to be people who, for whatever reason, are not okay with the very restrictive positions that the patriarchy wants them to sit in and who are just fully opting out. 

The big challenge that we faced with Dungeon Bitches was taking that worldview and not making playing it a fucking miserable experience. I think it's really easy to look at Dungeon Bitches and see all the grim, bleak depictions of sexual violence and depression and forget the bit where your player characters are just kind of badasses. You can realistically assume that if somebody's pissing you off, and you just decide to smack them on the head with the hammer you're carrying, they're just going to die.