BLOOD FEUD – An RPG about Honor, Power and Toxic Masculinity

[APM]

We’ve just launched our first international Kickstarter at Bläckfisk Publishing. It’s called Blood Feud and it’s a feminist game where you explore and experience toxic masculinity from a man’s perspective. You portray men struggling to uphold their honor. In the end, you will see what that struggle has cost both them and their community.

It started as a mashup between Sagas of the Icelanders and Dream Askew but soon turned into its own thing. There is no GM and the whole system revolves around a token economy. Have a look at the Kickstarter page and download the playtest rules if you’re curious!

It would be great to hear some of your thoughts and questions about exploring these kinds of topics in RPGs.

[Alessandro_Piroddi]

LoL… the “redacted” testimonial is priceless. You are sly foxes, and earned my pledge just for that one thing

And the games looks interesting as hell… that helps too

[DeReel]

Redacted makes my day.
Extra-love to the “insult someone” move. Not only because I love moves that allow the player to qualify an event, and the enormous and surreptitious subversive power of such moves. But also because tilting a gift, a comment or a praise into an insult is the kind of memorable turnpoint you find in the sagas.
I hope players can trigger the moves “via” one from their family or household, that would be specially useful for players of female characters.
Well done !

[APM]

Thank you! We haven’t met a lot of negative feedback in general, but we stumbled upon a forum where someone posted that comment, and we thought it was hilarious

@DeReel your thoughts on the insult someone move are very interesting! We like the way every move can be objected to by others which makes every move a potentially tense moment.

But one thing I want to point out is that every player’s main character is a man. You will take turns playing women as well. Women are not bound by moves, and never trigger any move. Only men trigger moves, which means that women are more free in what they can and can’t do, but they also lack any mechanical tools to get their way. So women may insult a man in order to make him make a move. But there’s no way to force them to do something, as a woman.

[DeReel]

Thank you. I now understand how to be playing a woman in Blood Feud can be a transformative experience. I also understand that, to qualify fiction as a move, you can’t go it on your own, and need the approbation of the narrating collective. That makes sense !