Awesome Women Kicking Ass

In Awesome Women Kicking Ass, each player takes the role of a great Heroine of mythology, defending the land of Herstoria against an attack by the pernicious forces of the Patriarchy, who wish to reduce all women to subordination. An indie RPG with (like My Life With Master) a fixed narrative arc, Awesome Women is essentially structured as a conversation.

Prior to play, each player creates his Awesome Woman, noting how in her mythic prior existence she awesomely kicked ass, showed wisdom, and persuaded others, as well as one other way in which she was awesome. Then, the characters introduce themselves to each other, talking in the Commons of Herstoria near the house of Old Lil, the first Awesome Woman. Introductions are done round-robin style, with a "chalice" passing from hand to hand to keep track of whose turn it is.

After a second round of conversation (the Socializing phase), each player then describes a force of the Patriarchy, attacking the Commons -- since the Patriarchy is equally mythic, the force can be quite diverse -- Odin and Thor might well join forces with army choppers out of Apocalypse Now.

Next comes the Ass-Kicking phase, in which each player narrates how his Heroine kicks Patriarchal butt; the basic rubric is that a Heroine must, with each round, be even more awesome than she has before -- tall-tale topping ala Munchausen, in other words. After two or more rounds of Ass-Kicking, the Patriarchy is, of course, defeated (as the rules say, "this game isn't called Awesome Women Trying To Kick Ass And Possibly Succeeding But Maybe Not"). In a final round of narration, the Heroines continue their socializing while describing how the damage done to Herstoria by the Patriarchy is restored.

If this doesn't sound awesome to you, perhaps you too are an agent of the Patriarchy.

P.S.: Heh. I just noticed how I referred to the players throughout as "he", e.g., "each player creates his Heroine"... Me, I don't have a problem with this, since I'm a tool of the Patriarchy, and firmly believe that "he" is the pronoun to be used for persons of indeterminate gender. Yes, Anglo-Saxon had a pronoun specifically for the purpose, but it's been lost, and I'm enough of a grammar Nazi to eschew "they" when it's numerically inappropriate, and things like "s/he" or "hir" are simply abominations.

The best note in this regard is Allen Varney's in the current edition of Paranoia, who says "players who object to the use of 'he' when gender is undetermined are encouraged to spend their time worrying about more important things, like serving The Computer with fervent loyalty."

Yeah. But anyway. So I'm a tool of the Patriarchy, too. But this is still an interesting game.