You always give great advice! I'm GMing at an one-shot event for International Woman's Day this weekend and was wondering if you had any ideas for one shot systems that would fit with the theme...? No worries if not, I'm aware it's a very specific ask!
Could do. The biggest potential problem you’re going to run into there is that tabletop RPGs that are specifically about addressing women’s issues tend to lean very grim – which isn’t necessarily out of theme, but it may not be the atmosphere you’re aiming for! My inclination would be to start with the more general brief of “tabletop RPGs created by women” and see where that leads.
A few notable authors from my personal collection:
Avery Alder is an educational consultant who runs Buried Without Ceremony, an imprint perhaps best known for Monsterhearts, a supernatural high school soap opera that’s made headlines within the hobby for the fact that it’s game-mechanically impossible to be heterosexual. For a one-shot, Dream Askew would perhaps be more suitable; its core system – variously known as “Belonging Outside Belonging” or “No Dice, No Masters” – has become quite popular for rules hacks, particularly as an alternative to the Apocalypse Engine.
Rose Bailey is a major contributor to White Wolf’s Vampire: The Requiem, as well as author of the swashbuckling planetary romance Cavaliers of Mars and the Castlevaniapunk investigative procedural Miserable Secrets under her creator-owned imprint, Fantasy Heartbreaker. She’s also the creator of a range of one-shot friendly microgames available both via her Patreon and her DriveThruRPG publisher page; I’m especially fond of Die For You (supernatural slice of life) and Princess of the Universe (literally She-Ra).
Emily Care Boss is one of North America’s leading voices in structured freeform gaming, often credited as the founder of the American Freeform school of game design. Her imprint, Black & Green Games, publishes a small library of her work, including the Romance Trilogy, an anthology of relationship-focused games designed to be played by couples or small groups. For a larger one-shot group, however (or any group that’s not terribly comfortable Talking About Feelings), I’d be inclined to give Misericord(e) a spin.
Elizabeth Chaipraditkul is the owner and founder of Angry Hamster Publishing. Though the company’s flagship title, Afterlife: Wandering Souls, is sadly not especially one-shot friendly, Chaipraditkulalso teamed up with fellow author Steffie de Vaan over the course of 2019 in a Patreon-funded challenge to produce twelve games in twelve months, all of which are one-shot friendly. You can find all of those games on Angry Hamster’s DrivethruRPG publisher page; for your target theme, you might pay special attention to The Wicked Sisters.
Erika Chappell is a prolific author whose body of work admittedly tends toward macho hyperviolence, which I suspect isn’t quite what you’re after. There are a few exceptions to the rule in her library, though; my favourite among them is probably Double or Nothing, but it’s strictly a two-player game (three including the GM), so unless you’re planning on running for a very small group, you might instead have a look at either The Way Home (if you prefer your games light and fluffy) or Must Be Tuesday (if you prefer your games not quite so fluffy).
Haley Gordon and Vee Hendro are the brains behind Storybrewers Roleplaying, publishers of the Jane Austen inspired epistolary RPG Good Society and the forthcoming sports anime drama Fight With Spirit. They also publish a small library of rules-light, one-shot friendly games, which are available for free courtesy of their Patreon backers; any of them would likely be suitable, but The Fictional Memoirs of Harriette Wilson & Her Sisters might be an especially amusing choice for the occasion at hand!
S A Hannon, Ruth Lampi and Jessica van Oort are Five Wits Press, a publishing cooperative whose back catalogue largely consists of comics and prose fiction, but just this past year they’ve ventured into the tabletop RPG arena with the magical-girl-flavoured superhero title Super Destiny High School Rumble!!. SDHSR isn’t exactly the most one-shot friendly game mentioned in this post, but you could probably swing it with some careful prep work – there’s nothing about its gameplay loop that demands a full campaign.
Marissa Kelly is co-founder of Magpie Games, and – along with WhitneyBeltrán and Sarah Richardson – the author of Bluebeard’s Bride, which is one of those games I mentioned in the initial paragraph that are a. explicitly about women’s issues, and also b. grim as hell; it’s based on the fairy tale of the same name, which probably tells you everything you need to know about how it plays out. If you’d prefer something with somewhat less spousal murder, Kelly is also the lead designer of Epyllion, a game where everybody is a dragon.
Dr. Jenna Moran likely needs no introduction, but for those who are new to this blog: she’s a veteran RPG author with a long list of contributor credits, including Changeling: The Dreaming, Exalted and Weapons of the Gods, as well as the creator of Chuubo’s Marvellous Wish-Granting Engine, Glitch and Nobilis. She’s mostly on this list for the sake of completeness, as she doesn’t really do one-shot friendly games; about the closest thing in her library is Wisher, Theurgist, Fatalist, which would be… a lot to drop on a group of novice players.
Sarah Newton is a published fantasy and sci-fi novelist, and co-founder of Mindjammer Press. Much of her early RPG catalogue – including the outstanding Legends of Anglerre – is now out of print due to expired licenses, which is probably why she switched to making games based on her own work! This is another for-the-sake-of-completeness inclusion, as her flagship game, Mindjammer, is basically the exact opposite of one-shot friendly, featuring some of the most baroque character creation mechanics I’ve ever seen in a tabletop RPG.
Annie Rush formerly ran the independent studio Itesser Ink, but has since left the hobby to pursue graphic design. Notable works under her imprint include the dystopian robot comedy Run Robot Red, and the 1:1 scale miniatures game The Secret Lives of Gingerbread Men. The title that particularly sprang to mind given your brief is House of Horiku; it’s never been published electronically and used copies are difficult to come by, so you’re not likely to get your hands on it for next weekend, but it’s definitely one to keep in mind for the future.
Elizabeth Sampat’s main gig is in mobile game design, with credits including the Plants vs. Zombies franchise and writing for Fallen London. Her work in tabletop games is largely theory-oriented, but she’s put that theory into practice a time or three; my personal favourite among her tabletop works is the Burn Notice inspired Blowback. She also served as editor for the wuxia psychodrama Mist-Robed Gate, which is, to the best of my knowledge, the only published tabletop RPG that uses an actual, physical knife for conflict resolution.
