The second annual Dicebreaker Tabletop Awards were presented at PAX Unplugged this year, recognizing a wide range of tabletop designers, companies, and games—and Women are Werewolves was among them, named by Dicebreaker as 2023's Best Roleplaying Game!
9th Level Games CEO Heather O'Neill, producer Adriel Wilson, and Women are Werewolves co-designer C.A.S. Taylor were on site to accept the award.
Of the game, Dicebreaker writes:
Women are Werewolves puts players in the role of non-binary characters in a family that believes women - and only women - transform into werewolves under a full moon. Driven by prompts drawn from a deck of gorgeous tarot-sized cards, Women are Werewolves looks to explores the relationships of its characters - and by extension its players - to gendered spaces and family customs, as they explore whether the family’s superstition is true and their non-binary characters’ place in both the family and its mythology.
Insightful as it is accessible, Women are Werewolves combines the familiar folklore of werewolves with its cathartic and meaningful gameplay, for both Queer and non-Queer players alike. Inspired and important, it is worthy of recognition wide and far.
In Women are Werewolves, all players create nonbinary characters who are members of a large extended family. Other than this, the only thing that must be true is that the family believes women, as defined by the family, transform into wolves on the full moon and men, as defined by the family, do not. Whether the family is correct, how the family defines men and women, and whether there are other werewolf families in the world who contradict that truth are up to you.
Play begins with a safety conversation. Then players lay the groundwork for storytelling by drawing one card from each of the following categories:
Setting. Where does your family live? A wide selection of setting cards help players imagine the family’s home and surroundings.
Family Dynamic. Is your family well meaning, ignorant, or actively hurtful? Each dynamic card helps characterize the atmosphere and tone of the story.
Transformation Milestone. In your family, when do people start turning into werewolves? This card helps players begin to describe their own werewolf mythology.
Following this, players create characters, then set up their card deck. The game is divided into phases and interludes. Each phase focuses on a different category of prompts, and comes with a stack of corresponding cards. The three prompt categories are: Werewolf, Gender, and Family. During each phase, each player will have a turn to answer one prompt card from the deck. Then, other players ask follow up questions to deepen their response. During interludes, each player takes a turn answering the same prompt from a single Interlude card.
Congratulations to the designers, and to everyone who was nominated for the Dicebreaker awards this year! You can check out the recap here, or just watch the award ceremony (which was, frankly, quite delightful) here: