Women are Werewolves is a PAX Tabletop Game Award-winning card-based story game where players portray nonbinary characters in a family where only the women transform into werewolves. Using a beautiful deck of tarot-sized cards containing roleplaying prompts, players explore their relationships to gendered spaces, family customs, and queer and non-queer family members.
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.