Play Report: Thirsty Sword Lesbians

I finally ran Thirsty Sword Lesbians, minus the swords but plus cowboys.

This was a very impromptu session and I hadn't looked much at this ruleset for about a year so it took a while to get started, refreshing myself and sending out a couple of documents to the players. None of them were familiar with PBTA games, so I summarised the main features and the major moves specific to TSL. As I was reading up on the main moves and sketching out the bones of a one-shot, the players took a look through the different playbooks and started building their characters. The session was originally promised this time last year for a friend's birthday and was cowboy themed to tie in with another present, so we tried to adapt the more fantasy elements inherent in the game to this setting. Our group of outlaws was:

• Cassidy the East Coast Rustler, a scoundrel running from a messy ex.
• Jessie Mack, 'Washington', a devoted believer in freedom with a bonded horse.
• Nettie Hallowhurst, a nature witch with a pet eagle and a walking stick that doubled as a gun.

I was prepping the session as the players made the characters but haven't consumed that much cowboy media outside of a couple of plays and the start of Destry Rides Again, so was struggling a bit for inspiration. I did some googling for cowboy one shots without much luck, but then remembered Bob Dylan's song Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts, from which point it was plain sailing. I basically twisted the underlying story of that song into a simple set up, and kept the major character's names but removed much of the darkness. The players would show up in a town run by Big Jim, having heard there's a score and a train passing through the following day, with which they could make good their escape. There would be a cast of very tropey characters with their own conflicts to resolve, and a big game at the saloon as the train arrived, which everyone would come to and where everything could come to a head. For the characters I jotted down some basic details, major links to any other characters, and a different set of dice which I could use to represent strings the players gained through the game.

The outlaws showed up in town (Lone Howl, a pretty terrible name from a generator) and I briefly described the main street which had most of the relevant locations and was definitely lifted from the Playmobil catalogue's cowboy sets that I was obsessed with as a kid. They entered the saloon, clocking a hanging judge (hi Bob), a woman in a pink dress playing poker, and the barmaid. The players immediately split up to talk to these three individually, aiming to gather some information to lead them to their score. Cassidy used emotional support while talking with Hanging Judge Jane, finding out that she was exes with the Sheriff, who used to be an ace shot but had slid into alcoholism since Big Jim's takeover. Jessie flirted with the gambling lady, Rosemary, showed her her horse, and got an invite to her ranch the following day. Nettie discovered from the barmaid Lily that Rosemary was with Big Jim and arrived a few months ago, and that there was a prisoner in the jail at the moment, who was being sent on the train tomorrow to a bigger prison.

Though it was getting late, the group decided to check out the jail. Cassidy chatted up the cowgirl clerk, winning herself a meeting with the Sheriff. While those two went upstairs, Nettie and Jessie snuck through into the jail, where they discovered the captured convict was none other than Jezebel Smithandweston, Cassidy's ex. They made a deal to break her out, and found out that Rosemary and her had been working together to try and get Big Jim's fortune, but had been missing a secret key, and when discovered Rosemary betrayed her. Meanwhile, Cassidy pulled out some hard lines and gave up her own pistols to convince the Sheriff to pick up her guns again though she'd sworn she was finished, and specifically that confronting Big Jim at tomorrows big game was the way to restore her honour. The group reconvened at the saloon, Cassidy bringing the clerk Hazel (who wasn't one of the pre-planned NPCs), and went to their beds.

The next day was basically 3 smaller missions, since each player wanted to pursue their own thing. Jessie went to Big Jim's ranch, meeting his daughter Sally, who wanted to go see the world but had to stay and look after her Poppa (wholesale lifted from Esmerelda from the play Cowboys and Lesbians, but older). She tended to Sally's limp and felt Sally was a kindred spirit in her conflict between duty and freedom, and through the interaction gained a couple of strings that would come in handy later. She then talked with Esmerelda and discovered that the secret key was Big Jim's silver cane. Nettie went with Jezebel down to Big Jim's mine to try and get some dynamite, talking about their pasts on the journey. Once there, some bad rolls meant they met Big Jim, who they told about Rosemary and Jessie's budding romance as a cover for their presence at the mine. Cassidy spent the day with Hazel mainly, gathering more info and getting ready for the big game.

At the big game, we did a poker style minigame to see how each character's plans for that evening advanced. The cane was obtained, Big Jim was convinced of Rosemary's fidelity at the cost of implicating Nettie and Jezebel, and some bad rolls convinced Rosemary to betray the outlaws, unbeknownst to them. Then Sheriff Jones strode in and challenged Big Jim to a duel, and in the ensuing chaos, the outlaws snuck into the bank to gather their score. However, things got messier as they heard more gunshots than expected from where the duel was taking place. Jessie abandoned the heist to ride in, seeing an injured Sheriff and a treacherous Big Jim in a standoff with a number of the other characters all pointing guns at each other. She used her healing abilities on the Sheriff (flavoured as a mini pep talk) and grabbed Sally, who she finally kissed in a dangerous situation. The outlaws were now being pursued by Big Jim and his men, who Nettie slowed down with some nature witch quicksand creation, but only Jessie successfully made it onto the train, and was then pushed off by Rosemary. As Big Jim loomed in and the train started to tremble, readying to leave, they convinced Jim to go ahead and stop it, then threw dynamite at him as they climbed aboard and the train bolted. Sheriff Jones also made an appearance, re-earning her sharp shooting credentials against Big Jim, and the player characters escaped with their score.

Reflections

This was quite a messy session, as could maybe be expected with such little prep. This is something I'm not very used to, especially without mechanically engaged structures like combats to fall back on. It might have helped to have some random tables for cowboy stuff to quickly generate ideas, and more familiarity with the genre would definitely have been useful. The main improvements for me would be: finding more of a use for Jezebel and delivering harder on her conflicts with Cassidy and Rosemary; encouraging the party to stay together a bit more, especially since it was a oneshot; and a bit of a tighter ending, particularly with Sheriff Jones. With the system, I think I'd have liked to do more with strings and conditions, and I need a bit of practice with the 3-results PBTA thing. I got a few conditions going near the end, but that might have been a more interesting result of low rolls in the poker minigame due to the roleplay implications. For strings, pretty much every string that I or the players gained got used, but for some characters they never came up.

I'd heard quite a lot of bad things about Thirsty Sword Lesbians since being gifted the pdf last year, including from people who don't just hate it for existing. I was therefore a bit reluctant about it. I would probably need to play more PBTA games to properly judge it, but I thought it was a decent system. It would have probably shone more in a different setting. I didn't think strings were super interesting mechanically, at least from the referees side, since in most cases they were only useful for plus or minus 1s to rolls. This would maybe be mitigated in longer form play though, as I don't feel TSL is very suited to one shots, at least with unfamiliar players. The number and varying specificity of moves made it quite complex from the player end and somewhat harder to engage with. Also, more of a quibble, but at least on pdf the book didn't feel very well organised for GM use during a session. There's a long section of settings in the middle, which splits the basic moves and character abilities from the section with GM advice and practice, and I think putting this towards the back would've sped the game up a fair bit.

While I struggled a bit with it, the 3 outcome system is fun and definitely creates dynamic, almost soap-opera, story moments. I also enjoyed playing a system so focused on big emotions and characters feelings. My long running 5e game has had a lot of emotional stuff due to my player's great roleplay, but it's interesting to see this being engaged through mechanics rather than completely apart from them. I've heard Girl by Moonlight is a similar but better executed game, so I'd maybe be interested in trying that.