Lichcraft
The Year is 2069...
The setting is Great Britain. The Tories have been in power since 2010.
Due to National Health Service (NHS) cuts, trans healthcare has become increasingly hard to access. The waiting list for the first appointment at a gender identity clinic is now 300 years. They don’t want to outright refuse you; that would imply that the health service is over capacity or underfunded. Instead, they will simply add you to the end of the list and wait for you to die.
But they are fools. For you have learned the secrets of immortality. And you will get to the end of that waiting list, even if it means waiting another millennium...
This is a game about spite, necromancy, being trans, and a 300 year long NHS waiting list. Although the game itself deals with serious themes, it is set up to be tongue-in-cheek, satirical, super queer, and intimate.
Content note: this game contains discussions of the difficulties surrounding trans healthcare, which may be a sensitive topic.
Lichcraft is a rules-light tabletop RPG set up to be played with 2 or more players. The play is inspired by Forged in the Dark systems, with a simple D6-pool resolution mechanic. Instead of choosing classes or players, characters begin by choosing their politics, hobby, day job, and magical source, and use attributes from these to add to their dice rolls.
Give this game a try if you like dystopian settings, collaborative world-building and play, magic-wielding queer characters, interesting and individualistic ways of spellcasting, and undeath as a metaphor for... something.
Credits: Laurie O'Connel, Sam Dunnewold, Ema Acosta, Chin Yan Han Kristen, and Alasdair Philbey
A5 staple-bound zine, 24 pages + a bookmark-sized character sheet.