Defy the Gods

Defy the Gods is a tabletop role-playing game of daring adventure, passionate romance and cursed power, set in fantasy ancient Mesopotamia. Inspired by Conan, Clash of the Titans and Princess Mononoke, it brings queer love and resistance to sword & sorcery role-play.

In Defy the Gods, you and your friends fight jealous gods and cruel tyrants who want to destroy you. You spin a story of wild invention and heart-rending drama.

Explore a fantasy ancient Mesopotamian world that you build at the table—its Pantheon, its Cities, its trackless Wilds. Its dream of Atlantis, its fate in the Underworld.

Win hearts and give your own. Your romantic entanglements leave you vulnerable, but they may save you from yourself.

Unseat the world’s powers and dare to seat yourself on their throne.

Leap into danger, surrender your heart, and ascend to monstrous, godlike power.

Defy the Gods is a sword & sorcery story game about love and power. It’s equal parts romance and adventure, using a version of the Powered by the Apocalypse engine. The game’s mechanics point your story in exciting directions. Like Thirsty Sword Lesbians, you may flirt with and tempt other characters. In the midst of this, you may also seize might for yourself, at the risk of cutting yourself off from your intimate connections.

What manner of sword & sorcery is this?

Sword & sorcery is marked by propulsive action, gritty urban life, cosmic horror, protean wonder, and the drama of street-level heroes taking on overwhelming odds. Like a lot of recent sword & sorcery fiction, Defy the Gods focuses on these elements and scrapes away everything else. Howard Andrew Jones called this “new edge” sword & sorcery.

What makes this a queer game?

Defy the Gods is a game of universal, visceral attraction. You may win anyone’s interest. Spend others’ hearts to aid or thwart them, throw them off-balance, or tempt them to do what you want. In Defy the Gods, love has no rules.

Also, the world is against you. The Pantheon of gods hates you, and the City’s rulers want to push you to the margins. If your flirtation goes awry, the world is ready to stomp on you for it. While your adventurer has tremendous talents, they are—at first—nothing compared to the forces arrayed against you.

Sword & sorcery is about underdog heroes battling civilization and unstoppable supernatural forces. This is queer life in a nutshell.