Monsterhearts 2 vs Thirsty Sword Lesbians - which queer romance game fits your table?

The short answer

Pick Monsterhearts 2 if you want it to hurt: teenage monsters in a small town, desire nobody asked for, and characters who treat each other badly long before they learn anything. Pick Thirsty Sword Lesbians if you want it to heal: duels, flirting and rivals who become lovers, in a game that believes people can change for the better. Both games run on the same engine and both keep score with Strings. One uses them as a leash. The other uses them as a thread.

What these two games have in common

Both are Powered by the Apocalypse. Most of the time you simply talk. When something is at stake you roll two six-sided dice, add a stat and read the result: ten or more and you get what you wanted, seven to nine and it costs you, six or less and the story turns against you. There are no battle maps and no initiative order. Every roll belongs to a named move, and the moves tell you what the game is about.

In both games that is feelings. Who wants whom, who owes whom, who cannot look whom in the eye. Both are queer at the core, not as a coat of paint. Thirsty Sword Lesbians says so on the cover. Monsterhearts 2 builds it into the rules: you do not decide what turns your character on.

Both also keep Strings, a count of the emotional hold one character has over another. Monsterhearts had them in 2012. Thirsty Sword Lesbians, nine years later, uses the same word for a gentler idea. And both books take care seriously. Monsterhearts 2 has a chapter called Keeping Your Heart Safe. Thirsty Sword Lesbians comes with a Palette for lines and veils, a Check-In Card and the X Card.

Both are decorated too. Thirsty Sword Lesbians, by April Kit Walsh and published by Evil Hat Productions in 2021, won the Nebula Award for game writing and ENnie gold for Best Game and Product of the Year. Monsterhearts 2, by Avery Alder and published by Buried Without Ceremony in 2017, was a finalist for the Origins Award for best roleplaying game.

Where they really differ

Who you play. In Monsterhearts 2 everyone is a student at the same high school, and everyone is secretly something else. The playbooks are called Skins: Vampire, Werewolf, Witch, Ghost, Fae, Ghoul, Infernal, Hollow, Queen and Mortal. The monster is never only a monster. It is a way of talking about a body and a social world that change without your permission. In Thirsty Sword Lesbians you play sword-swinging romantics who fight for something. The nine playbooks, among them the Beast, the Devoted, the Infamous, the Scoundrel and the Spooky Witch, are each built around an emotional conflict.

Strings. Both games let you spend a String to dangle experience in front of someone, so that going along with you pays off for them. After that the lists part ways. Monsterhearts 2 lets you spend a String to saddle someone with a Condition, or to hit them harder. Thirsty Sword Lesbians lets you spend one to find out what it would take to win someone over, or to add to their roll. It is the same currency in two very different economies.

What hurts. Monsterhearts 2 has physical Harm, and four of it kills your character. It also has Conditions: lasting social trouble that someone else hangs on you. In Thirsty Sword Lesbians emotional Conditions take the place of hit points: Angry, Frightened, Guilty, Hopeless, Insecure. One way to lose them is the Emotional Support move. Someone offers support, you open up, and a Condition comes off.

Desire. In Monsterhearts 2, Turn Someone On is a basic move, rolled with Hot. When it lands on your character, they are attracted and the other player holds a String on you, whatever you had in mind. What your character does about it stays your choice. Every Skin also has a Sex Move, a rule that fires when that character sleeps with someone. In Thirsty Sword Lesbians you decide when your character becomes Smitten. You say why, and you hand the other person a String on you. The game even has a move for what may follow: Finally Kiss, in a Dangerous Situation, which only works when everyone involved is enthusiastic about the kiss. Monsterhearts treats desire as something that happens to you. Thirsty Sword Lesbians treats it as something you choose to give away.

Losing control. Every Skin in Monsterhearts 2 has a Darkest Self: the character's worst impulses, which surface under stress. Each Skin names what sets it off and what it takes to come back. Thirsty Sword Lesbians has nothing like it. Its characters carry their Conditions, and the way back usually runs through another person.

Scope. Monsterhearts 2 is one town and one school, played in seasons. A season ends once someone has taken their fifth advance, and then the game offers the Growing Up moves, which are about becoming a better person. Thirsty Sword Lesbians is a toolkit. The book comes with ready-made settings, from the cyberpunk of Neon City 2099 to the laser swords of Starcross Galaxy, and a worksheet for building your own.

What it feels like at the table

An evening with Monsterhearts 2: in detention the Werewolf's player rolls to Turn Someone On at the Queen, and gets a ten. The Queen's player had other plans. Now the Werewolf holds a String on her. At the bonfire that night he spends it and offers her a reason to walk away from her own clique, and she takes it. By midnight the Ghost has seen everything, a Condition is hanging on the Queen that nobody will let her forget, and somebody is about to Lash Out Physically in the parking lot. Nobody behaved well. Everyone at the table is grinning.

An evening with Thirsty Sword Lesbians: the Infamous, once the Empress's favourite blade, meets her old commander on the palace stairs. She rolls to Fight and gets an eight, so she picks two things: she takes the commander's sword, and she opens a path for her friends. The commander picks one thing in return and chooses cutting words. The Infamous marks Guilty. Later, on a rooftop, the Seeker offers Emotional Support. The Infamous opens up, and the Condition comes off. Next session the commander changes sides, and the table cheers.

What you actually need to buy

For Monsterhearts 2 you need the book, and that is all. It is a compact softcover with the complete rules, all ten Skins and advice for the MC on running a season. Add two six-sided dice. The publisher also offers the Skins and the player sheet as PDF downloads, which is handy for printing. It is the cheaper of the two by a few euros. Be aware that it is a game for adults who play teenagers. The publisher itself lists teen sexuality, coercive power, abuse and violence among its themes, and the book has a chapter on handling them with care.

For Thirsty Sword Lesbians you need the core book, two six-sided dice and a printout of the playbooks, which Evil Hat offers as a download on its website. The book holds the nine playbooks, around a dozen settings, four scenario seeds and guidance for the GM. An expansion, Advanced Lovers & Lesbians, adds more playbooks and settings, but you do not need it to start.

Neither game needs a starter set, a screen or a second book. Both are written for one game master and a small group of players.

Choose Monsterhearts 2 if ... / Choose Thirsty Sword Lesbians if ...

Choose Monsterhearts 2 if you love the kind of television where everybody makes the wrong choice and you cannot stop watching. Choose it if your group can play people behaving badly and enjoy it, and trusts each other enough to go there. Choose it if you want horror that lives in a hallway rather than a dungeon, and if a game that takes desire out of your hands sounds exciting rather than alarming. And choose it for a short, intense run of sessions rather than a campaign without end.

Choose Thirsty Sword Lesbians if you want romance with the lights on. Choose it if you want to play someone worth rooting for, and if the best scene you can imagine is an enemy lowering her sword. Choose it if your group likes to pick a genre together, from cyberpunk to laser swords. Choose it if this is your first game Powered by the Apocalypse and you want a gentle way in. And choose it if you want to leave the table feeling better about people than when you sat down.

Where to start at Netherbook

Monsterhearts 2 is the complete game in one book. If you know Avery Alder from The Quiet Year, expect the same sharp design in a much darker mood. Thirsty Sword Lesbians is the core book with everything for a first duel. Both live in our Crushes & Quests collection, where romance and adventure share a shelf.

Want romance with a mystery wrapped around it? Then the third door is Moonlight on Roseville Beach, which we set against Thirsty Sword Lesbians in its own comparison. If it is the monsters that pull you, the Horror collection has darker company waiting, and Evil Hat's other games sit together in the Evil Hat Productions collection.