Each holiday season, I review different modules, games or supplements as a thank you to the wider tabletop roleplaying game community. All of the work I review during Critique Navidad is either given to me by fans of the work or the authors themselves. This holiday season, I hope I can bring attention to a broader range of tabletop roleplaying game work than I usually would be able to, and find things that are new and exciting!

A Stranger’s Just a Friend is a 38 page game for 2 players by Darling Demon Games. In it, you act out a romance between two men, one hired to assassinate the other. It’s an intensely queer and complex game with adult themes; even the cover is explicit, so fair warning in terms of content. I won’t be able to shy away from discussing adult content in this review.

This game is as much about sex between queer men as it is about romance; it is a period piece so it covers religious persecution and transphobia, there is consent play, there is animal death in some scenes, and there is a supernatural horror element as well. This game is a lot, and this one will require the players to be comfortable and care about each other given the subject matter. I really appreciate the safety section that opens this book, as if you’re playing this game that’s really what you should be here for, and I am a strong believer that art, even if it’s not for me, should be unashamed about what it is. That said, this isn’t for me – I have friends who really enjoy explicit sexual content in their games, but I’m someone who prefers to pass these scenes behind a veil, while I’ll play romance games until the cows come home.

Character creation is interesting and characterful. I love that the designer has strong opinions about who these characters are, but nevertheless leaves a lot of interesting space for the players to develop their own perspectives and unique traits. The writing here is universally interesting and awkwardly funny in precisely the way a queer period piece feels it should. You might “Lift a shoulder, dip your chin, and cast a glare that demands attention.“, or “Get more naked, more sweaty, or both.” Even the rules text is interesting and funny: “I’m sorry to hear that, Dullahan. At least you have your associates and employers to keep you sane!”. It’s good stuff. It’s fun to read, and I expect it would be fun to play together with a friend.

It’s an awfully tactile game; messy and sensual. You play with coloured stones, candles, and a block of chocolate. You start the game playing in alternating soliloquys, holding your chocolate over a candle’s flame and then filling an opaque bag with pebbles according to the results of the dice roll. When your chocolate is melted – your fingers sticky and likely thoroughly licked – you begin playing duets instead. You choose your soliloquys, but the stones you drew determine your duets. The result of a duet my cause a return to soliloquy, but the game ends if either one character dies or if they choose to be together. You can choose to play on even if this occurs, but I’m not really sure precisely what this might mean narratively.

Each scene – both soliloquy and duet – are quite detailed and complex, often 2-3 pages long. Your read through your scene, answer questions, you may roll dice, make decisions, narrate what occurs. It feels like a bit like a long drift from a Firebrands game, in a good way. There’s a great variance between the scenes, but the sex of it all is quite unavoidable. I don’t feel like there’s a long story here – we only have 5 soliloquys, and they feel less replayable than you’d expect, because of the choices you’re expected to make in them. I don’t feel like you’ll be moving to and from phases often, unless chocolate melts far faster than I expect it does (it might – I haven’t playtested melting chocolate over a candle). I do love how the scenes are broad in their topic though. There are shopping scenes, but also hunting scenes, as well as sex scenes. It’s violent and mundane and sexual. It feels very concrete and real, despite it also drifting into metaphysical and mythical at times. I love that at least the duet scenes, as they can’t be controlled, are going to lead to vastly different outcomes.

I find it hard to judge whether A Stranger’s Just a Friend is a good game, because it feels as if by design it’s supposed to be a little vague and abstract. It veers into cosmic horror, in a way, which is appropriate I think to the way it’s exploring queer themes. One of the player characters may never have existed; that isn’t even the one that is a mythical construct. Is it about romance, or is it about fantasy? Or is there some kind of mystical element to the world beyond the obvious? It’s really not clear. The art style and layout is clearly tongue in cheek, as is befitting such an explicit text. The layout and lack of page numbers make it a little messy. But even as someone who isn’t interested in explicit sex in TTRPGs, I find the text and the ritual of the game extremely compelling. I want to want to play this game. I think, with the right friend and the right level of comfort between the two of us, it would make a very memorable night, although potentially a risky one, filled with emotion.

A Stranger’s Just a Friend is a game you should pick up if you’re interested in sex in TTRPGs, and have someone else you want to spend a night with expressing your love for queer sex and cosmic horror together, and if you’re the kind of player who, as my friend Sam Dunnewold phrases it, is into “Emotional skydiving”. It’s deeply compelling, but also the kind of game that might be entirely outside many players comfort zone. I love that TTRPGs as an art form can contain such a multitude of kinds, and I’m very glad A Stranger’s Just a Friend exists, with it’s weird, messy, sensual tactility that reminds me so much of sex, and with it’s explicit, cosmic horror that is so symbolic of queer experience. It reminds me that roleplaying games are for everyone, even if every roleplaying game isn’t for me in particular. By this point in the review, you know whether or not A Stranger is Just a Friend is for you. If it is, I hope you check it out. I’d love to hear how it goes.

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