Twilight Dames

by Kira Magrann

A Quick Start about queer women in an erotic Noir World

Twilight City

The persistent rain, monolithic architecture, neon lights, and buzz of traffic are the heart and soul of the impossibly large Twilight City. Where day turns into night too fast, and high-heeled women with tinted shades are quick to buy you a drink. These twilight dames come here to the big city to find out who they really are. To escape the conservative small towns they grew up in, places filled with old fashioned bigotry, places where they just couldn’t be themselves. There’s more people here in the city with open minds (and open…hearts) than you can imagine. The city’s so big it’s easy to experiment with who you are and what that means. That’s not to say it’s a walk in the park here though; there’s plenty of experienced women who love to sink their claws into fresh meat, and systems even beyond them that we all struggle against. It’s still a hell of a lot better than those small towns, that’s for sure, and the seduction of the city slips its way into everyone’s hearts.

Queer Networks

Things are different in the communities here than they are outside of the city. Some lesbians have very tight-knit groups, only letting a chosen few in. Other groups are super laid-back and welcoming. Some women move seamlessly from their “straight” day job to their “gay” nightlife. Here in the downtown you can be anybody you want to be. Some ladies take advantage of their anonymity, trying on new personalities every month like a new pair of heels. There’s opportunity to climb that business ladder if you want to and take a swing at that glass ceiling. You can work the docks, or join the police, or own your own bar with only a few odd looks. There’s the hipsters and their endless parties and glamorous night clubs where you can dance all night and wake up in a new bedroom every weekend.

Strange Love

In this city, a girl can easily lose herself to whispers of passion traced in red lipstick and cigarette smoke. So many women do. Twilight City is a destination for women who have a desire for other women. It’s more acceptable to be more yourself here, whether that’s butch or femme, trans or cis, or somewhere along that Kinsey scale of desire. Loving who you want, out there in the wild open, is only one more step away. You just have to make the first move, sweetheart, what’s stopping you? People won’t judge, too much, but you can feel their eyes sometimes, that stare when you hold hands or kiss at the bar. Are they curious, or are they judging you?

Dark Nights

There’s a dark side to this city. Old lovers’ quarrels that seem to have been around since the first stones were laid. Secret places that can fuel any vice. People who don’t care about authenticity, who just want to use you. Thieves, blackmailers, and social backstabbers, yeah, they’re all here too. Getting swept up in their drama and their schemes ain’t as hard as it seems. Fall for the wrong gal and she’ll walk all over you, tear your heart up, and hang you out to dry.

Setting Creation

Twilight Dames is a Quick Start adventure that has everything you need to jump into your first session. Before you start, you’ll want to discuss the broader setting with your group, perhaps even reading aloud the descriptions of the Twilight City, the Queer Networks, Strange Love, Dark Nights, and The Body so everyone is on the same page.

At the start of play, explain the current issue to your players and ask them to fill in one or two additional faces associated with The Body. These additional characters will provide new plot hooks and twists that will tie your players more deeply to the issues facing their lesbian community.

Then ask your players to choose from one of the two available impending issues: Political Takeovers or Police Corruption. Have them fill in one or two additional faces for their chosen impending issue as well, rounding out the larger cast of characters with their suggestions.

Current Issue: The Body

One of your own, a college girl new to the city named Emily McCutcheon, was recently found dead. The morning after a big party down at The 300, that artist hipster warehouse on the sketchy side of town, she was found out back in the high grass of the neighboring lot; seemed like an overdose. It’s only been 24 hours, but rumors are spreading like wildfire through Twilight City’s lesbian community.

Those closest to the case, however, are beginning to piece the puzzle together on their own. What really happened to Emily that night? Who in this city holds the secrets to her death, and what price will be paid to find out?

Faces:

• Ian Welch: Emily’s ex-boyfriend, owner of The 300 art studio and celebrated drag queen
• Jada Brooks: Emily’s girlfriend, a punk rock butch lesbian who’s a headliner in the band Pussy Rage

Impending Issues

In addition to The Body and the drama it poses to our members of the lesbian community, there are a number of other impending issues haunting Twilight City, including:

Political Takeovers

Christina Johnson—a conservative Christian Republican representative for Twilight City—is supporting Issue 24 on the ballot this election. It’s a local bill to re-develop the area of town where the LGBTQ teen hostel Rainbows is, and the community is trying hard to fight it. These girls need a place to stay, and Mrs. Johnson doesn’t seem to care about that at all, instead talking about a new entertainment district that will restore this city to its former glory. What most people don’t know? Christina’s a closet dyke. If she got outed it would ruin her career.

Faces:

• Christina Johnson: conservative Christian Republican representative, closeted lesbian
• Susan Chung: volunteer at the LGBTQ teen hostel, political activist and diesel dyke

Police Corruption

Everybody knows the cops here in Twilight City are dirty. The corruption goes deeper than anyone could imagine, though. Many even suspect Police Chief Angela Gomez of being deep in the pocket of several prominent figures in the city. If you want to get something looked into, and you don’t have the cash to fund the investigation, it’s probably going to be buried in bureaucracy. Things are coming to a head recently with the local mafia, as crime rates go up and the cops do nothing to stop it. Twilight City gets more dangerous by the minute.

Faces:

• Angela Gomez: Police Chief of Twilight City, getting paid to not do her job and enforcing her strict regime
• Nikitos Manov: The mob boss’s hot-shot son, who seems pretty keen on gaining power while his father’s out of the country on business

Character Creation

Twilight Dames works best with Fate Core characters and is a tribute to pulp lesbian erotica. Players take on the roles of queer women in a pulp noir city. It’s encouraged for players to address the idea of LGBTQ women however they like, creating characters that showcase a variety of identities that fall under that spectrum. These stories could focus on telling sexy noir stories featuring lesbian, bisexual, queer, or questioning women, both cis and trans.

This Quick Start isn’t a 100% accurate reproduction of the genre—it’s updated to remove a lot of the inherent sexism and negativity toward queer women that was featured in those historical pulps. It’s also a mash-up of two genres: Erotica and Noir. Part of it is crime drama and intrigue, and the other part is the steamy scenes with other PCs or NPCs that arise amidst this drama.

Yes, this is definitely erotica! It should be sexy, steamy, pulpy, romantic, and extra queer. Decide how steamy you want it to be (PG-13? R?) and keep descriptions within those boundaries. Feel free to draw a curtain on a scene, ending the description before the “on camera” sex occurs, and then focus back in on the characters afterwards. Gain enthusiastic consent from players at all times, but especially when it seems they might be hesitant about something. Move on to a different scene if something comes up that’s uncomfortable, or try a different way to tell that scene that works better for everyone. Most of all, have fun being a sexy noir lesbian!

Players should select their aspects as normal, choosing a high concept and a trouble, and completing the phase trio to determine their final three aspects. Begin by being connected to the current issue at first. Who are you and why do you know about, care about, investigate, or love Emily?

Skill List

Twilight Dames uses a completely new skill and stunt list from traditional Fate Core. These skills and stunts are designed so that the actions players can take are very specific to the queer noir genre. If it’s not on this list, it’s not important to the narrative! Look for ways to showcase these skills and stunts as you’re roleplaying; they’ll help bring out the essence of pulp erotica at your table. Choose one skill at Great, one at Good, two at Fair, and two at Average.

Body Language

People make subtle movements that relay their true intentions. While talking with someone, roll Body Language to read their motives or determine a lie. You can also use it to signal your own intentions.

Overcome: Body Language helps you determine whether someone is lying, nervous, or otherwise. Overcome their desire to keep their motives hidden.

Create an Advantage: Get an idea about what exactly they’re hiding. Notice when their eyes go slightly to the left, or they reach inside their pocket, or they try to hide a text from you.

Attack: You’ve got some wicked moves, girl. Put ’em to good use, and let someone know without a doubt what you’re thinking about them.

Defend: Use your moves to hide your true intentions and misdirect people from what you’re really going for. Distract and deceive.

Stunts

Hips Don’t Lie. You’ve been lied to by the best of them and their tricks don’t slide by you anymore. Gain a +2 to drag the truth out of someone.

I Know What You Want. You can read someone’s true intentions. Gain a fate point if you give them what they want.

Rock Your Body. You know exactly how to move, where to touch, when to tease. Figure out an aspect from someone while using all your fancy moves.

Cash

An abstract representation of how much money you’ve got. Decide how obvious you want to make it, but it can be a huge influence over people’s minds and hearts.

Overcome: Use cash to get yourself out of a sticky situation if you suddenly need to. Help others in need with donations to their cause.

Create an Advantage: Win someone’s heart over by showing off your massive amounts of wealth. Buy them a drink or something they really need to get in their good graces.

Attack: Buy people to do your dirty work for you. People who could break into a place, threaten someone, be an “eyewitness”, or spread nasty rumors.

Defend: Use cash to get yourself out of an awkward conversation or sticky situation.

Stunts

Can’t Buy Love. Gain a +2 to your Sensuality roll to buy someone a fancy fancy gift as part of your seduction.

Playboy/girl. You’re ridiculously loaded, and you flaunt that shit. You can invoke for free any situational aspect that requires lots of money to be there.

This One’s on Me. Dinner, drinks, movie, that date night—you’re covering the bill, you insist. Roll Cash instead of Sensuality when you’re using your money to prove you can take care of someone monetarily.

Guns

Not really for shooting, more for the threat of violence. Intimidating, basically.

Overcome: A gun encourages someone to back down and step away because now guns are in play.

Create an Advantage: They’re a bit off their game if they’re scared of you. This can give you a little leeway when asking for what you want, or settling an argument.

Attack: Even if you shoot that gun, physical stress isn’t an option. Guns can frighten or demoralize your opponent, though.

Defend: Someone probably thinks you’re not so much of a badass, but they will after you show you’re packing. Now, to them, you’re kind of scary.

Stunts

Flash Your Piece. Show off that gun tucked in your pants and say something intimidating. Get a +2 to your Guns roll.

Command Authority. When using your gun as a reason to assert a command, roll Guns instead of Body Language.

Dangerous Sexy. Some people are attracted to danger, and a woman who can handle it. Get +2 to a Body Language roll when using your gun to prove how much of a badass you are.

Investigate

Sure, you might be on official detective business. Or maybe you’re just trying to find out if your lover is cheating on you.

Overcome: This isn’t just surface info you’re looking for; you have to dig deep and look hard to find the right details and uncover the truth. Investigate lets you find that stuff that’s buried deep.

Create an Advantage: Allows you to find specific details about the situation at hand, and the person involved.

Attack: Go after those nasty details, put together a file, and get ready to hit someone hard with it. You can use it for leverage or to outright threaten them.

Defend: Dig up dirt on that person who’s trying to hurt you.

Stunts

Private Eye. You’re pretty good at sneaking without getting caught, and you always know the right place to find a diary. Spend a fate point to be in the right place at the right time to find what you’re looking for.

Blackmail. Gain +2 when using Investigate to find a piece of information on someone you can blackmail them with.

Greasing Palms. Roll Investigate instead of Cash when you’re bribing someone with money.

Lingo

This ain’t your first rodeo. You understand the languages, etiquette, and secret code that gives you access to…all the right people. Use Lingo to understand or use words in a variety of communities outside of your own.

Overcome: Lots of cliques, clubs, and communities have their own way of talking and relating to each other. Want them to trust you, or to gain access to their secret parties? Use Lingo to overcome that language barrier.

Create an Advantage: Lingo gives you an idea of what that person might want to hear. It also gives you insight into the language of a place, and not just what to say, but what it all means in context.

Attack: You can sling slurs and insults in order to push someone’s buttons.

Defend: You can stand up for yourself too! Don’t let someone push you around with their verbal barrage, chica.

Stunts

Lipstick Mafia. You’re an important part of the lesbian community and you protect its members and traditions. Get an extra heart stress box reserved just for standing up for your lesbian community.

Down and Dirty. You’re a dirty talker, and you know how to use it to push someone’s buttons. Get a +2 when you say something raunchy to surprise someone or turn them on.

Comfort Zone. You know how to make someone feel unwelcome by using insider slang. Spend a fate point to make an NPC leave a scene because they feel like they don’t belong.

Little Black Book

You’ve got some old friends and lovers to call on for help. Or information. Or whatever else you might need them for. Maybe an ex you need one last fling with? A cheating lover you need to revenge fuck? No judgment here.

Overcome: You’ve got a problem you can’t figure out, but you know your ex would know this in a second. They can help you solve whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish.

Create an Advantage: Need a winglady to help you out on this blind date? Know that a little bit more info might tip the scales in your favor? This person from your history can give you the backup you need.

Attack: Use your vast network of friends and allies (and friendly exes) to turn the tide on someone. They can spread nasty rumors or do favors for you to get back at someone.

Defend: Call your connections for aid, a friendly ear, a shoulder to lean on. When you’re feeling vulnerable, your network can support and defend you against the most vicious social attacks.

Stunts

Call in a Favor. Need a favor from someone? You’ve got it, without needing to spend a fate point.

Heal My Heart. Regain your heart stress when you share an intimate moment with an old connection.

Sleeping with the Enemy. When trying to reconnect with an old enemy, gain a +2 to your Little Black Book roll.

Muscle

How much strength, grace, and body mass you have. Enables you to do impressive physical stuff.

Overcome: Muscle pits you against large objects that ladies couldn’t possibly move and allows you to lift it with sexy finesse. You’re overcoming the general weight ridiculousness of that thing, whatever it is.

Create an Advantage: Maybe you’re moving something out of the way of your path, rearranging furniture in an office, or lifting a girl off her feet so she doesn’t have to walk in a puddle.

Attack: Attacking with muscle is akin to restraining someone. Use your strength to wrestle or hold someone.

Defend: Defends against someone trying to muscle you!

Stunts

Lift You off Your Feet. Gain a +2 to Muscle whenever you’re using it in a flirtatious show of strength by picking someone up.

Farm Girl. You’re an expert at moving around heavy stuff, don’t even break a sweat. Roll Muscle instead of Suave when trying to impress someone with your strength.

Out and Proud. You’ve gotten some shit ever since you came out, but you’ve improved your self-defense skills like mad because of it. Gain a fate point to use your mad skills in a tussle.

Sensuality

Sensuality is how in tune you are with your desires and how well you can read the desires of others. Roll this to determine if someone is really turned on by you or just using you. Also use it to work your natural flirtatiousness and mad sex skills on consenting partners.

Overcome: Sensuality lets you communicate your desire to a potential partner in a difficult situation. Eyes caught across the room, subtle double entendres in a mixed crowd, a quick accidental touch. Alternately, use it to overcome your shyness in approaching someone you’re really attracted to and gaining the bravery to say something.

Create an Advantage: Your sensuality is a desirable trait; people want to be closer to you, share stuff with you they wouldn’t with other people because they want to be in your glow.

Attack: Determine if your enemy is attracted to you, then hit ’em where it hurts, right in the heart region. Love ’em and leave ’em, or taunt them into letting them know they’ll never really have you.

Defend: Defend against someone’s relentless come-ons and one liners. Especially effective against negging. You know what people are after so you can shut them down extra fast.

Stunts

Hopeless Flirt. You can’t help flirting and everyone knows it. Gain a +2 to sexily extract information from someone.

Pillow Talk. After sleeping with someone, they have to reveal a secret—but so do you.

Good, Giving, Game. You’re an excellent, attentive, playful lover, and you’ve got a reputation for it. Use Sensuality instead of Little Black Book to get in touch with someone you’ve slept with before.

Suave

Cool, hip, enticingly dangerous. Suave is what you use when you’re trying to impress the shit out of someone. Or maybe just turn them on. When you succeed, they’re not automatically “seduced.” They’re impressed, but ultimately they decide how to react to that.

Overcome: Suave makes someone more inclined to engage with you because of how amazingly cool you are. Overcome the emotional wall they’ve put up, be it shyness, stubbornness, anger, or snobbery.

Create an Advantage: Gain some insight about that person in conversation because your smooth moves can coax it out of them, or throw them off their game because you’re a bit cooler than they are.

Attack: Kind of like a dance off, only with how cool you are. Prove you’re cooler than someone else.

Defend: It’s pretty hard to embarrass someone as cool as you; insults just roll right off of you.

Stunts

Milk for Info. Use Suave instead of Cash if you’re using your words and your looks as a bribe.

Sharply Dressed. Gain +2 to Suave rolls when you’re dressed to the nines.

Genderfuck. Spend a fate point to seem ridiculously attractive to any gender, somehow knowing exactly what the target’s preferences are.

Undercover

Your character’s ability to fit in with different communities or identities, or appear as something other than what they are. Roll when you want to seem to be a different gender, orientation, race, or community member.

Overcome: You’re going to overcome someone else’s perception here, often a crowd of people. So, if you’re trying to fit in at that fancy hotel downtown, or at the hipster bar, or on a college campus, or at the mobster restaurant, you’re trying alter people’s perceptions of you in those spaces.

Create an Advantage: You’ll be able to interact more easily with the people in these communities, or relate to certain people who identify the way you’re identifying.

Attack: Use someone’s own community against them, act like an ally when really you’re not.

Defend: Undercover can be used to defend against people who are trying to out you, either your sexuality or your ability to fit in with a community or identification.

Stunts

Crossdressing. Gain a +2 bonus to Undercover when dressing, and attempting to pass, as a different gender.

Passing. Add +2 to Undercover when you flirt with a target while looking, sounding, or moving like a gender or orientation different than your own.

What Glass Ceiling? Put a Stunned aspect on your target when you impress them with knowledge about a non-traditional gender role.

Heart Stress

Instead of the regular stress tracks you normally use in Fate Core, Twilight Dames has a specialized track for the only thing that can get hurt in this game: your character’s heart. Get rid of physical and mental stress tracks. Replace them with a heart track. Filling the stress track still works the same way. Additionally, instead of dying, your heart gets broken, and you move to another city far away.

When taking actions, consider that you’re acting to protect your character’s heart! Same with NPCs. You can’t really take physical damage (or really hurt anyone physically) so everything you do is pointed toward emotional consequences.

Opening Scene: The Wake

All of the PCs knew Emily. Her passing is tragic, horrible, and shakes the community. They all had connections to her, so this isn’t just professional, it’s personal.

There’s a wake being held for Emily today. It’s at her family’s house, the McCutcheons, who are refusing to acknowledge that Jada was her girlfriend. Emily’s homophobic brother, Steve, is drunk and angry and ready to blame “those lesbians’ influences” for his sister’s death. It shouldn’t be too hard to find, but there’s some heroin stashed away in the bathroom.

How do the women deal with the mourning family and their homophobia? Is there someone there who they can relate to, or take their frustration out on? How are they expressing their sadness or anger at this loss? In what ways are they coming together with Emily being the thread that binds them?

Opening Aspects: Mourning Family, Drug Stash, Photos of Emily with Jada in the Trash

Middle Scene: The 300

Later that evening, it’s business as usual at The 300, the last place Emily was seen. Small art studios mixed with large warehouse spaces make for a moody evening. The largest space is holding a glam retro 40s style Drag Show tonight, headed by Ian Welch, Emily’s ex. A small shrine has been built for Emily in the corner for people to pay respects. While many wildflowers have been piled up there, most guests don’t linger and are quick to return to their PBRs and strange dance moves. Jada, Emily’s girlfriend, starts a dangerous bonfire out in the back of The 300 and tries to rile up the other hipsters and lesbians to find out who did this to her Emily.

Do the characters try to calm the bonfire crowd? Join in the party? Get debaucherous and try to drown their sorrows? Try to question people about what’s going on, or help Jada figure out what happened to Emily? Who do they make out with at the party? Who do they go home with? Do they comfort each other? Which NPCs have they begun to suspect? Who are you starting to suspect?

Opening Aspects: Dark Drag, Plentiful Alcohol, Raging Bonfire

Final Scene: Bangers

The next day can comprise of individual scenes for each PC, wrapping up whatever fallout there was from the night before. Later, there’s a confrontation at that old lesbian bar on the bay, Bangers. The owner, Betty, is a tough no-nonsense kind of woman.

Jada gets them to the bar, convinced that the guilty party is there. A worried text, a note, or a message can get her and the PCs there.

This is where they do in fact find the killer, or the enabler, or the truth. PCs have the opportunity to confront or react to this however they feel is dramatically appropriate.

Afterwards…is always the saddest. Have a scene where the PCs sit at the bar and discuss the fallout of this knowledge.

Who do they find at the bar? Do any of them know this person? Do they react with sadness, compassion, horror? Do they do something legal, and call the cops to have them carted away? Who do they tell about it afterwards? Whose arms do they crawl back to tonight?

Opening Aspects: Heavy Rain, Old Jukebox, Shotgun Behind the Bar

How to Play NPCs, Solve the Mystery, and Have Queer Drama

The plot of Twilight Dames is set up to encourage interaction, relationships, and drama amongst the PCs and NPCs. It’s a backdrop, a setting, a red herring in order to see how the characters interact with each other and how relationships form or break apart. It’s there to highlight their queerness, the sadness of losing someone from a small community, and really allow them to interact with each other and the NPCs in meaningful, revealing ways.

Here are some guidelines for helping you run this kind of game:

• Remind them of their skills: All of their skills ultimately come back to encouraging sexy, dramatic, noir interactions with other characters and the setting. If someone is being smooth and is dressed to the nines, ask them “It sounds like you’re being Suave. Is that what you’re doing? Want to roll?”
• Play provocative NPCs: Imagine that the NPCs that are included here, and the ones that you might make up on the fly, are there to push the PCs buttons. Got a PC who’s really great with cars? Have an NPC’s car break down at a dramatic moment. Have NPCs and villains that are trying to out them, make them feel like outsiders, or who just want to “experiment” with lesbianism instead of being in a real relationship.
• Highlight the queer erotica: Is the story a little too…dry? Have an NPC make the moves on one of our PCs. Ask the player about their character’s current crush, or romantic interest. Describe the wayward glances that woman smoking with the glass of red wine at the bar is giving them. Picture every femme fatale and every cheesy erotica scene you can and recreate it within this story. Go with the trope, and then if you can, add a twist! The femme fatale is a ladykiller?! The innocent girl in trouble is totally a top?! The corrupt cop is actually a prude who’s just lonely?!
• Drive toward maximum drama: Noir and Erotica are both over the top genres. When in doubt, don’t worry about the details, or the mechanics. Go for the most dramatic thing.

Sample Characters