The Game

Viva la QueerBar is a slice-of-life story game about a queer bar (or queer café) and the team who runs it. It’s a game about the pleasures and struggles of being part of a queer community.

Whether as a fantasy medieval tavern, a cyberpunk underground club, a real-world gay bar in a historical setting, an intergalactic queer bar on a spaceship, or anything else you can think of – the QueerBar lives wherever you want it to.

All you need to play is this zine, a regular deck of playing cards (52 cards), and 1-5 people to play with you. No preparation necessary – just start playing!

Viva la QueerBar is great for complete newbies to role-playing games and fun for experienced TTRPG players alike. It welcomes players of all genders and orientations who are willing to take on the perspective of a queer character for the duration of the game. Since this is a story game more than a role-playing game, however, you will spend more time describing your character’s thoughts, feelings, and actions than you will acting as your character.

Viva la QueerBar was written by Sandra Dahlhoff and Andrea Rick and illustrated by Hannah van den Höövel and Andrea Rick (you can find further credits on this info page for the game).

It’s available in English and in German.

The Rules

Viva la QueerBar is a stand-alone tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) for 2-6 players (no GM), conveniently packaged as a handy zine and perfect for no-prep one-shots of about 2-4 hours play time.

The rules of this Descended from the Queen story game are very simple: At first you read the short instructions out loud together. The text has our recommended consent and safety tools already built-in. During that introduction, you also choose the rough setting of your QueerBar.

Then the core game starts: You take turns drawing a playing card and looking up the question associated with it in the random tables. Over the course of the game, your individual QueerBar, your main characters, some side characters, and details about the surroundings of the QueerBar develop through your answers to the questions.

In the end, all main characters answer: What is your most important wish for the future of the QueerBar?

Due to the random selection and order of the questions (you’ll typically use around half of them during a 2-hour game) and the huge variability of possible settings, you can play Viva la QueerBar again and again and have a different experience each time.

The Zine & PDF

Format:

• 32 pages in A5 format (148 x 210 mm / 5.8 x 8.3 inches)
• Full color
• Zine: Staple-bound
• PDF: Screenreader-ready with image descriptions, PDF tags, internal references, and external links

Contents:

• Complete instructions for play (consent and safety tools included)
• 4 random tables with questions (13 options for each of the 4 suits = 52 different questions)
• Essay about real queer bars (plus 23 mini portraits of famous queer bars and cafés)
• Interior illustrations based on real queer bar flyers of the 1920s-2000s
• Bonus material: 20 pre-made queer bars/cafés and 20 pre-made queer characters for inspiration (available here)

You also need a regular deck of playing cards (52 cards without Jokers) and something to write. You can also use an online card deck. A template for playingcards.io is available via the Downloads page linked below.

More about the game

Under Downloads, you can find free materials for this game.

You can find more information about the game, its team, and external media links on this info page.