Shacking Up: Queer Compatibility Card Game Ideas

Okay, so, basic little card game idea: I’m thinking about a game about hooking up at cons.

Now let’s be clear, this is not a game about salacious details at cons. I am not, and have not been, a casual con sex haver, and queerness is not explicitly tied to queer sex. But queer sex is a thing many queer people do, from time to time, in between getting milk and playing Fallout: New Vegas. And when it comes to queer furry cons, I understand that a lot of people, without people to connect to in their home places, will take the opportunity to have some low-commitment, experimental and experiential up-shacking with people who make them feel connected and related to. And so, a game.

Simplest version of this game is like, a matching game, a game with multiple compatible and incompatible suits. Super basic idea is, let’s say we have four suits to represent genders:

  • Male
  • Female
  • Nonbinary
  • It’s Complicated

This is a simplification, extremely so. After all, there are lots of identities that don’t fit into these four categories easy, and there are overtones towards one or the other. That’s okay, we can use these four to sort of mix-and-match combine them. For example, a nonbinary femme, or nonbinary masc are options, or femme-masc, or Its Complicated Masc, suggesting questioning or all sorts of stuff. It’s a simple card game setup, okay, bear with it.

We’re going to assume characters are accepting and nice. That is to say, nobody’s transphobic – if you’re an Its Complicated Nonbinary Masc, and there’s a character who’s Just Masc, and these characters can be compatible – like, they’re both gay – then they can totally be paired and the just Masc character isn’t going to have a conversation that starts ‘well, biologically speaking’ that means we need to throw him into the trash.

Okay, so characters can have a gender, and then they can have genders that they relate to, and then they can have compatibility numbers. After all, some people don’t go to private spaces always in pairs. So we add in a compatibility number, of like, say, 2-4, where characters can form into sets of up to that many. Note that everyone in the group needs to share that number. So sure, you may have a 4, 4, 3 and 4, but you can only make a group of 3 with that – because the 3 hits their limit before you snap on the last 4.

Also, what about a way to cycle through cards? One thing I like is giving a discard zone, where you can ditch cards to to draw – you know, lots of games have a discard pile. What do people do if they’re not shacking up? Maybe they’re just off, over there, having fun. And that leads to the Fun Zone. After all, you don’t need to be doinking to have fun.

This is important, because in addition to these characters who are compatible doin’ it, you can have ace characters – and ace characters score points when they’re in the fun zone with people they also find compatible. This creates opportunities for say, an ace character with a 1 – they just automatically score if they go to the fun zone and that’s a cute little thing to include. Then there’s the opportunity for a super outgoing friendly ace person who wants to party with lots of people and you may need to discard like, six cards to them to get them all in the fun zone, but when you do, they have a big ole hootnanny.

Anyway, this is an idea. This is an exploration of an idea. Each card would be, in my mind, probably pretty simple with art in the central of some basic Standard Issue Queer Furries.

Now I mentioned this to Fox, and then that ‘it would be a furry con, but with real furries.’ She then suggested that it would be furries going to impersonate non-furries, to dress up like, and I swear this is her idea, ‘their skinsonas.’

Anyway, g’night!