Nuns with Guns: Inside Sisterhood, the TTRPG Where the Habit does the Kicking
Charlie Menzies on blending noir aesthetics, clever tactical combat, and post-WWII religious history
Sisterhood links:
Hi Charlie! The last time I talked with Parable Games, it was a written interview with your brother Barney about Shiver. But now it’s the other Menzies, about Sisterhood! Can you first tell us a bit about your game company?
Absolutely! So, SHIVER, our play your very own horror movie RPG, started life as a homebrew system created by me which I just played for fun with friends. That was until one Christmas, I showed the draft rulebook to my brother Barney. He owns a FLGS, and thought he would be interested and to my surprise asked me when would I like to make it? From there, Parable Games was born, and now we produce pop culture, cinematic TTRPGS.
What is the concept of Sisterhood?
Sisterhood is a gritty nun TTRPG about punching evil in the mouth and saving the world.
When the apocalypse didn’t kick in after World War 2, factions in both heaven and hell were pissed off. The horsemen of the apocalypse, battle-hungry demons and even rebel angels all decided that the end of days was nigh, and are now trying to bring about the end of the world.
The Sisterhood is the last line of defence against. A clandestine order of nuns from all walks of life, wield rosaries and revolvers in equal measure to fight cultists, punch demons and slay angels to keep the apocalypse at bay.
What can backers get with the Sisterhood crowdfund project?
We have an array of goodies for backers, including some that are exclusive to the crowdfunding project! We have our Sisterhood Core rulebook which has everything you need to start playing, 2 gorgeous expansion books focusing on the five horsemen of the apocalypse (that’s right there’s one extra!) and fighting a rebel angelic host. We have the option to collect all of these together into a confessional booth slipcase that is exclusive to the crowdfunding campaign.
On top of that, we have a load of accessories, including 3 packs of polyhedral dice fore you nuns, demons and angels, GM Screen, badass stickers, as well as a battlemap and token set.
The concept of the battling nun has been around for a while. The “Warrior Nun Areala” comics by Ben Dunn, which eventually had a Netflix adaptation, comes to mind. But there are many examples. Sisterhood itself has a mix of military, horror, and noir aesthetics in the game. Were there any particular books, films, or historical events that shaped the tone?
The germ of the idea came from a factoid I stumbled across whilst researching for another project. In the post-war period, the Catholic church saw a huge swell in women across the world becoming nuns, the largest number that had seen for centuries. People from all walks of life joined up, some for refuge and safety after being displaced by the war, some for faith, others for a fresh and peaceful start. Reading those stories, of a diverse group of women bringing an influx of unique backgrounds and talents into the convents at that time, inspired me in seeing it as a fascinating roleplaying opportunity.
In terms of aesthetics, the term ‘nun noir’ has become a shorthand for the style in-house, with classic noir movies and their grizzled PIs being a great tone setter for the nuns as characters. When it comes to the horror side of things, films and comics like Constantine (as well as the original Hellblazer comics), Outcast, Preacher and Evil all fed into our mood boards. The more heavy metal side definitely came from playing Doom and listening to Mick Gordon's epic soundtrack or the game whilst writing.
Graphic novels also play a big part in the visuals, with Sin City being a touchstone for the hard shadows and splashes of colour, but work by Mike Mignola, Eduardo Risso and Francisco Francavilla are just some other comic artists to name a few who inspired the style.
I’m not Catholic myself, so I don’t have a sense of these things, but is there anything irreverent, or dare I say blasphemous, about depicting nuns as physical combatants?
Our aim with the game is not to disrespect anyone's faith, and some may find the theme and content too much, but we have worked hard to make sure that we are treading that tightrope carefully. We’ve brought on two sensitivity readers to the team for this project, to help lend insight from different perspectives as practising Catholics, women and other life experiences that the broader team doesn’t have.
For us, we see this roleplaying experience as a unique opportunity to try and place yourself into someone else's shoes who you may never have considered roleplaying before. We know that the likelihood of an actual nun playing the game is quite low, but to have people explore them as characters from all walks of life to us feels exciting.
Ultimately, the game lets you tell stories about punching evil, and saving the world from the apocalypse. It’s about standing up for what’s right and doing what you have to to ensure the safety of those you care about. The drama of the game comes from not just the grand scale of saving the world, but battling with your contradictions of faith, being used by the church as a weapon, and reconciling what you may need to do to save the world may be in opposition to what you believe. The action side of the game may seem pulpy and irreverent on the surface, but the character drama that comes out of the game, allows for interesting explorations of faith, violence, and the personal cost of saving the world.
The game’s setting is post-WWII, yet it leans heavily into supernatural horror. Why did you choose this historical period and theme?
The recruitment of nuns exploding in this period was definitely a factor, but thematically the post-WWII period provided an interesting place to explore the global anxieties that we plaguing people. This is something we explore heavily with the horseman of the apocalypse. Their physical forms are moulded by the world's state in relation to their ‘theme’ as it were. For example, Death still has the look of the classic grim reaper, but has an atomic bomb growing out of its ribcage to represent the fears of nuclear annihilation. For me, horror is a brilliant genre that allows us to explore global fears and manifest them physically in a more supernatural way, giving us fictional space to explore and comment upon them, whilst providing some level of catharsis. The world as it stands today sometimes feels like the apocalypse is nigh, and I hope this setting and Sisterhood help provide some hope and feeling you can fight back against it.
The presence of demonic enemies implies a strong cosmology. How deep do you plan the bestiary of Sisterhood to be?
In terms of a bestiary, there’s going to be a lot of options of what the Sisterhood will have to face and many different flavours of apocalypse to prevent.
Currently, we have 3 strong arms to the cosmology of Sisterhood and who they will be up against. First up we have the 5 Horsemen of the apocalypse - your classic death, famine, pestilence and war, now being led by Sariel (the son of the devil) who has taken on the mantle of Conquest, the fifth horsemen. They have cults upon earth which are scheming to try bring about the apocalypse and bring their masters into the fray.
Then we have the rebelling angelic host. They view humanity with disdain, a project of the Almighty’s that has gone sour. They seek to wipe out humanity and start anew, their factions fractured by the particular flavour of our annihilation that they favour.
Finally, we have the classic enemy - demons. They take on a more mercenary approach to the apocalypse. Some align themselves with the horsemen, others making deals with heaven so they can have their final duel, and quite a few have their own agenda they are playing towards.
Game Design and Mechanics
I found the mechanics of the game to be pretty remarkable, especially with how elegantly tactical the combat system is designed. The Way of the Cross abstract battle map is at the center of that system. What inspired this mechanic, and how did it evolve during development?
I’ve been delving into my love of small model count skirmish games over the past couple of years and my brain was itching at having a go at designing one. This project started up as a TTRPG project where some of this passion bled over, alongside other tactical but punchy games like Warhammer Underworlds, various board games, Mordheim and more.
I wanted to be able to get a tactical combat experience that was fast to setup and quick to play, but still scratched that skirmish itch. That’s where The Way of the Cross came from. Being able to have this abstract map, inspired by how the sisterhood was trained, take how they visualise a battlefield and make that the play surface felt new and exciting to me. Also being able to setup in 5 minutes, not needing to have terrain, or draw a new map for each encounter, just place down the map, deploy units and get fighting was a dream for me as a regular GM.
There were more sections to this map originally, lots of ideas bouncing around that as I tested and refined, were cut or reformed into new mechanics or folded into existing ones. The evolution very much became everytime we sat down to play, the game felt punchier, faster and more brutal, very much scratching that John Woo action itch.
The Ritual section of the Pentagram suggests enemies have their own battlefield advantages. Was this designed to encourage specific tactics?
The Ritual section provides a really interesting design space for enemies where they can have a bigger plan at play that the players don’t know about. It creates a really unique tension where players are watching the cultists and how they interact with the RItual section, praying they don’t summon a demon. Tactically it creates a fascinating focus draw where you have to decide whether you thin the herd of enemies dealing damage, or try and slow down their machinations in the Ritual section.
The Blessing and Cursing system gives strong mechanical feedback for battlefield positioning, where, for example, a combatant is punished for being on the wrong side of the abstract battleground. What inspired this risk-reward approach?
I wanted to get that feeling of a modern firefight where positioning is everything. Getting shunted out of cover or a section where you get a bonus can mean life or death in Sisterhood. Understanding your position on the map, where your Sisters are, and how you can force your enemies into the open together creates really dynamic tactical play and gets everyone around the table talking. It also keeps people moving and trying new things. Staying static for too long can get you killed.
Taking risks I feel is such a key piece of fun in any game system. Making those choices, making daring actions, all to get a chance at finishing off an enemy, feel amazing when they pop off and go well, but create excellent story moments when they go wrong.
The game encourages combative engagement. How do you ensure that non-combat approaches (stealth, diplomacy, etc.) remain viable?
The full game will have a much wider array of abilities which lean into the roleplaying aspects more heavily, as well as having stories which provide more of a non-combat approach. The Sisterhood are by design the perfect infiltrators as no one suspects them of being up to no good as nuns. This espionage and investigative angle is definitely something we will be exploring more in the full versions of the books.
How do you balance Faith and Fortitude as both narrative and mechanical resources in the game?
Balancing the two has been an interesting challenge, as although they have some similarities to health and mana for example in fantasy RPGs, they can represent so much more in a narrative sense. Fortitude ties to your physical health, and for the Sisters as they get older and face more threats the narrative side of the toll this is taking on their body is an interesting space to explore. While some sisters develop and grow their fortitude on the mechanical side to hit harder and take more damage, the narrative side of being mortal and aging is one I’d love to explore.
Faith has a similar balance to it. You use spirit to power special abilities and relics, reroll dice and push your chances at success, but completely running out will leave you a husk of a human. Certain enemies or moments in the narrative will damage your spirit. It may power useful abilities, but it is also narratively your drive to go on and your connection to your faith. The lower your spirit gets, the closer a crisis of faith moment can happen in the narrative, providing some opportunities for some really compelling roleplay.
The Fight for Your Life death mechanic adds a fairly brutal death spiral. Was there ever a version where death was more forgiving?
To be honest, no. The sisters are badass but I always wanted them to feel mortal. We also found that it helped to keep the players fighting as a unit and watch out for one another. If somebody on the battlefield is fighting for their life, it becomes a bigger narrative and gameplay moment that way as players rush to help and have to abandon well-laid plans. It is brutal for sure, but we’ve found it keeps the bonds of working as a team much tighter having the threat of death be very real.
The game introduces moral consequences, like carrying a cultist’s insignia imposing a mechanical penalty. How important is moral weight in decision-making, and does it extend beyond this example?
Interacting with things that sit contrary to the sisters' faith or moral compass is a big part of the game. Making the hard choices and sacrifices to save the world means you will have to compromise and do things you never dreamed of doing. A great example of this is fighting angels. They are symbols of heaven, and your faith, but these rebel angels want to wipe out humanity. How do you reconcile fighting back? What if you have to use a demonic weapon to make sure you stand a chance of surviving? You may save the day, but what effect does that have on you? These are all things we are going to be exploring to help create those moralistic dilemmas, as they provide great drama for storytelling at the table.
Crowdfunding and the Future
How much more do you think could Sisterhood be expanded beyond this crowdfund project?
We have had a lot of discussions about Sisterhood and what its future could be. There was a preparation on our part that this could be the only version of the game and wanted to make a project that if it was one and done we would be happy with what was there. That said, the response has been amazing and we can see the demand is there for nuns with guns, so future expansions are definitely a possibility.
This version of the game has focused very much on stopping the apocalypse, but there are other threats out there, other time periods to explore for sure. The Sisterhood definitely has room to grow, so if people want to see more badass nuns, we are happy to provide.
Your company Parable Games has now successfully crowdfunded a good number of projects. What would be your top advice for an aspiring game designer who wants to crowdfund their first project?
Start small. Take your idea, no matter how big it is, and condense it down into the smallest vertical slice that people can play. Test it out, get feedback, and develop it until the core of your game is as tight as possible. Only then start growing it into a bigger book. It's very easy for scope creep to keep your dreams large but physically unobtainable, and the most important thing is getting your game out there and being played. Zines, game jams, and collaborating with other creators to launch your first crowdfund is a great way to get your game out there and build an audience who wants to play in your world.
Sisterhood links:
Interesting project. I didn't see anything (one way or the other) about the option of solo play? Do you think this game will be soloable?