Ratqueen: The Game Moves

Ratqueen, was created by transcribing the narrative created by playing the solo RPG: Rattenkönigin, by Abbax. What follows are the rolls I made during the first successful game I played.


Rats = 4 + 2

Food = 1 + 2

Location = Buenos Ares, 1986, +1 Rat +2 Food

Day Rats Food Feed Scavenge Fend
1 7 5 4 3 1, 3, 4
2 6 7 4 1, 2, 1 4
3 5 7 3 2 2
4 4 7 1 3 1, 4
5 2 6 1 3 2
6 1 2 3 4 4
7 2 4 4 2 4
8 3 5 1 3 4
9 4 2 3 2 3
10 4 2 2 4 1, 2, 1
Final 2 3

Final Thoughts

This game is Hard.

Based on the introduction to the game, I knew I wanted to write a story where the Rat Queen was victorious, and Rattenkönigin is a solo game rather than a solo journaling game, so I decided to handle the game a little differently than others: rather than write as I played, I decided to play the whole game first and see what stories arose from the meta-narrative.

The first playthrough was downright cinematic. The first few rolls saw me with 8 rats and 13 food. I was on top of the world…until every roll after saw me whittle those resources down to a scant 4 rats and 2 food. The last roll of all pit me against my first human, who left me with only two rats to sneak past out into the open air. I was already writing the story in my head, the climactic moment when the Rat Queen escaped.

Alas, when I started to write up the game moves, I realized I had miscounted. I should have had 2 rats less, meaning the human should have killed the Rat Queen on the last roll of the game. A horrific tragedy, and not what I had wanted to write, but still engaging. I started the rewrite, only to realize I had miscounted twice, and my Queen should have died on day 7.

Oh well, it was quick enough to play; I’d play again, this time correctly.

What followed was a cavalcade of slaughter. My Rat Queen could rarely survive to Day 5, let alone thrive to day 10. It took over fifteen games before I finally won, and that game was what turned into the short story.

There were a lot of good meta-narratives sprinkled throughout: One Rat Queen was obviously being chased by a rat-catcher, with a long stretch of their food getting poisoned every day, but their sharp wits and noses saw them scavenging their food back to large levels, until the rat-catcher caught up with them and killed them all. One Queen was a trio of rats for several days, with every rat joining getting killed the next day through starvation or beast. A huge number of Queens died before day 4, not a few of them on day 1.

Rattenkönigin calls itself a neuroqueer game: a game about the intersectionality of Neurodiversity and Queerdom. It uses the framework of a Rat King(Queen) that is struggling to survive long enough to fight its way out of the sewers and finally choose its own name. That the game is fiercely hard, entirely random, and centered around starving, pain, and death…the game is staggeringly bleak.

It is a game about the people who are kicked out of their homes, thrown to the sewers, and forced to do terrible things to survive. It is about victims of the society above and the forgotten souls who are not allowed the compassion of the affluent. It is about the queer and neurodiverse who are just too different to be allowed at the table.

It was easy for me to feel good about the Rat Queen who survived. I felt like I had won. My screeching shook the sky, I scratched at the heavens

But what about all those Queens who died? Is this a game about the uplifting power of community and cooperation? The anarchic strength of rats somehow wrong? The twisted glory of body-horror and madness turned beautifully heroic?

Or is this a game about pain? About itching scabs that begin to bleed, and the inescapable cost of othering? A reminder of our failures as a society, and a gnawing ache that makes it clear: for every success there are a thousand failures, and it’s random luck that decides who survives?

Or perhaps it’s both?

Either way, never forget my fellow goblins: scratch the heavens.