In 2018, I played this game at a convention when there was buzz about this game, lauded as a feminist RPG written by women. I came to the game cold and totally hated it. Here's my experience. I'm a guy, so I thought maybe I just didn't get it. Years later, at another convention, while chatting with a fellow Player who I respected, she told me she liked Bluebeard's Bride, but she had to be in the mood for it. Another friend of mine said he'd only play it with a specific group of people, but he liked it.
In my local group, one of our rotating GMs wanted to run Bluebeard's Bride. I was willing to give it another try since this GM was a woman. The GM I had at the convention was a man.
Well, I actually enjoyed it a lot more this second time. Part of it is because I knew what to expect.
Bluebeard's Bride uses a system lite version of Powered by the Apocalypse. When we played, we rarely rolled any dice.
This time, we didn't have a large group of personas, but we only got 2 Players and 1 GM. We spent very little time creating the characters, maybe at most 20 mins compared to the 2 hours I spent at the convention with 4 Players. I picked Witch (with the Viper move). Ken, the other Player, picked Mother (with the Kingmaker move). The Viper move lets me kill servants with my lies. The Kingmaker move lets the Mother gain a champion. We went with PCs who could manipulate NPCs.
We explored rooms with the expectation that every room was horrible and haunted by a previous bride, looking for evidence of her demise. We improvised pretty dark stories about how Bluebeard manipulated the brides to cause their deaths.
We decided Bluebeard's previous bride was our older sister. Originally plump, she got addicted to cocaine until she wasted away like a concentration camp victim. In her room were mirrors everywhere for the cocaine and also so she can see her reflection that wasn't thin enough for Bluebeard's liking. Depression combined with the rollercoaster ride of drugs doomed her. We encountered our sister's ghost and using the Viper move, put her spirit to rest (yeah, GM let us bend the rules for better story effect).
In a picture gallery of previous brides, we found a portrait of our sister. Her plump self stood in front of a mirror whose reflection was her inner thin. Also her thin version looked like us, since she was our sister. Portraits of other brides showed either subtly or overtly their fate. There was an animated statue that tried to paint our fate. It refused to let us move, "Stand still." Mother called the champion to rescue us, eventually I had to ridicule the statue and made it (a dark liquid inside the hollow statue) withdraw (I berated her artist abilities).
In the kitchen we found beautiful pastries and cakes, but mixed into the batter were herbs and drugs that caused diarrhea and vomiting. I got infected with bulimia before leaving the room.
We also found at the stables how our champion, Helen, was thrown by her horse and made into a hunchback. Another plot by Bluebeard to punish her for NOT ridding sidesaddle and losing her virginity to her saddle. Chastity belts and a punishing nun was in the barn. The Mother used the move Dirty Yourself with Violence. Took her scourge away from her and punished her with it.
In the finale, we decided to go into the Final Room. According to the rules, since we were Disloyal to Bluebeard, we we're only supposed to Present Evidence to the Town or Run Away and Start Anew, instead we wanted to Enter the Room. The GM let us do that. Bluebeard punished us by making an Aviary to cage us (one of our desires was freedom). Our long white hair and ribcage bones were woven into a bird nest. The birds, looking like doves, cooingly whisper about the fates of the other brides, when ignored, the doves transform into vultures and peck at recalcitrant brides.
So, with expectations set (there is no escape), creative Players and GM, Bluebeard's Bride becomes a very dark and psychosexual adult game.
As an aside, we wondered if we had more Players, we might have gotten a less sinister view of what a room really meant.
I came up with an alternative interpretation of the bedroom. Our sister was locked into her room by Bluebeard due to her drug addiction, in order to detox her, but with easy access to expensive furnishings, she was able to bribe servants to obtain drugs for her. Her death was self-inflicted.
Helen wasn't deflowered by her saddle, but by the stable hand. The stable hand put an irritant under her horse's saddle in order to cause her accident and death, so he wouldn't be found out and punished by Bluebeard.
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