Satire is a word that most people learn by watching at how it is used. That’s why you might come away believing, that any joke at somebody else’s expense is satire. Jokes, that denigrate women aren’t sexist, they are „satire“. Even board games aren’t immune to this gradual dissolution of meaning. There’s a very successful card game for „horrible people“, who like to present their sense of humour not as tasteless and crude, but as „satire“ instead. This makes it all the more welcome that with Deadly Dowagers there’s a card game, that can rightfully claim to be satire.

The game’s thematic hook is intentionally macabre. As women in 19^th century England we seek to rise in society by way of marriage, the premature demise of our spouse and the resulting inheritance. Said inheritance we then carry over into our next marriage as dowry. At the end we want our property to be enough to get the main prize: becoming the wife of the Duke of Lonsdale. Until then we have to enter a few transitional marriages and also leave them. Of course we will do so in the only manner acceptable to society of that time: the death of our husband. Since death is so inevitable, we have decided to shorten the wait and induce a natural end to our marriage. We do this with the help of cards in our hand, which we play if certain preconditions are met. Once our husband has passed on, he leaves us with money, which we use as dowry for our next marriage.

A large of part of Deadly Dowagers’ humour stems from euphemistic and indirect descriptions of murder. So far, none of the female players in my group could stop themselves from describing why and how their fictional spouse passed on. This happened with a strong sense of irony and as much fake consternation as any acting talent allowed for. This by itself be enough to make Deadly Dowagers an entertaining game. The game’s flow is robust and easily understood without feeling stale. Experienced games will find a number of familiar concepts in this game. But Deadly Dowagers doesn’t need innovative new rules to work well. It’s a game that plays fluidly and leads to entertainingly ironic and macabre comments at the table.

But cynical descriptions of capital crimes doesn’t transform a game into satire. Deadly Dowagers puts its thematic focus on women for a reason. The men are accessories at best. As spouses they are visually and mechanically interchangeable (for the most part). The game’s events are driven by its female protagonists and by extension our decisions. Yet thematically, we’re placed in a society which denies us self-determination simply because of who we are. It’s this tension between theme and action that makes Deadly Dowagers work so well as satire.

Female readers (and any female-presenting person in general) do not need this explained to them. Least of all by me. But some male readers might wonder why a game about murdering men is supposed to be satire. The following attempt to explain this quality, is dedicated to them.

Sexism and misogyny isn’t some fringe phenomenon in 2024. Quite the opposite, in fact. It appears influential political parties have made them a central tenet to their policies and set of values. You might want to brush this off as the misguided beliefs of specific individuals, but when such individuals continuously and repeatedly reveal themselves, you have to look at it as a systemic problem. It’s a constant background noise for people of certain identities, who have to expect being pushed into the background. It’s an environment that will reduce them to specific biological functions for political points. It’s a society in which they have to continuously demand and fight for equal treatment.

Deadly Dowagers, of course, doesn’t explicitly reference these situations. It’s a game, and so it’s fiction. Even if the rulebook features short biographies of individual women of the 19^th century. But the thematic hook of Deadly Dowagers works as a way to vent frustrations, resentments and even anger at today’s society a little. In this game at least you can take small steps to unseat the patriarchy and regain the self-determination and agency you’re owed. That’s why the chuckles and laughs around the table have a little zest to them. Deadly Dowagers is a small game that paints a broad picture of an openly misogynistic society. By doing so it also sees people, who carry anger in them because of the injustices we are still witness to today. It’s the laughter at the characters’ radical response to their sexist society that brings players together at the table. Our actions are a way to highlight the absurdity of such a society and by doing so criticize what it stands for. That’s exactly what satire does.

Whether you can appreciate this satire has a lot to do with how much you understand or even share this sense of frustration and anger. If you do, Deadly Dowagers is a very entertaining game, that uses its theme to remind you’re not “just imagining” society’s sexism and misogyny. Deadly Dowagers offers a robust, albeit routine rules set. In between playing cards and short descriptions of our actions there are short moments of black humour. That might not be to every one’s taste, but then not every one experiences modern society the same way.