Words by David C. Obenour
History is often experienced without consideration for the framing of what is and what is not being told by it. The generations that stretch back are populated by historians with their own opinions and omissions. The means for recording and remembering become less and less accessible for those lacking – well, means.
So the layer of dust and obscurity here should come as little surprise, despite the best and bawdiest behaviors of London’s early 18th century mollies. However, Jo Kelly has procured your invitation in the semi-cooperative game of Molly House. Travel back to Beech Lane as you throw masquerades and gatherings to find yourself and your community amidst an exploration of gender and sexuality. Just be careful to do so without catching the eye of the Society for the Reformation of Manners… or the ire of your fellow mollies!
Off Shelf: From your Designer Diary on Board Game Geek you talked about how you first became aware of the phrase ‘molly house’ as the title for a composition from your then composition tutor, Michael Finnissy that mixed distorted Arias by Handel with rhythmically played vibrators. As a gaming and music publication, can you share some of your background as a musician?
Jo Kelly: Sure! I learned violin as a child, but fell off the music wagon until I was 13 or 14 and started learning bass guitar. I went on to pick up a bit of electric guitar, piano and double bass, the latter of which ended up becoming my main instrument. I got my music degree at the University of Southampton, which is where I studied composition under Finnissy. I’ve been working on and off as a musician ever since, in jazz, punk, metal, indie, modern classical – my tastes are pretty eclectic! I’m currently doing a lot of free improv, making lo-fi synth pop under the moniker Wendy Miasma, and playing and dancing with a couple of morris groups here in Bristol.
OS: Having developed a trained expression through music, what about gaming struck you as another exciting creative endeavor to pursue?
JK: Part of the reason I got into game design was the lockdowns during pandemic times. My main avenue of expression, live gigging, was suddenly cut off and I found myself with a lot of free time. It was something I’d thought about and dabbled with before but the combination of extra time and the announcement of the Zenobia Award gave me the push I needed to pursue it properly.
I think the common thread between the two is the use of rules, which create expression through the systems they create. A musical score is almost an encoded rulebook; a semibreve between the bottom two lines in treble clef translates to ‘Play an F for four beats’. They can both be super specific and convoluted, like a Michael Finnissy score with nested tuplets or a heavy wargame with a load of chrome, or free and minimal, like Riley’s In C or a rules-light TTRPG like Wanderhome, or even just passed down through oral tradition, like tag/it or a folk tune.
Different strands of music and games can also allow for different levels of agency within the players. There are very different expectations between the members of a symphony orchestra and a jazz band, for example. And playing a game of Oath gives you a very different type of agency to a game of War.
The thing that appeals to me about both pursuits is creating a system which offers its players some kind of agency, and expresses something and creates meaning through both the rules it creates and the interaction of the players with that system.
OS: Molly House had a long and involved development process, from the initial design, to the mentorship process of the Zenobia Awards, and finally entering a tentative development and publishing agreement with Wehrelgig Games. What about the game kept you focused and determined throughout?
JK: I was determined to create something that felt true to the story I wanted to tell, and did justice to the history I’d researched. I felt some frustration with a lot of the secondary sources I was reading, and wanted the experience of playing Molly House to evoke the history as I’d imagined it, as a queer, non-binary person in the 2020s reading the primary sources. I felt there was an amazing, radical story to be shared about this queer community from 300 years ago that was languishing in outdated history books, and deserved a playful yet serious expression in a game.
That is to say I was completely obsessed with getting it right, and thought about the game probably every day for five years. It was completely redesigned many times over, both during my initial design process and through development with Wehrlegig, all in the pursuit of creating that experience we all wanted to convey. Looking back, I think I was running on fumes for a while – maybe we all were – but in the moment, I don’t think I could have stopped myself if I tried.
OS: Out of all the research you did for the game, what you are most proud of being able to translate into the game itself?
JK: I think I’m most pleased with the molly cards.
The mechanisms behind the relationship dynamics were perhaps the most fraught element of the design. There were so many systems that were tried and scrapped. Board games are good at making things feel transactional, or like battles, in a way that feels pretty gross when depicting relationships. The final design keeps things simple. If you score a molly, they go in your reputation. If you score a desire matching a molly in your reputation, you get bonus joy. If a matching threat shows up, they’ll leave your reputation, either fleeing somewhere safe or getting caught up in the gossip. It’s very expressive, leaves lots of room for interpretation, and feels dynamic and organic, like real relationships!
They also allowed for the depiction of real-life mollies, brought to life by Rachel Ford’s incredible illustrations. I was really glad to be able to put all this research I’d done into real people somewhere in the game, and having room in the rulebook to give a short biography of each one was a real treat.
OS: Knowing that a game still needs to adhere to some degree of complexity, length, and overall coherence, what from your research would you most like to share that wasn’t able to be incorporated within the game?
JK: I really wanted to put Charles Hitchin somewhere in the game. Hitchin was the Under City Marshall and a notorious ‘thief-taker’. He ran a grift where he caught thieves and enlisted them to steal goods for him, which he would then sell back to their owners under the guise of having retrieved them. He was possibly a member of the Society for the Reformation of Manners – the baddies of Molly House – but also a regular at several molly houses, and would use his position of authority to get what he wanted from the mollies. He was eventually caught and sentenced to pillory and prison, and died shortly afterwards.
However, Hitchin’s story generally fell outside the game’s central premise, and never quite fit in anywhere.
OS: There’s also an element of role-playing that is part of gaming. When thinking about Molly House, how do you think playing through this history can uniquely share the LGBTQ+ experience in a way that reading a book or watching a documentary can’t?
JK: Molly House offers a first-hand – if low stakes – experience of the tension between creating and protecting a community and protecting yourself from threat, potentially at the cost of that community. At various points when playing, you’ll be offered choices that may benefit you in the short term but may hurt another player, or even the community. How far do you let other players trail in terms of joy? When faced with prison or death, would you betray the community to save yourself?
The game is almost in tension with itself. Playing to win generally requires you to aid the very systems that are oppressing you. Cooperative play will keep the community alive, but generally results in lower joy for the players, and requires ambivalence about who wins. Both outcomes feel historically possible: most molly houses were untouched by the efforts of the Society for the Reformation of Manners, but those that fell resulted in convictions and death. The players’ collective agency in these decisions is something the game offers that other media cannot.
OS: Historical gaming has another unique aspect in that it casts players in roles that have been culturally defined as right and wrong, good and evil. Researching as deeply as you did, and then translating that into play, do you pass these sorts of judgements on the characters? How did that play into the experience of play you wanted to capture with Molly House?
JK: I think it’s hard not to see the antagonists of Molly House as evil. The Society for the Reformation of Manners was a pretty heinous organization that also targeted people for crimes relating to sex work, gambling and even sabbath-breaking. Their time was thankfully limited, and they were very unpopular – their actions should not be seen as reflective of the attitudes of the general public at the time.
As for the informers, who are represented as the rogues in the deck and players who decide to take that path, the situation is less black-and-white. Some were caught at a young age, some were facing the death penalty, and some were seemingly just vindictive. A range of motivations are offered to players to tempt them into informing. However, players who do choose to inform are encouraged to take a long, hard look inside themselves after the game. By me, now.
OS: Another massive part of the experience, how involved were you in working with Rachel Ford on the illustrations for the Molly House? Did you have any initial guidance or following feedback? What did you like about what their art added to Molly House?
JK: I was pretty involved! I gave Rachel quite a lot of historical notes and reference points, especially for the card illustrations. However, these were all guidance, and Rachel had a lot of input and their own references to bring in.
Rachel added a feeling of authenticity to the game that only someone who’s studied period art, while being an excellent artist, could bring. I’ve had so many comments from people saying they were surprised there was so much art from the period, only to tell them it was original art made for the game.
It’s really gratifying to be involved in a project that could allow for this depiction of queer Londoners from centuries ago, and I’m so grateful to have worked with Wehrlegig, who took a chance on the game and commissioned it all.
OS: A thing that people in marginalized communities continue to need to fight for, what about celebrating in community do you feel is so powerful? And what about it is so threatening to others?
JK: I think there’s a great power to being surrounded by people who share something fundamental in common with you, especially when you’ve not necessarily grown up with people who share that thing in common, nor maybe even seen those people represented in the world around you. And being able to celebrate something about yourself that you may have spent most of your life feeling was wrong, or made you broken in some way, can be a true blessing.
I think the threat comes from people who still feel that thing makes you broken in some way, and believe that people are being indoctrinated, that these communities are bringing other people in to break them too. They don’t see the internal life of the people who are being healed by finding their community. Maybe they’re scared. Maybe they feel like they’re broken too, and can’t bring themselves to accept who they are. Maybe saying others are broken brings them power, and they don’t want to let that go. The accumulation of wealth often requires them to keep other people scared of people who are no threat to them, as a distraction.
If community, rather than money, were the most valuable commodity, we could all be clothed, fed, housed and rich beyond our wildest dreams.
OS: Getting as esoteric or mainstream as you care to, who’s on your Molly House soundtrack? For playing the game and for “throwing your own festivity”?
JK: For the authentic molly house experience, I’d recommend listening to bawdy ballads from the 17th and 18th century. Listener discretion is advised though, they’re pretty risqué and some are downright bigoted!
On my own personal playlist though, I’d include:
- It’s a Sin by Pet Shop Boys
- (You Make Me Feel) Mighty Real by Sylvester
- Joy Boy by Julius Eastman
- Dress by PJ Harvey
- Trans Day of Revenge by G.L.O.S.S.
- Will Anybody Ever Love Me? by Sufjan Stevens
- Heaven by Mitski
- Our Last Night Together by Arthur Russell
- Normal Song by Perfume Genius
- Bird Guhrl by Anohni & The Johnsons