Molly House - A game of queer joy and betrayal in 18th century London.

From the studio that brought you the critically-acclaimed Pax Pamir and John Company comes Molly House, the debut design collaboration from Jo Kelly and Cole Wehrle with illustrations by Rachel Ford. 

In Molly House, players take the roles of the gender-defying mollies of early eighteenth century London. Throw grand masquerades and cruise back alleys while evading moralistic constables who seek to destroy your community. Be careful, there may even be informers in your midst! 

Molly House is a deep, interactive historical game bedecked in a fancy party dress. 

Over the course of an hour, players will draft hands of vice cards representing the different gestures, desires, and encounters that were frowned upon by the Society for the Reformation of Manners, a citizen group that sought to stamp out any behavior it deemed deviant in late 17th and early 18th century London. These cards allow players to host festivities with the help of their fellow mollies and create joy. But, those same cards can also lead players to be arrested and to the ultimate ruin of the molly house. 

As players encounter the Society’s enforcers, they will often have to pay bribes or may be coerced into becoming informers for the Society. Informers must try desperately to undermine the community around Mother Clap’s Molly House without being discovered by their fellow mollies. 

What follows is a novel twist on traditional secret role games where a player’s identity is as fluid as the cards in their hand. This 1-5 player game brims with opportunities for collaboration and coercion that bear the design hallmarks of a Wehrlegig game, but in a way that is approachable and easily playable within an hour. 

With additional design work from Cole Wehrle, Molly House has undergone over two years of development with Wehrlegig since Jo Kelly’s 2021 Zenobia Award Finalist design. If you want to read more, check out Cole's first Designer Diary over on Board Game Geek. Come join the festivity as we go cruising together this October.

At Wehrlegig Games, we publish beautiful historical board games with evocative gameplay that rewards repeated play and study. We believe in treating our players and subjects seriously and try to curate memorable experiences that allow players to learn about difficult and often underrepresented topics.

 

If you would like to see what we’ve been making on Day 1, sign up to be notified when Molly House launches on BackerKit. Furthermore, if you like going the extra mile, create a BackerKit account ahead of time to make your support seamless by the time we launch the campaign.

We're excited to be working directly with BackerKit for this next Wehrlegig project launching this October, and we hope you'll come along for the ride.