GayBlade

Overview

GayBlade is an LGBT-themed action role-playing game in which players explore a dungeon and defeat various "creatures", many of which represent opponents of homosexual rights, such as cops, rednecks, neo-nazis, politicians, and televangelists. The game's final boss is "Lord Nanahcub", a reference to real-life conservative politician Pat Buchanan, whose platform included an opposition to gay rights.

GayBlade was developed by Ryan Best and released for Mac OS in 1992, with Paul Ray handling the Windows version. Best was motivated to develop the game in response to growing homophobic commentary throughout political and religious communities, particularly in response to the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.

Best and GayBlade were featured in the 2020 Netflix documentary 'High Score.' At the time of filming, Best believed that all of the master copies and source code for GayBlade had been lost during a move. While the series was in post-production, the producers were contacted by an LGBT museum in Berlin, Germany called Schwules Museum; the museum had a copy of the game, and shared it with the producers. The game was subsequently made available on Archive.org for online emulation and download.

Character Creation and Classes

Characters in GayBlade have six primary statistics which determine their performance in combat.

• Hits: A character's HP. Max 250.
• Strength: Influences a character's damage in melee combat.
• Constitution: Determines the possibility of a character being raised from the dead.
• Wisdom: Improves cleric spells.
• Intelligence: Improves magic spells.
• Dexterity: A character's melee accuracy.

Each character also has tertiary statistics of Level, Experience, and Age.

These six primary stats determine what classes a character can be. While GayBlade does include some traditional fantasy elements, such as dwarves and magic, the classes are instead mostly themed after different aspects of the LGBT community. The classes are as follows: