Olivia Rodrigo Releases Fantasy Tabletop Game ‘The High Winter Elves Of Girlville’

LOS ANGELES—Calling the effort the purest distillation to date of where she is as a dungeon master, pop star Olivia Rodrigo released her long-awaited tabletop roleplaying game The High Winter Elves Of Girlville on Friday.

The multiplatinum artist, who appeared on an episode of The Eldritch Lorecast this week, spoke of how the years she spent creating the high-fantasy TTRPG roleplaying box set—which is available for $79.99 on OliviaRodrigo.com—allowed her to harness her frequent brushes with obsession, emotional turbulence, and jealousy to create a lore-dense, user-centered gameplay experience about the enchanted Frost Kingdom of Girlville and the feminine race of winter elves trying to reclaim it from the grasp of a dozen princes who were once their lovers.

The High Winter Elves Of Girlville really takes everything I’ve learned about fantasy roleplaying, player empowerment, and robust character creation, and boils it down into one amazing pen-and-paper system,” said Rodrigo, who told the podcast’s hosts that she had found the game as satisfying in one-shot sessions as it was in the months-long campaigns she hosted with an adventuring group that included Madison Hu, Billie Eilish, and Tate McRae. “There are real stakes here: You might be in the middle of a raid at the Mines of Glimmōr and suddenly a bad roll makes your closest party member reveal she’s been sleeping with your dwarven ex. Then it’s on you whether you want to stay focused on slaying the gelatinous beast or take out your ire on the so-called ally who totally betrayed your trust.”

“I can’t wait for my fans to get their hands on it and see how they handle the frigid trials and tribulations of the Blizzard of Heartbreak,” the global superstar added.

Originally conceived during long stretches of her 2022 Sour tour, The High Winter Elves Of Girlville reportedly took shape during late-night demo sessions with Rodrigo’s road crew and bodyguards, whose feedback the star called “essential” in developing the project beyond its beginnings as a tabletop miniatures wargame into its present-day incarnation as a tactics-based adventuring experience set in the snow fortresses, frost dungeons, and dance clubs of the Ancient Realm of Glamwendia.

During the intervening years, Rodrigo is said to have attended countless TTRPG enthusiast sessions between sold-out concerts at Glastonbury, Madison Square Garden, and the Kia Forum. According to reports, the multihypenate creator insisted her agent schedule a performance at Lollapalooza Chicago in 2025 so she could drive down to Indianapolis the next day and show off builds at Gen Con’s Playtest Hall. Still, muted reaction from Dragonsfoot.org forum users forced the Grammy-winning singer to repeatedly retool the game, starting from scratch with its skill-check mechanics, streamlining the character generation process, and further developing the core concept of The Glitter, which Rodrigo repeatedly described as “both a currency and a character affliction,” similar to the game’s déjà vu and vampirism mechanics.

“There are different kinds of Glitters—Ice Glitters, Rot Glitters, Charm Glitters—and they each have unique status effects depending on your race,” said the former child television star, paging through a thick, hardcover glyph-inscribed module titled The Glittorium Omnibus. “What’s cool is that there’s a little bit of cosmic horror tied into that, too. Jack Antonoff introduced me to Call Of Cthulhu, and that game’s whole sanity-check mechanic really spoke to me after everything I went through growing up.”

“Let’s just say that anyone who’s familiar with some of my Disney co-stars is going to recognize a lot in the Fester Witches,” said Rodrigo, referring to a cavern-dwelling feminine race that turns putrescence into dark energy.

Although Rodrigo has repeatedly described The High Winter Elves Of Girlville as her life’s “most important creative output,” sources have remarked upon its complicated development process, observing that her falling out with former boyfriend Joshua Bassett is heavily rumored to be the inspiration behind the game’s sewer orc race.

Those close to the “Drivers License” and “Good 4 U” singer have blamed her fanatical attention to the game’s details for her parting of ways with longtime manager Zack Morgenroth, who reportedly enraged Rodrigo when he suggested the hundreds of hours she had poured into developing her own elven script for the Seven Sacred Glyphs of Girlville—adapted from Insular Old Irish and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Tengwar—might have been better spent on her latest album.

Rodrigo has repeatedly stressed that she is overwhelmingly happy with the final product, describing a switch to percentile dice as a “eureka moment” in the game’s development and taking particular pride in the frost-based magic system known as Cryomancy that she crafted to mimic the six branches of a snowflake.

Fans, however, remain divided on the singer-songwriter’s shift in focus, with some saying they like being able to stay engaged with Rodrigo’s work during character creation by choosing astrological signs or specific perks such as feminine intuition, while others have expressed confusion over how exactly factions such as the Guild of Lacy Shadows or the Mercenaries at Makeout Forge connect to the star’s earlier output.

“Well, I guess I’m mostly interested in her new album, but this might be cool, too,” said 15-year-old fan Jamie Mahoozi, one of hundreds who lined up outside the Brooklyn hobbyist shop Twenty Sided early Friday morning to be among the first to purchase the game’s deluxe box set, which contains an Olivia Rodrigo–branded dice bag and a miniature of Valford the Girly Mage designed by the musician herself. “Maybe I’ll put it on the shelf in my bedroom. I don’t really know.”

“I like that all the goblins and wizards and stuff can go to prom together, though,” she added. 

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