Judson Lester

Repertoire is a confrontational, story-oriented game focused on a company of travelling performers as they carry the torch of Culture to the blighted remnants of the Final War. Pockets of survivors form the audiences for the productions put on by the company, as they go from place to place, each actor working up the steel to confront their domineering producer and win their hearts desire.

So in a few decades or so, there’s a horrible war. Not with nukes or anything, but maybe what happened was worse. What exactly that was we leave up to the imagination of any particular group, but it was awful and devastating, but didn’t absolutely wreck the environment the way that a thermonuclear war would have. Picture vast, amoral political and commercial entities duking it out with strange chemical and biological weapons. Mutant animals organized in phalanxes set upon screaming innocent civilian cities. That kind of thing.

The war was a like a hell on Earth. Soldiers have it best, because at least they’re a part of it. Of course they take the most casualties, and they see the most of the horror. So maybe it balances out. Suffering and terror is widespread and inescapable.

But the war has been over for years now. Maybe the vast entities got bored, or distracted, or all killed off. Who can say? Global communication is a thing of the past, along with heavy industry. But in little pockets, groups of people survive, each made a little strange by the things they lived through, and by the necessary isolationism of their little, obsessive groups. Picture librarians holing up in a library for a half dozen years.

As time goes by, and things settle down, a small group of the dramatically inclined band together to wander the countryside, risking everything for the theatre.

Narrative Roleplaying in a surreal soviet state that never existed. Worker’s paradise is inspired by the history and culture of Stalinist Russia, but set in a lush country of vineyards and bizarre biological engineering. Enjoy persecuting the hapless citizens of a tiny nation with extrajudicial proceedings whose outcome depends more on the work put into it by the police than on the actual guilt of the victim. But beware, since your fellows can always lodge accusations against you, which leaves you before the Regional Triumvirate.