A cyber 1984 game set in a weird future Italy

Daily Dread (Il Male Quotidiano) is a pre-apocalyptic cyber-dystopian tabletop role-playing. You will play as a Broken Wing, a citizen of a dystopian future, trying to survive the Reforms that the Authority of Freedom puts in motion to reach an utopic autarchy.

Italy, about a hundred years into the future.

The Italian people live under the Authority of Freedom, a dictatorship run by the Free Milites.
The regime has closed all state borders for decades and nothing can come across them, thanks to an extreme control of the mass media and the web.

Citizens are forced every day to defend themselves or bow to the actions of the Regime, which creeps into their lives every day with small acts of aggression.

Psychology, or rather a deconstructed version of Rorschach's theories, is the basis of social control. The few rebel groups act regardless of the consequences, making agreements with the criminal and mafia cartels, which have not yet been purged.

Meanwhile, the Authority has implemented a Reform program to achieve self-sufficiency, turning several citizens into Executors.

In all of this, you will play one of the Broken Wings: ordinary citizens who do not bow to the regime, but find the actions of the Rebels morally questionable. You will have to find a way to survive: will you sacrifice everything and hide in the plagues of the Regime, or will you suffer trying to stop it?

The Broken Wings are defined through three behaviors (Empathic, Imperious and Eversive) and a series of drives, phrases defined by the players and divided between Needs, Obsessions and Purposes.

Each trait in the game is defined by a series of white, red or black blinkers (circles). The colors of the blinker (inspired by the Rorschach’s Machine invented by the Authority) have a narrative meaning, which can be used during the game to survive the Reforms and other Perils.

When a citizen wants to resist, they will describe their action and put in an opaque bag a number of colored tokens equal to his own drive. The Operator, a sort of "master" of the game, will insert tokens equal to the drive of the Peril or the enemy.

The citizen will choose a color, then the Operator will extract three tokens. Depending on the extraction and the behavior used, citizens and Operators will describe the outcome of the action.

Daily Dread will be a full color, A5 paperback, with layout that resembles dossiers and documentation from the narrative world. In each page, you will also find notes and corrections from members of the Rebellion and from Operators, who try each day to support the citizens in any way they can. The zine will include scenarios called Reforms and Appendix with campaign rules and a System Reference Document for making your own game.

Daily Dread will be on Kickstarter at the of August, 2022! 

You can download A Daily Made Game, the Daily Dread SRD, at this page to have a glimpse on the ruleset - the SRD covers 90% of the game rules, although some of theme could have different names.

THE AUTHORS

Daniele Fusetto (he/him), blogger at Storie di Ruolo, founder of GDR al Buio, an Italian organized game format, is co-author of the Italian Tabletop RPG Le Notti di Nibiru (with Luca De Marini) published in 2018 for Acchiappasogni and distributed by Raven Distribution. He is also the Italian translator of Pigsmoke (SpaceOrange42), Dialect (NarrAttiva) and Blades in the Dark (Grumpy Bear Stuff). He is a professor of Narrative Design at AIV Milan and Multimedia Writing at AIV Rome. When he is not writing games he collaborates with Italian and foreign companies as a strategist, storyteller and marketer, as well as a narrative worldbuilder.

Zeus Longhi (he/him), is an avid international role player, graduated in historical sciences. He participated in the alpha and beta testing team for  Le Notti di Nibiru in 2017-18. Since 2018, he had started creating the world of Human Sacrifice, in which Daily Dread is set. He has participated in several game jams, including the 2019 Game Chef Pummarola Edition.

THE TEAM

Roberto Villa (he/him) - Editing & Accessibility

Archaeologist by training, Roberto has been creating projects to spread the love for history since 2016 (Curiositas). In 2018 he began a training course in narratology and, in 2020, he joined Storymancer for which he writes and reviews texts and games. He is currently involved in the design of three novels and a tabletop role-playing game.

Marta Palvarini (she/her) - Sensitivity Reader

Co-founder of publishing house Asterisco Edizioni, author of Dura-Lande and curator of Fuori dal Dungeon. Activist and independent researcher, Marta focuses on analyzing the intersection of digital cultures, pop culture and gender issues.

Michele Bosio (he/him) - Game Design Assistant, Kickstarter Analyst & Content Creator

After studies in the field of mechanics, in 2020 he enrolled in AIV Milan where he started a three-year course in Game Design. In the 2nd year, he began the first collaborations with clients for the creation of games or to contribute to various projects. While completing the path in AIV, he continues to work on personal and school projects.

Simone Miraldi (he/him) - Proofreader With a degree in Philosophy, in 2022 he joins the Storymancer collective, where he exploits his incomparable anxiety by finding in advance problems that no one had yet noticed. He has a novel in the pipeline and some RPG projects in the drawer.

THE PUBLISHER

Grumpy Bear Stuff was born from the will of the founders Alexandra and Flavio to put together their past experiences in the world of RPG to create something new.

They strongly believe in bringing different gaming experiences to Italy, because one way of playing is not enough for them. They want to give players new and old opportunities to get excited over and over again.

Their goal is not only to bring new titles from abroad, but to help nourish the fertile ground of the Italian community of designers, to ensure that the channel between Italy and abroad is increasingly bidirectional and open to new voices.