Barbabianca

It was in the early nineteen-hundreds, up in the village. A lot has happened since then, to me and to everyone else, but those years still feel like a whole lifetime. It was always like so: whoever came up the only winding road cutting through the valley could feel time slow down.

You know, village life is like a deck of well-worn cards. The suits are relationship, repetition, ritual, recognition. Everyone has their place, and even if you leave for a little bit, you’ll find yours waiting for you to come back. Like a loyal dog. Or a raven on your grave.

Barbabianca was the oldest man in the village. Tall, hirsute, knobbly, with too-long hair and a too-thick beard. He had no gift for speech, but he did know how to strike awe. My whole childhood was filled with the looming threat that he would come get me if I refused to behave.

Barbabianca avoided people and lived in the margins, beyond our circle of stone houses. And yet his bones were the bones of the village. Maybe his furrowed brow wasn’t enough to crown him King in our little deck, but it certainly made him the Fool. Everyone remembers him.

Barbabianca is a collaborative storytelling game for 3-4 players designed by Cristian Sisto. It is a game about treacherous memories and poisoned words. About how hard times and easy answers can destroy a community.

Taking inspiration from Italian anti-fascist authors like Italo Calvino and Cesare Pavese, and Neorealist film directors Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica, its story is set in the deep Italian countryside at the turn of the Twentieth century. In a town of stone houses, a likely place, but a fictional one. A quiet place where secrets slumber. A place where years turn into decades, decades turn into centuries, and nothing ever seems to change. At least on the surface.

This edition of Barbabianca includes:

• The complete rules, made to be read and applied over a single session.
• One Map of the village with blank spaces for you to fill in, illustrated by Maria Guarneri.
• One tragedy in four Acts of mundane misery, illustrated by Cecilia Ferri.
• Twelve Roles to make your own, illustrated by Maria Guarneri.
• Barbabianca, the one and only.

Inspired by Witch: The Road to Lindisfarne and taking a cue from Our Queen Crumbles, Barbabianca is a roleplaying game that requires no preparation. Its mechanics are bespoke and self-contained, weaving mapmaking, storytelling and roleplay into a harrowing tale about community and shame.

The game begins by choosing Roles from a selection of notable villagers such as the mayor, innkeeper or local brigand. As you build your characters, you also construct the village around them by drawing out key buildings onto a map, answering questions about the general feelings of the villagefolk, and tracing an intricate web of relationships. 

After this, you follow the Story act by act, taking turns to read out one of the Events that will shake the village to its bones. Every Event changes the very mechanics of the game, allowing players to mix up the narration with Tales of village life, Memories of old Barbabianca, Rumours that will be shared or twisted by the community, and shameful Secrets threatening to upset the characters' life.

As the tangle of gossip and memories grows more intricate, the Story comes to a dramatic climax when a sudden earthquake brings to light a long-buried scandal. Regardless of his secretly-determined guilt or innocence, Barbabianca could become the sacrificial lamb for all the town's sins. Players have a choice to spare him from mob justice—by letting their own secrets be revealed, their own lives be ruined. Refusing to confess means burning your secrets to ash along with the truth about Barbabianca in an ending ritual mirroring the burning of his beard by the village mob.

Cristian first wrote Barbabianca in 2021 for an Italian-run Self-production jam. Around the same time, Indie Groundbreaker Award-winning game design lab NessunDove had been experimenting with a new format for zero-prep games: the Italian edition of Our Queen Crumbles came as a boxed set containing laminated sheets that can be used and reused across multiple playthroughs.

When we met, it was only natural to combine the two. And with the support of 175 international backers, we've produced a complete boxed edition of Barbabianca in English and Italian, with 28 reusable laminated sheets containing the rules of the game and every handout you need to play. Write on the sheets with any water-based marker to confess your darkest secrets and seal the fate of Barbabianca, then erase the remains of your game and try to forget about it. If you can.

The physical edition is available on our website, NessunDove. Purchase of the book includes a free digital copy!