Paperwarped: A Game of Bureaucracy in the Grim Dark Future

++DATABASE: ACCESSED++

KNOW THIS: O Administrator.

BETWEEN: the years when the machines drank Earth and the shining cities.

AND: the years of the rise of the Children of Andromeda and the Free Captains.

THERE WAS: an age of great violence and tyranny.

ACROSS: the Orion Arm, the Covenant of Man ruled ten thousand worlds, each given over in its own unique way to the pursuit of war against the alien and the heretic.

FIRST: amongst these worlds was Centauri, where the Throne of Man towered above a city so immense as to defy categorisation.

UPON: the distant charnel worlds of the Sector Agrippa, the endless war against a dark heresy consumed a million lives a day.

AMONGST: the soldiers of the Covenant were the courageous cavaliers of Sirius, the ruthless riflemen of Rigel, and the murderous marines of Epsilon.

BUT: this is not this story of those crusading warriors.

IT IS: the story of their supply chain

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Paperwarped is a game about bureaucrats trying to hold a city-planet together in the face of unending crises. They will face political rivalries, conspiracies, heresies, betrayals, and legal challenges. We play to find out if they can overcome greed, ambition, discord, and ill fortune to defeat disaster and ensure that the Covenant remains strong for another day.

The game uses a hacked version of the Resistance engine developed by Rowan, Rook and Decard for their games SPIRE and HEART.

Despite taking place in the bureaucratic backrooms of a galactic empire, a game of Paperwarped should be exiciting. Wargames do not simulate the boredom between bombing raids, and your game of Paperwarped should take a similar approach. Your game should not be about shuffling forms, but about the sort of moments that would take place in an exciting political or legal thriller. Moments of betrayal, crisis, and triumph, when hard decisions are made, and some pay a terrible price.

Inspirational Material

Waiting in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles is boring. Dealing with crises and politics in a murderous bureaucracy isn’t. Here’s some of the media that should inspire your game of Paperwarped:

TV Shows: Chernobyl, The Thick of It, Veep, The West Wing, Yes Minister, The Hollowmen, Mad Men, JAG, Utopia (Australian series)

Movies: Brazil, Contagion, In The Loop, The Informant, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, A Few Good Men, Pentagon Wars, A Perfect Day

Books: The Planner by Tom Campbell, The Laundry Files by Charles Stross, Going Postal and Making Money by Terry Pratchett, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantell, The Power Broker by Robert Caro

Games: CRISIS RPG by Xavier Doolittle, Rogue Trader and Dark Heresy by Fantasy Flight Games, SimCity 2000 by Maxis, Papers, Please by Lucas Pope, Suzerain by Torpor Games, Grim Fandango by LucasArts