Victor Gijsbers

In Stalin’s personal chambers, a troupe of actors are forced to improvise a Russian fairy tale while the courtiers play their game of life and death. A Ronnies entry using ‘dragon’ and ‘Soviet’ and based on the work of Vladimir Propp.
The game text you are currently reading is not the end product of a design process. It is merely an alpha version, which means that it will have to be tested and developed further before it reaches its final form.

Stalin?s story is my entry for the November 25 Ronnies. This is a roleplaying game design competition held by Ron Edwards, in which the participants have exactly 24 hours to create a game text. Every word in this document has been written within the space of 24 hours ? which explains why it has not been polished and thoroughly tested.

In addition to writing the game within 24 hours, the participant also has to use two terms from a list of four terms as central concepts in his game. For the November 25 Ronnies, the terms were: dragon, gun, mud and Soviet. Stalin?s Story has been based on dragon and Soviet. The other two terms may not be central to the experience of play at all; guns and mud, therefore, should play no role in the game and the designer is supposed to actively exclude them.

Have fun reading the game. And, who knows, have fun playing it!