On Stage!: Metodo di improvvisazione teatrale nel mondo di William Shakespeare

"On Stage! - Metodo di improvvisazione teatrale nel mondo di William Shakespeare"

Summary courtesy of Andrea Angiolillo, used with permission.

On Stage! is a role-playing game based on the comedies and tragedies of William Shakespeare. Every player is one of the characters of the play and gets an archetype usually set on a different Shakespearian character: if Hamlet is based on Btutus, he wants to bring the Republic t Denmark while Ophelia, set on Lady Macbeth, will try to become queen pushing smebody to the throne and marrying him. The mix is changed at every game session, that's complete in itself. At the end of the "play", goals of each specific character are checked and he can be successful or not. But as in every RPG, winning is not the most important thing: the aim of the game is to put together an enjoyable "show" for the virtual public.

But the public is nt always virtual. Several rulesets have been developed for "live" games: often with a public, sometime with an active role: "On Stage! schizfrenico", "On Stage! teatro interattivo", "On Stage! Vox Populi". Some of these rules are included in the "Inventare destini" book.

On Stage! is one of the most innovative role-playing games and his success has been immediate. Even when it was still unpublished, game enthusiasts from all over Italy who had the opportunity to try the game at shows and conventions developed a huge amount of expansions with the most different settings: from Star Wars to Victorian horror, from soap opera to Disney comics. Some of them became official supplements, some have been published on magazines, and many more are available on the web.

On Stage! has been also used in schools and libraries, in educational projects.