From the introduction:
Dystopias come from somewhere, and they go somewhere. They appear because someone is able to convince others that they are reasonable, and they disappear because someone is able to exploit their weaknesses. They rise, and they fall.
Rise and Fall is a story game for 2-5 people in which players create a dystopia, explore its rise to power, experience how everyday life operates during its tenure, and then identify how the regime is brought down, by answering three questions:
••How does a dystopia rise?
••How does it operate?
••How does it fall?
Think about dystopias, and about how they work. Which dystopias do you already know? (You may want to look at the list on p. 94). How did they arise, how did they operate day-to-day, and how did they fall? What characterises a dystopia, and what makes it different from other forms of society? Do dystopias always arise out of evil intentions, or are they sometimes good intentions gone wrong? Could one person’s utopia be another’s dystopia?
