Migrant Stories: Playtest (2016)

(publisher blurb)

This is a playtest ruleset for the roleplaying game Migrant Stories, based on the Apocalypse World engine.

Migrant Stories is a creative tool for telling a realistic, collaborative story from the perspective of people of color and minorities. There are no dragons or wizards in Migrant Stories, but there’s plenty of mystery, dirty wonder and intrigue. You’ll tell the story of newly or not-so-newly arrived immigrants in a curious, Western, Industrial civilization, probably around the turn of the twentieth century, and explore the obstacles they face in pursuit of glory, profit or redemption.

Those obstacles will most likely come in the form of isolation, bigotry and hatemongering. In telling their stories, how your characters confront those issues will make all the difference. Your characters may work together to confront the forces of bigotry and ostracization, but oftentimes they will find themselves pitted against one another as they work to achieve their own goals. No story would be complete without those complications.

Migrant Stories strives to tell the emotional truth, if not the historical truth, of the immigrant experience. The characters are tough, noble, complicated, hardheaded and fanciful in the face of ignorance and hostility. It’s their truth, but it is everyone else’s truth, too.