21st Century Fake News

Publisher's blurb: Much to the surprise of The Party and The Opposition, a new President with no political experience has been elected. They're a celebrity who campaigned on populist ideas nominally as a member of The Party, although The President's policies aren't always well aligned, or even consistent. But through The President, The Party is in power, and they'd like to stay that way. The setting is an exploration of contemporary populist politics ' it will draw on news stories both from North America and Europe, blending them into one fictional narrative. The characters are The President´s spin team, working hard to make the government acceptable to the people by putting a favourable take on a succession of news stories. Players select characters from a set of templates during a pre-game workshop, adding some detail through suggested questions, and by building positive and negative relationships with other characters. They will also collectively define who The President is, and what their policies are. During the course of the game, the players will work down a stack of cards containing news events which they must come up with a way as spinning as fake news, or into a positive narrative for The President. Different characters will have stronger loyalties to The President, The Party, or The People and different influences over the media. Their powers of invention will be more and more called upon, and their cognitive dissonance ever stronger. An overall storyline will develop and build to a climax. There is no pregaming material to read, or character generation in advance. Characters will be generated during the game from predefined templates in a workshop type process. Costuming is not required, but if you want to dress for the part, inspiration can be drawn from White House dramas such as "House of Cards" and "The West Wing", or British political dramas ranging from the original "House of Cards" to "The Thick of It". The game includes themes of politics, military conflict, immigration and refugees. If these themes are upsetting for you, this might not be the game for you. There are no sexual assault themes in this game and players will be asked not to introduce them, even off-screen. User summary: The game is distributed as a ZIP archive including a Macro-enabled DOCX, an XLSX, and twelve PDF files. The DOCX and XLSX are used to generate alternate print-and-play cards (pre-generated cards are included in PDF format).