By The Intrepid in Cassandra and Joseph — 04 Jun 2025

Cassandra and Joseph: A Game of History’s Truths

“The past is set—but what it means is up to you.”

What Is Cassandra and Joseph?

Cassandra and Joseph is a collaborative storytelling game where you don’t change the past—you fight for its meaning. You and 3–6 others become survivors, witnesses, and a flawed Archivist, piecing together a fractured record of a pivotal event. The official story is incomplete. The memories conflict. The archive is glitching.

Together, you’ll sift through documents, recall memories, and argue over what deserves to be remembered. This is not about playing heroes. It’s about reckoning with bias, silence, and distortion—and deciding what history preserves.

Whether exploring corporate collapse, cultural myth, or revolutionary moment, Cassandra and Joseph invites you to ask:

What really happened?
Whose story gets told?
And what truth survives?

Why Play?

Most RPGs imagine the future. This one looks backward. Instead of adventurers forging fate, you're archivists of a broken world—debating what happened and why it matters.

Here’s what makes it unique:

Uncover the Past: Analyze diaries, memos, broadcasts—documents warped by censorship, spin, or decay.
Relive Human Stories: Step into the memories of rebels, refugees, cynics, or true believers. Conflict isn’t just likely—it’s vital.
Shape the Legacy: As a glitching AI or biased chronicler, decide what enters the Final Record. Even truth can be lost—or rewritten.
Any Story, Any World: From the fall of a water grid to a rock concert's cultural impact, use built-in scenarios or create your own.
Collaborate—and Clash: You’ll build history together, but disagreement is part of the journey.

This game echoes the real conversations we have—at family tables, in classrooms, on message boards—about what happened, what was covered up, and who gets to decide.

How It Works

Cassandra and Joseph plays in three story-rich phases:

Phase 1: Recovered Records

Each player presents a document—realistic or surreal—and chooses to Preserve (!), Redact (X), or Rewrite (~) it. Each edit distorts the archive, tracked by Glitch.

Take on characters who lived through the event. Share personal memories, challenge others, and use Memory Tokens to add weight or mitigate distortion.

Phase 3: The Final Record

The Archivist compiles the archive. Glitch returns. Every decision in the final summary adds distortion—or clarity. What truth endures? What fades?

Simple tools guide play:

Truth Decisions (! / X / ~)
Memory Tokens
Glitch Track (1–8+)

Play a one-shot in under 2 hours, or connect sessions into a campaign about contested memory.

Who Is This For?

If you love The Quiet Year, Fiasco, or Dialect—games with emotional stakes and narrative focus—Cassandra and Joseph is for you.

It suits:

Story-minded players
Debate-lovers
Historians, educators, artists
Fans of speculative fiction and political intrigue

No combat. No crunch. Just compelling conversation, emotional resonance, and the tension of truth under pressure.

Safety First

Because the past can hurt, we prioritize safety and consent. Before you begin:

X-Card: Say “X” to pause or shift content.
Lines & Veils: Establish off-limit and off-screen topics early.
Open Door: Anyone can step away anytime, no explanation needed.

Talk openly about tone and themes. Trust and care deepen the story.

What You’ll Need

3–6 players (one may be the Archivist)
1.5–2 hours
Pens, paper, and 6–10 tokens (coins, beads, etc.)
A willingness to question the official story

Welcome to the Archive

Cassandra and Joseph is a game about what survives. It’s about sifting through wreckage—of memory, of systems, of stories—and deciding what the next generation remembers.

We will be presenting a series of scenarios for this game as articles on this blog:

In The Shutdown of Grid 19, you’ll decide who’s to blame for a collapsed water network. In Depeche Mode 101, you’ll argue over whether a concert was spiritual salvation or media spectacle. In Occupy Wall Street, you’ll debate what changed—and what didn’t. In The Siege of Terra, you’ll challenge millennia of dogma in a mythic sci-fi empire.

You won’t always agree. That’s the point.

Gather your group. Choose your world. Shape the archive.

Let history glitch.

The game rules can be downloaded from hotelkilo.itch.io