Last Train to Bremen

Last Train to Bremen

A storytelling game of four doomed musicians and their poor decisions.
Edit
$48,583 🎉
of $15,000
840
backers

Get a Backer Train Started Start a Backer Train

Share the project to start a Backer Train Back the project to start a Backer Train

Ends on at .
Share

Share

Twitter

Bluesky

Facebook

Copy Link

Edit

You know the way these stories go . . .

Thirteen years ago, four struggling musicians made a deal with the Devil. What were they chasing? Fame, riches, adoration. Your classic Devil fare.

What happened next? Well, you know the way these stories go . . . The damn fools got it in their heads to try to outrun their end of the bargain.

See, the Devil is coming to collect his due, and he doesn’t take kindly to those who can’t cough up. This brings this story to the four of us here, now, huddled in the back of a freight car on a train, hurtling to the one place the Devil will never catch us. One final, desperate shot at immortality.

And if we’re lucky? By the end of the night, one of us will still be left alive to tell the tale.

Product images should be considered in-progress representations and not yet final. There may be changes between the images shown throughout the campaign and the final product.




Last Train to Bremen is a tragedy for a doomed quartet: a storytelling game of four arrogant musicians who made a deal with the Devil that backfired horribly. Now they’re stuck in a boxcar, fleeing from their cursed contract, and there’s nothing left to do but point fingers and lay the blame for how they wound up in this sorry mess.

A Note on Content: Last Train to Bremen is a dramatic tragedy about a dysfunctional band of lowlifes. These characters are fucking each other and fucking each other over, often at the same time. The fiction and rules of this game gesture at the following subjects: ▪ Smoking and drinking ▪ Sex, drugs, rock and roll ▪ Band hookups and bad breakups ▪ Hedonism and debauchery ▪ Deceit and betrayal ▪ Vulgar language As players, we decide together how we want to explore these topics in a way that everyone will enjoy. Before you begin, discuss with your fellow players any boundaries you may have around these themes. If anyone has particular safety or support tools they want to use, now is a good time to bring those to your table.



Four players embody these four messy bandmates as they compete in a game of Liar’s Dice at the highest possible stakes. Each lost wager represents one of their memories – a highlight from their rise and inevitable fall. Their final memory reveals a secret: their part in how they doomed the band, and a special rule that twists the game in their favor.

Liar’s Dice is a class of bluffing games where players roll pools of dice and place wagers about the number of dice that share a particular face value. It is an old game with many names and many variations — but for the purposes of playing Last Train to Bremen, the instructions are as follows:Each player starts with a hand of 3 dice. Everyone rolls, concealing their dice from the other players. The player who leads the round wagers that of all the dice on the table, a given quantity share a particular face value, e.g. “three twos”. Going around the table, the next player must raise by making a higher call: ▪ Either the same quantity of dice, with a higher face value, ▪ Or a higher quantity of dice, with any single face value. Raises You can increase by as much as you want. If a player says “three fours”, you can raise to three fives, or three sixes, or four of any value, or five of a kind, or even more. But you can’t go backward: If someone calls “three ones”, you can’t back down to 2 dice. If a player calls “four sixes”, the next call must be at least 5 dice. Challenges At any point, any player may challenge the current call. When someone issues a challenge, all players reveal their hands and put forward any dice that match the current wager. The challenger counts up the dice in play: ▪ If the defender meets or exceeds the call that they made, they win the round; the challenger loses a die. ▪ If the defender comes up short of their wager, the challenger wins the round; the defender loses a die. When you lose a die, discard it from your hand, decreasing the total number of dice in play. Wild Values The final die in the center of the table is the Devil’s die. At the start of a round, the leading player rolls the Devil’s die out in the open; the resulting value is wild, and any dice that share this value — including the Devil’s die itself — are included in the final count. However, if any player calls the value on the Devil’s die while wagering, that value stops being wild for the rest of the round: In this case, do NOT put forward any wild dice during the final count. After a round ends, the winner of the round makes the opening call during the next round. Continue until all players, save one, have been eliminated.
Edit

This marks the first time the award-winning Last Train To Bremen is available in print. The physical book is a 4” by 6” (roughly A6) size (in the style of historic pocket books and train companions), featuring exquisite art by Conner Fawcett in the style of turn-of-the-century lithographs such as those of Max Ernst. It will be approximately 62 pages and contain everything needed for play, including a tutorial for Liar’s Dice, four character sheets, and the acts of the game itself. 







Edit
Click the image above to go to the pledge levels page.
Edit

Click here to check out the add-ons available during the campaign.


Selecting Add-Ons

For The Last Train to Bremen crowdfund we've made a selection of games from Possum Creek available during the active campaign. Visit the add-ons page to view the great games available, including Wanderhome in a premium hardcover format with lay-flat binding. 

Not quite ready to add more to your pledge? After the campaign ends we will open the pledge manager. The pledge manager allows us to collect the necessary information to fulfill your pledge items, where you may also select additional items to add to your pledge. The final shipping cost of your pledge will be calculated based on the total weight of your shipment. 
Edit


Caro Asercion is an interdisciplinary artist working in analog games and theatre. Known best for their tabletop games i'm sorry did you say street magic and Exquisite Biome, Caro makes compact games that build small worlds through deep collaboration. In addition to their own games, Caro has been a contributing designer and writer for projects with Possum Creek Games, Exalted Funeral, Three Eyed Rat, Sly Robot Games, Teacabbage Studios, and many others. They first learned to play Liar's Dice at the impressionable age of thirteen years old.
Caro Asercion - Game Design


Weaver Walker is an anti-disciplinary artist, outsider philosopher, and guerilla storyteller. He works in disputed territories, refuses traditional understandings of medium and method, and goes where his work takes him. He lives in Washington D.C, on land where the Nacotchtank once prayed, where he preaches an end to legal slavery, the destruction of nuclear weapons, and the absolute right to self determination. You might know him from Together We Write Private Cathedrals.
Weaver Walker - Editing


Ruby Lavin is the artistic director and co-founder of Possum Creek Games, art director at Steve Jackson Games, and the award-winning visual mind behind everything Possum Creek Games does, including Wanderhome, Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast, Wickedness, and more — along with layout design for other successful Kickstarter-funded projects like Strong Female Protagonist and Field Guide to Memory. She likes texture, critical theory, fantasy, and weird plants.
Ruby Lavin - Art Director


Conner is a illustrator/artist currently living in the north-west reaches of America.  He once slept in a small cave, at the end of a narrow glacier valley along side several small bats. The bats didn’t seem to mind. You can keep up to date on their work on Twitter and Instagram.
Conner Fawcett - Cover Artist & Illustrator
Edit
 Recipient of The Awards 2024  2024 IGDN Indie Dicebreakers Award Most Innovative (winner), Best Rules, Game of the Year (finalist)  2025 CRIT Awards Best GMless Game (finalist)  "Have you ever held tightly to a dream, or a promise, despite your self-preservation screaming at you? Have you ever listened a bit too long to the reptilian growl in the back of your head that wants to suddenly jerk the wheel of your car? Have you cursed with one hand and loved with another as both embrace your closest friends? Then, you’ve already played a sliver of Last Train to Bremen."  — Chase Carter, Rascal News (In Last Train to Bremen, Hell is something we inflict on each other)  “The great joy and frustration of Bremen is that your story is never your own. The bandmates are poised to snipe and twist your words, reveal a hidden barb from the past that sours every victory and bitters every sweet memory.”  — Rascal News (Rascal Catches the Last Train To Hell (via Bremen) )  “Last Train To Bremen released last year, but for me it's still one of the most exciting innovations to hit tabletop gaming of recent. Owing to Asercion's tactful way of evoking players' cultural preconceptions, in terms of band culture and animals in folklore, it manages to cleverly encourage emergent narratives to form around an already established, and well-loved game of dice rolling.”  — Katie Wickens, Game Radar
Podcasts and Actual Play:

Twice Rolled Tales took "The Last Train to Brooklyn" and filmed actual play of The Last Train to Bremen on the NYC Subway. Check it out below:



Mule (Last Train to Bremen) and Pregenerated Characters with Aaron Lim (Dice Exploder

Theatre & Games (w/ Caro Asercion) (Yes Indie’d)

'A Symphony Of Sinners' - Last Train To Bremen One Shot (The Lore Mistress)

…and more!
Edit


Estimated Delivery: Winter 2025 - Spring 2026

All pricing shown are strictly estimates. The final shipping price will be presented during the final step of the pledge manager, accounting for the total weight of your shipment.

Shipping for your pledge will be collected in the pledge manager (BackerKit) after the campaign closes. Based on the final shipping destination you will be charged according to the total weight of your order. 

A few weeks after the project closes and all pledges are processed, we will open the pledge manager. Once invited, you will be guided through the survey and add-on store where you will need to provide your physical address and finalize payment for shipping, any add-ons you might've selected, and applicable taxes.

United States Shipping & Taxes: Pledges shipped within the United States will have state taxes applied where we are legally required to collect. We will likely use USPS, FedEx, or UPS as our carriers for delivery.

International Shipping & Taxes: We will use a delivery-duties-paid shipping service to collect VAT/GST for the following countries: CA, AU, NZ, UK, DE, IT, FR, and ES. We hope that your packages clear customs with no additional requirements from you. 

International backers in countries not listed above will have their shipments sent with delivery duties unpaid. Ultimately, backers will be responsible for addressing any additional fees beyond what is collected in the pledge manager.

In the event that your package is not collected or your required fees are not paid, the package may be marked "to abandon/destroy" (instead of "return to sender," which results in prohibitively expensive return-shipping costs for Steve Jackson Games). Unfortunately, we will not be able to offer refunds or replacements for pledges in these cases. 

If you wish, you may choose to use a fulfillment service. This allows you to pledge for the project and then provide us with a qualifying address for the delivery of your rewards. Forwarding from the fulfillment service, as well as any local fees, is your responsibility when using a fulfillment company. We are not responsible for pledges sent to forwarding services after tracking has confirmed delivery.
Edit

Visit our websites: 

Looking to chat with other fans of games from Possum Creek? Visit the official Discord channel for Possum Creek.

Fans of all things Steve Jackson Games-related can join the community on our official Discord! Chat with others who share similar interests, and take deeper dives into channels dedicated to Munchkin, Illuminati, Car Wars, Ogre, GURPS, and other titles. 

Have a question or need some help? If you think others might want to know the answer, feel free to leave us a message in the comments. If it’s a question about payments or other private-type matters, visit our support site.

Finally, you can view our crowdfunding refund policy here.
Edit


Possum Creek is an imprint of Steve Jackson Games. Possum Creek is best known for their award-winning indie hit roleplaying games, Wanderhome and Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast.

Steve Jackson Games, based in Austin, Texas, has been publishing games, game books, and magazines since 1980. Our top hit is Munchkin, with over 12 million games and supplements in print worldwide. Other hits include GURPS (the Generic Universal RolePlaying System), The Fantasy Trip, Zombie Dice, Car Wars, Ogre, and Illuminati.
If you believe that this project is not in compliance with BackerKit’s Community Guidelines or Terms of Service, you can file a report by sending a message via this link: Report this project