Fellow villagers, there’s only one week left before the end of this small, grand adventure together. The truth is we have no more big goals to announce: the village is complete, and with Greetings from Anna it has also gone beyond our initial designs.

This doesn’t mean that getting the best possible outcome from this campaign won’t make a difference. Let us get sentimental for a bit and tell you a little about our story.

NessunDove was born to publish our personal projects, and particularly our chamber larp anthology Crescendo Giocoso. That’s where we discovered we like working alongside other people. So, as the pandemic limited a lot of other activities, we started working on Italian game adaptations— and especially with indie authors, for whom we’ve often been the first outsider voice to discuss a game. So it felt natural to become the publisher for the designers we had an affinity with, even in their international editions, like with The Magus and Our Queen Crumbles.

But Barbabianca is a different sort of challenge. Just like you’re doing with your support, we decided to put our faith in Cristian, a debuting designer, and Barbabianca, a project with polished design that still needed work to come together in term of texts and art. All February long you’ve been proving that investing this kind of time and energy is worth it. We could never thank you enough for that.

So, if you happen to strike up conversation with a friend that’s on the fence, you can tell them a new pledge won’t unlock new playbooks or fancy cover finishes— but it will make it easier for us to work on more projects like this one. We’re lucky to be surrounded by many creative people, in Italy and all around the globe, who just need a little push to make their talent shine.

A little push for Barbabianca is a call to arms for us at NessunDove, saying something along the lines of: “we want more radical, surprising games like this one!”. The only thing we can promise is that the call won’t fall on deaf ears.

So let’s roll up our sleeves, ring the village bells in celebration, and remind all roleplaying wanderers out there that Barbabianca is waiting to tell a terrible, wonderful story together.