Barbabianca - Rumour and silence in a town that is no more

Created by NessunDove

A GMless game for 3-4 players set in the deep Italian countryside at the turn of the 20th century. Think Pavese, Calvino, Buzzati. Or imagine the secrets buried beneath the stones of any village where decades go by and nothing ever seems to change.

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Cristian, Barbabianca & Soledad
5 days ago – Mon, Mar 02, 2026 at 10:46:01 AM

Here we are! It took a few days to catch our breath, as always happens after a town festival. Thank you again, all of you. This time we'll be brief, and leave the parting words to Cristian.



But there are two questions we want to answer.

When will Barbabianca get to you?
In May. The Italian edition will launch for Bologna PLAY on May 22. We'll get shipping sorted right before or right after the con, so we'll hopefully be done sending out copies by June at the latest. The preorder store is open for those who missed the campaign and would like to receive it at the same time as backers.

When's the next festival?
Here is a proper rumour, a preview: on May 7 we'll be joining Pocketopia to launch a new game by Matthijs Holter, the Norwegian author of Archipelago and Society of Dreamers. We've always loved his games and recently found out we share the same passion for South American magical realism, à la Hundred Years of Solitude. Come unearth The Roots of Soledad, starting with the extraordinary cover art by Columbian street artist Soma Difusa.

The last week begins!
15 days ago – Fri, Feb 20, 2026 at 09:23:14 AM

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.

Welcome home, Anna!
17 days ago – Wed, Feb 18, 2026 at 12:33:03 PM

Thanks to the support of an ever-growing village, each of you will get a physical or digital copy of the one-page game Greetings from Anna, an extra prelude to add to Barbabianca’s worldbuilding or an express game to play by itself.

But who is Anna, really? If old Barbabianca represents the superstition and fear of the past, Anna is youth, pushing boundaries ever further and always seeking something new. Neither of them is just a symbol, though: they’re people made of flesh and bones, our neighbors, our family, made real by the details you’ll invent about them.

We’re very happy to have reached this achievement, and to celebrate we want to share a campaign by another friend: Elliot Davis. One of his games will soon get an Italian edition curated by NessunDove, but just like us he’s also active as a publisher and for this Zinetopia he’s bringing the world two small, weird gems of game design.



Rise, Wizards! & All's Fair

Rise, Wizards! is a dice-stacking worldbuilding game of wizard hubris. People will fall in love with its tactile gameplay and the unique maps you make through play. If folks like chaotic wizardry and worldbuilding, this is the game for them.

All's Fair is an 18+ duet game about wanting to f*ck each other so bad you save the world about it. What makes this game special is its engagement with sexuality directly and how oppressive regimes want to take away those most special and joyous moments from our lives. I also think its unique twist on the card game War as a mechanic will inspire further unique designs.

Busking in the village square
22 days ago – Fri, Feb 13, 2026 at 08:56:22 AM

The tale of Barbabianca is made up of rumours, words getting around without quite knowing who spoke them, and seeing the word-of-mouth that keeps bringing a few new faces in every day is heartwarming. Thanks for this, too: every time you share a link, message someone about the game, or just mention it in passing helps brings this little homemade game a little further.

As things have been less frantic, we've had time to put together a little playlist with all of the songs that inspired Barbabianca's village notables. You'll find the lyrics quoted in the Role sheets, translated so you get the gist. But there's something about hearing a song in its original language that you can't quite replace, so give it a spin: Luigi Tenco, Francesco De Gregori and Fabrizio De André are some of the best songwriters in Italian music, and the atmospheres they conjure in their music are a prime source of the memories we associate with this game.



And to keep with the musical theme, we want to shout out another Zinetopia project by our dear friend Côme Martin. 

 

THREE PUNK GAMES is a collection of 3 small TTRPGs, each dealing with the theme of punk in its one way. Each is presented and being played differently:
  • Hex & the Punks is a small, 40-page booklet including a GMless game of angry witches fighting against a personification of capitalism, patriarchy, or both, and is played with coins;

  • We were punks is a 24-page, risograph-printed booklet, offering a GMless, system-less epistolary game which is played solo first and then as a group, and in which characters reconstruct the history of a punk band and the zine that talked about them;

  • SEX/VIOLENCE/POOP 3: REBELLION ON PLANET TURD will be printed on 9 sheets of toilet paper. In that game, 3-8 players take on the role of slaves of Turd Planet, rebelling against their Master (played by the GM). The game uses a system based on rock/paper/scissors.

We've translated some of Côme's work into Italian, and his minimalist styles is a source of endless fascination. Give these a listen, it'll be worth it.

Rumour and hearsay
27 days ago – Sun, Feb 08, 2026 at 11:49:13 AM

It's always a pleasure to see new friends join us in the village. Even if it's just for a leisurely stroll, after the euphoria of launch day, which basically felt like a county faire. While Anna's postcards wait to be mailed, we though we'd share a couple of links to help you get to know Barbabianca better, if you're curious and not afraid of a couple of spoilers.

Blogs & articles

For English speakers, here's a great article by Zeruhur. He got to know Barbabianca when he was a little younger, before Cristian and the rest of NessunDove started working together, and that play experience results in a very deep understanding of the direction we've taken the game in. We could not have hoped for a better breakdown of the game's intents.

Videos & interviews

For Italian speakers (or friends unafraid of auto-generated subtitles), Cristian and our editor Oscar had a long chat with Marco Andreetto on GdR Unplugged, where they got to discuss Barbabianca in depth. If you want to get a peek behind the curtain or just see our faces, go watch it.


For English speakers, the fine folks of EUphoria have been going through ZineMonth releases to highlight European projects. The first stop in their tour was Barbabianca and we couldn't be happier for it.


We'll have more stuff to share soon. 

P.S. In the meantime, we're still curious about that poll. Do we all agree the Gravedigger should be the most popular fellow in the village?