As always, let’s start this review with the due thanks to the publishing house Gamers Hunter Editions for providing us with the digital version of The Midnight Pages – La Gazzetta Piemontese.

On their store you can find it in Italian and English at the price of €5 for the PDF or €15 plus shipping for the physical version.

The product we’re about to show you is presented as a tabloid featuring news from the city of Turin during the 1920s. The Midnight Pages – La Voce Partenopea (from the same editorial line) is available here.

But what does an old-fashioned newspaper have to do with roleplaying games? Let’s take a look.

An Investigative Urban Noir

The Midnight Pages presents itself as a roleplaying game where narrative is essential. Each player is a co-author of the story they create, always keeping in mind that the city is the true protagonist and the beating heart of the story. The early 20th-century setting and noir undertones make our plots dense with mystery. Players aren’t pitted against each other, though their clues may lead them to doubt each other. Dice? You won’t need them. Just remember that a good idea and a convincingly explained intuition are worth more than a thousand critical rolls.

The Narrator and the Characters

Let’s start by saying that you don’t need a gamemaster to play The Midnight Pages – La Gazzetta Piemontese. Narrative is shared, and there’s no specific direction the story must go. Narrative logic will be the cornerstone of your case. For simplicity’s sake, however, there will be an initial narrator who will read the tabloid article and present the case. The newspaper, in fact, presents various news. You can only decide which ones are actually related to your case by advancing the story with the other players at the table.

You can choose a pre-generated character or create one using a provided template. If you create one, it will be crucial to choose their social role, their link to the case, their objective, or whether they’re based on a narrative archetype (such as, for example, the detective who lost everything).

The Midnight Pages – La Gazzetta Piemontese Case Reviews

Just like with characters, we have two options for cases. We can simply use a predefined case, one of the articles available in the tabloid (for example, The Fog on Via Po), or create our own, drawing inspiration from everything available in the newspaper, cross-referencing various news.

Key points of our case will be the scene, the context, the suspects and the secrets (intended as truths that no one is yet ready to reveal). In any case, we will always have a map of the city available so we can understand the distances between streets and neighborhoods.

Each player, once per session, can introduce a clue or a twist. This will give the people at the table the opportunity to greatly diversify the narrative. For this very reason, there is no fixed duration. But remember not to drag it out too much: a good noir also knows how to close with a good dose of suspense.

What Happened in Those Years?

Let’s take a closer look at our newspaper and the events unfolding in Turin on May 23, 1923.

Drawing inspiration from true events, we can read about the inauguration of the Lingotto factory, theories about various magic triangles, the creation of several Fiat neighborhoods, events related to the fascist squadrons, or simply admire advertisements for restaurants and typical products from Piedmont. Everything is accompanied by realistic photographs and posters from the period. The 20-page tabloid will hide many intrigues for you and your companions, all set in Savoy territory.

Conclusions of the Review of The Midnight Pages – La Gazzetta Piemontese

If you’re part of a group eager to try a roleplaying game with a distinctly narrative approach, you’ve come to the right place. The more the people around the table engage in dialogue and are knowledgeable in presenting the facts, the more in-depth and satisfying the story will be. For this reason, The Midnight Pages – La Gazzetta Piemontese is, in my opinion, not an article for beginners.

The graphics are very simple and very similar to those of a real newspaper, making the experience believable.

Giordano Sardella and Stefania Rossini then delved into researching events related to the era, which they decided to explore further, combining fictional stories with historical anecdotes. A similar project would also be very interesting for a high school, to help students better understand what it meant to live in that era. As a resident of Turin, I can only recommend it.

If you enjoyed this review of The Midnight Pages – La Gazzetta Piemontese, stay tuned for more roleplaying game reviews!