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DoctrineJust and Unjust Wars by Michael Walzer, Waging Insurgent Warfare by Seth G. Jones, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism by Robert Pape, Resistance to Tyranny by Joseph P. Martino, Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest by Zeynep Tufekci, Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War by Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami, The Ethics of Insurgency: A Critical Guide to Just Guerilla Warfare by Michael L. Gross, The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier by Bruce Sterling, “Why Terrorism Does Not Work” by Max Abrahms, and the “Magic Diamond” framework by Gordon McCormick. We thank these authors for their brilliant insights and apologize in advance for simplifying (and potentially misrepresenting) their arguments in our attempt to make a game about radio-powered cyborg revolutionaries fighting a fascist military occupation.

All people have the right to exist. All people have the right to resist those who threaten

their existence through any means necessary.

All onlookers have the obligation to come to the aid of the oppressed, or they’ll fight alone when they, themselves,

become the oppressed. And their time will come.

For tolerance of tyranny and genocide against any people, no matter how distant they are, no matter how

different they are, only validates tyranny and genocide as acceptable strategies.

Radical empathy is not a sentiment. It’s a strategy, a sword held to the throat of tyrants. Stand with your

brothers and sisters or die.Samp

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Table of ContentsWelcome to America ................................................................. 8It Could Never Happen here ................................................. 18State of the Union .................................................................... 32The American Insurgency ...................................................... 46The Sigmata.............................................................................. 56It’s 1986. Welcome to the Future ........................................... 66Operating System .................................................................... 78Combat ..................................................................................... 90Evasion ................................................................................... 108Intrigue ................................................................................... 122Cybernetic Vanguard ............................................................ 138The Resistance ....................................................................... 176The Regime ............................................................................ 198Repeat the Signal: Radio ...................................................... 212Repeat the Signal: Telephony .............................................. 220Repeat the Signal: Computers ............................................. 230Repeat the Signal: Propaganda ........................................... 242Ethical Insurgency ................................................................. 254This Signal Kills Fascists ...................................................... 268Campaigns, Actions, and Missions .................................... 288

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“Fear not the fascist; he is the consummate coward.Beneath the mask and riot armor, that state-made veneer of power, is a wailing, heaving toddler, told by men far more cynical than he that his tantrum is an expression of mythology and a defense of his birthright.He is a weak-willed simpleton, lashing out at enemies that don’t exist, lamenting the loss of a cultural identity that never was, and proclaiming he is besieged despite the fact that he is the only aggressor. He is too dull to compete, too infirm to adapt, and too spoiled to share. He hides his cowardice with chauvinism and racism, twists his entitlement into heroic national narratives, and wages war on reality. He emasculates artists, intimidates teachers, degrades women, and jails journalists: anyone and everyone who would dare hold a mirror to him. He is afraid of the world because he is not strong enough, mentally or emotionally, to survive it. That is why he never met a tyrant he didn’t like and will gleefully serve one: a strong father who will let him take whatever he wants from anyone he wants because in his toddler’s solipsism, everything is rightfully his.The state is his nook, his night-light, his favorite blanket, his favorite stuffed bear; an implement to stave off the horrors of the darkness, that long, long night where he would actually have to compete, actually have to participate in dialogue, actually have to compromise, actually be judged by his merits, actually have to find his own path in a complicated world. He lacks the mettle to do any of these things. The only strength he demonstrates is his white-knuckled grip on father’s pantleg.If the fascist could be reasoned with, he wouldn’t exist in the first place. But, by word or endeavor, you will let him know that you see through his mask and you see his fear. His shivering, quaking, bowel-voiding fear. He shall be judged.This Signal Kills Fascists. Repeat the Signal.”— Father Francis, Regional Commander of the Faith, Eastern Revolutionary Front, Miami. 1986.

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“There are two types of propaganda.The first type is the kind we use on ourselves: the slogans, manifestos, chants, memes, and demonstrations we use to repeat the Signal. We do this to provide succor, support, and solidarity to our comrades, to let them know that no matter where they are, they are not alone in their fight. This propaganda is spoken in our languages, leverages our shared assumptions, and is built upon the political axioms and values we hold to be true.The second type of propaganda is the kind we use to counter-recruit the enemy or enlist new comrades into our movement. It is much harder to do this, for we must do the difficult work of unearthing the intersections of our common interest buried under mountains of political rhetoric and social programming. We must gain a foothold by seeing others as rational, self-interested actors before we can expect them to mainline Marx, Mao, or Malcom X.Both types of propaganda have their value, but when we confuse the two, we do so at our peril.When the fascist said the Christians were persecuted, we said the Christians were the persecutors. They went to him. When the fascist said the miners and machinists were not forgotten, we said they worked in dying industries that were destroying the Earth. They went to him. When the fascist said the police officers were under attack, we said they were the shock troopers of a white nationalist prison-state. They went to him. When the fascist told the corporations that the communists were sharpening their guillotines, we said “You’re goddamned right we are!”Stop laughing. All of you, shut up. We were right, we were just, and here we are, outnumbered, outgunned, and sitting in the ruins of a community center still talking revolutionary strategy.By simply acknowledging fears, the fascist made the people receptive to his violent nationalism. To grow our ranks, to outnumber the enemy, we must employ a radical empathy. Radical empathy is not about ceding our revolutionary pursuit, betraying our deepest held values, downplaying the struggles of our comrades, or

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breaking bread with the utterly unsalvageable. Nor is it about appeasing Whitey or sanitizing our struggle so it doesn’t hurt his feelings. It is about seeing the world as those outside our movement do, internalizing the narratives that drive them, understanding the touchstones and shibboleths that give them identity, and using all of this to hone our message so it can strike true.We don’t employ radical empathy to convert the fascist. We employ it to outnumber him. For how long have we traded praxis for purity? To those among you wilting under the dissonance of standing with dominionists, capitalists, and militias, even temporarily, I’m telling you right now, you can either go back to shrieking at the mirror until the echo is so loud you cannot hear anymore, or you can get back in the motherfucking fight. While we bemoan them, the fascist recruits them. Let me say that again. While we bemoan them, the fascist recruits them. The enemy will not wait for us to have the Resistance we want. Partisans fighting and dying in the streets are counting on us to wage psychological warfare and flip enough fence sitters to send the fascist back to Hell. We will not let our comrades down.This Signal kills fascists. Repeat the Signal.”— Chaka Hobbs, Regional Commander of The Party, Eastern Revolutionary Flank, Miami. 1986.

If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come here because your liberation

is bound up with mine, let us work together.

— Aboriginal Activist Group, Queensland, 1970s

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WELComE To AmERICA

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overviewSIGMATA is a tabletop role-playing game about cybernetic revolutionary heroes resisting a fascist regime in a dystopian, alternate history of the United States of America during the 1980s. The heroes of this game’s setting, a revolutionary vanguard played by you, are called Receivers: normal people afflicted with the Sigmata, a phenomenon where one’s mind, body, and adherence to the laws of physics are dramatically altered when in range of FM radio towers emitting a special number sequence called the Signal. The Sigmata grants Receivers super-heroic powers, such as the ability to throw automobiles, teleport over phone lines, or scream out laser beams. Our heroes can only exploit these powers as long as the Resistance is able to keep repeating the Signal.SIGMATA is a table-top roleplaying game about repeating a signal at all costs and sustaining a resistance effort during a period of intense government crackdown on all lines of communication. This game of technological cat and mouse transpires within the telecommunications technology of the 1980s: bulletin board systems (BBS), 300 baud modems, floppy disks, magnetic tape backup, mainframe computers, HAM radio, land lines, payphones, and brick-sized cellular telephones. The Resistance must maintain a resilient and fault-tolerant network through pirate radio and BBS systems, and a small army of couriers who install transmitters, deliver floppy disks, and run communication lines while being hunted by the state. The battle isn’t just isolated to bit and baud, however. It is also raging in the streets.SIGMATA is a table-top roleplaying game about fighting an ethical and effective insurgency against a fascist government called the Regime. A homeland-oriented occupation force has replaced the quaint police departments of yore. All minorities, immigrants, foreigners, and unaccompanied women are assumed to part of the Resistance unless they are cleared. Veterans who demonstrate doubts about the Regime’s methods are shamed, threatened, or simply disappeared. Brutal raids, indefinite detentions, and book-burnings are cheered on by a population of loyalists convinced they will benefit from the Regime’s actions. Foreign interests feed weapons, supplies, and hope to the most unhinged members of the Resistance not to help in their liberation, but to further destabilize the United

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States. Unless strategic thinkers prevail, the Resistance will degenerate into a band of terrorists that only validate the Regime in the public imagination.SIGMATA is a table-top roleplaying game about the world we live in. It is a synthesis of modern political realities: the Arab Spring’s technical resilience against governments that shut down the Internet, the rise of nationalism and nativism in liberal democratic countries struggling with globalization, the new prominence of psychological operations influencing political outcomes, the militarization of law enforcement, the criminalization of protest, and a craven media giving demagogues and authoritarians the platform they need to grasp true power. It is a game about revolutionary superheroes, but also a sandbox to safely explore and experiment with the difficult subject matter of today and tomorrow.

What is a Tabletop Role-Playing Game?What is a role-playing game (RPG)? There are a million definitions out there, but here’s the one we’ve settled on: it’s like playing make-believe, but for all ages, where disagreements about what happens are settled by rules and the random chance of a dice roll. People playing a role-playing game are contributing to a shared imaginary narrative, mediated by the structures and mechanics of play laid out in the rules.Like all games, RPGs have players. Players take on the role of a character they create: an imaginary protagonist in the game. Each player makes decisions, rolls dice, and contributes to the shared fiction by narrating their character’s actions, their outcomes, and by speaking in their voice. The characters controlled by players in this game are referred to as Receivers. Each player dictates and narrates the thoughts, emotions, actions, and well-being of an individual Receiver.RPGs are played over several sessions, each building on the shared fiction established by the players and their character’s actions in previous sessions. A typical session lasts 2-4 hours. The broad narrative arc of the game, played over multiple sessions is called the campaign. Think of a session as an episode of a television series, whereas a campaign is a season of a television series. A scene is a contained series of events that might happen during a session, such as a skirmish with Regime forces, the

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infiltration of a detention facility holding political prisoners, or the interrogation of a Regime propagandist. Story space is used to describe the session’s or campaign’s imaginary universe; a collaborative creative work influenced by all the players and informed by the game’s fiction, concepts, illustrations, and rules.One of the players does not control a Receiver, but is instead the session’s or campaign’s game master, or GM for short. The GM is the person who prepares adventures in advance of a session, facilitates a session, and controls all the characters and events in the story space that aren’t controlled by the other players. During play, the GM introduces scenes of drama, danger, and decision-making, and then the players react to that prompt. While players will be telling most of the story, the GM reserves “editor-in-chief” and “referee” rights in order to maintain a level of consistency, believability, and productive play.

What do Players do in this Game?Players assume the role of Receivers, the spearhead of the Resistance: an American Insurgency that has risen up against the fascist Regime. The Receivers aren’t just the Resistance’s secret weapon; they are the political agents, negotiators, and troubleshooters that keep it from fracturing into factionalism and extremism.Due to their superhuman gifts, Receivers are tasked with executing the Resistance’s most challenging and dangerous missions; the types of missions the Resistance cannot afford to fail. The Receivers’ missions include, but are not limited to, infiltrating Regime military fortifications to sabotage equipment, smuggling supplies to satellite Resistance communities to keep them in the fight, breaking Regime sieges on Resistance safehouses, liberating political prisoners from internment camps, recruiting strategically valuable allies deep in loyalist territory, bolstering community defense efforts against ultranationalist neo-Nazi hooligans, ferreting out loyalist spies who have infiltrated the Resistance, fighting for control of commercial and pirate radio towers, and defending mass demonstrations from the brutality of a militarized police force chartered to crush citizen assembly.When the Receivers are not executing missions to weaken the Regime’s war machine or to strengthen the Resistance’s strategic position, they are engaged in operations to ensure

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that the factions of the Resistance do not turn on each other, defect to the Regime, execute strategic blunders, or get provoked into committing atrocities. The Receivers may have to broker agreements between feuding factions of the Resistance, perform missions to curry a faction’s waning loyalty, sabotage Regime negotiations with a faction, and neutralize members of the Resistance who would engage in extremist behavior, such as terrorism, torture, assassination, banditry, and coercive dominion over the people.While Resistance Command is counting on the Receivers to be the fist and the conscience of the American Insurgency, the Receivers are only as strong as the movement. When the Resistance is fractured, feared by the people, loathed by the international community, and on the defensive, the Signal is weak and the Receivers are only slightly more than human. When the Resistance is unified, loved by the people, supported by the international community, and on the march, the Signal is strong and the Receivers can leverage super-heroic powers. If the American Insurgency fails, the Receivers face a grim fate. They will be captured by the Regime, secured in faraday straightjackets, and carted off to a military laboratory where they will undergo a baptism of electroshock therapy and psycho-political reprogramming, to rise again as the brainwashed supersoldiers of a fascist government.

Strategy in an Age of outrageSIGMATA was influenced by the politics of anarchism, internationalism, anti-racism, and anti-fascism. The game’s primary political agenda is to teach and explore some fundamental concepts of armed resistance against tyrants, foreign occupiers, and genocidal nationalists, and to help evolve a Western audience’s often simplistic understanding of insurgency, be it contemporary or historical. If we understand the kinetic and political strategies used by both the insurgent and the occupier, then we are better equipped to see the human beings behind these struggles, to hear their pleas for support and solidarity, and to reject the rhetoric that dehumanizes them.SIGMATA’s revolutionary army, the Resistance, is a somewhat heroic, somewhat grotesque representation of a popular front turned armed insurrection. It is composed of human beings who have the courage to challenge their oppressors. It is also composed of numerous factions

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who agree on little when it comes to tactics, the treatment of non-combatants, or what type of government should replace the Regime. The movement is a complicated mess. This is a reality of all resistance movements, which must contend with internal struggles as difficult as the one they wage against their oppressors. This messiness is not license to dismiss a movement outright, though the oppressor is counting on you to do so.

The way we talk about resistance to tyranny often serves those in power. Dogged deference to nonviolent resistance, even when it’s no longer effective, and admonishment of violent resistance, even as a last resort, only serves the oppressor. Reducing a complex and evolving resistance movement into the simplistic categories of either “democratic opposition” or “crazed terrorists,” when the reality is far more complicated, only serves the oppressor. Bemoaning all international military intervention as imperialism, even if it is to save a people being eradicated by imperialists, and proclaiming non-intervention as “neutrality,” even as those being butchered cry out for help, only serves the oppressor. Seeing refugees as a problem population, instead of seeing the tyrants who create them as the problem, only serves the oppressor. Blaming “a few bad eggs” for acts of police brutality, while exonerating and canonizing the violent institutions that create, protect, and reward those bad eggs, only serves the oppressor. A goal of this work is to change how we talk about resistance movements and rid ourselves of these semantic shackles.

SIGMATA’s gamification of a popular counterinsurgency framework (Gordon McCormick’s “Magic Diamond”) is not meant to praise this strategic framework or its application in imperialist adventure, but instead, to demonstrate how militaries and militarized law enforcement perceive and structure the work of subduing and destroying people’s movements that are antagonistic to those who control the means of war. Contemporary and historical examples show that the victor of an insurgency, whether it was the insurgent or the occupier, often won the struggle because they were better able to gain the solidarity and support of the local population and the international community alike. “Winning hearts and minds,” is a phrase made nearly meaningless by decades of American military misadventure, but history has validated, and continues to validate, the strategic sentiment behind it.

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We will undoubtedly be accused of “bad politics” from folks left, right, and center. And that’s OK. Any energy spent articulating just how twisted and/or misinformed we are has value, so long as it sparks conversations about how all of us can be better at seeing, supporting, lifting up, and standing along with the human beings behind people’s struggles happening locally, nationally, and internationally. Their struggle is ours and our struggle is theirs.

This Signal Kills Fascists. Repeat the Signal.

Content, Safety, and SolidaritySIGMATA was written for a mature audience that has a firm grasp on the difference between fiction and reality. While this book periodically takes the form of a primer on armed insurrection and an anti-fascist manifesto, at the end of the day, it is not an authoritative source on either of these topics because it is a game about radio-powered cyborg revolutionaries fighting a fascist regime in an alternate-reality 1980s. Our goal is to humanize the people behind revolutionary struggles, not tell you how to launch your own revolutionary struggle.SIGMATA features some troubling concepts, images, and language. Some of the uncomfortable topics explored in this text include but are not limited to misogyny, homophobia, white supremacy, religious bigotry, systemic police brutality, paramilitary death squads, genocide, armed resistance against an authoritarian government, and the strategic calculus behind acts of political violence including terrorism, torture, and tyrannicide. Some or all of this content may be particularly difficult for players because of their own experiences. Prior to beginning play, it is imperative that everyone at the table talk about their level of comfort bringing these topics into the story space and agree on some content limits. If you are not already familiar with safety tools for tabletop gaming, now would be an excellent time to look up the X-Card by John Stavropoulos and utilize it at your table.Why would a book exploring and espousing radical politics defer to any mechanism that obfuscates cruel realities or constrains how we talk about things? Because for some, “it’s our struggle, but it’s my life.” Allies frequently have the privilege of wading into and out of a struggle as they see fit, based on their current level of resources, availability,

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and passion. For those at the center of a struggle, however, whether it’s indigenous peoples fighting for their land and water, African Americans fighting mass incarceration and police violence, transgender people fighting to have their existence acknowledged, or Syrians fighting a genocidal despot, there is no reprieve. They do not have the privilege of being able to walk away from the struggle because they are exhausted. Being mindful of the emotional duress that some carry and some do not is quite literally the very least that is expected from an ally. If someone asks to escape certain content while playing an escapist fantasy game, respect it.Lastly, SIGMATA explores the concept of empathy, compromise, and coalition-building between political nemeses. SIGMATA’s Resistance is composed of fictional political factions that are coded to have revolutionary and humanitarian impulses at their best and counter-revolutionary and authoritarian impulses at their worst. We suspect that the typical reader will identify with some of the factions and detest the others. This was by design. No matter what your political persuasion or background is, you’re bound to be uncomfortable with some aspects of this game’s exploration of politics, ideology, and political violence. We certainly were.

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Important Design ConceptsSIGMATA was built with the following design concepts in mind:

No Player Left BehindVirtually every scene in SIGMATA, whether it is a frantic firefight, a stealthy infiltration, or a scene of social intrigue, is structured in a way where every player has a turn to be in the spotlight, regardless of how they built their Receiver. Even shy players will be telling exciting stories and creating narrative springboards that other players will use to move the fiction forward.

Team, Team, TeamIn SIGMATA, the story’s heroes live and die as a team. To succeed in their goals, some Receivers will need to take bold action, storming fortified positions, risking their cover stories to recruit allies, and sneaking deep behind enemy lines. They won’t make it far, however, unless their comrades are supporting them with suppression fire, convincing alibis, and timely distractions. This game elevates assistance and teamwork to the same dramatic heights as bold individual actions.

Everyone at the Table owns the StoryThe final product of a game session is a compelling and memorable story, told in a collaborative fashion by people willing to surrender to the fiction they are creating. Every single heroic component of a Receiver, be it an amazing super power, a cybernetic module, a coveted weapon, or a memory of a fallen comrade, is a prompt to tell a story, build the game’s fictional world, and defeat the game’s fascist antagonists.

minimal Prep TimeThe greatest threat to a fulfilling RPG campaign is real life. SIGMATA was designed so that a GM can simply create a prompt for an adventure, and then sit back while the players populate the story space that their Receivers inhabit. Once a GM has absorbed the contents of this book, she will be equipped to create exciting adventure prompts in an hour or less.

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IT CouLD NEvER HAPPEN HERE

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