With careful stitches and meticulous work, a ragdoll carefully sews back a torn limb on a panda who is crying out his troubles (girl troubles… isn’t it always a girl?) while he sips from a daintily painted teacup filled with brandy.

In another room in the shoebox house she calls home, the ragdoll’s other patients wait patiently for her craft. A Mekka bulldozer, metal with chipping yellow paint, is missing his front left wheel. He holds a vinyl doll’s head, waiting for it to be glued into the empty wheel well. It won’t roll quite the same, he knows, but he can live with the handicap until he scavenges a better part.

The ragdoll finishes with her panda patient and wishes him a cheery farewell, tucking his payment (2 buttons and a tiny watch gear) into her skirt pocket. She quickly schools her face to hide her sly, greedy smile when she steps across the threshold to the waiting bulldozer. His repair is going to need glue, and glue is a costly resource, my friend…

Threadbare RPG is a role-playing game in which you play a jury-rigged toy in a broken world. Caught in a world where Entropy is a constant danger, you’ll patch yourself up, invent new devices, and maybe make new friends along the way.

Threadbare is a Powered-by-the-Apocalypse role-playing game by Stephanie Bryant. You’ll need two 6-sided dice and a group of 2-5 friends to play.