Vespri 1282

Palermo. February 1282.

The fleet of Charles of Anjou is being assembled in the harbour. Three hundred ships. Fifteen thousand men. A crusade against Constantinople that will reshape the Mediterranean - if it sails.

It will not sail unopposed.

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VESPRI 1282 is a bilingual (Italian/English) Forged in the Dark one-shot for 28–35 players across 4 tables, set in the weeks leading up to the Sicilian Vespers of 30 March 1282 - one of the most dramatic uprisings in medieval history.

Each table plays a different faction, working toward (or against) the same explosive night. The total score across all four tables determines what actually happens when the bells ring.

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THE FOUR FACTIONS

⚔ The Conspirators - Giovanni da Procida's network. Aragonese gold. Byzantine letters. A plan that works on paper. You are already inside it.

🏰 The Barons - The Sicilian nobility caught between two fires. You have land, vassals, and obligations. You have been approached with a proposal you cannot ignore. The time to decide is now.

✝ The Clergy - Bishops, friars, sacristans. The Church has channels that bypass Angevin administration entirely. You serve God, Rome, and your people. Tonight, for the first time, you are not sure these three things point in the same direction.

🔨 The People - Craftsmen, fishwives, a boy, a widow, an old man. You know nothing of any conspiracy. You know only that the taxes have come again, that your cousin was beaten last week, and that someone told you last night that everything might change.

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WHAT'S INSIDE

Two complete PDFs (Italian + English), each containing:

• 10-page historical context - the Angevin burden, the Aragonese conspiracy, the debate between Runciman and Abulafia, Palermo in February 1282
• Adapted FitD rules - 12 thematic actions (Incite, Plot, Invoke...), multi-table mechanics, Telegram bot coordination
• 4 faction chapters with scoring systems (0-4 per faction, 0-16 total)
• 32 historical playbooks (8 per faction) - each with a historically attested name, Gift, Burden, and opening Bond
• NPC roster with stat blocks - Giovanni da Procida, Jean de Saint-Rémy, Alaimo da Lentini, Fra' Matteo di Sant'Agata, and more
• 4 outcome bands - The Night of Silence · The Spark Extinguished · The Vespers · The Insurrection
• Optional Passion Layer - inspired by Pasión de las Pasiones, adding sincere melodrama and cross-faction bonds
• Public History guide - structured for use in upper secondary school, with debrief questions, written task options, and teacher notes
• Appendix: rpg-schema.org - full RDF/Turtle semantic representation of the game
• Appendix: OpenHistoryMap - geo-referenced historical data for Palermo 1282 and five other Sicilian centres, usable as a standalone OHM resource

Plus: 28 A4 character sheets - one per playbook, with action ratings, stress/harm/trauma tracks, Gift & Burden printed, Passion Role box, and cross-faction bond notes.

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THE SCORING SYSTEM

Each faction accumulates a score (0-4) during the session. The total (0-16) determines the outcome of the night of 30 March 1282:

Score	Outcome
0–4	The Night of Silence - the conspiracy is broken. Nothing happens on 30 March. The seeds remain.
5–8	The Spark Extinguished - partial uprising, suppressed within days. The memory feeds the next revolt.
9–12	The Vespers - the historical outcome. Palermo is free by morning. The players built it.
13–16	The Insurrection - not a riot, a planned revolution. Peter of Aragon lands early. The Mediterranean is changed.

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THE PASSION LAYER (OPTIONAL)

An optional dramatic layer inspired by Pasión de las Pasiones by Brandon León-Gambetta. Each character may take a Passion Role - The Protagonist, The Impossible Love, The Betrayer, The Parental Figure, The Rival, The Innocent Bystander, The Martyr, The Redeemed - adding sincere melodrama and cross-faction entanglements to the political thriller.

The Passion Layer does not slow down the political game. It grounds it. When players have emotional investment in personal relationships, political choices gain weight.

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HISTORICAL NOTE

The events of 30 March 1282 are real. Giovanni da Procida, Jean de Saint-Rémy, Alaimo da Lentini - real people. The church of Santo Spirito, the Norman Palace, the port with Charles's fleet - real places. The historiographical debate about whether the uprising was a planned conspiracy or a spontaneous explosion of popular resentment is real, unresolved, and built into the game's design.

Vespri 1282 deliberately presents both readings. The conspiracy exists - but it does not control everything. That tension is what makes the history playable.

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CREDITS & LICENSING

System: Forged in the Dark by John Harper (Evil Hat Productions). Vespri 1282 is an unofficial derivative work, not affiliated with Evil Hat.

Optional Passion Layer: inspired by Pasión de las Pasiones by Brandon León-Gambetta.

Geographic data: OpenHistoryMap

Game ontology: rpg-schema.org

License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). You are free to share and adapt this work for any purpose, including commercial, as long as you give appropriate credit and distribute your contributions under the same license.

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PAY WHAT YOU WANT

This game is free. If you find it useful - for a convention, a classroom, a historical gaming club - pay what feels right. All proceeds support future open-source historical gaming projects.

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"All the people of the city, as though awaiting only that signal, rose against the French with knives and makeshift weapons, crying: Mora, mora li Francisi." — Giovanni Villani, Nuova Cronica, 14th century