Last Train to Bremen vs Rosenstrasse - which one-evening story game fits your table?

The short answer

Pick Last Train to Bremen, Caro Asercion's award-winning game for Possum Creek Games, if you want an evening of bluffing, blaming and dark laughter: four washed-up musicians, a Devil who has come to collect, and a dice game that decides who pays. Pick Rosenstrasse, by Moyra Turkington and Jessica Hammer, if you want an evening that stays with you: four couples in Berlin between 1933 and 1943, no dice at all, and a piece of history too few people know. Both are tragedies you finish in one sitting. One lets you enjoy the fall. The other asks you to bear witness to it.

What these two games have in common

More than the covers suggest. Both are complete in one box and done in one evening. There is no campaign and no homework for the players.

Both hand you characters that are already written. In Last Train to Bremen that is a rooster, a cat, a hound and a mule, borrowed from the Grimm tale of the Town Musicians of Bremen. In Rosenstrasse it is eight Berliners: four married couples, each with one Jewish and one non-Jewish partner. Nobody builds a character and nobody levels up.

Both also tell you the ending before you begin. The Devil is coming for the band. The year 1943 is coming for Berlin. The question is never whether things go wrong, but how, and what your character does on the way there. That is exactly why both games work so well with people who have never played a roleplaying game. There is no system to master, only a prompt in front of you and a question to answer.

That is where the resemblance ends.

Where they really differ

The subject. Last Train to Bremen is a folk tale: fairy-tale animals, a crossroads bargain, a hellbound train. Nothing real is at stake, and that is what gives you permission to be awful to each other. Rosenstrasse is history. The laws that take away the characters' work, homes and safety were real laws, and the protest it is named after really happened: in 1943 the women of Berlin stood in the street and demanded their husbands back. Bremen is rated 14+ for strong language and mature themes. Rosenstrasse deals with antisemitism, persecution and genocide, and it is a game for adults.

The engine. Bremen runs on Liar's Dice. Everyone rolls in secret, you bid on what is under all the cups together, and sooner or later somebody calls somebody a liar. Whoever is wrong loses a die and has to tell a memory from the band's past. Rosenstrasse has no dice and no numbers. The facilitator draws a card from the Rosenstrasse deck for one character: a short scene, a piece of news, a knock at the door, and then a question about what that character thinks, feels or does. You answer, and the decade moves on.

Who runs it. Bremen has no game master, and it needs exactly four players. Not three, not five. Rosenstrasse needs one facilitator and two to four players. The facilitator works from the Director's Guide and does not have to be a historian or an experienced game master, but someone does have to read the book beforehand and be willing to hold the room through difficult scenes.

Each other. Bremen is one of the few story games that sets the players against each other. You call your friends liars, you tell memories that drop the blame in a bandmate's lap, and the winner of the round gets the last word. In Rosenstrasse nobody plays against anybody. Each player holds two characters, one man and one woman, and all the pressure comes from outside: from the housing office, the workplace, the street.

The cost. In Bremen you can count what you have left. Your dice are your life. When the last one goes, the Devil takes your character, and although the book gives you ways back in, you may spend a stretch of the game watching. In Rosenstrasse the cost is hidden. Whenever a male character draws the attention of the Reich he receives a risk token, and nobody knows what those tokens mean until the epilogue. The game never tells you which choice was the safe one.

Before and after. Bremen opens with a plain practice round of Liar's Dice and ends when the dice run out. Count on two to three hours, less with a quick group. Rosenstrasse opens with a workshop in which the group agrees on what everyone is comfortable with, runs two to five hours, and closes with a debrief. Plan the whole evening for it.

What it feels like at the table

An evening with Last Train to Bremen: the cups are down and the Cat bids five fours. The Hound does not believe a word of it and calls her a liar. The cups come up. Five fours, exactly. The Hound slides a die to the middle and reads a prompt from his character card: a memory, a gig, a night that went wrong. He tells it, and he makes sure the Cat is standing in the middle of it. Then the Cat gets the last word, and her version is rather different. Everyone is laughing. Everyone has also noticed that the Mule is down to one die.

An evening with Rosenstrasse: the facilitator turns over a card and reads it to one player. It is a small thing, a colleague who has stopped saying hello. What does your character do the next morning? The player thinks, and answers quietly. A little later a risk token slides across the table to one of the husbands, and nobody says what it is for. Hours on, the men are held in a building on the Rosenstrasse and the women are standing outside in the cold. When the last card is read the room stays silent for a while. Then people start to talk, and they keep talking.

What you actually need to buy

One box each, and nothing else.

The Last Train to Bremen boxed set holds a 62-page rulebook with a Liar's Dice tutorial, thirteen dice and four character cards. Bring four people and something to hide your dice under. Be aware that it is a small box for its price: you are paying for a beautifully made object and for a game you can put in front of almost any four people. And four really means four.

The Rosenstrasse Deluxe Boxed Set holds a 228-page Director's Guide, eight character cards, the 94-card Rosenstrasse deck, twenty risk tokens, four star patches in velvet bags and twenty postcards. Add pencils and a quiet room. It costs about fifteen euros more than Bremen and asks more preparation: give the facilitator the Director's Guide a week in advance. The story itself is fixed, so most groups will play it once. The facilitator, on the other hand, can run it again and again for new tables.

Choose Last Train to Bremen if ... / Choose Rosenstrasse if ...

Choose Last Train to Bremen if your group loves to bluff and does not mind losing. Choose it if you want to bring board gamers into roleplaying, because the dice give everyone something solid to hold before they have to invent anything. Choose it if you have exactly four people and nobody wants to prepare or lead. Choose it for dark comedy, old grudges and a tragedy you can laugh at. And choose it if you want a game that comes off the shelf more than once, with a different group and different lies.

Choose Rosenstrasse if you want a roleplaying game to mean something. Choose it if your group likes character drama and is willing to sit with discomfort and talk about it afterwards. Choose it if one of you is happy to prepare and to guide the others with care. Choose it for people who would never roll dice but would gladly spend an evening on a serious conversation: a book club, a class, a family with adult children. And choose it if you want to carry a piece of history out of the room with you.

Do not choose between them for the same evening, though. Bremen is a game for after dinner on a Friday. Rosenstrasse deserves an evening of its own.

Where to start at Netherbook

Last Train to Bremen (Boxed Set) is the whole game in one box, and our Last Train to Bremen starter guide walks you through a first evening. You will find it in the Comedy & Satire and Mythic & Folklore collections.

The Rosenstrasse Deluxe Boxed Set is just as complete. Read the Rosenstrasse starter guide before you choose your evening, and if you want the real story behind the game, our essay Where the protest meets the table sets it beside the week in 1943 it is named after. It lives in the Historical collection.

Like the shape of a single evening but want a third mood? Alice is Missing is a silent search played over text messages, and Dread swaps the dice for a Jenga tower and the comedy for horror.