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Milk Bar: sci-fi OSR roleplaying in post-Soviet Poland

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Create your Communard, dive into abandoned Soviet research facilities, and upgrade your Milk Bar. For the people!

What is Milk Bar?

Milk Bar is a minimalist OSR (Old School Renaissance) RPG by Eryk Sawicki for 1-6 players. The core rules are based on Cairn, easy to learn and quick to play. Milk Bar comes as a single DL-sized book with exposed binding and yellow threading. It’s crowdfunding on Kickstarter from the 1st of February 2024. Milk Bar is being published by Peregrine Coast Press

Milk Bar Features:

  • Quick, simplified rules in the old school tradition
  • A toolkit for generating a retro-futuristic, alternate-timeline post-Soviet Communist Poland
  • Funnel Rules which have your group of upstart Communards find and take back a Milk Bar from the grasp of Capital. Start at level 0 and Cut Your Milk Teeth. 
  • Unique progression system tied to basebuilding. Want to stitch up those wounds? You better build an Infirmary and find a Doctor
  • Abandoned Soviet Superstructures containing reality-bending Future Tech deep within
  • A Bestiary melding Polish and Slavic mythology with classic science fiction
  • Solo Rules. Become the Biggest Communism Builder of the year ’24!
  • Gorgeous production values: high-quality, uncoated paper and an exposed, yellow thread binding. Full of graphic design work from Eryk Sawicki (me!) and art from SADGHOBLIN
  • Pierogi

What’s a Milk Bar?

In Communist Poland, Milk Bars were government-subsidised restaurants offering cheap food and drink to workers whose workplaces didn’t have a canteen. 

It’s a straightforward setup: you pick up a tray, you head to a pass-through window behind which is a large kitchen staffed by locals, pick up whatever food is available, and head to sit down. No menus, no faffing: you get what you’re given. 

Milk Bars still exist and some of them are still government-subsidised.

Milk Bars are key to this game for a few reasons:

  • They’re available in every city in-universe. 
  • They’re a dry social space.
  • They’re a neat stand-in for character motivation: selfless betterment of the community.

You can find Eryk over at @peregrine_coast and on his website. SADGHOBLIN can be found over on Instagram. Peregrine Coast Press has a shop.

Assets

You can find promo art here