LE CATÉ

Paris. 1955.

The window on the third floor has been unlatched since Tuesday. You checked from the scaffolding, in the rain, with the patience of someone who was taught patience by a woman who never once got caught.

The Aubusson tapestry inside was taken from a family in 1943. The family's daughter is still alive. She does not know her mother documented it. You do. It is in the carnet — in your mother's handwriting, with the small horizontal mark in the margin that means: unfinished.

Tonight you finish it.

You have until four in the morning. You have a set of picks, a dark coat, a cat who may or may not be waiting on the front step when you come out. You have until the nerve holds.

Begin.

WHAT IS THIS GAME

Le Caté is a single-session solo journaling RPG. You play a young woman in postwar Paris — Sylvie Marchand in the fashion magazines, Colette in the underground network, and something else entirely on the rooftops after midnight. One night. One Object. One delivery before dawn.

You roll one die, write in your journal, and inhabit a character the city has decided to love — and one very good detective has spent two years trying to catch.

The game takes one to two hours. You need a journal, a pencil, and a single six-sided die.

THE WORLD

Ten years after the Liberation, Paris has put itself back together with remarkable efficiency. The cafés are full. The couture houses are thriving. The men who sold their neighbours' paintings in 1942 are lunching at the same brasseries they always did, and the auction houses at the Hôtel Drouot are processing an extraordinary volume of material whose provenance is documented with varying degrees of creativity.

Le Caté names what the paper trails won't.

She is not stealing. She is returning. The distinction is not semantic — it is the entire philosophical architecture of the game.

THE MECHANICS

Two resources track her night:

NERVE — internal. Her capacity for precise decision under pressure. Starts at 4. Drops when things go wrong. Hits zero and she stops, breathes, and rolls the Stillness Table. Her mother is in the low-Nerve moments — not as comfort, as company.

ÉCLAT — external. Her reputation across two worlds simultaneously: Sylvie Marchand's access to every salon in the 7th, and the legend of Mlle. ? that France-Soir maintains and l'Inspecteur reads over coffee. High Éclat means the city is on her side. It usually is.

Six thresholds stand between her and the Object: Entry → Lobby → Stairwell → Apartment Door → The Room → The Object. At each one, roll 1d6. The city tells you what happens next.

Six tables. One die. And Sebastian.

SEBASTIAN

He is a black Persian cat. He belonged to her mother. He was in the Resistance. He does not discuss it.

Once per session, unrequested, he resolves a Complication. The player writes how and why he was there. She does not ask how old he is. She is afraid he might answer.

WHO IS THIS FOR

For players who want a game that moves like a good film — confident, precise, with a moral weight that doesn't slow the momentum. For people who love the particular quality of attention that comes with inhabiting a character who is very good at something and knows it. For anyone who has ever watched a woman walk into a room that was supposed to keep her out and thought: yes. exactly like that.

For fans of Hitchcock's Marnie and To Catch a Thief. The rooftop ease of Rififi. The interiority of Amélie. The clean elegance of early Godard. The particular Paris of a city still deciding what it did and what was done to it.

WHAT'S IN THE TRIFOLD

Le Caté is a print-and-play trifold — two pages, landscape format, designed to fold to a standard three-panel brochure. Print it, fold it, put it next to your journal. That's the whole setup.

Inside: full character creation, all six gameplay tables, resource tracking, session loop, Sebastian rules, and the Press Mechanic. Everything you need for a complete one to two hour session.

One six-sided die. A journal. The carnet. Paris. Begin.

THE ROAD AHEAD

Le Caté is the entry point. The campaign gamebook — Le Caté : La Grande Affaire — is coming. Her mother's unfinished collection. Fifteen Objects dispersed across Paris in a single terrible week in August 1942. Six to twelve sessions. A final conversation with l'Inspecteur that has been building since the first time he understood what he was looking at.

Play the trifold first. That's the rule we follow here.