Our characters are all elves of the bobbly-hat and cute-little-shoes variety. Genderless, possibly ageless and created of gingerbread, our society's sole purpose up to this point has been making Christmas toys.

Threats:
Automation. (Originally a proxy for outsourcing, but it ended up working rather differently.)
Santa's retirement. (This took up basically all our time.)
Cultural appropriation. (Almost irrelevant.)

Locations: the World Tree top (the North Pole is a floating island at the very top of the World Tree, which sticks through the world to form a Christmas-tree peak). The Naughty Archive. Reject toy warehouse. Assembly line. Elf break-room (second-hand brandy and mince pies year-round). Lump-of-coal mine.

Widget (Jess): self-appointed R&D elf, focused on innovative design. Issue: personal vanity.

Jingle (Caroline): perky traditionalist. Matches toys to kids, but (issue:) secretly enjoys giving out coal more. May have invented black plague.

Brite (Ben): a true believer in Santa, makes traditional noisy toys (mostly horns). Issue: deep down inside, doubts Santa loves us.

Scumblebritches (Sam): an electronics specialist and revolutionary, who thinks we should focus on useful gifts like not dying of treatable diarrhea. Issue: thinks everybody he knows is basically insane.

Will the workshop carry on Christmas without Santa? Santa has been doing this too long and honestly doesn't care any more. This year, he's going to be sitting around in his underwear watching cable reruns, and he's told the elves to just do whatever. Widget and Scumblebritches see this as an opportunity; Jingle and Brite have trouble coping emotionally. We attempt to fill the void with a utilitarian robot-Santa, then Brite in a giant Santa suit, neither of which are received well.

Will the workshop do away with the position of Santa?
Even though we managed Christmas-as-usual with Brite's suit, Santa nitpicks our performance and puts everyone on review. Revolt foments. While Jingle grapples with what the naughty list even means now, Scumblebritches concocts the concept of 'the Santa in our hearts' and attempts to institute a republic. The constitutional convention puts an end to kings, princes and Santas, and Widget flees the kingdom for a startup in California. With no unifying purpose and without the animating presence of Santa, the remaining elves slowly turn back into gingerbread.

(Sam, I think your Locations list might have gotten clipped)

That is an excellent summary of an excellent game. So much fun! So much elf-drama! So much weeping and kicking of tiny feet! So much throwing ourselves face-down in the snow and wailing that Santa doesn't love us! (maybe that was just me, but I was Touchstone when I did it, dammit!)

I loved that Widget had a late game change of heart and then got to be the only elf (PC) that escaped the gingerbreadmageddon. That's xmas karma for you. And Smileybritches' (né Scrumblebritches) swan song of sneaking himself into the stocking of some poverty stricken child in sub-Saharan Africa, vaccination in hand, only to turn into gingerbread and get devoured.

Fantastic game. I was walking around for days chiming "Hold me, Jingle!" at random times. Yeah, I got looks but I did not care.

So much throwing ourselves face-down in the snow and wailing that Santa doesn't love us!

These hats aren't even real wool! They're only felt! You'll freeze to death out there!