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Old 03-31-2015, 01:10 PM   #6
Icelander
 
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
Default Re: [WWII/TS/Covert Ops/Weird War II] Götterdämmerung on Walpurgisnacht

Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
Assuming they have the backing of OSS or SOE, and can pass for Germans, getting in should be possible.
For the purposes of the adventure, the PCs will belong to a secretive section or desk of one or the other organisation, tasked with something so obviously unimportant that everyone will fall all over themselves giving them assistance.

In the interest of providing an interesting selection of pre-gen PCs, I had thought that there would be an odd collection of experts from all over the world, probably explained by the mysterious and occult objective of their quest.

Some PCs will be able to pass as Germans, others as other Axis soldiers. Most probably I will have to offer one or two fish-out-of-water PCs, who aren't experts in Berliner German and Brandenburger culture, and can't easily pass for locals. Some players don't like it when their PCs are supposed to fit easily into the adventuring locales, while they are entirely alien to them. Most of my players have probably visited Berlin, but none have spent more than a month there and some probably only a few days.

I had thought maybe a decorated young American Marine who had not left his native land* before the outbreak of war and is included in the mission largely because a high-ranking US general insists that no matter how esoteric the skills of other team members, they'll need a good man in a tough spot who happens to be a phenomenal shot.

Another idea would be a Gurkha commando. Cheerful, lethal and indomitable. Someone who was good with languages could easily speak several European languages in 1945. There was a battalion of Gurkhas on Cyprus in 1939 and they fought in North Africa and Italy, among other places. I dunno what he could pass as. I wonder if Berliners would know enough about the world to recognise a racial difference between an 'Italian' of vaguely Moorish or Cypriote ancestry and a Nepali?

*Which might be rural Maine, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky or even Texas, depending on the breaks.

Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
Getting back out again is harder. If they leave their vehicles unguarded, they will be stolen.
I had some idea that a good mechanic might burn the outside chassis of a truck to make it look like a wreck, remove a few vital parts so it wouldn't run and leave it as a part of a bombed-out ruin. Bury the vital parts and make it possible to use the truck to escape after an hour or so of repair work.

Of course, a convoy of trucks pretending to be Swedish would be a nice backup.

Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
Getting picked up by aircraft is conceivable, but the Berlin airfields are all subject to Soviet attack and ones further west will still have Luftwaffe ground troops with AAA even if they don't have much in the way of aircraft. Getting picked up by submarine is hard: Berlin is some way from the Baltic coast, and the Danish Straits are still heavily mined; the Western Allies have left the Baltic to the Soviets.
It's always possible to postulate an airborne assault on a small airfield as part of the operation, if it's important enough. Of course, the paratroopers wouldn't know the true purpose of the raid.

I guess the Spree was impassable due to mines and other defences.
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