Red Tide

[Michele]

Originally Posted by lazlo_woodbine

Survival, and also small but significant victories - you take out a Nazi border post and so allow refugees to get out, or you manage to outwit the local soviet authorities and run a black market operation, or help some important writer defect to the USA or something. I think a GM who wants to run such a game needs to make sure there are significant small rewards involved, and so that the PCs can feel like they're getting somewhere rather than just running to stay still.

Since we're at it, let's mention Defiance, then - which might be better known than Levi's works. Does that portray what you have in mind?

[lazlo_woodbine]

Originally Posted by Michele

Since we're at it, let's mention Defiance, then - which might be better known than Levi's works. Does that portray what you have in mind?

I was going to mention it in the same breath - but since I've not seen the film didn't want to give a false impression! But it does sound similar to what I'm talking about.

Of course, playing resistance fighters against the Nazis will be tied to the fact of certain defeat of the Axis - at least in player knowledge. Other resistances, the ones that didn't win, would be maybe more challenging. I'm thinking of the Lithuanian 'Forest Brothers' who held out against the Soviets into the later 1940s, or the 'Reds' who existed as outlaws in central Spain in a similar period, until Franco's Guardia Civil wiped out the last of them.

It would be hard to have any kind of happy ending in store for such resistance groups unless history is altered; it might lie only in successful escape to, say, Sweden for the Lithuanians or Mexico for the Spanish, maybe to continue the struggle by over the border raids.

[Xenarthral]

Originally Posted by lazlo_woodbine

maybe to continue the struggle by over the border raids.

Neither of the suggested destinations are suitable for that purpose, though.

[lazlo_woodbine]

Originally Posted by Xenarthral

Neither of the suggested destinations are suitable for that purpose, though.

:D No, sorry I expressed myself badly; I'm quite aware that they aren't border countries. The anarchist guerilla Sabate had a base in Marseille that he used to mount raids into Barcelona right into 1960 iirc .

[jimminy]

Originally Posted by lazlo_woodbine

Survival, and also small but significant victories - you take out a Nazi border post and so allow refugees to get out, or you manage to outwit the local soviet authorities and run a black market operation, or help some important writer defect to the USA or something. I think a GM who wants to run such a game needs to make sure there are significant small rewards involved, and so that the PCs can feel like they're getting somewhere rather than just running to stay still.

I think that's the part of my GMing style that I failed to communicate. It's all about starting small, the little victories, and hopefully by the end you're a leader among men or something glorious, and you can feel you have made a real difference. The tragedy would be that after the war many of the heroes became lost or were denounced, but we don't have to roleplay that bit, we could just mention that it happened to others, right at the end of the campaign, and leave it on the poignant possibility, after finally being reunited with all those family members you thought were dead for so many years.

Of course, after the poignancy we'd probably want to go back for some fifties, high flying, cold war craziness and drag the hero out of retirement, but still...

And of course your early survival games are still spiced up with cool toys, the chance to prove yourself, funny moments, weird skill uses, ironic twists, players going nuts (in a good way, breaking free and doing crazy things), etc. etc.. So though the story is survival in a difficult world, it still has all the little ingredients to make the games fun and memorable. You start off playing with a rifle and end up playing with a tank brigade or something...

In my current game they started off with non lethal military training exercises, moved up to inter force rivalry and fun pranks and only after a few games got into combat. It was/is (on hiatus, back soon) a Commonwealth game, so not the same, but the point is that even 'survival in military life' was part of the fun, and a slow, gentle introduction to the world. After dozens of games and about a year of real world time later they were in the SAS, unmonitored, doing crazy things, sometimes flying planes and driving captured vehicles... You build up to everything, because it's more fun when you feel like you've earned it. The Soviet game just gives a bleaker beginning and a different 'background tone' and political intriguing to a basic, fundamental arc of adventure that most players would recognise. I guess the idea is, 'Trust the GM, he wants you to have fun.' And the greater the odds, the harsher the oppression you overcome, hey, the more awesome you are as a PC.

I agree that unrelenting survival and going nowhere would be straight out rough on everybody, done to excess. You would space that stuff out with humour, randomness and fun, the way that even the most bleak lives often are. I do believe that with the right touch you could actually keep the survival side fun to play out for longer than most people would expect (especially with a partisan game, where the PCs get such control and can loot such a wide variety of strange equipment, vehicles, etc, and meet such a wide range of people).

The PCs would scratch forward, and by the end they'd be taking giant leaps. After the war, well, but that's probably not the scope of the campaign (or the ingredients for a brand new one).

[Michele]

Originally Posted by lazlo_woodbine

Of course, playing resistance fighters against the Nazis will be tied to the fact of certain defeat of the Axis - at least in player knowledge.

I don't see that as a problem, considering that the same holds true for all regular servicemen in the Allied armed forces...
Knowing that your side will eventually win can also be quite a poor consolation if, say, you start out as a Soviet private under orders to stand and die in the fortress of Brest on June 21, 1941.

[Pomphis]

And the GM can of course always introduce some non-historical event telling the players that they are on another timeline, so that the outcome is suddenly no longer known. Just give stalin or goebbels or eisenhower another name and the players will start to wonder how much they can rely on their knowledge of history.

[lazlo_woodbine]

Originally Posted by Michele

I don't see that as a problem, considering that the same holds true for all regular servicemen in the Allied armed forces...

I wasn't contrasting resistance with regular army, just saying that a 'doomed resistance' campaign will usually have darker tones in it than one where we know the PC's side will eventually win.

[jason taylor]

The defeat of the Axis doesn't mean the PCs cause will prevail. Most emigre states from Eastern Europe were a lost cause. So were the Cossacks. So were the Ukrainians.

Heck, EVERYBODY on the Eastern Front was a lost cause.

[Michele]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

The defeat of the Axis doesn't mean the PCs cause will prevail. Most emigre states from Eastern Europe were a lost cause. So were the Cossacks. So were the Ukrainians.

Heck, EVERYBODY on the Eastern Front was a lost cause.

Save the Soviet one... :-). And what about sincerely Communist Poles or Rumanians or Latvians? Then you also have the all-is-not-lost guys on the _other_ side, the Finns.