America vs. insurgents: RPG campaign allegory

[joepub]

First of all, I'm not sure what campaign system you are used to running.
Let me clear up a few things that I, as a player, would NOT like in this campaign:

a.) I don't want to be told what I'm going to do in tonight's session. Don't prepare adventures.
Prepare events.
Let me know that the S'Galian Rebel Army is closing in on the small hamlet of Gavel, and that the Trebian Horde is still sieging upon the Darian Empire Frontier Base.
Let me know that I am STILL being paged by the Darian Patriarch.

Let me decide what I'm going to do. What I care about. What my role is in the war.

If I want to play general, let me. (If this is D&D, don't make me take the Leadership feat. Just tell me I have 1,000 men at my command.) If I want to play messenger in a tense negotiation, let me.

The first step in not railroading is not having this SET PLAN for how things will go down.

Dogs in the Vineyard is great for that - providing interesting places, difficult situations, and human pains... and then turning to the player and saying "now what?"
Do that.


b.) If you want a game about rebels and empires, dissention and factionalization... cool. Design whatever setting you want.

If you want a game about Bush's America vs. the Middle East...
or the IRA movement...

Use that.

[joepub]

c.) I wouldn't want to be put in a game I felt uncomfortable in.

Ask your players what they are okay with playing out.
Are they going to be able to handle a real world empire/insurgent setting?
Would they be comfortable placing their characters in Lebanon right now?
How about at the World Trade Centre during 9/11?
***Figure out what they are comfortable with, in terms of real issues in the real world***

If terrorists torch a house, are they comfortable with hearing that description?
If the government carpet-bombs a town, are they comfortable playing that out?
They are given orders, by their commander, to bomb an orphanage. Are they comfortable with the game at this point?
***Figure out what they are comfortable with, in terms of violence and graphic depiction***

Are they comfortable turning on each other, backstabbing, betraying, or taking different sides?
Is one PC allowed to shoot another PC in the head?
***Figure out what they are comfortable with, in terms of player/character opposition***

[aaronil]

How to keep the characters from merely washing their hands of the entire conflict?

That's an important question - if both sides seem pretty bleak and no sane middleground is presented the temptation to say "forget it, I'm out of here" is great. I suggest portraying the two sides sympathetically...realistically...but sympathetically. Emphasize the human, even behind the worst of atrocities. Provide the players with real insight into the minds of the fanatics on both sides ("the path to Hell is paved by good intentions"). Likewise, give the players the power to sway people to their side, to change hearts and minds.
A great example of this is Marshal Rosenberg (director of the Center for Non-Violent Communication), who talks about being in a Palestinian refuge camp and while giving a talk a man comes out of the crowd and shouts "Assassin! Child killer!" The crowd begins to get restless. Long story short, Marshal uses NVC and the man ends up pouring out his grief about the US providing weapons to Israel that had just killed Palestinian children. The man -who had just been calling him a "child killer"- ended up inviting Marshal home for Ramadan dinner.

How to keep this game from being a total GM railroad?  How do I provide the players with real choice about the story?

The framework is empire vs. insurgents, so that doesn't change, but within that you've got lots of maneuver room. If the story is about a manhunt for a freed convict, have the players run into the brother of escaped "criminal" who challenges their beliefs. Now the players realize that the imperial shock troops hunting this man down don't intend to save his life but to shoot him dead. It's up to the players to get to him first to save his life (and take him back into custody). This plot is well portrayed in the movie "City by the Sea."

I can easily come up with a kick ass, complex unconvential army with all sorts of factions and personalities, and an invading empire to match, but how would you bring the PC's in, without railroading and fiating them from point to point?  Would you start by drawing out a relationship map?

I would let the players choose where they fit in the scheme of things. You give them a short handout and talk to them about the game's premise, then let them come up with their character's motives as a group.

[Roy Batty]

A heart-felt thank you to everyone for your input.

I hedged and hawed over this thing for months, and in a few short days of correspondence and spitballing with you all, I'm rolling like mad.

I think I've got a pretty good setting in mind to pull this off, and I'm reading like mad re: kickers, bangs, flags, all that goodness, to try and turn my ideas of RPGing on their head.  I'll drop in with more details soon.

Thanks again!  Long live the Forge!

[Roy Batty]

So I've been thinking a hell of a lot about this campaign.  I think I've got a handle on the railroading problem through a ton of reading re: flags, kickers, and bangs.  My next obstacle was that this will be my first time gaming in a long time, and this'll also be this group's first time together.  So while I want to have some heavy intellectual exploration going on, I need somehow to lighten it up a bit, just to get people out of their shells.  So I think I may have found a decent way to make the campaign accessible, while retaining the ability to discuss big, relevant social issues.  Prepare for the (hopefully intentional) cheese.

(Begin crawl)

The Republic and the Jedi Order are smashed.  The Empire rises, spreading terror and crushing all those who oppose them.   Hope dims as the Empire's rule through fear spreads like a plague.

But among the ashes of the Republic, hidden embers burn yet.  Here and there are Jedi who survived Order 66.  And while these Jedi masters must live as hunted animals in the face of the mighty Empire ascendant, they also prepare to strike back, to burst a light into the growing darkness. 

Seeing his brotherhood annihilated one Jedi master fears that the time for balancing the Force is gone.  Through Vader's treachery, the balance has been destroyed.  The Empire must be stopped, no matter the cost.  The ends shall justify the means. 

And so amidst the ruins of the Republic, a rebellion against the Empire stirs.  Realizing that desperate times call for desperate measures, the Unknown Master begins to train a guerilla army.  To bind their will in the face of such desperate odds, this Jedi christens himself the godhead of the Uprising, and his Jedi are both this guerilla army's lieutenants and spiritual bishops. 

Can this desperate bid succeed?  Or will this fledgling rebellion merely be crushed under the Empire's heel?  To what ends will this insurgent army go to achieve their vital intent?  As the Unknown Master and his clerics realize their power, will they hold to their ideals, or will they become just as evil as the Empire they strive to unseat? 

(End crawl)

(see 40k and the Emperor, also Dune, the Fremen, and Paul as their prophet)

The characters could be students of this master, sent on missions, such as:
   Classic attacking the empire with guerilla hit and run tactics
   Bringing new recruits/civilians into the fold
      (And possibly dealing ruthlessly with those who do not obey)
   Functioning as inquisitors among the guerillas, rooting out dissent and heresy among the faithful (see Michael Collins)
   As the characters are brought further into the organization, the severity of their missions increases (ala LA Confidential...like Bud, only slowly gleaning the true nature of their masters)

The characters could also be sent by the remnants of the Jedi Council to seek out and make contact with/destroy this rogue Jedi Master as a threat to the emergence of the true Alliance
   Could start as an attempt at pulling him and his forces in as allies, unless their methods become irreconcilable
   Could become a hunt to seek and destroy the master (ala Apocalypse Now)
      Could have the PC's sent under deep cover to infiltrate the organization
   The characters could have considerable autonomy, given the chaotic state of the Jedi Council



   So that's where I'm at.  I think that'll give me the ability to hit the heavy themes I want, without making the game dark to the point of being unfun.  Now I need to spitball this with the players a bit.  But also to figure out what system would work best?  Any thoughts?  Anyone?  Bueller?

[MatrixGamer]

Interesting thread.

What it made me think of was "What are the costs to people engaged in war?"

You've assumed that your characters are going to be rebels. If that is the case and they feel a self righteous zeal for their cause they might be able to quite comfortably carry out all manner of evil in the name of a just cause. I'm certain the average Wehrmacht soldier felt they were on a holy crusade against communism. But no mater how just a cause is, actually committing violence takes something out of people. If could be Call of Cthulhu sanity or Cyberpunk humanity but they get used up.

I played in a WWII spy RPG years ago in which our characters started to develop mental illness symptoms due to leading double lives.

I did a game back in the mid 80's in which players drew out a "cognitive pyramid" of what was on their minds. People came up with phrases like "Fuck it drive on" and "They're all hunks of meat" as well as "Sensitive to nature" "Acute hearing." The burn outs were able to do the job without much remorse while I told nature boy that something hit him in the face when the smell of the nasty thing they encountered hit his nose.

I know soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan also feel alienated and pretty pissed off because people back here don't understand what they've gone through. It happens in wars. Soldiers end up having more in common with their enemy soldiers than they do with the folks back home. I think you'll find this game to be a powerful psychodrama. Good luck!

Chris Engle
Hamster Press = Engle Matrix Games

[aaronil]

So that's where I'm at.  I think that'll give me the ability to hit the heavy themes I want, without making the game dark to the point of being unfun. 

Roy, I think that's an important decision to keep the game from getting too dark. In a game like this (well, in all games actually, but this kind of morally ambiguous game especially) it's important to establish a social contract before playing about what players are comfortable with. It might be good to work that into the rules from the get-go.
I think a somewhat detailed example of the kind of morally grey situations you are evoking is important because it needs to present both sides sympathetically to create that real tug of war. I think you're trying to do this for the players, rather than a player looking at their character sheet and saying, "Oh, I have a belief of liberty +19, so I'm definitely with the rebels."
I'll add one caveat that I saw occur at Gen Con. I got to sit in on an introductory Living Arcanis D&D game (run by Paradigm Concepts) where one of the player characters was a military officer with oaths to serve her fellows in arms, and her emperor. When another military officer is accused of treason, the player characters are sent to determine his innocence or guilt - thing is the "treasonous" military officer was very sympathetically depicted by the GM. The player of the military officer felt she was in a real pickle and couldn't make up her mind what to do and her fun diminished greatly.
Don't give the players an easy out, but definitely give them some way to resolve the situation that doesn't mean bloody murder on one side or the other. Or else don't have them officially associated with either the rebellion or the empire, thus avoiding this sort of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario...though heightening the risk the players just walk away from the conflict altogether.

Hope something in there is helpful.

What it made me think of was "What are the costs to people engaged in war?"

You've assumed that your characters are going to be rebels. If that is the case and they feel a self righteous zeal for their cause they might be able to quite comfortably carry out all manner of evil in the name of a just cause. I'm certain the average Wehrmacht soldier felt they were on a holy crusade against communism. But no mater how just a cause is, actually committing violence takes something out of people. If could be Call of Cthulhu sanity or Cyberpunk humanity but they get used up.

I'm with Chris. The cost of violence is not just more violence, it has a fall out on people's families, communities, and psyches. Also, it might be interesting for players to take the role of imperial officers (instead of rebels) to see the other side of the coin.

I know soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan also feel alienated and pretty pissed off because people back here don't understand what they've gone through. It happens in wars. Soldiers end up having more in common with their enemy soldiers than they do with the folks back home. I think you'll find this game to be a powerful psychodrama. Good luck!

Chris, I understand what you're getting at, but I think that statement is misleadingly vague.
For example, there's a myth that was propagated by the US government after Vietnam that soldiers returning home were spat at by civilian protestors as they got of their planes at the San Francisco airport. This antipathy towards soldiers (and their antipathy in return) is a creation. First of all, there's no way soldiers are returning home at a civilian airstrip, and there's no way protestors are on the military base. The movie "Sir, No Sir!" explores that misconception in depth, with parallels to the war in Iraq.
As for Iraqi Veterans, many of them are against the war and are joining forces to with anti-war activists under the banner of Lieutenant Ehren Watada, the first serviceman to publicly refuse deployment to Iraq on the basis that it is an illegal and immoral war. It's the American citizens who aren't questioning the war in Iraq that Iraqi veterans seem to have the most problem with.
Not trying to criticize you, but I think that's an important distinction that could be lost on the OP.

[Roy Batty]

Thanks for the comments Matrixgamer and Aaron.

What it made me think of was "What are the costs to people engaged in war?" 

But no mater how just a cause is, actually committing violence takes something out of people.

That's certainly one of the themes I'd like to address.  I'm not sure exactly what would be a good mechanic to simulate it.  Dogs in the Vineyard might work...

I played in a WWII spy RPG years ago in which our characters started to develop mental illness symptoms due to leading double lives.

Awesome idea.  As one of my potential "takes" on the setting involves the characters under deep cover, I may have to yoink this. :)

In a game like this (well, in all games actually, but this kind of morally ambiguous game especially) it's important to establish a social contract before playing about what players are comfortable with. It might be good to work that into the rules from the get-go.
I think a somewhat detailed example of the kind of morally grey situations you are evoking is important because it needs to present both sides sympathetically to create that real tug of war.

Absolutely.  Our first session will actually be playing a board game, shooting the bull, and going over these kinds of issues.

When another military officer is accused of treason, the player characters are sent to determine his innocence or guilt - thing is the "treasonous" military officer was very sympathetically depicted by the GM. The player of the military officer felt she was in a real pickle and couldn't make up her mind what to do and her fun diminished greatly.

Don't give the players an easy out, but definitely give them some way to resolve the situation that doesn't mean bloody murder on one side or the other. Or else don't have them officially associated with either the rebellion or the empire, thus avoiding this sort of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario...though heightening the risk the players just walk away from the conflict altogether.

The story is definitely helpful, though I'm not quite sure how to work around it.  I've never played with bangs, kickers, and flags, so I guess I'm hoping that the players themselves will help lead me to the sorts of moral quandries that they're interested in and comfortable with.  Is this expectation reasonable?

Today I had a classic exchange with one of the players: when I mentioned that I still hadn't settled on a mechanic, he said, "I don't think the system matters.  All that matters is the person running it."  I might have agreed before I came to the loving bosom of the Forge. :)

So the major question remains: what system would work best for this campaign?

[TonyPace]

I think that Sorcerer with ideologies as Demons with violent needs might be a good fit.

Using Dogs you have a lot of work facing you; character creation and system are mostly fine but the system is pushing you towards judging others from a position of moral and temporal authority. In Dogs the responsibility of the characters is set out for you but that doesn't really fit your vision for the setting. Without the focus on sorting the good from the bad the system will push you to blow the hell out of everything that moves as surely as D&D does. If you do want the players to have that kind of clear responsibility, then you need to both keep them away from just shooting bad guys with big guns and give them a hierarchy of sins so they know what the local standards are.

The immediate idea I had when thinking about an insurgency / morality Dogs setting was Israeli Army MPs investigating accusations of soldiers abuses, which might be tremendously interesting. But it should would rip the lid off any moral/political divergences in the group, and god help you if there is any latent racism in the group. Which is my way of saying it's a bad idea for my group!

And you can't talk about morally tricky rebellions in RPGs without giving Burning Sands: Jihad a shout out. It's a free supplement for Burning Wheel pretty heavily based on Dune. The general idea is that it after the events of the first Dune book and the Fremen are spreading out over the galaxy taking over the Noble planets on by one as guerrillas. The players decide as a whole which side they'll take - the GM takes the opposition and the whole thing works out from there as a sprawling guerrilla war for an entire planet.

It's a little different from your setup, but not SO different, and there is a lot of great stuff in the free pdf. That said, the crunch of Burning Wheel doesn't appeal to large segments of my play group, so I don't know how well it would work for you as a system.

[MatrixGamer]

It, being the forge, would be cool to make up a system.

I find it helpful to have something to base a system on. When it comes to the psychological effects of war I always like the US Army movie "Shades of Gray". It was made right after WWII and describes the army's experience with battle fatigue during the war. They were working on a stress model - the more stress one is put under the "darker" one becomes. With enough stress everyone develops symptoms (usually anxiety, depression, addiction, and some hysterical blindness and paralysis). Remove them from the stress and they get better. If they start off dark gray (say a person has psychotic symptoms when en-ducted) they fall apart quicker in battle (best not to send them there at all.)

Lt Col Grossman's book "On Killing" is pretty good at fleshing out Shades of Gray - but does get preachy about video games.

As to the antipathy of soldiers to civilians I wasn't thinking about the Vietnam thing. I was thinking about accounts I've read of Civil War soldiers on the Union and Confederate side thinking they should march north to show the people complaining back home what war was really like, and how WWI soldiers were unable to explain what they had gone through when they got home, and how WWII soldiers didn't even try. It's not so much what the people back home do - there will always be assholes - it has to do with the system shift between what one does in combat and what one does in civilian life. A soldier has to return fire and live with the image in their mind. We safely back home don't, so we never have to ask ourselves the deep existential questions killing raises. I've heard soldiers be angry about being judged by people. We civilians don't need to do much at all to trigger such feelings. just ask about what happened over there (and look like you want a war story) or look at a soldier funny.

I used to be fascinated by this stuff years ago (when I was young and draftable). Then war got boring for me because I realized it just uses people up (whither you win or lose). One side charges, the other defends and they either hold the line or run. Repeat till exhausted.

One option for system for running the game might be to use some Matrix Game ideas. If people had to keep a running log that briefly summarizes what they've done, the GM could reflect on it in picking out what conflict arises next. It is kind of an internal relationship map. My relationship with myself.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press = Engle Matrix Games