[Grey Ranks] Conpulsion playtest

[andrew_kenrick]

So Saturday afternoon at Conpulsion as part of the Indie Games Track we got to play Grey Ranks. We had 4 players so I faciliated, and 2 hours, so we only did 2 chapters.

We had 4 players, Steve, playing Ola (an enthusiastic 15 year old girl from a farm outside Warsaw); Joe, playing Irena (an old before her time 16 year old girl from Old Town); Fred, playing Mar (a 16 year old boy); and Mik, playing Adam (a 17 year old boy).

We played chapters 5 and 7, and I played it by the book, letting the players frame scenes and setup the mission and the like. I mdde characters in advance, but allowed the players to pick their own starting positions.

Chapter 5 was framed around the characters attacking a tank as it rumbled through Old Town. They adopted "the usual plan" of Irena pretending to be pregnant and running out in front of it, forcing it to stop and then the others would attack it. This time, however, it went wrong and the tank didn't stop - it kept rumbling on. Irena threw herself to the ground and it rumbled over the top, but the others all thought she was a goner. Ola, as mission leader, had to make a snap decision whether to carry on with the mission, whether to fire and risk hitting Irena. She deliberated too long and Adam took over.

We then had some personal scenes. Adam had a scene where he was trying to persuade his mother (who didn't realise he was in the Grey Ranks) to let him go and fetch his Uncle Karl. She refused, and we cut back to the mission where the tank begun strafing the street ... and Uncle Karl's house.

Ola framed a scene earlier in the revolution where she was looking for her father. Irena then notched up the disturbing by a notch and had a scene earlier in the occupation when she was 14 and living with "Uncle" Karl (who, of course, turned out to be all the kids' uncles). She was standing on the balcony, wondering whether to jump off as Uncle Karl approached and tried to persuade her to stay with him and not fight. She clambered off the balcony and ran away.

Finally Mar had a personal scene where he was looking for his deaf 14 year old brother who had stolen a gun to kill some Germans. He found him in a nearby building, oblivious to the approach of the tank and Mar dragged him away and sent him home.

The mission ended with Uncle Karl running out into the street to rescue Irena, and as he did so the rest of the team jumped onto the tank and threw molotov cocktails down the hatch.

Quite harrowing in places, and it shoved Ola into the martyrdom corner, and as Irena was singled out for jeopardising the mission, she shot straight through martyrdom and into derangement.

[andrew_kenrick]

Chapter 7 was the point at which the uprising started to go wrong, with soldiers being starved out of their barricades.

The mission was to find Uncle Karl's hidden stash of supplies and take them to the soldiers on the barricades, sneaking them under the barricades via the sewers beneath the Prudential Building. But first they had to find the supplies, or persuade Karl to tell them where they were.

So Irena's mission scene was to get the information out of him as a mission scene. The scene was beautifully set, with Karl's ruined house filled with rubble, but Karl sitting at a dining table using silver cutlery to eat expensive pate out of the tin and drink champagne out of a broken bottle. Irena came in and sat on his lap, visibly showing signs of pregnancy. He patted her belly and told her he had two to look after now. Irena asked him to share his food with her friends, and he said if she brought her "little friends" to him they could have all the food they wanted. Irena wriggled on his lap and said she wanted to take it to him. He stroked her hair and said that after they made love he would show her the way.

We all freaked out a little here, as I managed to disturb myself playing Uncle Karl. At one point Joe, playing Irena, turned to me and said "this is the least fun game I've ever played - but I mean that in a good way." I'd take that as a compliment. It was really emotionally powerful. But around here it dawned on me we hadn't had the lines and veils conversation. Ack! So I took a step back and apologised if we'd crossed lines and we had it then, but everyone was cool with it and were eager to take it as far as the story would go.

Ola then had a personal scene where she met her father, who urged her to leave the city with him to hide in their farm. Ola tried to persuade him to let her go with his blessing, but he refused and they parted unhappily. Ola was in martyrdom corner so we knew it wouldn't end well.

Adam had a scene with his first love, Kazmeina, where he explained to her how much the Grey Ranks meant to him and how he had to go and fight with them. She let him go and they embraced for the first time.

Mar had a scene where he went to the crumbling Church of St Peter to pray for guidance (the church was threatened in chapter 5 when it was shelled by tanks). He destroyed his faith to get a reroll for something (the mission, maybe?) and turned his back on his faith, placing his faith in his comrades instead.

Ola's mission scene saw her returning from the market with a determined mind, her rucksack clinking with molotov cocktails. The way into the sewers beneath the Pru were guarded by none other than the SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger, who were lounging about on the steps into the building, warming their hands around a burning brazier. Ola was tasked with distracting the rapists and paedophiles of the Sturmbrigade, walking up to them and flirting. As they advanced on her, she hurled her rucksack into the brazier, causing an explosion and a distraction, but costing Ola her life.

The rest of the Grey Ranks snuck through the sewers to where Uncle Karl had kept his stash, creating a human chain to ferry it out of the sewers and distribute it to the soldiers.

We cut away to Irena, holding her stomach, climbing to the top of St Peter's Church and stepping off, unable to bear the burden of what she had done ...

But, as they were carrying the supplies out through a school, a treacherous teacher snuck off to tell the Germans and the Grey Ranks found themselves caught in a horrible crossfire. They were saved (mostly) by the Home Army opening fire to pin the Germans back to allow them to get behind the barricades, but in doing so Adam's love Kazmeina was hit, having been so moved by his speech to join in the fighting too ...

[Jason Morningstar]

Thanks for the report, Andrew! 

I'm really glad it went well for you.  I'm interested in a couple of things:

How did the handouts work to facilitate or hinder play?  Were they used and referred to?  Did you read Radio Lightning and write out situation elements?

Were you able to find the fun despite the heavy subject matter?  I'm interested in Joe's statement, which makes me happy in one way but concerned in another - I don't want play to be a grim experience.  Were there other comments about the game's thematic content?

Were two chapters enough to get some coherent stories emerging?  (sounds like yes to that)  Did anybody struggle with framing personal or mission scenes? 

Thanks again for running Grey Ranks!

[andrew_kenrick]

How did the handouts work to facilitate or hinder play?  Were they used and referred to?  Did you read Radio Lightning and write out situation elements?

I thought they were a great help and really made things go smoothly. We used the lists of names round both character sheet and situation sheet a great deal. I read out Radio Lightning at the start of each chapter, and if you compare our missions with the events described, you'll see that we took cues from the broadcast. They do a great job of setting the scene.

As for situation elements, here's what we had (we picked them as usual). See if you can spot how we used them!

chapter 5

• a homemade gun
• 14 year old deaf boy
• our family's don't matter
• somebody is pregnant

chapter 7

• SS Sonder Regiment Dirlewanger
• Maria Dunajewski, english teacher and dirty traitor
• a picnic basket with laudenum
• the sewers beneath the Prudential Building

Were you able to find the fun despite the heavy subject matter?  I'm interested in Joe's statement, which makes me happy in one way but concerned in another - I don't want play to be a grim experience.  Were there other comments about the game's thematic content?

Don't get me wrong, it was grim and bleak and traumatic. But I don't think that's a bad thing. It was emotionally powerful and engaging and we were on the edge of our seats the whole way through. The game was fun and enjoyable - the content was not, if that makes sense? Like when you watch a film like Schindler's List or Downfall - they're great films, but you wouldn't say they were fun to watch. This is a good thing.

Were two chapters enough to get some coherent stories emerging?  (sounds like yes to that)  Did anybody struggle with framing personal or mission scenes?

Absolutely. I thought we'd struggle with 2 chapters, but it did the job just fine. Not sure chapters 5 and 7 are the best examples of whether 2 chapters work though, as they're perfect counterparts to one another. We felt we had a good narrative going, and a good sense of the story.

Nobody struggled, although it did take us a little while to get going each chapter, with players a little hesitant to jump in with a scene. One thing I did notice was that the personal scenes were very focused around the events of the mission, flashing back no more than hours or days. Or, in several cases, interspersed with the action of the mission itself. The exception was Irena's flashback to when she was 14, but that was the exception. I'm not sure why that happened, whether I didn't explain the scope enough, but I didn't interrupt as it worked well all the same.

[Jason Morningstar]

the sewers beneath the Prudential Building

...always gets used, without fail!  It's the Regina Sutton of Grey Ranks.  I think every group will find its own way with personal scenes.  When I play I try to be very aggressive about flashing way back in time when a good call-back presents itself, and to be equally aggressive about interrupting mission scenes, which I think is a really useful technique for drama and pacing. 

[andrew_kenrick]

to be equally aggressive about interrupting mission scenes, which I think is a really useful technique for drama and pacing. 

We didn't seem to do that. Each mission scene was a part of the grander mission narrative for sure, but it remained inviolated as a separate entity. It seemed to work well enough though.