[Gathering Storm] -- can't shake the war!

[Darcy Burgess]

So, here's the deal:  I just can't shake war as a theme.  It's in all of my design ideas -- it just won't go away.

And here's its latest iteration.  This is based on an idea that a friend had for a Riddle of Steel campaign.  He was crafting a neat humano-centric setting with the usual trappings and whatnot.  When he pitched the idea to me, I immediately commented: "Dude, that's world war two.  With Nazi orcs."

And that's pretty much stuck in my head ever since then.

I want to work with setting in the same manner as what Clinton did with TSOY -- create a fruitful playground.  Kickstart stories (as the designer), and then shove the reins into the players' hands and jump off the carriage.

Setting
I'm thinking along these lines:
- parallel the whole 1935-1940 era pretty strongly.
- PCs will be from Albion (England) and be normal folk.
- the Horde will be the Nazis, and will rampage across the continent.
- some sort of magical effect will stop the Horde from crossing the channel (in other words, sub Magic in for the Royal Navy)
- the Horde will find a clever way around it, but not in a 'conquering' sense
- play will begin in an iteration of the Blitz

Play
As to what play looks like, I'm picturing individual story lines of simple struggle.  The little guy trying to do what he can in the face of unrelenting horror.  Stuff like trying to help someone trapped under rubble.  Find food for the family next door.  Make it to the shelters in time.

Accomplishing little goals within your story will automatically impose obstacles on someone else's story.   Similarly, suffering a setback in your tale will cut someone else a break.

I'm seeing stories being relatively tight little things, and they will resolve.  Maybe each story has a fixed number of 'go's or turns.  At the end, the story ends, maybe resolved, maybe faded to black, maybe happy, maybe sad.

When your story ends, you craft a new protagonist and start a new story.


Mechanics
I'm picturing resolution based on some sort of zero-sum tool (eg: playing cards, dominos, etc.).  The mental image I have is that when you play a card to win a conflict, it goes in front of another player -- it becomes their next target number.

[Darcy Burgess]

Dang it!  I posted before getting to the pointed question.

Here it is: what's the magic bullet that takes setting and turns it into the wonderful fodder, rather than overwhelming encyclopedic data?

Cheers,
Darcy

[Jason Morningstar]

A couple of thoughts, Darcy -

First of all, I've never understood the impulse toward the fantastic.  You're frank about your sources - and your sources are overstuffed with rich, compelling drama and situation.  Why not write a game about The Blitz?  This may be a personal bias, I don't know, but I don't see the value orcs and magic add to a compelling and very human story. 

That said, to address your question, I dealt with the same problem writing Grey Ranks - I wanted to honor ground truth but there was a huge volume of information available.  And that's the key - chunk it in such a way that the really important bits are revealed in play.  In my case I inject situation that is, in all cases, information about the setting.  It works well.  You don't need to know anything about the Warsaw Uprising, but after playing a game it will have been true to history to some degree, and you'll know more.  So find a way to reveal it in play, that's my advice.

[Noclue]

what's the magic bullet that takes setting and turns it into the wonderful fodder, rather than overwhelming encyclopedic data?

Well, I would say focus on conflict not back story. Let me say the setting sounds rich and has oodles of potential. I want to play it. I know lots of folks that will feel the same. But, backstory always should stay in the back. It informs story, it is not story itself.

What does this mean in practical terms? It means its okay if your players only know the little part of the story that they actually see and touch. They'll sense there's a big canopy of story going on behind the scenes and it will imbue the story with meaning. But resist the temptation to make sure that their characters know everything, see everything that the setting can provide. Leave that for future character arcs.

Focus on how the setting creates conflict in the character's life and make those conflicts sing.


On a side note, I don't see the need for some big magical effect keeping the orcs on the continent. Orcs like holes in the ground. Its only natural that they will resist crossing the english channel while the pickings are good at home.

One last thought, avoid the temptation to make the orcs one dimensional. If the Nazi/Orcs are just evil with a capital M the story becomes trite. They need character motivations and aspirations just like the PCs. It just happens that their beliefs don't include treating humans with compassion and dignity. To them humans are sub-orcs, inferior, made to be exploited. But they can't see themselves as evil tormentors of the goodly PCs or everything becomes one big cheese log.

Anyway, that's my view.

[Noclue]

If the Nazi/Orcs are just evil with a capital M

Ummm....it was pretty late last night. Evil, of course is not spelled with an M. Wish there was an edit button.

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi again,

It's always refreshing to have water thrown in your face, so...thanks.

Jason --
You're absolutely right.  The whole Albion/Orcs/Magic thing is totally an artifact of the idea's genesis.  There's no point in making a Blitz game be anything other than a Blitz game.  Actually, that's not entirely true.  Maus is a great example of using transposition to open avenues of storytelling that are perhaps too painful or too touchy to attack "directly".  However, to avoid derailing my own thread, I'll shut this avenue of discussion down right now.  Suffice it to say that although this technique can be used to achieve certain ends, I don't think that this project requires it.

As far as your "chunking" of source material suggestion goes, I'll try a couple of self-cooked examples to see if I'm thinking what you're saying.  So, we presume that I've done a pile of Blitz-related research, and have all of these cool historical facts that I want to highlight.

Fact: Londoners used the underground stations as shelters
Situation: Tommy McAllister has been separated from his folks, and the air raid sirens are screaming.  You've taken him with you into your shelter (which is cramped and stinky!)  Tommy's terrified & hysterical, and you have to deal with some boorish oaf who's completely unsympathetic -- "shut that rotten brat up!"

Fact: The RAF was hopelessly outclassed during the early days of the Blitz.
Situation: What to do with the downed Hurricane that didn't explode on impact?

Fact: St. Paul's Cathedral miraculously survived the Blitz.
Situation: Crazy old Wilhemina Baird won't leave the Cathedral, she prays there during every air raid.

It's important to note that these examples are all created from whole cloth -- the Facts may be less-than-true (I'm working strictly from memory), and the resultant Situations are purely me-in-GM-shoes mashing those facts into a situation through sheer force of will.  I'll be looking for something a little more elegant and improvisational.  I'm imagining a technique that doesn't require players to do the painful research (or consult endless setting material in the game).  However, I think that my examples illustrate my interpretation of your suggestion, which is all that they need to do right now.


Noclue --
Number one, I think that evil should always be spelt with a capital M.  Reading that made me smile -- it's just the sort of weird juxtaposition that happens to appeal to me.  So, I suggest less sleep and more typing!

I agree with everything you say about backstory -- you've essentially done a really good job of articulating my concerns.  In fact, I think that your suggestions also point out some broader implications than my intial question did.

However, your statement, "Focus on how the seting creates conflict in the character's life and make those conflicts sing" isn't all that helpful.  You've rephrased my question as a statement.  I'm very aware that I don't want this to devolve into a didactic history lesson.  My question is how do I avoid doing that?  Jason's given me one suggestion (at least, I think he has -- if I'm interpreting it right).  Do you have another?  Because, I'm all ears, man!

Cheers,
Darcy

[Jason Morningstar]

Hi Darcy,

OK, I won't bring up the fantasy thing again, fair enough.  Here's what I did in Grey Ranks, which I actually think is a good model for what you are after:

1.  Players can read about twenty pages of history, if they want.  But it says up front that they don't have to.  The game doesn't break if it goes completely ahistorical.  That's important.
2.  When they make up characters they have to make some choices that are informed by history a little - what district they are from.  What do they hold dear. 
3.  About once an hour, there's an injection of actual events - an update as the actual in-game date changes.  It's about a paragraph of content, read aloud in the form of a radio broadcast.  This is fun!  People get into it.
4.  Also about once an hour, each player grabs a new "situation element" that will inform the ensuing action.  These are just sticks to poke the story with, and you pick from a list of ten (of which there are 26 in total).  Here's D4:

• Dr. Friedrich Uhlig, inquisitive police inspector with a list.
• Henryk Grzedzielski, reluctant hero and enthusiastic womanizer.
• An SS-operated farm outside the city proper.
• An apparel factory opposite the police barracks in Wola.
• Home-distilled 190 proof "bimber", mixed with raspberry juice.
• Is he just an annoyance - or something more dangerous?
• A steamy make-out session. 
• A coward shows his true colors.
• Eavesdropping and distrust. 
• The ruins of your living room.

So they are jumping off points, some are romance-oriented, some are action roiented, some provide detail on the setting, some are vague.  But a player will read all ten to choose one that leaps out as fun and interesting, and, to some extent, internalize the flavor I'm after. 

[Noclue]

Noclue --
Number one, I think that evil should always be spelt with a capital M.  Reading that made me smile -- it's just the sort of weird juxtaposition that happens to appeal to me.  So, I suggest less sleep and more typing!

There was also a bottle red wine involved that night. Typing under the influence.

However, your statement, "Focus on how the seting creates conflict in the character's life and make those conflicts sing" isn't all that helpful.  You've rephrased my question as a statement.  I'm very aware that I don't want this to devolve into a didactic history lesson.  My question is how do I avoid doing that?  Jason's given me one suggestion (at least, I think he has -- if I'm interpreting it right).  Do you have another?  Because, I'm all ears, man!

I'll take a shot. The big problem with a setting that is so rich is the writer tends to fall in love with the research. They see such rich story in the history and they want the players to experience everything they felt while reading it and to know "everything their characters would know about the setting.. This often leads to long and tedious exposition where the players are "told" about all this awesomeness, without seeing any of it. But, grab any engrossing book off the shelf about Nazi Germany and you'll find the compelling parts are about human emotion--suffering, love, fear--and actions. The writer's advice of "show don't tell" works really well here. If you can't paint a picture of it for the players to see, think long and hard about whether the players really need to know about it at all. For example:

Fact: Londoners used the underground stations as shelters
Situation: Tommy McAllister has been separated from his folks, and the air raid sirens are screaming.  You've taken him with you into your shelter (which is cramped and stinky!)  Tommy's terrified & hysterical, and you have to deal with some boorish oaf who's completely unsympathetic -- "shut that rotten brat up!"

Fact: The RAF was hopelessly outclassed during the early days of the Blitz.
Situation: What to do with the downed Hurricane that didn't explode on impact?

Fact: St. Paul's Cathedral miraculously survived the Blitz.
Situation: Crazy old Wilhemina Baird won't leave the Cathedral, she prays there during every air raid.

[/quote]

Okay, so let's look at #1. There's Tommy whimpering, your hiding in the subway station and we've got the got the sirens blaring above us as the planes fly in. The players don't need to know that "Londoners took shelter in the undergrounds." You're Londoners. Your hiding in the underground. Nuff said. But you've got sounds, whimpering, sirens blaring, maybe bombs going off in the distance. What about smells? Its cramped and stinky. Not good enough. What do I smell? How about the scent of fear wafting off of dozens of sweating bodies packed together. Maybe its hot and humid down here now. What do I see? Inky darkness? Maybe there's just enough light to see the dust filtering down from minute cracks in the ceiling as one bomb hits a bit too close to home. Then there's that inconsiderate oaf. Is he? Maybe he's terrified. Maybe he knows this city like the back of his hand and he can tell where the bombs are falling. Maybe he's got family out there. But what comes out is "shut that brat up!"

Okay #2: Again sight, sound, smell, touch. We don't need to know that we're outclassed. We need to see it. We need to see our side taking a beating. Just getting hammered. And then there's this Hurricane. Jeopardy! This thing could go off any moment. There's your conflict. Put it in the middle of a hospital ward. You can't move the critically injured. Maybe have bombs exploding outside, so folks just can't up and run. What do you do? Again, things are alive. Its not a long diatribe of how the RAF was outgunned and the Hurricane is a much better piece equipment...blah blah blah. It's do something or the place is coming down around your ears.

Number #3 is more of the same. Bring it alive with evocative detail. Put the loon up in the belfry screaming the lords prayer or whatever as the rockets are flying by and great gouts of smoke and fire are erupting on all sides. The players don't need to know the church survives, in fact its better they don't know.

I'm not sure any of that helped, but it was fun to write =)