[Grey Ranks] Joyriding in tanks and other skylarks that will get you killed

[GreatWolf]

i]Grey Ranks a whirl and then head into Nine Worlds.  Should be fun.  So, last Friday, we fired up Grey Ranks<Grey Ranks is a GMless RPG set during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, where the Polish resistance forces unsuccessfully tried to liberate their capital from their German invaders.  You play teens in the Grey Ranks, which is essentially the underground Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of Poland, which had been outlawed in the wake of the German invasion of 1939.

You cannot change the course of history; Warsaw will still fall.  Instead, the game uses the Warsaw Uprising as a setting for coming-of-age stories about these teen characters.  I told Crystal that Grey Ranks is a romance story set in a war zone.  She looked at me funny, but I was being serious.  Grey Ranks<Players and Dramatis Personae<have<Session 1:  Resistance

Chapter 1:  Monkey-wrenching the Occupation

Gameplay is divided into Chapters.  Chapter 1 is actually a special prologue Chapter, similar in concept to Dogs in the Vineyars<Grey Ranks<after<really<Chapter 2:  The Nazis Begin to Get Nervous<<

Now, Ola had a plan.  She wanted to get the tank turned around and go after a German encampment of some kind.  Do some damage!  Make the Germans sorry!  Crystal contributed a d4 to the mission pool, and Ralph rolled.

Failure.

Yep, target number of 12 and we failed.  This was actually pretty funny at this point.

So, Plug turned down a normal alley shortcut and got the tank stuck.  German forces were on alert, converging on our position, so Gigant put his foot down.  Time to go.  The crew abandoned the tank and made their escape.

<Chapter 3:  The Uprising Begins<<

Ola took charge and started barking orders.  The crew formed up and tried an alternate route to their rendezvous point.  (Crystal contributed a d6 to the mission pool.)  So they cut through the burned-out ruins of the Jewish ghetto.

As they got closer, Ola sent Leon on ahead to scout the area ahead.  He slipped up and made sure that the coast was clear.  (Keith contributed a d4 to the mission pool.)  All clear.

<

We adjusted our Grid positions, and Crystal singled out Gigant to make sure that he got a better die for the next Chapter.  But that meant that Leon slid into Nervous Breakdown, visiting a corner for the first time.

Grid positions at the end of Chapter 3:

Gigant:  E3
Plug:  A3
Leon:  A5
Ola:  C3


Post Game Reflection<The Shab-al-Hiri Roach<Polaris or Dirty Secrets<Grey Ranks<Polaris<too<Grey Ranks with Session 2: Uprising.

Grey Ranks[/i] a whirl and then head into Nine Worlds.  Should be fun.  So, last Friday, we fired up Grey Ranks<Grey Ranks is a GMless RPG set during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, where the Polish resistance forces unsuccessfully tried to liberate their capital from their German invaders.  You play teens in the Grey Ranks, which is essentially the underground Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of Poland, which had been outlawed in the wake of the German invasion of 1939.

You cannot change the course of history; Warsaw will still fall.  Instead, the game uses the Warsaw Uprising as a setting for coming-of-age stories about these teen characters.  I told Crystal that Grey Ranks is a romance story set in a war zone.  She looked at me funny, but I was being serious.  Grey Ranks<Players and Dramatis Personae<have<Session 1:  Resistance

Chapter 1:  Monkey-wrenching the Occupation

Gameplay is divided into Chapters.  Chapter 1 is actually a special prologue Chapter, similar in concept to Dogs in the Vineyars<Grey Ranks<after<really<Chapter 2:  The Nazis Begin to Get Nervous<<

Now, Ola had a plan.  She wanted to get the tank turned around and go after a German encampment of some kind.  Do some damage!  Make the Germans sorry!  Crystal contributed a d4 to the mission pool, and Ralph rolled.

Failure.

Yep, target number of 12 and we failed.  This was actually pretty funny at this point.

So, Plug turned down a normal alley shortcut and got the tank stuck.  German forces were on alert, converging on our position, so Gigant put his foot down.  Time to go.  The crew abandoned the tank and made their escape.

<Chapter 3:  The Uprising Begins<<

Ola took charge and started barking orders.  The crew formed up and tried an alternate route to their rendezvous point.  (Crystal contributed a d6 to the mission pool.)  So they cut through the burned-out ruins of the Jewish ghetto.

As they got closer, Ola sent Leon on ahead to scout the area ahead.  He slipped up and made sure that the coast was clear.  (Keith contributed a d4 to the mission pool.)  All clear.

<

We adjusted our Grid positions, and Crystal singled out Gigant to make sure that he got a better die for the next Chapter.  But that meant that Leon slid into Nervous Breakdown, visiting a corner for the first time.

Grid positions at the end of Chapter 3:

Gigant:  E3
Plug:  A3
Leon:  A5
Ola:  C3


Post Game Reflection<The Shab-al-Hiri Roach<Polaris or Dirty Secrets<Grey Ranks<Polaris<too<Grey Ranks with Session 2: Uprising.

[Jason Morningstar]

Whoa, Leon is in trouble.  You've already got a guy on the verge of complete emotional collapse...and things aren't even truly hellish yet. 

Your comments on scene guidance are well-taken, and I've definitely seen people struggle with that.  Thing is, it always works out because it has to, which is kind of interesting - if somebody uses their Mission scene to describe what would normally be considered the goal of the mission, that's totally OK.  It can't be, unless they are the last person to go.  So you might need to get creative with pacing, or timing, or even causality.  I tend to be pretty loose about the definition of "mission", too - if you deliver the ammo to the barricade early, maybe the mission includes getting home in one piece. 

Thanks for the thoughtful write-up!  Your Crew seems really cool. 

One note - mission target number is scene number multiplied by the number of players, so for Chapter two, it should have been 8. 

[GreatWolf]

Your comments on scene guidance are well-taken, and I've definitely seen people struggle with that.  Thing is, it always works out because it has to, which is kind of interesting - if somebody uses their Mission scene to describe what would normally be considered the goal of the mission, that's totally OK.  It can't be, unless they are the last person to go.  So you might need to get creative with pacing, or timing, or even causality.  I tend to be pretty loose about the definition of "mission", too - if you deliver the ammo to the barricade early, maybe the mission includes getting home in one piece. 

And it seems to be working out here, too.  Over on Story Games, Steve Segedy mentioned a facilitator's handout.  This should probably be an item on that handout.  It's cool if a group is supposed to find its own sense of how long a scene should be, as long as they know it going in.  (Personal design bias.)

One note - mission target number is scene number multiplied by the number of players, so for Chapter two, it should have been 8. 

How do you say "I'm dumb" in Polish?  Yeah, we played with a target number of 8; I just wrote it down wrong.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Seth,

The thing I liked most about Grey Ranks, among many excellent things, is the arrangement of Action scenes within a mission. If I'm recalling correctly, anyone can call for someone else's Action scene, and in that way become a mini-GM for a bit. Only one person can call per chapter, and everyone gets one and only one Action scene. They can go in any order for characters.

This has lots of small effects that add up to a very usable, understandable, and flexible structure in play. For example, the relationship of the current Team Leader to the Mission can vary all the way from a dramatic act in the beginning to a desperate last-ditch bid for success in the end. For example, who "calls" and who "gets" narrows down through the mission until the last one is dictated in terms of players.

It also interacts nicely with the slightly more straightforward Personal scenes, because they are totally flexible in terms of placement, and a given player calls one upon himself or herself.

We played with four people, so every chapter had eight scenes. Every Mission was different in terms of "who goes when," and how Personal scenes related to that. My point is that arriving at that structure for each one was easy. It was neither dictated through some rigid formula, nor wide-open and thus subject to tedious negotiation.

The reason I'm bringing this up is because it means the person who really wants to frame a hot scene this minute can do so, and anyone who doesn't feel the spirit moving them this minute doesn't have to. And it gets easier after the halfway point of the Mission because so much has happened. The "frame you now" sorts can hop right in, and the "must have stuff to riff off" sorts can wait for it.

We found that Radio Lightning always provided inspiration for the Mission itself, so armed with this structured flexibility, scene framing was actually ten times easier for us than when playing Polaris or some other "you! now frame this!" games.

Did you and the others in this game really make use of that particular rules feature?

Best, Ron

[Filip Luszczyk]

How do you say "I'm dumb" in Polish?

I suggest "Jestem glupi" or "Ale ze mnie jelop" for bonus sophistication. "Koziel, powiadasz?" is a good expression to use in such a situation as well.

However, in this particular context, we'd normally just use the all-purpose word.

[GreatWolf]

Filip,

Awesome!  Now I can try to mangle the pronunciation like an American!

Amusing story:  My brother-in-law is Polish.  (He emigrated to the U.S. at age 8 after his father spent three months in jail for being part of Solidarity.)  When I saw him for Thanksgiving, I mentioned how Polish is known as the "secret language", because it's so hard for non-Poles to learn.  He looked at me in utter confusion.  "It's simple.  Just look at the letters on the page and say them."  I almost laughed in his face.

Turns out he's right, though.  Once you know the rules, Polish is apparently easier to pronounce than English, with all its silly exceptions....


Ron,

We found that Radio Lightning always provided inspiration for the Mission itself, so armed with this structured flexibility, scene framing was actually ten times easier for us than when playing Polaris or some other "you! now frame this!" games.

Did you and the others in this game really make use of that particular rules feature?

Radio Lightning was quite helpful.  In fact, our Chapter 3 mission was framed straight out of Radio Lightning information.  It's a great tool, especially combined with the Situation Elements. 
As I've thought about it more, I've realized that this is a common issue that most GMless designs need to address.  "We have our characters, but now the situation needs motion."  And, oddly enough, the start of the Uprising isn't enough.  This is a change in the setting, but it's still up to the players to establish what this means for the characters.  (I'm running into a similar issue with my current design; I'll be posting about it in Playtest in the near future.)

Upon some reflection, I think that Chapter 1 was probably the hardest for me, because we were establishing our characters in play.  Since I didn't have a good sense of who my character was, I was trying to figure out what to do in the situation.  Combine this with my confusion over the "length" of a Mission scene, and I found myself a little adrift.  Once I got my Reputations and (especially) my Thing Held Dear, I had a better sense of what do this with this character.  (For example, Gigant is set up for a horribly tragic love story of some kind.)

I do agree that the interaction of Mission scenes with Personal scenes is quite powerful.  I made sure to stress to the players that they can call for Personal scenes whenever they want.  I suppose that I could simply view the "scene length" the same way.  In other words, just keep going until you run out of ideas or someone else frames another scene.

Now, maybe this is just my open personal hangup, and now I'm performing self-therapy on an Internet forum.  Dunno.  Am I alone in this?  I'd love to hear from other folks who have played Grey Ranks.

[Valamir]

The mini GM capability of assigning someone a mission scene works pretty well.

In Chapter Two after careening wildly out of the tank park for my initial mission scene, and after Keith's mission scene of trying to get on the tank, I looked at Seth and said, "we've encountered a road block...shoot the gun! shoot the gun!".

In Chapter Three after getting my friend killed due to the tragedy of my d10 die, and after Seth's Gigant beat Plug unconcious for it, and after Crystal had her moment of bossing every one around to try and salvage the mission by taking an alternate route I looked at Keith and said, "Stephan's dead, I'm unconcious, Gigant is carrying the guns and me...guess who has to scout ahead for a safe way through the old ghetto..."

There are certain actions that just seem to follow as an "obvious" next step for the mission, and so far its been equally "obvious" whose character just has to get it done.

If we had to choose our own mission scenes that would suck.

Having to narrate the chosen mission scene when we've taken the "total tragedy" die also sucks...but in a very good way.