Cold City: all that you leave behind

My Sunday night gaming group continued to work through my shelf of indie games last week, beginning a game of Cold City. We’ve all been looking forward to it for a good long time now, and it even tempted Geoff out to play.

I took a leaf out of Malcolm’s game and spent a whole session on setting up the campaign and doing character creation. We discussed themes, possible scenes and other stuff, although for the most part the group were keen to go with it “as written.”

We decided to go for a dark but pulpy tone, with terrible (and tentacled) monsters and Hellboy-style Nazi villains. There was mention of streaking it with black comedy too, but after the horror of the draw scenes I suspect that will be left by the wayside.

We discussed who the players wanted the villains to be and, apart from the aforementioned Hellboy-esque villains, Geoff was keen to focus on the void left behind by the Nazis, with opposition coming from the conflicting power struggles of the occupying powers. So whilst Nazis might well feature, the real danger and antagonism should come from supposed allies.

I asked them for some scenes they’d like to see, but instead we got some locations. However, coupled with the aftermath of the draw scenes I think I’ve got quite a lot to work with. They threw at me: something explodes, a warehouse filled with tesla-esque technology, an abandoned hospital, a bomb factory and an underground laboratory. Oh, and no sewers.

We then created characters together, the players having decided on nationalities some weeks ago. We settled on an ‘open’ game, so everyone knows everyone else’s secrets – at least out of character. As usual we setup a wiki to record characters, notes and that sort of thing on. We ended up with:

Dave: Bjorn (I forget his surname), a former German Army engineer sequestered to certain black projects during the latter stages of the war. He was part of some of the Nazi experiments, and saw rather too much, but remains useful to the RPA for his insights into twisted technology. He is one of two civilians serving in the team.

Rob: Sergent-Chef Christophe “Chef” Baptiste, a former French resistance fighter, and now a high(ish)-ranking French army officer. He is fiercely untrusting with a self-destructive streak, and is the only survivor of a daring commando raid on a Nazi castle in the Alps during the war.

Jan: Lt Ivan “Vanya” Konstantine, an soldier in the Red Army and survivor of the horrors of Stalingrad. After what he saw at Stalingrad he is emotionally dead and detached, but also utterly fearless and remarkably hard to kill. In many ways he is unthinkingly loyal to Mother Russia, and willing to forgive her many sins in pursuit of revenge.

Darren: Sir Edward Samuels, a diplomat with a long history with the foreign office who spent much of the war trying to negotiate peace with Germany. He is a relic of a bygone age of Imperialism and Colonialism, and his passion for big game hunting led him to Germany to chase rumours of strange and unique beasts. He is lofty and arrogant, viewing himself far above the concerns of the common man.

Geoff: Captain Ryan O’Reilly, a veteran combat pilot in the USAF who was shot down over Berlin towards the end of the war, and came into contact with twisted technology whilst hiding out in the sewers. His experiences scarred him more than he lets on, and he is an insomniac plagued with horrific nightmares.

So we ended up with an interesting set of characters, although they weren’t as tied together or into the setting as much as I’d have hoped for. I skipped the relationship map, which may have been a mistake with hindsight. Still, they had a good range of traits and agendas, many of which conflicted horribly with one another.

We had just enough time after character creation to play out the draw scenes for each character. The draw scenes went very well indeed, and were invaluable in giving us an insight into each of the characters, seeing what made them tick and how they came to be here.

The draw scenes played out as follows:

Vanya was cornered with his unit in Stalingrad, under attack from German STs who rose from beneath the snow around them. The conflict was whether he escaped without injury – he succeeded, but it was a slight success so his comrades died whilst he got away. He took the ‘hard to kill’ trait.

Bjorn was maintaining the twisted machinery during a sinister Nazi experiment when something began to go awry. The conflict was whether he could fix the machinery before the experiment went badly wrong. He succeeded, but it was another slight success, so the experiment was a success, but the scientists died in the process … only to be reanimated in the process. I forget which trait he took.

Christophe was infiltrating a chateau high in the French Alps where high ranking members of the Nazi party were meeting, or so he thought. It turned out to be a dark cabal summoning something terrible, and the conflict was whether Christophe’s bombs would destroy the castle before anything came through. He failed, and left the castle believing he had succeeded when in fact something had come through after all. He took the trait ‘over-confident.’

Edward’s scene took place after the war, in a village in the Black Forest where he had heard rumours of a strange beast akin to a hybrid of wolf and giant ape. It turned out to be a werewolf-like monster, and the conflict was whether Edward killed it or not. He got a slight success, and narrated wounding it rather than killing it, but he succeeded at escaping unharmed. Edward took the ‘motivated by the kill’ trait.

Finally we had Ryan’s scene, which creeped both myself and Geoff out no end. The scene was in the sewers beneath Berlin, with Ryan constantly on edge trying to dodge German patrols … and worse. He heard a child’s voice calling out to him, and saw a young girl come round the corner. But her shadow was not that of a girl, and as she approached (calling out “Daddy! Daddy!” the whole while) began to unravel into a mass of tentacles, topped with a child’s head. The conflict was whether Ryan could get away without having to shoot the ‘child’ – he got a narrow failure, shooting the child by accident, but not killing her, as his gun went off as he panicked and fled. He took the rather wonderful trait ‘sees the monsters as the victims.’

The session worked very well indeed, and I can’t wait for the next session tonight! Plenty of buttons to push and rich imagery to tap into.

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for posting up the AP for your game. I should probably add for the benefit of others that the Draw Scenes that Andrew mentioned are a new addition to the game that came out of this thread.

It's always interesting to see the different tones that people take for Cold City, ranging from dark noir and psych horror to pulp and even black comedy. The characters certainly all sound very varied and interesting. I look forward to hearing how the next session goes for you once the group gets in to the meat of the game.

Cheers
Malcolm