Hi Mithras,

On 2001-10-10 15:28, Mithras wrote:

Running with this doomed attitude from the word go, I'm working on a horror in war RPG focussed on the Vietnam War. Characters are going downhill fast, becoming quickly hardened to the terrors and atrocities of the conflict, and turning severe psychological damage (meanwhile) into hidden psychological flaws.

Its going to be nasty. Its going to be tragic. There's not alot you can do about it. Just 'be there' and share the overwhelming horror engulf you...

I think that the problem that I'd have with a concept like this is finding the protagonism in the characters. I like the characters to have victories, and successes, even if they have to fail a lot first. Even if the characters get a little evil themselves its fine as long as they get to be the good guys at some point.

Even in CoC, the players can still try. If they die fighting, well, that's heroic. In the case of Paul's (Mithras) Vietnam game, I don't see where the entertainment is at all; at least not from the brief description. Could I maybe learn from it? I suppose, but having been associated with the military for fifteen years and hearing actual war stories from vietnam that I'd never care to repeat, I think I may have had enough education of that sort. It's not something that I'd feel a need to participate in.

Mike

but who the heck could handle the second option over an extended period of time? Is there such a thing as *too intense* in a role-playing game? You mention that it will "be tragic" and that "overwhelming horror" will engulf you. This brings up an issue that I think a lot of people are uneasy about dealing with: the difference between the horror found in the Exorcist and that found in Saving Private Ryan.
-Tor

I personally wouldn't go there with ther deliberate intent of exploring horror that viscerally. I don;t necessarliy think it should be sacharined, but I would think that horror serves better as an adjunct than the central point. I know enough people with war stories to agree with Mike that I would not choose to repeat them, certainly not for entertainment anyway. Although I find war gorrifying, I don;t think theres any point to wallowing in it.

Laurel said:

I think one of the important components to successful "intense" role-play is to ensure that stories have a beginning, middle, and an end. Characters and players both have breaking points. Even in epic chronicles that last for years, they need opportunities to recover from emotional crisis and have closure from one episode before the next begins. If the intense trauma never ends, or its overplayed without other kinds of emotional experiences to compensate, then everything breaks down.

The only I problem I can foresee with the concept of a very intense Vietnam RPG is that some gamers if not old enough to have been involved in the war personally are old enough to either remember it or had family members who were overseas fighting in it. WWII is far enough in the past to lose that direct connection for most people. Vietnam isn't.

For example, my wife had an older cousin who went to Vietnam. He came back a very different person but the only person that he ever talked to or mentioned anything about the war to was her. He never talked about it to his family (all of whom had served in previous wars themselves). Up until his death he was never quite right and went through multiple marriages because of it. Though my wife finds the topic interesting I don't think she could ever play anything that intense having "lost" a family member to it.

Just my 2 cents.

Warning: film-geek learned-butthole comment is approaching.

Francois Truffaut, I think, said that one could not make an anti-war film because, bluntly, war was fun to watch and to imagine oneself being there (emphasis on imagine). My personal construction of war stories is that the vast majority of them are coming-of-age stories, placed in a dangerous environment such that the issue is thrown into high stakes. Other issues of war (some might say the "real" or definitional issues) simply don't enter into these stories.

I'm not sure Truffaut was entirely correct, but the very few movies that I consider critical of war, in the sense of addressing IT as an issue, tend to stay away from the battlefield through much of their length (Full Metal Jacket, Born on the Fourth of July).

To shift gears slightly - what is "horror," anyway? As I said long ago on the Sorcerer mailing list (archived at my site), horror requires comprehension, reflection, and in many cases identification. It is horror not only of "ick poo" or "Oh no, don't get me" but also of "what the hell ARE we." Jason Blair is completely right to state that Little Fears is about childhood TERROR instead.

So what to do with ANY fictional effort involved with Viet Nam or any military action that carries conflicting moral and emotional resonance within one's culture? That's a personal issue and cannot be dictated from any person to another, in artistic terms. Go ye and create if that's where the creative passion is turning.

In case anyone's interested, my own call is to bring those conflicts directly into the emotional foreground, if the purpose is horror. This is a very different outlook from the often-stated view that to role-play horror is all about scaring the players. I have no intention of scaring the players; I want us all to be shaky and reflective rather than startled and a little giggly.

Best,
Ron

Well strangely enough, I think the realist bent in modern film making illustrates some of the, umm, goals, of simulationist play. The coherency, plausibility, of the environment are valid and "entertaining" without such measures as character development and the like. If you WANT to tell a story in this context, it is a story IN war not a story ABOUT war. The ABOUT only needs depiction. If this is what bakes your biscuit, you don't need a GM to handle anything more than rules adjudication and bit parts; a bit like CounterStrike, say (which incidentally a lot of my sim/gamist ex-players are playing these days).

But isn't all of that, in RPG, just casting your Orcs as Viet Cong, or whoever your enemy-of-choice happens to be? Thats fairly "neutral", but going out of your way to explore the MOST unpleasant, dehumanising aspects of war is in my opinion not a useful exercise, and I personally cannot experience it as Fun. I do not shy away from the horrors of war, and can use these, I feel, appropriately in games - but games which are IN war rather than about it.

If such a game were to be written perhaps it should be tackled a bit like 'Puppies - it could be called "Killin' Commies for Capitalism"

Hey Gareth (contracycle),

I see where you're coming from, but it seems to me as if an independent variable is getting mixed in: depiction of specific acts or events.

I'm thinking that role-playing toward a critical view (by which I mean issues-addressing, not negative) of war may or may not include full-screen, detailed atrocity. I'm thinking of the scene in Full Metal Jacket in which we see the tail-gunner firing chattering machine-gun out the bay of the helicopter. We never see what he's shooting at or anything about where the bullets go. A character asks him, "How can you shoot women and children?" He answers, in apparent total lack of reflection about it, "Easy! Just lead them a little less!"

The scene is not graphic in the slightest but I find it horrifying.

So I definitely see your point, but wanted to distinguish between (1) being about-war or in-war, and (2) depicting specific things.

Best,
Ron

I remember Full Metal Jacket quite well. My favorite (if you can call it that) war films for purposes of underlining the absolute folly of war are Glory and Gallipoli.

Glory is set during the Civil War. The theme there can be summed up by "Captain, My Captain" rather than "Charge of the Light Brigade," were you to use poetry as a metaphor. I came out of that viewing with a sick feeling about the waste of young lives, and the futility of the action that led to the protagonists' deaths. For me, the most intense moment was Matthew Broderick's scene on the beach prior to the final charge against the impregnable rebel fortress. He let his horse go free rather than throw its life away as he was about to do with his own.

Gallipoli ends on a similar note: you see men reacting to the knowledge that in a few moments their lives will be thrown away for nothing.

Finally, I'll point anyone interested in a fine presentation of moral issues without a combat emphasis to Breaker Morant, which deals with a court martial of Australian soldiers during the Boer War.

(Aside: It occurs to me that designing an RPG focused on courtroom drama could be an interesting challenge. The players would probably have to be attorneys and investigators rather than clients. Hmm.... Any other attorney types out there who'd like to comment on this? For that matter, I'd be interested in hearing what any of the Forge crew has to say.)

Anyway, an excellent source for capturing a broad sense of how war affects society is Studs Terkel's "The Good War," an oral history composed of interviews with World War II veterans. Lots of good material there, and the descriptions of the Pacific war from the viewpoint of U.S. Marine Corps veterans is truly chilling. I'd also point people to "Backs to the Wall," a very personal history of the London Blitz that draws heavily on the journals and experiences of everyday laborers and common citizens as well as the politicans and military leaders.

Best,

Blake

Hey All.

contracycle,

If such a game were to be written perhaps it should be tackled a bit like 'Puppies - it could be called "Killin' Commies for Capitalism"

"If they run, they're VC. If they don't run, they're well disciplined VC." -Full Metal Jacket

Y'know, if I though that I could do it as well as Stanley Kubrick, I might give it a try. But, c'mon, hardly nobody's that good (certainly no role-players I know). And even if they were, I wonder about the sort of mechanics that would propell that sort of story. Hmmm.. How about this. You get a stat called degredation that is doled out like EXP by the GM based on how depraved your character acts. Accumulate a certain number of points, and you get to go home and never have to play again.

I think I'll just rent the movie again...


Mike Holmes

On 2001-10-12 12:24, Ron Edwards wrote:
My personal construction of war stories is that the vast majority of them are coming-of-age stories, placed in a dangerous environment such that the issue is thrown into high stakes. Other issues of war (some might say the "real" or definitional issues) simply don't enter into these stories.

I'm not sure Truffaut was entirely correct, but the very few movies that I consider critical of war, in the sense of addressing IT as an issue, tend to stay away from the battlefield through much of their length (Full Metal Jacket, Born on the Fourth of July).

I think some excellent points have been raised in this thread. Warfare is something common to roleplaying games. RPG warfare isn't commonly approached in the way its approached in "Full Metal Jacket" or "Saving Private Ryan", though. I don't think it has to do with the fact these movies are set in Viet Nam and not in Jerusalem during the Crusade or on an Imperial Battle Cruiser: its not the specific setting, its the specific presentation of "war as physical and psychological hell" that make this kind of movie so chilling and horrific. I don't know how well I'd like RPGs that presented warfare ala "Full Metal Jacket"...
I would have to play one, first. I'm very sure many role-players would NOT like it.

Laurel

Well I've waded in late on this one, I apologise!

Obvously I need to back up the brief description I posted, don't I? When I began writing the game years ago, it was to be a straight 'you are commandos' RPG format. Having digested tons of material on the war in the intervening years, I wanted to do two things in the game.

1) I wanted to include some sense of horror. To make it less like Kelly's Heroes and more like Saving Private Ryan. Not horror as in the PCs commit atrocities, but horror as in they realise some of the futility. They get a taste of real war. In other words - it's serious business.

2) I wanted to educate. I'm sorry but it's true. I wanted to get over in the game some idea of what it was like to be there. I'm a great fan of this kind of explorattive roleplaying. Via RPG I can go anywhere, do anything and be safe. Let's go to Vietnam - and be safe.

I've written a good deal of my Vietnam game. To be honest, the horror is one sided. The VC are portrayed almost as an impersonal force, a rarely seen enemy striking from the jungle or the darkness. A notch up on the horror meter there. Never show your monster.

I've had my troubled moments. I've read the accounts. I want the personalities of the PCs to go through the changes suffered by many soldiers, from the panic of that first 'horror' to the grim determination to'take it' and the slow unravelling later on as the bottled up horror emeges as some psyvchological flaw. But I have been worried about what I want PCs to become. I don't want baby killers and rapists. I've said before I would never let any player in any one of my games commit rape. So how does this gel with a game about horror in war?

So I'm thinking carefully. What I've come up with is a system where PCs try to survive as long as they can (both physically and more important, mentally). When they reach the unacceptable uncontrolled ultra-desensitized stage they are removed from the game (Cthulhu style). Its 'losing' in effect.

So the game is about navigating through mission after mission, learning quickly, trying to keep a lid on your assailed psychology, trying not to let your stresses show. Trying to stay normal.

The firefights are quick and brutal - yes. So are those in many RPGs. They are more frightening, however - because you rarely see the enemy, even after the combat is over.

I see a narrative shape to the missions and betweenmission time, a la Tour of Duty. About the psychological stresses and how they might manifest, and how the players can handle those within the squad.

I hope that's made things a little clearer. Some fine comments here, BTW. You've really given me food for thought.

I just wanted to drop a quick note on what actually is the horror in war. The horror in war, and in most slasher movies, is quite simply, the level of dehumanization that occurs to both the perpetrators and the victims.
When you see living humans, treated as meat, slashed, cut, exploded, shot, burned, what have you, you either feel immediate revulsion or else you dehumanize them; in effect, treat them as not humans. You yourself must distance yourself as the perpetrator did.
The nature of war is that man is dying mostly for someone else's political ideals and/or greed. It's one thing to educate why we should not have war. I myself, cannot read historical books about slavery, in Africa, Asia, Southamerica, and the general results of colonialism and all its aftermath without wanting to go out and beat people senseless.
Nothing is more frustrating that knowing the sheer amount of atrocity that has gone unpunished, and continues to do so in our world without even a face to put it to.
As intense as a game is, its still just a game. It's not the same as listening to a fellow human scream for hours, knowing that you cannot take back what you have done. I doubt too many people will learn the lesson to be taught, while a sad few will glorify it.
Not to be too serious about this subject, but I think 9/11 showed us what war is like, to be attacked on your homeland, and you cannot identify why. I pray that we can keep all our conflicts, ego posturing, and dreams of violence and conquest to sports, roleplaying games, videogames, and small bar scuffles.

I hope we do find a good way to teach people peace,

Bankuei

A discssion of war in RPGs leads me to reference this page I mentioned in another thread:

http://www.geocities.com/thesnarkhunt/brutaltruth/brutaltruth.html

I'm NOT a big GURPS fan, but there are some interesting ideas there.

Gordon

That is a great link.

I was considering some mechanism similar to Scott Lynch's EACH SOLDIER'S FATE SYSTEM.

Very nice.

With all the nasty words I've had for Paul's idea, I should mention that he has a lot of really awesome stuff (some of which I've stolen and use on a regular basis). :smile:

Oh, yeah, and I hear he's a pretty mean PBEM player as well.

Mike

Also see:

http://www.criticalmiss.com/backissues/issue5/bigpush3.html

Apparently GURPS is resonant with the horrors of war -- probably its lethal combat system.

In any case --

I think it's also important to note that, while War -is- Hell, it is other things, as well. The 'classical model' that states that 'War brings out the Best in Mankind' does have some merit -- in no other setting will thousands, if not millions, of men (and, theoretically, women) take up arms and sacrifice their lives for a greater good.

True, in the recent past we have seen numerous wars where that 'greater good' is more a puppet show from the powers that be -- in particular Vietnam (proxy war vs. USSR) or the Gulf War (protect oil interests), but that does not detract from wars previous to that -- World War Two, while not without political manuevering behind it, was also a worldwide crusade to stop horrible atrocities. The Civil War, even if it did not start over slavery, became about slavery, and had thousands of men risking their lives so that slavery might be blotted from their country.

Instead of focusing exclusively on the depravity of war, setting the depravity of war counterpoint to the honor and glory of war may be more rewarding. Even in Vietnam, which had little honor and glory, the noble side of humanity can be displayed. This would, most likely, be along the lines of Three Kings (soldiers in the Gulf War stumble onto a terrorized town, and defend it despite the fact that their orders do not tell them to) or Apocalypse Now (soldiers take that dip into depravity only to come up against a general who is orders of magnitude worse; they kill him in a pseudo-sacrificial action to purge themselves of the madness), with pockets of honor and even goodwill set against the backdrop of insanity. It makes the honorable even brighter than it would be on its own.

[ This Message was edited by: Thededine on 2001-10-22 23:29 ]

I think it's also important to note that, while War -is- Hell, it is other things, as well. The 'classical model' that states that 'War brings out the Best in Mankind' does have some merit -- in no other setting will thousands, if

not millions, of men (and, theoretically, women) take up arms and sacrifice their lives for a greater good.

I'm not really convinced that Three Kings or Apocalypse Now (both of which I have seen) speak to the glory of war or noble sacrifice. Rather the opposite IMO, the sheer pointlessness and brutality of war.

Yes, in Three Kings they turn out to be good guys but that is essentially unrelated to the war itself, the film has the war as backdrop but is not really about the war (except possibly in commenting on the far from noble motives for the war taking place, the war is fought for profit and the heros discover they have other values beyond those which ostensibly brought them there).

APOCALYPSE NOW SPOILER ALERT

Apocalypse now has sacrifice, but ultimately is an extremely dark film. The war is portrayed as an act of collective insanity, drug fuelled madness descending ultimately into chaos and horror. By the end the protagonist and nemesis are indistinguishable, the protagonist has become that which he opposed. The old king is dead and the new king is in place, to borrow from the Campbellian imagery the film uses.

END SPOILER ALERT

Modern industrial war does of course give rise at times to humanity's noblest instincts. The soldier who carries his wounded comrade back across enemy occupied territory, risking his own life to save his buddy, this is a heroic figure. The man who remains to cover an escape perhaps. But mostly it is brutal and efficient. We speak of the military machine with good reason. Professional soldiers are just that, professionals. Men and women doing difficult and dangerous jobs under stressful conditions. This can certainly be roleplayed in a Gurps Special Ops kind of way but it doesn't give an impression of mass warfare involving conscripts.

When you bring conscripts into the picture I think war often becomes brutal with a sense of futility. Think MASH, patching up horrifically wounded boys so as to send them back out to be killed. The first world war with serried ranks of men marching into machinegun fire. Vietnam with teenagers from Idaho dropped into a jungle being killed by people they'd never even heard of before. A place where even children in the street could be carrying bombs to kill you with.

Glory and honour in war are best brought out, IMO, in historical cultures which prized such things. Modern industrialised warfare has little space for it, its difficult to be noble when death is random and impersonal.

Its worth remembering also that those thousands who took up arms were mostly conscripts, the alternatives to taking up arms were usually prison and in some periods execution. Its less self-sacrificing to go to war when the alternative is prison, disgrace or death. These people had no real choice. That does not lessen what they did, but the bulk of conscript armies consist of just that, conscripts.

On 2001-10-22 16:33, Mike Holmes wrote:
With all the nasty words I've had for Paul's idea, I should mention that he has a lot of really awesome stuff (some of which I've stolen and use on a regular basis). :smile:

Thanks Mike! Don't worry about criticising this project. Even as I write it I'm still wrestling with the question 'what is the point?', both from the stand-point of the infantryman, and the player.

Staying alive isn't enough, is it? Can you imagine watching the first 20 mins of Saving Private Ryan extended out for 5 hours?? Players would come away feeling fatigue - thankful it was all over!

Story is essential. For story you need character conflict - that is conflict outside of the guns and bombs and VC. I think that is essential. But in doing so you immediately fictionalize the war, youput a pattern over it, give it shape and sense. War often has no sense. What was it Scott Lynch quoted in his Omaha Beach scenario BRUTAL TRUTH? "Let's get out of the water and get killed someplace else!!"

Story is good. You want 4-5 hours of entertainment for god's sakes, don't you? I just feel that if you choose a war as a setting, you should do your damndest to make that setting as scary as possible. If anything it should throw your story into high profile.

"We saved Sailor from re-enlisting and succumbing to the awful bribery of the Recruiting Sergeant, just before he was due for DEROS (going home) - and we survived that badass mission through My Tho where the bastard VC mined the footbridge, and that f***ng Phantom pilot tried to drop napalm on us thinking we were NVA."

Mike also said:
Oh, yeah, and I hear he's a pretty mean PBEM player as well.

Well we'll have to see about that. If I get as far as standing on the rim of the Ulysses Patera and look out north-west to the horizon to see the top half of blood red Olympus Mons glowering over the pink horizon then I might agree with you. See you there.

_________________
Mithras

Zozer Game Designs: Home to ultra-lite game The Ladder, as well as Roman epic fantasy ZENOBIA, Cthulhu add-ons, MARS the RPG and more - http://www.geocities.com/mithrapolis/games.html

[ This Message was edited by: Mithras on 2001-10-25 13:58 ]

This is easy Paul.

The goal: stay alive and stay human.

method: subplots.

In the midst of this war, you find a lost 2 year old.

boom.

guns, bombs, horror... and now a very human subplot.
By either finding the lil' guys parents, or by finding a safe caretaker for him, you gain some sort of Humanity Points or something.
"so shines a good deed in a weary world"

these types of "little victories" would be the breathing points amidst the horror.


I wanted to work on this with you, remember?
:wink:

Tom

On 2001-10-25 14:04, unheilig wrote:
I wanted to work on this with you, remember?
:wink:

Tom

That's true - I haven't forgotten! I have stopped work for now though. I can't see myself getting back into gear until December.

I've had some good feedback from our Target Audience design group, so will be more than willing to pass around stuff to be read, hacked at, rewritten, rolled up and thrown away etc!

What you've described in your post pretty much encapsulates the vision I have I think. Just hope I can get the balance right.

On 2001-10-23 06:41, Balbinus wrote:
I'm not really convinced that Three Kings or Apocalypse Now speak to the glory of war or noble sacrifice. Rather the opposite IMO, the sheer pointlessness and brutality of war.

Yes, in Three Kings ... the heros discover they have other values beyond those which ostensibly brought them there.

APOCALYPSE NOW SPOILER ALERT

Apocalypse now has sacrifice, but ultimately is an extremely dark film. The war is portrayed as an act of collective insanity, drug fuelled madness descending ultimately into chaos and horror. By the end the protagonist and nemesis are indistinguishable, the protagonist has become that which he opposed. The old king is dead and the new king is in place, to borrow from the Campbellian imagery the film uses.

END SPOILER ALERT

Modern industrial war does of course give rise at times to humanity's noblest instincts. The soldier who carries his wounded comrade back across enemy occupied territory, risking his own life to save his buddy, this is a heroic figure. The man who remains to cover an escape perhaps. But mostly it is brutal and efficient. We speak of the military machine with good reason. Professional soldiers are just that, professionals. Men and women doing difficult and dangerous jobs under stressful conditions.

When you bring conscripts into the picture I think war often becomes brutal with a sense of futility... Its worth remembering also that those thousands who took up arms were mostly conscripts, the alternatives to taking up arms were usually prison and in some periods execution. Its less self-sacrificing to go to war when the alternative is prison, disgrace or death. These people had no real choice. That does not lessen what they did, but the bulk of conscript armies consist of just that, conscripts.

Glory and honour in war are best brought out, IMO, in historical cultures which prized such things. Modern industrialised warfare has little space for it, its difficult to be noble when death is random and impersonal.

On 2001-10-26 21:53, Thededine wrote:
To relate this back to gaming, the PCs get taken on a horrors-of-war ride. The -conflict- comes from struggling to survive the experience, not only physically but also emotionally. 'Surviving' and even triumphing do not mean being unchanged -- far from it. The characters -will- change, and they will be traumatized, and they will be scarred, but they will remain -human-, and to do that, they need to hold on to human virtues. The most easily accessible virtues in a war setting are honor, glory and doing the right thing.

I agree with these sentiments, especially your comments that the characters will change and be traumatized. There's no getting away from it is there? I think any 'reality of experience' RPG needs to provide some hope of clinging on to humanity. The goal isn't to take the village or even not get hit, but to stay human while doing so. There are obvious comparisons with Vampire here, I suppose. Forced to commit daily atrocities - how far and how fast do you fall?

A note here on Spielberg/Hanks' Band of Brothers that retains the brutalising imagery and camera techniques of Saving Private RYan, but packages them up into a 10 part series that follows a unit throughout the liberation of France. This series does show war at its nastiest and most frightening. A real eye opener. But does include 'off-stage' emotional development. In my opinion, though, it is very very weak. I have no idea what the lead characters are feeling or thinking ... so there's not much counter-point to the terror of the amazing combat scenes.

Remember combat films in the days before Saving Private Ryan? The old WW2 movies, where glorious music played the troops into battle, all the bullets used the same stock sound effect, men fell over and rarely bled, explosions were just puffs of stage-effect flame and you knew someone was going to get shot because you could predict the script.

I'm glad those days of cinematic censorship are over.

With regards to degradation and all that, I thought I'd mention a system I've used with some success. We call it corruption.

Your average human being has a corruption of 1. They'll lie, maybe cheat a little, occasionally steal or swear. They're not perfect, but they're alright.

A hardened criminal, is not averse to hurting someone for their own needs, but only in a small way [a light kicking]. This is corruption 2. You are jaded.

3 requires that you reach for violence or somesuch a little more readily. Fraud becomes part of your arsenal, as does blackmail. Moral standards start to slip. You are numb to violence.

4 means that violence is the first tool in your arsenal. Suffering is a means to an end, and nothing to worry about. At this point you're pretty much a monster.

5 means that you actively enjoy the suffering you cause.

The scale goes up to 10, but only for NPCs. Player characters become a nightmare at 5, so are retired.

Corruption accumulates as Permanent and Temporary. 1/3 is PC 1, TC 3, when TC is 10, PC goes up, and TC is reset to the new level of PC. You'll have noticed that at 9/10 you hit an infintite corruption loop. At this kind of level, the mechanisms of your depravity are likely such that almost nothing can stop them.

The system was devised for a Vampire LARP that I'm still an ST for. Corruption gains you access to disciplines and other neat stuff, but means that various things do you more harm, and you can clearly be pointed at and labelled evil, which is often a bad thing.

Corruption is awarded for 'bad deeds' and removed [at a much slower rate] for good deeds. The supernatural element isn't likely to be important, but it does serve as a loose framework to trace a moral collapse.

Perhaps it should act as a penalty in various interactions? A measure like SAN in CoC may serve a similar purpose, though I'm of the inclination that there should be two:

What you've done, and What you've seen. The latter is perhaps a little harsh, unless the degree it affects you is somehow connected to your involvement in the act that produced the results you witness.

Of course, those are just my thoughts.

drew