I played in a Grey Ranks game Friday night of Gateway. Noble served as our facilitator, walking us through the rules and reading the radio reports. I don't remember everyone's S-G handles, but I was joined by CK, Brendan, and Colin. We played through 3 chapters (I think 5, 6, and 7?), so that we'd get the midway flavor of the game, when things had started to unravel.

In each chapter, there is a mission. Each player gets a spotlight scene during the mission, as well as a personal scene whenever they want during the chapter. Each player receives two dice, based on their placement on the emotions grid and a d4 for their reputation, which can be boosted if they bring their reputation into play. One of the dice is assigned to the mission, and one to the personal scene, as the player deems fit. Before the last mission scene, all the mission dice are rolled to determined the success or failure of the mission. Based on your win/loss pattern in the personal scene and mission, you then move to another part of the emotional grid, which gets ou a different die and different inspiration list (thematic elements you can incorporate, if you choose).

In the beginning, CK had the spotlight and he made the statement that there were Nazis approaching that might discover us. It was at this point that we realized that there was no conflict resolution method other that one final roll of everyone's contributed dice for the whole mission. Therefore, the tension could not come from success or failure, but from what we decided to do, because we'd always be as successful as we wanted until the final scene, after the dice had been rolled. CK scrapped the Nazi and instead made the scene about one of the NPCs, one of the PCs' sister, being scared and not wanting to come on the mission. Then the Nazi came and she didn't shoot him, and he had a personal scene about that.

Personal scenes, unlike mission scenes, do have a die roll to decide whether the character succeeds or fails. So, when CK tried to talk the girl unto killing Nazis ("They're just like birds. You can shoot birds"), there was a mechanic to see if she came along.

The difficulty of both the personal scene and overall mission rolls are based on what chapter you're playing, making both harder as time goes on. Given that we started with the fifth chapter, it was actually numerically impossible to succeed with our d4s, but I guess there aren't too many happy memories/experiences left by chapter 5. You could use your d4 on the mission and the bigger die if you had one on the personal scene.

You could also boost the D4 by being 18 (for personal scenes) or 15 (for missions), narrating in your reputation, or re-rolling with a d12 by threatening/destroying the thing you hold dearest. The first mission didn't go so well because we hadn't figured all this out.

What did go great, however, was the parallelism that emerged between our personal and mission scenes. Once CK said the Nazis were like birds, there were birds everywhere, foreshadowing the bloodshed to come. For instance, Brendan's personal story about having to kill chickens in the butcher shop intercut with having to stab a Nazi.

One thing our game fell down on a bit was PC-interaction. Most of the really emotionally charged scenes were the personal ones, which made the mission scenes charged only in what they echoed from the personal stories. There were numerous wonderful scenes with NPCs (played, of course, by the other players), but not many between PCs. It was like watching a movie where all you knew about the characters, emotionally, came from flashbacks. I was spotlighted in a scene where my character became convinced that one of the other Grey Ranks, also an NPC, was betraying us. I flashbacked to a personal scene of giving up my neighbors to the Nazis out of childish naivete (I framed the circumstances, turned to Colin and said, "If you would be so kind as to interrogate me?"). Then I killed the suspected traitor back in the mission scene.

One thing that we continously had problems with was understanding the smaller-the-die-the-greater-the-personal-victory mechanic. We were unsure if we were supposed to narrate something good when we pushed forward our small dice and bad when we pushed forward our larger dice or what.

I'd like to back up a moment and talk about the lack of conflict resolution in the individual mission scenes. At first I found this kind of annoying and hard to grapple with, but I realized that it made our decisions far more devestating to the players. In our years of gaming, we've all come to see "rolling well" as exciting. No matter what awful thing you're about to do, if you roll well to do it, the pleasure center in your brain perks up and says, "good job!" Without that rolling step, when you just do it, it feels bleaker, like you've got no one to back you up on your actions. You can't blame it on the dice. It's all you.

Summary:
The Good: Wonderfully evocative setting. The inspiration lists, each according to where you are on the emotion grid, were great.
The Bad: Seriously guys, I don't think I could take a whole campaign of this. Maybe if there were like a month between each chapter. The mechanics don't really push PC interaction as much as I'd like, but I imagine that was mostly the group's fault.
The Confusing: The low die/things go better mechanic. I still have very little grasp. The lack of conflict resolution in the individual mission scenes was hard to get used to, as well.

It's a great game with some interesting mechanics, and I enjoyed playing it. But it was also a little bit of crotch-kicking game-- how can I make this as emotionally wrenching as possible? Which, I like, but only in small doses.

Thanks for the great AP writeup, Holly. It's really good to hear where the game worked and where it didn't. I hope everyone had fun, despite the crotch-kicking!

I'm guessing that you guys were playing with a playtest version of the rules- is that right? In the official release, the age mechanic has been removed (being 15 or 17 no longer impacts your dice for scenes). Also the final version clarifies some other aspects of the game, such as how mission dice impact narration for the scene.

In any case, it sounds like you got the concept in the end- essentially, the idea is to create a tension between individual and team interests. A low die is bad for the group (it makes it harder to succeed in the mission), so it's better for the player character personally. If you contribute a D4, it's a great personal success of some kind for your character. If you put in a D10 it's a great personal failure, but the team will benefit with a better chance of success.

Also, thanks Ian for facilitating the game at Gateway! Let us know if we can do anything to help you do it again in the future!

First: Holly, I am in awe of your write up.


Second:

I'm the CK in the Friday game with Holly.

I didn't notice until I read Holly's write up that are characters really didn't have moments with each other. I mean, really, at all. Which is weird.

Part of that was this: We started the ame playing some of the Personal Scenes inside of the mission scenes. It was more a personal moment within the mission. Ian pointed out that these had to be separate scenes. From then on out I glommed onto the idea of using flash backs and trying to incorporate my (I can't remember the exact term -- the thing I value) into flashbacks, because I knew I'd be wanting to get that character revealed, shattered and destroyed to get the bonus dice later.

Given that those were defined as my personal scenes, and the Mission Scenes were the ones defined I spent as those with the PCs, it didn't really occur to me to build personal moments with the PCs. Which is weird, because these folks were great to build scenes with. The structure of the game just sort of shunted me there once my mind went in that direction.

One thing that occurs to me is that in the Saturday game one of the PCs was the "valuable thing" to another PC. Apparently this produced some rock on toast moments -- as can be well imagined.

If I were to ever play again, I'm pretty sure I'd invoke a house rule where everyone at the table had to pick another PC as their most "valuable thing." I can only imagine it would bring even more creative and narrative focus to the game, tighten the sense of the noose closing around the PCs and so on. And again, the gang I played with was great, and realizing now I missed opportunities to play more dramatic stuff with them frankly pisses me off.

Jason, how did you see all this rigamarole of PC interaction, Mission scenes and Personal scenes interacting.


Third: Thematically, what can I say? You want to win the mission, you have give up what you care about. In the last chapter we played, my character was a freakin' zombie who walked with solemn steps and didn't even notice till he hit the ground that machine gun fire had ripped through back and sent chunks of muscle and meat spraying from his chest.

At one point I pounded on the table, shouting at Colin, completely out of character, "To hell with your girlfriend, we have to save the Jews!" It was kind of funny, but I also meant it. We had gotten torn apart in the first Mission we played, and since I now had a handle on how the mechanics worked, I was determined we'd succeed at the next mission. That's one of the reasons I framed the Mission as freeing the Jewish prisoners from the railroad cars. I wanted mission with high stakes and stakes that had a moral edge that I could use to bully people if they started to balk. I really wanted to win at least one mission!

I cannot express the peculiar sensation of that desire to win. It wasn't a Monopoly or Diplomacy, "Okay, here we go, I'm going to win." It was more like, "If these poor kids go through all this shit and they don't get at least one in, I'm gonna be heartbroken. And sure, the rules are stacked against us. But we can do this if we're willing to give everything up." So, of course, that which we valued most was shattered left and right to get those bonus dice.

I'll say this though (and I'll say it about a lot of these games these days, though with different thematic buttons): I get it. You either win or give up what you love. I'm not sure I'd need to play it too many times. And yet, having just typed that, I'm not sure if it wouldn't be cool to do it again, for the 10 chapter game, and really go deeper into those narrative details and see what else is there to be mined.


General: I too really liked the evocative lists, the maps, the radio scripts.

Closing: What I took most away from it was how fragile everything is and how lucky we are in this country. I mean, I'm usually aware of that. I don't take any of the peculiar historical and geographical situation of this country for granted. We are really, strangely comfortable human beings. But the game drove the point home in an interesting way, really making me feel for these kids who basically were fucked out of the gate. It was sad, and made me reflect on kids all over the world in similiar and horrible situation, but also made me glad to seize and enjoy the opportunities right before me as well.

CK

Posted By: Jason MorningstarChristopher, I like to aggressively interpose personal scenes that reflect mission scenes, and to actively break the flow of missions to do so.

Hi Jason,

That's exactly what we did. And it worked great.

My question was about how to get the PCs to interact with each other during the mission, since every time the ground starts shaking we're cutting back in time to all these other characters that mean so much to us.

Do you do a lot of interactions between the PCs during missions as wells as cutting to flashbacks with all the emotionally meaningful NPCs?

If so, can you give some examples about that? I'm curious about this because
a) the personal flashbacks soak up a lot of personal "energy";
b) are rewarded with dice, whereas personal interactions with PCs during missions gain you you nothing mechanically

I think the distinction between Mission Scene and Personal Scene got lodged pretty firmly in my head and it didn't even occur to me to have personal moments during mission scenes because.... well, these were the Mission moments, not Personal moments.

I just want to know if you guys do a lot of role-playing between the PCs in mission scenes, even though it will have no mechanical effect, "just cause".

CK

Now for a slightly different viewpoint.

I was in the the Saturday game. I'd talked with several folks from the Friday game, and I'd read the book on the way back from GenCon, so I think we had a slight advantage over the Friday crew. In particular, I'd been warned about the slightly odd nature of mission scenes, so I think we were able to handle them better. And we did so using the method Jason describes above. I believe all of our missions scenes involved at least one other player, often as NPCs, and they worked nicely. Yes, you knew how things would eventually turn out, but getting there was a lot of fun.

One thing that I wasn't clear on was how to handle Meghann's character having mine as the thing she held dear (first love). Specifically, what happens when it's destroyed? Meghann kept operating under the assumption that I'd die, but I wasn't so sure. It didn't really matter, as I hit the Martyrdom corner that turn anyway. (Actually, three of us did.)

I was also a little unclear on threatening and destroying the things that other people hold dear. How does that work?

Despite these quibbles, it was immensely satisfying. Marek's personal journey moved me in a way that I didn't think a game could in just four hours.

--Paul

Paul,

Could you talk about mission scenes that involved PCs interacting with PCs?


Jason,

When you write: "He puts forward a d6, signaling personal success, and frames a scene where the entire crew bickers about what to do." Do you mean he's framing a Personal Scene within the Mission Scene?

Thanks,

CK

No, it was like this:

"OK, mission scene - I'm going to be a big hero, recover some important information, and get the crew past a sniper. Will you guys help? Let's have a scene where we're pinned down ten feet from a dead scout and have to figure out what to do. Tadeuz is eyeing that courier bag and really wants to go get it."

(We snap into character)

"Marta, any chance you know a back way off Filtrowa avenue? Something under cover?"

"Mother of God, look at him. That could have been any one of us."

"I'm getting that bag."

"Tadeuz, don't even think about it."

"I'm not going to let that kid die in vain..."

Etc.

Posted By: Jason MorningstarNo, it was like this:

"OK, mission scene - I'm going to be a big hero, recover some important information, and get the crew past a sniper. Will you guys help? Let's have a scene where we're pinned down ten feet from a dead scout and have to figure out what to do. Tadeuz is eyeing that courier bag and really wants to go get it."

(We snap into character)

"Marta, any chance you know a back way off Filtrowa avenue? Something under cover?"

"Mother of God, look at him. That could have been any one of us."

"I'm getting that bag."

"Tadeuz, don't even think about it."

"I'm not going to let that kid die in vain..."

Etc.

The Saturday group started doing that a lot; the game worked better with more interaction between PCs and I suspect that trend would continue with more chapters in play.

We were all figuring this out in play so it's cool -- just needed some time for the elements of the way the narrative should be played to sink in.

Paul,

Great.


Ian,

Oh, yeah. Just figuring it out. Even as I'm reading Jason's example I'm slapping my head going, "Oh, yeah." But there was just a lot of new stuff to take in.

Posted By: ptevisCK, I'll get to your question in a moment. But first:

My favorite moment of the con was from the Saturday night Grey Ranks game. In the last chapter, I was one space away from the Martrydom corner. If we won the mission and I lost my personal scene, I'd hit it. Otherwise, I was fine. But one of the other characters (Eugenia) had mine (Marek) as the thing she held dear (her first love). So when that last chapter became all about our relationship, which had been sublimated the whole game, I knew what needed to happen. I tossed my d12 towards the success of the mission as I described the two of us in a sniper's perch watching for the German Panzer approach. We couldn't hide our feeling for each other any longer, and we never saw the artillery that started shelling our position. We cut the scene there.

When it came around to the mission die roll, we had more than enough, so we won. Before Crystal could narrate the result of the mission, I cut to my personal scene: The night before, standing outside Eugenia's window. "If I win," I said, "I tell her how I feel." I needed to roll a seven on a d4.

"I'll tell her tomorrow," Marek said.

--Paul

That was fucked and beautiful.

Posted By: Noble
That was fucked and beautiful.

I have to say the having to roll the impossible number was always fucked and beautiful. And know what? We rolled that too-low d4 everytime. Just in case.

Posted By: Jason MorningstarPaul, that's really perfect. Sometimes yousohave to play to lose.

No way. I didn't lose. I got the outcome I wanted, and I played hard to make that happen.

As I told a friend of mine when we were playing Polaris two years ago, "You don't know if dying is winning or losing until you get there."

CK - "At one point I pounded on the table, shouting at Colin, completely out of character, "To hell with your girlfriend, we have to save the Jews!" It was kind of funny, but I also meant it. We had gotten torn apart in the first Mission we played, and since I now had a handle on how the mechanics worked, I was determined we'd succeed at the next mission. That's one of the reasons I framed the Mission as freeing the Jewish prisoners from the railroad cars. I wanted mission with high stakes and stakes that had a moral edge that I could use to bully people if they started to balk. I really wanted to win at least one mission! "

I think by that point I was convinced both in game and out of game that we could not win a mission, and damn it if he was going to die I wanted something good to happen to him before then at least.

At least we won our last 2 missions, and poor Janek the Wrench struck out twice with the girl in both personal scenes.