This is just a short account of my experience with Grey ranks at Viking Con. I was unsure whether I would be able to play the role as a young partisan, or even buy in to the whole concept. But when I found myself, sitting there, holding my breath, waiting for a die role to determine whether a young girl realized that she was about to break her friends heart, well, I was sold on the game right there. The game was serious and made me think of and feel for the Grey Ranks. I was really impressed by the mechanics that made the storytelling possible. The scenes came easily, dictated as they were by the grid position anecdotes. The choices were always difficult, suceed in the mission or sacrifice your personel life? Choosing a low die to succeed in at mission scene seemed counterintuitive to me at first, but after realizing that it made the mission scenes full of opposition, I think I got it. Choose a high die, and the mission is full of grief for your character, but eventually he will suceed if everyone does there part. The Grid was something else, seeing as it was an emotionel roadmap to the characters. There was no doubt where everyones character was headed.
Intresting scenes from our game: - The Jewish boy witnessing the Rabi selling out to the Germans to save his own hide. - The young girl who, without knowing it, breaks her friends heart. - The meaningless death of my own character Radoslaw 'Zeus' Dudek.
I can't recommend Grey Ranks enough. Hopefully I'll be starting af full three seesion game on sunday
I had a similar experience when I got to playtest Grey Ranks, Thomas. It's funny how the heartbreak of adolescence makes it more possible to deal with playing out the tragedy of the war. Makes it more human somehow.
I though Zeus' death was the high point of the game.
The crew had just bought their way out of a mass execution by promising Hans, a Wehrmacht soldier they knew, the location of a jeweler's safe hidden in Wola. There was an awful scene where Hans and his sociopathic buddy retrieved the safe and calmly deliberated their next move - shoot the partisan teens? March them back to the killing ground? Let them run off like they had promised?
Zeus had hit the derangement corner earlier in the game and was already deeply disturbed by what he'd been through. He made a sudden move and was gunned down like a dog. It was a stupid, senseless death that just fit into our collective tale seamlessly.
Zeus was headed towards Martyrdom, which I had begun to play up, but as a result of being singled out in the previous mission he went over the edge into derangement. The character was a real patriot who was already dying from cancer, the perfect outcome for him would have been to die for his country, instead he was just gunned down in the street with no one there but his closest friends. Sad, gripping and very dramatic stuff.