Our Friday night group sat down and planned out the next stretch of roleplaying that we’re going to do. We agreed to give Grey Ranks a whirl and then head into Nine Worlds. Should be fun. So, last Friday, we fired up Grey Ranks.

For those of you who don’t know, 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 is not about the war; it’s about the effects of the war. That makes all the difference.

Players and Dramatis Personae

Thank God for names lists! Between the lists in the book and the Story Games Names Project, I felt like we had enough to work with. Here’s what we came up with:

Seth—Lech Dabrowska (“Gigant”) from Wola.
Age: 16
Thing held dear: his First Love, symbolized by a locket with his girlfriend’s picture.
Reputations: Slow Thinker, Brutal
Starting Grid Location: D4

Ralph—Henryk Leska (“Plug”) from Wola
Age: 15
Thing held dear: his Family, symbolized by his brother’s shoes
Reputations: Reckless, Unreliable
Starting Grid Location: B2

Keith—Jerzy Teska (“Leon”) from Old Town
Age: 16
Thing held dear: his Faith, symbolized by St. John’s Cathedral
Reputations: Coward, Naïve
Starting Grid Location: B4

Crystal—Krysha Zwolinski (“Ola”) from Old Town
Age: 15
Things held dear: her Friends, symbolized by her journal
Reputations: Mean, Bossy
Starting Grid Location: D2

I noted to everyone that you don’t have to start on different Grid locations, but we did. In fact, Ralph assigned me D4.

So, yeah, I ended up with the big kid, a brooding loner with the heart of a romantic.

I’m playing myself. How do I get stuck in these situations?

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 initiations, where you’re fleshing out your character. In Grey Ranks, your accomplishments aren’t random. Rather, this is an opportunity to get a feel for your character and to do some basic exposition of your character’s personality. Things Held Dear and Reputations are selected after Chapter 1, so you definitely want to showcase who you are so that this last step of character development goes well.

Also, at the beginning of each Chapter, someone at the table reads the Radio Lightning broadcast from the book, then each player selects a Situation Element from a list. These are things like “A brother puts his foot down” or “Your parents want to kill me”. You don’t have to include these in the Chapter; rather, they serve as inspiration for the Chapter ahead. Chapter 1 has a special list, but, generally speaking, you choose based on your Grid Position. There are 10 items per list, which ends up taking up a large chunk of the book. I found these to be really helpful. Just the process of selecting one for myself got the ideas rolling, but then seeing my selection next to the other players’ selections sparked many ideas.

For Chapter 1, our situation elements were:

A brother puts his foot down
A letter authorizing the bearer to break curfew
Your parents want to kill me
Jerzy Nowicki, softspoken greengrocer who knows everyone

The situation quickly assembled itself. We were being sent out after dark to retrieve a food shipment from Jerzy, which would then be squirreled away for use by the Resistance at some point in the future.

We each showed our true colors. Plug was scouting ahead and ran into a German patrol. He led them on a wild goose chase, eventually leading them into a cellar where dogfights were held. He released the dogs so that they would attack the Germans.

Gigant ended up getting the job of carrying the food, since he’s so big. On the way back, one of the dogs that escaped from the cellar knocked him over, spilling the huge pile that he was carrying. This frustrated him a great deal.

Leon was mugged by an old Pole who was starving. Rather than resisting, Leon stabbed the loaf of bread that he was carrying onto the mugger’s knife and then ran off.

Ola was generally bossy to everyone, ordering people around, even though she had no right to do so. Then someone beckoned to her from a nearby alley. It was Hans, a German soldier that she had been dating to irritate her parents. He wanted to talk, but she blew him off.

Sigh. Kids.

Chapter 2: The Nazis Begin to Get Nervous

Ralph had an idea for this mission, so he became our mission leader.

Situation Elements:

Edmund Telakowski, dashing partisan and liar
A coward shows his true colors
A tightly bound collection of love letters, soaking in the gutter
A tearful farewell

Here’s the situation. The crew is walking near the German motor pool, when Plug and Stefan (a friend of his) get into an argument about whether or not they could steal a German tank. Eventually, Stefan double dog dared Plug to do it. The rest of the crew thought that this would be a good idea. They’d steal a tank and embarrass the Germans. High fives all around.

So, to distract the guards, they started a fight outside the motor pool. In the chaos and confusion, Plug slipped into the facility and managed to find a tank, already idling. (Ralph contributed a d4 to the mission pool.)

As he was sneaking toward the tank, Plug remembered the day that his brother left to join the Home Army. Plug has always idolized his big brother, and he wanted to impress him when he was leaving. (Goal of the Personal Scene: impress my older brother). Ralph succeeded on this roll, so, as John was leaving, he gave Plug “the talk” about being the man of the house and all that. Then, as he walked out the door, he turned and winked at Plug.

Tanks are hard to drive, but Plug did his best. On the way out of the motor pool, he took out one of the guard posts by running it over. The other members of the crew started to pile onto the tank. But Leon was stuck out in the open. As the Germans began to open fire, he ran as quickly as possible for the tank. Eventually, he grabbed the treads, using them to pull him up onto the tank. Then Gigant pulled him aboard. (Keith contributed a d6 to the mission pool.)

Gigant pulled himself into the tank and started yelling at Plug, who is all over the road. Then they turned down a side street and found themselves staring down a German roadblock. “Shoot at them!” Plug yelled. Gigant tried to figure out how to use the main turret. First he had to get it cranked around. Then he tried to fire, but it was unloaded. So he loaded it, got the turret turned around and fired! (I contributed a d6 to the mission pool.)

Gigant struggles with figuring things out that he’s not good at. So this incident reminded him of last summer, when he spent a few weeks in the country on a farm. The farmer took him out to the barn, gestured with a grunt, and then left. Gigant didn’t know what he was supposed to do. (Goal of Personal Scene: figure something out and do it right). I rolled and succeeded, so Gigant was able to figure out that there was a hole in the barn that needed to be repaired, and he was able to do it.

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.

Later, the crew was receiving a blistering rebuke from Edmund Telakowski, one of their superiors. Plug was taking the credit for the idea, but Leon really didn’t want to get in trouble. (Goal of Personal Scene: pass as much blame as possible to someone else). Keith rolled and was successful, so Leon managed to come out look least bad of anyone in the crew.

Later, Hans came and confronted Ola. He had been one of the guards at the motorpool, and he had recognized them. So now he was blackmailing Ola. Either she goes out with him or he will inform on them. (Goal of Personal Scene: make sure no one finds out I’m dating a German). Crystal rolled and was successful, so she kept this secret…for now.

At the end of the Chapter, we adjusted our Grid positions, and Ralph singled out Gigant. Why, you ask? Because that would put Gigant into E5, the “suicidal depression” corner. I’m playing a Goth Pole in World War II. Great.

Plus, Gigant has now taken one step towards leaving the game forever.

Post Game Reflection

Playing this game was odd. There’s some specific constraints within the game, and yet, much of it feels almost freeform. I’ve not actually played The Shab-al-Hiri Roach, but from what I can tell, this is a feature of that game as well. So, maybe this is a Morningstar hallmark.

In particular, the GMless nature of the game is a little hard to grok at first. There aren’t actually assigned roles in the game, unlike Polaris or Dirty Secrets, so you need to be able to shift rapidly between playing your character and doing GM duty for everyone else. At first, I was looking for more structure to guide this transition, but as the game went on, I became more comfortable with it.

I also found the lack of guidance about a “scene” to be challenging. Personal scenes make sense, because they are usually self-contained. But how much action goes into a mission scene? The best answer, obviously, is “about one quarter of all the action in the mission”, but that can be hard to feel out in the middle of the game.

Finally, I found the beginning of the game to require some heavy lifting to get things moving. This may have just been my own problem, but I found myself groping at the beginning of the game for stuff to narrate. Not surprisingly, as the game moved on, this became easier, because we had created material that we could then reincorporate. It’s like pushing a car; it’s hard to get started but, once it’s rolling, it’s easy to keep it moving.

I don’t think that this is a knock against Grey Ranks; I’ve felt the same when starting a game of Polaris. Also, I had the additional pressure of teaching a game that I wanted the rest of the group to like, so perhaps my attention was divided up a bit.

Now, to be fair, the game has several tools to help you get things moving, both at the beginning of the game and for each Chapter. The Radio Lightning introduction to each Chapter and the situation elements are really helpful to provoke inspiration. I’m glad that these were left as inspiration and not mechanically enforced somehow. I think that this would have been distracting. Instead, they are just allowed to be grist for brainstorming, which is really cool.

We also really enjoyed the mission die mechanic. I remember being somewhat skeptical when I first heard about it, but seeing it in play made me a believer. After all, you generally want to succeed at your missions, right? So you want to contribute big dice to the mission pool. But how big? If you give dice that are too big, you’re just guaranteeing massive amounts of tragedy. So, maybe you just contribute a d8 instead of a d10 and hope for a good roll. But will that be enough? A delightful tension.

I’m also coming to see how the Grid messes with the apparent simplicity of winning or losing scenes. After all, maybe you’re in a place where winning the mission will push you into a corner for the second time. Or, to pick an example from our game, if Keith had lost his personal scene in Chapter 3, he wouldn’t have ended up in the corner. I think that it will become important for the players to learn to read the Grid to be able to make the best possible strategic choices.

No one has yet exposed their Thing Held Dear. I came close, though. If we hadn’t won the mission in Chapter 3, I would have ended up in Derangement in E1. So I was prepared to do what had to be done.

As are we all. Next week we will continue Grey Ranks with Session 2: Uprising.

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

Posted By: Steve SegedyThis is a great write-up Seth- thanks for your attention to detail and comments!

Just trying to use my "Fanboy 2d8" Trait effectively. ;-)

I'm glad that I'm finally getting a chance to play Grey Ranks. This was my number one game pick for GenCon (as in, "march in the door and throw down money for it right away"), so it's good that it hasn't languished on the shelf.

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

Posted By: Jason MorningstarI get the feeling it was a bit of a hard sell for Crystal - is that true? Did she warm to the setting in play?

Not as such. My wife loves me and is willing to give these sorts of things a try. She also actually prefers historical stories to crazy fantasy games, so this works.

Instead, she doesn't really go for the bleak tragic story. So, I think that's what it was. Maybe. After all, she's the one who's really been agitating to play Steal Away Jordan. That's her number one GenCon pick. So, maybe I'm totally not getting a read on her right now. It happens from time to time.

The whole "romance in a war zone" was my attempt to 1) boggle her mind a bit and 2) show the possibilities beyond just being a story about people shooting at each other.

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

Posted By: Jason MorningstarMaybe you guys'll be the ones to demonstrate that Grey Ranks need not be all horror and death all the time.

Maybe. On the one hand, we have the tank joyriding. On the other hand, well, two of the four characters have had their first corner visit already. So, I guess we'll see....

BTW, for those who are interested, the full mp3 experience of this session can be found here.

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf