A Bit of History
For this campaign I went with Savage Worlds because we wanted a pulpy, over the top game with a fast system. I also like using cards, poker chips, tokens, maps, and a whole range of accessories at the table. Yes, I am addicted to RPG accessories and I will happily admit this. Using a generic system often means a fair amount of extra work on the part of the GM, especially so when doing a historical game. This is because most generic systems take fantasy or sci-fi as their target and go from there. These two genres are far more popular than historical, and I can understand why they do this. Of the generic systems I am familiar with, GURPS, especially if you have access to Third Edition material, has the largest amount of strictly historical material. Savage Worlds does have Weird Wars II, and we had two copies of this book at the table, something that has helped greatly. In addition, the Explorer's Edition of the core rulebook is fairly cheap (US$10) and all but two of the players has a copy.
For a campaign premise, I went with CASS United, a homebrewed setting. Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the US's entrance into the war, the Allies agreed to pool their special operatives to better distribute this precious resource. Special operatives are low-level supers, defined as being characters with one or two subtle powers, or those whose mundane abilities and skills are above the common man. The Combined Allied Special Services includes American, British, Russian, and French agents. They are sent on missions of vital importance, especially those that involve enemy special operatives. This set up gives the characters a bit more power without pushing the overall power level of the campaign from low-key mostly historical and into super or fantasy WWII. There is still plenty of room for over the top shenanigans.
There are several advantages to using special operatives to tell a story set during WWII. First, our group contains two female players, and neither was terribly interested in playing cross-gender characters. This places some constraints on a more traditional military unit, unless we wanted to go completely a-historical and remove the endemic gender, class, race, and religious bias from the era. By making the characters people with unique or extraordinary abilities, the powers that be have to accept them, at least to a certain degree. This allows for more than female characters, it allows for a wider diversity of characters in general. Another advantage is that the characters are outside of the normal military chain of command and restrictions. They still have to follow orders, but have a lot less people giving them orders. This adds to the PCs freedom of action, an important thing to keep in mind when running wartime games.
Within these parameters, we sat down to make characters. The group is a large one, and that is one of the reasons we choose Savage Worlds as it is a fast enough of a system to let seven players (plus extras) get through a decent session in under three hours (our set game time). Character creation is also fairly quick and simple, thus allowing for rapid creation of new characters when things go wrong. This can be vitally important when running a game set in WWII, as I once learned from a GURPS WWII game that started with the Omaha Beach landings, in the boats, and never made it to shore. We went through three parties and I haven't been able to play Call of Duty since.
Our CASS United team is (or was, we lost Dr. Krats in France last week): Lt. Liberty (designed as a low powered and somewhat low rent Captain America), Quick Draw Lee (a fast drawing, hard drinking southerner), Svetlana Markova (a mildly psychic Soviet spy), Agent Jack Kennet (a film noir G-Man), the mysterious Allison (an American super-spy), and Karnak the Mighty (a circus strongman with superhuman strength and toughness). As a different way to do character backgrounds I put together a CASS personal form that listed date and place of birth, known associates, aliases, personal history, and special notes. Each player sat down with me and we searched the internet for a picture that best represented their character, and inserted this into the blank form document. The result was a visual and written intro to who the character is and how they came to be what they are today. I did the same thing with the major villains, and handed them out before each mission during the briefing.
Missions are an important part of role-playing a wartime game. They provide a clear set of goals and limitations for the party to work within and help set the tone for the game. The danger with using missions as the basis for writing adventures is that the players can feel constrained by these objectives and limitations. It is all too easy to set up a railroading scenario, and most groups do not find this fun. There are three ways around this, mission design, interludes, and free time.
Mission design needs to be a balancing act between steering the adventure towards a specific goal and allowing the PCs freedom in reaching that goal. The objectives of the mission need to be clear, and it helps to list them as primary, secondary, tertiary, etc… This allows the players to sacrifice a less important objective in order to achieve a higher ordered one, should the need arise. Second, placing limitations on the conduct of the mission helps create a challenge, but should never be used to make a character unimportant to the mission. If the mission limitations exclude a character's use of their primary abilities, the question they should ask is why am I being sent on this mission? Finally, the party should be the ones who decide how a mission is to be carried out, if the GM (through a commanding officer NPC) gives the PCs a mission that basically says you will go to A, do B, proceed to C, do D, and then meet up at F to complete G, the characters and their players don’t have much choice or control over the game, and most folks do not find that to be a good time at all.
Interludes are an excellent way to break up mission monotony and give the players some greater freedom in their actions. They can be minor things that involve just one character. In CASS United, there is a romantic sub-plot involving Markova and a US Paratrooper she met on a troop transport. How this plays out is largely up to the player, and as a GM I improvise this storyline in response to the player's wishes and the character's actions. Another example, this time involving the entire party, was the discovery and subsequent investigation, of a cult of shub-niggaruath operating out of a hospital in England. The party had to take a break from their planned mission in order to deal with this threat, at the same time not jeopardizing the mission they were on. I think they greatly enjoyed the freedom of action afforded by this interlude.
Finally, every war story needs some R&R time, what I generally call free time. Between missions it helps to give the players a chance to explore their characters, blow off steam, and take a break from the grind of mission after mission. In CASS United, they party was operating out of Blighty, and had earned some R&R, so they took the train to London and enjoyed a three-day pass. The players had free reign to decide their character's actions, and in general they all managed to expand on their backgrounds and personality, as well as enjoy a little mayhem. That two of them managed to come out of the experience with a fatigue level that won’t heal until they get some penicillin was on their heads, not mine.
For more information on my CASS United campaign, feel free to check out my blog. When the party finishes a mission I post my session notes there, and although they don’t contain the parts where I 'go off script' or 'wing it' they do have an outline of an adventure or two in them. As I have mentioned several times, I have an adventure series coming out from Frog God Games, the Northlands Saga. The first adventure in the series NS-1 Vengeance of the Long Serpent has been released, with nine more to follow. They should come once a month, and the next is NS-2 Beyond the Wailing Mountains. The adventures can be played on their own, or linked together to tell a larger story arc. They are available in both Pathfinder FRPG and Swords and Wizardry formats. Next month will be the double-sized Anniversary Issue featuring a review of historical rpgs and a campaign seed, In Service to the Queen. Until then, play your greatest bit of history.
