The Building 2 - Events (RPG All)

This will be the last post for a short bit, as I shall be off island. Hopefully New York won’t be too cold … 

I’ve been noodling a few campaign ideas for Wraith: the Great War. I don’t know if I’d ever get to play them; Wraith isn’t the most popular World of Darkness setting, and it wants players who a) understand the rules system and b) are willing to get put through the mincing machine, which … I mean, people like that exist, it’s getting them in the same room for several hours on consecutive weekends that’s’s the problem. 

However, expanding on a previous post about the Building, I thought I’d talk a little about RFC Conty. 

The TL/DR of the Building can be summed up as: 

The Building is that area in which you, as GM, expects plot to happen. For plot to happen, the GM needs to populate the Building, either with people or events with which the players can interact. It is player interaction, not NPC action, that makes plot. 

The last time I talked about the Building I focused on the people in it. This time I want to talk about events. But first, a bit of prologue.

RFC Conty is a Royal Flying Corps air base operating out of the village of Conty, not far from the Somme shortly before that battle is about to begin.  

The action in Wraith: The Great War is loosely supposed to take place in the 1920s shortly after the Great War’s end. It presumes that during the War, sparked by the colossal slaughter that was the Somme, a spectacular outburst of spectral armies shredded the Hierarchy, the Wraiths’ nominal form of government, and as a result of that chaos one particular faction, the Legion of the Grim who represent those who died of violence and especially murder, step into the breach and attempt a coup. That goes about as well as you might expect given all the other carnage that’s taking place, and it’s this cesspit of violence and its consequences that kicks off the main plot. 

I’ve always thought it would be interesting to have a kind of prologue event to all this, hence RFC Conty. That’s the main hub of the plot for this opening chapter. The action takes place prior to the Somme hence prior to the main spectral outburst that kicks off the main event. Think of it as a kind of backstory to the devastation to come.

RFC Conty is the base for Sparrowhawk Squadron, No. 7 Sqn RFC, which flies DH2 single-seater pushers out of Conty. The DH2, popularly known as the Spinning Incinerator, is a recent arrival intended to take on the Fokker Eindecker head-to-head and put an end to the Fokker Scourge. It’s not a bad plane but lack of experience meant that many of the early intake span down to the ground, hence ‘spinning incinerator.’ Some of the RFC’s early aces cut their teeth on the DH2, notably Lanoe Hawker (one of Richtofen’s kills) and James McCudden. 

For settings like this which rely so heavily on real-world details I find it helpful to turn to history, and in this case An Infantry Subaltern’s Impressions of July 1st, 1916, by Edward Livening, which I nicked off of Gutenberg. He describes the area roundabout, just before the battle: 

The country in that part is high-lying chalk downland, something like the downland of Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, though generally barer of trees, and less bold in its valleys. Before the war it was cultivated, hedgeless land, under corn and sugar-beet. The chalk is usually well-covered, as in Buckinghamshire, with a fat clay. As the French social tendency is all to the community, there are few lonely farms in that countryside as there would be with us. The inhabitants live in many compact villages, each with a church, a market-place, a watering-place for stock, and sometimes a château and park. Most of the villages are built of red brick, and the churches are of stone, not (as in the chalk countries with us) of dressed flint. Nearly all the villages are planted about with orchards; some have copses of timber trees. In general, from any distance, the villages stand out upon the downland as clumps of woodland. Nearly everywhere near the battlefield a clump of orchard, with an occasional dark fir in it, is the mark of some small village. In time of peace the Picardy farming community numbered some two or three hundred souls. Gommecourt and Hébuterne were of the larger kind of village. 

OK, so that gives me a bird’s-eye view of what Conty is probably like. Clay earth, used to be a corn field, a large community nearby, probably an orchard nearby (apples, why not – it’s cider country after all). A chateau, always good for plot. Anywhere that long-lived is bound to have a hidden history that the current population don’t know about or remember, and hidden histories are meat and drink in Wraith games.  

What about the Squadron? 

Total aircraft: 15, in three Flights, of which 12 are in the air at any one time and the others – the knacker’s yard – used by replacements or if one of the flight is too badly damaged to fly. 

Commander:  Major Bob Lennox 

Flight Commanders:  Captains David Lynch-Hardinge (A Flight), Robinson ‘Mule’ Fairbrother (B Flight), Eustace ‘Skipper’ Wainwright (C Flight) 

Flight: Leftenants Eric Quarry, Norman Fitzhugh, Daniel Rutledge (A Flight);  

                Andrew ‘Crasher’ Lacy, Geoffrey Vine, William ‘Billy’ Mason (B Flight);  

                Victor Crawthorpe, Harold ‘Crackers’ Parrot, Percy Warnock (C Flight) 

Also present, though No. 7 Sqn has no knowledge of this, are two relic aircraft. One is a Fokker Eindecker, and the other is a SPAD SA two-seater recon aircraft. These fly daily, keeping an eye on events on the battlefield and reporting back to Hierarchy higher-ups on the ground. 

Pilots & Observers: Otto Rall (d. 1916, Eindecker); Arthur Bonneton (d. 1915, SPAD Pilot) Sir John Fastolf (d. 1459, SPAD observer)   

Additional Hierarchy support on the ground at No. 7 Sqn is provided by the Office of Maelstrom Preparedness which has an outpost in what is now the munitions store and was a barn. This small Iron Legion outpost is led by Chevaleresse Marie Allard (d. 1804) who employs a small number of scouts, couriers and administrators kept constantly busy by the changing tide of events on the battlefield. 

Ammunition Store: Seems constantly ablaze (burnt down in a fire), has spectral horses (plasmics, always screaming), wraiths coming and going at all times of day and night. I see the Ammunition Store as having been built on the remains of some past tragedy, the burning down of a stables, hence the spectral horses. Places like that have a lot of energy humming away.  

In Conty I’ve already placed a few people but haven’t gone much further than names and nicknames, because this time around I want to talk about events. 

Events don’t have to directly affect the players. However, events happen whether the players get involved or not, and the consequences that flow from those events are also things that might affect plot.  

An event in its simplest form is a thing that happens, and the great thing about a setting that involves real world situations is that you have some events baked in. If this was about the Titanic or the Lusitania disasters, there’s a predetermined sequence of events; the iceberg or the torpedo always arrives at such-and-such time on such-and-such date. In a battlefield situation as GM you know roughly when the battle starts and stops, but beyond that there’s a whole smorgasbord of events you can pick from. 

The Somme has a defined start point: 1 July, the Battle of Albert. That’s when the Maelstrom kicks off, with massive exhalations of spectral energy. From my perspective, that’s where the Chronicle ends. 

I mentioned RMS Lusitania a moment ago. She went down in May 1915, after being torpedoed by U-20. That sounds like a good start point for the Chronicle; it provides a meaty inciting incident and is exactly the sort of thing that might kick off an uptick in Maelstrom activity. An outburst of spectral activity inspired by the sinking is exactly the sort of thing that might inspire the Iron Legion to set up its Office of Maelstrom Preparedness outpost at Conty. 

The OMP is a small organization at this point; the main book describes it as being a couple hundred field researchers. Sounds like a great group patron for the sort of miscellaneous vagabonds who make up the average Chronicle. 

The story begins with the sinking of the Lusitania, in which one (or more) wraiths are killed. They have fetters in Conty – we can thrash out the whys and wherefores in session 0 – so they snap to that location after the tragedy. That’s where they meet Chevaleresse Marie Allard, who at that point is just setting up the Office that her superiors have asked her to create.   

[For those not familiar, fetters are things that link wraiths to the living world. They can be anything from a favorite doll to a house but are usually small personal items of one kind or another. When a wraith dies, assuming they don’t disincorporate altogether, they go to a fetter. That's how these wraiths get to Conty from the murky depths of the Atlantic.]  

Right there we have events Zero and One. Zero being the sinking, One being the snap to Conty and the initial meeting with Chevaleresse Marie Allard. Those are fixed points, and they have to happen for plot to proceed. In theory they can happen in session 0 and not involve dice or any kind of ability check; it can be their introduction to the setting and the world at large. 

Broadly, a fixed point is something that has to happen. Think of it like a Core Clue in Gumshoe. The players will always be given Core Clues since without them the plot can’t proceed. The same principle applies here. Fixed points have to happen because without them the plot can’t proceed.  

Whereas a floating point is something that may/may not/will happen at some point, but don’t have to happen directly to the characters. The death of Major Bob Lennox may/may not/will happen at some point and the characters may be affected by that death, but it does not have to happen to them directly. A big party in the officer’s mess, a sudden uptick in maelstrom activity, a raid by the Grim Legion, the last ride of the ghostly coach-and-four that’s been going up and down the Conty road since the 1700s, the arrival of a group of pretty Irish nurses, the card game that nets Crackers Parrot a significant sum, a bombing raid – all these things are floating events. They provide useful background to what’s happening on the main stage, or they become the main stage, depending on whether/how the players interact with them. 

As GM you don’t need to go chapter and verse on every single event. That way madness lies. However, it can be very useful to go over the calendar month by month and pencil in a few things. That way even if the players never interact directly with, say, the last ride of the coach-and-four, you at least know when it happened and can work out what affect it may have on the plot. Perhaps it deeply affected Chevaleresse Marie Allard, or robbed the OMP of a useful resource, or its end somehow brought Major Lennox’s career to a premature close. Or maybe it just provides water-cooler gossip for a few weeks.  

An event can be absolutely anything. The day the sewer backed up is an event. The day the house got painted is an event. Its significance may be anything or nothing; often the things that seem the smallest to those on the outside matter a great deal to those intimately connected with the event. 

There’s a sad moment (one of many) in Capt. J.C. Dunn’s WWI account, The War the Infantry Knew, in which a number of trees in the village of Le Nord are cut down to make gun limbers. An old woman watches it happen. ‘Soon there will be no trees in Le Nord,’ she says. A small event or a large one – who can say, except those who were there and experienced it? 

Point being, it’s worth having a few floating events to hand either to have the players bounce off them, creating plot, or at least as hints dropped for future plot. The players may not care that much about the coach-and-four, but if they care about Chevaleresse Marie Allard then they care about what happened to the coach-and-four. That means plot. It may also determine future plot.  

If this wasn’t Wraith, if this was a fantasy setting without a Gregorian calendar much less the fixed points described here, what then? 

Exactly the same. You frame it differently. You might say that this happens in Spring, this Summer, this in Autumn and this in Winter. The crops are planted in spring, the crops harvested in Autumn. Or the great storm that shatters the old oak tree happens in Summer, or the taxes go up in Winter, or the wizard turns all the children into mice in … and so on.  

The process does not change. There are still fixed points, and floating points. The difference is in the description, but not the details. 

Enjoy! 

I'll be back later in December (briefly) to talk about New York and will probably take a hiatus after that until January when we'll pick up the weekly posts.

Battlefield 1 Reveal Trailer - Historical Jibber Jabber

It's rare I have something drop in from the mystic land of videogames that's so firmly in my wheelhouse as Battlefield 1, the latest iteration in the warfare FPS franchise from Electronic Arts. As I'm busy working on an Esoterror project - more later - I thought I'd use the trailer as a mental cleanser, popping in from time to time to give my thoughts on it when I want a break from the project.

Little is known about the game itself. It's set in the Great War. It's already been revealed that the Harlem Hellfighters, the black American (or perhaps that ought to be French, since the Americans wouldn't let them fight under the Stars and Stripes) regiment, will be a significant part of the game. Allegedly you'll be able to pilot tanks, planes and battleships as well as engage in ground combat. Not entirely sure why, since naval warfare really wasn't a thing in the Great War; everyone stayed home after Jutland. It might have been more interesting to give the players submarines. But what the hell.

With that in mind, the trailer:

First thought: the music's OK, but I would have preferred at least a nod to the tunes of the time rather than leap in with White Stripes. Eh, whatever.

0.08: trench warfare. Looking accurate so far.

0.09-11: desert warfare. Cool, the game's looking beyond the usual Trench Warfare stuff. Apparently that's a woman riding at the charge. Fair do. Not sure about the henna face tattoo; I thought that mehndi was more of a festivals/weddings tradition, than a 'let's stab people up and look good doing it' thing. Also, face tattoo? Is that what traditional mehndi's for?

0.14-0.17: back to the trenches again. Not sure when this is. I'm going to cross my fingers and say  1917-18. It's remarkable that everyone's striding around upright given the snipers, shrapnel and machine gun nests everywhere.

0.18-0.21: only one flyer used an all-red crate, and he didn't crash into what looks like a desert outcropping. Also, triplanes in the desert, what the hell. There was air warfare in the desert, but they used clapped-out hand-me-downs from the Western Front, not the latest and most modern kit. Plus I'm getting muddy about the timeline. If that's a tripe then this is probably 1917. So what's that remarkably intact building doing there? Why does everything look comparatively nice and not bombed to hell and gone?

0.25: Tanks? In the desert? Bullshit. Plus, if those are tanks, then this is 1918. They're working remarkably well, under the circumstances. The early tanks didn't like mud; God knows what those delicate little darlings would have made of sand, sand, sand as far as the eye can see. It's bad enough trying mechanized warfare in the desert in the present day. Those things would have gone two foot, coughed, and died.

0.034: I have absolutely no idea where we are. Italy? Maybe? It's the only explanation for why everything looks so green and verdant.

0.36: onwards, yeah, forget it. Not a clue. Most of it's trench warfare, some of it's sea warfare - again, that all came to a halt after Jutland - a chunk of it's air warfare, and I couldn't begin to tell when or where this is meant to be. Except there are tanks. So presumably 1918, Western Front. Except those are British tanks attacking what seems to be a British, or possibly American, position. Well done, lads. Medals for everyone. Historical note: the Germans did have tanks, but they never really got the chance to use them, except for one inconclusive little scrap in April 1918.

0.54-56: A zeppelin? What on earth for? Those things were a joke by 1918. You might as well send in Charlie Chaplin.

1.01: well, it's all over now, and I don't have to listen to that Godawful music. Thank Christ.

Impressions: it's traditional at this point to scream 'no gameplay' at the top of your voice, but in this case I think the criticism isn't as on-point as it could be. This is EA, after all, and Battlefield is one of its showcase warfare FPS titles. Unless someone screws up dramatically the gameplay will be solid but uninspired, because it is always solid but uninspired. Equally if there was anything really interesting it would be in the trailer, and it isn't. So nothing to look forward to, or to worry about.

It's just cinema, and not even very interesting cinema. It's unusual to see a Great War themed game, but there have been a few of those recently - Valiant Hearts, for instance - so it's not a complete shocker. I predict a bland and uninspiring single player experience tacked onto what is probably intended to be a multiplayer extravaganza that will last until the servers go dark. So maybe two years.

It's odd. There's been a bunch of multiplayer titles recently - Destiny, the Division, whatever that bloody silly mecha titans game was a year or two back - and all of them seem to be aiming for roughly the same market. Presumably someone out there is praying for a Team Fortress 2 success-level title, rather than the withered fruit that drops off the twig these days. But these things cost a fortune and if they're all leeching from the same customer base I don't know how the hell they're meant to make a profit.

Mind you, these are all made by the same small handful of AAA developers, and that might be the point. As the audience for Titanfall dwindles repurpose the servers for whatever Battlefield title is coming up the pipe, and that way you seldom have to worry about underutilized assets.  

Final verdict: historically wobbly justification for what's very likely to be Just Another Shooter. Collector's Edition pre-order at $220-odd (Jesus Wept), but that includes the statue and other gimmicks which nobody in their right mind needs, and you know in your heart that any DLC in the pre-order will eventually be released for everyone to buy sometime after launch. I note that the Desert War and Red Baron packs seem to be separate assets, so presumably if you just buy the core game you only play in the trenches.

Incidentally what the hell is it with pre-order rubbish? I liked feelies back in the day; the cloth map you got with Ultima III Exodus was part of the fun, and had in-game relevance. But the monkeys have taken over the zoo. Who needs yet another dust-bunny up on the mantelpiece, gawping down at the living room like a senile relative at a bar mitzvah? Just how stupid is the average consumer, anyway?

Don't answer that.

Knights of the Air: Trail and the Great War

If you're looking for a video series to absorb hours of your time, I highly recommend The Great War, a YouTube channel that focuses on the events and personalities of that world-shattering conflict. The production team has chosen to focus on some of the undeservedly obscure elements of the war, like South Africa's role in the conflict, which makes it invaluable for Keepers wanting to set a scenario somewhere unusual.

All of which brings me back to Dulce et Decorum Est, and the air war. I've talked previously about mixing game types, linking several different Trail concepts in a single, overarching narrative. This time let's consider what it would mean to mix the air war rules found in Flying Coffins as well as Dulce, and the survival rules found in Mythos Expeditions.

The Middle Eastern theatre of operations is one of the least studied, unless you happen to be a fan of Lawrence of Arabia. However from an air war perspective it is very interesting. Germany began sending the Turks aircraft very early on, and by the end the Turks had the benefit of some of Germany's best fighter designs, such as the Albatros and Halberstadt. Even as the original Eindecker was making mincemeat of allied aircraft over the Western Front, the Germans were sending its latest designs to the Ottomans. They were opposed by the British and Australians, operating out of Egypt as part of the Expeditionary Force. From a Keeper's point of view, possibly the best time to stage a scenario in this conflict is early 1917, as Allenby is forming the Palestinian Brigade in a desperate attempt to stave off air defeat by a superior German-backed air force.

The Arab Revolt is already well under way at this point, Lawrence is busy blowing up train tracks, and the Ottomans are beginning to feel the pressure. The British are poised to take the Sinai Peninsula, and are looking hungrily at Rafa, an important military stronghold. Number 1 Squadron AFC is moved closer to the scene of the action to support ground assaults. The protagonists, it can be assumed, are part of Number 1 Squadron. They need to be able to establish and hold air superiority, which is going to be next to impossible since the Germans have very strong air combat capability. During the battle, German air raids are going to be a very difficult challenge for the allied attackers.

The Keeper might consider a few prelude scenes before the main action, perhaps set in Cairo, as these dashing young pilots arrive in the Middle East and begin training. Here they learn about Mordiggian for the first time, and discover that there is a small group of quasi-cultists within the Palestinian Brigade, blessing bullets, as they have been taught to do by home-grown Mordiggian cultists, possibly even agents of the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh. These bullets require blood sacrifice to make, but if they are used against the enemy then their effectiveness is greatly increased. The protagonists may be intrigued by this, and even be tempted to use them, so long as the blood sacrifice is limited; goats, say, or other small animals. Of course, the most effective bullets require human sacrifice ...

Then battle begins, and the pilots are tested, perhaps even found wanting. German air operations are taking their toll, and allied command  is not happy at the losses suffered as a result of successful German bombardment. A big push is on to take Rafa; the protagonists had better up their game. At this point the Keeper ought to throw in several fierce air engagements near the scene of the battle, as troops begin to deploy. Personalize these defending German aircraft; perhaps one or two of them become nemeses for the attacking Australian pilots.

Close this scene with a demand from the cultists: perform a blood sacrifice, and all will be well; we can ensure you defeat your enemies. But if you don't, our curse be upon you! A personal appearance from an avatar of Mordiggian, or a particularly dangerous creature, would be very useful at this point. This is the entity that has to be fed. The protagonists don't have to find their own victims. The cult is happy to provide the sacrifices, but it has to be the protagonists who decide whether or not to carry out the ritual.

Then they take to the air, fighting over Rafa. If they chose to carry out the ritual, then they enjoy tremendous success, as their new bullets seemingly cannot miss, and do great damage. Perhaps those German nemeses go down in flames very quickly, now that the protagonists have access to these magic bullets. If they didn't, then the German forces are all but overwhelming. Attack after attack leaves the Australian planes in shreds, low on ammo, smoking and about to crash.

The scene should end with the aircraft forced down. If they didn't carry out the ritual then this shouldn't be difficult to arrange. If they did, then the pilots are horrified to discover that their own aircraft are turning against them, becoming monstrous things, demanding blood. If the protagonists don't immediately land and abandon ship, then these vampiric entities will drain them dry. This is definitely worth a Stability check.

Now the pilots are on the ground in Palestine, somewhere near the fighting. They don't have psychic powers, so there's no way to know who's in control of Rafa; they need to get somewhere safe, and eventually back to their squadron. They also need to avoid Ottoman patrols.

This is where the Survival Pool needs to be established, and I would base it on the number of pilots, on the assumption of 2 points per pilot, representing any charts, navigation equipment, and water that they may possess. Naturally they ought to destroy anything that the enemy might find useful, like documents which show current Allied positions, but since those are also the charts that they might be using to find their way back, they may be reluctant to do this. If they do, then feel free to reduce Survival by 2. The area around Rafa is best described as hot semi-arid, which means Survival tests are either Hostile (in the area immediately around Rafa) or Very Hostile (everywhere else).

Now the pilots have to make their way back. Possible challenges include desert Arabs (are they on our side, or in the pay of the Ottomans?), attacking enemy aircraft, dust storms, leaking water bottles, and mine fields. If the Keeper feels that the protagonists might be about to snuff it, perhaps those Arabs turn out to be friendly, or perhaps the protagonists find an unexpected source of water; say, from dead soldiers' canteens, which would mean a Stability test.

On their way they spot a landmark that isn't on the map. It is an abandoned fort, possibly dating all the way back to the crusaders. Nobody would establish a fort without ensuring it had a water supply, would they?

Here is where they have their final encounter with the forces of Mordiggian. Of course the fort isn't truly abandoned; this is one of the Old One's fanes, where it is worshiped in nightmarish, bloody ritual. Did the protagonists make sacrifice and get those magic bullets? Then they are welcomed with open arms, and the scenario may end with them descending into madness as they embrace the blood rites, and become one with Mordiggian's worshipers. If they did not, or if they choose to avoid the fort altogether, then they are pursued across the desert by the creatures that live within, and spend the final scenes of the scenario on a knife edge, low on Survival, throats dry, water out, no way of knowing how far away safety is, and pursued relentlessly by things they cannot, dare not, comprehend.

That's it for now! Enjoy. 

Dulce et Decorum Est Trail of Cthulhu Great War

I'm overjoyed to report that my Great War collection, Dulce et Decorum Est, is finally out in .pdf!

http://pelgranepress...1#comment-73782

To forestall the obvious question: Not So Quiet and Flying Coffins are not in this collection, as those two scenarios have already been published twice: once as .pdf, and again in one or other of the Out Of Space/Time collections. However this one does include Dead Horse Corner (terror in the trenches) and Vaterland, set aboard the rotting hulk of Germany's finest ocean liner.  This collection also includes extended rules sections for air, land and naval warfare - new planes, tanks, armored cars and more - as well as a section devoted to campaign ideas and settings. You've got all kinds of new antagonists to worry about, from the Order of the White Feather in England to tainted and terrible hyenas waiting out in the desolate wastelands of Palestine. Incidentally, for those of you wondering whatever happened to Agathe von Plon of Flying Coffins fame, you can find out in Vaterland ...

I'm pleased and proud to see this in print at last! I hope everyone who purchases a copy enjoys it.

To give you a brief taste, let me show you an extract from one of the cultist sections, Mata Malam:

When the Dutch spy Margaretha Geertruida Zelle – aka Mata Hari, Indonesian for Eye of the Day – was executed in October 1917, few mourned her. Many of her former paramours were secretly relieved to see her gone, but there was at least one who wept for her unreservedly, and that one determined to get her back, by any means necessary.

Doctor-turned-cultist Victor Berthelot’s descent into madness began – though he could not have realized it at the time – when he went to see a show at the Olympia, in 1905. He was just a student then, but he was smitten by the danseuse’s charms, and – along with many other would-be suitors – bombarded her each night with flowers and presents. At least, such presents as he could afford, and when his family discovered how he was spending his allowance, they threatened to cut him off. Chastened, he returned to his studies, while his beloved – who had no idea Berthelot even existed – went on to fame, fortune, and life as a courtesan to wealthy men ...

Not-Quite-Review Corner: Sid Meier's Ace Patrol

This is a review of 2K Games' iOS free-to-play turn based strategy title, Sid Meier's Ace Patrol, a Great War air combat game. First, a disclaimer: although I write for the Escapist - in fact, I wrote this news post about the game - this review has nothing to do with the Escapist. It's completely my own thing. I'm drawn to this game in particular because I wrote this RPG scenario for Pelgrane and, as luck would have it, was tweaking the air combat rules not so long ago for the collected Great War Trail of Cthulhu setting.

Sid Meier is someone you should all have heard of by now, but on the off-chance you haven't, he's the guiding mind behind the Civilization game franchise, the man who took us to the stars in Alpha Centurai, the man who made Pirates! - also out for iPad, incidentally - and a host of other strategy titles. This latest effort fits right in with Meier's strategy aesthetic, being easy enough to get to grips with, but tricky enough to test your brain. It boasts 120 different scenarios and asynchronous multiplayer, all set in the hostile skies above the Western Front. You play as one of four nationalities - French. British, American and German - commanding a squadron of four eager pilots. Your job is to wage a successful campaign against the enemy, which means you need to fight the enemy four times in a series of scenarios, and then fight the concluding battle. Once that's over, the next campaign begins. Best of four campaigns wins the match.

Sounds simple? Well, it is ... except you can't just beat the enemy. You need to prevail while at the same time preserving your squadron. Each time a plane gets too badly damaged, its pilot has to sit out the next one or two missions. If a pilot gets shot down, they're injured for five missions, if this happened on your side of the lines. If this happened on the enemy's side, they're captured, which means they're out for the rest of the campaign, until they get handed over in the Christmas prisoner exchange. Remember, you only have four pilots. Most missions require only two, some insist on one, so you can afford to be a pilot down for a mission or two. But the concluding scenario of the campaign requires all four, so if something's gone very badly wrong and you only have one or two healthy pilots left, you're going to get trounced.

Aesthetically, this is a very pleasing title. Visuals are clean and fit the period very well. The sound and music are (mostly) spot on, though I'm prepared to swear on a stack of Sopwiths that someone borrowed a musical sting from Pirates! It just sounds too familiar. Strategic minds may be reminded of games like Avalon Hill's Knights of the Air, or Wings of War, as this title has a very similar aesthetic. Your pilots start off with the basic maneuvers and bags of optimism, but later on will be pulling off Immelmanns like seasoned professionals. Which is just as well, since their flying coffins are never very sturdy at the best of times. No single scenario takes much longer than ten minutes to play through, before the fallen are scattered across the landscape like crispy pigeons. Moreover the AI knows its business well enough to pose a significant challenge. If one of your pilots manages to get caught in a one-on-one against an AI ace, be prepared for pain, unless your man has as many tricks up his sleeve as the AI does.

Don't expect complete historical fidelity. The aircraft are well designed and in period. The pilots' continual survival is a bit odd; despite being shot down, shot up, set on fire, or imprisoned on the enemy's side of the lines, each lives on to fight another day. I'm torn. I'd almost rather there was permadeath, and have the dead pilot replaced by a rookie. Not only would that be historically valid, it would add a new layer of complexity, particularly late game. The presence of female pilots on the battlefield may upset some purists. The title gives you some customization options - you can change the pilot's name, and add some color trim to the pilot's plane - but ultimately you're stuck with a more or less interchangeable, and unchangeable, smiling face, male or female, to take into battle. Female pilots I don't mind, but I do find it slightly odd that - though there are one or two non-Caucasian faces - there don't seem to be any black pilots. After all, there were at least two black warbirds, one American, one Turkish, who actually fought, one of them on the Western Front. Why not have them in the game?

The 120 different missions boast is a bit of a misnomer. Mathematically, there may be that many, spread across the British, French, American and German campaigns, but in practical terms there are perhaps twelve different mission types in all. The Germans have one less than everyone else, since they have a zeppelin for the Allies to blow up, whereas the Allies don't have anything quite as cool for the Germans to shoot at. Some missions are essentially copycats; there isn't a substantial difference between blowing up a train, and blowing up some trucks. Most of the time you'll be playing through the same handful of missions, with the only difference between one campaign and the next being the relative difficulty of the enemy pilots. You may get bored quickly, given the level of repetition. Multiplayer is, I strongly suspect, where this title expects to enjoy longevity.

Whether or not that appeals to you is down to personal preference, but be warned: you may need to spend some cash. Though the title is technically free-to-play, only the tutorial missions in the British campaign are free; if you want anything else, you'll be spending money. It's $1.99 per campaign, or $0.99 for the rest of the British campaign. If you want your pilots back from hospital or the prison camp soon after they get shot down, that'll be cash on the barrel head, presumably each time you do it. I haven't been mad enough to spend money on that, at least not yet, though I wonder if that might not be the only way to successfully complete the game at its highest difficulty levels. There are also aces for purchase, special pilots who start the game with their own unique abilities, either bought singly or as part of the 'ace pack.' I do not know if the aces are allowed in multiplayer matches, but if they are, I pity the poor sod who goes toe-to-toe with the Germans. The special bonus for von Richtofen is 'inflicts more critical hits' and Immelmann 'starts with one ace maneuver', both of which abilities are ever so slightly savage. Pride of place has to go to Frenchman Rene Fonck's chance of a single-shot kill, though his companion Guynemer's ability is a bit naff, and anyone who spends good money on the American aces wants their head examining. I wouldn't take balloon-buster Luke on a bet, and Rickenbacker's ability to avoid critical hits isn't that wonderful, not when you consider that it's your ability to shoot down other people, not avoid getting shot down yourself, that will ultimately win the match.

Ultimately this title does tick all the necessary boxes: it has clever strategic play, and a compelling just-one-more turn single player campaign. Game play itself is smooth and swift, and while you may be tempted to go in bull-headed at first, it's clever strategy that will win the day. You do need to think one or two moves ahead, and if necessary take a few losses on the chin. It's the campaign that matters, not the skirmish, and it does you no good to win a match only to lose half your squadron doing it. Where it falls down is in its limited mission options, and a fairly aggressive monetization model that seems determined to wring pennies out of the player. It's not as aggressive as it could be; technically you could get by with just the British campaign, at $0.99, thus getting a pretty addictive strategy title for cheapsies. However it's unlikely that most players will stop there, and I've no doubt 2K Games knows it.

Recommended for: strategy nuts, Great War enthusiasts, those who remember the old Avalon Hill games fondly.

Not recommended for: people looking for a 100% authentic Great War experience, people who can't stand microtransactions.

Necessity is Somebody's Mum

Now that Sisters of Sorrow is out, I can talk a little bit about how that scenario came to be.

The Great War has always fascinated me, both as a historical period and as a setting for RPG scenarios. It seems uniquely suited to a horror setting, as well as being a conflict that, from a Keeper's perspective, involves so many different potential ideas. You could literally do anything, anywhere; a Great War scenario set in Africa, or the Pacific, is as feasible as one set in the trenches on the Western Front. A Keeper could set the scenario set entirely aboard a zeppelin, or a cruise liner, could have spies infiltrating the New York docks, a conflict in the Italian mountainside, Japanese soldiers in a bayonet charge, or German internees awaiting their fate after the Siege of Tsingtao. Any nation, any setting the Keeper can think of, and the War provides it.

I hadn't intended becoming Pelgrane's go-to for Great War scenarios, but they're a lot of fun to do, and I hope to make more of them. That said, there are times when I run smack against a scenario problem that takes some thinking to solve, and Sisters of Sorrow was one of those times.

I had intended to write a completely different kind of scenario, something more on par with Red October.  It would have been a haunted house at sea, with the players creeping around the once-familiar corridors of the U-Boat, never entirely sure what they would find around the next corner. I had the rough idea sketched out in my head before I started the research.

If this incident taught me anything, it's to do the research before coming up with any clever ideas. There was a glaring problem with my plan, and that problem was, there isn't enough room aboard a sub of the period to swing a cat. It's difficult to get hold of a comprehensive sketch, but Submarine Warfare of Today and Diary of a U-Boat Commander, both hosted by Project Gutenberg, give pretty reasonable accounts of life on board a submarine. I can't believe even for a moment that the Diary is genuine, bearing in mind how it's written and what happens in it - Polish spies, ye Gods! - but some of the scenes are probably accurate enough, as far as setting goes.Submarine Warfare was much more useful to me, and many of the illustrations in it could prove helpful to a Keeper running Sisters. 

But I had a problem: there was no way the complicated haunted-house story I had in mind could play out on a tiny little thing barely fifty foot long. If every single crewman stood up at once - assuming they could - they'd fill the boat from end to end. The very idea that someone could get lost in one was silly; it'd be simpler to imagine someone not being able to find their way out of a public toilet.

In some ways, scenario writers are crippled by a reliance on historical accuracy; it prevents them taking advantage of an idea, and seeing how it could play out. Yet there's no way a Cthulhu audience would tolerate any significant deviation from historical fact, not when the facts are available to anyone who cares to look. It's odd, when you consider that Lovecraft's U-Boat story featured not just portholes, but also diving suits and the means of deploying them, that players insist on strict accuracy. But then, I suspect there aren't that many who really like The Temple. Incidentally, for those who enjoy coincidences, the real U-29 sank on its first voyage in 1915, thanks to prompt action by HMS Dreadnough.

Meanwhile the real UC-12 had seven patrols to its credit, when it was sunk by its own mines in 1915. All of its crew went down with the boat, most - if not all - probably killed in the explosion.  

However the problem presented me with its own solution. A situation in which people are crammed together in a stifling, small space, helpless in the face of danger; that breeds paranoia and fear. It's not unlike Night of the Living Dead, funnily enough, but the interplay of characters was what made that move really interesting ... and then I realized I had my solution, ready-made.

Of course, I don't intend to discuss that here. Read the scenario, if you're interested in finding out what happens next.