Dear friends,
Please use the below link for a write-up of our first game that may be of interest to you. It is strictly narrative so has no reference to the mechanics of the game. Please forgive the turgid prose and the length of the piece.
www.dropbox.com/s/67c00mz0v2clqxs/NKVD%20Report.pdf?dl=0
For context, this was a one-off with one GM (me) and six players, forming one complete air section. The game session lasted four hours; the players made their character individually beforehand and they started play with only five remaining Marks which worked out to be a good number for create a bit of tension and suspense when they did get marked (even in a one -off Embracing Death was a real possibility).
Before play started properly, we did a collaborative introduction process where I asked some question, the players introduced themselves and established Regard for each other. We then collaboratively mapped out the airfield. The session was set at Trud Gornyaka.
The whole session worked very well – it was in fact one of the best games I’ve ever run and involved players with greatly varying degrees of experience in role playing. The most important lesson I learned was to work out when to stop creating complications in the narrative and start pulling all the narrative threads together into a satisfying and cohesive story. I wouldn’t have been so concerned about doing this in an ongoing campaign but for a one-off I wanted a clear sense of narrative conclusion. Hopefully the attached write-up will give some sense of that.
Any comments are welcome.
Jerry
Thanks for running an excellent session, Jerry.
For me, the best part was seeing small character details turn into high-stakes conflicts—especially when the social dynamic of the day phase guides decisions about who is flying together in the night phase, and how they respond to the action on the mission. So intense!