So, we had our first run of Night Witches last Friday. I had 5 players and it was our first “powered by the apocalypse” game for 5 of us.
Unfortunately, it didn’t go as smoothly as I expected. I had difficulties to suggest “living scenes” for the daytime. But the night phase was fun.
We played the first Duty Station (Engels) and the second mission (the real one) was deadly: they had an awesome result for Wayfind and Attack run (15 and 12). But they wanted more : so, two more attack runs.
Casualties: 2 dead (one PC, one NPC), and a second plane down : pilot had been captured and the other one survived and made to the airfield.
It was the first time in our 4 years of weekly playing that a PC died. Well done, Night Witches 😉
Do you have tips for using agenda, principles and threats as a gm?
Furthermore, my PCs and I aren’t used to narrative mechanics.
Example: I began to ask the questions suggested in the guided creation:
Me: Where do you lie in your enlisment quizz?
PC: I didn’t lie.
Me:… (mind: ok, what do I do now?)
Fortunately, it went a little better with the others players after that, but it was a tough start.
One remark: infos in the play aids are not consistent: the guided creation suggests two missions but the Duty Station 1 have 3, and they don’t exactly match. There are some minor problems with names of the regimental staff (don’t remember exactly which one but I can look for them if needed)
All in all, it was an interesting evening, and I look forward for a second try
Why during day you had problem with scenes? You didn’t found enough help in the manual, you werent’ able to come up with what could happen…
As for questions, if the player gives that answer, you can either stress that those questions are there to create a dynamic situation and so you’re supposed to answer to them (it could be as simple as “I told I was 18, but I’m really 17” – it happened); or, if the player refuse to answer the question, change it.
How do you got so many dead? They got a lot of harm, crashed, or what?
As for handouts, they are currently under revision, Steve Segedy should be releasing the new ones soon.
If a player answered me with “I didn’t lie”, just go with that and continue the conversation. Those questions, I believe, are designed as prompts to get you started.
“Oh, you didn’t lie? Why not? What made you tell the truth?” Keep in mind to not remove the player’s agency and control of the character (unless a move triggers it). That’s a quick way to make the game unfun for both of you.
If you’re having troubles during the day scenes, just keep asking questions of all the players of what they do, and ask MORE questions to clarify things. If everyone says “just wait” or sleep or something else that doesn’t really go anywhere, then introduce the appropriate GM moves or give them consequences for their inaction during the day. Surely the rest of the base must notice the stuff they aren’t helping out with.
Their mission pool will be pretty low, as well if they aren’t doing stuff during the day. Run the night missions relentlessly and the gamers among the players will see the game mechanics and start to engineer ways to earn more pool points. Otherwise, the missions will tear the PCs apart. This is how it’s supposed to work. The war should not be soft-pedaled. If a PC should die or get incredibly injured as a result of a roll, make sure just that happens.
Hope that helps.
Oh, I just reread your post and I see that deaths were occurring! I apologize for not reading it carefully before posting a reply. I’ll leave my post as is, maybe it will be useful.
Sounds like you’re doing great.
The problem with “I didn’t lie” is it doesn’t insert nothing interesting and could go on that way: “Why did you tell the truth?” “Because I have nothing to hide”, and so on. I’d rather change the question, that keep going with just “I didn’t lie”.
My understanding is those questions are loaded for a reason – unload them, the starting situation will be so much less interesting and easy to be used in game.
Mauro Ghibaudo, for sure. I actually don’t think that’s a great question. And I would only use it for a player who I think would be open to it’s “improvy” nature.
Definitely cherry-pick the questions that you think will work with your group of players, and if you don’t know them that well, then pick the questions you think are the best.
When scanning through the questions at the beginning or with the various bases, I would be like “Nope, nope, nope, that one’s cool, oh, that one works, that one’s dumb” all in my head and ask appropriately. They are aids as well, the game will work just fine without them, it will just have more of a slow burn to start. I have trouble with this myself as I like to play games with the all the rules as written, but a lot of Bully Pulpit games seem to be written with treating some of the rules as optional if ignoring them will bring more fun to the table.
Mauro Ghibaudo
Regarding day time, I lacked of ideas how use the threats or the principles: those are interesting themes but I should have thought about a couple of scenes before
the number of dead: the 3rd attack got a result of 5. I chose to use the three consequences: so pilot and navigator marked (navigator being an NPC: one Mark=she dies), the then the pilot had to suffer 5 Harm: she dies (maybe I misunderstood something here?) and the pilot used a Move (don’t remember which one) which allows to remove one Mark from her if another plane go down.
+Jesse Coombs About the question: I think I choose badly the player (she was the more skeptical about the game) and made a mistake as I asked it in-character. It would have been better understood by the player if I had asked it as the GM to the player
I took this question because I thought it would be easier to answer. I asked other questions like this and after a while everyone had understood the meaning of them.
Thanks for your help!
No problem. It’s fun.
5 harm sounds like a lot, death sounds right, but I’d have to check the book.
And don’t worry about jumping out of character whenever you need to, especially when you need to check in with a player, ruling, or description. It’s better for everyone to be clear about what’s going on than for things to be immersive. In my take anyway. I’m out of character for 90% of the time, when I run or even play rpgs.
I’m not sure about what happened: due to how you describe the effects, it seems it’s a missed Enemy Fire, but since the navigator was an NPC there was no need to roll, so the 5 should be about another move; was it in an Attack Run? If so, missing an Attack Run means to “either abort the attack completely […] or desperately press on, Tempting Fate”, so it doesn’t trigger Enemy Fire.
Also, keep in mind the five Harm is shared among characters; while I guess it’s fine for the GM to choose how to divide them (since it’d be decided by the navigator, but the navigator is an NPC; maybe Jason Morningstar can confirm this?), I think giving all five of them to the PC, killing her outright, is too much, even more since it was just the first Dusty Station (but I have to say, I’d rather not choose the “choose three consequences” option).
Keep also in mind a marked NPC doesn’t have to die at once – she will die, but it could be later.
I have no idea which move are you referring to while saying that a PC removes a Mark if another plane goes down.