Finally had a chance to play Night Witches for the first time. We mostly followed the training scenario in the handout, with occasional reference to the book. It went okay without too many roadbumps, but I do have some questions now:
1. Do duty station missions repeat? The advancement rules seem to imply that moving to the next station is not directly related to the missions, but I can’t find anywhere in the actual book that clarifies. What happens when you’ve used up all the missions but aren’t ready to go to the next Duty station? Or do you go anyway?
2. I think I misread the text on the wayfinding move incorrectly at first: on a failure, I gave the other navigators the chance to roll a separate Wayfinding move (which they also failed). Rereading the text, it looks like instead they should just individually pick one of the consequences, rather than rolling. Have I got that right?
3. Given that each player must have a successful wayfinding and attack run move to finish training, I’m not sure how four players are going to get eight successful rolls across three missions.
4. The intro scenario worked really well to get the players to spread the GMing around a bit, though the player GMing mostly stuck to the text (which I’ve noticed is pretty common for training scenarios.) Although in part six, the descriptions of the night missions don’t quite line up with the Duty Station’s list. Which lead to their first mission being the bombing run on the simulated bridge before the mission pool was introduced, which lead to accidentally bombing a car that belonged to a captain from the 217th. (They had terrible luck all around that night, though the simulated bridge did get hit once.)
We stopped after the first night mission and debriefing because it was getting late out of the game, though there was some disapproval that we hadn’t gotten to bomb the fascists yet. I have some ideas for how to spin their failure on the bridge mission into the lead-in for the next flight, and then someone else gets to try GMing for a mission, so I’m looking forward to the next time we may have a chance to play…
I think when your done with missions at a place that’s it…
1. I think that “no more missions” = “next duty station, no charge.”
2. Multiple Wayfinding rolls seems perfectly fitting, but if everyone fails then they didn’t find their target and had to return to base due to incompetence (because a wayfinder who can’t find their way is…).
3. Ditto.
4. This is still Duty Station 1? Or Duty Station 6 with no Mission Pool?
3. So, if I’m reading you right and did the math right, someone is guaranteed to not pass the training? Because with three missions and four players, they can theoretically pass all the missions successfully without everyone getting a chance to roll.
4. Duty station 1, part six of the intro in the handouts on the website (which I now note may not be the latest version of the handouts)