The missions are getting easier as the game goes on. Is anyone else experiencing this?
My clever players have figured this out. The section leader puts the airwoman with the highest Skill on Wayfind, and the one with the highest Guts on Attack Run. They both have Regard for their planes. With +4 on the rolls, they almost can’t miss. Every mission is a piece of cake. I am nostalgic for those hairy early missions when people would miss the target multiple times and come back on fire – or not at all.
We are at Duty Station 3, and none of the PCs have died yet, so their scores are getting up there.
Have I overlooked something?
Should I add fictional pressure for them to each make their own Wayfinds and Attack Runs each night?
Should I rile up the Germans and make the ladies roll Enemy Fire before their Attack Runs?
Something else?
I (well, the Major) made them take along a green recruit in their last mission. She rode shotgun in the Wayfinding plane, and didn’t make things any riskier. Which got me thinking: I should try to get more of them rolling somehow.
Make them hate each other during the daytime. Particularly, find a way that your section leader would be better off if one of her section didn’t come back from a mission.
Keep them busy during the day and wear them out. If they don’t sleep, that’s harm. If they don’t have time to earn mission pool, that hurts their chances at night. If they don’t make nice with the 218th, something bad might happen to their planes.
If you just want more mission rolls, that’s easy- a commander wants to see more initiative, more zealous enthusiasm for the destruction of their enemies. More Attack Runs means fewer informal interviews…
Also, play the fiction straight. Don’t try to enforce challenges out of habit. If they manage to have a run or two that isn’t death and horror, for pity’s sake don’t try to snatch it away.
I think the Marks will catch up with them in the end. Both Day and Night Moves can result in Marks and even if they physically survive mission after mission the war will eventually grind them down.
Steve Segedy: more Attack Runs mean fewer formal interview, but if the lead Attack Run succeed that means all Section’s planes succeed in their attack, doesn’t it? I’m not sure how you’d force more Attack Runs in that situation.
A successful Attack Run by the lead pilot is like a passing grade for the rest of the squadron- it’s assumed that everyone more or less succeeds and survives, with no particular glory. They did their job. But a pilot who looks at that success and dives back in for more glory? That’s someone who’s going to get noticed!
The point is that there are both mechanical and fictional drives in the game. Fictional positioning is important. If someone takes a Medal advance but they’ve never shown any particular zeal or valor in play, that’s a good opportunity to have others look at them with contempt or pity- they got a medal due to politics or bureaucracy, not heroism.
Sure, I get PCs can roll their own Attack Runs if they want glory (and medals, or whatever), it’s just that if the lead pilot succeed (i.e., all crews succeed) it seems to me there is little ground for an Informal Interwiev (barring something else gives the opportunity for a hard move), so I wasn’t clear how more Attack Runs means fewer informal interviews.
Thanks everyone. Good point John Harper, I won’t try to turn their successes to ash on them.
When the lead plane succeeds on the attack, does that mean that the vedomaya planes didn’t make attack runs, or that we assumed that their runs went smoothly?
Mauro Ghibaudo my answer is the same- fictional positioning is as much a reason for a GM to make a hard move as is the result of a failed player move. Even if the attack run was a success for everyone, if you’ve previously established that the Regimental Politruk has her eye on someone and that they better do something extraordinary to prove themselves, you’re using your GM moves to Show Them the Darkness on the Horizon, Doubt Them and Demand Discipline, and Bring a Threat to Bear.
“Look through Crosshairs” is the Apocalypse World term; if the players are – on one “front” (in the AW sense, not the “where is the front line of this war” sense) – practically Godzilla stomping down things, don’t be afraid to let the fiction reflect that.
Multiple missions where one regiment regularly flies in silently, under cover of darkness to deliver devastating attacks? Maybe forward operating posts are made. Or maybe the repairs needed to Nazi vehicles afterwards makes scrounging for resources that much harder.
Hell, arguments over command decisions or tactical decisions (“I needed you to watch my back and you didn’t!”) are, as far as I’m concerned where the meat of the game is found, whether or not anyone actually got hurt.
New relations can (and should !) mix up a little, and while adding some rookies – both PC and NPC is easy, I prefer to rely heavy on the character background and Marks. “Tell a war story” cannot be wasted !
Our GM had a particularly good way of derailing our ‘winning team combo’. When the junior members of the section became outspoken and too cavalier about respecting rank and asking questions. The wing leader was temporarily shifted to support and an NKVD “observer” was assigned to oversee and manage the wing. With as expected lack of care for the members of the flight or attention to whom was best for what role.
We ended up having to argue very hard with the commissar to get at least some of the section in the roles that would hedge our success. Our suggested role changes DID end up leading to success. but it also put us on the watch list and making life difficult.
Oh I LIKE that!
I had one player who always did the ‘mark harm…success on your wayfinding roll’. I allowed them to have a good run with it and then had someone’s plane takes damage during particularly heavy flak (ironically not even the plane that rolled a hit from enemy fire). This put her plane down behind enemy lines. She was out for the rest of that station and the rest of the squad found things much harder with the 2 rookies replacing them. Basically any opportunity to make life more interesting for the group.