Category: Night Witches: Actual Play

Another session in, we finished training and moved to Trud Gornyaka.

Another session in, we finished training and moved to Trud Gornyaka.

Another session in, we finished training and moved to Trud Gornyaka. Two of our airwomen fell in love just in time to be separated when they shipped out. The Wolf, tail number 088, was destroyed attempting to land after the final Engels mission. Touchingly, in a deal for some extra supplies for their tent, they also managed to pull off a name day party for Dina, an underage navigator in another squadron. Despite a number of disasters setting it up, on the day it went great (and one of our airwomen has adopted Dina as a daughter stand-in).

Moving from busy Engels to the middle of nowhere seems to have affected our section, too. Their first mission went well, but there’s worse waiting for next session.

We’re playing in a break from a long game of The One Ring.

We’re playing in a break from a long game of The One Ring.

We’re playing in a break from a long game of The One Ring. Nice to see that after only two sessions of play, there’s already tension and friendships building up quick between the airwomen.

Our two training missions so far have been tough – lots of damaged planes, marks, harm came out of each of them. Mission pool is now being pursued aggressively by most of the section.

Looking forward to the next game – I feel like everything is still building so far, and we’re going to get some really good characters and development in the crucible of action once we hit the front lines.

Dear friends

Dear friends

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 

Whoops, I turned their move back on them!

Whoops, I turned their move back on them!

Whoops, I turned their move back on them!

This is an actual play from my last demo of Night Witches. Alessio’s PC, Ira, and Stefano’s PC, Sveta, were in the infirmary after a training mission which went south.

Sveta eyeballed Ira and Stefano rolled a miss. I looked at my GM playsheet and I also looked at the situation, and I said to them:

“Ok, guys. First: Sveta, choose a question from the eyeball list; Ira, you can answer it as you like. Second: Ira, choose a question from the eyeball list; Sveta, you have to answer it truthfully.”

Ok, it worked, I swear, and it was sweet! But then I looked back to the GM general moves list and I realized there wasn’t such a move like this one. This was a turn their move back to them hard move from Apocalypse World and I used it instinctively because of my previuos gaming experience!

So my question is: can I do things like this when I am the GM at a Night Witches table or is this a “horrible drift” I made on the fly?

We had session 2 of Night Witches tonight and it was a blast!

We had session 2 of Night Witches tonight and it was a blast!

We had session 2 of Night Witches tonight and it was a blast! Only got through 3 of the missions but so much drama! The rolls went unnaturally badly all night so every NPC we sent into the air ended up dead, the ladies were interrogated by NKVD on several occasions, planes were damaged, everyone ended up in hospital, some had to return from enemy territory and they got busted trying to participate in an illicit party – ratted out by one of the zealot PCs. They did actually blow up most of what they were supposed to and they did rack up mission points during the days, but there’s only so much you can do when the dice come up snake eyes.

We are switching GMs next time, which is bittersweet for me because I’m just starting to get into the groove, but I’m going to have so much fun playing a fresh character next week.

I ran my first one-shot of Night Witches.

I ran my first one-shot of Night Witches.

I ran my first one-shot of Night Witches.

I was nervous reading over the material before the game.  I wasn’t sure if I was familiar enough with the setting, or how I was going to choose threats, and when I did, if the threats were going to be interesting enough to carry a whole game.

We used the cards to create characters, and mapped out the duty station and answered questions about our characters, and pretty soon it became obvious which of the threats I was going to pick.

Then before I knew it, moves were snowballing, and the game was going places I was not sure I was comfortable with it going.  Things kept spiraling into this dark and horrible crescendo…

and then we took a minute and looked around and thought “Where the hell could this game possible go from here?”  before we realized it was dusk and they better get their briefing under way and get those birds in the air and face the whole unrelenting horror again.

It was heartbreaking; but one of the best one-shot gaming experiences I’ve ever had.

Session 1 Report

Session 1 Report

Session 1 Report

We had our first session of Night Witches tonight. We ran through the training session, at Duty Station 1 – the Engels Airdrome, following along roughly with the walkthrough provided in the downloadable handouts. There were five players plus me, which is probably one too many, but we seemed to manage okay and started to get a feel for the rules and the flow.

The girls had a spectacularly bad first training run. This is the first (and only) daytime run, bombing fake targets while taking “friendly” fire from their own troops to simulate the enemy fire they can expect while on a real attack run. 

The main attack run went pretty well, except that Anya, the lead pilot decided to perform an odd manoeuver to make it appear that the friendly fire had actually struck the plane – just trying to mess with the soldiers below. Then Liza, one of her wing-women, assumed her comrade was had actually been hit by friendly fire, so she got and attempted a hard landing in the marshy grass, which didn’t go well, lodging the plane in the muck. She argued with and tried to strike one of the soldiers on the ground, and she and her navigator were then unceremoniously tied up, strapped to jeeps and driven back to base.

Meanwhile, the third plane took some incidental shrapnel damage from the main bombing run explosions, tearing a hole through their rudder. So Tasha, the pilot tried to land back at base but fails horribly, completely destroying the plane and sending her navigator to the hospital with a serious head injury.

And that was just the first run. 

Later, Liza and Sveta barely survived a run in with some of the men at the training facility. Liza is gaining a real reputation as a scrapper.

Their second bombing run was a great success, and they re-earned some of their credibility, but still finished their air training as some of the worst performing group of cadets the Engels training centre has ever seen. The only reason they weren’t kicked out immediately is the desperate need for air pilots due to how badly the war is going.

Our second session will be in a real combat zone, and we’re looking forward to a lot more daytime drama to go along with the night time bombing excitement.

Played our first session!

Played our first session!

Played our first session!

I didn’t have enough time to read the rulebook more than once, and I was a little reluctant to jump in without a more thorough understanding of how all the pieces fit together, but we couldn’t resist. Luckily, the “Airfield on the Borderlands” introductory scenario was there to hold my hand.

It was a bit of a struggle for me at first to figure out how to bring the Day turns to life, and it took me a while to get a handle on the different moves and their application, but I attribute that to me not doing my homework, plus just needing to get better at it with practice. I can’t imagine a better way for Bully Pulpit to have structured and laid out the information, in any case — everything is super-clear and well-organized, such that even having only read through the rules once, I was still able to run a 3-hour session with minimal hiccups.

The two most memorable bits:

* Liza, our Pigeon and stolid farmgirl, noticed Galya, her NPC bunkmate/Navigator trying to conceal the fact that she was scratching her head too much. Realizing it was lice, Liza offered to shave Galya’s hair, and her own in solidarity. This won Galya’s respect and gratitude, but a bad Scrounge roll for a straight razor led to using a sharpened butter knife. They gave each other terrible haircuts, which led to them wearing their flight caps everywhere, and the lice didn’t go away, but they were close comrades from then on. And between later training missions, when Liza finally Scrounged a straight razor, they managed to shave each other’s heads clean.

* Tasha, our Sparrow, and Lyuda, our Raven, took an immediate dislike to one another, manifested at first by the stylish and cosmopolitan Lyuda openly mocking Tasha’s peasant background. This built over the course of their time at Duty Station One, with Tasha reporting Lyuda to the NKVD and Lyuda reporting Tasha to the Major. By the end of their time at Engels Airdome, they were at each other’s throats, and then the Section Leader rearranged the planes so that Lyuda was the Pilot and Tasha the Navigator of the same plane. Lyuda complained to her Captain and demanded a reversal of the order, but she was told to obey her Section Leader (failed Act Up). So when Duty Station Two kicks off they will be forced to fly in the same plane. Lyuda is contemplating sabotage.

The start was a little shaky, but by the end of it we were having a blast. They all want to play Duty Station Two the next time we have another backup game night. I’ll definitely take more time to prep and get in the right frame of mind before that session, but I’m still pretty amazed at the fact that I was able to run it tonight without really knowing the rules very well at all.

On that note, “144 Night Witch-y Things” is PURE SOVIET GOLD.

Thanks again Jason and Steve and everyone else who contributed their hard work, playtesting, and talent to this project (everyone was ooing and aahing over Claudia Cangini’s character cards). This thing is brimming with love, care, clarity of communication, respect for the real lives of real people, and terrific attention to detail. It’s one inspiring package.

I am eagerly looking forward to Duty Station Two, and whatever unforeseen trials await the 588th!

Night Witches Session 1 (of 3) ended inauspiciously with unlucky Rufina dead in a crash from a training exercise,…

Night Witches Session 1 (of 3) ended inauspiciously with unlucky Rufina dead in a crash from a training exercise,…

Night Witches Session 1 (of 3) ended inauspiciously with unlucky Rufina dead in a crash from a training exercise, the Lt hospitalised, and another plane shot down at Voronezh, though Sgt Lisa landed to rescue the unconscious Katya and co-pilot Anya was awarded a Medal of Valour for leading a German Tiger tank away from the downed planes and into the Red Army’s guns.

(I’m running 3 consecutive slots at Conception 2015 with 4 players to see how the campaign rules work. Started with the Engels aerodrome duty station)