Night Witches: Discussion – Page 6 – Powered by the Apocalypse G+ Archives

Hi people

Hi people,

Trying to get my head around nightwitches.

How does the GM judge the appropreate length of the day phase?

So, I ran my first session of Night Witches over the weekend at a con.

So, I ran my first session of Night Witches over the weekend at a con. When we changed duty stations I volunteered to take over GMing duties. And it was a blast.

Though despite how hard I tried to make it grim and capture the vibe of the setting. Night Phase, no problemo. It was a brutal run of poor luck. With one plane shot down and another two damaged. I found that our Day Phase, while fun and productive. ended up, in many ways, feeling a bit like MASH. With the players trying to work around authority and the outright idiocy (at times) of the military. And backroom deals with unsavory people for black market goods. All in all it was great. If not exactly what I was shooting for. Anyone else have a similar experience?

As a side note, I think part of the disconnect, at least for me, was the nature of it being a one-shot. Without a ton of time to get attached to the characters and have them become interconnected amongst themselves. That, coupled with the fact that they had their full bag of tricks to throw at the NKVD to thwart their designs. Which I’ll admit. I rather enjoyed watching the players scramble, pulling out every stop to dodge a full blown inquiry.

I have been thinking about ways to increase the rate at which we get through missions.

I have been thinking about ways to increase the rate at which we get through missions. Since we only play once a month and only for about 3.5 hours each session, if we only get through one mission per session it is going to take us years of real time to do the whole campaign. My preference would be to do three missions per session; we are at Duty Station 3 now so at that rate we complete the war in another eight sessions. That seems a good pace but I do not want to have to railroad the players through set-piece scenarios to do that.

To that end, I experimented with a couple of things in our last session:

Firstly, at the start of play I put a great big timer on the table, visible to all players, with a countdown of 45 minutes of real time until the first mission. The players were a little intimidated at first but they snapped into action pretty quickly, looking for ways to get that Mission Pool. They really had to throw themselves into trouble of their own accord and the story unfolded urgently but naturally – a great effort for a “cold start” type situation. They ended up getting 4 Mission Pool for the first mission and had lots of excellent rolls so it turned out to be a pretty easy run (they only used 1 Mission Pool).

Secondly, as soon as they landed from that first mission, I had that smug bastard Lt Gen Igor Miroshnichenko waiting for them at Debriefing and he sent them straight back out for another mission. I probably wouldn’t have done this if they had no Mission Pool left from the first mission (but then again maybe I would have…). The second mission was another success and gave the women opportunities for confronting the patriarchy and hierarchy for their callous disregard for the safety of the regiment.

I did not use the countdown again in this session and there was a noticeable relaxing of the mood. The general pace of the fiction slowed but we still got a third mission in.

After the game, the players all commented on how much they liked the countdown gimmick and I think I will use it on a regular basis. I especially like the idea of varying the amount of time on the clock in different sessions. Imagine starting a game with only 15 minutes to go before the first mission. Watch the scramble for that Mission Pool!

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 made up some play aids for my players for our second session.

I made up some play aids for my players for our second session. I’m going to print them off on card stock and hand them out to each of them to keep track of their PO-2’s.

I’d appreciate any feedback you might have.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0a_iGRNRo6BLUUzQzMwb0pyQ3c/view?usp=sharing

I’ve got a couple questions about the Attack Run move that I am a little confused about.

Planes relying on your leadership can choose which miss condition they would prefer.

Does this refer for planes covering you as Vedomaya specifically? Otherwise I don’t know how it applies.

After an Attack Run by a Leader, if other pilots decide to make an additional Attack Run they enjoy +1 forward.

I assume the only time you would ask for a follow up Attack Run is if the first payload didn’t connect or the mission requires more than one target be eliminated, is that correct?

Also, I think I may have handled our Night Mission incorrectly last night. We did B mission from Duty Station One.

B: Under the tutelage of major Marina Raskova herself, a Night flying exercise culminating in a live bomb attack on targets arranged on either bank of the Tsna River, simulating a bridge. Potential Enemy Fire is damage from ordinance dropped too low.

Given that the targets can offer no resistance, an Attack Run wouldn’t have been necessary? I asked for one but didn’t read the rule about no roll being needed until this morning. If that is the case, Potential Enemy Fire would only come from a less than successful Wayfind check?

Thanks. 🙂

Here’s a thoughtful and honest review of Night Witches.

Here’s a thoughtful and honest review of Night Witches.

https://heterogenoustasks.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/night-witches-an-rpg-about-ww2-soviet-airwomen

Finally had a chance to play Night Witches for the first time.

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’m very excited that very soon I’ll get to finally try out Night Witches!

I’m very excited that very soon I’ll get to finally try out Night Witches! I’ve assembled a local team of amazing lady gamers who will boldly take to the night skies!

The only problem is that I got a little over-zealous in my recruitment. I invited six players assuming 1 or 2 would either not be available or interested, I was wrong. So now I am in the unique situation of running a very large NW group. Does anyone have experience with that big a group, or have any ideas on how to best handle it?

I thought about pairing them up so that each session they have a partner in scenes, allowing me to make my way around the group quickly enough that they don’t have to wait around much for spotlight. (It also happens the players attending fit into pairs of old friends really nicely and it might be a cool meta-comfort level for them with the newer players)

Also, I gotta say, I’ve finally started to fully read the core book and I am super amazed! The moves are incredible once I started to see how they all fit together. I am soooo excited to see this in play.

Anyone run Night Witches as a longcon game? 3-4 sessions of 3-4 hours each? Any thoughts on that format?

Anyone run Night Witches as a longcon game? 3-4 sessions of 3-4 hours each? Any thoughts on that format?