Night Witches – Page 13 – Powered by the Apocalypse G+ Archives

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?

A couple of visual references I find useful to get an idea of what it meant to fly a Po-2:

586th flew this: http://ram-home.com/ram-old/yak-1-gor1p129-1.jpg

http://www.airwargame.com/upload/image/render/Yak-1b_03.jpg

587th flew this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Petlyakov_Pe-2_at_Poltava,_Russia.jpg

http://img.wp.scn.ru/camms/ar/265/pics/1_13.jpg

588th flew this: http://www.hans-egebo.dk/images/po2-2.gif

http://www.bestpapermodels.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/p/o/polikarpov_po-2-winter.jpg

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.

Sergeant’s beginning stats

Sergeant’s beginning stats

Can a sergeant start with +3 -1 -1 or +1 +1 -1 in her stats?

Doubts about Act Up

Yesterday evening I was running a demo with Mauro Ghibaudo, Luca Ghibaudo and Mattia Grazioli.

Luca was playing sgt. Sveta and she was acting up against some male comrades who, in an act of bullying, stole the bombing levers from the planes of Sveta’s Section.

Well, Luca rolled a 7-9 and choose “add one the the mission pool”. Ok, so Sveta didn’t make the boys do what she wanted. The problem is Luca narrated as part of her initial action that Sveta took away with force the levers from Stepen, an NPC.

Then Luca asked me: “Does the 7-9 mean that I still get the levers or not?” Luca’s request was motivated with the general rule of the moves, which states that with a 7+ you still get a success and not a failure.

I answered him that is the general rule of thumb, but that the outcome depends on the specific move: “The trigger of the move says ‘When you try to get your way…’ and, well, if you don’t choose ‘make someone do what you want’, I don’t think you are getting your way”. But, at last, I only narrated Stepen and his friend taking back only a few of the levers, leaving the most with Sveta.

How would have we managed that situation according to the rules?

I think there is a typo in Replay:

[Player roll Act Up] OK, ten, awesome, I choose three

I guess that should be “I choose two”?

At p. 65 of the rulebook the list of the “OUR BELOVED 588TH REGIMENT” threat moves is way too long.

The reason is the seventh bullet is a missing heading of another threat type: “Our Gallant Flying Comrades”.

After the second reading, some more thoughts, doubt and typos (with help from Daniele Di Rubbo):

First things first, what I miss most is something more about the life in duty stations during the day, how it changes according to ranks, etc. There is something, and I have to see how it developes during the game, but after reading the rules I felt I’d have needed something more. Also about ranks: it’s not really clear to me how duties, and day scenes, changes according to ranks (I know Section Leaders have to do paperwork, for example; I’m not so sure about how to bring this without being repetitive or boring, I guess I’ll have to see what I can do during play).

Doubts:

• Pag. 20, Major: If another airwoman attains [Major] rank, one of them will be reassigned to a different command

This means one of the PC is out of the game?

• Pag. 31, Order of the Red Banner: When you earn this individually, you may choose any staff role in the Regiment other than Commander. Choose a character to be transferred into your old job when you receive the Order of the Red Banner

“Old job” as in pilot/navigator, so the PC isn’t pilot/navigator anymore? (Unless she finds a way to keep flying.)

• Pag. 42: Split 5 Harm between you however you like

How to split Harm is chosen by whoever rolled the Move? So, if I roll it, I can say “The other PC in my plane takes it all and dies”?

• Pag. 44, Murky Past: Choose two things you are hiding: valuable training, prominent family, political connections, a strange secret, portable wealth. Define them whenever you want

Just to be sure, can I also choose which one I’m hiding (valuable training, etc.) on the spot, as the details, or I have to choose them when I get the Move? (I guess I can?)

• Pag. 46, Sacrifice: When you are sent to the hospital to recover from combat injuries, you may choose your assignment, Squadron, Section, and aircraft when you return

What if she returns to a different Squadron/Section, not the one with the other PCs? Not sure about how to manage this during missions.

• Pag 46, Behind Enemy Lines: On a miss, you don’t evade capture

And? I mean: the captured PC is out of the game, returns after a while after managing to escape, it’s GM’s choice…

• Pag 107. Wayfind and Attack Run: HOW CAN I IMPROVE OUR ODDS?/Ask your Vedomaya for help

“Help” here is just the Vedomaya ability to take consequences? I’m not sure because that doesn’t improve odd of Wayfind (i.e., roll’s result), but I guess being able to return home in a piece counts as improved odds?

Typos:

• Pag. 23: MAKE AN ATTACK RUN, endure Enemy Fire, find yourself Behind Enemy Lines, or in an Informal Interview, and choose it as an option.

Not sure if it’s a choise for Moves’ names not to be bold.

• Pag. 41/42: “split 2-harm between you and your crewmate however you want” and “Split 5 Harm between you however you like” and “Split 3 Harm between you however you like”

Wayfind, Enemy Fire and Wheels Down have similar consequence, written in different ways; this could be confusing (I wondered for a while if “however you like” meant “among all planes”, since Wayfind says “between you and your crewmate”).

• Pag. 21 and 42: You are free to change a slot’s tone at any time, and you can change who a slot’s target is between sessions or as a result of the Reach Out Move

Also Wheels Down let you change your Regard (“Change an existing Regard slot to refer to your plane if you want”); not sure if it’s a typo this isn’t shown in the summary on page 21.

• Pag. 72: Consider changing GMs when:Any player chooses the “Moving West” Advance

According to Moving West, the player who choose it has to become GM (“you become the GM”), while here it seems just an option.

• Pag 109 and 111: “PASHKOV-skya” and “Pash-KOV-skya”

Pronunciation is written in a different way.

• For Engeles, it isn’t said missions are to be done in order, but since training has an order I guess the mission should be done as presented?

(I’m guessing friendly fire here works as normal Enemy Fire, since they could mess things up and hit you nevertheless?)

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.

On the Owl and on the Raven Nature playbooks the Order of Suvorov is miswritten as “Order of Suvarov”, with the…

On the Owl and on the Raven Nature playbooks the Order of Suvorov is miswritten as “Order of Suv*a*rov”, with the…

On the Owl and on the Raven Nature playbooks the Order of Suvorov is miswritten as “Order of Suv*a*rov”, with the “a” in lieu of the “o”.

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.