Advice for running Black Madonna

[Rockwolf66]

I'm planning on Running the modual Black Madonna and I'm wondering if anyone has any advice for me?

[Targan]

Read through the entries on the rumour tables. Deciding that some of the rumours are true can provide excellent starting ideas for side missions. In my last campaign I decided that the rumour about a backpack nuke being left over from the NATO withdrawal from Czestochowa in 1997 was true and it provided some of the best role playing sessions of the entire eight years (real time) of the campaign.

[Legbreaker]

Be VERY aware of the effects of radiation, darkness and dangers of moving through nuked rubble.
Once the PCs get underground do your damnedest to scare the pants off them and split them up. With the fairly limited opposition, and the tendancy of PCs to load for bear, they need all the help they can get.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

I'm doing this from my very hazy memory of the module but...
Jasna Gora, the monastery the Black Madonna is located in, is huge and fortress like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasna_G%C3%B3ra_Monastery
http://www.sacred-destinations.com/poland/czestochowa-jasna-gora

Communism did nothing to dampen the faith in the Catholic Church and for Twilight: 2000 the Polish people would probably be further motivated to seek solace in their religion. The Black Madonna has history, specifically that it is believed to have protected the Jasna Gora monastery during an attack by the Swedes in the 1600s. It's also believed that it came to their aid again in 1920 when the Soviet Army was going to attack Warsaw but were defeated by the Poles.
I think as a symbol for Poland, it would be much more potent than the designers of the module realized.

A lot of older towns (as in at least a few hundred years old such as Czestochowa) still have handpumps for water in the old sections that are still in operating condition.
Czestochowa is a typical big, built-up town with tall buildings and relatively narrow streets from hundreds of years ago but also large industrial/commercial areas from the Soviet era (typically drab coloured, depressing collections of buildings) and the depressing Soviet style apartment blocks. These blocks typically only have elevators if they have more than 6 floors.
There's also a number of parklands and water features, the parklands are often light forests. The rail yards are huge.

[Legbreaker]

The city did get flattened by a Nato siege with plenty of artillery and airstrikes.... If that didn't do it, then the nuclear demolition charges probably finished of the city's tourism value.

[Caradhras]

Three things I remember about when I ran it.

1. The group had no idea about the local Margrave's motivations, but they did know he had NATO prisoners hald. When they encounter a strong patrol of the Margraves it proved interesting. (stand-off becomes kick-off, then in hostile territory...others may turn out different).

2. When they reach the caves, they detect an odd smell..I left them unsure as to whether it was safe to use firearms down there which gave the extra element of tension down there.

3. The Spetnaz are tracking the group from Krakow having heard of them asking questions and they have been instructed to use the PCs to lead them to the painting for the Russians to take. I had the young spetnaz encounter the PCs in a chess tournement in the Nas trovia (? cant remember) bar in Warsaw undercover. He also was sypathetic to them and their prediciment.

Thats all I remember offhand at work.

[Adm.Lee]

Once the PCs get underground do your damnedest to scare the pants off them and split them up.

- Let someone with engineering skill suggest that explosives (grenades) underground might be a bad idea.
- Remind them that it's dark under there. Flashlights and torches still cast all kinds of shadowy light, conducive to "visions."

One of my players brought in IR goggles. I pointed out that it wouldn't help if the catacomb was haunted, since ghosts don't have heat signatures. :D

The crazy para captain down there did a lot of hit & run from the side tunnels and such, I think I whittled the party down to two wounded PCs before they finally got him.

The Black Madonna has history, specifically that it is believed to have protected the Jasna Gora monastery during an attack by the Swedes in the 1600s.

Yep. Some time after running this, I got to read the novel "The Deluge,"* which includes this siege. I think there's a movie in Polish, but I haven't seen it.

BM and Krakow were two of my favorite modules, in that their basic set up was to present the GM with all of the factions in a region, then hand the PCs an object too valuable for them to use. What do they do, and who do they ally with?

Good luck.

*by Henryk Sienkiewicz. I recommend the 1993-ish Hippocrene translation.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

The city did get flattened by a Nato siege with plenty of artillery and airstrikes.... If that didn't do it, then the nuclear demolition charges probably finished of the city's tourism value.

Fair point, my knowledge of the module is vague at best so I didn't know what state the city was in. Considering this however, if some part of the city did survive it could be seen as further evidence of the Black Madonna protecting the Polish people?

[Legbreaker]

From my reading of the module, the city is basically flattened rubble which then got nuked.
And that be a ground burst too, not some weak arsed airburst from above! :cool:

[HorseSoldier]

The key to making it work is bumping up the atmosphere, which can be a little tricky since the idea is horror and creeping the PCs out with their powerlessness and a lot of T2K problems are either easily handled by head on confrontation with big guns and skill, or are clearly too much to chew.

If I were going to run it these days, I'd probably start foreshadowing the horror angle a couple scenarios out by working in some inexplicable stressors -- like a Soviet patrol coming out of Kalisz that seems specifically intent on killing the PC's group, follows them long after it makes any sense to just go after stragglers, is obviously too big to fight directly, and seems to have an uncanny ability to stay on their trail. I'd mostly make them a nuisance, and eventually reveal a mundane explanation (like they're a special unit with RF direction finding gear and other surviving high tech stuff and think the PCs are somehow involved with Operation Reset or some other super important deal). The trick would be to make them a problem that seems somewhat uncanny, and have it in place before the PCs get on the trail of the Madonna, otherwise the dots connect themselves too neatly.

Second, I'd conspire to have the PCs end up having some extended contacts with refugees -- camping with them outside a town, or do some extended contact interactions with them while trying to research the situation in the area. Along with information that directly advances the scenario's plot, hit the players up with the sort of stuff hungry, cold, terrified people with no sense of personal power are likely to by into. A mix of sort of plausible ideas coupled with downright strange ones, all featuring fear of unknown areas and the dark. Basically, the sort of stuff the locals would be saying in a good Hammer horror film set in Eastern Europe. Throw out some crazy stuff about vampires and zombies or werewolves, whatever, but have the locals buy into it 100%, and throw out some bodies to maybe/maybe not corroborate it (Y2K Poland should always have the occasional dead body laying around, and most of them would surely be predator or scavenger gnawed, but that makes for a whole different story after some frightened refugee told them the last night about a secret government lab that had a biowarfare agent that turns soldiers into unstoppable, psychotic cannibals . . . ).

Anyway, the trick, I think, is to shift gears from sort of mil-combat simulation game to horror story without being so sudden and heavy handed about it that the players think they've just warped into a whole other universe, but also to make sure the air of terror and unease is thick on the ground long before they get down into the monastery catacombs.

[pmulcahy11b]

You can almost describe the underground area as (if you're a good DM) the way you describe a dungeon or cave. The dank atmosphere, the fetid smells, the strange noises just within earshot but you don't know where they come from, the movement you see out of the corner of your eye but when you look, there's nothing there -- that sort of thing. Even on night vision, things look really weird on IR in a very dark place -- and with a starlight scope, you need some sort of light to see anything.

[HorseSoldier]

And even with an IR illumination source, the bodies lined up as an honor guard towards the end would be over the top creepy under NODs, with that initial "what the hell am I looking at" moment you get where you'retrying to convert that NVG image into something your mind can recognize, followed by any shift in the point of illumination looking like movement. Probably worse that way than by torchlight in a lot of ways (like trying to do CQB under NODs instead of white light, plus the "supernatural" angle . . .).

[Raellus]

It might pay to have the PCs come across a couple of people who've been inside the catacombs. Perhaps they meet them in a nearby town. Perhaps the town's "mayor" asks the unit's medic to take a look at them. One of them has had his eyes gouged out. When the unit inquires as to who did such a thing, the mayor answer, "He did that to himself." The sightless man refuses to speak and he just grins non-stop. The other survivor babbles all kinds of weirdness about meeting the devil underground or something along those lines. Build up a sense of supernatural dread and forboding on one hand, while presenting very tangible threats (like the Spetznaz team) on the other.

You might also also want to include yet another faction just in case any of your players have seen the module before. One idea I like is a small French team sent to recover the BM so that France has a bargaining chip/leverage in the region. They're neither pro-NATO, pro-Soviet, pro-Polish, nor pro-Margrave. Could be interesting.

[Raellus]

And even with an IR illumination source, the bodies lined up as an honor guard towards the end would be over the top creepy under NODs, with that initial "what the hell am I looking at" moment you get where you'retrying to convert that NVG image into something your mind can recognize, followed by any shift in the point of illumination looking like movement. Probably worse that way than by torchlight in a lot of ways (like trying to do CQB under NODs instead of white light, plus the "supernatural" angle . . .).

I like it. Here's an additional flourish: Once the PCs get close to the honor guard, and believe they are all dead, have one of them open his eyes suddenly and croak, "Kill me!" - like one of the cocooned colonists in Aliens.

[HorseSoldier]

Yeah, having the demented guy down in the catacombs "recruiting" members of his honor guard and dressing guys up in uniforms pulled off dead paras and then chaining them up to the wall with the rest of his "troops" could amp up the final encounter down below, and could be the source for the crazy, traumatized refugees you mentioned above.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Interesting stuff, it makes me think of the guy voiced by Phil Lynott in Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds. The guy has become unhinged and is convinced that digging tunnels under London is the only way to survive, he's so deluded by the idea that he thinks they can rebuild the city and society below the earth.
I'm think that an encounter with someone like that early on in the piece could also help to play up the unusual nature of the scenario. Someone who thinks that he can rebuild society under the ruins of the city so he is frantically digging tunnels. The guy is obviously irrational due to the war but maybe he knows something about the area - or maybe he is just crazy?

[TiggerCCW UK]

I think you're thinking of the 'Young Artillery Man' character played by David Essex IIRC. Phil Lynott was the pastor who the narrator was buried with under the cylinder. Just talking about War of the Worlds, is anyone familiar with the BBC radio version? Not a bad listen if you get a chance.

[Targan]

Just talking about War of the Worlds, is anyone familiar with the BBC radio version? Not a bad listen if you get a chance.

We had a version on vinyl in the old family home in Wellington. It had a big impact on me as a kid.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

I think you're thinking of the 'Young Artillery Man' character played by David Essex IIRC. Phil Lynott was the pastor who the narrator was buried with under the cylinder.

Ah yes, (slapping myself now), thanks

[TiggerCCW UK]

No slap intended Stainless - It only really occured to me because I'd been listening to the Jeff Wayne version the other day :D

Targan - I thought them replacing the artilleryman with a Australian helicopter pilot was interesting, but not as intersting as the fact that the treatment of his idea for the 'Brave New World' was very different to the treatment it received in the novel and the musical version. His ideas were treated much more seriously in the BBC version - possibly because of people thinking about long term shelters and underground life in the event of a nuclear war, or am I reading too much into that?

Apols for the thread jack btw:o

[Slappy]

I'd also suggest that spending some more time in the Margravate could be rewarding. The political information in the module is pretty vague, but there is a good bone structure that you can hang some meat on. Figuring out how such a state would actually function, what the motivations of the individual Barons would be, etc. can provide a lot of interesting material.

I personally envisioned the Markgraf as a bit less obviously crazy, but clearly a bit paranoid. Probably not surprising as he is the head of a fragile and nacent state threatened potentially by the Russians, the US Cav Brigade, internal unrest, the merchant league and Krakow. Even if he is a decent guy trying to maintain control he sees a lot of enemies and there. There are a lot of power bases in the Margravate that the PCs could align with. They could back the Markgraf, back a baron, try to undermine the regime, lead a trade or intimidation mission to one of the towns in the trade league, be given a mission to fight encroaching Soviets or sent out to spy on or destabalize Krakow in one way or another.

I would personally think about delaying the discovery of the Madonna until they have had a chance to explore some of these realities and potentially pick sides without such a valuable item. Geographically, Silesia is the most likely place for the players to end up escaping Kalisz if they run straight South avoiding canon opfor placements. Despite the appeal of Krakow it can be a good place to introduce them to the realites of the Twilight world.

Just my thoughts if I had it to do again.