The King?-- what did you do?

[Adm.Lee]

I was thinking about Julian Filipowicz, the Markgraf of Silesia (and King of Poland), in connection with the "Later Days" game blog brought up here. I have read as far as the players going to Silesia and getting hired by the Markgraf to look for his brother's remains in Czestochowa.

I remember being perplexed by this guy when I ran Black Madonna back in the day-- there were suggestions that he could be a useful patron/foil for the PCs, and there were hints of intrigue between two of his subordinates, but I could never put together anything for me to run.

I assume that it was left open-ended, so that each GM could tailor things to the game's circumstances, but that left me hanging. I readily admit that making stuff up from whole cloth is one of my weak points as a GM.

Hiring the PCs, and then sending them back out beyond his borders, seemed counterproductive from a story point of view, as that would bypass the intrigue elements. Sending them out to his Foreign Legion seemed useful, but just as uninteresting to me. He wasn't said to be planning any offensive moves, so there was no goal on which I could focus.

In short, it seemed like a lost opportunity for storytelling to me. Did anyone else come up with stuff for the PCs to do with him?

[Olefin]

Actually you have two opportunities to run into him if you did White Eagle as well.

[Raellus]

I think the BM designers didn't want to railroad PCs into taking out the Margrave as a matter of course. They'd pretty much already done something similar with "Black Baron" Czarny in the RoW module so my guess is they left BM a little more open-ended so that the PCs had more sense of choice- overthrow him, join him, work for him for a bit and then betray him, other? My guess is that most PCs would have seen him as an adversary, but I think the designers wanted to avoid the impression that they were recommending any particular course of action. My impression with the RoW (which I'm more or less running right now in my PoV PbP) is that everything presented in the module is meant to steer the PCs into duking it out with the Baron.

The only personal experience have had with the Margrave of Silesia is that I once played as a Polish partisan who was part of a group (including a couple of U.S. SOF PCs) who deserted from one of the Margrave's convoy escort cavalry units to join an understrength company from the 5th ID which was on its way west towards NATO lines in No Carrier's defunct Stalemate War game on RPGnet. The idea was that the PCs had joined out of necessity or lack of purpose and then opportunistically took off with his horses when an opportunity presented itself. They didn't feel too guilty because the Margrave was a jerk. I guess that's one of the down sides to hiring mercs.

[Olefin]

We made friends with him (but we didnt give him the Madonna) because we brought his brother back alive to him after we got the Madonna. He gave us a pass allowing free entry into and out of his territory and as well as other rewards.

His brother was knocked out during the fight and we hid the Madonna and told him after he came to it had been destroyed by one of his booby traps during the fight. (We had decided we were going to give it to the DIA in Krakow which is where we were going next - will give some details of that campaign in a post soon). He went totally insane but his brother, the Margrave still was very happy to see that his brother was still alive.

However we werent in his good graces for long - on the way out to Krakow we busted out those 40 5th ID guys in the warehouse and most of them went with us to Krakow instead of serving with him.

[Rainbow Six]

And I thought this was going to be a thread about Elvis!

Can't really add to what's already been said, other than when we played this module many many years ago, we introduced a French DGSE team who had established friendly contact with Julian and were lurking behind the scenes. The DGSE team - and in particular their leader - became a sort of recurring nemesis who would crop up every now and then.

[Matt Wiser]

Our group passed thorugh Northern Silesia-but stayed north of the nuclear targets. Never did encounter his forces, but if we'd heard about the guys from 5th ID being held, a raid to free them would certainly have been in order.

[Adm.Lee]

Originally Posted by Olefin

However we werent in his good graces for long - on the way out to Krakow we busted out those 40 5th ID guys in the warehouse and most of them went with us to Krakow instead of serving with him.

Whoa, I'd forgotten all about those. Were they in his capitol city?

[Olefin]

No they were in a warehouse north of his city in another town. We heard about them from a civilian we encountered and went to the town. The passes we had got us into town no problem and we did a recon and found them.

We created a diversion, took out the guards (had to kill one, the rest non-lethally) and busted them out and headed to where B troop was. About 15 of them joined up with them, the rest went with us. (GM was doing a bunch of rolls and gave us the results)

Later on we went back to B troop and found out that the Baron was not happy to say the least and that Silesia was not a place to be if we wanted to remain breathing, especially after the news leaked that the Polish Free Congress had the Madonna (after Stark gave it to them) - i .e. we had lied to the Baron about not having the Madonna when we brought his brother back to us

Our GM kept a running journal of what we did and he used to use it as a way of making good (or bad) decisions come back to haunt us or come back to help us

I havent put up details of my campaign but I think I will do so - might give everyone an idea of where I am coming from as a player since I am The New Guy here