Origins 2013 AAR

[Adm.Lee]

At Origins 2013, I ran a game (twice) using v2 rules, set in the Russian Civil War, “Siberian shootout.” The Russian Civil War has been something I’ve been wanting to do for years with T2k rules, and I’ve spoken of it often enough here.

The basic setup was of a multinational team with the goal of rescuing a Russian countess from a Bolshevik detachment. The hard part: the Reds had an armored train, damaged in an earlier aerial bombing and hidden in a wooden trainshed, and were far up a branchline off the Trans-Siberian Railway. (Standard RPG event: meet in a tavern, travel through the forest, fight a fire-breathing dragon in a cave, and rescue the princess, right?)

I figured on 8 people, made 14 pre-generated characters, and hoped for the best. I had a very busy two weeks prior to the convention, and so my preparation was less than I had hoped. I did make weapon cards, which would have pictures of the guns in question, boxes to track ammunition fired, and blocks to fill in to-hit numbers for the characters. I’ve been making my own character sheets for years, changing as I go to add more info for the players to understand the rules.

As it was, I made up 4 Germans (diplomat, female spy, gunrunner, ex-POW army officer), 4 British (female spy, RAF mechanic, cavalry officer and his batman), 3 Americans (2 army engineers and a navy officer from a Russian family), 2 Russians (a railway engineer and a female artist) and 2 Czechoslovaks (both draftees in the A-H army, one a chemist and one a railway laborer). At least 4 of them knew the Countess, so they could ID their target; at least two of them could give information about a train. Two had automatic weapons (the Czechs had a Madsen LMG and the Americans had a BAR), about half only had pistols, but could take rifles. I told them the Americans would have 10 pounds of dynamite and some fuse-cord. They could all split a box of German stick grenades. Ammunition would be plenty enough that they didn’t need to count magazines, but I did want them to count rounds in the guns.

I used the 2nd edition Initiative stat, but ran it like 1st edition: hesitations or actions, tracked with poker chips. I forgot the chips on the first day, and just ran everyone in initiative order. It worked much better on the 2nd day, although once nearly everyone took a wound, I could have dropped it to 3 potential actions per round and gotten through things much faster-- note for next time.

Once the BAR gunner got the hang of suppressive fire down the Red axis of advance, they held the initiative very well. I need to print clearer info on how initiative (and wounds) interact for the players.

Using bottlecaps with stickers on them worked a lot better than carting miniatures back and forth, especially since I don’t own any WW1-era minis. I know there’s lots out there, but I don’t have money to invest in that. {The guy running a 2000-era Twilight game did me one better: he painted all his bottlecaps matte black, and then printed the names on the stickers.} Vehicle-outline cards, or maps for the train cars, would have been very useful, but they fell victim to my lack of preparation.

[Adm.Lee]

Game 1, on the first morning of the convention, had 12 people at my table. That first morning is a bit sparse on games, so I got my allotment of 8, and I didn’t have the heart to turn people away. Some of them played with me the year before, and are veterans of Roman’s “last stand” T2k games.

This group split into a few teams to assault the armored train, dormant in its shed, while others kept watch outside. I put a camp with a platoon or so of Reds just out of sight of the train. The two MG gunners, with some grenades, kept those pinned down while others engaged the guards immediately around the trainshed. One of the spies, with backup, was able to get inside the sleeping car, fight past the two commissars, and rescue the countess. They all headed back to where they had tethered the horses, while leaving some dynamite to wreck the locomotive. They did get chased through the woods for a bit, but they got away clean. About a third were wounded, mostly Slightly, some Serious.

Game 2, on the 2nd day of the con, had 4 people. This about matched my experience of last year, by the way. Of course, I scaled down the opposition, so as not to overwhelm them. These guys were able to take out the nearby guards, then keep the reinforcements at bay with the BAR. The few guards on the far side of the trainshed, as well as the commissars inside, gave them some trouble. Nearly everyone was wounded here. The lone BAR gunner rolled 3 20s in a row—which I ruled as a jam in his gun. Fortunately, he had a pocketful of grenades, keeping the Bolsheviks’ heads down until he could clear his jam. He demoralized the Reds enough that the others were able to get up steam in the locomotive, and drive it away (time was almost up, anyway).

Both groups used Stealth and Observation rather well to avoid foot patrols that were marching around the forest near the train and camp. This was a noted contrast to last year's v1 game, in which no one seemed to make a RCN roll to sneak past the guards.

[Adm.Lee]

Weapons: pistol damage still sucks. For the first game, I used exploding d6 for all damage, and that didn’t seem to help. I don’t think anyone actually rolled an exploder with a pistol, but several did with a rifle. For the second game, I used non-exploding d10 for all damage, and that didn’t help either.

I've been troubled for years about the HtH combat, too, the damage there seems just as weak. It only came up once, in the first game when they suppressed the 2 commissars in the sleeping car, and the players shifted back to using pistols.

I am leaning strongly towards scrapping the existing damage stats for weapons and melee combat, and adopting a different method for any v2 games.

I am leaning almost as strongly towards using a different ruleset for the RCW-era stuff, if I do it again. I may experiment with a different ruleset for non-convention T2k games, as well. I’d like to see how Traveller, D6 Adventure, Savage Worlds, and Cortex would work for either setting. I was thinking next year of returning to the standard v1 setting and rules, a follow-up to the game I ran the year before.

[Adm.Lee]

Final installment.

Since I had a handful of people who played in my game last year and this, and will also sign up for Roman's games, too, I was wondering about the following idea.

If I ran next year's game with the same PCs and setting as the year before, and I do so again another year, should I start paying attention to who comes, and which characters they play? I could offer them dibs on the same characters, if they ever play again with me.

Should I offer them the opportunity to modify the characters to suit their tastes? Should I offer them the chance to make their own, and I would hold them for the future? Should I reserve these for their exclusive use (in addition to however many pre-gen PCs I make). BTW, I've said it many times: I really don't like making up lots of pre-gens, so recycling old characters is pretty mandatory for me.

Thanks for reading the several entries above, I look forward to comments.

[Adm.Lee]

Roman and I are already thinking of next year, may coordinate on some 1998-9 scenarios, probably featuring cavalry or raider-type action on the German-Czechoslovak front.