The Free City of Krakow

[Webstral]

Please note: this is a speculative post that goes way off-track from role-playing Escape from Kalisz and The Free City of Krakow to story-telling.

The recent talk of the Poland modules has moved me to break out The Free City of Krakow and have a look. I find it interesting how my perspective changes every couple of years. Two summers ago, I created a large party of characters who I envisioned surviving Escape from Kalisz together and fleeing to Krakow. Looking over my material and The Free City of Krakow again, I realize that the story isn’t about the limited fighting I imagined as what amounts to a small mech company escapes Fourth Guards Tank Army. The story is really about leadership, consensus, and visions of who these survivors are going to be. None of the guys I played with years ago ever questioned the idea that we were loyal Americans in a tight spot. If memory serves, we handed over the Reset papers to the DIA for a very nominal fee. Our role-playing was not especially imaginative.

I see now, though, that if one were to tell the story as a novelist would (I did just finish Team Yankee) a large number of characters could be used. More of the tensions could be explored. A lot of discussions would have to take place regarding motivation, plans, and so forth. The discussions and actions stemming from them would be the heart of the story, with a few firefights and a climactic escape battle thrown in.

Going back to Escape from Kalisz, I envisioned a large group combining a tank and crew, an APC and infantry squad, a HEMTT tanker and crew, a small MI group, some mechanics with a truck and gear, a team of horse cavalry, a small group of engineers, and a truck-mounted infantry squad. I had some other odds-and-ends characters who got scooped up along the way. You can’t do this sort of thing role-playing, but I devised this group after wondering what would happen if more than a couple of vehicles made it to the woods south of Kalisz. Somebody has to take charge of a large group like this, once they have sorted themselves out in the wood line, and there is the first tension of the story. How are things going to run?

I wrote the senior guy as the S-3 of one of 1st Brigade’s battalions. His tank got through, but none of the other tanks from his battalion managed to follow. The other groups are not all from 1st Brigade. Inertia would keep the troops following the orders of a major, but not for long. Almost immediately, the question of plan of action would have some characters starting to ask why the hell they were still following orders. Were the various groups free to go or not? To what degree is consensus necessary, and to what degree can the senior people still tell everyone else to get in line? What happens if there is dissent?

I also wanted to focus on what I call “the tyranny of the tank”. An M1A1 takes a lot of fuel to go anywhere. It’s a battlewagon, but it’s a magnet for trouble. Moving it quietly is difficult. Hiding it is difficult. If it uses its main gun, everybody for miles around knows. And yet leaving it behind while it is still operable is unthinkable. What to do? The whole group’s efforts start to revolve around the tank, and everybody starts to feel more than a bit resentful about it.

When it comes to Krakow, the schisms in the group that were papered over at Kalisz open up again. Not everybody wants to go along with the major’s scheme to sell the tank and a lot of the other gear to Krakow and give the Reset papers to the DIA. Some have come to believe that their identity as Americans doesn’t matter anymore. They are better off creating their own futures in Poland. Loose lips bring the KBG into the situation. How do the various characters handle all of this? The crux of the story here is conflicting ideas about who the characters are and what everyone is going to do about these conflicting visions.

Webstral