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.