I’ve been gaming for more years than I can remember. It started back when my younger brother and I would make up our own rules for games and tell stories through those mediums. When I finally got into games like Dungeons and Dragons a few years after that, my eyes were opened to just what could be accomplished with these rule sets and what kind of experiences could be delivered. At heart, I’m an “incorrigible system tinker monkey.” I like to open up the hood of a game and see what makes it tick. What changes if I tweak this dial or turn that knob? As I grew older, that turned towards writing my own original content for games and even working on my own rules and game settings. Nothing original has been published, but I still work with an eye towards that eventual goal.
I will be bringing you a mix of articles each week with no particular focus or game system in mind. Some may focus on bringing in original content for games that I enjoy, some may be to promote games that I don’t feel get the credit or recognition they deserve. And some will very likely focus on tweaking or adapting rules in games to run a particular type or style of game that the developers may have not have originally intended.
War.
I have a hard time thinking of something that seems to capture the collective imagination of the people like war. We know it’s a terrible thing – a tragedy that takes countless lives and ruins many more than that. We live with the shadows and scars of several wars in our collective conscience from the past century, and armed conflict still continues around the world. But at the same time, we see it dramatized and romanticized in our popular media. What is more heart wrenching, more dramatic, more heroic than a person willing to lay down his life for his brothers, for his countrymen, for his flag?
Yes, we see the bitter, ugly side of war sometimes too, but always filtered with that greater lens of heroism. After all, if it just showed the bad, it wouldn’t sell nearly as many tickets. It wouldn’t have nearly as many people tune in week after week. And it wouldn’t sell nearly as many copies of games.
This phenomenon isn’t limited to just movies, television, and video games. War is such a powerful, evocative backdrop that it finds its way into everything – even our super heroes. Captain America, for example, was basically American propaganda in his early days. When the war was over and people wanted to stop thinking about it, his comic was cancelled for a time. And it’s a common motif that keeps coming up. Secret Wars, Future Wars, Armor Wars, Civil Wars; time and again the word gets brought up evoke that collective feeling and to tap into the power of the word.
It should come as no surprise that it makes a common appearance as a backdrop in superhero roleplaying then. Heck, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying’s first major release after the Core Rules was the Event Book for the Civil War storyline. But the biggest name that I think of time and again is Arc Dream Publishing. Greg Stolze’s Godlike was the first game that really introduced me to the concept of superheroes in a war setting. It takes place in an alternate version of World War II where common men and women started to develop powers beyond that of a normal human. Some of them could fly. Some of them were immune to bullets. Some of them were able to do other wondrous things, and they had to come to terms with what their new abilities meant and how they could serve the war effort while the rest of the world raced to understand them. However, despite all of their power, the timeline changed very little.
Wild Talents, the next evolution of the One Roll Engine as developed for Godlike, took the timeline that was established and advanced it another 60 years which saw humanity fighting an interstellar war with an alien species in the early 2000s. These powered individuals were the next step of power evolution after the Talents of World War II and were more powerful, more capable, and thus, were able to change the course of human history a little bit more easily.
Progenitor, which was released more recently took a different tactic and instead of World War II, introduced high level powers into the Vietnam War. These powers spread through the world like a disease, creating more and more powered individuals. It also advanced the timeline into the year 2000, but it took a different approach to how these people with powers would be able to affect the world and recorded human history. It was not shy about letting the characters change things and let them find out what would might have happened if something like the iPhone were developed in 1985.
But each of these games does focus on war and its effects on the setting and on the future. And I firmly believe that when used properly, it’s a very effective backdrop to tell some very compelling stories by evoking the same feelings and images that popular media has been using for so many years. How can you effectively manage the heroic action and romanticism to tell a good story without whitewashing the brutality and grisliness that can come with it?
The first thing to remember is that while the characters themselves may be larger than life, the war is bigger than all of them combined. While they may be able to affect the outcome of a single battle, it is much less likely they will be able to change much in the way the war proceeds. There is much more to fighting a war than having people with super powers fighting your battles for you. It’s about supply lines, fresh reinforcements, strategic placement and advancement of troops and so many other variables that a small squad of men isn’t going to overly affect the outcome of a given campaign. It may make some things easier, but it’s also going to make some things harder. And remember – the enemy is likely to have their own powered individuals.
The second thing to remember is that these characters are still human. They, for the most part, still have human weakness. They can be brought down by a stray bullet or blown to pieces by a landmine or any number of horrific things that can befall someone in an active warzone. Even if they’re immune to bullets and explosions, their friends and allies aren’t. They lose people under their command. They get bad news from home. They find themselves cut off from allied forces and stuck behind enemy lines. All of these things take a tremendous mental toll on a person and can be used for great effect in a game to remind the characters that they are just as fragile as the unpowered grunt next to them in the trenches. (This is something that the One Roll Engine games handle very well through the way they handle damage and the character resource of Willpower by the way.)
While these first two points are quite important, it’s very possible as a GM to overdo them and swing the feel game into something so grimdark that even hardened Warhammer 40k veterans may shy away from. If you press those two points home every session, the game quickly becomes no fun to play, and no one wants that. But there are ways to use them without compromising the fun of the game.
Instead of focusing on the outcome of the war or even the particular military campaign, focus on personal victories for the characters. Maybe one of them was able to utilize their power in a very unique way that helped out the forces or embattled civilians in an unconventional way. Maybe they finally manage to capture or kill a particularly resilient enemy that had been harassing them for months. Maybe they were able to do something that they were only able to accomplish because of their powers.
That brings up another salient point – give them things that normal soldiers could do, but that they can perhaps do better or in a more effective/less conventional way because of their powers. Can they fly? Well they’re better equipped to get to the top of a cliff face and secure ropes for a Ranger squad than the best climber in the unit. Do they have super strength? Are they capable of melting steel with their hands? Then they’re a better, stealthier way to breach an enemy fortress instead of using explosives. Can they create walls of force? Then they can help funnel enemy forces towards an ambush and help control choke points. Focus on small things than can help make the battle easier or use less resources in order to give them the momentum to keep going, even when you hit them hard with the reality of what is going on in the greater war effort. You can even effectively combine these tips if you’re feeling really devilish. Let the characters take control of a small portion of a larger battle. Let them use their powers to make it a cake walk. And watch in horror as you reveal to them that the rest of their forces were driven back by overwhelming numbers, effectively trapping them behind enemy lines and turning their victory into so much ash in their mouths. Be careful with this kind of followup punch though. You still want the game to be fun for the players.
Next week we’ll discuss some specifics regarding character and power types you may commonly see in a superhero game and how you can best utilize and showcase them in a backdrop like this.
Ben Erickson
