I just don't get why someone would a) pick that as a subject for a game, or b) likewise why anyone would play it, personally. ~shrugs~

Quote from: walkerp;236477Warthur, I really don't buy that argument for a second.  You can extrapolate that to deny the fun and depth in any rpg.  I mean none of us have actually fought a dragon.

No, and I don't see anyone claiming that fighting a dragon in an RPG is a meaningful exploration of the issues surrounding fighting a dragon.

It's when people like the designer of We All Had Names claim that you can get a meaningful understanding of what the holocaust was like by playing a game for a couple of hours that my heckles get raised.

Quote from: jhkim;236486Feh.  This is the same thing that is said about almost any historical game or game with any real-world -- which is effectively saying "it is worthless unless it is nearly perfect".

Not at all, because many of those games don't claim to provide any sort of emotional verisimilitude. And many historical games are set in sufficiently distant historical time periods that the issues simply aren't emotive any more - since when did you ever meet someone who was more upset by the French Revolution than they were by the Holocaust?

Conversely, Grey Ranks and We All Had Names are set in real historical disasters which are still in living memory, are a source of great emotional distress for the people involved, and seem to claim a sort of "emotional verisimilitude", as if by playing those games you could ever get even a fraction of a glimpse of an idea of what the people who actually suffered through all of that actually experienced.

QuoteOn the one hand, for any real-world subject (i.e. science, culture, history, etc.), there is a potential problem if you misrepresent it.

Which is precisely why I say you couldn't run a meaningful game set in the Warsaw uprising or the Holocaust without thoroughly researching it beforehand and treating it seriously - sufficiently seriously that the game would no longer be fun. Anything less would be an insult to the people involved.

Unfortunately, once you get to the point where you (as a GM or a designer) have researched the subject enough to really do it justice, you probably don't want to trivialise it by making it into a game.

Hello!

If anyone has questions about Grey Ranks I'd be glad to answer them.

Quote from: Jason Morningstar;236708Hello!

If anyone has questions about Grey Ranks I'd be glad to answer them.

Hi, and welcome to the RPGsite!

Congratulations on your laurels this year! As a designer of the Indy Game of the Year and this Diana Jones award winner, what would you say is the key core mechanics or themes that put your game over the top, so to speak?

Oh, and what do you plan on doing in the future?

Quote from: Jason Morningstar;236708Hello!

If anyone has questions about Grey Ranks I'd be glad to answer them.

Hey mate. Congrats on the awards, etc.

Here's a doozy of a question to start things off:

Is Grey Ranks supposed to be fun to play, and if so, why? If it is not supposed to be fun (and we've encountered more than a few games here that don't seem to want to be "fun" to play in any conventional meaning of that word - jeepforms like Gang Rape, frex), what is it supposed to do for and to people who play?

Thanks for the welcome, I appreciate it.  From the feedback I received and the comments of voters, it looks like the combination of a mature theme (in this case the explicit intersection of youth and war) and mechanics that support that theme pretty relentlessly were what people liked.  Grey Ranks obviously isn't the first game to do this but it seems to have struck a chord.

My next project is pretty much diametrically opposed - it's a very light and funny game about medical melodrama, where you play surgeons and actually perform procedures at the table.  I got some good playtesting in at Gen Con.

That's a fantastic question!

I'm always a little reluctant to call the game fun, because that's so imprecise (and potentially insulting).  First of all, front and center in my mind as I designed the game was the very real possibility that I would have to look someone who fought in the Rising in the eye and explain my work to them.  I hope I get the chance, and I'm confident that Grey Ranks doesn't trivialize their experience.  The Warsaw Rising Museum has reviewed the game and agrees with me on this point.

I do think it is an enjoyable experience - a typical session is stuffed with hard choices and genuinely exciting situations - and the fiction that emerges is often pretty moving.  As with any game, you get invested in your characters and the system is designed to put tremendous pressure on them.  There's a tragic arc that can't be avoided but you have wide latitude on how you'll shape your character's destiny within that.  

So it isn't meant to be escapist fun, but in practice it provides an enjoyable experience.  Does that answer your question?

Quote from: Jason Morningstar;236728That's a fantastic question!

I'm always a little reluctant to call the game fun, because that's so imprecise (and potentially insulting).  First of all, front and center in my mind as I designed the game was the very real possibility that I would have to look someone who fought in the Rising in the eye and explain my work to them.  I hope I get the chance, and I'm confident that Grey Ranks doesn't trivialize their experience.  The Warsaw Rising Museum has reviewed the game and agrees with me on this point.

I do think it is an enjoyable experience - a typical session is stuffed with hard choices and genuinely exciting situations - and the fiction that emerges is often pretty moving.  As with any game, you get invested in your characters and the system is designed to put tremendous pressure on them.  There's a tragic arc that can't be avoided but you have wide latitude on how you'll shape your character's destiny within that.  

So it isn't meant to be escapist fun, but in practice it provides an enjoyable experience.  Does that answer your question?

That seems reasonable.

Have you considered converting it to a more universal system for representing people under tremendous pressure during various bits of history? I'm given to understand that most of the mechanics could be easily converted to other settings, with perhaps the exception of the Radio Lightning broadcast portion of the game (which could be adapted into a more general chapter of GM advice detailing how to present contextual information in a period-appropriate way to PCs).

For example, the French Revolution during the Terror, the English Civil War, the Boxer Rebellion, the Paris Commune of 1870, the interbellum German KDP revolutionary activities, the Russian Revolution, the Cuban Revolution, and so on, to stick solely to revolutions and uprisings in the modern era, could possibly be done using the system if advice and information on running them was provided.

I have thought about it some.  The key thing for the game to port easily is the presence of child soldiers in the conflict, because that's what the game is about.  So Berlin 1945, contemporary Sudan and so forth would be easy to do - adjust the situation generation bits (Radio Lightning becomes the BBC Africa Service and the situation elements all pull from the modern Sudanese experience, etc).  It just requires some deep subject knowledge to infill that situation for players to draw from.  It's probably telling that none of the alternates I suggested appeal to me in the slightest.  I think the lack of moral ambiguity in fighting with the Armia Krajowa goes a long way toward making the bleak setting of Grey Ranks palatable.  Hitler Youth and drugged-out orphans don't have that going for them.

Quote from: Jason Morningstar;236743I have thought about it some.  The key thing for the game to port easily is the presence of child soldiers in the conflict, because that's what the game is about.  So Berlin 1945, contemporary Sudan and so forth would be easy to do - adjust the situation generation bits (Radio Lightning becomes the BBC Africa Service and the situation elements all pull from the modern Sudanese experience, etc).  It just requires some deep subject knowledge to infill that situation for players to draw from.  It's probably telling that none of the alternates I suggested appeal to me in the slightest.  I think the lack of moral ambiguity in fighting with the Armia Krajowa goes a long way toward making the bleak setting of Grey Ranks palatable.  Hitler Youth and drugged-out orphans don't have that going for them.

On the other hand, a number of critics have proposed that it is the still politically-resonant events of WW2 that make them uncomfortable with the game. Events at a further remove from contemporary experience might provide a good way to draw in people put off by WW2 games, or who are calling it "misery tourism".

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;236744Events at a further remove from contemporary experience might provide a good way to draw in people put off by WW2 games, or who are calling it "misery tourism".

Maybe but if it's a game about say a slave revolt some folks would still be shouting "misery tourism". Although the original def of misery tourism is far removed from the way how some use it now.

Regards,
David R

As well, many of the examples I listed did feature child soldiers, mainly due to different conceptions of where to place the boundary between childhood and maturity in those periods. The Paris Commune strikes me as ideal, for example. It's a similar set-up; a doomed community besieged in a major urban centre that enthusiastically mobilised its entire population to fight for its survival and failed. It's even got catchy modern concerns, with its socialist and anarchist origins.

Doing these could possibly provide the basis of a line of supplements if you were interested, with each one focusing on a specific period, so you'd have say, Grey Ranks: Paris, Grey Ranks: England, Grey Ranks: Moscow, and so on.

Quote from: David R;236746Maybe but if it's a game about say a slave revolt some folks would still be shouting "misery tourism". Although the original def of misery tourism is far removed from the way how some use it now.

Regards,
David R

Though Eliot's right that the term doesn't have a specific definition, only a constellation of uses, I do favour the specific conceptual distinction I advanced earlier about "misery tourism" (Are the PCs primarily agents or victims?) and am personally trying to stick to using the term only when that conceptual distinction is relevant. I'm not totally sold that it is relevant here, though as I will admit, I haven't read a copy of the game yet, just reviews and discussion by those who've read and played it.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;236749Though Eliot's right that the term doesn't have a specific definition, only a constellation of uses, I do favour the specific conceptual distinction I advanced earlier about "misery tourism" (Are the PCs primarily agents or victims?) and am personally trying to stick to using the term only when that conceptual distinction is relevant. I'm not totally sold that it is relevant here, though as I will admit, I haven't read a copy of the game yet, just reviews and discussion by those who've read and played it.

I agree but I suspect this is more about subject matter than anything else. But I won't derail this thread any further.

Regards,
David R