Today is the 66th anniversary of Operation: Overlord, aka the Invasion of Normandy, which started on June 6, 1944.

Talk to me about ways you'd use this event in a Role Playing Game. Any Role Playing Game. Maybe as a comparable event in a Galactic War in Traveller? Or maybe the set of a "Save Private Ryan" adventure?

What RPG ideas does D Day inspire to you?

Quote from: Benoist;386096Today is the 66th anniversary of Operation: Overlord, aka the Invasion of Normandy, which started on June 6, 1944.

Talk to me about ways you'd use this event in a Role Playing Game. Any Role Playing Game. Maybe as a comparable event in a Galactic War in Traveller? Or maybe the set of a "Save Private Ryan" adventure?

What RPG ideas does D Day inspire to you?

Dude - why didn't you put this in the RPG section??
 Just curious....


Anywaay.....on topic and that fun stuff.....



Years ago a friend told me how he'd been in a TRAVELLER game where he and the other players were a bunch of Mercs operating somewhere in the Spinward Marches. They got hired by a lower-tech nation on a planet to set up defenses in an area and advise on fortifications.....and also to hire more mercenaries and train them to beef up an army of the nation that hired them.

At some point in that adventure their characters saw a large fleet headed their way on that planet's ocean and hundreds of aircraft were detected headed their direction as well.
That when they realized  - "Oh shit! We were hired by this worl'd equivalent of the Germans/Nazis and we just did our best to fortify the beaches of this world's French coast. "
They had been working for what would be considered the Bad Guys in other games.

Thats the most of that anecdote I remember. Can't recall if those characters died, ran or survived the scenario.(It wasn't my game - it was an aquaintance's gamer war story)


- Ed C.

Quote from: Koltar;386101Dude - why didn't you put this in the RPG section??
 Just curious....

I feared it'd be moved from the RPG section to here...

Maybe I should have, in hindsight.

Bump! Come on, guys. Don't be shy. Share some ideas!

I published Operation Jedburgh a few years ago. I think there's a review or two of it on this site.

http://www.pigames.net/store/product_info.php?cPath=43_48&products_id=279

Pete

Its marvelous stuff for war games. But its not really all that conducive to the RPG; because its just a huge impersonal slaughter, where individual heroism gets covered over by the sheer size of it and the context of the genre.

The real thing that can inspire RPG material would be the covert operations that were going on just before and just after D-day.

RPGPundit

I'm not so sure about your point, Pundit.

 The mini-series "Band of Brothers" in many ways might parallel a typical WWII-era RPG group of 4 to 6 characters. That story started with the main characters as part of the D-Day invasion.

 For that matter, "Saving Private Ryan" focused on 5 to 8 main characters - yet the opening moments where we first meet them is during the beach assault and invasion.


- Ed C.

Quote from: RPGPundit;386877Its marvelous stuff for war games. But its not really all that conducive to the RPG; because its just a huge impersonal slaughter, where individual heroism gets covered over by the sheer size of it and the context of the genre.

The real thing that can inspire RPG material would be the covert operations that were going on just before and just after D-day.

RPGPundit

You can use the impersonal battles and general slaughter as a background for a more traditional scenario. INS/MV for instance had a scenario in which, whether you played Demons or Angels, you were basically sent back in time in May of 1945 in Berlin to go through the battle, reach Hitler's bunker, and kill the bastard before the "others" could take the credit for it. Think about the mission of the soldiers we follow during Save Private Ryan. It's a pretty clear goal, with all sorts of going-ons for the team along the way.

The setting itself could be translated to Fantasy, or Science Fiction, heck, even characters could be. The topic's generally about RPG ideas. It doesn't mean necessarily adventures and scenarios. Could be locales (bunkers, siege of a city, etc), characters (translating nazis to a different setting, or picking an historical figure as inspiration and doing something else with him/her) or gosh, even creatures, who knows.

Other settings......:


A low-level Rogue living near the docks of Waterdeep (FORGOTTEN REALMS) suddenly spies over a hundred sailing vessels on the horizon headed for the city he lives in. He might gather his four or five favorite adventuring and ropuse the town's guard and leaders to start a defense.


A group of Solomani who previously advbentured together in the past are part of the leadership of a paramilitary group that plans to take back Earth / Terra from the Vilani and the Third Imperium and return it to control of the Solomani.



- Ed C.

Quote from: RPGPundit;386877Its marvelous stuff for war games. But its not really all that conducive to the RPG; because its just a huge impersonal slaughter, where individual heroism gets covered over by the sheer size of it and the context of the genre.

The real thing that can inspire RPG material would be the covert operations that were going on just before and just after D-day.

RPGPundit

I think you've been watching too much Saving Private Ryan.

There's plenty of small unit stuff on D-Day itself, particularly with the airborne troops being spread all over the place. Plenty of gathering your group, capturing vital objectives or resources. The assault on the battery at Merville? Commandos at Arromanches? What's wrong with just playing out D-Day for a typical infantry section?

Given that British troops on Gold Beach were exiting by 8am and at Bayeux by 8.30pm you could almost run a24-style game but spread over 12 hours instead, perhaps two hours to a session.

Encounters could include: dealing with French civilians (maybe some wounded by the bombing/shelling), denying the enemy a supply dump, linking up with airborne, rescuing someone lost behind lines, reconaissance of enemy troops deployments before the advance in Bayeux? You can always put some additional combat in there, but the first day needn't be one of mass slaughter, because apart from Omaha it went relatively smoothly on the beaches.

A superpowered immortal realizes that WW2 was the last, best, opportunity to assume control of the Earth, so he builds a time machine that is powerful enough to teleport small objects back in time.

He sends himself a lap top computer with a history of the war as it plays out and schematics of 21st century technology including the machining processes needed to engineer them. Using his power, his previous self forces Hitler to step down and places himself in command.

With his new weapons, he reinvents the German Military and builds something powerful enough to overrun the Allies.

Enter the player characters - super powered 21st century heroes, sent back in time to stop him and repair the time line to the best of their abilities - even if it is to just win the war.

Now that the new game "DUST TACTICS" is out as both a tactical boardgame and a miniatures game I'm wondering if a Roleplaying ghame version isn't too far behind.
That alternate history take on D-Day might be pretty fun to play out with a group of adventurers.


- Ed C.

D Day is such a shockingly awesome environment for so many amazing RPG adventures, given the span and timeline of the whole thing, from helping to set up the invasion to actually participating in it to all sort of side adventures or particularly focused endeavors a la Private Ryan... fantasy or no fantasy, there is so much to do with D Day, it's truly mindboggling. Worthy of an entire systemless RPG supplement, really.