Grey Ranks (system-based, WW2 setting)

[wander]

Hello and thanks for looking in here!



At sixteen, you've seen enough to know it's now or never. The Uprising is on and you're in the thick of it—for your family, your country, your faith—and now, most of all, for your first love.
Side-by-side, you'll haul ammo to the fight, bring back the wounded, nurse the sick, and bury the dead. Together, you'll move vital intelligence through the lines, always side-by-side. Always.
And when it all goes horribly wrong, the things you hold dear will crumble all around you, and saving them might mean letting the Nazis win. So you'll grow up fast, as partisans, sewer rats, executioners, and maybe martyrs—whatever it takes, you'll do it together.
Are you ready?

For Sunday, July second, 1944, this is Radio Lightning, voice of a free Poland.

We are broadcasting from Warsaw, always one step ahead of the Gestapo. The following two persons have been sentenced to death by the Home Army Special Court: Commandant August Kretschmann of the Gesiówka concentration camp and Igo Sym, an actor who sold out his country for money. Radio Lightning thought better of you, Igo. We have learned that some enterprising young patriot has managed to distribute forged German newspapers promising swift and certain death at the hands of the Home Army. We have no idea who the perpetrators are, but we salute your zeal. Soon may the day come.

This is Radio Lightning, the voice of the defiant Polish people.



So... I am on the look out for people to play alongside myself in a game of Grey Ranks, a partly freeform, partly system collaborative narrative game. It is a system game, taken from the RP book of the same name, from Bully Pulpit Games.
Players will need a copy of the rules to play.

Grey Ranks follows stories of those from Warsaw in 1944 in their late teens (16 or 17) who belong to a cell of the Polish Resistance, before during and after the disastrous 1944 uprising against German occupation. These youths will fight to defend their city and over the course of sixty (in-game) days, the players narrate their stories where these teen fighters either grow up fast, or fall as things get progressively tougher and worse for them. It is a game where the characters will very much need to earn their happy ending, though it is possible to survive and have grown as a person for some. There will be difficult choices and consequences for every action taken. Will your character survive to tell their tales, or fall in the line of duty?

The game is split into chapters, ten in all. Depending on how the game develops, some can be skipped over if there is an issue with pacing.
Each chapter will have a personal scene for each character, then a Mission scene for each, detailing their part in achieving the goal of the current Chapter. These scenes are a mix of narration and then a dice roll to see if success or failure is achieved. Dice and the number to roll against change with each chapter and decisions made in previous chapters. The targets get progressively harder to represent the fatalist tone of the character's goal. No Mission is impossible to defeat, though this game will not change history. More about the 1944 Warsaw Uprising can be read up on if wanted.



I placed the game here rather in Non-adult Requests because it is highly possible in Personal Scenes that some characters may feel the need to proclaim love for another and lose their virginity lest they die tomorrow and their burgeoning relationships go forever unrequited. E's rules say a character can be 16+ in an adult scene, I have omitted the option to play as a fifteen year old as the system book allows to stay within the rules.

Also this is a game of mature themes, due to the setting. Many aspects of WW2 can be a trigger to people so I felt these aspects in the Adult boards can be given the proper treatment based on the player's own wishes based on what they want or not want covered in the game in a mature manner. Finally, there is a 99.9% chance that there will be a death of one of the Grey Rank's numbers, if not more. This could be some NPC teammates, though it is likely to happen. Because these are characters in their late teens and the deaths likely violent, I wanted things to be covered effectively.

Luckily, thanks to the group narrative dynamic (there is no GM per se), we can go into as much or little detail as required for whatever tragedies occur in play.

If you feel as a writer you'd like to challenge yourself and want to write something mature, this is the game for you.



Still interested? Then let me know below and lets see how we fare defending the character's city against the oncoming threat!