[Grey Ranks] The Durham Crew
Jason Morningstar:
(Cross-posted at Story Games)
We played the first three chapters of Grey Ranks last night – me, Clinton, Remi, and Joe. Our plan is to play a complete, ten chapter game over three Monday evenings.
I was a little nervous playing my game with these guys. We play every week, and we play short-form stuff, and they are all very, very good players. Clinton and Remi make games, too. So despite the fact that they have been with me through Grey Ranks’ creation and even playtested a bit, this was the first time any of them got to see the final, finished game in action. I know it doesn’t suck, but I still had a little anxiety.
We set up our crew without any trouble. Joe is playing Danusia, a pious and judgmental Catholic girl. Clinton’s playing Bogusław, an impulsive 17-year-old from a dirt poor family. Remi is Zygmunt, a farm boy and lothario. And I’m playing Robert, who contrasts nicely with all of them – he’s rich, he’s a city slicker, and he’s got no time for God. The thing I hold dear is my first love, who is Remi’s character, Zygmunt. That’s already proven really interesting and fun. For some reason the gay angle gets downplayed most of the time in Grey Ranks. We were happy to bring it into our game.
We talked about the likely content – anti-Semitism, fascism, children getting killed and hurt, sexual violence – and agreed that we’d be open to what happened, keeping the worst of it off-screen. We all trust each other and agreed to check in often once things got crazy in the game. None too soon, really – in my first mission scene I outed a Jew and got him killed. This was a harbinger of bad things for Robert, who is turning out to be a real shit-heel.
There was a palpable tension as we played the days leading up to the Uprising, which was very satisfying. Everyone really brought their best game and we pointed our characters, and various NPCs, directly at each other. In chapter two, during the mission, I narrated a scene where I was stopped at a German checkpoint – alone but within sight and sound of my crew. I bribed the sergeant with a thick wad of Reichsmarks. Now Clinton had introduced the Bank of Poland as a situation element, where of course my father was a managing director. So he interrupted the mission to cut in a personal scene, where Bogusław and Robert went to visit Robert’s fat-cat father and beg for a loan for Bogusław’s impoverished family. He failed, my guy’s dad became this towering asshole we’ll definitely meet again, and he handed Robert a fat wad of Reichsmarks “to spend on something nice.” So wham! Back to the mission, here’s Bogusław watching me give away the money that would have turned his family’s water back on. Really cool. That’s how the game’s supposed to work.
The game’s opening, which is entirely freeform, was a little rocky, but it always is. Once we’d nailed down our reputations it really caught fire. Three chapters in, and Joe’s already invoked Danusia’s thing held dear. My guy Robert (thanks to mission leader Clinton, getting revenge for the Deutschmark thing with my wholehearted support) has already visited the nervous breakdown corner. We’re all super excited to play again, and now that the difficulty is ramping up we can all start to see trajectories for our characters.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Jason,
I am going to ask a personal question. In the past, this very group (before Joe joined) occasionally experienced arguments and resentment based on what characters did to one another.
How's that working out this time? My impression is, better. Is that so? Any thoughts on that?
Even if the thought is, "Butt out, Ron," that's OK too - but it's what's on my mind when I read your post.
Best, Ron
Clinton R. Nixon:
Hey Ron and Jason - I hope you don't mind if I take a crack at Ron's question.
At the end of our first Grey Ranks game, we could have held hands and sang together, we were so happy. Ron, you're right, we - like every other gaming group that has ever existed - have had moments where the game went a little south. I wouldn't agree that it's because what characters did to each other as much as it's about who has control of the fiction at any given point, but that's a fine point. Either way, no, we did not have any friction in this game. The first session was probably our best first session of any game we've played.
In regards to that, though, the big difference between this game and some others we've played is that all the characters are working together. They fail each other from time to time, but they haven't been at each others' throats.
- Clinton
Jason Morningstar:
Hi Ron,
We still have arguments! Resentment is way too strong a word, but as Clinton points out, we are gamers. To use Judd's baseball metaphor, we usually bat doubles or triples, last session was a home run I think, and sometimes we have singles or strike out. People who pay attention to us might get the impression that our play is undiluted fabulousness, but that's because we focus on the positive most of the time and we are sort of loud.
You know the first third of Grey Ranks is all building. So next session is when the difficulty starts to become problematic, and then it will spin completely out of control. If there's going to be any inter-group friction, it'll be then, but I honestly think we're very happy with playing out those tragic arcs. Everybody has a lot of control over their own piece of that, so I think we'll all be satisfied.
Ron Edwards:
The reason I'm asking is not so much to do with your group as a unique situation, because as you say, it's not. I'm asking because the game has so much adversity built in, sometimes character vs. character - and certainly me as player vs. your character. For instance, I've destroyed more than one Thing Held Dear in my time with Grey Ranks, and it was never my own.
You told me a while ago, Jason, that part of the game design really was to set people against one another ... now, let me clarify, I understood what you meant: that genuine (fictional) adversity put into play was intended to emerge as a positive force for play. But the personal responsibility for the adversity is real; there is no hiding behind "the dice made me do it" or "my character would do that" when I destroy your Thing Held Dear to gain an advantage for my current roll. It's purely me, and it purely hits your character.
What I'm saying is, I think this is a remarkable positive feature of the game. It looks kind of scary and cruel when described on its own, but here's why I think it's good.
1. The honesty involved. As I wrote above, there's no hiding. In a game about teenagers fighting a losing, dreadful battle against Panzers and Stukas, with their heads stuffed full of patriotism and their hormones going nuts, well, there must be adversity, and a lot of it is going to be extreme. Does it come from the book? No. Does it come from rolling on a table? No. Does it come from a special-guy called the GM who says "it's my job" and washes his hands? No. Does it come from listed personality flaws on the character sheet so a player can say "it says so here" and wash his hands? No. It has to come from all of us.
It's part of what makes Grey Ranks special in the same sense as Steal Away Jordan and carry. These games do not let the setting be a fun-imaginary arena that pretends to be edgy. They require the participants to want to create a story in that historical context, and the responsibility-orientation of the mechanics reinforce that requirement. I love it. To me, it's a huge step for role-playing as an activity. We not only play the marginalized and often flawed heroes, we all literally play the oppression, the war, the disaster, and the tragedy, too.
2. On a related point, the historical setting, which as I see it is another form of honesty. It's the opposite of escapism. To play Grey Ranks is not to step away from the world we live in, but to step into one of its causal historical moments. And it's the kind of moment that doesn't fit all that well into the general and vague American narrative of WWII, partly because it's the eastern front, and partly because of the timing of the events. To me, that means that providing the adversity (and the harsher the better) also means enriching one's understanding of that unfamiliar, hard-to-fit kind of history.
So that's the other part of what makes all those games special. (Others: Darcy Burgess' current design in progress, and I hope, Spione.) Playing brings the real people into closer touch with history, which is to say, with Now. It matters a lot.
Does that clarify my question? I am not psychologizing or dissecting your group as people. I'm working with a given feature of the game - player-responsible adversity and even tragedy visited upon others' characters - and asking whether your group has illustrated its strengths. It looked to me in your posts as if it has, but the focus is on the system feature, and how it plays into the home run.
Best, Ron
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