Yesterday I was in Paris for SteveCon Paris V and I ran Hot War. Unfortunately the game was cut short about 2/3rds of the way through by food poisoning and I spent the next 12 hours asleep, and not gaming. We still had a good time in the few hours we played but because I left in a hurry I don't have the character sheets or any player feedback.

I'd discussed this with Malc beforehand that instead of a fully fledged scenario as I had for Cold City I would try something a bit different. I've written a sort of story arc about something that is going on in and around London and an introductory event for the characters.

The story is that the British are trying to build a rocket to put up a satellite. Whether it's a bomb, or some occult machinery or just a comms device is not specified. Most of what I've written is story hooks as to how the PCs can become involved in all the many different aspects of the operation.

The starting event is that the PCs' SSG unit have been doing some nighttime patrolling in the East End and meet up with the shady Dr Yeuzhny, a member of BERG, who gets them involved. Depending on how the PCs react to him this might be some cushy political number or it could be shovelling crude oil from a leaky tanker by Beachy Head.

But that's rather putting the cart before the horses. Back to yesterday's game.

I had four players, all seasoned gamers two of whom had played Cold City, two of whom hadn't. We started off with a little bit about the background and then we discussed tone. No one seemed fazed by this and engaged from the start.

We decided to go with slightly grimy, occult stuff but no mechs or nazis. We didn't discuss very much what the characters would be doing or what kind of scenes they wanted for a couple of reasons. We didn't have long to play (less time than we thought in fact) and the players weren't terribly familiar with the background. Also the choice of character would to a certain extent decide this. We also decided on an open game.

Next we did character creation. This went pretty smoothly too. Initially everything was hidden but they soon started to ask about each others goals and build interactions. I've got the hidden agendas for each PC and details of their experience scenes.

It was a little harder than expected to explain the experience scene because initially some chose scenes that had they failed, they wouldn't have joined the team. But once I'd shown them how it went with the first one, the others became very easy to do.

Werner Braun - Terrorist (Thomas)
An Austrian assassin with no country
Agendas
Kill the Krays
Get money
Experience scene
He was in a cafe with his girlfriend when these two heavies came in and started breaking up the place. They hit his girlfriend. Without hesitating he jumped in and was badly beaten. His girlfriend disappeared. He later found out these were Kray's heavies collecting protection money.
Trait gained
Impulsive (-)
Game fact
Many more women have died in the war than men.

Lt Hope - Army (Matthieu)
Patriotic and a solid soldier
Agendas:
Use the Krays to support the Army
Implicate superior officer in some failed operation
Experience scene:
Hope was on guard duty whilst the PM was being moved across country secretly. Stopping over for the night they were discovered by a little girl. Hope knew that his duty was to kill any witnesses who might alert Soviet traitors. He ran after the girl and came across her mother who was also looking for her. The conflict was whether the mother could persuade him to turn a blind eye. He lost the conflict so I had her throw herself at him but Hope's superior caught the embrace and shot the woman.
Trait:
Empathy(-)
Game fact:
Many people have been summarily executed, and it's still going on

Douglas Lemmon - Government (Aurelien)
A career diplomat
Agendas:
Find out what happened to his sister in Berlin in the 50s and why she keeps reappearing to him
Gain control of creatures for use by the Government
Experience scene:
He was working in a research establishment just as war broke out having been recalled to the UK. It was his job to liase with the local press. One of them had compromising photographs of what was going on but he did a deal by which he managed the release of the information.
Trait gained:
?
Game fact:
The press is controlled by the Government

Sgt Silver - Police (Jean Christophe)
A racist policeman fascinated by technology
Agendas
Get occult tech
?
Experience scene:
He tried to steal a piece of occult tech from the evidence room. He failed his roll so I gave him the tech but had his brother in law take the rap. Now he's got two families to support whilst his b-i-l faces a possible firing squad.
Trait gained:
Wants to be make amends (-)
Game fact:
Occult technology is around

The game started in media res as the PCs came across a bayonetter killing a young boy. They killed it easily although a high negative trait dice meant one of them was wounded in the crossfire (Go Newman-Dempsey!). The agreed not to mention Yeuzhny's involvement but Sgt Silver, not liking foreigners, put him in the report. Lemmon tried to find out more about Yeuzhny but only succeeded in alerting him to his interest. Dr Y showed up at the bar where Lemmon expected to meet an informant and gave them their orders, evict a band of new age cultists who had set up close to an army firing range on Salisbury Plain (possibly not incorporating enough of the agendas immediately although I did have plans that I didn't have time to use). There were 150 in the cult, including many women and children. It was felt by top brass that rounding them up might have turned into a blood bath and would have been bad for morale as they seemed pretty harmless.

There was plenty for everyone to do and they attacked on two fronts, finding out what the cult was up to directly and discreditting them with the locals people and military.

We managed to play about a week's worth of their planning which involved trying to discredit the hippies with the locals, especially the church, take incriminating photographs of naked dancing (teenagers involved), have one them infiltrate the group (he took a gun and almost succumbed to brainwashing - a very early crisis point after a badly failed roll), and frame the cult for stealing a local farmer's sheep (a bit of a strange one).

We didn't get to the end to discover the source of the cult's apparent power to control spirits not their leaders strange overnight conversion from CoE to Children of the Earth. But I'll leave that until my group has had a chance to play the game on Wednesday.

S.