In a thread somewhere Graham posed a question. I've been too busy to catch up with everything, but I dug up an old idea (once called Freigrad from back in 1994 that never got very far) and put this together. I plan to use ERP and its conflict resolution system (to see whether it works at all, etc.).
Think of it as The Third Man, meets Scanners, crossed with Schindler's List in Danzig, 1939.
FREIE STADT
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Freie Stadt is a role-playing game set in the Freie Stadt Danzig in the late 1930s. The City State is an anomaly, an unhappy child born in 1920 from a disagreeable settlement to The Great War. The Nazi party headed by Arthur Greiser has come to power in Danzig but not with enough votes to overturn the constitution and re-affirm formal links with Germany. In the cobbled streets of the City State, agitators for various factions work secretly to bring about change. Germans, Poles, Russians and operatives from other nations are at work by night pushing and pulling in a secret war. However, not all their methods are political or conventional, for some of the agents at work can harness psychic powers and it is these ‘Gifted’ actors that the players portray.
Freie Stadt asks players to address big questions about their characters, and by association, themselves. What do you hold dearest? What will you not do? What choice will you make when the answers to these two questions clash together? If you were Gifted to what end would you use it? How far would you go? And how far is too far gone?
Hitler rises in the West and Stalin in the East. It is 1939 and a storm is coming. What do you do?
That sounds like a very
Submitted by Andrew Kenrick on Sat, 09/06/2007 - 12:54.
That sounds like a very interesting scenario and setup for a game, even without the added psychic elements. So would players work for opposing sides, or all for the same side?
Well...
Submitted by Gregor Hutton on Sat, 09/06/2007 - 15:23.
...I think that would be up to the players.
Personally I would like to see players coming from different sides, their commonality is in their psychic ability (and to some extent the pressures from their respective masters).
There are two factions within the Nazi party at that point (one following Greiser, the President of the Senate, and another following Forster, the Gauleiter of the party), others are affiliated with the other Senate parties (predominantly German, though there are two Polish representatives), the Polish army (who have a military base on the Westerplatte), the League of Nations (which allows any nationality), and I'm sure Russian spies. (Indeed perhaps you are a postman from the Polish Post Office in Danzig?) I also think it would be interesting to play a Jewish character (either Pole or German) in that setting.
The players can pick which group they are affiliated with and the GM takes it from there. I see the GM's role to be pushing characters and putting them in difficult situations, crossed with the other PCs. Surely the PCs will have to trust and aid one another at some point, but under what circumstances and with what consequences? (Not to mention hindering and complicating things for each other too.)
We know that the war is going to happen, that Danzig is going to ultimately be purged of all Germans and become Gdansk in the fullness of time, we know that horrific things are going to happen. But given choices at any point in time what will the characters do?
Oh, and if everyone starts on the same side I think they will quickly break into factions based on their different views on what they will not do and what they hold dearest.
Are you a sock puppet of Malcolm Craig?
Submitted by JoE PrincE on Sat, 09/06/2007 - 19:02.
Is this just a cynical attempt to get Nazi zombies into another game? ;D
No, seriously it sounds like a very inspiring setting, but do you need the magic?
Any chance of a link to ERP?
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JoE
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Prince of Darkness Games
Rock N' Role-Play....
Yes, Yes, No, Yes
Submitted by Gregor Hutton on Sat, 09/06/2007 - 19:51.
I'm not keen on Nazi zombies -- other games have a corner on that market. :-O
As originally envisioned it had no magic/psychic stuff but in making it up to this idea I put in the psychics as a "twist". (I also want to see whether I can make these Gifts work in ERP.)
Here's the latest ERP 3 draft (there are some slight errors in the early pages where I updated it from version 2 -- stats now are 0 by default -- but the Conflict Stuff is appended at the back).