Grim War: Saving Major Rogers

Saturday, 6 pm, 2 August 2010: Saving Major Rogers

I had hoped to learn both about Grim War and the One Roll Engine. I learned a fair bit about Grim War, but not so much about ORE. Greg is a very good GM. He makes it look easy. So, on a play level, I had a great time and was never confused about what to roll or what it meant. But, I don't think I was able to pick up a lot about how to run the ORE.

Greg had hoped I'd read Grim War and made myself familiar with it, especially the magic system. Oops. I'd read the opening fiction vignette, but that was all.

• GM: Greg Stolze
• Me: Cassandra Kretchmar -- An occultist academic. She made deals with two significant archons, the Western Samurai and Mistress Coffee.
• ???: Winchell "Daz" Daszkeiwicz -- another academic refugee, collector of Nazi occult paraphernalia. My notes say that he dealt with Princess Tranquility and someone whose name I can't quite read, from talismans. I don't know whether these were archons or daemons.
• ???: Madame Z -- a conjurer, rather than an invoker like Cassandra. The two women disliked each other. I think Madame Z worked with daemons. My notes say something about Soul Breaker, Opposing Secrets, and something I can't quite read.
• ???: Dick Doran, in charge of Special Threat Response Group, Department 3, and, hence, the other PCs' boss. Actually very competent, and quite long-suffering.
• Richard Storr: Abe "Buster" Bellido -- perhaps the oldest, Vietnam veteran, with some knowledge of magical control and defense.

Archons and Daemons are like positive and negative poles, not like good and evil spirits. One might have an archon of preserving knowledge, but a daemon of destroying secrets, for example. The two types of being can work together. Archons are generally invoked, while daemons are generally conjured.

The PCs worked for the USA government's Special Thread Response Group, Department 3, aka SpecTroD. The odd thing drawing attention today was someone using World War II era codes saying, in German, "Reporting Please". The signal came from Deception Island. Dax had been going on about this island for some time.

Meanwhile, Buster discovered a problem.

GM: When you get to the coffee station, it's empty.

As usual, Madame Z had finished the coffee without making any more.

Meanwhile, Dick was on the phone with Lt. General Phillips.

Lt Gen Phillips: I understand you're on top of this Deception Island thing -- have a DI expert on your team.

Dick: Yeah... Let's... go with that.

Lt Gen Phillips: You can't let your people know you distrust them -- even if you do.

Dick: Well, I guess we have a guy who knows as much as anyone about DI given he is always going on about it.

Dick tried to pump Phillips for more information.

Phillips: Do you have Omega Red Clearance?

Dick (bluffing): Of course, I do!

Phillips: Which hexagon are you in?

I also have this quote in my notes:

Buster: I need you to get me into Dick's office. Again.

I think I misattributed the quote and that it was Daz talking to Buster.

Daz: This is about Deception Island.

Buster: Oh please no!

It became fairly clear that a trip to Deception Island was in order.

Cassandra invoked the Western Samurai, a spirit I think she had already arranged to work with for the next month. That is, the archon could be defined in play, but already had a working relationship with the PC.

The Western Samurai, we decided, was the Spirit of Cross Cultural Combat Envy.

Me: Where does one invoke him?

Greg: Where _does_ one invoke him?

Me: Ah! A dojo! It's got the combination of academic and philosophical atmosphere and kick butt!

Greg decided that the Western Samurai added one dice, plus a hard die, plus a wiggle die to anything supporting its agenda: to understand and utilize the dangerous skills of other cultures.

But, Cassandra decided that she needed a little more help. Deception Island was very cold right now, so she needed an archon that would help with warm comfort.

Cassandra: Mistress Coffee, of course!

She made a fresh pot of coffee and explained the situation: She and her companions needed the benefits of the warm comfort Mistress Coffee could provide. Mistress Coffee agreed to provide these for a week, but, of course, there was a price.

Mistress Coffee: That you make the coffee every day for a year!

Cassandra (calling out to her coworkers): I'm on coffee duty for a year!

Madame Z: Great!

Buster: Thank God!

Mistress Coffee: And weekends.

Cassandra (calling out again): And weekends!

Mistress Coffee: _And_ clean the pot!

Cassandra: ... all right.

Mistress Coffee: Done!

It took me a moment to realize that there _had_ to be some part of the price that Cassandra would not be happy to pay. Otherwise, it's not really a price, right?

I think that Daz was allowed to use Die Sehenschadelrad to consult Nazi spirits. That is, either Dick allowed him to or Buster helped him break into Dick's office. I think the spirit's take on events was: Then Redenhoff has returned?

Dick was given Omega Red Clearance.

Lt Gen Phillips: You can expect a pamphlet when you get back from the mission -- a dossier -- I mean a dossier!

The problem: Squadron A1 all went missing. Squadron A1 was composed of USA superheroes / mutants -- I've not yet read enough of Grim War to know the details. Apparently, they found something involving archons or daemons, maybe the Archon of Stifling Air. Whatever it was, they went to investigate.

Madame Z: Heaven forbid they contact people who deal with spirits!

GM: Madame Z is Displeased!

Our Heroes went off to Deception Island, via a couple of helicopters. The spiffy one that took them to the much less spiffy one that took them to Deception Island. I think they got in touch with Gabriel Ulb and Project ELSA, a group also coming to investigate. I think this was a European group.

Dick's player (looking at his character sheet): Suicide capsules. I just noticed this.

GM: You going to hand them out?

Dick: No, not yet.

My notes mention an Archon of Life converted to an Archon of Antilife.

Dick: All I can say is there'd better not be zombies.

GM: Oh you can't tempt fate like that!

Someone: _Are_ there zombie Nazis?

Someone: Zombatzies!

Dick: It's time that word got coined!

One of the PCs, explaining: Wonder Woman is attacking us.

NPC ally: Ze comics zey have all come true.

Alas, I don't recall what that all meant. I also have a note about an RN with no skills at first aid.

The PCs helped deal with whoever or whatever was attacking the folks from Project ELSA. And, alas, I forget the context of this wonderful quote:

GM: _Well_. This is a chocolate in my peanut butter situation, if ever I saw one.

Someone made a comment about Hitler, only to be told "No, Hitler is conspicuously absent from all of this."

By now, the PCs were doing research on the inside of the base, finding out a couple of things before they could be joined by either the Project ELSA people or a group of Russians.

Buster: Hey Boss -- I don't think we should trust the Russians very much.

Dick: Of course we don't trust the Russians -- The _Russians_ don't even trust the Russians.

Despite that, the initial meeting with the Russians was fairly cordial, especially after Cassandra offered them coffee. One of them picked up on what she had done with Mistress Coffee and praised her ingenuity.

By now, if I read my notes correctly, the PCs learned that there was a big spirit, one both Conjured _and_ Invoked. Iirc, this was The Razor of Empires -- Antagonist of Civilization.

GM: But good to have with you in a fight.

The Archon of Secrets was there as well. Greg warned us that we'd reached the point where characters started to drop like flies. On the other hand, the PCs had done the right thing by rescuing the ELSA people, as their deaths would have summoned something called Howler.

But, iirc, the ELSA people had a traitor in their midst, and she murdered one of them, kicking off the fight.

GM (explaining a bit about the woman): She murdered a baby.

Me: Bitch!

GM: She really is.

Me: Did she get tenure out of it?

GM: No, just a pair of horns.

Me: What a waste!

GM: I'm handling this a bit narratively, given all the phone calls. (His phone rings again, recognizing its cue.)

Then, somehow, the Really Big Spirit had frozen everything except for Madame Z and Cassandra. I forget exactly how that came about, and, as is often the case, the players involved were torn between doing as much as we could to resolve things in our favor and getting things to a state where the other players could participate in as rapidly as possible. It helped that this was near the end of the game.

The big spirit, the one both summoned and conjured, had been promised lots of deaths by the ELSA woman who had summoned it. It was willing to turn on her instead, in return for three deaths of more important people. I forget who one was, but I think that was someone who had already wound up dead (unless it was the ELSA woman herself?). The second was Buster, and the third was his counterpart on the Russian side.

The two women looked at each other in silent, agonized debate. And, I note that this is one of the few games where I was torn out of character. Usually, big decisions like this are a lot easier for the player than for the PC, whichever way they get made, but Greg had us genuinely squirming with this one.

There was, of course, no guarantee that the two would survive, even if they made the bargain.

Madame Z: If we die, we won't have to make long explanations.

Cassandra: That's right! We won't have to explain or make coffee!

Madame Z: That's what's important!

Cassandra: Oh, I don't mind making the coffee -- it's cleaning the pot.

Madame Z: That's the kicker.

There was another awkward pause.

Cassandra: You do the Russian.

And the two women went into motion. Madame Z killed the Russian, and Cassandra killed Buster. Cassandra figured that it would be easier on Madame Z that way. It really had never occurred to her that this meant that Madame Z had just made an enemy of, oh, Russia.

Dick, while appalled, managed to prevent the other teams from killing anyone else on his own, although the Russians vowed that they would settle things with Madame Z some day. Buster's player confirmed that, yes, Buster would have agreed that killing him was only sensible under the situation.

Dick listened to the two women's explanations and was not impressed.

Dick: This is exactly why we don't put mages in charge!

And indeed, he was quite correct. Madame Z and Cassandra had completely forgotten about the actual mission objective, the top priority above all others of rescuing Squadron A-1. Nope, the two women, being mages, babbled about mystical balances, and how they'd had no choice, and how what they had done was Absolutely Necessary.

GM: Yeah -- Tell yourself whatever you need to to convince yourself. Remember it when you walk by Buster's empty workstation and make the coffee.

This was a lot of fun, gritty feel of Le Carre or the Laundry series notwithstanding. And, I decided that ORE benefits from:

• quiet room
• big table
• 5 focused gamers +
• Greg Stolze

"Quiet" is, of course, a relative term. One thing I learned was that the odd roof beams really were the underside of train tracks, and trains really did pass overhead at periodic intervals. As a NYCer who spent two years sleeping in a room under the elevated subway track, that didn't bother me. Heck, it was quieter than the occasional shouts and cheers coming from the room next door, where an L5R larp was going on.

I definitely want to play more ORE before I try to run it. But, this game showed me that, yes, it can run well, and yes, there are times when it makes sense to split the reduced die pool and do multiple actions. I just don't remember when those cases came up or what they were.