Discussion on base character creation

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ThreeBFour
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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#26

Post by ThreeBFour » Thu Aug 29, 2019 6:45 pm

I actually have 2 ideas for a character concept running around in my head.

1st would be an Italian-American mobster. I remember reading some historical fiction a few years back where there was a lot of talk about how patriotic the Mob was during the war and ended up working hand in hand with the government to guard eastern ports. I was thinking of making him into a 2nd Story Man or even a Yegg (safe cracker).

2nd would be a fairly uneducated backwoods hillbilly type. A hunter/trapper, able to live of the land and whip up just about anything from items on hand. He's smart, but has never had access to the education that most people get, probably no more than a 3rd grade level.

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ShadoWarrior
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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#27

Post by ShadoWarrior » Thu Aug 29, 2019 7:14 pm

Bob, I think that you need to rethink your background. The Vichy French weren't kicked out of North Africa until Nov. 1942. My guess is that the game will take place before then.

It would help us a lot if Rider would tell us what month and year the game will start in.

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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#28

Post by SavageBob » Thu Aug 29, 2019 7:33 pm

Good point. With that in mind, he could be from French Equatorial Africa instead, as they were taken by the Free French forces in 1940. Or he could have jumped ship in Senegal in 1940 before the Allies gave up their attack on the Vichy forces there, or have helped the Allies take Gabon later that year.

One possibility to keep him in Abidjan would be to say he was recruited by British or Free French agents working there clandestinely. Doesn't give him as much opportunity to learn English, though, as I'm assuming that will be the lingua franca for our team.

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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#29

Post by swrider » Thu Aug 29, 2019 8:04 pm

ThreeBFour wrote:
Thu Aug 29, 2019 6:45 pm
I actually have 2 ideas for a character concept running around in my head.

1st would be an Italian-American mobster. I remember reading some historical fiction a few years back where there was a lot of talk about how patriotic the Mob was during the war and ended up working hand in hand with the government to guard eastern ports. I was thinking of making him into a 2nd Story Man or even a Yegg (safe cracker).

2nd would be a fairly uneducated backwoods hillbilly type. A hunter/trapper, able to live of the land and whip up just about anything from items on hand. He's smart, but has never had access to the education that most people get, probably no more than a 3rd grade level.
The first is more of a fit for what they would have recruited but either is allowed. It is actually documented fact that the mob was patriotic and played a vital roll in helping the allies. Mob contacts and organization helped orchestrate and facilitate the landings in Italy.

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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#30

Post by swrider » Thu Aug 29, 2019 8:05 pm

ShadoWarrior wrote:
Thu Aug 29, 2019 7:14 pm
Bob, I think that you need to rethink your background. The Vichy French weren't kicked out of North Africa until Nov. 1942. My guess is that the game will take place before then.

It would help us a lot if Rider would tell us what month and year the game will start in.
The hole area was not liberated in a day. He could have been from one of the earlier regions liberated which would explain his desire to aid the allies. Perhaps he anticipated being deployed there, but was no longer needed by the time he completed training.

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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#31

Post by swrider » Thu Aug 29, 2019 8:07 pm

Early 1942, Training lasted several months your arrival in France is scheduled for May 1, 1942. So you would have started training about January. It was not uncommon for agents to wait a month or two before deployment and after training.

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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#32

Post by swrider » Thu Aug 29, 2019 8:45 pm

Ok everyone. I have put up some basic outlines of how skill checks , health, and healing will work in this game. Please let me know if you have any questions. Each of these mechanics will be tested out as we play, but if you have any immediate questions let me know so I can clarify. Please note the healing mechanisms, this game is meant to be more realistic and deadly. If you want your character to live, you will need to be cautious. Wounds, injuries, and illness can be devastating and take considerable time to heal. Time that the group will not always have available to them.

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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#33

Post by ShadoWarrior » Thu Aug 29, 2019 8:59 pm

swrider wrote:
Thu Aug 29, 2019 8:05 pm
The whole area was not liberated in a day. He could have been from one of the earlier regions liberated which would explain his desire to aid the allies. Perhaps he anticipated being deployed there, but was no longer needed by the time he completed training.
Operation Torch, 8–16 November 1942. Prior to Nov. 8 there were no Allied troops whatsoever in western North Africa (Morocco and Algeria). The only part of North Africa that had been liberated was in Libya, by Monty's 8th Army, many hundreds of miles to the east and that area was Italian, not French. So unless he wants to be Libyan, an Italian defector, or Egyptian, anything French will have to be from Equatorial Africa or some other colonial spot even further away.

Setting the game in early '42 also puts us before the disastrous (Anglo-Canadian) Dieppe raid in August of '42.

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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#34

Post by swrider » Thu Aug 29, 2019 9:11 pm

LOL you are much more informed than I Shado. He could have easily been a defector refugee or other situation. The point is that the individual can be written as an exception to the history. Or perhaps he is a soviet spy!

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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#35

Post by ShadoWarrior » Thu Aug 29, 2019 9:38 pm

He could be from French North Africa, but he would have had to have left when the Vichy government was created in 1940 after the fall of France. Wait too long and trying to get from Africa to England would have been damn near impossible given the danger from U-boats and Luftwaffe patrols. Or from the British Navy for that matter. The waters all around western North Africa were a free-fire zone: shoot first and maybe, just maybe, check later to see what you shot at.

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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#36

Post by SavageBob » Thu Aug 29, 2019 10:13 pm

A poor, unarmed, black African would frankly be able to go anywhere on the continent of Africa without any white person being able to tell him from any other locals, so I may still have him from French West Africa. I don't know the espionage history of the region, but he could have been recruited by a mole inside the Vichy government of the territory. That said, Equatorial Africa might work just as well.

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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#37

Post by ShadoWarrior » Thu Aug 29, 2019 10:46 pm

The flip side of that is that a black agent is pretty much Nazi-bait in Europe. Really bad idea to play a non-white character in this time period in the places SOE is likely to send you, what with the "master race" running around looking for an excuse to harass and kill people.

By the same token anyone considering playing a ginger-haired character, like Irish, is also going to increase suspicion of them. Ditto for my thinking about playing a Scotsman. Strong Irish and Scot accents are problematic. Basically, you want to blend in as much as possible. Ideally SOE might want a bunch of Nordic-looking agents. Boring for roleplay, but safe.

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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#38

Post by swrider » Thu Aug 29, 2019 11:09 pm

All things to consider, but remember you background is basically a justification for skills and insight to the character. It should not come up in play unless by accident. You will have cover identities.

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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#39

Post by SavageBob » Thu Aug 29, 2019 11:26 pm

Are we supposed to go undercover in Germany? I missed that. I'm sticking with the black African idea anyway. He can pose as a black German whose parents immigrated from Kamerun or Togo. In my mind, part of the intrigue of playing in a historical scenario is facing up to the racism, sexism, and every other -ism that were rampant at the time.

I've looked a bit more into espionage in West Africa, and the Brits were pretty good about sneaking in and winning locals over to their cause as agents. They had folks in the missions who were able to move about in the colonies. If my dude worked loading and unloading ships, he'd be a good contact to report on what the Vichies were imported and exporting, troop arrivals, and the like.

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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#40

Post by swrider » Thu Aug 29, 2019 11:30 pm

SEO operated behind enemy lines. This group is being recuited for operations in France

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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#41

Post by swrider » Fri Aug 30, 2019 12:08 am

The black African works. It will be more difficult for him/ her in a lot of ways but that will just add to the story.

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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#42

Post by ShadoWarrior » Fri Aug 30, 2019 12:11 am

"The SOE was known as “the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare.” They were saboteurs, dropping behind enemy lines to hit the Nazis in guerrilla attacks on industrial plants and railway lines. The Norwegian branch of SOE, Company Linge, recruited young Norwegians who had either taken a boat or flown to England to be trained."

"On the night of February 27-28, 1942, everything is ready for Operation Gunnerside (the attack on the Norwegian heavy water plant at Vemork). Nine of the saboteurs are led by a 23-year-old named Joachim Ronneberg, who had no military experience except for what he had learned in England."

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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#43

Post by swrider » Fri Aug 30, 2019 12:16 am

That is one of many such operations. Including many success and failures. They are interesting in history in that both are recorded equally. They choose to learn from failure and success.

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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#44

Post by SavageBob » Fri Aug 30, 2019 12:22 am

Sounds good. And Shado's feedback is helpful in making the character more realistic (and forcing me to do more research!). Turns out the Brits established a Methodist mission in Côte d'Ivoire in the '20s. Only French priests were allowed to remain under the Vichy regime, and then only after a brief period of being drafted to fight. But the point is, my guy's handler could have been a priest who sympathized with the Allies, got the dockworker to report on shipments, and then figured he could do more good in Europe. Somehow got him smuggled out under the story that he's headed to seminary in Germany to enter the priesthood. Maybe they lie and say he's unfit for combat for some reason so the Vichy leaders let him go.

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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#45

Post by ShadoWarrior » Fri Aug 30, 2019 12:23 am

A black will have problems in France (or Italy), but as long as he stays mostly out of sight he should be okay. While blacks in those two countries were rare and heavily hassled by the Nazis, they weren't completely absent. If we ever have to do a mission anywhere else in occupied Europe it'll be a death sentence for the whole team. You can't get away with it in Norway, Belgium, Holland, or Denmark, let alone Germany, Austria, or anyplace in eastern Europe. He'll be arrested (if not summarily shot). After he spends some quality time with the Gestapo, where they'll try to break him and get him to confess to being a spy. Which will lead to getting shot later in the day. Best he could hope for is to be sent to a concentration camp, and hope he gets sent to one of the milder "work" camps.

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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#46

Post by swrider » Fri Aug 30, 2019 12:37 am

I've been researching it. Blacks were handled very inconsistent by the Germans. The population was so small that no official policy was enacted... Thank goodness. But harsh treatment if blacks was not punished so it was very much up to the individual. If suspected of anything they would be questioned more harshly and more like to be arrested, shot or otherwise delt with. As long as the player is ok with such an environment than there is no issue with the choice. I'll have to remind myself to play racist NPCs as it is contact to my nature. We will see how it goes.

This is exactly the type of thing I was going to bring it though. If I ever finalize the game system for release this type of info could be helpful for game masters.

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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#47

Post by ShadoWarrior » Fri Aug 30, 2019 1:01 am

No official policy is a polite way of saying that license was given to locals to do whatever they damned well pleased. And most of the folks running things in Nazi-occupied Europe were absolutely horrible people. Imagine the KKK running the government (nowadays that's not entirely unimaginable either) and then you'd still fall short of the brutality that existed daily in Nazi-occupied Europe. Every single provincial governor was either shot or hanged after the war, along with most police, mayors, and other officials. They were all guilty of crimes against humanity to one extent or another. The Soviets when they "liberated" regions didn't bother with trials. Catch them and kill 'em. In western Europe there was at least something remotely related to due process. But the end was, with rare exceptions, inescapable: the only appropriate punishment was death.

Just because there was no explicit Nazi policy about murdering blacks (unlike for Jews and Roma) doesn't mean that there wasn't an implicit policy. (They just hadn't gotten around to it yet.) If you weren't Caucasian, preferably "Aryan", then you were fair game. The darker your skin, the more likely something bad would happen to you, sooner or later. Women would get raped. Guys would get sent to work camps or labor battalions, regardless of whether the charges against them were trumped up or not.

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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#48

Post by SavageBob » Fri Aug 30, 2019 2:23 am

More research has been done. Black actors were actually afforded a relatively safe work environment, as the Nazis used them in propaganda films. Things could get terrible outside the studio, of course. But not all Germans drank the kool-aid you're describing, Shado. Blacks were so rare that most people just ignored them so long as they kept their heads down.

I'll stick with the idea. His cover story is that he's an actor who does Nazi propaganda films. I need to do a bit more research on what these films were all about. Some titles are Carl Peters (1941), Ohm Krüger (1941), Germanin (1942–43), and Münchausen (1943). There were also black stage performers under the Nazis. Even though public black performances were banned around 1939, word didn't get around about it (or folks outright ignored it) for at least a couple years after that. Goebbels himself attended an opera in 1940 that featured fourteen black performers; afterward, he asked the manager to call in two of them he particularly liked to let them know how much he'd enjoyed the performance! (I'm using Chapter 7 of Black Germany: The Making and Unmaking of a Diaspora Community, 1884–1960 by Robbie Aitken and Eve Rosenaft.)

In short, Rider is fully within his rights to make some (or most) characters treat my character like dirt. But it won't be a blanket reaction from all Germans all the time. And being an actor should be a good enough cover story (along with sufficient forged documentation) to let him have free passage, with the other characters as his "handlers."

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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#49

Post by ShadoWarrior » Fri Aug 30, 2019 3:15 am

Nice save. Good homework job there. I hadn't considered the many exceptions to the Nazi's usual way that was afforded to those involved in Goebbels' propaganda. It wasn't just blacks that were spared. Not every Jew that was known to the Nazis ended up in a camp. Some, a very very few, managed to stay out of harm's way. Well, at least physically.

In the grand scheme of things the Holocaust was (very) arguably a blessing in disguise to the rest of the world. Had Hitler been kinder to the Jews (and less of an idiot) the world's best atomic scientists would have stayed in Germany and Italy and they'd've gotten the bomb first. They'd've lost the war, eventually (once Russia failed to collapse the end of the Reich was inevitable), but it would've been a lot longer and even bloodier. War would have been over a lot sooner if Stalin hadn't been just as stupid and sent his best aeronautical designers and lots of other top researchers to the gulag. Compounding the damage from the 1937-38 purges of almost all of the best officers in the Red Army.

So many what-ifs. If Hitler hadn't invaded Russia in 1941, Stalin was preparing to invade Germany in '42 or '43. If Hitler had let his generals follow their plans in Russia in 1941 instead of stepping in and changing things, again and again, in mid-campaign the Germans would have taken Moscow and Leningrad. If Hitler had given more resources to Rommel in 1942 what might have happened had England lost the Suez canal ... and the Middle East. If Hitler had ignored the militarily worthless Stalingrad and focused on taking the Soviet oilfields in the Caucasus that would have taken the Russians out of the war ... and pretty much assure that England and the US would fail when attempting to invade Europe (the most and best units were on the Eastern front and those would have been redeployed to the west, and Germany would have had no shortage of fuel and been able to relocate industry east out of range of Allied strategic bombing). If Hitler had delayed the start of the war until 1948, as envisaged by the Kriegsmarine's Z Plan. And on and on...

As I mentioned, WW2 is a hobby of mine. I should shut up now.

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Re: Discussion on base character creation

#50

Post by swrider » Fri Aug 30, 2019 3:31 am

Shado. I haven't seen you this excited for a game in a while.

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