"It is sweet and proper to die for one's country." Yeah, what's Latin for "fuck an entire bag of that?"
The Game: Pro Patria Mori
The Publisher: Mythworks
Degree of Familiarity: I've seen 1917 and Blackadder Goes Forth, but otherwise, none
Books Required: Just the one
From the game studio that brought us The Wildsea and the same basic system as...um, Honey Heist comes a WWI RPG about crossing No Man's Land and maybe coming home a forever broken and changed person.
Not a comedy, then.
I actually really like the Great War as a setting; I think Wraith: The Great War was really underrated and when I was still running WoD/CofD games, I always wanted to run a game of Hunter: The Vigil set in the trenches. It's this nice balance between the bleakness of war generally and the just pure horror of trench warfare when automatic weapons were just becoming a real factor, coupled with the leadership being unwilling to accept that things are different now. I am, granted, a fan of tragedy, and I can't ever find players who would be willing to get into this kind of game, but I think it's pretty compelling.
In this particular expression? I dunno. It's only 23 pages, and like I said, it's got basically the same mechanics as Honey Heist, so it's pretty minimalist. But probably that's all it needs, with the right table?
Character creation is, shall we say, not very involved:
Well, suppose I'll be a Private. I can roll a d66 to pick a Backstory, so let's see what I get. Milkman! Awesome, that's a profession that never would have occurred to me. Doing a little bit of quick googling, I discover that by the early years of the 20th century, milk was being delivered in glass bottles, and the "milkman joke" was very much extant.
So let's say my character, Jameson Beard, is a skinny lad. Maybe 20 years old, which would imply he didn't join up right away (if this is 1917) or that he's been in for a while and stayed alive. Let's say the former; his family owns a dairy farm and he was the one who was able-bodied enough to ride the bike around town and deliver milk, but he eventually ran out of excuses and went off to war.
Jameson gets grief for that, and for being a milkman - everyone assumes he sleeps with everybody's wife. Jameson has never and probably would never; he had a sweetheart back in his village but it never progressed that way. Jameson is naive and perhaps a little queer, but he'll probably never figure it out because he's almost assuredly going to die in a field in France. Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori.
What's a Hope he has? It seems a little basic to say "to get home alive", so let's say it's "get home before his father dies." His father was doing a bit poorly when he left, and while no one is exactly surprised (his father smokes and drinks entirely too much, and pushes himself to the limit every day), Jameson would like to see the old bugger off. And he certainly doesn't want his dad to outlive him.
I get an Enfield rifle, a bayonet, and some Mills bombs (hand grenades). I don't know if I get any Rations (which aren't the sort you eat, they're more significant objects that can be used to change your stats a bit), so let's assume I don't.
And that's it, folks. Beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly.
