The TALENT Campaign II

The popularity of genres wax and wane as time passes, and so it is that the superhero genre is no longer as popular as it once was. Certainly not popular to be supported with regular supplements, but one exception to that is GODLIKE: Superhero Roleplaying in a World on Fire, 1936-1946. Originally published in 2002, Arc Dreams' RPG is supported by various supplements including a full campaign in the form of Black Devils Brigade: The First Special Service Force and the Italian Campaign, 1943–1944. This is now followed by a companion mini-campaign, Combat Orders No. 4 - The Courtyard of Hell. What separates the two are the Apennine Mountains and their differing scopes.

As its title suggests, Black Devils Brigade concerns the whole of the Italian Campaign, including the battle for Anzio and the eventual drive on Rome. Geographically, it is set entirely on the western side of the Apennine Mountains. The Courtyard of Hell takes place on the eastern side of the Apennine on the Adriatic Coast, in just the one location, that of the port town of Ortona. Located on a steep-sided plateau and comprised of narrow streets lined with stone buildings, the town was the site of fierce street fighting between the defending Fallschirmjäger troops and the attacking Canadians in the final weeks of 1943 that Winston Churchill came to call the battle for the town, ‘Little Stalingrad’.

In The Courtyard of Hell as in GODLIKE, the player characters are Talents, members of the Allied forces who have been ‘blessed’ with an amazing ability such as controlling the blood flow of the wounded, being able to map out a location with a shout, or smash open the armour on a Tiger tank with a single punch! The player characters are soldiers first before being trained to use their Talent effectively in battle, but as more and more Talents manifest on the battlefield, there is not always the time or the chance for newly expressed Talents to receive this training before being thrown back into fray. This often means that they will be prepared to face the Übermenschen, the Nazi Talents who are part of the SS and who revel in their powers and the Aryan ideals of the ‘Super Race’. This will be an issue in The Courtyard of Hell as will be a Talent’s Will. It is his Will that fuels a Talent’s powers and his ability to cancel out another Talent’s powers that can be lost in a contest of Wills with an enemy Talent.

The Courtyard of Hell takes place in the last week of December, 1943. The soldiers of the 2nd Brigade, the Loyal Edmonton Regiment, the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada, and Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry have recently made a hard fought and bloody crossing of the Moro River and now need Talent support in taking Ortona. The battle is depicted in thirteen scenes that take place between December 20th and December 27th, as the Talents, being among the first Canadians to manifest as Talents, are thrown into support the assault on the town. This will see them leading the attack on Ortona’s outskirts before becoming embroiled in street fighting against troops of the 1st Fallschirmjäger Division. Intelligence reports that there are Übermenschen in the town, including at least one flyer. What is curious about these Übermenschen is that they are not members of the SS as are most Nazi Übermenschen, but have remained with the elite Fallschirmjäger troops rather than transferring to the SS as is expected of all Übermenschen. Technically then, these Übermenschen are members of the Luftwaffe!

In the seven days of the battle for Ortona, the Talents will support tanks, fight from one building to the next, move heavy artillery, and come to the rescue of their comrades and civilians alike. They will also find themselves fighting Übermenschen other than Fallschirmjäger as the intensity of the fighting increases and Übermenschen of the SS are brought into to support the German defence of the town. Throughout, the Talents will be shadowed by newsmen and photographers who are eager to report on the success and activities of Canada’s first Talents in battle.

Based on a real battle, with two of the battle’s actual participants being included in the seven pre-generated Canadian Talents, The Courtyard of Hell is a combat intensive affair. Designed to be played by between six and seven players, guidelines are included to help the GM adjust the difficulty of the scenario’s encounters so that they can be played by a smaller group. Further support comes in the form of descriptions of the weapons and vehicles used by both sides; guidelines for handling large battles as well as a means to quickly set up interesting encounters using the ‘One Roll Cityfight’ rules; full stats for both the Canadian and Fallschirmjäger troops; and some twenty-four fully detailed and described Übermenschen in addition to the six pre-generated Canadian Talents.

In previous releases for Godlike, the design of the Übermenschen and the Allied Talents has been somewhat underwhelming, perhaps even unimaginative. Admittedly, it is not easy to come up with interesting Talent concepts, let alone create them on the limited number of points available during character creation. With over thirty presented in the pages of The Courtyard of Hell, there is a surprisingly degree of invention on show.

Physically, The Courtyard of Hell is generally well presented. In places it needs another edit and in places the text has faded to the point of near illegibility. The maps are also hard to read in places, primarily because of the difficulty of depicting the necessary detail in grayscale rather than colour. Otherwise, The Courtyard of Hell is decently illustrated.

The Courtyard of Hell is much more focused and much shorter affair than Black Devils Brigade, though the possibility of soldiers from the First Special Service Force being sent over the Apennines to fight in the battle for Ortona is discussed. It could thus be used as an extension to the campaign presented in Black Devils Brigade: The First Special Service Force and the Italian Campaign, 1943–1944, but even if not, it should offer several sessions of challenging combat. Well-researched, solidly-presented, Combat Orders No. 4 - The Courtyard of Hell presents the opportunity for the players to explore a heroically tough if little known battle of World War Two.

The TALENT Campaign

For a game as old as Arc Dream Publishing’s GODLIKE: Superhero Roleplaying in a World on Fire, 1936–1946, it seems a shame that there is so little support for it, let alone the fact that for a game with a setting – the whole of the Second World War – as rife with possibilities, it has never been given a campaign of its own. All that changes with the release of Black Devils Brigade: The First Special Service Force and the Italian Campaign, 1943–1944, the first full length adventure campaign for the GODLIKE, the RPG that took Talents or the common soldiery with an amazing abilities to war against the Axis Powers. In GODLIKE the player characters are soldiers first, not only highly trained, but also trained in how to use talents such as being able to open any locked door simply by pointing at it, momentarily freeze time and sidestep bullets, or go to sleep and have their skeleton climb out of their body to fight for them. Not only are the Allied Talents up against the military might of Nazi Germany, but also the Übermenschen, the Nazi Talents who are part of the SS and who revel in their powers and the Aryan ideals of the “Super Race.” At the heart of the game lies each Talent’s Will, this fuels his powers and his ability to cancel out another Talent’s powers, but which can be lost if he loses a contest of Wills with an enemy Talent. In Black Devils Brigade: The First Special Service Force and the Italian Campaign, 1943–1944, this will all come to the fore as the Talents are taken from training right through the length of the Italian campaign.

The Talents in Black Devils Brigade are members of the First Special Service Force (FSSF), a joint American-Canadian unit raised and trained as commandoes specialising in winter warfare, their intended mission to carry out strike missions behind enemy lines in Norway and Romania. When this became impossible, the unit was first sent to the Pacific to help re-capture the Aleutians from the Japanese, before being going to Italy and fighting at Anzio. Many of the initial recruits were originally miners, mountaineers, and lumberjacks, tough outdoorsmen who were also expected to speak a second language. This is reflected in the extra points that a Forceman receives for his Stats. One factor reflected in character generation in this alternate world is the fact that the First Special Service Force kept its Talents when they manifested and did not send them to train with Talent Operations Group at its Achnacarry Commando Training School. Thus a player receives just twenty points with which to create the abilities of his FSSF Talent.

Our sample FSSF Talent is Henning Huber, a Canadian who as the son of German immigrants wants to prove himself to be a Canadian rather than a German. He trained as a telephone engineer, which often meant repairing telephone lines in all weathers and which resulted in him being assigned to the FSSF’s Communication Detachment, part of its Service Section. His Talent manifested during a live fire exercise when one of his detachment was wounded and he found himself without sufficient medical equipment to treat the wound. With no one else available, he literally grabbed other kits from Forcemen elsewhere on the battlefield. He can grab objects vital to his survival or that of others, but only if he is scared and he has no control over what item he gets. In recent battles he has managed grab weapons from both his colleagues and his enemies, and even one occasion, a whole tank! For his reason, he is known as “Lucky Dip.”

Corporal Henning Huber, “Lucky Dip,” Talent Section, FSSF
Body 3 Coordination 3 Sense 2
Brains 3 Command 2 Cool 2
Base Will 4
Current Will 8
Motivations: Prove himself to be Canadian, not German; Force Esprit des Corps
Skills: Anti-Tank Rocket 1 (4d), Bluff 1 (3d), Brawling 1 (4d), Climb 2 (5d), Drive (Automobile) 1 (4d), Electronics 2 (5d), Endurance 2 (5d), Explosives 1 (4d), Forward Observer 1 (4d), French 1 (4d), German 2 (5d), Grenade 1 (4d), Instrument (Piano) 1 (4d), Knife Fighting 2 (5d), Machine Gun 1 (4d), Map Reading 1 (4d), Mechanics 1 (4d), Mortar 1 (4d), Navigation (Land) 1 (4d), Parachuting 1 (4d), Pistol 1 (4d), Radio Operation 2 (5d), Rifle 2 (5d), Sight 1 (3d), Skiing 1 (4d), Stealth 2 (5d), Submachine Gun 2 (5d), Survival 2 (5d), Tactics 1 (4d), Telephony 2 (5d)
Talents (16 Will Points)
Fetch: Reflexively grab what he needs when in an emergency 8d+1wd (Qualities: Attacks, Robust, Useful Outside of Combat. Base Cost: 4/8/16. Extra: Reflexive +2/+4/+8; Flaw: Peace of Mind – Scared -2/-4/-8; Flaw: Uncontrollable -3/-6/-12; Final Cost 1/4/8; 16 points).

So a Forceman Talent character can be created with twenty points, but this is a real problem for Black Devils Brigade as a supplement. In a standard game of GODLIKE, Talent Operations Group characters receive twenty-five points to spend on their Talent abilities and it can be challenging enough to create interesting characters on this point total. On the twenty points that an FSSF Talent gets it is very difficult without resorting to the common default of buying Super Stats and Super Skills. In play, this disparity widens when the FSSF Talents face the Übermenschen, who are often built on as many as eighty or more points. To an extent this is a feature of the game, pitching the better trained Allied Talents with less effective abilities against the Übermenschen with emphasis on powers over training. It forces a player to be inventive, not just in creating the character, but also in playing the game. Now while the inclusion of the FSSF’s first eight Talents as playable characters is laudable, it would have been useful to have if not more characters, then at least some ready-to-play, Talent packages built on twenty points.

Although the bulk of Black Devils Brigade is devoted the FSSF’s time in Italy, it includes enough background information with which the GM could run the Talents through some sessions training stateside or the anti-climax that was the recapture of the Aleutians. Once in Italy, the Talents will naturally find themselves constantly at the centre of the action, being called upon to perform scouting missions, assaults, patrols, and more over mountain, rural, and urban terrain. Not only will they face normal veterans of both the Wehrmacht and the SS, but also the Übermenschen, who are also members of the SS. More specifically, the Talents will often themselves sent out to deal with the threats posed by the Übermenschen. The campaign details some fifty of them, complete with fully worked powers and personalities, both of which vary widely. It should be made clear that not every of the Übermenschen is an avowed Nazi – many are simply trying to survive, while others have second thoughts.

Naturally, the focus in Black Devils Brigade is on combat, and plenty of it, with the player characters finding themselves being tested again and again. That said, the campaign includes several situations that do not involve combat, including comfort missions, relationships with civilians, inter-unit rivalries, and army politics. These both break up what could have been a very one-note campaign and provide yet more opportunities for roleplaying. Throughout the campaign, the Talents are at the centre of the attention and the action, reflecting the fact of their importance in the war fought in GODLIKE and the need to keep the player characters at that centre of attention.

Rounding out the campaign is a lengthy appendix that not only includes the pre-generated Talents but also several sets of rules. These cover making Sneak Attacks – a common tactic used by the Forcemen in their raids across enemy lines; Bombardment – artillery is a constant threat; One Roll Patrols – a means of generating random patrol missions from the type, terrain, and complications with a single roll of eleven dice; Minefields – laid by both sides; and FUBAR situations. The latter dealing with the random bad things that can happen on the battlefield, coming into play only when a player rolls poorly.

Physically, Black Devils Brigade is well laid out and well written with decent artwork. In places the GM will need to pay careful attention to the maps and their descriptions in the text as it is not always easy for the GM to visualise the battlefield, and this may well be a problem in trying to impart the lay of the land to the players. Even though the campaign does work hard to keep the emphasis in the battles on the player characters, there is the feeling that miniatures would help in order to have both players and GM visualise and interact with the battlefield, though in bringing them to the game would make it much more expensive.

In truth, we have been waiting for Black Devils Brigade for quite some time now. To date we have had excursions for GODLIKE to the Pacific and Western Europe, but for the most part, the Italian Campaign has been ignored. Not now though, for Black Devils Brigade: The First Special Service Force and the Italian Campaign, 1943–1944 does it full justice in presenting a challenging, sometimes too challenging, a roleplaying campaign that will give months of play.

Wild, Yet Not Without Focus

Back in 2001 there was a rash of RPGs devoted to World War II, of which my favourite was GODLIKE: Superhero Roleplaying in a World on Fire, 1936-1946 from Arc Dream Publishing. It presented a desperate time of men at war wielding small, focused, even odd talents or powers through Will alone, such as being able to open any lock by pointing at it, falling asleep and having your bones go fight for you, or being able to fly, but only whilst praying. Allied characters or Talents, were soldiers first, because whilst every Talent was amazing in some way, unless he had armoured skin or was invulnerable in some way, bullets could still kill him. Worse a Talent’s super abilities could be literally switched off if he lost a battle of will with another Talent or a German Übermenschen.

In addition to being an interesting setting, GODLIKE also introduced what would become known as employ the ORE or “One Roll Engine” System. With a single roll of a pool of ten-sided dice, it determined both how fast and how well a character performed, whilst in combat it also determined where he hit his target and how hard. All this could be drawn from the value (Height) and number (Width) of just matched results. For example, Private Maxwell takes a shot at a German soldier. With Body 2 and Rifle 3, Maxwell rolls 5d or five dice. His results of 1, 3, 5, 10, and 10 reads as Width 2, Height 10, or 2x10. The Width of 2 means that it was not a very quick shot, but the Height of 10 means that the German has been shot in the head and will suffer Width+2 or 3 killing damage.

Larger dice pools increase the possibility of rolling matches in what is otherwise a gritty set of mechanics. Where the ORE System gets interesting is in the addition of two extra dice types. The first is Hard Dice, which always have a value of 10. Any Hard Dice represent both the maximum of any skill or ability and an unconscious inflexible action. It would mean for example, that if Private Maxwell had any Hard Dice in his Rifle skill, say 5d+2hd, he would instinctively aim for the target’s head every time. In the encounter above, the result would be 1, 3, 5, 10, and 10, plus the two Hard Dice of 10 each, which would read as Width 4, Height 10, or 4x10. With the rifle inflicting Width+2 in Killing Damage, the likelihood is that the German is dead, even with protection of his steel helmet.

The second type is Wiggle Dice. Instead of always being set at 10, a Wiggle Die can be any value as determined by the player, and represents more carefully judged skill or ability use. If Private Maxwell had a single Wiggle Die in his Rifle skill, say 5d+1wd, he would have made the roll above and could have attached the Wiggle Die to any of the results, so that he could shot the German in the left foot (2x1), left (2x3) or right (2x5) arm, or head (3x10). Further, if Maxwell had been using a Thompson SMG, he could have used the 2x10 and whatever number the Wiggle Die was attached to in order to achieve multiple hits. Either way, with a Wiggle Die, Maxwell has greater control over where his shot goes and can fire with intent to wound rather than kill.

Mere humans under the ORE System are rated between one and five, but it is possible to have stats or Hyperstats and skills or Hyperskills above this – as high as ten. With a Rifle skill of 5, any dice of any type – ordinary, Hard, or Wiggle Dice – would make Maxwell’s skill a Hyperskill. In addition to these, the ORE System has Miracles, the term it uses for superpowers. Character creation under the ORE System involves buying dice for the Stats, Skills, and Miracles, with Hard and Wiggle Dice being progressively more expensive.

All right, so far it has been all about the ORE System. This is intentional as it is its mechanics that really do set the feel of any game they are used for. They are designed to be fast – “ORE” does stand for “One-Roll Engine” after all, but they are also gritty, not to say dangerous. This was certainly the case with GODLIKE: Superhero Roleplaying in a World on Fire, 1936-1946, and it is so with Wild Talents: Superhero Roleplaying in a World Gone Mad, the RPG that let gamers do more with superheroes and the ORE System than have them participate in World War II.

Originally published in a limited run in 2007, but now available in an expanded Second Edition from Cubicle Seven Entertainment, Wild Talents was always more than just a set of detailed superhero RPG rules. As with the original, Wild Talents Second Edition provides a guide to creating superhero worlds based on our own; pushes the world of GODLIKE into the twenty-first century; and presents a scenario to a low-powered Wild Talents game. There are also one or two additions that I will come to in a bit.

In presenting a “generic” superhero RPG, there are a number of differences between GODLIKE and Wild Talents. The first of these is what powers a character’s super abilities. In both RPGs, it is Will, which when lost in both games means that a character cannot use his super abilities. In GODLIKE, it is usually won or lost following contests of wills with opposing Talents or Übermenschen to try and negate his power. In Wild Talents, Willpower use is more flexible providing a range of benefits when spent and can be more easily gained or lost, ranging being Heroic and rolling matching 10s to suffering failure or tragedy. Underlying a character’s Willpower in Wild Talents are his Motivations, the Loyalties and Passions that drive him. Playing to and against these Motives will usually have a role in how many points of Willpower a character possesses at any one time.

The second difference is the amount of points a player has to spend on his character. The GODLIKE base character, a trained soldier, is worth one hundred points in Wild Talents, on top of which his player has another twenty-five points to spend on his actual Talent. The result is invariably a relatively powerful, narrowly focused ability. In Wild Talents, a player has a total of between two hundred and five hundred points to spend, the suggested total being two-hundred-and fifty points. The third difference is that characters now have one or more Archetypes, each the source of a character’s powers and also defining what he can have. The samples given include Adept (essentially Hypertrained), Alien, Artificial, Mutant, and Mystic.

Guidelines allow a GM or player to not only create his own Archetype, but also his own Miracles. Miracles are built with up to four Qualities -- Attacks, Defends, Robust (Miracle works regardless of distraction), and Useful Outside of Combat. The number of Qualities sets a Miracle’s base dice cost to which can be assigned cost increasing Extras like Locked On and Radioactive, and Flaws such as Attached and Touch Only that decrease it. Dice pool size determines range, spread, and capacity, so Flight 6d gives a flight speed of 64mph, whilst Body 6d lifting power of 1,600 pounds. Power Stunts can also be bought for most Miracles, for example Barnstormer adds dice to roll when maneuvering through a city skyscraper canyons. Other Miracles are straight level based, for example Heavy Armor and Immunity.

Wild Talents includes the usual superpowers, from Absorption to Unconventional move, the player having to the exact nature and parameter of each Miracle, the point being that a power is not going to be the same for every hero. Sidebars suggest how Miracles might be used to simulate powers of the comics, such as using Containment and Attach with Heavy Armor to create Force Fields, or Extra Tough, Flight, Harm, Hyperbody, and Immunity all Attached to Heavy Armor to do Power Armor.

Wild Talents introduces several Miracles not found in GODLIKE -- Telepathy, Cosmic Power/Spell Casting and Gadgeteering/Enchanting. These last two work to simulate other Miracles and can be very expensive in terms of Will. Although the designers go to great lengths to explain how each works, some examples would have helped. This is an issue throughout the book, but primarily with character generation which is not a simple process. To some extent, the selection of pre-built Miracles eases it a little, but Wild Talents is not a game in which a character can be created on the fly.

Except in the Second Edition, such a character can be. In an idea first seen in Reign, the ORE System fantasy RPG in which the players played not just characters, but organisations too, Wild Talents includes a “One-Roll Talents” set of tables. With the roll of nine dice a whole character can be created in a few minutes. For example, a roll of 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 5, 7, and 9 gives the following results, with the matched sets deciding the Miracles and the single dice his Events or backgrounds.

Arkadi Quayn
Body 2 Coordination 2 Sense 2
Mind 2 Charm 2 Command 1
Base Will:
Willpower: +1
Skills: Athletics 1d, Brawl 1d, Endurance 1d, Intimidate 1d, Knowledge (Engineering) 4d, Perception 2d, Research 3d, Scrutiny 1d, Stability 1d

Superpowers
Flight 8d+1wd with Power Booster/9; Light Armour 4hd; Immunity (high altitude and suffocation) +2hd
Power Blast (Defends) 10d
Precognition 8d

Events: Librarian, Stranded Time Traveller From The Future, Unjustly Convicted

Now this character is far from complete, a few details are needed here and there, primarily his Archetype. As to Quayn’s background, the Events suggest the following. Quayn was a technician working on a time travel program led by Doctor Tempuso, who was using the technology to his own ends and set Quayn up to take the blame. He was convicted of the crime, but escaped and attempted to stop Doctor Tempuso. Although successful, Quayn was flung back into the past with a device that that Doctor Tempuso had stolen from the future. This is what gives Quayn his powers.

Given the complexity of building characters in Wild Talents, it is pleasing that the section on creating worlds is as elegant as the ORE System mechanics. In “Building Superheroic Histories” Ken Hite starts with one simple question – “How much do you want the existence of superheroes to change the world?” Then with four design axes, he takes the GM through how to set the parameters for his campaign. The Axes are Red, Historical Inertia measuring how much Talents can change history; Gold, Talent Inertia or how much the Talents change themselves; Blue or how much paranormal and alien influence there is; and Black, Moral Clarity, is the world morally black and white, or does it contain shades of grey? Push all four to the maximum to get a Four Color world. The essay also discusses the nature of realism in a Talent setting and how Talents fit into it before exploring common trigger points for Alternate Histories, coming right up to date with 2001.

The setting for Wild Talents is “A World Gone Mad,” a development of the history first seen in GODLIKE. Whilst it parallels our own modern history, it makes a number of switches to the politics of the Cold War, with the Soviets and the Americans backing different nations in the Middle East -- Israel is Soviet backed, Syria U.S. backed, and so on. In this history, Talents were used in a militarized Space Race, reaching Mars in 1969; and it culminates in secret interstellar in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Other notable differences include a united India as a world power that leads the computer industry, and the Talent volunteers, a non-political organization that helps worldwide. Campaign suggestions are given throughout the history, decade by decade.

Wild Talents is rounded out with four appendices. The first of these gives the full stats for many of the Talents that have appeared elsewhere in the book. The second and third appendices present well-written guides to both roleplaying and how to be a GM, whilst the last looks at adventures, scenes, and challenges. At just two pages in length, it is a bit too short to be anything more than a cursory look at all three.

When I originally reviewed the First Edition of Wild Talents it included a complete adventure. The Second Edition does not, and is the better for it. The issue was that the scenario was not set in the Wild Talents setting “A World Gone Mad,” which meant that the book contained a set of rules, a guideline to superhero setting creation, a given setting, and a generic scenario, four elements that did not sit well together. Had the scenario been set “A World Gone Mad,” then the book would have been more cohesive and more focused.

The same effect, that of being more focused, is achieved in the Second Edition of Wild Talents with a set of detailed, gritty rules; a superb essay on setting creation; and an interesting setting itself. While the rules for running the game are simple, those for character creation are excellent for anyone wanting to detail their superhero’s powers in exact terms. These are rules in which you can get under the hood and tinker, but this demands time and effort upon the part of both and GM. Wild Talents is not necessarily a casual superhero RPG.

The effect of the rules though, is fantastic, and particularly so in genres other than the Four Colour of mainstream superhero comics. This is not to say that Wild Talents cannot do Four Colour, but it has to work harder to do so. Where its strengths lie is portraying grittier settings such as The Dark Knight Returns, Top 10, The Ultimates, Watchmen, and even the Wild Cards setting. In doing so, Wild Talents: Superhero Roleplaying in a World Gone Mad brings a harsher edge to roleplaying the superhero genre, yet still has room aplenty to be flexible.