I’m playing Overlord on the 360 and minor irritants aside (camera, lack of in-game objective map), I’ve been having an enjoyable romp. There’s just something truly satisfying about watching a throng of pint-sized terrors who look like goblin refugees from Warhammer smash, loot, pillage, and destroy all that they touch.

One thing that I’ve noticed though is that for an evil overlord you’re not really that evil. You’re definitely not big ‘E’ evil, and frankly your character isn’t even small ‘e’ evil. Sure, your character has glowing eyes and bad-ass armor, and a tower overseer that sounds an awful lot like the Cryptkeeper, but what’s your first adventure? Rescuing a town of humans from a halfling work camp.

The humans you’re rescuing are a harmless lot, a bunch of country rubes, while the halflings are a disgusting bunch of critters led by a hygienically challenged corpulent ball of buttery hero. Even if I was supposed to be playing a noble warrior I would have no problem smiting these vermin from the lands.

There is a corruption factor involved in the game from doing bad deeds (i.e. slaying the rubes) yet it doesn’t seem like it’s really much of a factor. At one point I needed to spawn new minions. The resources used for minion creation is the lifeforce of fallen creatures, so I walked into town and acted like a one-man Untouchable Trio +1, hacking and slashing everything in sight. After a couple of kills the townspeople revolted against me and started to fight back. A few moments later the game told me I had “suppressed” the town and everyone went back to liking me. Hmm, okay.

And what exactly is up with lording over a town of bumpkins? The game explains that as an Overlord you need followers, which I understand, but wouldn’t it make more sense to have dominion over tribes of orcs, hobgolins, kobolds, and other ne’er-do-wells? Good Lord, I have the mayor of this ‘burg wanting to buy me, the Dark Overlord of all that is Unholy and Vile, a beer!

Basically the developers, Triumph (makers of the excellent Age of Wonders series), have given us a standard fantasy world with the usual bad guys dressed up as what we normally consider the good guys. Don’t worry though, because they still act like the bad guys.

Now, this isn’t meant to be a huge complaint. Like I said, I’m having a lot of fun with Overlord and stayed up way too late with it last night. It’s just an observation that when it comes to digital gaming there are few games that actively portray the protagonist as a truly evil person. I imagine Overlord, which has a Terry Prachett-like feel, would be extremely different if instead of chasing down fat, disgusting halfling cooks you smashed halfling babies against the wall while their mothers were ravaged by your pack of minions. But who wants to play a game like that?

This is something that folks like the British Board of Film Classification (who just banned the upcoming Manhunt 2, which got me thinking about all this), Jack Thompson, and whatever other flavor of the month anti-game group there is, fails to understand. While there have always been some games that cast the player as an antihero, typically within the game’s context you are facing off against miscreants and other deviants. From my understanding of the Manhunt series this pretty much sums up the experience, as your opponents are generally not nice people to begin with. And in those games where innocents can be harmed (every Senator’s favorite whipping boy, the GTA series) it is a matter of player choice, not requirement. The only game that I can think of in which it is fairly central is the Postal series, but considering those games are crap and no one plays them, who cares?

Which brings me to another point. There seems to be a belief amongst some that gamers are drawn to games because of the violence, when in reality it is first and foremost the gameplay. You can create the most violent game you want but if the game surrounding it sucks, no one is going to play it and it will be forgotten about (see Postal) except by government watchgroups. Likewise, you can create a great game that people enjoy and feature barely any violence. Consider how popular anything with the word “Sim” before it has been or Microsoft’s Flight Simulator series.

There is no question that there are violent games that could be considered excessive, but there are few (and even few may be too high of a figure) computer games in the past three decades that have wallowed in abject immorality. Playing true evil, as anyone who tried to DM an all-evil D&D campaign can attest to, is simply not a lot of fun. Violence, in the proper context, is perfect acceptable. Immersing the player in a world of filth, with terrible actions inflicted on the helpless (i.e. Hasborg presents Dr. Mengele’s Operation!), is not acceptable and makes for a very poor gaming experience.

Now back to a cartoon world of fantasy violence. I have a mistress to find…

This past Wednesday we announced Scallywag: In the Lair of the Medusa, which is a single-player Rogue-like fantasy game. Like a lot of similarly styled games Scallywag is first and foremost about being an enjoyable exercise in fantasy, with plenty of light-hearted fun to be had. This isn’t a game of doom and gloom, of end-of-the-world prophecies, of feeding orphaned kittens to rabid eldritch sharks that don’t return library books. Rather, this is old school D&D with a touch of humor.

While not as prevalent as the serious side of fantasy, fantasy gaming mixed with a liberal dose of humor is rather common in all gaming formats, from pen and paper role-playing to computer gaming. Likewise you can find plenty of humor in science-fiction gaming of all types. Yet when it comes to the world of wargaming you really have to search for it.

Off the top of my head the only wargame that really was aimed at humor was Panzer Pranks, and that was from what, 1980? There are of course a number of wargames that have included counters or scenarios for laughs, such as The Final Countdown option in Victory Games’ Carrier, but no real attempts at combining wargaming with humor. Well, I suppose some folks would classify most of Ty Bomba’s alternate-history design work as humorous (and maybe he looks at them that way too).

So why is that? Are we considered that stuffy? Sure, I’ve wargamed with the kind of grognard that wouldn’t crack a smile and treated the game as if real lives were on the line, but that was never a problem twice. It’s a lot more enjoyable to sit around a table (or in front of a monitor), cracking jokes and having a good time.

Is it that fantasy and sci-fi, being unrealistic to begin with, simply makes it easier for developers to interject humor into the mix? Or are developers afraid to try? Maybe there’s not a market for it, but since games are ultimately meant to be fun I can’t see anyone arguing against adding a little goofiness. Or does humor totally destroy the genre’s ideal?

Last Saturday was the inaugural Free RPG Day, did you get in on it? I completely forgot about it, but since none of the local shops were participating it really didn’t matter.

The idea of Free RPG Day is based on Free Comic Book Day and both I think are fairly self-explanatory. One day a year you get free stuff at your local game/comic shop. The stuff comes courtesy of the various publishers representing fresh content, and not simply hacked up reprints. For free a lot of the material isn’t bad. After all, the idea behind the events is to entice new players/readers, so the publishers do try to provide folks with quality material to lure you in with.

Does it work? Being the first year for Free RPG Day it’s too early to tell, although the comments over at Ogrecave suggest it was a bumpy ride, and since no one was doing it locally I have nothing to gauge it upon. Free Comic Book Day though, having been around for awhile now, is extremely popular. Whether all the customers hitting the shops on event day then translates into more customers down the road, I don’t know, but since it keeps growing in size each year something positive must be happening.

Now while the consumer reaps the benefit of the goodies ultimately it’s about exposure, especially for Free Comic Book Day. You see quite a number of indie titles now putting out stuff for the event, which probably helps them tremendously since as a small-press imprint trying to find shelf space next to the big two is normally pretty tough.

Who else would benefit from an awareness campaign? I’ll give you a hint, it rhymes with wargames.

Why not a Free Wargame Day? Tell me, how many people truly know about wargaming outside of those who already play? Not a lot. After all, it’s become a fairly insular hobby, and if you weren’t aware of it to begin with there’s very little to help you find your way. Living the hobby it’s very easy to overlook that. You know what’s out there, and what’s coming out, but that’s because you’re actively involved. You already know the secret handshake. But what about everyone else?

Isn’t one of the keys to expanding the hobby building exposure of the hobby? And what better way than to provide potential gamers with a couple of free games? Besides turning someone on to gaming a way they never even considered, what about all those folks who may have hefted a consim title but were too afraid to spend $60 on something that they have no experience with, nor any way to make a comparison? Let them get their feet wet.

Could Free Wargame Day become a reality? Would there be support for this? And would it matter? Would people take the plunge even for free? Or would they walk on past, intent on picking up the latest CMG booster pack? Only way to find out would be to try…

How many times have you been playing a grand strategic game about the Second World War in Europe (board or computer, doesn’t matter as long as your opponent is a fellow human) as the Axis powers, only to get smacked around hard when executing Fall Gelb/Rot? If playing against a competent opponent probably quite often. But wait a sec, that’s not what happened historically! Shouldn’t France collapse quite quickly, with the BEF scurrying back to England like rats on a sinking ship?

The problem with wargaming such events is that the Allied player has the benefit of hindsight of how things actually unfolded. Factor in a keen understanding of the mechanics, and what exactly units can and can not do, and no Allied player should ever face the crushing defeat that was historically inflicted on France. That’s not to say that France should hold out forever, but the results should be better than they were in real life. And why shouldn’t they? What won the battle of France was a combination of poor Allied operational cooperation, bad French political leadership, and new German tactics. Strip all that out and put the situation down in a format of counters and CRTs the two sides are fairly evenly matched.

So how does one simulate the friction of the time on a strategic scale?

You see the problem all the time in grand strategic games on the subject. The Axis player is on a race against the clock. He knows that the United States will enter the war. He knows that the Soviets will start receiving X number of units, at Y strength, at a certain date (just as he knows that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact prevents aggression from the Soviets for a number of turns). Likewise, the Allied player is well aware of all this too, meaning that all he has to do is hold onto his key territory in the beginning until those previously mentioned events kick off.

In reality of course no one on the ground during that time knew a damn thing. The Germans did not expect to have the United States involved (and let’s face it, could have avoided it), and after judging how poorly the Soviets fared against the Finns, fully assumed that Russia would collapse easily. The war was uncertain from day one. Each step that Axis took was an unknown. What if the Soviets did not also participate in Poland? What if the western Allies were aggressive when Poland was attacked? As we game the war though we know how everything unfolded, and in most cases, the way it unfolded is right there in the rules, black and white for all gamers to follow.

Going back to my original question let me also add something else to it to be exact in what I’m wondering. How does one simulate the friction of the time on a strategic scale while keeping the historical realities?

What I mean is that anyone can take the Second World War and randomize the whole thing. Does Pearl Harbor happen? Roll on a table. Does Stalin purge his officer corps? Roll on a table. Does the British fascist party gain control of English politics and allies themselves with Germany? Roll on a table. Hey, you can even go further and randomize unit strengths, force pools, leadership qualities, everything. But if you do all that you don’t have a re-creation of World War Two, you have a Harry Turtledove novel. Next you’ll be rolling on tables to see if aliens attack during the war…

I’m wondering if there is some way, achievable through play mechanics, to provide players with the same level of uncertainty that the real leaders had at the time? Again, I emphasize, without altering the way it unfolded.

Impulses dictated by random chit pulling (a la AP’s Third Reich) do a decent enough job of keeping the flow surprising, with fortunes won and lost by how a turn unfolds. Computer games also do a good job with their ability to easily handle fog-of-war. It’s definitely a lot different to be faced with an unknown enemy operating far from prying eyes on a computer screen, than the usual God’s eye view with a board game. Even block games, while providing limited fog-of-war, still pale in comparison to what a computer can achieve since players know where the blocks are, even if they don’t know what their strengths actually consist of.

You could perhaps add randomized unit quality, or randomized die-roll modifiers before combat to simulate the vagaries of combat. Some games already do this, so that’s a plus.

What if a role-playing layer was added on top of the strategic game? Individual leaders and commanders would have varying statistics, and the game would perform checks against these statistics to allow actions to take place. For example, suppose generals have a Political Influence stat that would be used when attempting to convince the politicians to open up an offensive. In the battle for France the Allied generals would have to make a successful roll against the French leadership to attack the Germans, otherwise they could not move their units.

Adding the RPG elements would help the game simulate the war at the human level I think. The human factor seems to grow less and less significant as the scale of a game increases, at least that’s the way the majority of games are designed. At squad level the quality of the man behind the rifle matters, at platoon level it’s more about the weapons with a hint of humanity, but at operational and strategic it almost always boils down to hard numbers and finding the perfect odds ratio. I’d like to see grand strategy become a little more personal.

Could it happen, or is it simply too difficult to reasonably simulate in a game?

Chain saws. Who doesn’t like them, especially in their games? They’re loud, nasty, brutal. Carnage incarnated in metal and fuel. A Freudian nightmare of bloody, violent penetration.

When you think of chain saws and gaming chances are the first titles that come to mind are Gears of War for the 360 and the venerable DOOM, but chain saws and gaming goes back even further. Games Workshop brought the chain saw to the tabletop back in the ‘80s with Chainsaw Warrior, a nifty solitaire game about kicking undead, demonic ass in a New York city apartment building. Or something like that. You can even find a Flash version of the game online today. And let’s not forget all those Space Marines with their chain saw swords. Speaking of Space Marines, does the huge armor really help? I mean when playing Space Hulk the genestealers pretty much rip through you, so what exactly is the point of all that armor?

It’s a shame more games don’t have chain saws in them. Just like zombies, adding chain saws will always improve a game.

And now a chain saw haiku…

A chain saw, hurrah
Flesh, bloody, mangled, shredded
Gummed the chain, now slipped

Random other end of the week stuff…

I got a copy of Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier this week, and holy Hell is this a beautiful RPG! Set in an alternate historical setting in which the South secures its independence (and includes other differences such as an independent Republic of Texas and the Mormon nation of Deseret, and more) the game opens up a wide range of adventuring possibilities. A physically imposing book (you can easily kill people by throwing it off a tall building) the system uses a nice, layered approach allowing players to jump in rather quickly (heck, the basic game which is primarily meant for role-playing skirmishes only takes up eight pages).

While I haven’t had a chance to sit down and read it cover to cover, what I have read has really excited me. The system is very open ended, and features some clever mechanics for various tasks. As an example, if involved in a chase players lay out a series of cards (regular playing cards) and takes three stacks of poker chips representing a mount’s speed, agility, and endurance. The type of card dictates whether it’s safe terrain or hazardous (if chasing in the hills hazards are represented by jokers, twos, threes, fours, and fives), and the chips are used to bid on your positions during the chase. It’s cool to see designers thinking outside the box, and tying a western RPG in with poker cards and chips is a nice touch.

There are two possible issues with the system. One, I don’t see how you can translate most of the mechanics to a email system, so for anyone looking to play-by-post you’re going to have to give up a lot of the innovations found in Aces & Eights. The other issue is that it does have that Hackmaster element of excessive detail at times, like while other game systems are using rapid paced critical hits, Aces & Eights uses pages and pages of critical hit tables. Personally this isn’t a problem, especially since RPGs are all about personalizing the experience for your group, but it is something to be aware of going in.

Oh, one of the more interesting aspects of character development is the ability to take on various profession paths. Each path provides players with a number of build points for developing their PC, when certain goals are completed.

The paths provide a nice way to create some on-the-fly role-playing experiences, and a way to flesh out the PCs. The professions are quite varied, from the truly mundane (Brickmaker, First goal: Set up for business. Setting up in a known area for sale and/or creation of wares. For starters this can be (and typically is) a rented location, even a ramshackle tent on a mere lot. Award: 1 BP) to the more action orientated, like a bounty hunter or spy. Why, players can even become professional whores and earn their first build point by getting paid for a sex act. I can only imagine the rule lawyering that will go on defining what constitutes an “act”…

While I don’t have kids I have plenty of friends who are married with children (poor bastards), and so it’s hard to escape hearing about Dora the Explorer. Granted, I don’t know anything more than it’s a popular children’s cartoon character, but with her title I started to think about terrible places she could explore and came up with the following ‘toons.

The second cartoon references the classic AD&D module S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. For those unfamiliar with this great adventure I included a scan of the cover to the illustration booklet so you could see why the mind flayer appears as such. The scan is poorly rendered to conserve size, but it’s good enough to get the gist.

So you’re grinding your way through the week, looking forward to running your players through your latest adventure of supreme deviousness, when you get a call from one of your players. Apparently the group wants to take a break from the world of fantasy gaming, and after a marathon session of watching The Longest Day, A Bridge Too Far, and Das Boot, the general consensus is that they want to do some military role-playing. Real world military role-playing they add, so forget stealing adventure ideas from Rambo III, and they definitely don’t want to see any Nazi werewolves unless they’re post-war guerilla fighters. They want their game to be grounded in reality.

A realistic military RPG can be a tricky proposition if you’re used to running your party through dungeons as they battle mighty dragons for their mountains of swag. While you’ll find that there are always certain similarities to be found in any genre of role-playing, running a military RPG (and one not aimed at the comic book or action movie crowd) differs considerably in many areas; areas you may not be used to thinking about since fantasy gaming is so different. The purpose of this article is to provide advice to those gamemasters (GMs) who are wanting to run a realistic military RPG but are inexperienced in the genre.

The first thing as the GM you’ll need to address is how long is your group interested in playing this kind of genre? Will it be a full campaign lasting months, a mini-campaign lasting weeks, or just a one-night stand? Deciding the length will depend not only on what your group is expecting, but also your vision for the game.

One-night stands are the easiest to prep, and allow both you and your players the most freedom. With no history leading up to the adventure, and for that matter no future afterwards, the party can be an eclectic group that would normally not make sense in a long term campaign. Because the adventure also boils down to an elaborate set-piece affair as the GM you can tailor the party exactly to the adventure. One-night stands in a historical context are great if you want to run your players through a single battle. The downside is common to all one-night stand sessions, with the danger of players performing ridiculous actions with their characters since they will never use them again. That is of course a problem stemming from the players themselves, and not the game, and will ultimately be decided by how much control you exert over the players, and if they are mature gamers to begin with.

Campaigns in a military RPG are excellent options, allowing the players to experience a variety of situations over the course of your playing time. The campaigns could be grandiose affairs, charting the actions of the characters over the course of an entire war, or could be smaller to cover something like the landings and breakout at Normandy. Campaigns also allow character growth, and a more natural sense of team building than the one-night stand option. The downside to a campaign is that the deadly nature of combat will necessitate character turnover, although in a military RPG this is handled fairly easily. More on that later, though.

As you plan out how long the game will be it’s important to also consider factors such as when and where does the game take place, both of which should influence your decision on the type of campaign. If you’re interested in gaming the raid on Saint Nazaire doing it as a single session makes sense, while obviously having players live out a tour of duty in ‘Nam would necessitate a full campaign. Something else to think about when deciding this is what will the players be playing? Having them as the crew of a PT boat may be fun for a single session, but may not have enough legs for months of gameplay.

Speaking of when and where it’s highly recommended that you stick to the modern era (Second World War onwards), as this period offers logical roles for small groups. The further back you go the more focus there is on massed formations, and the less fun there’s to be had in a role-playing situation (unless your players want to role-play standing in formation and blasting away with muskets at fifty paces all night). That’s not to say you can’t create interesting situations in a pre-modern game, but it does become more difficult. If you do want to try something from the days of yore it’s highly recommended you keep it as a one-night stand.

Once you’ve decided the length of your military game, along with what the focus will be, it’s time to decide what the player characters can become. In some ways this is easier than a typical fantasy game because there’s a common cause (go out and kill the enemy) pre-built into the game, so as a GM you can avoid the cliché old-man-in-the-tavern-with-the-dungeon-map-of-glory setup. Where it gets more difficult is that players will not have the same amount of freedom when creating their characters as in a fantasy setting.

For starters there’s only one racial option, human. Next, characters will usually have to be from one particular nationality, which in turn will depend on what the game is portraying. You can stretch that somewhat since many battles involved multiple allies per side, but this ends up working better in a single session than long term because of the tactical scale involved. Finally, there’s the class of character to be portrayed.

In fantasy games warriors fight, thieves sneak, priests heal, and wizards lob fireballs. To some extant you can have similar roles in a military RPG, with foot soldiers, scouts, medics, and support weapon teams. Where it gets dicey is if the players want to go for more exotic roles such as tankers, fighter pilots, or navy personnel.

Unless everyone wants to take those roles on, and thus turn the game into a campaign focusing on a tank platoon, fighter squadron, or single vessel, the exotic roles simply will not fit. The only way to make them fit is to take away the cool toys associated with the various roles. For example, the party could come across a downed fighter pilot or tanker whose tank was disabled. A particularly brave GM could even run multiple plots at once. Perhaps one player plays a pilot trapped behind enemy lines, while the rest of the party takes on the role of the squad sent to locate him. In the end it’s much easier to have the characters take on similar roles, primarily as your basic foot soldier.

At this point you should decide whether the characters will be members of the rank and file, or special forces/commandos. From a gameplay perspective putting your players in the boots of special forces makes your life a lot easier, since the majority of SF operations can be conducted independently, by a small group such as your party. Just make sure they realize that the A-Team should not be an example of how they should play their characters.

The party composition is close to completion, but there is one last thing you and your players need to consider: rank. Unlike every other RPG out there in which a party leader usually ends up being the loudest, most talkative player without any true power, in the case of a military RPG the party leader really is the leader of the group. Depending on the group, this can become a very sensitive subject.

If you have players who heavily invest in role-playing, and will get into the spirit of things, by all means assign characters different ranks. If your players are like the other 99% of role-playing groups someone will end up griping about having to take orders, and before you know it a case of fragitis breaks out. Avoid this by making everyone equal rank and throw in a NPC officer, if required. Ultimately the players will be following orders from up top anyway, so a little fraternization amongst the party can be overlooked during the heat of the game.

All right, you’ve decided the length of the game, where and when the game is taking place, and who the party shall represent. Now it’s time to work on the adventure(s).

If your game is set against a specific historical backdrop (i.e. the battle of Stalingrad versus a more generalized ‘It happens during Barbarossa’) be sure to research the background. Since this is meant to be a realistic historical RPG, invest your spare time in ensuring that the correct military units are present, learn their equipment and overall history involved. There are countless books and websites dealing with military history, and even the most historically-challenged GM should have no problem digging up the proper details.

Unlike fantasy games in which the party can literally save the world, in the military RPG genre the players are nothing more but individual cogs in the gears of war. If you are basing the game on a historical battle create a timeline before the game begins of the major events, and if possible, weather conditions. As you plan your adventure out use the timeline as a basis for the events that you wish the party to be involved in. Additionally, by describing the events that are taking place outside of the party’s immediate area of concern, it creates a much more vibrant, and lifelike world and helps players immerse themselves in the game.

Go ahead and plan out the major encounters/events and then proceed to the creation of random encounter tables. When creating the tables keep in mind that this is supposed to be realistic. While in the realm of fantasy random encounter tables can provide an diverse mixture of foes without regard to why they’re roaming, one based in reality must reflect the situation. It would be unrealistic to encounter a lone tank on patrol in a dense urban environment, but not so unusual in the wide open countryside. Think about changing fronts, and what types of troops will be encountered on your maps.

Maps are another factor that you will have to take into consideration. While fantasy games are no stranger to maps, especially those of forgotten dungeons and towers, in a military game maps are the utmost importance for your game. The proper use of terrain will often make the difference between victory and defeat, so your players will expect you to provide them with details of the landscape when needed. If you’re not a regular mapmaker one cheat is to use the maps from tactical board wargames.

The last thing you need to worry about is character death. Whatever actual gaming system you use to game your adventure out it should be deadly to provide the proper realism. Now, because the players’ characters can never have the same awareness level that a real person in a real situation can have, having a realistic damage model should not equate to a GM license to kill. You’re role-playing war, not Paranoia. It’s not fun for anyone if in the first five minutes of the game the players are strafed by a squadron of SU-25s and end up as pink mist.

Characters will die though, especially if it’s a long term campaign. Character replacement is actually easier to accomplish in this type of game than in a fantasy setting. Ever try to rationalize why there’s a paladin hanging out in the middle of the Great Desert of the East, waiting to join a group, right after Borka the Battlecleric died from a snakebite (damn saving roll!) while the party crossed said desert? In combat though replacements are a way of err, life, so rotating a new character in poses little problem. The exception would be if the party is performing a mission deep behind enemy lines, but even then you can simply have them run into another patrol performing a similar mission.

Because war is death personified it’s best to pad out the party with NPCs. Since most role-playing groups consist of only three or four folks—much smaller than even a typical squad—filling out the party with NPCs even fits in the genre. When a character dies the player simply takes over one of the NPCs.

At this point you should have enough suggestions to break out the notebooks and start working on your military RPG session. When done right a good military RPG can be just as engaging as the best tactical board game, if not even better. To get you started, I’ve included some idea kernels to flesh out below. Each idea has a title, followed by the type of game (ONS = One Night Stand, MC = Mini-Campaign, FC = Full Campaign), and some details to springboard off of.

Escape from Saint Nazaire (FC)
The campaign takes place immediately after the famous raid on the port of Saint Nazaire, with the players taking on the roles of British commandos attempting to escape occupied France.

Chosin Reservoir (ONS)
Players take on the role of Marines during the Korean War during the bitter fighting in the Chosin reservoir. The scenario lasts one full day.

With Extreme Prejudice (MC)
The party is a special forces team infiltrating North Vietnamese territory during the Vietnam war on a mission to assassinate several Cong leaders.

Rattenkrieg (FC)
Players take on the role of German soldiers fighting for their survival in Stalingrad.

Bad Day in the ‘Stan (ONS)
The party is the surviving members of a downed US or UK helicopter in Afghanistan currently awaiting rescue and under siege from the Taliban (could also substitute the Mujahadeen for Taliban and make the players Soviets during the Afghan war).

Sand, Sand Everywhere (MC)
The players are a B-24 bombing crew that got lost on the return leg of a bombing run in the Med and had to force land in the African desert. Now they have to find their way back to friendly lines, all the while avoiding enemy forces, violent natives, and the GM’s shiv, the environment.

Band of Brothers (FC)
The campaign follows the series of the same name starting off with the D-Day operation. Each session follows one episode.