31 Character Challenge Part 30: Behind Enemy Lines

 

World War II.  Possibly the most studied conflict in the history of mankind.  I remember when The History Channel was nothing but wall-to-wall WWII documentaries.  The Hitler Channel: All Hitler, All The Time.  So it's only natural that there are a few roleplaying games out there that cover good old WWII.  Many of them add non-historical elements, like Weird War II with Nazi "Wehrwolves" and Gear Krieg with dieselpunk mecha.  But FASA's Behind Enemy Lines is not one of those.  This game intends to be a "straight" WWII roleplaying game, by default from the point of view of an American US Army soldier.

The game has a sort of lifepath character generation, and with its 2D6 task resolution it's hard not to see a bit of Traveller influence in the game.  It has some very wargame-y elements, but that's to be expected of a game where the main setting is the conflict in Europe.

I have to admit that I have rolled up characters for this game many times, but I have yet to actually run it.  I've owned it for decades, but never found a group that was interested in playing WWII "straight."  No supernatural elements, no mecha, no nothing.  Most players I've talked to felt it was far too grim, too easy for characters to catch a stray bullet and die horribly.

I think this game is in a genre where I'd stick to playing the dice as they fall, rather than my more modern mode of saving character deaths for dramatically appropriate moments.  No, in a WWII game the grim brutality my players have always feared is probably pretty appropriate.

Without further adieu, lets' see who got drafted.

Character Creation

 We begin by determining our physical characteristics.  They are Strength, Endurance, Weapons Handling, Agility, and Stamina.  All but Stamina are rolled on 1D6+4.  Stamina is then the average of Strength and Endurance.

• Strength: 10
• Endurance: 10
• Weapons Handling: 7
• Agility: 5
• Stamina: 10

Well, Agility crapped out, but the two sixes right off the bad help. Rolling on the 2D6 table tells us our character's weight is 170-180 pounds.

Now we roll for background skills, but we have to figure out if our character came from the city, or the country. 4, our character is rural.  So we'll roll to see if he (these characters are universally male) picked up useful skills before basic training.

We now have a level 1 Rifle skill, a level 3 Pistol skill, Drive at level 1, and a level 2 Swim skill.

Now, for basic training.  Our Rifle skill comes out to 4, First Aid at the maximum of 3, level 2 Hand-to-Hand skill, and level 1 skill in Bayonet, Rifle Grenade, BAR, Bazooka, .30 machine gun, 60mm mortar, and submachine gun.

Now we determine how experienced this character is.  We roll an 8 and are a Private First Class.  Our character has seen action only at Normandy. He has 1 Combat Experience point, and 5 acquired skill points.  We'll spend 3 on a level of Rifle, and 2 on another level of First Aid, qualifying our character to be a medic.

Jot down gear, and this character is ready to play.

The Character

Charlie Carlisle grew up in the small town of Taylor, Texas, son of a farmer and one of six children.  Charlie and each of his siblings worked hard helping keep the farm afloat, with Charlie being the only member of his family to have graduated High School, with Charlie spending late nights trying to help his younger siblings do the same, then waking at dawn to help his father with the chores.  That was the way things were until Sunday, December 7th, 1941.  News from outside Texas didn't travel terribly fast most days, but by Sunday night even the sleepy little farm town was abuzz with news of the Japanese attack.

Charlie had a talk with his father, a veteran of The Great War, and set off for Austin the next day, to enlist in the US Army.

Basic Training was educational, but not too tough for a boy whose body had been conditioned to hard work.  Like most boys in the country, he already knew his way around firearms, and knew how to drive the family's Ford pickup.  These skills came in handy, and he was made a PFC aboard the ship taking him across the Atlantic for the invasion of Europe.  Then the waiting started.  Training, training, training.  Practice and more practice.  Some units invaded Sicily, Italy. And still Charlie waited with his unit.  Drills, field problems, waiting.  Waiting.  Then one day, the paymasters paid the men in francs.

D-Day.  Charlie had never seen so much vomit, and hours later he had never seen so much blood.  The whole thing was a blur of sound and motion, blood and water, men and machines.  When the whole thing was finally over, God knows how long later, and he and his company caught their breath- there were just over half of them left.  Charlie's own squad had lost their squad leader and both BAR men.  He wondered why he'd ever wanted to hurry up and invade.  But here he was - in Europe.  He joined the Corporal who now led his squad in pissing on a burned out pillbox.  So much for Fortress Europa.

Now begins the long road to Berlin.

My Thoughts

I'm currently watching Band of Brothers with my son.  We've also watched Saving Private Ryan together.  I wonder if I could use Behind Enemy Lines as a teaching tool, to pick up some WWII history by walking students through some of the scenarios soldiers lived through.  I doubt I could do a better job than Spielberg or Hanks, but the idea that the students could choose their own paths and see the outcome might be worth looking into.  I'm reasonably familiar with both US and German squad-level tactics and unit compositions, and could bone up on specifics without much trouble.  I mean, I spent way too much on a graduate degree in military history, I might as well put some of it to use.

This could also be interesting to play D-Day in the same "character funnel" style as Dungeon Crawl Classics, rolling up, say, four characters per player and seeing who survives hitting the beach.  Rather than an irreverent kill-fest, the point would be to show the players just how horrifying the real thing was, again, make it an educational experience.  Role playing games have a potential to allow us to step into the shoes of people we are not, and in some small way place ourselves in situations we have never experienced.  Perhaps this would be a worthy goal at some point.