RANDOM THOUGHTS #67
Steve Cole muses: Just thinking to himself about the verbal RPGs which he and Steven Petrick play to amuse themselves during exercise walks or sometimes during dinner.
1. The best one is the RPG Die In Place. These are always campaigns, and take two weeks to six months to play out. SPP plays the leader character, while SVC is the GM and handles the extensive cast of up to 30 NPCs. The overall situation can being inspired by a movie or TV show or be made up out of whole cloth.
Over time, Steve Petrick has played:
A. A tank colonel in Vietnam. This was first one, nearly 20 years ago, and went on for a year. In a climactic final battle, Colonel Petrick had to lead a bayonet charge to break through the final NVA trap and save his trapped command during the Tet Offensive. One NPC, the young Lieutenant Castle, won the Medal of Honor and later came to visit Petrick in the old soldier's home.
B. The second-in-command of a survivor group during a Zombie Apocalypse. This campaign was repeated later when a different Petrick was told to take his battalion of paratroops and go secure a remote island as a final bastion of humanity.
C. The commander of an Army battalion in Iraq when the US homeland was suddenly wrecked by terrorists using over 40 nuclear weapons. He had to fight his way out through the desert, trying to reach an intact US base in Kuwait.
D. A poor infantry captain stuck commanding an engineer company (with lieutenants and sergeants played by members of the Star Fleet Staff and various SFB players). Lieutenant Ken Burnside kept breaking the rock-crushing machine by trying to do too much during his shift, leaving Lieutenant Andy Palmer to clean up the mess during the next shift.
E. An advisor to a Mayapultpec rebel group trying to win independence from Mexico.
F. On a trip to EuroGencon, a lightning bolt struck the airliner. When the lights flickered, Steven Petrick found himself on a planeload of Army Reserve officers being sent to a war in Europe in an alternate timeline. The US Army was desperately patching together units to stop the onslaught of the Nazi Germans (who had survived the stalemated end of WW2 and were trying to invade France again). In this episode, Gilbert Gottfried was Petricik's executive officer!
And many other roles including peacekeeping in Africa, defending a lonely Iraqi hill from an Iranian invasion, a campaign in purgatory where he was (literally) fighting demons of various colors, and more.
In one very elaborate campaign, the roles were reversed, with Steve Cole playing a reserve engineer captain called up for Korean War II (under the command of Major Hillary Clinton) while Steven Petrick was the sadistic Gamemaster.
2. Time travel: These are usually one-time dinner discussions and are not so much RPGs as they are practical problem-solving discussions. One Steve will travel back in time with a limited number of modern weapons (and sometimes but not always soldiers trained to use them) and be told to win a battle someone lost.
A. One such battle involved Steven Petrick, alone but with a sniper rifle, at the Battle of Bladensburg, the last chance to stop the redcoats from burning Washington.
B. A recent discussion gave either Steve the mission to arrive on June 1st, 1863, and win the Civil War for the south. The choice was one M1A2 tank, one F16C fighter, or one AH64D helicopter (with perfect maintenance, a maintenance crew, unlimited stockpiles of ammunition, and a vehicle crew). Steven Petick wanted the AH64D, since it could cover wide areas, hover, support troops, and so forth. With it, he planned to sink Farragut's fleet (saving Vicksburg), knock out key bridges feeding all of the Union armies, and wreck Washington DC. (I thought he was going to have a hard time sinking warships or wrecking buildings with anti-tank missiles, but he thought he could make it work. I also thought that, sooner or later, someone was going to hit the hovering AH64D with a lucky cannon ball.) Steve Cole (me) picked the F16C, noting that by carefully picking a central location, he could sink Farragut's fleet with laser-guided bombs, wreck the bridges feeding Rosecran's drive from Nashville to Atlanta, keep Meade from bothering Lee all that much, AND pound Washington DC into submission.
Several trips have gone to the Alamo (or Rorke's Drift, or Custer's Last Stand), with various small quantities of modern weapons. The Custer episode in which Petrick's cavalry troop rode into battle on Harley motorcycles was especially fun.
3. One of the briefest games is to nominate two military leaders for an appearance on Deadliest Warrior. They must be historical, fairly well known, and a technological match. (Patton would have no problem defeating Attilla the Hun, giving the disparity between a Sherman tank and a few horses and swords.)
1. The best one is the RPG Die In Place. These are always campaigns, and take two weeks to six months to play out. SPP plays the leader character, while SVC is the GM and handles the extensive cast of up to 30 NPCs. The overall situation can being inspired by a movie or TV show or be made up out of whole cloth.
Over time, Steve Petrick has played:
A. A tank colonel in Vietnam. This was first one, nearly 20 years ago, and went on for a year. In a climactic final battle, Colonel Petrick had to lead a bayonet charge to break through the final NVA trap and save his trapped command during the Tet Offensive. One NPC, the young Lieutenant Castle, won the Medal of Honor and later came to visit Petrick in the old soldier's home.
B. The second-in-command of a survivor group during a Zombie Apocalypse. This campaign was repeated later when a different Petrick was told to take his battalion of paratroops and go secure a remote island as a final bastion of humanity.
C. The commander of an Army battalion in Iraq when the US homeland was suddenly wrecked by terrorists using over 40 nuclear weapons. He had to fight his way out through the desert, trying to reach an intact US base in Kuwait.
D. A poor infantry captain stuck commanding an engineer company (with lieutenants and sergeants played by members of the Star Fleet Staff and various SFB players). Lieutenant Ken Burnside kept breaking the rock-crushing machine by trying to do too much during his shift, leaving Lieutenant Andy Palmer to clean up the mess during the next shift.
E. An advisor to a Mayapultpec rebel group trying to win independence from Mexico.
F. On a trip to EuroGencon, a lightning bolt struck the airliner. When the lights flickered, Steven Petrick found himself on a planeload of Army Reserve officers being sent to a war in Europe in an alternate timeline. The US Army was desperately patching together units to stop the onslaught of the Nazi Germans (who had survived the stalemated end of WW2 and were trying to invade France again). In this episode, Gilbert Gottfried was Petricik's executive officer!
And many other roles including peacekeeping in Africa, defending a lonely Iraqi hill from an Iranian invasion, a campaign in purgatory where he was (literally) fighting demons of various colors, and more.
In one very elaborate campaign, the roles were reversed, with Steve Cole playing a reserve engineer captain called up for Korean War II (under the command of Major Hillary Clinton) while Steven Petrick was the sadistic Gamemaster.
2. Time travel: These are usually one-time dinner discussions and are not so much RPGs as they are practical problem-solving discussions. One Steve will travel back in time with a limited number of modern weapons (and sometimes but not always soldiers trained to use them) and be told to win a battle someone lost.
A. One such battle involved Steven Petrick, alone but with a sniper rifle, at the Battle of Bladensburg, the last chance to stop the redcoats from burning Washington.
B. A recent discussion gave either Steve the mission to arrive on June 1st, 1863, and win the Civil War for the south. The choice was one M1A2 tank, one F16C fighter, or one AH64D helicopter (with perfect maintenance, a maintenance crew, unlimited stockpiles of ammunition, and a vehicle crew). Steven Petick wanted the AH64D, since it could cover wide areas, hover, support troops, and so forth. With it, he planned to sink Farragut's fleet (saving Vicksburg), knock out key bridges feeding all of the Union armies, and wreck Washington DC. (I thought he was going to have a hard time sinking warships or wrecking buildings with anti-tank missiles, but he thought he could make it work. I also thought that, sooner or later, someone was going to hit the hovering AH64D with a lucky cannon ball.) Steve Cole (me) picked the F16C, noting that by carefully picking a central location, he could sink Farragut's fleet with laser-guided bombs, wreck the bridges feeding Rosecran's drive from Nashville to Atlanta, keep Meade from bothering Lee all that much, AND pound Washington DC into submission.
Several trips have gone to the Alamo (or Rorke's Drift, or Custer's Last Stand), with various small quantities of modern weapons. The Custer episode in which Petrick's cavalry troop rode into battle on Harley motorcycles was especially fun.
3. One of the briefest games is to nominate two military leaders for an appearance on Deadliest Warrior. They must be historical, fairly well known, and a technological match. (Patton would have no problem defeating Attilla the Hun, giving the disparity between a Sherman tank and a few horses and swords.)
posted by Federation Commander at 3:47 PM
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