Something that we are discussing for one of our SA games, thought I would drop it here and get some feedback from you guys as well.
OVERVIEW:
This game will be more role-playing and detective work than straight-up fire-fights. The idea is to replicate the dynamics of a German occupation force in Western Europe: the front-line is far away, and the only times of 'contact' are when the local Resistance forces engage in acts of sabotage against the German occupiers.
Venue
We will need something with several buildings, and preferably in a not too messed-up condition. Even two-three buildings will work, close together, with some form of path/trail between them.
- one building = German base, with at least two rooms: one for HQ (comms, interrogations), one for barracks (respawns, weapons cache)
- one building = local cafe; civilians can go there to mingle
a) a kitchen here would be neat, providing food in exchange for game-printed money; this game money is 'bought' before the game, and then used during the scenario
b) a back room for clandestine meetings would also be ideal; someone like the Forger would operate from here, with/without the knowledge of the kitchen's operator(s)
- one building = civilian residence, where innocent civilians can lurk and make the German patrols paranoid
FACTIONS:
1) German occupation force
- needs to be split into a Guard and a Patrol(s) unit
a) Guards
* guard the German base
* need about 3-4 minimum
b) Patrol
* patrol the village, as well as outlying fields/farm areas
* need about 3 players per patrol; 4-5 would be ideal
* can have multiple patrols, just never less than 3 men
- when KIA, Germans respawn at German base
2) Collaborators (pro-German civilians)
- start the game in civilian kit in village center, and with their guns cached at the German base
- allegiance to Germans is an unknown at game start
- if they decide to take up arms, they need to report to the German base and prove to the commander that they are pro-German; this can only happen in the presence of at least one German at the German base (so Collaborator players cannot simply walk in and arm themselves)
- taking up arms does not mean they have to join the patrols or stand guard; they can continue to stay undercover
- however, if anyone on the Allied side sees the Collaborator entering the German base, they could become suspicious (is he getting a gun, or being interrogated, or giving them false info, or...?)
- when KIA, Collaborators return their weapons to the German base, then head back to the village center to respawn
3) Saboteurs (Allied troops)
- start the game in civilian kit in the village center, with weapons cached at the Saboteur Cache
- Saboteur Cache contains all weaponry and kit of Saboteurs and Resistance players
- Saboteurs have choice: can don army uniforms and webbing once game starts, or can remain in civvies (more kit vs anonymity)
- Saboteurs have to infiltrate village and destroy some German objective(s) that are being guarded: a telephone exchange, a fuel dump, an officer's car, etc
- when killed, Saboteurs return their weapons to the Saboteur Cache, and can then choose where to respawn: at the Saboteur Cache, or at the village center; can only respawn at village center if in civvies
4) Partisans (pro-Allied civilians)
- start the game in civilian kit in village center, and with their guns cached at the Saboteur Cache
- allegiance to Allies is an unknown at game start
- if they decide to take up arms, they need to report to the Saboteur cache and prove to the commander that they are pro-Allied; this can only happen in the presence of at least one confirmed Saboteur at the Saboteur Cache (so Partisans cannot simply walk in and arm themselves)
- taking up arms does not mean they have to join the patrols or stand guard; they can continue to stay undercover
- however, if anyone on the German/Collaborator side sees the Partisan visiting the Saboteur Cache, they could become suspicious (is he getting a gun, or being interrogated, or giving them false info, or...?)
- when KIA, Partisans return their weapons to the Saboteur Cache, then head back to the village center to respawn
Random factions
- If a Saboteur, Collaborator or Partisan is KIA, they respawn at the village center
- when respawning, player draws a tag from a central pot; tag is green or red
- tag is drawn in such a way that only the drawing player sees what colour his tag is
- red tag: player is 'True Neutral', and is not a member of any of the combating forces (Collaborator, Saboteur, Partisan)
... interpretted as your allegiance being 'switched off' - i.e. red - for that period, rendering you completely neutral
... a red tag may be redrawn after 30 minutes
- green tag: player is active in his allocated team, and can resume following his team's chosen plan (so you are then an active Collaborator / Saboteur / Partisan)
- your tag must be kept on you at all times, and is only returned to the selection pot just before you pick a new tag; no player may have more than one tag (exemptions given for items obtained from Forger)
- for purposes of allegiance, a red tag will prove your 'innocence' if interrogated
- a green tag will show that you are active in your team, but it remains up to the interrogator to determine what team that is
- each tag is numbered, from 1 to 40 (number of attending players); these numbers serve as a type of ID
Security checks
- the German Patrols will have the power to perform spot checks on any civilians they pass
- during the check, the civilian will need to hand over their tag
... need to find a way to link the tag to an ID booklet of sorts (similar to Crete I)
- if the checking party notices anything odd about the civilians tag (has the same number as another person's tag, or has no tag, or...), they may apprehend the civilian and take them in for questioning
Paperwork
- when a Collaborator takes up arms, the Germans will give him a Weapon Permit (of some kind) to allow him to carry the weapon
- for each weapon permit issued, a unique 6-digit number is given; this list of issued permits is kept at German base
- if the Collaborator is searched by a German patrol and the weapon is found, this Weapon Permit will show that the Collaborator is allowed to carry the weapon (as a first check); as a second check, the number on the permit can be compared against the roster at the German base, in order to ensure that the number is legit
- HOWEVER!
- the Forger can, at a price, issue fake Weapon Permits to anyone - Saboteurs, Collaborators, Partisans - who pays him
- the Forger's Weapon Permits, however, will contain numbers that might not necessarily match up with the roster at the German base; this will be one way to detect a fake Weapon Permit
- when a Collaborator / Saboteur / Partisan is KIA and respawns back at the village center, they have to hand in all of their paperwork along with their old allegiance tag (so getting a Weapon Permit once is not enough - you need to get it every time after you have been killed)
FINAL OVERVIEW
The idea is to create, over time as players are killed, an ever-increasing sense of paranoia in the village (which you would expect in a village plagued by Resistance action of this sort). Patrols should become more diligent in checking paperwork back with base (and we have enough mobile radios for this to happen), while the civilians should become more adapt at subterfuge and evasion.
And of course, if everything goes to hell, there will be a massive firefight between who knows who - Germans shooting civilians, civilians shooting Germans, civilians shooting civilians...
Time-wise, we would need to run this in winter (cooler weather), and for a relatively longish period: say 13:00 to about two hours after sunset - roughly 20:00. The village would then need lights as well (generator for electricity, paraffin lamps for the civilians), with the fall of darkness favouring the Saboteurs in their mission.
Great idea! Be careful not to let the munchkins peak behind the curtain....
Good ideas on the tags and documents.
Consider the balance of Resistance to Neutral civilians. For the Resistance to work the need a population to hide in "Many people think it impossible for guerrillas to exist for long in the enemy's rear. Such a belief reveals lack of comprehension of the relationship that should exist between the people and the troops. The former may be likened to water the latter to the fish who inhabit it. Mao Ze Dong"
If the Troops feel most encounters will be with a resistance member they rapidly become likely to shoot first rather than talk to them. When we played out a similar idea set in Yugoslavia the British Commando's ended up killling civilians as it was just too frustrating to work out which side they really belonged to. I think you need quite a number of really civillian players at any time with the restriction that they will not be armed or killing anybody just getting hassle the Germans and the Resistance. The Germans probably need consequences for shooting true civillians. An Airsoft equivalent of the Eastern Front perhaps, whether this is going home early or being forced to become a civilian I will leave you to work on.
Great work on thinking how to develop games that are more than just shooting at each other.
a Resistance game is a LARP, and players need to be willing to be neutrals for a reasonable amount of time - at least half the event. It don't work for the 'trigger time moneys-worth-s'.
It has been on the cards for ages, just need the damned site. 
Yes anything truely resistance based has to be heavily roleplay based and very restrictive on any weapons/shooting. Like Ramsays says otherwise the occupiers simply get fed up and shoot any civilians outright (as they would in the real situation).
You'll have to keep the resistance players busy with non combat objectives including true resistance stuff like intelligence gathering and equipment sabotage and severly limit their access to weaponary to remove temptation. Otherwise it sounds pretty good, if only we had such a game here (stares at Wladek) 
this would work well in the way that flying lead (western airsoft) works, in an ongoing story line lrp over many serial events.as a one day'er i think there would be too much role play and not much action for many involved.please don't take that as criticism as i like the idea, as an alternative to walk on day airsoft once or twice a month it would be epic.
armoury
m1a1 Thompson,sten mk2,mp40,stg44,sterling,mk2 bren gun,lee Enfield no4 mk1,Mauser Kar98, Walther ppk,smith and Weston m10 and Mauser m712
Give me a big enough hammer and a place to stand and I could fix the world.
i'll kill a man in a fair fight or if i think he's going to start a fair fight or over a woman or.......
a problem shared is a problem halved ,but an advantage shared is no advantage at all
if a job's not worth doing then its certainly not worth doing well
Some very valid points raised, let me see if I can address them in some manner.
- The inclusion of 'True Neutral' players is definitely a desired element. However, instead of convincing existing WW2 airsofters to drop their kit and play TN, we are looking at including our local LARP groups for that purpose. Acquiring 1940's civilian garb would be cheaper and easier for them to manage than the alternative of trying to convert them to Germans / Tommies. Also, since they come from a LARP background, one would expect more enthusiasm and experience on their behalf when it comes to acting like civilians.
- The Collaborator team is intended to avoid that mindset of 'all civilians = enemies' mindset. With the Germans so severely outnumbered by players in mufti, the mere knowledge that some of them could be pro-German - Vichy French, or a local pro-Fascist group, or some locally-raised Nazi group - should encourage the Germans to be more careful with their shooting. After all, being able to recruit a handful of locals to help defend the German objectives could mean the difference between victory and defeat.
- Number-wise, I envision about 12 Germans (4/4/4 Guards/Patrol/Patrol), about 6-8 Saboteurs, and then as many civilians (Collaborators / Partisans / TN) as you can recruit. The majority of your props would also need to be German (Occupier-aligned), with each item - a staff car, or R75 motorbike, or MG42 nest - have the dual functionality of aiding the Occupiers while it is intact, as well as providing a target for the Resistance.
- Repercussions for killing civilians can be a mixture of 'official' penalties - i.e. German player being confined to barracks, or a Saboteur being recalled to MI6/OSS to 'please explain' - and 'unofficial penalties, whereby the civilian leader (a mayor, or local clergyman) starts encouraging the civilians to start favouring the less murderous side. This would require some strict 'staying in character' from the three team leaders (German, Saboteur, Civilian), in terms of following up on reports of atrocities and dealing with the culprits.
An interesting twist here could be a slightly more stereotyped response from the Germans based on the unit that committed the killings: Wehrmacht troops would be punished on a 'regular' level, FJ troops - being more elite, and/or better equipped in some way - would face far harsher punishments.... And SS troops would get off lighter than Wehrmacht troops again. However, there needs to be two sides: an in-game punishment should be combined with a behind-the-scenes allocation/deduction of points for these activities. If the FJ troops are punished in-game, and their commander makes some form of reparations to the local civilians, subtract only a few points (or add negative 'atrocity points' on a second scale); on the other hand, if SS discipline is lax in-game, it should be coupled with more penalties / negatives behind the scenes.
One slight note of caution is that there are an awful lot of rules listed above, people often just don't remember all this stuff. Maybe if you put character specific notes on individual briefings?
There was a civilian/resistance element in the 'Dirty Dozen' game last year, which was OK for a while but in the end was just a pita as the Germans got tired of being walking targets to get stabbed and we ended up shooting any civilians on sight. So I'd keep the amount of allowable direct resistance violence down and focus more on sabotage, intel, 'Germans go home' slogans etc.
Cheers
Martin
"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" Helmuth von Moltke
Toys: AGM MP40, Cyma M1A1, TM M14/G43/SVT40, TM VSR/K98, SnS No. 4, ASG Sten, Ppsh.
Arnhem3,Gumrak,Campoleone
The easiest solution would be if a German shots a civilian without good cause, i.e they are not actually armed or engaging in nefarious activities, then it's the German that takes the hit and returns to HQ/regen and not the civilian. Simples!
“I wanted to come to the Volga at a specific location at a specific city. By chance it carries the name of Stalin himself. So don’t think I marched there for this reason – it could carry another name – but because there is a very important goal... this goal I wanted to take – and you know – we are very modest, we have it already."
Adolf Hitler, November 1942
"Comrades, Red Army men, commanders and political workers, men and women guerrillas! It is on your perseverance, staunchness, fighting skill and readiness to discharge your duty to the country that the defeat of the German-fascist army and the liberation of the Soviet land from the Hitlerite invaders depend! We can and must clear the Soviet land of Hitlerite vermin."
Joseph Stalin, November 1942
The easiest solution would be if a German shots a civilian without good cause, i.e they are not actually armed or engaging in nefarious activities, then it's the German that takes the hit and returns to HQ/regen and not the civilian. Simples!
I like that idea! If the civ takes a wound, the Germans then need to investigate his situation and determine if he was innocent or not. If innocent, the German shooter is sent back to barracks with a reprimand; if the civ was engaged in nefarious shennanigans, there is no issue.
The officer at HQ can then simply keep track of who gets sent back most often for civilian shots, and then confine those Germans to barracks after, say, three black marks against their name.
Alternatively, if a civilian is shot by a German, the wounded civilian - who is now in the 10min bleeding period before going KIA - must be escorted to the German HQ by two other civilians, and a complaint must be made to the CO. They must then also be able to identify the German culprit, and provide reliable proof of some kind. False accusations would be possible here, but that should prevent Germans lurking off on their own, as they would then have no friendly witnesses to back them against accusations like these.
As said we did something *very* similar a few years back at operation lighting.
there were four 'factions'
1. the occupying germans who just wanted a quiet life
2. the local population who were either pro communist or pro facist to varying degrees
3. the british commandoes sent to help the communists
4. the SS unit diverted to hunt down the commandoes.
We played it over a day and ten 45 minute 'missions' if you were shot once , you were bandaged, shot again and you were dead and out until the next mission.
One 'mission' might have just been for the commandoes to make contact with a communist fighter... no shooting required.
The yugo/partisans each had an ID card. This said who they were, what their allegiance was, how strongly they felt about it (for instance one card said something like 'you shout about the revolution and the need for sacrifice but you will leg it as soon as the first shot is fired') and who they liked or hated.. for example some of the partisans while both being ardent fascists might actually hate each other and want to arrnage an 'accident' for the other one or grass them up to the guards.
equally the heer commander was briefed to hate the SS etc.
The big problem with these games is that once you know 'dave is a communist partisan' you shoot dave every time you see him or at the very least treat him as a threat and point your gun his way all the time. we tried to alleviate this by shuffling the id cards and handing them out randomly after ever mission to represent the idea that there were many many more guys in the village and you didnt know who was a friend or not until you'd chatted to them (and they could be lying). While in one way this fostered the feeling of doubt and suspicion working behind the lines and that the guards also couldnt trust the locals it did , as ramsay says sometimes result in people being shot for no reason!
In general you need a significant 'crew' to be civilians otherwise they just end up being 'soldiers in shirts' as soon as their cover is blown, with airsofters who are not roleplayers this is usually in the first 30 seconds of the event.
"I think we are in rats' alley - Where the dead men lost their bones."
You'll have to keep the resistance players busy with non combat objectives including true resistance stuff like intelligence gathering and equipment sabotage and severly limit their access to weaponary to remove temptation. Otherwise it sounds pretty good, if only we had such a game here (stares at Wladek)
I am waiting for a site to get back in touch, as well you know sir!
Doing a site scout on Saturday, and (hopefully) meeting the LARP group on Tuesday. Not really clued with how the LARP'ers work, so the meeting should be... interesting. My contact with them is a librarian with a BDSM fetish.
(Okay, now you can hit me with the stereotypes)
*runs*
This sounds right up my ally and the final dynamic to complete all element in WW2.
Well thought out buddy.
You can have Tuddenham if you site falls through.
We did a cold wAr larpy style game there last year and it was awesome 
Good work mate
Heer Schmidt
This dounds very interesting
Sent from my GT-I9305 using Tapatalk 2
You can have Tuddenham if you site falls through.
Josh, I doubt that Tuddenham will be much use to him.
He's in South Africa.
I was just thinking that 
You can have Tuddenham if you site falls through.
Josh, I doubt that Tuddenham will be much use to him.
He's in South Africa.
Really appreciate the offer though, believe me! 
Plus, the idea is hardly 'copyrighted' or such - if this inspires a Brit organizer to host something similar, I will be just as happy. We are still very much in the planning phase here on our side, with 1) the site and 2) the civilian crowd both still needing to be sorted out.
The paperwork angle is raising some good ideas on our side though, will share as they take form.
At the "Bridge Too Far" game back in 2007 all the residents of Oosterbeek were issued with their own personalised identity cards. Good fun checking the card and matching their face to the photo - then asking them to confirm their names. Some actually remembered their alter egos!
Oh.......and........they best get their passports in order!
Sorry for not ready it properly.
Heer Schmidt
