Godlike Cotentin Session Summary 06/01/2003

Attendance

We celebrate the beginning of Tim's new Godlike game by having full attendance! Paul, Chris, Chuck and Bruce all show up with their crowds of six characters. Mike missed the great character-creating binge, so he ends up creating all his characters very quickly. Chris sympathizes, because he only managed to make it to five characters. He quickly hashes up a sixth.

Dark Days in France

The curtain rises upon Cherbourg, 1942. The German occupation is well under way, and thus far has been almost unopposed. German propaganda has amounted to, "We are winning! Resistance is futile!", and many Frenchmen have accepted this. French Resistance operations against the Germans thus far have been clumsy and amateurish. The most successful Resistance operation so far was centered on the Musee de l'Homme, where a group of students and academics started printing newspapers contradicting the official German line. Unfortunately, they were not very security-oriented: they were quickly infiltrated, arrested, tried and very publicly executed. This sent an important message to other Resistance groups on the importance of caution. There have also been a number of student protests, most of which have either been broken up by German soldaten or shot in the streets.

Resistance Activities

Typical Resistance activities broke down into a half-dozen areas:

• Propaganda. Most Resistance groups print some kind of underground newspaper. This is important for recruitment, and to maintain the morale of the French people and of other Resistance fighters.
• Refuge. Safe houses are important to keep Resistance fighters and downed Allied pilots out of the hands of the Gestapo.
• Local Support. Without this, any Resistance group's days were numbered. Concealing resistance activity from the German occupiers was not that difficult, but concealing it from local French citizens was impossible. If they did not tacitly approve, the luckless Resistance members would soon find themselves in a Gestapo lockup.
• Anti-Gestapo Activities. The Gestapo's primary role in Occupied France is to maintain order and ensure that loyalty to the new order is enforced. They will hunt down Resistance groups until actions are taken to impede their operations.
• Spying on the Heer. There is a lot of German military activity around the Cotentin peninsula, activity that both the British and the French government in exile are interested in.
• Funding. The British have shown an interest in funding Resistance groups that can provide them with intelligence information. Obtaining this money requires spying on German troop movements and finding a way to get the information back to Great Britain. The British generally have a low regard for the fighting ability of Resistance groups, and are not interested in building up amateur armies in the French countryside.

Our Resistance Fighters

Each player has six characters, including one Talent with 25 Will points, two Talents with 10 Will points each, one mundane with commando training (not necessarily an actual commando), and two regular mundanes with no special training. These thirty-six characters are divided down into four cells, each with a different function:

• Smugglers: Jacques Griveau, Hober Grunner, Emile Bonhomme, Alain Brissard, Charles Moulin, Jacques Taureau, and Mike's Forger (dampen talent)
• Outlaws: Poul-Edouard Matisse, Jack Ripley, Henri Villon, Maurice Pierre, Jean-Pierre Foretnoire, Robert Frenay, Sergeant Major Henri La Guerre, and Mike's Commando
• Police: Marelle Lechance, Pepe LaMain, Christian Diable, Vincent Mayer, Steven Seltzer, Marcel-Marie Loussaint, Brother Timothy, Jacques Levy
• Restaurateurs: Jean LeClerc, Jeanne Verney, Sam Smith, Andre LaRoux, Maurice Vilde, Guy Marchant, Loren Longwillow

The players are distributed across the four cells according to the following table:

The total list of characters (incomplete in part) is:

The characters' Resistance organization possesses a very limited armory, drawn from a variety of sources. Some weapons were issued to French reservists before the war, and have remained hidden from the Germans since then. Others were private property (particularly the shotguns). The Bren gun was salvaged from abandoned British military hardware. Each gun is loaded. The shotguns come with 10 extra shells each. The rifles come with three extra clips each. The Bren gun has a single extra clip. The pistols come only with a single ammunition load.

Three of the MAS36 rifles, the Bren gun and one Lebel revolver are hidden in an arms cache in the countryside, against possible later need.

Gathering Intelligence

Loren Longwillow ("Liar"), Sam Smith ("Slick"), Christian Diable ("Hypersniper") and Jeanne Verney spend time in Cherbourg cabarets lying to German officers in an effort to extract information from them. Their efforts are fairly successful, in part because the Germans are overconfident and not expecting ambushes. Longwillow gets a German quartermaster drunk and learns the schedule for an upcoming equipment shipment. The quartermaster lets slip that it will include only two or three trucks with a few armed guards.

Both Sam Smith and Jeanne Verney hear that the Germans have a Talent who has a sort of fairy-tale conceit going: he can smell the blood of an Englishman, and when he lives in a castle it gets surrounded by clouds. He's still in Germany now, but rumor has it he will be moved to Occupied France soon to find downed English fliers.

Contacting England

Poul-Edouard Matisse ("Stalker") can teleport, but only when nobody is looking, and only to a place he has been before. This seriously limits his ability to teleport straight to England. Fortunately, he once went there on holiday and stayed in a small bed-and-breakfast (he remembers because he couldn't eat the breakfast). He teleports into the bathroom, and is a bit embarrassed to find that there are some people sleeping in the bedroom.

He doesn't know a word of English, so he arrives with some cue cards written for him by the other characters. His problems are simplified by the large numbers of French expatriates hanging around London, many of whom are more than willing to help him find the local Free French Prefect. It is easy for him to demonstrate that he is a Talent, that he comes from the Cotentin and has information on the front. It is a bit harder for him to avoid being turned into a propaganda poodle for De Gaulle's staff, who want to demonstrate that the French are still in the war. He eventually convinces them that he can carry information into France, and bring back useful information (including today's editions of the London papers).

Propaganda!

Armed with information Matisse brought back from England, Marelle Lechance sets to writing an underground newspaper. The lead story of the first issue is a complete fabrication, a story about how the Gestapo is investigating the district commander in St. Lo for corruption. The backup stories are war news taken from the Daily Mail and the Globe. The initial distribution plan is to write out the paper by hand and pass copies around person-to-person. Lechance suggests that some of the more criminally-inclined cell members should steal some printing supplies from the offices of the Cherbourg Gazette when the opportunity arises. She indicates that mimeograph machines are available in the Editorial Room and that ink and other supplies can be taken from the locked storage room on the second floor.

Alain Brissard ("Apparition") and Emile Bonhomme ("Le Messager") get the job of distributing copies of the paper. Three other characters help, providing a total of four bonus dice to Brissard's roll. A couple of day's effort later, the paper has been distributed through three neighborhoods of Cherbourg with sufficient discretion that the Gestapo remains unaware of its existence.

Finding Safe Houses

Charles Moulon ("Brain") manages a 9x2 success on his Inspire roll and persuades a rural farmer to give him access to the barn and the farmhouse. The Forger and Jacques Taureau the longshoreman try to accumulate a supply cache in the barn by diverting shipments from the port. Unfortunately, they discover that everyone in Cherbourg is already trying to steal shipments from the port, which has caused the quartermasters and guards to treat everything with an unusual level of scrutiny.

Taking out the Convoy

Jeanne Verney passes along information on a two-truck convoy to a team of other characters, along with instructions to take it out and steal all the equipment they can. She knows that the convoy will consist of one Krupp Kfz81 (light truck) and one Opel Blitz (heavy truck). The assault team consists of Jacques Griveau ("Le Troll"), Christian Diable ("Hypersniper"), Robert Frenay (armed with the Bren gun), Hober Grunner ("Le Engine"), Henri Villon ("Rapport"), Jack Ripley ("Saucy Jack"), Sgt-Major Henri LeGuerre, and Steven Seltzer ("Alchemist").

The plan is simple. The convoy will need to cross a rickety covered bridge at one point in its route. Le Troll will hide under the bridge until the first vehicle arrives, then stop it by punching through the bridge roadbed. Le Engine will block the second vehicle by pushing a wagon out across the road. Up until the convoy's arrival, the wagon will be concealed by hedgerows. The Alchemist and Rapport will stand off at a safe distance on a nearby farmhouse roof. Christian Diable, Sgt.-Major LeGuerre, Saucy Jack and Father Frenay will stand off to the flanks under cover and disable the truck crews with guns and Talent powers.

The Ambush

The characters can see that the convoy is pretty much as described. There are eight men visible in the Krupp truck and two more in the Opel Blitz, though the back of the Opel is covered and might conceal additional soldiers.

Le Troll hits the Krupp's front axle. It stops dead. There is a lot of shouting in German; the characters deduce that they think the bridge is falling apart. At this point, Le Engine pushes the wagon out across the road. He is able to see a couple of troops sitting in the back of the Opel Blitz. They seem pretty surprised. They are more surprised when Saucy Jack steps out and makes the driver explode ("Instant Death"). Both he and the German in the seat next to the driver attempt Mental Stability rolls; both are successful. Germans start dropping like flies: Father Frenay injures one of the soldiers in the Krupp with the Bren gun, Christian Diable kills the Krupp driver with a rifle shot to the head, Rapport shoots the soldier sitting next to the driver in the Opel, and the Alchemist turns another soldier in the Krupp truck into gold.

Four uninjured soldiers jump out of the Krupp, leaving two wounded men in the back. Two soldaten with submachineguns jump out of the back of the Opel Blitz. Le Engine rips the leg off one of the soldaten, felling the man instantly. The Alchemist calls out "German to wood!" and another German clatters to the ground. The surviving soldier out of the Opel opens upon on Le Engine with his MP38, hitting the Talent in the head and knocking him out. Saucy Jack turns another man into body parts.

The rest of the battle turns into chaos, albeit brief chaos. By the end, all of the German soldiers are either dead or wounded. Among the Resistance fighters, Christian Diable was killed instantly by a lucky shot to the head and Father Frenay was crippled by ah shot to the leg. Le Engine recovered quickly from his own experience with gunfire.

The characters are able to capture:

• six MP38 submachine guns;
• six Karabiner 98K rifles;
• twelve Luger pistols;
• thirty-six spare Karabiner clips;
• two spare pistol clips;
• two Hitler Youth knives;
• eighteen stick grenades;
• the Opel Blitz;
• two torpedoes;
• rations;
• winter uniforms; and
• 240 liters of petrol

Le Troll and Le Engine make trivial efforts to clean up the scene by throwing the Krupp off the road, piling the bodies inside, and setting it on fire. The idea is to create the appearance of a terrible automobile accident. The smarter characters realize that this won't fool the German investigators for more than five or ten seconds.

Medical Aid

The characters carry Le Engine and Father Frenay back to Dr. Marchant. He is able to patch up Father Frenay's leg, but the priest still permanently loses a right leg wound box. Le Engine recovers within a day. Upon regaining consciousness he promptly lays claim to a German helmet.

The End of the Session

Each character gains one experience point. Each player gains an additional single experience point to assign to the character who did the most. Each Talent character also gains +1 Base Will. One of Chris' mundane characters will become a Talent in the next game. An executive decision is made to not introduce any new "replacement" characters, as the current crop of 35 survivors is disorienting enough to keep track of.