December 2015 news (Third part): Comandos de Guerra

Today I present you a news addenda for this December month that's finishing with a special news annex because this month the game Comandos de Guerra by Ediciones Sombra celebrates its 25th anniversary, and to conmemorate this it offers a special edition of the Desde el Sótano magazine which I had complemented with a brief summary of the game thanks to the collaboration of Juan Carlos Herreros Lucas, its author and director of Ediciones Sombra, and the blog Rol de los 90, managed by bloggers Chubasco and Surf. At the end of this post I also provide some links you may find interesting...

Downloads

The online magazine Desde el Sótano reaches its 137th edition with the following articles (Note: The magazine is writen in Spanish, it's also available from Lektu):

Editorial

• Editorial: A word from the maker.
• Credits: Those who are behind this (and make it possible).
• Index

Fandom

• Basement Answers: Questions from the fans and the best of our responses.
• The Voice: Conferences, meetings and events for the coming days and months.
• Basement exterior: Section with interesting news from the outside world.
• Bibliography: Fury. A review of this film about the Second World War.

Setting

• Characters: Wladyslav Raginis: Hero of Wizna. a character for Comandos de Guerra.
• Operations: Operation Himmler. A bit of history for a new section in the page of Comandos de Guerra.
• Terrains: The desert. A dificult terrain for your characters of Comandos.

Rules

• Fauna: Camels in the Second World War. This animals can also appear in Comandos.
• Combat: Summary of fire modes in CdG. Comandos is a game with very high doses of armed conflicts. This article is a summary for your gaming sesions.
• Combat: Fanaticism. Some troops of the Second World War went amok and run against the enemy. Do you want your PCs in Comandos to get fanatic?
• Moral: Optimizing command and moral. How to take more leverage of rules for command and moral of Comandos.

Equipment

• General: Zippo: a lighter for war. Am essential piece of equipment for soldiers of Comandos.
• Navies: The German Navy (5th part). Penultimate article in which we have been bringing the German fleet.
• Vehicles: T-40, the amphibious tank. A new look at a vehicle for Comandos.
• Vehicles: Panzerwerfer 42 auf Selbstfahrlafette. A new vehicle for your Comandos PCs to face.

Events

• Chronology: The Great War, December 1915
• Runes: News of Pangea.
• The Truth: Cunia news of the day. December 2015.
• A.D.E.G. ’70: Summary of all events of these year 3470.
• Chronology: December 1810.

Adventures

• Comandos: El puente de Cappocorso. A classic in Desde el Sótano, paratroops in a Sicily bridge hours before Operation Husky.
• Comandos: Un Puente Cercano. Relive Battle of Arnhem from the German side.
• Sangrienta Siete: 1x10 – Gafsa.. Synopsis of the series of Comandos de Guerra.
• Sangrienta Siete: 1x11 – La batalla de El Guettar. Synopsis of the series of Comandos de Guerra.

And once we have seen these interesting contents let us know a little more about the history of Comandos de Guerra thanks to the information the author was kind enough to communicate and the posts La primera (pero primera, primera) edición de Comandos de guerra and Comandos de Guerra - El juego de Rol de la 2ª Guerra Mundial of Rol de los 90...

The game as such was born as one of the projects of the cultural association Alas de Dragón of Madrid during Summer of 1990 and became known in the Wanted gaming days of December of the same year.

Said cultural association carried out several activities (film screenings at the faculty where its members studied, photo contests, fanzine and role-playing adventures publishing, etc.), so this led to the genesis of Comandos de Guerra, which was strongly influenced by the author's like for films about Second World War (such as The Dirty Dozen o The Guns of Navarone), his fondness for tabletop wargames (basically all the parts related to tactical, logistical and strategic elements) and role-playing games (getting even to arbitrate 4 simultaneous campaigns with a gaming session every 15 days), which naturally led him to think about the possibility of writing a game set in this historical period and get information with the consultation of specialized literature on the conflict (mostly boks by publisher San Martin) and the study of weaponry specialization during his aeronautical engineer career.

The first version of the got a pir of editions of 25 and 15 copies respectively which were funded by the association itself and sold or freely given, being one of these bought by chance for one of the persons who later will set up Cronópolis publishing house which will publish the second edition of Comandos de Guerra commercially in 1994, so this would eventually lead to the third edition of the game in 2003 (with a reprint in 2009) already with Ediciones Sombra, the actual publisher.

Changes in the game regarding the rules and contents during these years had been many: on one hand the ruleset based in percentage rolls (like Call of Cthulhu) has been replaced by Sistema Sombra (the basic ruleset for all the games published by Ediciones Sombra which can be freely downloaded in its basic version in Spanish from the aids page of the publisher website) and for other obvious change regarding the setting, because if in the first version of the game you only can play soldier characters (the commandos of the game title), and treat only war issues, in the third edition it's possible to play civilians (the priest, the child, the civilian hiding in the basements the one breaking out of the forced labour camp, the one living from the black market, etc.) and get immersed in the events of these years, going from creating the "flat" characters of the first edition to the "three-dimensional" ones of the actual edition. It's also possible to find, since the second edition, iformation about the Pacific Ocean theatre of operations allowing to play Japanese and Chinese characters (something that should have been included in the Zero supplement, but that did not become published).

Images from the first and second editions of Comandos de Guerra

"To all whom, like me,
believe that war only must exist
moving lead, cardboard or plastic figures"

Dedication of the second edition

Regarding the future of Comandos de Guerra there's a project for a supplement devoted to Spanish Civil War on which is still being developed and other projects pending development, either for the responsibilities of managing the publishing house and the distribution company or for the lack of writers eager to develop historical themes.

At this point you also may wonder if Comandos de Guerra may be of interest to foreign publishing houses to edit translated editions given the interest that the games created in Spain begin to awaken abroad, although there have been some complimentary contacts these have not yet materialized into concrete proposals, so if there's any interested publisher he can contact Ediciones Sombra to explore possible agreements.

To complement this special news post I remember you t't's not the first time I talked about the Second World War in a historical context and that the posts about Juan Pujol, also known as Garbo (the double agent who contributed to the success of Normandy Landings), the Spanish refugees in France becoming part of the Resistance, Paris liberation by La Nueve and Spanish victims of the Holocaust, with such cases like those of Francesc Boix or Joaquim Amat Piniella can be useful to have more onformation to create adventures for Comandos de Guerra.

I also remind you that Ediciones Sombra have a resources page for the game that can be helpful.

To finish here you have some trailers and informative links os some films you surely have seen or you can get inspiration from:

Where Eagles Dare (IMDb | Wikipedia | Rotten Tomatoes)

The Guns of Navarone (IMDb | Wikipedia | Rotten Tomatoes)

The Dirty Dozen (IMDb | Wikipedia | Rotten Tomatoes)

The Train (IMDb | Wikipedia | Rotten Tomatoes)

This entry it's also available in the following languages:
Castellano Català