Review of Sturm und Drang (Part 2)

Keeping with the series devoted to the crowdfunding of Sturm und Drang which I began in this post today I will talk about the pocket book of Walküre and the adventures which got unlocked during the patronage.

Pocket book of Walküre

As can be seen in the first two photos at he beginning of this section the pocket book of Walküre is a small version of the original basic manual (which I reviewd in this post), characterized by offering the same content but without all graphic elements not included in the book layout, so you won't find historical photos or illustrations of the contents (if you want to see them in the original edition you may download the pdf file of the basic book from the website of La Marca del Este).

Adventures: Les Marguerites fleuriront ce Soir

In this adventure, written by Diego Marqués Vega, players will be part of French Resistance and act under the direction and advice of the Special Operations Executive (SOE).

Without giving to much spoilers I can say that the playing characters will take part in an infiltration mission in Brest naval base and that this mission is related to the history of one of the Tipe IXB german submarines, adapted to the Walküre background.

In addition to the plot of the adventure you also can find in the book a set of already generated characters to be immediately used and a template of a Resistance member to create more characters, as well as a list of new weapons and explosives and non-playing characters.

To finish the mini review of this first adventure you should note that the photograph of the back cover shows Violette Szabo (1921 – 1945), a SOE agent captured by SS during a mission while acting as a liaison for the Resistance in the campaign of the Normandy Landings (D-Day), being interrogated and tortured by Gestapo and the SD to end up being interned in the Ravensbrück camp and executed in February 5th of 1945.

Adventures: Objective: Burma!

In this adventure, written by Carlos Prats, players will be immersed in the Allied campaign in Burma being part of the Detachment 101 of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and facing Japanese troops in two infiltration amd sabotage adventures in enemy territory.

Besides all this there's also a study about the evolution of Detachment 101 as weall as a set of already generated characters, a list of weapons and equipment and additional rules for ilnesses, night combat, jungle combat and squad combat as well as some ideas for adventures to begin a campaign.

Adventures: Ucieczka z Sobiboru (Escape from Sobibor)

In the last adventure unlocked in the patronage, written by Hugo Reyes Navarrete, there's a topic that, unlike the previous two (that according to how are refeered these could come to be included within the genre of Hollywood feats of war) must be treated in a serious and adult way, because in this case we delve into the Holocaust and more specifically in the events that happened in the Sobibor camp.

The module begins with the historic introduction to the Wannsee Conference, held in January 20th of 1942 to deal with Endlösung der Judenfrage (Final Solution to the Jewish Question) and of which Aktion Reinhard is part of, the extermination of the Jewish population of Poland, with the creation of Bełżec, Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps.

After this introduction comes the description of the goal playing characters of the module must acomplish, which is none other than try to escape the camp emulating the escape which happened in October 14th of 1943 in a sandbox game environment.

The needed contents to carry out this are offered to referees:

• A set of 12 already generated camp prisoners characters with their gaming stats and backgrounds for players to choose among them which ones to play (those not chosen will become non-playing characters controlled by the referee).
• Stats for camp prisoners as non-playing characters, including the häftling (category corresponding to most prisoners), the kapo (prisoners acting as supervisors and managers which in turn receive orders of the SS) and the sonderkommando (prisoners responsible for gas chamber cleaning and remove corpses of killed prisoners).
• Stats for camp guards as non-playing characters, including Trawniki guards (Red Army soldiers captured in the Eastern Front, mostly ukrainian, acting as auxiliar troops) and members of the SS, including real historical characters like Erich Bauer, Franz Reichleitner, Gustav Wagner, Hermann Michel and Karl Frenzel, all part of the camp command hierarchy.
• A detailed plan of the Sobibor camp and a description of the installations.
• The camp operating routine and the tasks the prisoners usually do.
• A series of diferent kind of events which may happen during the course of teh adventure: random (general, personal and occupational, all during the daily routine), required (happening regardless of actions carried out by the characters) and possible (which can be triggered in response to characters' actions and include the succesful escape from the camp).
• A list of weapons used by the camp guards.
• A list of names allowing the referee to personalize non-playing characters.

As I said at the begining of thsi mini review it's advisable that for its theme the referee to act with caution because it isn't a a trivial matter.

Upcoming releases in the Walküre line

Regarding the future of the line of supplements and adventures for Walküre the Aventureros Errantes de la Marca del Este plan to offer the adventures that failed to unlock during the patronage as well as other releases through their own distribution platform as explained in this blog post.

And here ends this post, in the following installment of these series I will talk about how to use Sturm und Drang with other role-playing games other than Walküre.

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