As a bit of shameless promotion for a WW2 game I am promoting here
link
and discussing here
TMP link
I wanted to go over how generating a group of characters for the game might go.
We've decided that our troops will be part of a Volksgrenadier outfit, with a mix of battle hardened veterans and fresh recruits and thrown in the path of the advancing Red Army.
You could simply pick out the figures you want to use, but we'll roll them up randomly by rolling five times on the Forces table.
The rolls are percentile dice. I cheated and used a computer dice roller due to criminal laziness.
After consulting the tables, I get:
Six riflemen (one with G43), one MP40, one pistol and my choice of one figure with any weapon, so I take that opportunity to add in an MG42
So 9 figures total and with a pretty decent spread of gear. The pistol fellow might be an officer that's ended up with our band, a medic, some shady military police type or just about anything else. We'll find out in a bit.
The next step is to determine what special gear we have at our disposal. I roll twice on this table and get an Entrenching tool and some smoke grenades.
Special gear is usually temporary and assigned on a mission basis.
Lastly, we get to the skills. I decide to upgrade three of my figures to "Characters" which will let them begin the game with a skill. I'll roll the skills first, before assigning them to specific figures.
We get a Brawler (bonus to hand to hand fighting). Seems to go well with the entrenching tool so we'll pick out the toughest looking German mini we have and use him for that.
Second roll is Shoot and Scoot. When our men get bogged down in a firefight, this guy will be able to move a bit first. Seems a valuable trait for the guy with the G43.
Last roll is Stealthy which lets you move faster when sneaking. I can't resist giving that to the Pistol guy. Maybe he is some sort of nefarious nazi agent after all?
We could go on to generate personality backgrounds for everybody but we have 9 men to keep track of, so we'll just do it for the three characters.
Our tough Landser with big fists came from a working class background, his motivation is ambition but is yet fairly inexperienced. Maybe a dock worker who used to get into fist fights a lot?
Our sharp shooting rifleman came from the upper class. For a German that could mean old nobility or it could mean political hierachy. We'll go with an "Old Prussian" lineage for him as his motivation is Glory. No wonder he's so energetic in a gun battle, he wants to make a name for himself!
For length of service we get "To hell and back". This guy was there during the march on Moscow and has been around the block. Wonder if he'll survive the war.
The nazi with the pistol came straight from school into the military and interestingly joined up to escape from something. He's also relatively inexperienced.
Maybe he isn't such a hardened nazi after all? Communist that is portraying himself as a devoted nazi to avoid suspicions?
Quite an interesting cast of characters to game with, and a few little details like this can go a long way towards making your little lead soldiers come to life.
