Role Playing?

[KirkH]

Years ago I played a WWI air game called Dawn Patrol, which featured role playing. You tracked your pilots, the missions they flew, the medals they won, etc. You became attached to them. The role playing added an element of realism not found in other games because you had real concern for the safety of your pilots which forced you to fly more realistically. I was wondering if anyone has done anything like that with Wings of Glory.

[Dawn Patrol]

Years ago I played a WWI air game called Dawn Patrol, which featured role playing. You tracked your pilots, the missions they flew, the medals they won, etc. You became attached to them. The role playing added an element of realism not found in other games because you had real concern for the safety of your pilots which forced you to fly more realistically. I was wondering if anyone has done anything like that with Wings of Glory.

Oddly, I haven’t played “Dawn Patrol”. But I tend to fly my planes like real people are involved, and usually invoke “live to fight another day” and fly off if I feel a pilot is at extreme disadvantage.

[KirkH]

Dawn Patrol was originally called Fight in the Skies when it first came out in the late 70's. The name changed in the early 80's but it retained the look and feel of the original. I believe the role playing aspect was enhanced in the Dawn Patrol revision because the game was produced by a small company called TSR, who had another new role playing game they were trying to sell at the time called Dungeons & Dragons. The role playing aspect is fun in WWI air games not so much because of medals and career advancement, but more because of how it impacts your decisions when flying. You have more of an emotional attachment to the outcome of the game.

[OldGuy59]

Eventually, Ares is supposed to be releasing a 'Campaign and Scenario' Pack. It will include a way to run a campaign of a few games, or as involved as anyone could want. It will include things like time cards (hours to weeks til the next mission), scenario cards (dogfights to rescue missions), and cards to determine what happens to planes and crews that are 'eliminated'. There will be skills specific to a campaign environment, and in some cases useless for one-off dogfights.

Now, pending that release, there have been awesome campaigns run by Forum members, like 'Over the Trenches' (in the Files section), that includes elements of all the above in some form (Critical Hit Cards for when some-one draws the Boom Card), promotion and skills development charts/tables, and the scenarios can be found in the WWI forum.

One point: don't get attached to your pilots. When you are playing a campaign, with a system that randomizes damage draws, you can loose pilots in a blink of an eye. I have been playtesting the Ares rules, and last week I lost my Squadron Leader, and this week I lost a Flight Commander and a veteran pilot. The Rookie lived because he was wounded and had taken 50 percent damage, and left the fight before being 'eliminated' by the enemy.


PS: Link: Downloads - World War I - Campaigns files

[Dawn Patrol]

Dawn Patrol was originally called Fight in the Skies when it first came out in the late 70's. The name changed in the early 80's but it retained the look and feel of the original. I believe the role playing aspect was enhanced in the Dawn Patrol revision because the game was produced by a small company called TSR, who had another new role playing game they were trying to sell at the time called Dungeons & Dragons. The role playing aspect is fun in WWI air games not so much because of medals and career advancement, but more because of how it impacts your decisions when flying. You have more of an emotional attachment to the outcome of the game.

Oh, well…FiTS! Why dinchya say so in the first place? Kept my first edition (brown box!) D&D, but sold FiTS long, long ago.

[camel crew]

Being a regular D&D player, it just felt natural to bring the role playing aspect into Wings. Naming pilots, airfields, etc, added to the fun and added to the AAR stories. I'm all for Role Playing

[KirkH]

Part of the fun was the fact a mission didn't necessarily end simply because one's game was over. If you had a damaged plane you had to roll to see if you made it back, if you crashed on landing, etc. I remember one time crash landing behind enemy lines and I needed to do a d20 roll to see if somehow I got back across the lines without getting captured. I needed to roll a 1 on a d20 roll and actually did it. My pilot eventually made his way back to his squadron to be able to fight another day. Fun stuff.

[Jager]

Part of the fun was the fact a mission didn't necessarily end simply because one's game was over. If you had a damaged plane you had to roll to see if you made it back, if you crashed on landing, etc. I remember one time crash landing behind enemy lines and I needed to do a d20 roll to see if somehow I got back across the lines without getting captured. I needed to roll a 1 on a d20 roll and actually did it. My pilot eventually made his way back to his squadron to be able to fight another day. Fun stuff.

Starting at 2:00 is the escape from behind enemy lines

[KirkH]

Wait just a minute. I didn't see Snoopy's d20 roll. Maybe he made it while he was off camera.

[milcoll73]

i would personally love to get into a wog campaign. but there arent enough players in my local area to support such a thing and the places with enough players are just far enough that i couldnt be there on a regular basis (now more then ever). oh well. someday.....

[Flying Helmut]

That's the eternal problem with Campaigns - you just can't rely on peoples' ongoing availability to participate.

I have been in a number of Campaigns, mostly "Full Thrust"-based space games, and they have always petered out as players left, or missed too many sessions, or didn't keep up with their economics "homework".

I've written 3 Campaigns myself, two of which have never even been started - that's was a LOT of work, with no end payoff.

[KirkH]

Back about 15 years ago there was a small group of us who would meet online every Thursday evening to play Dawn Patrol. It was fun while it lasted, but eventually life reared it's ugly head and folks quit for various reasons. The main problem with Dawn Patrol is you need four players for an official game so many nights three of us would sit around waiting for a fourth that never showed up.

[Sam Urai]

My local hobby store has an off again, on again, off again, on-going campaign. So far, we have ZERO aces, and none of them have lived through more than 5 sorties. That has not stopped us from naming each and every pilot.

[KirkH]

One of the joys of Dawn Patrol is the pilot creation process. You give him a name, a birth date, you roll for what region he's from, etc. Before you've even flown your first sortie you've gotten to know your fictional pilot. It's a fun aspect of the game and was something I started doing with Wings of War when it first came out. So far my most experienced WoW/G pilot flies Sopwith Camels and is Lt. Thomas Hadfeld. He was born on 10 Jun 1892 and hails from London.

[Mike George]

I do it. It fun doing a back ground story, but said when they die.

[KirkH]

Yeah, sometimes when you have a pilot you've spent some time with you'd rather roll up a new pilot for missions rather than risk your experienced guy.