Greetings

These game reports go a way back. I got the book in January and played the sessions in May. I wrote them soon after that, but because I couldn’t sign in to the Contested Ground Studios’ forums, I never got a chance to publish them. Then, in August, I ran into the Contested Endeavour and noticed that here’s also an Actual Play forum, where these reports would fit in.

I remember reading Cold City through right away and liking it very much: there’s a special place in my heart for a Hellboy-ish game. Furthermore, while having a neat setting, its system is sewn together from fabulous games; Dogs in the Vineyard being one of my favourite games. However, there seemed to be certain vagueness in CC, which was felt in the actual play as well. On the other hand I’m far from judging the game; I’ve just taken the first spoonfuls and maybe we didn’t give the game a fair chance. Read this as a first encounter, not the final stand.

I and a couple of my pals wanted to play a roleplaying game. From my comprehensive game list we chose Cold City probably because of its colour ie. setting. I know that it’s clearly a campaign game and set for four players, but we still wanted to give it a shot. My friends haven’t played games which support so heavily on narrativism before. Or actually there was a long The Shadow of Yesterday campaign last summer, it ended up being quite traditional, adventurous roleplaying.

The Prodigal Son

Agent’s name: James Bond (British)
National agenda: Acquiring Nazi military technology for the security and wealth of the country
Personal: Find Nazis’ gold stocks

Agent’s name: Andrei Primakov (Soviet)
National: Acquire technology
Personal: Keep the technology to myself

After the characters were made, I fine-tuned the example scenario to fit for these characters. The debriefing was given by the American, an outsider, leaving thus room for Bond to make his own decisions. Bond also had "ladies’ man" trait, so I emphasized that Werner had a pretty sister, who took care of him. On the other hand I framed a scene for Andrei, where a Soviet general ordered him to bring the ST’s controlling device to them. And to bring in wider aspects to the situation, Werner was a son of the editor in chief of Berlin’s biggest newspaper and the ST was perceived by a Volkspolizei officer. In other words, they should have a lot to consider before making any decision and whatever they would choose, it should bring in wider consequences.

I ran the game with tv-series aesthetics: I told where the camera would be, cut sharply from a scene to scene and left out anything uninteresting. For an example, I started from the debrief room but cut then straight to the railway station, where the sighting was made, skipping the equipping part. Once the characters had made their way to the station past the guarding police officer, I dropped in the Soviet assigning as a flashback. I had fun doing this, but other players didn’t follow the metaphoric approach as easily and didn’t imitate this style in their own descriptions.

Anyway, I took the game rather quickly to the interesting part, the confrontation with Werner. I framed his sister Anna speaking to him. The players, or at least their characters, didn’t care about this a bit and stormed in. I managed to prevent the end with sheer luck, as Bond’s player lost the conflict about capturing the ST. I then explained the whole situation from the sister’s point of view (you know, "Werner is alive, he is no danger to anyone, his family loves him" and all that), but to my amazement the agents’ hearts were steel. Bond explained how Werner was long gone and now a mere threat to the humankind, if some fiend would ever get their hands on the ST controlling technology. And since it was clear that she was an eye-witness, he executed her in cold blood. Andrei didn’t have any problem with this; after all, it was he who had the "ruthless" trait.

Werner’s stats aren’t great, so they had no problem taking him out in the next scene. After that the players had a lengthy discussion about what they should do to the corpses (at this point Andrei’s player had to leave, but another player arrived and made his character. He is presented in the beginning of the next session). They knew that it if they left the bodies there, Werner’s powerful family and the police investigation would make the thing public. Finally they come up with some sort of plan, placing corpses so that someone might think that Werner first shot his sister and was then shot by the agents. A bit problematic, as the agents weren’t supposed to be there in the first place, but I really didn’t wish to make this a problem. The interesting question (to me at least) was who would take the ST controlling device, but since Andrei’s player left, there was no argue about it. They brought it back the HQ, mission accomplished. It took maybe about 3,5 hours to complete, excluding the character creation. Needless to say, I didn’t find the session too entertaining.

The servant of the Devil

We took a little break and ate something, and decided then to give Cold City another run. This was especially so because the third player didn’t have a chance the play the previous one (he arrived too late). At this point, I realize now, I should’ve raised the question about how the game was supposed to be played. I didn’t, which left us a bit in the blue about our different expectations concerning the game.

Agent’s name: René Chevalier (French)
National: Investigate Nazi technology
Personal: Avenge to the Germans

I wanted to create my own scenario for this one, as it seemed that I had to hit the agendas in order to cause any reaction in the players: human tragedies, like The Prodigal Son and Transformations, are my own favourites, but these players didn’t seem to share my opinion. So I started with the apparent conflict: if Bond was extremely loyal and Chevalier wanted to avenge, then the order had to be about not hurting Germans. Another conflict seemed to be about who would gain the technology. And finally, to make Bond’s player think, there had to be a conflict between his character’s Personal agenda and loyalty to his own government. The result was this:

1.1. A German scientist has escaped. Bring him back alive.
1.2. None, except an idea where the scientist escaped.
1.3. Stasi, which is receiving the scientist.
2.1. British Wright orders Bond not to investigate any information they might find.
2.2. Brits and Nazis had some serious cooperation – and maybe still have. This is why Wright wants to deny all access to the data files.
2.3. The scientist is looking for medical applications of Nazis’ technology.
3.1. The scientist promises Nazis’ gold for the payment for his release in case the agents capture him.

So the whole situation: A German scientist found out that Nazis had also some humane medical applications to heal the disabled veterans’ wounds. This is something that the people would need. However, should the RPA find out about them, they would share the technology between the occupying forces. Therefore he decided to run for it, acquire the medical knowledge and gain Stasi’s protection. Unfortunately the medical information was stored in Charlottenburg Castle, the very same place, where were the files about British – Nazi-Germany cooperation. The British officer in the RPA couldn’t allow this scandalous information to be spread, so he had to stop the scientist. The agents would do the dirty job if the scientist would be presented as a defector.

I know see that this isn’t as good a scenario as I thought it would be. It’s strange that I recognized what I ought to do, but I just didn’t make the scenario to follow my perceptions about the characters: I made the plot too complex. It does touch the different agendas, but it still has several flaws: it holds a moral dilemma, but it didn’t stop the players last time; it doesn’t produce an inevitable conflict between Bond and Chevalier (taking the scientist back serves them both); it is too easy to deny the chance of acquiring the gold; in short, it might be not enough to threat the loyalties and to produce a juicy tension. I wish I would’ve noticed these before the scenario was played.

And, unfortunately, it didn’t rock. Bond and Chevalier got inside the Carlottenburg Castle past the Stasi guards, slipped past some STs (or simply left them alone) and captured the scientist. They were pretty darn close to gag the guy before I had a chance to explain his point of view, but eventually I did get to say the word. Bond didn’t care a bit about the well-being of the German people and didn’t believe about the gold offer either. Crap. I was hanging on Chevalier to cause some dramatic tension. The players entered into a lengthy discussion about what they should do next: Bond wanted to exit, Chevalier wanted to take a look at the medical files. Finally Bond agreed to let Chevalier peek them, but absolutely nothing more. They went through a hellhound and its lair surprisingly easily (I had a chance on the first turn, their 9 dice against my 8, but the doggy was down after three rounds) and made it to the file cabinet. The clear implications about cooperation between Brits and Nazis didn’t move Bond a bit, he was adamantly supporting his own government and not interested in discovering its dirty secrets. They underwent another discussion about whether Chevalier could read some medical files or not – finally Chevalier gave up without calling a conflict (after all, he had already filled his personal agenda). There was a slight after-tension when they went past the Stasi guards second time, but again they were victorious in the conflict explaining their authorised activity there. As they returned to the HQ, they reported everything, even about the Nazis’ gold. Bond asked for a small provision for providing this valuable information, to which his superior answered with laughter. This, to my surprise, caused Bond to get angry a bit.

If we return to this game and storyline at some point (though it’s more likely that I play CC with some other folk you actually like it), I’d have an idea how to make Bond react: he’s willing to follow blindly any order from his government, but what if his own superiors showed no respect or gratitude to him? Would that make him rethink his loyalty? This session took about 1,5 hours.

And finally, the pondering part or constructive criticism:

• The game is probably great, if you play it like you should: not to win (fulfil one’s agendas) but to create drama by facing dilemmas. This is the Dogs-influence, but I love it because CC’s setting gives a foundation to multiply consequences, which the characters are quite likely to encounter due to their staying in Berlin. As it usually goes with these kinds of games, challenge-approach doesn’t give any real satisfaction.
• Creating scenarios is a bit better than I initially thought and I like its idea to build the situation on top of different agendas: what the RPA wants? what the different nations want? what the characters want? what the public wants (after all, as secret agents PCs have considerable status in the game setting)? However, it seems to be too far from the characters’ agendas, so that I really have to think the scenario instead of letting the system create it for me, but the guidelines do direct the GM’s attention neatly to various levels. The powerfully described setting (p. 47-57), with various factions does help in this a lot.
• "The number of dice rolled by the GM should be appropriate to the situation" (p. 47). Malcolm Craig, what were you thinking? This is, for me, the worst flaw in the entire game. There are no guidelines whatsoever about how much there should be resistance. I had no clue what to do with it. I ended up using the same system as the players do. But since the NPCs have no agendas or trust, they usually don’t seem to gain more than five dice, while the players’ dice pool can easily go near ten (but not always and even if they had more dice, they don’t win by default). You guys must have some sort of guidelines for this, so let’s hear them.
• As I already mentioned, the game system is a patchwork. Nothing wrong here, provided that the result works. After playing the game only for two undermanned test sessions I cannot say what’s the case. Dogs and The Mountain Witch are different kinds of games, but tossing them together in CC might work. I can see how the Trust points would become a kind of feedback system, through which one can show admiration or contempt towards others’ moral judgements. Interestingly the judgements come from the other players, not from the GM as in many other games.