A Flash of Weird

Game: SWADE

Setting: Weird War I

Recruitment thread

Scenario

You are part of a multi-national Allied unit that specializes, and has experience in, the weird things that have been occurring here and there during the war. When someone screams and insists they saw something horrible or strange, you know that there's a possibility they're telling the truth.

Russian command and forces on the eastern front have been particularly perturbed by the supernatural things they've seen during the course of the war. A particular Russian general, Brusilov, was even documented to use supernatural means in a June offensive on the Eastern Front a couple months earlier, causing much discontent and laying the supernatural more bare.

It's another Russian general that has sent you to Romania to investigate a weird fog that has settled in a forested valley in the Carpathian Mountains. There, nestled in the mountains itself, is a mysterious castle whose history has been lost to time. The fog is thickest near the castle itself, and in the tiny forest villages and guard towers scattered throughout the valley there have been reports of attacks by mysterious assailants. Some villages have gone silent, and those who have gotten a hint of the attackers report them wearing vaguely Roman-esque style helmets, the ones with the red crests arching along the top, while they fire from the concealment of the primeval trees.

Rules

Initiative

• Everyone draws initiative cards as normal to give the possibility of effects to trigger
• Each side's Initiative is the average value of their cards, starting from Aces which are 13 down to Twos which are 2. Each side may be separated into groups that have their own roll and go in their own order. Highest average goes first. Jokers can act whenever they want.
  • Hesitant is handled either with the first point or second point below, player's choice, with the most likely handling to be the first point for simplicity.
    • Hesitant characters always goes last in the Initiative order
    • Hesitant characters draw two cards and choose the lowest, as normal, but in initiative they only act after the character/group that drew the higher card.

Gear

• Weird War I equipment allotment, plus $50 for equipment that can fit in a backpack. Some flexibility here for the taste and experience level of the characters.

Setting Rules

• Creative Combat

Fear and Sanity

• Sanity and Fear works as presented in the Weird War I player's book, with the addition that the player of a failed Fear roll also rolls on the core SWADE Fear table
• Some characters may be extra hardened against Fear and their mechanical bonuses against Fear stack.

Characters

Artie Vance (Eplov)

Dunstan Raines (Max)

James Francis Swallow (Elfwine)

Jacqueline 'Jack' Féral (Stormraven)