My friend Joe has never played an RPG in his life, though he did participate in E-Fed Wrestling? That aside I thought the best game to use might be Cold Soldier for a number of reasons. It would be my first time playing Cold Soldier. Although I have read it over several times, this would be my first go at it.
Prep
There was not much to prep and this allowed me to walk through the procedures and focus on them. Even so, I still skipped a few parts and at times we had to walk back some play. It did not affect the outcomes I don’t think but I am glad I had the text easily available.
Prep for the game itself consisted of choosing my Dark Master and his evil plan.
Dark Master: A Sorcerer of my own Dark Writer’s Half. Jealous of the success of other indie-authors.
The Terrible Thing (Agenda): This turned out to be harder than one might imagine. I immediately crossed off anything sexual, as Joe would never do it and it felt inappropriate for two people with a high amount of cis and trans women in our circle. There is transgressive and then there is gross.
I landed on the idea that the Dark Half would want to eliminate the support people who made his rivals so successful. And that of course meant killing them.
Joe’s Cold Soldier
I thought Joe did a good job putting together the pieces of his Cold Soldier from a brief read over of the rules and some feedback from me.
- Died by Suicide
- Thinks he work up in today, but really woke up at the end of the 80s or early 90s.
- Had been a Marine (Joe served in the Marines IRL).
- And the conflict we agreed on was the invasion of Grenada.
- The weapon he put together was straight 80s bullshit, with a pulse gun, flame thrower, and something else I cannot remember. It felt a little out of tone, but we went with it and I think this provided a moment of entertainment.
Play
My travel for work had recently taken me to Portland, OR and we placed the setting there. We played through three turns before coming to the Endgame. This was because of a time constraint. Joe wanted to keep going and I could have gone further too, but I want to talk about that below.
I had sketched out three basic “tasks” for the Cold Soldier to accomplish to begin with. In this there were three victims to take care of. The first was Talia Jones, editor for Mercury Rodes. The second, Brian Farn the brother and publicist of Gertrude Farn-Riley. The third, Josh Pell, Ghost Writer for Babcock Cornwiler.
I laid them out one at a time for Joe and I feel like I should have laid all three out and let Joe choose them of his own accord. The cards did not favor the CS in any of these and Joe used memories in each turn to get more draws. I Was not sure if you could use memory more than once in a given turn, so I allowed him to do so. It made my Hold potent with higher cards, but this would not help me at Endgame. These were gradually more and more interconnected memories of the character’s time on Granada, which turned out not to be as successful as the media or certain movies might suggest.
I will share one specific moment that we both enjoyed. When eliminating the third victim, Josh Pell, the CS drove a truck into Pell’s Portland office, then jumped out and set the office on fire. Pell was killed and the office would make it a clean sweep. An older admin (nee secretary) in the burning office and she looked to escape. Joe did nothing until I mentioned she picks up an expensive electronic typewriter. Only then did the CS raise its pulse gun and eliminate poor Barbara. Joe mentioned he interpreted that as part of the “support” Pell provided. This may have been more thinking than the CS is capable of? But it made sense to me.
In the end, Joe had a full house and I had a pair of threes. Plus a King and Ten that I couldn’t match up for something better. Joe chose death for the character in the end. He did speak at the end, in character, and again I allowed that because it is what the character desired.
My Thoughts
I don’t have much to say about the system itself, which seemed to work fine. A completely shiny new player grok’d the system after short acquaintance. Joe found play compelling; he wanted to go longer and do more with the character and its memories.
I didn’t feel that compelled. I would have gone further and creating situations on the fly may have inspired more play, but I got bored with the Dark Master. In many ways I felt that he had done what he had set out to do. Was I not evil enough? Should I have set a larger Agenda?
Well the game is not about the Dark Master, its about the Cold Soldier and that role should be the most compelling. Normally the back and forth of creating color as you go is something that I enjoy, but while I was invested in what Joe was doing, not so much on my side. Maybe it was the constrained time, maybe something else.
Certainly I want to play again on both sides of he game and see if my feelings change.
4 responses to “Portland to Granada and Back”
I have only read *Cold Soldier* and various threads here and was immediately intrigued by the small scale of the Dark Master’s ambition.
You asked if you were not evil enough or should have set a larger Agenda. Do you remember how the evil acts (murdering innocent people in, well, cold blood) manifested in detail, e.g. fictional details as well as your friend’s and your own reactions (e.g. where “poor Barbara” comes from)? Did things escalate or vary from victim to victim?
Martin, I’m going to be mean. None of that timing or stylistic stuff is relevant.
The key here is absolutely clear: Sean, you didn’t make your character. Your Dark Master is your character. You are not the GM. You are playing the Dark Master. To do so, you must identify something that you consider to be wrong, not in some ordinary categorical way, like “murder is bad,” but persistently and self-fueling.
If you identify something that you don’t want to do, as with the sexual content you mentioned, that’s fine. That’s Lines, they make sense. But none of that is relevant either. Your job is to identify something you consider heinously wrong which someone is driven to do and to continue to do it, and which can self-perpetuate through successes and failures along the way … which you are willing to play. Agree with? No, by definition, not to agree with. But to play.
If you can’t do this, do not play Cold Soldier. That would betray your partner in play and turn the whole thing into an exercise of “see if this booklet hands us fun.”
Ron, that’s a fair critique. Thinking about it, I did fail to make the mental shift required. On the surface I’d say that’s due to inertia and habit and being in teaching mode. But also, for whatever reason, that didn’t sink in for me when going over the text. Which I do not think is an issue with the text, but my approach.
Right now I see the Agenda as “do evil” and “cool, let’s do evil again” and less a series of escalations. I am not sure that is even relevant, but its where my mind is right now.
I began composing a reply beginning with the phrase “Now with positivity and colored lights,” but I couldn’t actually write it. Therefore I’m continuing with relatively intrusive content. Let me know if it’s going too far.
Your point about escalation isn’t wrong as such, but I think it’s too focused on delivery and “for the player” and not enough on the basics for the Dark Master player. I ask you to focus instead on this bit of my phrasing regarding this character’s goal:
That’s the system key to the concept. When the Soldier fails to accomplish the mission of the moment, it changes the situation for the Dark Master, and it means they don’t get what they want in precisely the way they want it … but it doesn’t stop them. And in game-function terms, it doesn’t even slow them down. The Dark Master’s goal is grand and strong enough to weather setbacks or diverse paths along the way. The only way for it to fail is for the Soldier to defy the command, not merely to fail at it.
Therefore “kill some people” is mistaking missions for the goal. Why kill the people? And given that some of them may not be successfully killed when the Soldier fails a task, how does that change-up the efforts and secondary, perhaps cherished aspects of the overall goal, considering that it persists and will continue? Merely increasing scale and atrocity of the murders in graded fashion isn’t the answer to these questions.