RPG Spotlight: Night Witches
This week we’re stepping into the shoes and the biplanes of the historical World War II era bomber regiment, The Night Witches.
The Night Witches were a team of Soviet air force bombers during World War II made up of three women units. Known for an attack style that involved idling their engines and gliding to drop their bombs in almost complete silence they were especially difficult to see let alone shoot down, logging a collective 28,676 flight hours and dropping more than 3,000 tons worth of bombs, winning awards and designations along the way.
The biplanes they flew were all but obsolete and the altitudes they flew at made parachutes a useless piece of equipment to be left behind. In short, these women were a terrifying force to be reckoned with for the short time they were flying, and that’s where this week’s game draws its inspiration.
Using the Powered by The Apocalypse ruleset, Night Witches can be played as a single multi-hour one shot, or a longer campaign following the regiment through their entire involvement in World War II. But due to the heavy nature and general darkness of this game, I may recommend starting off with a self-contained mission or two and expanding out from there.
The rules are simple, focusing on the different movies you can choose off of your playbooks with different actions to take during the day and night. While nighttime hours are dedicated to high-risk bombing missions with historically accurate targets, daytime is where your characters will find their renewal and sometimes conflict on the ground and a little closer to home.
Where the rules are simple the actual meat of the game can be a little more demanding, forcing players to make difficult decisions, deal with interpersonal conflict, and take on some more realistic and less-fun aspects of life at this time such as secret police, supply shortages, and good old fashioned military sexism. This is a game that’s meant to feel real and powerful, but that doesn’t mean it can’t also be enjoyable or rewarding.
Unfortunately, as is the case with any tabletop roleplaying game that focuses on heavy topics and especially darker aspects of real-world history, this probably isn’t the best way to introduce a newcomer to RPGs. It may be hard to convince them that tabletop RPGs are a fun form of fantasy escapism and then immediately throw them into historically fictionized WW2 era bombing runs.
In the end, Night Witches is a game that’s well worth playing at least once. Its ruleset keeps it simple and familiar enough to jump into without committing a lot of time to the awkward learning-the-rules growing pains, the action portion will keep players on the edge of their seats, and even the in-game daytime hours may be riddled with danger and opportunities for smart roleplaying. It’s well done, thoughtful, and as well researched as the 174-page long book that also has to lay out an entire RPG system will allow.
Have you played Night Witches? Do you know much about the history of the actual Night Witches or will you look them up now because of how interesting they are? What’s your favorite historical fiction based tabletop RPG? Let us know in the comments!
Happy Adventuring!
