Wings of the Valkyrie update

[Dead guy on tab]

Has anyone converted Wings of the Valkyrie to 5th edition/updated images (assuming the rights are okay - anyone know the status of this module as far as rights are concerned)?

[Balabanto]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

Updating Wings is somewhat problematic because technically the product was recalled.

 

The moral implications of the adventure are nasty, but not unbelievable.

[Certified]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

Reading up on this it made me think of a story line from City of Heroes. The premise is that a Nazi solder is sent into the future to get supplies to aid the failing war effort. I know that there are people who play CoH so I will leave the description at that. Well, and it made a lot more since before when they had the 5th Column not the Council.

 

The point being this, the concept of changing WWII with the aid of superpowers or superscience is a recurring theme in the genre. There was a Justice League story arc that ran 2 or 3 episodes on the idea of changing the outcome of the war. The articles I’ve read on Wings of a Valkyrie seem to revolve around to controversial for Role Playing Games at that time. Why couldn’t they update this story? The weight of the plot forces players to think about their choices and the story can be used to revitalize campaigns that may have grown stale.

 

That said, I believe that trying to tackle the subject matter should include notes on the real world history as well as the setting and alternative settings. (Note: there would likely need to be multiple alternates based on likely player/NPC actions.) The characters in the story would need to be truly fleshed out with strong personalities and motivations for each of them.

 

Comics have been used to play with alternative histories. Through the years the stigma of D&D is evil has for the most part faded from the media. I remember an episode of Cops where they pointed out a stack of White Wolf books in a kid’s car. Why can’t a Role Playing Game take on serious subjects? It is possible to write something that is both thought provoking and enjoyable. Why couldn’t a RPG do it?

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

The moral implications of the adventure are nasty, but not unbelievable.

 

The module led to some of the best roleplaying moments in my last Champions game.

[Dead guy on tab]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

If and when I run it through my current campaign, I'll let you know how it went.

[SAVeira]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

Updating Wings is somewhat problematic because technically the product was recalled.

 

The moral implications of the adventure are nasty, but not unbelievable.

Yes, it was recalled, but a large number were sold. I own a copy as do a lot more people then you would think.

 

As for the moral implications, there are numberous novels that have been published on the same theme. I even believe there was a Fanastic Four issue where they stop a time traveling Nick Fury from killing Hitler.

[assault]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

It's a massive exercise in railroading.

 

While a degree of that might be inevitable in time travel scenarios, subtlety would have been nice.

[Dead guy on tab]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

I think the railroading is only necessary is so far as the GM/players are unwilling to play in a completely different campaign world. I ran the first half (with the PC's in an altered present), and I was willing to let them explore the world and run adventures in it for a while. Similarly, I am prepared to modify the present depending on their actions in the past. If you don't want to modify the campaign setting in response to the player's actions, I guess railroading would be needed.

 

Since Wings of the Valkyrie was written in the '80's in needs quite a bit of updating to make it work for the 2007. I modified the background to create a different present day (I was never really that excited by the "red scare" tone of the original). I've attached my timeline for the adventure. I sued a sort of "man in the high castle" earth resulting from an imperial Japan and Germany winning World War II. I tried to use as many historical figures with their viewpoints as I could. My campaign is set in Chicago so it tends to be more Chicago-centric. Let me know what you think.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

While a Nazi victory in World War 2 has to be high on anyone's list of Bad Things That Could've Happened; other superpowered/time-traveling alternatives might not be much better. Suppose, for instance, Hitler had been killed in 1943? What if, for example, that subsequently allowed Josef Stalin's Soviet Union to conquer all of Europe? The Cold War might have been a hell of a lot hotter. Hitler was a nasty piece of work, but from what I've read living under Stalin was probably worse. Unless you were one of the persecuted minorities such as Jews, gypsies, or homosexuals (which Stalin also persecuted), ordinary people were pretty much left alone under Nazism. Nobody was safe from the increasingly paranoid Stalin.

 

I've still got Wings of the Valkyrie around here somewhere. I didn't think much of it as a Champions scenario (largely because of the railroading aspects), but I've always wanted to see a well done Nazi/Champions adventure. (I've used organized Neo-Nazis twice as villains in our Champions campaign; once with an attempted armed coup in Austria.) I suspect the only way is to build one tailored to a specific group of players and their characters. What probably doomed WotV was its largely futile attempt to be generic enough for any group.

[Dead guy on tab]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

While a Nazi victory in World War 2 has to be high on anyone's list of Bad Things That Could've Happened; other superpowered/time-traveling alternatives might not be much better. Suppose, for instance, Hitler had been killed in 1943? What if, for example, that subsequently allowed Josef Stalin's Soviet Union to conquer all of Europe? The Cold War might have been a hell of a lot hotter. Hitler was a nasty piece of work, but from what I've read living under Stalin was probably worse. Unless you were one of the persecuted minorities such as Jews, gypsies, or homosexuals (which Stalin also persecuted), ordinary people were pretty much left alone under Nazism. Nobody was safe from the increasingly paranoid Stalin.

 

I've still got Wings of the Valkyrie around here somewhere. I didn't think much of it as a Champions scenario (largely because of the railroading aspects), but I've always wanted to see a well done Nazi/Champions adventure. (I've used organized Neo-Nazis twice as villains in our Champions campaign; once with an attempted armed coup in Austria.) I suspect the only way is to build one tailored to a specific group of players and their characters. What probably doomed WotV was its largely futile attempt to be generic enough for any group.

 

You make an interesting point about adventure writing. I don't recall any adventure that gave the designer notes (e.g. character tie-ins they used during playtesting). It might be interesting if adventures including some of the author's thoughts on how they brought characters into the storyline, how the players reacted, unexpected character responses, what they were trying to go fo in the adventure. I wonder besides Strike Force if anyone else has included the "under the hood" part of the adventure. I know VOICE and To Serve and Protect had long threads on the old discussion board where the writers explained what happened in their home campaign. This got me to thinking that it would be nice if Champions put together a PDF revised Wings of the Valkyrie and included all the background recall story, play experiences, etc.

 

Now to another point, the thing to remember in the Wings of the Valkyrie is that modern day is not as if the Nazi's had won. The Nazis are wiped out. I had imperial Germany win (think Otto Bismark). The injustices that plague the modern world should be the ones that would not have been noticed/addressed if the Nazi hadn't existed (e.g. ideas on racial purity, segregation, colonialism, etc.). I think an argument could be made that communism was much more destructive than Nazism.

[death tribble]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

For those of us who have not seen the module could someone give me a brief precis of the plot. Spoilered if you feel it necessary.

[Dead guy on tab]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

For those of us who have not seen the module could someone give me a brief precis of the plot. Spoilered if you feel it necessary.

 

 

There is a group of people (Children of the Holocaust) who suffered as a result of Nazi Germany who create a time machine and go back to 1932 and destroy the Nazi party before it gains power. Communism takes over Germany and the Soviet Union. History diverges and the heroes find them in a modern day where civil unrest is much higher. The government is paranoid about mutants and communists, racial purity, etc. The heroes need to go back in time and stop the Children of the Holocaust from killing Hitler and the rest of the Nazi leadership.

 

 

[Derek Hiemforth]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

Suppose' date=' for instance, Hitler had been killed in 1943? What if, for example, that subsequently allowed Josef Stalin's Soviet Union to conquer all of Europe?[/quote']I was talking to Ray Greer about WotV at DunDraCon several years ago (before DoJ purchased the Hero assets), and he mentioned that if they ever wanted to re-release the adventure, they could probably do it just by changing the focus from Hitler to Stalin. The adventure could have played out much the same, but since Stalin's name doesn't carry the controversy that Hitler's does, it's unlikely anyone would protest it...

[Roter Baron]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

There is nothing offensive about the adventure - I do have a copy and read through it quite some time ago (did not gm it though). In my oppinion the recall was uncalled for: It is not pro Hitler, but pro time continuity.

 

For a re-release it would do no good to make it anti-communist but to make it more open in the approach: maybe the heroes are contacted by a scientist who wants to send them back to kill Hitler, putting certain Code vs. Killing heroes in something of a moral dilemma. Maybe they just want to kidnapp him and send him to the twillight zone, Dimension N superprison or something. Amybe they are hardcore vigilantes jumping in joy to have the chance to get some real evil in front of their guns just to contacted by The Time Warden who is in charge of keeping history in its continuity. MAybe he can stop them (by force of arms or arguments), maybe they balst a hole into the Time Warden and Uncle Adolf, just to come home to a very different "today": maybe a Soviet Europe, or a timeline without a USA as a superpower (never really came out of the depression because there was no WW2), maybe the U.K. still rules, maybe worse, maybe better, maybe better for some worse for some.

 

THAT would be a real masterpiece: Different timelines depending on what the heroes did at a certain time during the adventure - including the time-old bore that "It really did not change anything this way or another because time is a fixed thing and now Hitler is dead/ alive on Earth 2/3/n:"

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

There is nothing offensive about the adventure - I do have a copy and read through it quite some time ago (did not gm it though). In my oppinion the recall was uncalled for: It is not pro Hitler' date=' but pro time continuity.[/quote']

 

The Canadian Anti-Defamation League put pressure on ICE's Canadian Distributor, and they were told in no uncertain terms to "Pull that module, or we won't distribute anything you do". So it was pull it, or lose and entire country. Can't blame them for the decision.

 

I don't see it as offensive, but I can see where someone would - after all the whole thing comes down to saving Hitler and un-preventing the Holocaust.

 

I talked to the author years ago, and in the original manuscript, the world was a better place without WW2 and the Holocaust, but the editors didn't think a module that would tend to make the GM have to re-write his entire game would do too well. I mean "Let's see, hitler got killed, WW2 never happened, the world is a better place... let's leave it the way it is, those guys did a good thing" could very easily have been the reaction of game groups.

[Roter Baron]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

WOW! Makes you wonder how well informed that Anti-Defamation League was/ is! I mean ICE wasn't the biggest company in the whole roleplaying marked and HERO products were probably their smaler part of the sales the had. That and the fact that roleplaying games are a minuscle market when compared to the whole markedt for (family) games makes one really wonder: Did they just got lucky to find that "module" or do they really have *shudder* omniscient minds? Is their president Adam Weishaupt V.?

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

I suspect someone heard from one of their roleplaying children, "This adventure has heroes trying to save Hitler, because the world turned out worse without the Holocaust," and promptly went ballistic without actually reading the module. There's never a shortage of people ready to condemn something without any firsthand information.

[BoloOfEarth]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

But Harry Potter really does teach kids withcraft and Satanism! Honest!

[Derek Hiemforth]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

But Harry Potter really does teach kids withcraft and Satanism! Honest!

Not to derail the thread too much, but you started it...

 

I'll never cease to be amazed at how many people have this big fit over the witchcraft and Satanism that Harry Potter's supposedly rife with, when in fact, there is so much Christian symbolism and allegory in the Potter books, and it's so obvious that it's there. Having extremist Christians protesting those books is just ridiculously ironic.

 

'Course, they'd have to read the books they're squawking about in order to realize this, so...

[Dead guy on tab]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

Not to derail the thread too much, but you started it...

 

I'll never cease to be amazed at how many people have this big fit over the witchcraft and Satanism that Harry Potter's supposedly rife with, when in fact, there is so much Christian symbolism and allegory in the Potter books, and it's so obvious that it's there. Having extremist Christians protesting those books is just ridiculously ironic.

 

'Course, they'd have to read the books they're squawking about in order to realize this, so...

 

Before we get this read too far off. How would you update the adventures for 20 years later (to both reflect modern concerns and all the people around during World War II are getting up there)? What do people think of my modified timeline?

[Roter Baron]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

Actually it is quite a piece of work! Here and there I would disagree on your point of view - mostly in the beginning of the 30s.

 

I don't see the Communist Party seeing any support with a dwindling national-socialist power base, simply because the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands was not vote for by the same people: unqualified and unemployed workers and laborers voted communist, not national-socialist.

The Nazis had their power base with petti-bourgeois people who feared that they would lose their little shop, middle-kmanagement who feared that they would lose their job and by public employees like teachers. Was also strong in protestant rural areas in northern Germany.

 

So, killing Hitler would probably reduce voets for the Nazi Party, but not for the CP. Chances are that the CP would grow more because in 19932/33 some unemployed and laborers who had voted communist or social-democrat before gave Hitler their votes.

 

I do not see that the German National People's Party (Deutschnationale Volkspartei) could get something like 40+ %. The DNVP was the party of hard-core capitalist, old-money and the rural elite (Junker) of Prussia, East-Prussia and Pommern, Silesia and Posen. No chance in hell that they would get the majority of the votes.

The downfall of the DNVP was the reason why the national elites looked into Hitler's direction and supported his government because he had the party to influence the masses AND was nationalistic enough. The "socialist" part was a headache for them, but after Hitler assured them that that was just a way to rally people behnind him and that in his "socialism" private enterprise would thrive, money was rolling his way.

 

I think a military coup, a "putsch" based on the bayonets of the Reichswehr would have been a "solution" for the problem that the elites in Germany faced (fear of a communist revolution).

 

During that time something ruthless like the "Night of Long Knives" might also have been possible. Without the Nazis, I would have doubt it. Same for the round-up of communist and socialist after the burning of the Reichstag.

 

You need a dictator for this (even one that is just beginning the job but has alreday styled himself a "Führer").

 

But as you see - my criticism is pretty much in detail and not generally and based on your good and insightful, may I say educated, knowledgable work.

 

Maybe you can use it to change some things. Still: Good work! REPPED!

[Dead guy on tab]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

Thanks for the comments. I am not well versed on '30's German politics at all (just heavily releid on Wikipedia). I developed my history from the end backwards (i.e. I thought of a world where the U.S. was not a superpower, but was being squeezed by the two powers around it as an interesting place to adventure). I ran across the Man in the High Castle and borrowed it's map. I figured that Franz von Papen would seize the opportunity of the sudden destruction of the Nazi party which was on the rise to blame the Communist since both parties were engaged in street fighting at this time. I figure he was successful and most of the support of the Nazi party shifted to Paul von Hindenberg who could act as dictator. Plus the economic policies of the previous chancellor and negotiated reduction of the war debt would increase civic pride and aid von Papen's cabal. As he was consolidating his base, he was looking for an event, he could use to wipe out the Communists. I envisioned von Papen as a potential Kingmaker who had been outmanuevered by Hitler. If my players hadn't boogied for the first time machine they could get their hands on, it might be worth revisiting or if people wanted to develop a revised Wings of the Valkyrie adventure for their own use.

 

I like Wings of the Valkyrie's thematic elements; my group has already started having discussions on the potential consequences of their actions and they haven't even met the bad guys yet! I find it useful for player role-playing as long as the GM-dumbass virus doesn't hit me when the time comes.

[rjcurrie]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

One thing that you need to remember about Wings of the Valkyrie is that it was originally a convention adventure and designed to play out over two four hour sessions. I suspect the first round ended with the character's return to the present to find it changed.

 

I have also heard, like Lord Mhoram, that the original "new present" was a better place. However, I suspect (and this is pure supposition based on how convention events like this work) that there may have been one or two things that were worse for the individual characters. Perhaps the lives of some characters are better and the lives of others are worse. Or perhaps the characters don't exist at all in this "new present" and would be looking at living their lives as complete outsiders.

 

Whatever the case, the whole thing is intended to lead to an intense role-playing situation where the characters are forced to make a tough decison about what should be done, likely involving discussions of the ethics of changing history and such.

 

Unfortunately, I never played the convention game so I can't offer much more than that -- I did play a couple of "Capitol Patrol" games that a couple of years after Wings of the Valkyrie was run.

[Balabanto]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

Well, if you wanted to change the premise, perhaps going back in time to kill Hitler leads to a future where superbeings are worshipped by the Germans as gods. This faith based movement swiftly spreads to the rest of the world. (I.E. the assassins and their amazing powers are seen.)

 

In the post-death of hitler universe, your PC's come back to the present, only to discover that Superbeings rule the world, including some of them, and that it's a highly pantheistic view of which superhero is their god.

 

Unfortunately, not all of these cults are friendly, or use ethical means of promoting their membership. Some of them are very strange. Imagine the heroes returning to find that "Lady Liberty promotes her cult by having sex with her worshippers" or "Doctor Agammemnon educates his students in the ancient greek manner" or "This city is under the protection of the Golden Guardian! Pay tribute to his temple! Thank you, citizen, and protect the innocent!"

[SAVeira]

Re: Wings of the Valkyrie update

 

In some ways, Wing of the Valkyrie remind me of The Proteus Operation by James P. Hogan, published in 1985.

 

The idea is that there was an original timeline where there never was any Nazis only the forces of USA and USSR. This lead to world where the USSR collapsed early and the world developed into one great society.

 

However, a number of elites in the original timeline disliked their loss of power in new world. With the creation of time travel, they when back in time and created a new timeline by backing a nobody called Hitler. This second timeline resulted in a world control by the Nazis expect for the lone holdout of North America lead by JFK.

 

In this second timeline, JFK orders the creation of their own time travel technology and send agents back to stop the creation of his own timeline. Unfortunately, they fail to be able to go back far enough, so they cannot stop the raise of Hitler, but they do alter the outcome of the Second World War. This causes a third timeline, what we know as our own.