Table of Contents
Welcome to James Kemp's Wiki
This is a collaborative web platform that allows people to edit1) the web pages to provide additional content for some of the stories I have written and the roleplaying games that I am involved in, whether as a player or GM.
There are several namespaces operating slightly different wiki subjects. These are, in no particular order:
- Skyss - Story Background - a fantasy novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo 2016.
- Perfects - background for the near future story and some police roleplaying that I ran in that universe
- Theocracy of Daprav - A D&D campaign that I ran with Glasgow University Games Society around 2002-3.
- Jim Wallman's Universe - a roleplaying by e-mail campaign that I play in, this is an unofficial wiki and none of it is canon unless Jim says it is.
- Interstellar Freelance Unlimited - subset of the Universe pages covering the activities of a mercenary company that we are currently roleplaying every Full Moon.
- Earth Imperium pages. These cover the activities of the Government of the Solar republic (aka Earth Empire) in Jim's Humanity Will Prevail campaign, including the Earth Imperium News Items.
- Free Worlds Alliance - covering the activities of another emerging polity in the Humanity Will Prevail campaign. Mostly contributed by Eric Moroney.
- Universe Background - page collecting the various bits of background info that have come up in various e-mail discussions for the campaigns set in Jim Wallman's Universe.
- Master map of the Universe (6Mb PDF, as at 3212).
- Delta Green - some roleplaying campaigns about horror and conspiracy. The main one was set in Berlin in 1953.
- Free games rules - a collection of free rules for wargames and other sorts of face to face games that I have designed or run.
- Wargames rules - I'm not just a player of games, I also do rules for them from time to time as well as one-off games. A primary outlet for this is through Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group.
- Other free rules - at the moment just those for the 1689 (Orange or Lemon? and Bonnie Dundee, respectively about the debates in the Scots Parliament and then the military campaign of Viscount Dundee during 1689) and The Other Side of the COIN (about what makes people become insurgents). All games that I have have produced for Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group.
- Background for a near future universe where I have written some fiction and also run some roleplaying games in.
Comments and complaints to me at webmaster@full-moon.info please.
James Kemp
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Recent Additions
WW2 Company Actions
This could do with a snappier title…
I also need to properly organise it, so far it is just an ideas dump of things I thought up over Christmas at my in-laws.
Overview/Introduction
I would like to do a wargame that works with a team of players in the key appointments in a WW2 infantry company. This would cover both the traditional officer roles (platoon and company commanders) and also some of the NCO roles that often get subsumed (i.e. the Company Sergeant Major (CSM) and the Platoon Sergeants).
Each of the units would then have two players, an officer and a sergeant, both with different roles and different rules that would share a common objective. The officers would move units, motivate them and fight the battle. The sergeants would help with the motivation, look after re-organisation after the battle, supplying ammo, food, dealing with casualties and POWs.
In short what I want is a game that captures some of the teamwork involved in battles and also shows the importance of looking after your troops.
Level of Resolution
As always I follow the maxim of 'two down' so for a game where players are the platoon commanders we want to see the rifle and weapons groups that make up the infantry sections/squads. I think it is probably also useful to show the NCOs as single figures as you migth well want to move them separately from their entire group (e.g. to receive orders, take over from a more senior NCO that has become a casualty etc).
This means that for a British Rifle Platoon you'd have a game organisation a bit like this:
- Platoon HQ
- 3 x Rifle Sections
Order of Play
For the basic game mechanisms I'm going to build on my WW1 trench raiding game as I know that those mechanisms do actually work. The bit that I want to get innovative with here is the two player command of the platoon and also the logs side added as an integral part of how the action is progressed.
The Turn Sequence
| No. | Commanders | Sergeants | Others |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Activation | Activation | - |
| 2. | Morale (Attacker morale) | Morale (defender morale) | Morale individual morale |
| 3. | Hand to hand combat | Hand to hand combat | Hand to hand combat |
| 4. | Throw grenades | Throw grenades | Throw grenades |
| 5. | Movement - move infantry - move vehicles - opportunity fire by static groups | Resupply - supply ammo - food & drink - casualties - equipment | Other Actions - call indirect fire - cut wire - place demolitions - minesweeping |
| 6. | Shooting - static groups - moving groups | Grenade effects | Indirect Fire Artillery/Mortars |
| 7. | Orders | Resolve effect of hits | - |
Both sides move simultaneously. If the game is played without an umpire one side should write their orders down prior to the other side moving. See the detailed sections for more on how this ought to work.
Logs
There is a famous6) quote that: “Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics”. Well in this game the Sergeants are the professionals that deal with logistics. Most of the contents of this section are only carried out by those players acting as sergeants7).
Logistics is the ball and chain of armoured warfare. (Heinz Guderian)
You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge box. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub. (George Bernard Shaw)
Quantity has a quality all of its own. (Josef Stalin)
Main items
The following items could have some direct impact on how a unit operates.
| Item | Combat | Morale | Features |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ammo | High | Some | quantity, type, frequency of supply |
| Medical | none | high | speed of treatment, quality of care, dead/wounded |
| Food & drink | none | medium | quantity, hot/cold, readiness to eat |
| POWs | low | low | need removed from battlefield when taken |
| Stores | medium | low | e.g. mines, sandbags, replacement kit; availability when required |
| Mail/news | none | low8) | good/bad news, frequency of mail delivery |
Ammunition
One of the main supply items at company level matched only by food & drink in its consumption and necessity. For the purposes of the game this will be abstracted a little into some general natures. Also the precise number of rounds will not be tallied, each stand will be allocated an ammunition state on its record card.
Ammunition Natures
Democratic Army For Truth
Player briefing
You are all members of an international pressure group that investigates strange phenomenon and tries to persuade governments to come clean about their secret research projects, especially the ones into alien technology and UFOs.
Your part of the group is currently working on several projects, which although separate are linked by the fact that they all involve some work in international waters off the coast of Scotland. In particular you are on the trail of a German born scientist who has retired to the North of Scotland who was employed by the US Government in the 1950s & 60s.
There are three main projects:
Project Poseidon
this is the investigation of a joint British/US research project based on a research establishment in the Outer Hebrides. The official story is that the researchers were working on submarine acoustic coatings, however you believe that they were in fact working on a project to graft gills into humans to allow them to work underwater without the need for scuba gear.
Project Prometheus
This is a wholly British project from start to finish. It was initiated in 1940 and finally terminated in 1962 as far as you can tell from the paperwork you have found on it. You found out about it from the GRU records as one of the wartime scientists was in the employ of the soviets and reported back to them. British records show it to be an investigation of how to improve the survival of people in the sea. The Soviet records show something entirely different. They make it out to be the investigation of a Nazi wonder weapon which allowed contact with alien civilisations.
Project Wolf
This was originally a Nazi project and was taken over by the US Government at the end of the war. Most of the early work was done at Peenemunde and in Sachsenhausen. Later it moved to Jacksonville, Florida with some field research carried out in the North Atlantic. This sometimes involved the support vessels calling at a research station off the coast of Scotland. Details of the exact nature are very sketchy at best, the security was sufficiently tight that the GRU never managed to get anyone involved on the project, probably due to it originating with the nazis. You have however found that one of the major players in the project was one Dr Johan Krauss (known as Joe Cross). He was taken to the US after the war and naturalised as a US citizen in the mid-1960s. He worked for the US government for his entire career on a variety of defence research projects and when he retired in 1985 he moved to the UK.
Herman Wolfe
Herman Wolfe was captured by the staff of the The Golden Gate on the night of 4 June 1953 in a cellar a couple of streets away from the club. Following his capture he was brought back to the The Golden Gate and questioned by Marian, Jeb, John and Gustav. George was also present but didn't play a large part in the interrogation. The information below was gleaned in part from the documents and evidence found in the cellar he was living in and also from some of the paperwork in the crates. Mainly however it comes from the interrogation which involved showing Wolfe the photos from the documentation and telling him that they already knew what he had been up to.
Wolfe's background
Early life
Wolfe was born in 1910 in Berlin. His father was a relatively prosperous cabinet maker who ended up owning his own factory. Wolfe completed school and was accepted for a place at University in Nuremberg which he started in October 1928.
Political activism
Wolfe was rapidly drawn in to political life and joined the nazi party (74320) in late October 1928. He dropped out of university at the end of his first year.
The next few years were spent as a political activist in the racial purity office. When the nazi party finally came to power in 1933 Wolfe moved back to Berlin where he continued his work as well as studying anthropology part time at the university. He was finally granted his degree in 1938.
Ahnenerbe
Shortly after his graduation Wolfe joined the Ahnenerbe and started work on some projects involving inmates in several concentration camps. He was collecting folk tales in an effort to determine whether or not there were any aryan or german roots in any of the gypsy clans given one of the thoughts that they may migrated from the same place as the aryans. This collection of work brought him to the attention of another SS group whom he joined in 1940.
Sonderkommando K
In late 1940 Wolfe joined Sonderkommando K, Gruppe Hecht which was commanded by Standartenfuhrer9) Hecht. The group was a mixture of anthropologists, sociologists, medical doctors, historians, archaeologists and occultists. In total there were about forty 'scientists' based in a research institute in the Brandenburg countryside just East of Berlin.
Initially the work involved sorting through lots of artefacts and documentation that other groups had salvaged from various museums, universities and other archives from the parts of Europe now under nazi control. The primary thing that the group was looking for were references to magic and other folklore.
