Today I have an interview with Alex White about A Cool and Lonely Courage, which is currently on Kickstarter! This game is about women in occupied France in World War II and I asked Alex about the research involved. Read on to see more!
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Tell me a little about A Cool and Lonely Courage. What excites you about it?
Last summer I was discussing the role of women in World War II with a friend, thinking about the courage which they had displayed and the encouragement that can give to us today. The next evening on the flight home I remembered a museum exhibit I had come across once about the women who worked as spies in occupied France, and the germ of an idea for the game formed – I’ve still got the half page of scribbled notes which are the underpinnings of the game even now! I wanted to design a game with simple rules that would allow us to tell emotionally complex stories.
I followed this up by several weeks research into the women who served as part of the Special Operations Executive and I was rocked back on my heels by their history. They came from all kinds of backgrounds and faced incredible peril. A third of them were captured, tortured and executed, but they performed a vital role in the liberation of France. The photo below shows Violette Szabo, Noor Inayat Khan, Nancy Wake and Odette Sansom.
I decided that I wanted the game to remember and honour the women who had faced such dangers. I’ve put as much history as I can as examples into the rules and made every effort to help the players understand the kind of circumstances these real women found themselves in. I’ve been delighted that many people have said afterwards that they want to find out more about these spies, and I’ve included a book and film bibliography in the rules to help people find our more.
The central mechanism of the game reflects the fates of war, and gives a tremendous replay value to it. Every time that someone plays, very different stories will result. Because the game is interested primarily in the relationships these women had with the people around them, and tracks the changing relationships during their time, it has the capability to be very emotionally engaging – even shocking. As one player, new to story games, said during a recent session “I can’t believe that I’m crying over someone that we just made up in the last hour”.
That’s a long response to a short question! But in a nutshell I’m excited about the capacity of this game to give the players genuine emotional experiences and a new respect for the women who did this for real.
You mentioned your research. What kind of research did you do? How did you find the right sources?
When it comes to research, happily there are many books available! Historians have done all the hard work in research or working as biographers. I started by looking at some authors who have covered a number of the women who worked with the SOE such as Rick Stroud who wrote ‘Lonely Courage’ or Beryl E. Escort who wrote ‘The heroines of SOE: F Section: Britains secret women in France’. I followed this up with more in depth biographies of women such as Pearl Witherington and Nancy Wake.
I supplemented this real life history by looking into some of the fiction based on these activities. I really enjoyed the young adult novel ‘Codename Verity’ by Elizabeth Wein, and I was able to obtain a 1988 TV series called ‘Wish me luck’ by Lavinia Warner and Jill Hyem.
A friend of mine is an amateur historian of World War II and he was able to give me a lot of additional context about the situation in occupied France too.
Did you reach out to the families of the women who you based the game on, whose likenesses you’re using, to gain their perspective or permission?
No, I didn’t attempt to reach out to any of the families – None of the public resources I had available referred to any family members much, and trying to track them down would have felt too stalker-y.
What happens in play of A Cool and Lonely Courage? What do players do, and what are their hard questions?
When it comes to playing A Cool and Lonely Courage, it goes like this:
There are a series of questions which each player answers to develop an initial view of their character – their background, how they speak french, the reason they joined up, a strength discovered during training and a weakness revealed by training. Whether they were going to be primarily a courier or a radio operator. Their code name, and the name of the circuit leader they would be working with in France (who is their first supporting character).
As the play starts, the players have to picture themselves in neighbouring cells, captured by the Nazis. They briefly introduce themselves, and they start telling each other their stories…
Each player is dealt a hand of 6 cards, held face down.
There are going to be five chapters, and in each chapter every player will have a scene. The chapters are arrival (meeting the resistance), a mission with the resistance, an interlude which is a period of quiet and getting to know people, the chapter where you are captured, and a final chapter in prison.
As each player is going to have a scene they draw one of their cards, and the suit determines whether the focus of the scene is one of love, success, misfortune or death. The scenes will involve one or more supporting characters, adding to a selection in front of each player or reusing existing ones in later scenes. Other players take the role of the supporting characters in the scene.
As the chapters progress it will be natural to revisit some of the supporting characters and depending upon the fall of the cards you will see relationships grow, deepen, fracture or sometimes be tragically ended by death. Through playing out the scenes there is a real sense of personality in the supporting characters… and when a spade is drawn and the players set a scene where a lovely person has to die… that can feel really tough – but true to the sense of the wartime story that is being told.
The conclusion is a real point of decision. Everyone has one card left. They then secretly decide whether to keep that card for themselves or donate it to another player. When these decisions are revealed, anyone with two cards is rescued! Anyone with no cards is killed out of hand. Anyone with one card is sent to the concentration camps and if your card is black you die there, if it is red you survive.
Finally, in the epilogue, the players think about what happened next to the survivors after the war. And who remembers those who died.
It is sometimes a little quiet at the conclusion of the game, as we think about the stories that have been told, and perhaps reflect upon the real women who the game is based upon.
How do you support players who might find this kind of play overwhelming or upsetting once they’ve jumped into it?
One of the things that has always been important when running the game is that everyone knows that there is an open door policy – anyone can excuse themselves for the game for any reason. They might want a break, or they might feel that they have to exit the game entirely. It is important that people know that this is an option at the start of the game, and that if during the game someone feels they have to step out it is important for the rest of the table to reassure them that is perfectly fine, and it won’t ‘spoil the game’ for anyone else.
I’ve seen this used twice, once in a game that I was facilitating and once in a game a different person was facilitating. In each case it was easy to reassure the person that was fine, and they left with no worries that it would impair anyone else’s fun.
Occasionally someone finds one particular thing that is brought up somewhat upsetting, and the game rules discuss right up front using Ron Edwards “lines and veils” or John Stavropoulos “X-card” mechanics to help avoid troublesome areas up front or during play.
How do you feel sometimes knowing the end of the story can affect play and the experience of the game?
I think that knowing the end of the story actually plays really well. Although it may not be fashionable, I really loved the movie Titanic. We all know the ship sank, but it was interesting to see the stories leading up to that point. Indeed, it lent a bitter-sweet aspect to some of the stories. The same holds true in A Cool and Lonely Courage.
Knowing that these stories end in capture can make the sense of small moments of joy or victory shine like candles in the darkness. And of course, the very end of the story isn’t known. You know that you are all in prison, but there is the question about what you do with your final card… to keep it or to give it away, once you know everyone else’s stories. The final end of each character isn’t known until the epilogue!
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Thanks so much to Alex for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out A Cool and Lonely Courage on Kickstarter today!
Note: As required by my standards, you’ll note that I asked Alex about whether he reached out to the families of any of those he’s writing this game based on. I understand Alex’s perspective, but as I have spoken of before, I care about whose stories we tell, so I wanted to ask to get that perspective.
