Grey Ranks (role-playing game)

Grey Ranks

Cover for 1st edition
Designer(s)	Jason Morningstar
Publisher(s)	Bully Pulpit Games
Publication date	2007
Genre(s)	Indie
System(s)	custom

Grey Ranks is a role-playing game by Jason Morningstar, independently published by Bully Pulpit Games. The game is designed for three to five players and puts each of them in the shoes of child soldiers during the Warsaw Uprising, serving as members of the Grey Ranks (Polish: Szare Szeregi).

Grey Ranks is set in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, with each player playing a child aged between 15 and 17. The game itself takes place over the course of ten chapters, each relating to an event that shaped the course of the Warsaw Uprising. To set the scene, each chapter begins with someone reading out a passage attributed to Radio Lightning. This is a narrative conceit as the game starts with preparing for the uprising in July 1944, and Radio Lightning didn't start until a week into August.

The ten chapters are:

The players have no ability within the game to change the overall course of the uprising.

Grey Ranks is a collaborative role-playing game with no GM, and where each player has one scene for their character per chapter. Each scene in all chapters save the first and last needs resolving, and each chapter is harder to resolve than the previous ones. In order to play you need:

Although not strictly necessary to play, the game book itself contains notes on Warsaw in the 1940s, guidance towards play, and other useful references.

Before the game each player gives their character a name, a code name, an age, a sex, and a position on the grid. After the first chapter each player chooses something their character holds dear from their faith, their country, their city, their family, their friends, and their first love - and represents whichever they pick with a tangible symbol that may get destroyed in play. The other players then pick two negative reputations for the character that they may turn into positive reputations in play if they survive long enough. The reputations, and the things that characters hold dear may not overlap between player characters.