RolePlay onLine

World War 1: The Ruritanian Front (One Dice World War One)

This game is intended to recreate World War One as chronicled by John Buchan (Greenmantle) or E. Phillips Oppenheim (The Great Impersonation) not Siegfried Sassoon or Erich Remarque. The emphasis is on dashing exploits by small groups of adventurers, not the grim realities of trench warfare.

To free the imagination from those realities, the game is set in the Central European kingdom of Ruritania, described the Anthony Hope in The Prisoner of Zenda, Rupert of Hentzau, and The Heart of Princess Orsa.

The last of those stories (in terms of Hope's chronology) ended well before the Great War, but my assumption is that Queen Flavia still ruled there when the war broke out, and her memories of Rudolf Rassendyll still made her favorable to Britain in that conflict, though many of the population, being German by culture and Catholic by religion, sympathized with the Central Powers, and especially with Austria-Hungary. The survivors of Rupert of Hentzau's party, led by his cousin the Count of Luzau-Rischenheim, naturally placed themselves at the head of the "patriotic" opposition to the queen's policy.

The first task for the players will be to bring Ruritania into the war on the side of Britain and her allies in the late spring of 1915. Assuming they succeed, they may go on to aid Ruritania in resisting an Austro-German invasion in the summer and autumn of 1915, then in coordinating a counter-attack with the Russian Brusilov offensive in 1916, and later in suppressing  German and Bolshevik intrigues in 1917-18 which seek to turn their Russian allies against them.

 The last postwar adventure involves providing security for the Lake Stemka Conference in the postwar period, when Ruritania is negotiating a Little Entente with Herzoslovakia (originally created by Agatha Christie) under British auspices, and the succession to the aging Queen Flavia may be settled.

Joining in the first adventure does not, of course, commit players to the entire campaign. Just getting safely to Ruritania and obtaining the Ruritanian commitment to the Allied cause may be quite enough to go on with.

The Ruritanian background story is entirely my own invention based on Hope's novels and some knowledge of the real history of the war. In order to provide a concrete set of rules, I have adopted the beautifully simple One Dice World War One rules produced by Cakebread and Walton, which are available online from DriveThru RPG. Players should have no trouble using this extremely playable system. IF there are differences of opinion about how play action should be decided, my decision as GM will be final, but I trust there will be few difficulties.