Posted by Jason on January 30th, 2007 — in Design, Grey Ranks
Steve suggested including sample characters in Grey Ranks, so I did some research and found actual partisans who exemplify, as best I can make out, the Things You Hold Dear in the game. So:
DANUSIA: MY FRIENDS
Danuta Raby was an eleven-year-old Girl Guide when the Germans invaded. She served in the Grey Ranks as a messenger during the Uprising and developed an intense camaraderie with her crew, often partying with other teens until dawn before reporting for duty. She participated in the house-to-house fighting in Wola and shot a German soldier in the head. Danusia spent time in a POW camp after the capitulation but survived the war.
GOLIAT: MY COUNTRY
Julian Eugeniusz Kulski served in the Grey Ranks as an under-age partisan throughout the occupation. The son of Warsaw’s Protestant mayor, Julian had a long history with the resistance prior to the Uprising – he’d even spent time in the Gestapo jail in Szucha alley. During the Uprising, he and his crew fought in Zoliborz before the order to surrender came. He was fifteen.
ANNA: MY FIRST LOVE
Lucyna Maciejewska was a Grey Ranks courier and medic. Her story revolves around her deep love for another Scout named Zenon, who she met in early 1944. They immediately knew they were meant for one another – she was sixteen and he was seventeen. During the Uprising Lucyna and Zenon were separated, and in the course of her duties she prayed he wouldn’t be among the scores of badly injured boys she tended to daily. Zenon was captured and executed on Gibalskiego street in Wola, but not before writing Lucyna a final letter, telling her to wait for him. She survived the war and never married.
WANDA: MY FAMILY
Celina Pastuszko was the daughter of a wealthy family that chose to stay in Warsaw during the Uprising. At seventeen, she volunteered her parents flat at 11 Zurawia street as a field hospital and communications outpost. Celina worked in her own home as an untrained nurse and medic, supporting both the Grey Ranks and the Home Army Bartkiewicz group. She was killed by artillery fire on 4 September.
BANANA: MY FAITH
Seventeen-year-old Zbigniew Banas was an enthusiastic Catholic scout even before the war. The leader of his crew, Zbigniew conducted high-risk operations centered around Powisle in City Center, the district of his birth. Banana was known across the city as a fearless courier who never hesitated to take on the toughest assignments, confident in God’s protection. He was killed by a sniper on 17 August.
VARSOVIAN: MY CITY
Witold Modelski earned his prestigious nickname for fanatic devotion to his city during the Uprising. Initially a courier, Witold demonstrated his fighting skill and was rapidly transferred to the Parasol battalion and served with distinction, earning the Cross of Valor. He was killed on 20 September defending one of the last Home Army strongpoints in City Center. He was twelve years old.
Posted by Jason on January 20th, 2007 — in Check this out dude
We’re a little nutty around here, but in a good way. For Grey Ranks we’re using a lovely font called Literaturnaya, which could have been pulled straight from any 1940′s publication from eastern Europe. In fact, compare and contrast for yourself:
Above, the 1939 Warsaw telephone directory. Below, Literaturnaya. Anyway, it’ll look great and we’re happy to have a very solid extended character set font on hand.
Posted by Jason on January 13th, 2007 — in Check this out dude, Design
I’ve had this idea percolating for over a year – a comedic game inspired by the tropes of Restoration comedy. And I’ve been mulling it over, and poking around for material, and a recent trip to Davis library was a jackpot – I found the weirdest book. It was printed in 1883 and is a parody of early publishing called Olde Tayles Newlye Relayted. It’s really a send-up of caxton-era printing, but the illustrations are post-1600, so whatever. It’s stuffed with humorous woodcuts that I am going to use. They are absolutely perfect and I couldn’t be happier – the game revolves around “types”, and Olde Tayles Newlye Relayted has great illustrations of all thirty. It’s been fun to paw through the substantial tome to see where they “break character” – here an illustration that’s off, there a typeface that screams late nineteenth century, there a suspicious turn of phrase. Big fun. Digitizing and cleaning up these images was a nice break from Grey Ranks.
Posted by Jason on January 8th, 2007 — in Design
So I’m auditioning an artist I’m very excited about, and if he pans out I’ll be giving him some direction for ten illustrations. He’s comfortable with this level of detail, and can branch out from these descriptions. They are sequential and refer to the example crew from the game. I may change number ten, since that’s a hell of a way to end the game.
ILLO ONE
Janek and Jadwiga in street clothes are kneeling before the base of a monument, maybe we see a plaque that reads “Zawisza Czarny z Garbowa” but just the feet of a statue – focus is tight on the teens. They’ve just crudely painted the anchor symbol of the resistance, one of them still has a dripping brush and the other a paint can, and their heads are turned toward the viewer in guilt and terror as a man-shaped shadow falls over the scene, maybe with the outlines of helmet and rifle visible.
The kotwica, symbol of the resistance
ILLO TWO
A checkpoint – sandbags, a striped traffic barrier. A puzzled/bored German military policeman is holding Janek pressed against the wall with one hand while he looks through Janek’s papers with the other. Maybe a basket spilled on the ground, with scattered loaves of bread or flowers or something. Janek is looking out of the corner of his eye at Jadwiga, who has a pistol behind her back.
German police
Jadwiga’s gun
ILLO THREE
There’s a full-on firefight underway. The focus is Janek, who is dressed in street clothes and firing a home-made submachinegun, a stack of newspapers still bound up at his feet. Flying spent brass. He should look anything BUT heroic – awkward, scared, disoriented, clumsy. Bullets are whizzing by and the only other guy in the frame is spinning, hit by a German round and dying as he falls.
home brew SMG
ILLO FOUR
Janek, Jadwiga, Irka, and Pelikan posing for a photo with a swastika flag they’ve torn down, drunk with pride and excitement. They stand in front of a municipal building pock-marked with bullets, the glass shattered, the ground crunchy with debris. They are all wearing AK red-and-white armbands and somebody has a German helmet, also decorated with red and white bands. They look like soldiers, a little.
ILLO FIVE
Inside a house during street fighting. Up-ended furniture blasted to sticks, a ragged sofa, broken shit everywhere, a portrait hanging lopsided on the wall. One of the interior walls has been blown open with a man-sized hole. On our side of the wall – Janek and Pelikan are crouched, waiting. One has a pistol and the other has a big-ass carving knife. On the other side, a German soldier is carefully poking his way through to their room, clearing away rubble with the bayonet of his rifle, unaware of the ambush he’s about to walk into.
German rifle
ILLO SIX
Irka (a shy girl) and Pelikan (a boy full of himself) are pressed together in a shelter – we see them at that “lady and the tramp” moment, chest to chest as they make surprised eye contact. They are in a cellar, there is dust falling and rubble everywhere, maybe crashed out Polish soldiers, maybe even Janek and Jadwiga hunkered down covering their asses. The focus of the illo is the electric charge of intimacy and sexual chemistry between Irka and Pelikan.
ILLO SEVEN
A buttoned-up German Panther tank is rumbling slowly down the broad avenue. Surrounding it, like plants in a field with their arms outstretched, are miserable Polish women, openly weeping, human shields. Maybe we see it from behind a barricade from the rebels POV as they prepare to open fire, but maybe it is a closer scene, just the women and the tank.
Tank
ILLO EIGHT
Irka and Pelikan are locked in a passionate embrace, French kissing on their way to more intimacy. Their rifles are stacked against the wall behind them, and they are in a bedroom that is now open to the sky – half blown apart. It is Irka’s old bedroom, and there is a needlepoint on the wall with her name (Irena Dunin, 1937). Maybe we see them from the street level looking up, with a burning Warsaw behind them.
ILLO NINE
Jadwiga is standing over a raised street grave. A long stream of refugees floods by. A marker says JANEK on it. She’s been hurt herself, she’s obviously haggard and exhausted, and the focus of the image is her face, which shows all the beating she’s taken but also her grim promise of revenge – there’s rage in her eyes.
ILLO TEN
A desolate landscape of utter destruction, something out of Dante’s inferno. A pair of RONA soldiers (filthy, one wearing a women’s fur coat and burdened with a sack full of silver) have Pelikan and Irka on their knees. They are about to casually shoot the Poles in the back of the head. Pelikan and Irka are looking at each other with love, sadness, and longing.
Some RONA images (mixed with others) and their insignia
