A role-playing game about Warsaw Rising called "Grey Ranks. Child Soldiers, Warsaw, 1944" designed by Jason Morningstar was published in the United States. Although it proved a big success in America, it has not found its way to Poland yet.
Danuta Isler reports
According to the producers, "Grey Ranks" is a game for three to five players that puts them in the shoes of child soldiers during the Warsaw Rising. It is designed to be played over three sessions and includes a scene structure, with each scene corresponding to a specific date in 1944. As the game progresses, success becomes increasingly difficult and the player is faced with difficult choices. The characters have all the faults and enthusiasms of youth. Across sixty three days of armed rebellion, they will grow up fast - or die.
Jason Morningstar of North Carolina is the game's designer: 'My heritage is Polish so I was aware of the Rising and some of the events surrounding it so it's been an interest of mine anyway. I actually participated in a contest which required that you use specific terms and those terms were 'ruin', 'the city' and 'romance'. And I thought that it makes perfect sense and it sort of inspired my creativity. So I started working on a game about the Rising, did some research and found out about the Grey Ranks. That seemed liek a perfect fit 'cos it combined those themes quite well.'
The games' bibliography includes works by professor Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, Polish underground activist and a participant of the Warsaw Rising himself as well as the late Jan Nowak Jezioranski, ęłęóone of the most notable resistance fighters of the Home Army.
The designer says said he wanted to create a dramatic game and at the same time show the many sacrifices and hardships of the Warsaw insurgents: 'They wanna find love and they wanna come of age and mature and prove themselves to their peers and to the Home Army. So they have all these issues that teenagers everywhere would have but in the middle of this absolutely genocidal conflict. Death is ever present and the horrors of war and that is juxtoposed with the kinds of things that regular teenagers do. The real challange was to find the way to model the emotional and mental state of the characters that you play. Often when I talk about the game people would say: oh, so you're playing those brave Jewish fighters of the Ghetto Uprising - and I have to say: no, it's not about that. So I have to educate a little bit as well.'
The 'Grey Ranks' which was well regarded and is in consideration for some awards is now examined at the Museum of the Warsaw Rising, which may decide whether the game can be distributed in Poland. Paweł Ukielski, the deputy director of the Warsaw Rising Museum says the game's convention matches the new approach to celebrating patriotism that the Museum wants to promote: 'The way of celebrating patriotic anniversaries changed in the last few years. Young people began to feel that it's not only boring ceremonies as every way of expressign emotions abo ut historical events is good. And so we organise rock concerts, bicycle races, theatrical performances and various games many events that everybody can find somehting for themselves.'
Mornignstar stresses that the game also provides a lot of historical context so you can play it without being an expert on Polish history or the history of World War II. More information about the game can be found at www.bullypitgames.com while the Warsaw Rising Museum site is www.1944.pl