Description
A Cool and Lonely Courage
A Cool and Lonely Courage is an immersive table top story game for 2-5 players. A game session can take from 2-4 hours to play. You only need a pack of playing cards, some paper and pens, and this short rulebook. The rulebook is filled with real-life examples to steer the players into the situations and dilemmas faced by the real women of the SOE. Historical knowledge is not necessary
It is the Second World War. France has fallen to the Nazis and Churchill needs to disrupt Hitler’s war machine. The Special Operations Executive (SOE) recruits women as well as men for combat operations. It was extraordinarily dangerous. One third of the women who worked in occupied France were captured and killed.
This game allows players to tell their own stories of courage and sacrifice, and to honour the women who did it for real.
The game starts with each of you captured by the Nazis, and facing interrogation and death at their hands. Together as players you tell the stories of these brave women through their training, deployment, missions and eventual capture, and discover their lives through flashbacks.
The focus of each scene is determined by drawing a card and is one of love, failure, success, or death. Each scene involves other characters from that individuals life – friends, enemies and bystanders – all of whom are played by other players around the table. Characters introduced in one scene may return in future scenes, for good or ill.
The game ends with a final session where players work out who lives, who dies, and who tells their stories.
