White Rose

White Rose is a campaign created and run by Michael Engard. A low-fantasy political/wartime drama, the story revolves around three leading members of a resistance movement, the White Rose, formed to combat the oppressive monarchy of the city-state of Macha. The focus is placed on the complexities of the player characters' actions, agendas and contrasting philosophies toward war, crime, terrorism, torture, and morality - in short, the human experience of revolution.

The campaign was played with a vastly diminished focus on rules and mechanics, and much more on artistic and storytelling accomplishments. The scale is deliberately sub-epic, and somewhat postmodern in its treatment of cosmic forces: while historical, spiritual and even religious forces are acting in direct support of the plot, they do so in a way that stops short of dictating events and serve, instead, to impart the personal sagas of the protagonists with an atmosphere of multi-layered resonance.

Summary

Main article: Sessions

The front page of the Everfalls Chronicle on Capricorn 6^th, 1597, the day after the abduction of Gwydion Fehlstein by agents of the White Rose.

The first session was played on February 8^th, 2009, following several days of preliminary 1o1s, which collectively became the prologue. With the exception of an unofficial hiatus in August 2009, sessions continued unbroken for fourteen months, until the epilogue was played on April 27^th, 2010.

Building on the legacies of Adelore, Aevum and Hex, the structure of sessions was guided more by artistic rather than practical needs. Sessions rarely picked up immediately where the previous one left off, but instead were timed to suit a particular "scene," and ended as early or late as the scene dictated. This left broad swaths of in-game time unaccounted for, and 1o1s occasionally returned to the past in order to fill in these gaps.

As the campaign progressed, the focus gradually shifted towards the "supplementary" content: 1o1s and 2o1s which took place in between full-group sessions. By the end, it was not uncommon for pivotal events and dramatic scenes to take place outside of sessions, although the full group still convened on a regular basis. In order to keep the "session" useful as a benchmark of time and progress, the GM often combined a selection of 1o1s and 2o1s into an artificial session. However, even with this policy, the supplementary scenes comprise a majority of the campaign's written content.

In general, the plot and direction of the campaign were directed, to an unprecedented extent, by the players themselves. Times and locations of sessions were often supplied by them, as were a variety of tie-in media and documents. Due to the nature of the player characters as political leaders, symbols and phrases originated by them became common ingame motifs. White Rose players were also less reluctant to metagame, and often shared private information with each other for the purpose of analysis and future planning - and occasionally kept their agendas hidden from the GM. Because this format made it exceedingly difficult to prepare any long-term plot arcs, the campaign plan was based on a set of themes rather than a sequence of events. That the story ever arrived at a satisfying point of conclusion was a product of constant communication, voluntary player coordination, and, in the GM's analysis, sheer dumb luck.

Production

Main article: Mechanics

The campaign was played in real-time line-by-line Internet Relay Chat, using the Cortex RPG system, and augmented by a variety of visual and literary media. The role of gameplay mechanics was deliberately minimized in White Rose: no strict equipment lists were given, and many Cortex traits - including those which granted unrealistic abilities, and those designed to substitute roleplaying elements, such as artistic skills and economic status - were excluded.

This experiment culminated, in a way, with the Ceteris Module, a device which granted its user perfect success on all actions, completely negating the effect of mechanics in those instances. The GM was fascinated to find that all three player characters, at various points, gave up the device's power voluntarily.

Characters

Plot

The story takes place almost entirely within Macha, a city-state at war with its peers. For a combination of political, practical and philosophical reasons, Macha's hereditary ruler, Marissa Aciesvor, enforces a policy called the Blackout, under which no person is allowed to enter, leave, or communicate to or from the city. A resistance group called Briar Fell has taken root in the city, but it is stagnant and floundering, having already once been hunted to near-extinction by the government. While its members seek only to rid themselves of the oppressive Blackout, a mysterious foreigner named Troy is pursuing a more ambitious agenda: the unprecedented overthrow of the Aciesvor family's rule. To that end, he has begun scouring the city for men and women worthy of leading a bold new resistance movement: the White Rose.

Setting

A hand-drawn map of the Cernun Plateau as it existed in the year 1594.

The sister cities of Macha, Rhia and Epone are the heart of a civilization called Cernun, resembling mid-20th century Europe, which inhabits a plateau of the same name. The plateau is blessed with fertile soil, rich geothermal energy, and a protective mountain range. Outside the plateau, the world is cold, barren and lifeless; inside, it is a temperate paradise with limitless resources, yet its people have never known true peace.

Cernun is dominated by the Matrona, a nihilistic social class devoted to competition, deviance and the pursuit of power. Each city is host to a lower class, the Fomoria, who perform basic labor and are informally denied their full right to self-determination, but are guaranteed a comfortable standard of living and absolute protection within the city walls. Where the Matronae elites manipulate the notions of family loyalty, national pride and personal vendetta to veil their cynical politics, the Fomorians value them above all else.

The only other society known to Cernun is that of the Arians, a serene, utopian people who possess the art of crystallurgy, with which they provide Cernun with fantastic treasures and advanced technology. After their gifts were abused in a terrible massacre, the Arians chose to deny the use of crystal to any city at war with its neighbors. As a result, open warfare is no longer a viable policy for the people of Cernun. To maintain their legitimacy, the traditional ruling families have manufactured exaggerated ideological conflicts to keep themselves permanently on the brink of war. But now, Macha has taken the plunge, and only the Blackout will protect them from the Arians' wrath - for now.

Themes

The one major drawback the player-driven nature of the campaign was the impossibility of planning any reliable long-term story arcs. Instead, to maintain a sense of cohesion and continuity, the GM used a set of abstract themes, which were touched upon throughout the campaign in ways big and small, and emphasized the connection - dramatically, when possible. These themes are represented metaphorically by a set of symbols:

• Pillar
  A pillar is necessary but insufficient. It is an element of any system which must not only stand, but stand together with its peers, in order for the system to act as a union. The pillars of a resistance movement - or any movement, for that matter - are physical action (the Hand), logical foundation (the Eye), and spiritual imperative (the Ghost). In White Rose, these are defined and put into practice by Troy.
  
  

• Chain
  The chain is a bond between two objects which someone feels the need to enforce, possibly against the will of one or both of its prisoners. The chain represents the umbilical cord between an idea and its creators: the people who lead it, fight for it, even personify it. White Rose explores many forms of this relationship, from resistance movements that flounder without strong figures to embody their ideals, to ancient institutions that are wrenched away from undeserving patrons, to personality cults whose ideas are only excuses, though the actions and passions which they feed are sincere.
  
  

• Fountain
  The fountain is a force of nature, the result of pressure systems balancing themselves out. Sooner or later, somewhere or elsewhere, the pressure will be released; but the time, place and pattern can be swayed by the arrangement of pebbles and tiny crevices. The fountain represents fealty and anarchy: the question in every man and woman of which imperatives to obey, which necessary evils to commit, which battle lines to draw, and cross. White Rose explores the power of competing loyalties, and the solutions that are chosen: sovereign, city, family, heir, philosophy, tradition. It follows those who constantly fight for the 'free will' to determine their own right and wrong, and those who see it as arrogant presumption that an individual can make such decisions; those who surrender their concern for what is right, and those who decry the peril of blind loyalty.
  
  

• Chord
  The chord is an entity that is meaningless in its own right. It is nothing but a particular set of frequencies with some chance mathematical affinity, yet it evokes in us a universal, irresistible and undeniable emotional resonance; and even the same sound, the same emotion, can be put to use in an endless variety of patterns, not all easily grasped, but all employing an alphabet that every person is born understanding. The chord represents the arbitrariness of institutions, norms, and narratives, and the impact that people can have by acting and speaking on their behalf, without believing in them, or even being aware of them. White Rose sees what happens when assumptions are questioned and questions are assumed. It follows the fate of movements rejected by their own creators, or kept only in care for someone else. It makes a small measurement of humanity's capacity to believe a lie.
  
  

• Mirror
  A mirror shows us mostly what we already see, some of what we already know to exist, and a little of what we never quite seem to recognize until we see it reversed, exaggerated, or polarized. There is, however, no way to see this hidden light without changing it, puncturing the barrier that you thought existed between you. The mirror represents the relationship between the Matrona and the Fomoria: the rights and responsibilities, the privilege and burden, of identifying with a class once thought by both sides to be "safe," outside the boundaries of the conflict, yet living within and around it; immune to the "rules" of engagement, yet affected by everything they touch; and the cascading entropy caused by even the smallest, most inevitable graze.
  
  

• Wall
  The wall, before anything else, is a barrier. Its purpose is to keep energy from moving between systems, into some, out of others. Every wall gives a little, erodes or subsides, against the waves of power that break against it, and even a strong wall only amplifiess points of relative weakness. The wall represents attempts to control people - their power, freedom and potential - by Blackout, by canon, by crystal. White Rose explores the value, the necessity, the inevitability of these walls' erection, and their demise.
  
  

• Ink
  Ink is pure energy, potential itself. As a substance, it hardly exists except as a thin texture on an impassive canvas, yet it is needed and craved by everything it passes through, everything in which, moment by moment, it exists. The ink represents the blank slate: the infinite possibility, the permanent, generational opportunity to break the cycle that is embodied - above all - by Gen, Georgiana, and Eliza. These three are barely more than observers of White Rose’s story, except in the end; yet their hands are necessary to shape it and give it meaning.