Civil Disorder Trial 1

I decided to get some sort of riot control game together, and got the Civil Disorder rules from Board Game Geek: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/66654/civil-disorder. I'm planning on umpiring it for three or four players over xmas, and have given it a trial run.

I made a scenario that has General Fredo visiting town, attracting a group of anti-fredoist protesters. The game starts at midday, and Fredo will be emerging from his meeting at 4pm and getting in his car. Players all play the security forces (SF) commanders while the umpire moves the mindless crowds and the commanded SF. The SF have a bunch of resources at their disposal and can set them up however they like. It's a thing in Civil Disorder that the more forceful the SF are, the more they are likely to rile up the crowd, so it might not necessarily be best for them to put all their assets on the table, or to go in forcefully.

The SF also had a bunch of road block terrain which they set up to direct the crowd away from the Fredo meeting. I put 4 crowds of 4 stands on the table, and decided to keep a fifth in reserve to turn up later to stretch the SF.

The crowds start at '5' Response Level (RL, rile) and this can go up or down depending on reactions to how the SF treat them. Actually in the rules, if nothing particularly gets their goat, the crowds will stay at RL5 forever, and not really bother anyone. Not sure whether this is deliberate satire, but it means some sort of conflict needs to be built into the scenario, or things can pass off entirely peacefully.

I added a few touches like putting some reporters around the place. I decided to tell the players that any damage happening within 6" of these will count double. As there is no real win/loss system this is kinda meaningless, but it might make the players think more carefully about what they're doing when the press is about.

This is Dave the newspaper guy who has managed to inconspicuously infiltrate the protesters.

And the local news have arrived, too.

The SF closed off one of the main roads, but left the opposite one open to, sensibly, give the protesters somewhere to go.

Not sure why the police sniper is there. I guess he can just be used as a spotter. I think giving the players the option to use one, means that he is bound to get on the table.

So the protesters marched up the road towards the town hall pretty peacefully. 

Once they came across the barriers blocking their planned route, I decided they should roll for Response Level, and I got a couple of high rolls meaning that a couple of the groups really resented having their march interfered with and their RL went up a notch.

When your RL is at 6 then a bit of criminal damage is par for the course, so over went the barricade.

At that level they can only taunt the SF, but the police move in anyway, to try to push them back.

The police charge was pretty effective wounding four protesters and arresting a base. Not sure how the base is arrested; presumably there are a bunch of unmodeled figures supporting the modeled ones.

The ambulance is on its way to check out the wounded. There were soon so many wounded that the SF didn't bother to get injured protesters seen to. It was all they could do to look after their own. I only have one ambulance model so feel like that should be a scenario restriction to the number of ambulances the SF have access to. Saves having to buy any more.

Just try not to shoot anyone.

The Police pushed forward and had another go. After getting a beating the protesters' RL is likely to go down, but I rolled decently for these guys.

Meanwhile, further down the street, another group pushed through the barriers and started taunting the only group of police I had kept to the side. They were obviously looking for trouble, coz they could have headed the other way with no problems. The rules allow for random movement of crowds. I imagine it would be easy enough to come up with decent rational for seemingly strange moves.

You don't know how badly injured someone is until the medics turn up. As it happened, only one was bad enough he needed hospital treatment.

This group decided to push on through the roadblock and charge the police. Not entirely sure they should be allowed to do this under the rules, coz they were only RL6, but it happened anyway.

So after about 1hr 20mins the streets looked like this. Two groups are riled up and getting into it with the police, while the other two are looking on. If fighting continues, and if more police turn up, these groups are likely to get riled up, too. 

The frontline group ended up being pretty soundly stopped in their tracks, with only a single base left. As it happened, the success of the middle group managed to rile up their neighbouring group, and they went up to RL7, meaning they were more prepared to charge the police.

The middle group massively outnumbered their opponents and drove them back, injuring two 

officers.

The SL decided that this was the time to call out the riot squad.

They piled in pretty successfully, driving the rioters back. Charging riot-trained officers and tear gas combo is very effective.

The medic saw to one of the injured policemen. That 6 meant he unfortunately didn't make it. Dave was on hand to witness it, and no doubt the story of the officer's death will be in the local paper the next day.