Things go wrong in the room too

On 11 October I sat down with the newest build and played the mission we have been building towards. One section out on patrol. A contact. A casualty. A helicopter to bring in. This time the room fought back as well. The video is above; this is what it taught us.

What the room had in it

Since the first playtest the room has filled up. There is a chat terminal for the wider operation, a sand table you plot by hand, a second radio set for the boss, two feed monitors (a drone and a helmet camera) and a big map on the wall that repeats the sand table. Aircraft and the drone carry trackers, so the map shows where they last reported themselves. Troops on foot do not. You only know where a section is when someone tells you.

Everything is still grey boxes. Ryan has not got his hands on it yet. That is deliberate: we are building how it works before how it looks.

What worked

• The drone went where I sent it and orbited there.
• The staff plotted each position report as it came in.
• The casualty request went out from the chat terminal. When I placed the landing site I sent an amended one with its location.
• The quick reaction force went out to secure the landing site.
• Then the generator died. Lights out, screens dark, the radio still talking. A fight still going on and the room blind. I had to go outside and get the generator running again. That was the moment it stopped feeling like a test.
• Rounds landed on the base. Helmet on, eye protection on, and the net went poor after the impacts.
• The helicopter was in the overhead at 42 minutes and wheels up at 44.

What broke

1. A section of eight with two casualties reported two fit. It should have been six. The men carrying the wounded had dropped out of the count.
2. The casualty handover happened wherever the two parties passed each other on the road, not at the collection point I had set. They should wait for each other there.
3. A move order to the platoon sergeant looked as if it had vanished. It had not, but nothing at the table told me it had been received.
4. In the power cut the sand table stayed lit while everything else went dark, and there was no light to find the way to the generator.
5. There was no way to tell the wider operation that my troops were in contact.
6. No sprint and no crouch. When rounds are landing you want to get low.

What we changed the same afternoon

• The section counts the men away carrying as fit, and says they are away.
• The handover happens at the collection point, once both parties are there.
• The order card at the table shows what the room knows: sent, received, refused and why, or unanswered and worth sending again.
• The sand table goes dark with the room, and a battery lamp flickers on over the door.
• A troops in contact message from the chat terminal: the first word, then the full report.
• Shift to run, Ctrl to crouch, and crouching counts when rounds land.
• Two clocks on the wall, Zulu and local.
• The radio static now comes from each set, not from inside your head.

What is still placeholder

The words on the radio and in the chat are mine to write properly; for now they say what is happening rather than how it would be said. The feeds are blocky. The sand table will become a model in sand. Next on the list are people at the stations and the men themselves: water, ammunition and fatigue, reported to you rather than shown.

Come and tell us what we are getting wrong on the Discord.