Cool and Lonely Courage, A

Ennie Award 2020 nominee for Best Game

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 these women who worked in occupied France were captured and killed.

This is an immersive table top story game for 2-5 players, without a GM. A game session can take from 2-4 hours to play. All you need is a pack of playing cards, some paper and pens, and this short rulebook. You don’t need any historical knowledge to play — I have filled the rulebook with real-life examples that will help steer you towards the kind of situations and dilemmas which were faced by women working in the SOE.

You start the game captured by the Nazis. Playing cards are used to guide your story told in flashbacks of love, success, misfortune and deaths with the people you worked alongside. Ultimately in the final session you discover who lives, who dies and who tells their stories.

This game gives you an opportunity to tell your own stories of courage and sacrifice and to honour the women who did it for real.