The Storming of the Bastille [95x55] (free version)

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The fourteenth of July is approaching and I have finally finished a map that I had been planning for ages :)

A few words about the Bastille myth with some worldbuilding ideas

It is quite interesting that some events can be given very exaggerated meaning in memory, which could also be reflected in the worldbuilding. Imagine you continue a campaign 60 years later and there are big celebrations for the events of the last time. But no one remembers how your heroes deafeated a great conspiracy deep in a dungeon, but instead the people celebrate how some drunken townspeople lynched a nobleman and thus "liberated" the kingdom. In the case of the Bastille, this is a polemical exaggeration, but here too, a very overrated event is remembered very fondly. There was a massacre when the crowd went to the first courtyard, then the Bastille was threatened with cannons and besieged and negotiations took place. The fortress commander had threatened to blow up the large gunpowder depot and half of Paris, but then surrendered without a fight. The gate was opened and all the prisoners were freed (a total of seven). At the end the commander and some of his soldiers were barbarously massacred on the streets of Paris. Far more important for the constitutional development of the revolution were previous declarations by the National Constituent Assembly that citizens were allowed to arm themselves. Nor was the Bastille the first armed clash. In the days before, there had already been bloody clashes in which citizens armed themselves. The Bastille itself gained its significance primarily through its symbolic meaning, which made it so easy for the later culture of remembrance to develop it into the core of the revolution.

Gameplay ideas

1. Give your heroes a motivation to storm the Bastille and make it a longer quest. To achieve their goal, they need various things:

An angry crowd: This could be achieved through public speeches. Populist speeches in particular are particularly good for inciting a mob.

The crowd must be armed: Do you buy the weapons? Do you ask the army and try to convince them, or do you storm a few weapons depots.

The army must be kept away from the Bastille or made to defect: Here you can give speeches again or actively instigate street fights. (Sidenote on how to convince soldiers: During the Russian Revolution, many soldiers deserted after being forced to shoot at their own people. So sacrifice a few citizens to get the army to fall over)

Then you can move to the Bastille and use the mass of the crowd in a fulminant fight to either negotiate or storm it.

2. Alternativly one could use the storming as a backdrop but not as the primary goal of your heroes. For example, your heroes could be tasked with killing an important and dangerous prisoner there as unnoticed as possible. Other people from an enemy group are also in the crowd and their goal is to free the prisoner and bring him to safety. The heroes may have to help to storm the bastille, but their real goal is to find the prisoner as quickly as possible while camouflaged in the crowd during the storm. They have to fight against defenders and also be cautious of people in the crowd, as their real enemies are lurking there. And if you unfortunately have to end the session early or the heroes have taken too much time, then the fortress commander may have set fire to the powder chamber and blown up half of Paris.

3. Or I would suggest changing the perspective and putting your heroes in the position of the "evil" defenders. How do they behave in the face of a huge crowd of people who want to storm their fortress and take their lives?

Have fun again with a historical map (I hope some of you are interested in it too) and see you next map!

-Your AtaraxianBear

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The assets used here are exclusively from Crosshead. Here you can get his assets: https://www.patreon.com/Crosshead