Night Witches — Soviet women flying WWII night bombing raids

"By day: paperwork, gossip and love. By night: a plywood biplane over German lines."

Dice2d6 + stat

Players3–5

Prep~15 min

Foundry VTTNone

Complexity

What is this system

Jason Morningstar's Night Witches runs on the Apocalypse World engine and follows the real all-women night bomber regiment of World War Two. Two hundred women and girls in outdated Po-2 biplanes flew against the invaders for 1,100 consecutive nights, and the Germans called them Nachthexen — "night witches". Play splits into Day (life on the airfield) and Night (combat sorties), and the GM role passes around the table.

Is it for your table?

Pick it if

you want a historical war drama about the real women bomber pilots
your group enjoys mixing airfield politics by day with deadly sorties by night
you like rotating the GM role around the table

Skip it if

you want escapist adventure with little historical weight
your players dislike heavy themes like grief, sexism and wartime loss
you want a tactical air-combat simulation

Setting

The Eastern Front of World War Two. The regiment flies from open fields right behind the front line. To each other they are sisters; to the Red Army Air Force, an infuriating feminist sideshow — with political officers and the NKVD always watching. Play it as a single two-hour session or as a campaign that follows the regiment across the whole war.

What it looks like at the table

Night, a sortie. You're the lead navigator guiding the flight to the target: Wayfind, 2d6 + Skill (+1). You roll 4 and 3 — total 8, a partial hit. You find the target, but choose a consequence: you're banged around — 2 harm, split with your pilot however you like. Now the bombing run: Attack Run, 2d6 + Guts (+1), you roll 6 and 4 — 11! The payload connects, but even a full hit means choosing one consequence: you and your fellow airwoman are marked. At dawn, the Debrief: you tell the Chief of Staff what went right and what went wrong, and decide who you now feel differently about.

Playstyle

Narrative Combat Historical

Key mechanics

Day and Night

Day has its own moves: scrounging what you need, acting up like a hooligan or a lady, reaching out to someone. Good day moves feed a shared Mission Pool that helps your rolls on the night's sortie.

The sortie, step by step

Night plays almost like a mini-game: find the target (Wayfind, +Skill), bomb it (Attack Run, +Guts), survive the flak (Enemy Fire, +Luck) and land a damaged Po-2 (Wheels Down). Every partial hit leaves scars.

Marks and Medals

Stats are Skill, Guts, Luck and Medals. Marks are the war's toll on the psyche: give your aircraft a personality, acquire a superstition, suffer the death of a friend. Take too many Marks and the only one left is death.

Rotating GM

The GM role moves around the table: if your pilot is killed or hospitalized, you take the GM's chair for a while. The "Moving West" advance also makes whoever takes it the new GM.

What people say

The effort that Bully Pulpit put into their research is obvious and admirable— Seamus Conneely, Cannibal Halfling Gaming

Art & materials