Fleets: La Royale
Author’s Notes
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
July 2023

With our Second Great War alternative history, we get the chance to build an entire world, one sort of like ours, but different. And then fill it with stories. That’s what makes a game fun, its story. You get to sit around a table and create the tale, with each scene unfolding as you move pieces and roll dice.

Sourcebooks like Fleets of the Second Great War: La Royale are all about filling out the world, to make the games more fun to play. Those pretty blue French pieces should represent more than just their printed game values. They need to tell a story.

La Royale is the third sourcebook we’ve done for Fleets of the Second Great War, and it’s a little different. Imperial Germany covered ships that did not see action during the actual Second World War; some of the oldest vessels did participate in the First World War, but had been sunk or scrapped before the outbreak of the Second. In Imperial Russia, a very few of the old First World War era vessels soldiered on to serve the Soviets, but almost all of the ships covered there are brand-new inventions (based on actual plans, but still were never built).

France represents a different sort of topic, and that’s probably why I wrote the other two volumes first. We’ve presented the Second Great War mostly as expansions to existing games, not as stand-alone games playable by themselves (there’s one exception, Tropic of Capricorn). When I design them, I usually try to make use of existing ship pieces as much as possible, so we can use the added pieces for totally new vessels.

The French fleet includes both brand-new ships (based on actual proposed designs) and ships that really existed and are drawn from other games (Bismarck or The Middle Sea, for the most part). That means to give full coverage in La Royale, we’re talking about both proposed designs (like the Alsace-class fast battleships), ships that really did exist (the Dunkerque-class battle cruisers), and ships that did exist in reality, but received a much more extensive upgrade for the Second Great War (the Bretagne-class dreadnoughts).

The French fleet of the Second Great War is much larger than that of the First World War, because it plays a very different role as an instrument of state policy. France in this alternative history is a revisionist power, its leaders determined to overthrow the international order laid down by Wilson’s Peace. In our alternative history, Woodrow Wilson negotiates an end to the First World War in December 1917, allowing the old empires of Central and Eastern Europe to survive (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Turkey and Russia). France gains a sliver of Lorraine and has nothing else to show for over one million killed in action.

France in this world is a corporate-fascist state, under the iron rule of the Solidarité Française party, which is closely linked to Benito Mussolini’s fascists. State-controlled media preach undying hatred for Germany, and for the Jews who denied France the well-earned fruits of her victory in the First Great War. Major corporations with links to the party pay low taxes and face little regulation, and even less threat of penalty should they ignore what few restraints exist. The French budget is propped up by heavy borrowing, with Italian, Russian, British and American investors heavily involved thanks to generous interest rates. War is not only seen as inevitable, it’s a central part of French economic and government policy.

Toward that end, this French government has invested even more heavily in its military than that of our reality. They’ve poured francs into their land and naval forces on a massive scale, calling on their populace to sacrifice in order to redeem the stolen victory of 1916. France has a military alliance with Italy and Russia, as well as some smaller states, but not with Britain – the Marine Nationale of this reality must plan to wage a North Atlantic naval war without British assistance. With Imperial Germany having invested heavily in its High Seas Fleet, France must do so as well.

A naval limitations agreement forged in Vienna in the early 1920’s provides some limits to spending on new construction, preventing national bankruptcy among the major naval powers. France can lay down one new battleship in every even-numbered year, and two battleships or three battle cruisers in every odd-numbered year. Any ships already on the slipways could be completed, and there are no limits on the reconstruction of older ships except that they cannot exceed the maximum displacement and armament of new ships (unless they already did so, before the treaty came into force).

The French have made maximum use of both provisions, building their full allotment of new ships and refurbishing their older warships. Most of the new ships appear in The Cruel Sea: their fast battleships and their rebuilt dreadnoughts and wartime battleships.

Others have yet to appear: rebuilt versions of Great War-era designs that appear in the Great War at Sea expansion Secret Treaties. And the naval treaty has a loophole allowing signatories to build smaller, less capable coast defense ships. That allows us to use some of the designs every navy put on the drawing boards in the 1920’s, when Britain proposed limiting battleships to 25,000 tons’ displacement and a maximum armament of 12-inch guns.

And France needs a lot of ships, with two major fleets (the Atlantic, seen in The Cruel Sea, and the Mediterranean, as yet to appear in the Second Great War), a smaller but still substantial fleet in Indo-China (also yet to appear) and a squadron in West Africa (that’s going to need a small stand-alone game of its own). Other world-wide commitments are fulfilled from those fleets.

And it’s a powerful fleet: 36 battleships and seven battle cruisers plus coast-defense ships, cruisers and destroyers. With the new Second Great War additions to the Marine Nationale’s actual lineup, there are plenty of ship classes to be covered. Each of them gets their story, their stats, and their schematics, just like we did with Imperial Germany and Imperial Russia.

You don’t need La Royale to play and enjoy The Cruel Sea or any of the other Second Great War at Sea games or expansions. That’s not its purpose. It gives substance to the story: you can look up the displacement and armament, when they were built, where they’re deployed in 1940 and what sister ships exist. There’s a nice schematic of most of the ships (way larger than the ones we put on the playing pieces, so the detail shows) and you can read the story of each class of ships.

All of that helps with suspending disbelief, helping you feel the story as you play the game. That’s what makes it fun.

You can order La Royale right here.

Storyteller’s Bookshelf
            The Second Great War
            Fleets: Imperial Germany
            Fleets: Imperial Russia
            Fleets: La Royale
Retail Price: $119.96
Package Price: $110.00
You can order the Storyteller’s Bookshelf right here.

Sign up for our newsletter right here. Your info will never be sold or transferred; we'll just use it to update you on new games and new offers.

Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children, and new puppy. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.

Want to keep Daily Content free of third-party ads? You can send us some love (and cash) through this link right here.