Say "Yes" to Dynamite! - One-Shot

So in this post earlier I explained a framing device for campaigns. I used it for a one-shot as a test tonight, though. The players liked the premise of being gunslinger lawmakers in a fantasy desert land. They started in the little border town of Rozwood near the Badlands. We had little back-and-forth exchanges before and during the game to establish setting details as needed, and with that extra encouragement the players were more prone to adding their own twists to scenes or leaning into the description of their successes (not failures as that was usually my prerogative - out of habit more than intention really).

Here's a quick recap of what went down: the adventure began properly when a rebel soldier walked into the saloon grieviously wounded. He was of the Bone Folk, a people with transparent skin, muscles and organs, which brought to him a mix of cruel apathy and underlying hatred from the backwater locals. Things quickly turned rowdy with three desperadoes when Judge Bill intervened to protect the wounded soldier. A quick and tense fight mixing brawling, knife throwing and gun-totting went down - we played beat by beat, in slow-motion. After one guy got his throat slashed the barman "defused" the situation with a shotgun and the Judges ran off to get the wounded soldier to a doctor. Later on that day when he came back to his senses, they learned that he was a scout for General Rex of the rebel army, and that they were on their way here, on a train. He had been attacked by people from the woods wielding spears and bows. They decided to go investigate the woods on lizardback on the same night, bringing along Robert McNorf, an anthropologist from Leng, to the eastern, more urbanized part of the country. The talks with the wood people went well, offerings of crabs and alcohol were made, and the judges were invited to meet She Who Looks to the Sky for Answers, a venerable woman living in symbiosis with an ancient tree growing inside the inhabited caves. They were invited to a banquet, ate some medicinal/sacred plants and drinks, had a little freakout moment when it seemed like the game turned into Call of Cthulhu, then realized they were tripping balls and avoided any faux-pas. Eventually it was agreed that the train would be left alone as long as the woods were left undisturbed and tributes were paid regularly since the passage of the train would disturb the hunts. In addition, Looks to the Sky also asked the Judges to go hunt some monstrous beasts that had taken the lives of some of her warriors. They agreed, but decided to first go meet General Rex. At his camp by the stopped train, they explained everything that went down and he refused to pay tributes, giving them dynamite instead and asking them to betray the tribesfolk's trust. They said yes to get the dynamite, grabbed a few soldiers to help in the hunt, and went on to fight the beasts. The beasts' fight was also pretty exciting and horrific, they looked like barnacles with human heads and crab legs, with long spindly arms and massive hands, and they were magically strong to an extent that whatever living thing they touched tore like paper with the slightest pressure. Lots of dynamite and gunpowder later, the pair of beasts were dead and Judge Billy's face and right hand were scorched. Bringing back the corpses, they were offered rewards as well as thanks: the priestess carved the symbol of the Black Goat of the Woods on Bill's cheek, speeding up his recovery, and Judge Guy got some junk, I forgot what exactly. Since they still had a rebel soldier alongside them they gave up on offering the dynamite to the tribesfolk and sold it on the market place instead, arming rozwood for later troubles. They also arranged with the mayor and townsfolk for a tribute to be regularly paid and for the wood people to be left alone.

So when I said I'd do a fantasy western, I meant I wanted to play with guns and the wild west mythos stuff while extracting the difficult historical baggage around it. Turns out, it's not that easy, as I felt the general social dynamics between the people of the woods and the rebel army were a little iffy to play out. So palette-swapping and trying to not bring up some stuff just plain did not work, lesson learned. Other than that, the general atmosphere was fun and visually dense, although players remarked everyone was kind of one-note and pretty much a cliché character from a spaghetti western. It's sort of a setting idea that I love on paper but have very little actual understanding of the context thereof to really do justice to.

Mechanics-wise, for mysterious reasons I can't really explain, doing a 2d6 vs 2d6 roll-off thing led me to intuitively rely more on dice rolls than usual. It's not that the specific dice thing doesn't work, it's that some system frameworks make me want to roll more, some less. The players liked it a lot, while I thought it kind of made resolutions more "wishy washy"? It's unclear what exactly bothered me there, but I know I prefer to avoid rolling in most cases. Made me want to do more 24XX again as so far that one has been working for everyone in my group.

I know my update schedule isn't reliable but for once I figured I'd let people know - I'll be away doing some training for my black belt (for September, fingers crossed) for a week, so I won't have time for tRPGs let alone blogging. Maybe after that I can try and force myself to post a bit more regularly or something, I've been craving more tRPG goodness in my life lately.