The Empire of Texas - Session #3 Notes




Players

CosmicOrrery is Captain Kelly Branson of the Texas Imperial Army.
My friend Jack is Chuck Dalton, back on his feets.

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NPCs
Simone and her townsfolk of the Cacti Earthships, about fifty(?) strong.
Old Man McCarthy, a wise hermit
The Band of the Jackal, vicious mercenaries.

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On the night of Day 10, they found the scene of a shootout, a small fortune in gold, heroin and marijuana.
They took it all and trekked further into the desert, still without rations.

Day 11 - Uneventful trek through the desert, in the company of hunger and thirst. Vultures trail the party.

Day 12 - Reached the town of Anjo. Earthship in the desert surrounded by adobe round houses.
Traded clothes, some weapons, ammunition and a horse for food (rolled 2d20 x10 worth of rations, then rounded up as they sweetened the deal with half the crate of weed). After a night of proper rest, they move on towards the desert armed with further knowledge about the area and supposedly enough food and water to hopefully make it through most of the desert.

Day 13 - 14 - 15 - Uneventful trek through the desert, mostly focused on simple logistics. Morale is good, the weather is clement. Eventually they reach a small oasis of PALM TREES (which grow in the southwest part of North America, despite our American player's protests to the contrary), ripe with fish, wild rodents and a nearby cabin to the west where a hermit told them to steer clear of his property when they made themselves known as imperial soldiers.

Day 16 - They realize they are being followed by a fast-moving troupe of at least a dozen armed men.
They keep riding through the night, towards the great boulder the people of Anjo indicated as a landmark to orient themselves towards the mountain pass as they near the Sheer Madre mountain range. They arrive in the morning of the next day.

Day 17 (31.12) - In the morning they secure the perimeter near the hill, ensuring they keep the high ground and solid cover from their wagons should a fight break out. Kelly and Merriweather ride out to meet the larger band in the desert plains. They realize the men have hostages - they are using five of the children from Anjo as human shields, and are also carrying with them Simone, the leader of the community they traded and socialized with two nights ago. The men are well-armed, one of them is carrying a modern scoped assault rifle, the others have rifles. Their leader, a hairless, smiling, pale giant, waves for Kelly and lets them know how things will go:

The party is to surrender the stolen property which rightfully belongs to the Lord of the Desert.
They are to surrender their weapons, ammunition, food and water, as well as pick one of their own to die as punishment for theft. Failure to comply will result in the hostages' deaths, and then their own.

The players begin to strategize as they bail back to their fortified high ground, and frantically discuss how to deal with the situation out of character as we reach the end of session 3.

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The Dead - No one died this session.
Sister Jessica Wiley - killed by Donovan Langley on day 3.
Donovan "Donnie" Langley - shot by Chuck Dalton, Private Solomon & Father Finch on day 3.
Jessica "Jessie" Reynolds - killed in the skirmish on day 5.
John R. Solomon - killed in the skirmish on day 5.
Eight from Cinnal, four of them women - killed in the skirmish or left to die in its aftermath on day 5.

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Cosmic's Notes
3x wagons (four horses each)
250 doses of Amber Fluid
66 food
66 water
12 lances
12 revolvers
9 rifles
160 rifle rounds
193 revolver rounds
1x jerrycan of gasoline
300 gold ingots
20 kilograms of heroin
1/2x crate of weed
1 shotgun
4 shotgun slugs
~ low on medical supplies
19x horses
3x soldiers
6x convicts
Everyone is starving (count as injured)
In total : 48 (28 doubled because desert) mouths to feed & water per day

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Some Game Moderator Notes

Last time I used HQRPG (Ben Lehman) mechanics for handling the outcomes of surgery, it turned out to be somewhat tedious in play and didn't add much so at the very beginning of play I asked Chuck's player if he'd rather "finish" rolling for the infection chances daily until his character died or got better, or leave it to a coin toss. He picked the latter and survived. I added that from there on we will not add extra rules for the aftermath of violence, and rather favor conversation, context and perhaps the Non-Violence rules (d20 over TN depending on context) for field surgery as I still feel it shouldn't come as a guarantee that you'll survive a firefight in this setting. Oh, we used the Non-Violence rules, when Chuck tried to sneak up to the old man's cabin, I rolled a d20 against a 15+ as the old man was already aware and wary of the party, he failed - didn't tell them about the dice roll just dealt with it on my end and sticked to describing things in plain english as I've been doing the same for violence sequences.

The game continues to be a breeze to GM. Pattern-seeking brain naturally finds way to tie things together and it feels organic rather than engineered at the table, procedural stuff and pacing does it all, feels very player-driven while at the same time the environment is just so harsh that there is constant antagonism to provide tension. The quiet days in retrospect felt like the calm before the storm. Cosmic mentioned how each session has had a different feel so far and I agree - what I especially dig is that I don't really do much before a game. I just check the nearby hexes quickly and read them again when they explore. One thing I did change / interpret fairly loosely, is the distance between relevant POIs in the marked hexes. Because a lot of hexes are empty but I wanted to keep some sense of agency when they're not following a trail, I consider that the party can send a small group ride out to wherever the scout looked at in a nearby hex during the Evening shift, at no further penalty (so it doesn't count as forced march). This has so far allowed the players to always have something to do and the few days of quiet have been a nice contrast without ever being boring. The emptiness provides much needed respite, on the contrary.

Because next session might be the last depending on how things go, I've pitched Wolves Upon the Coast as the next game we might pick up, though part of me is rooting for the characters' gang. I've committed to playing the Jackal and his men as worthy opponents that will surely demand a very clever plan to deal with, as they're the first party that outguns and outnumbers our "heroes". We've also begun to re-assess lines & veils and expectations when it comes to how to play out what might happen next as we overall agree on how ruthless these very bad people might get depending on how the next session goes.

 “When the lambs is lost in the mountain, he said. They is cry.
Sometime come the mother. Sometime the wolf.”
-Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy


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