We left the second session on a cliff hanger: the Apex Queen, chugging slowly up river, was being followed by three large ripples in the water! Turns out these were 3 mosasaurs which are detailed in the Apex books following our crew, hoping for dinner perhaps.
This was also an experiment in handling the combat. I needed to know where people were on the boat, and where these river creatures were coming from. So I dropped a few things on a Google drawing, and did a share screen (which is where my issues came to the fore: I chose to not share computer sounds. While I thought that would prevent any alerts and odd noises my computer may make it also served to mute the microphone. I was not being ignored - I was not broadcasting!). Anyway, once all that got settled, Ilsa starts shooting her Mauser at the beasts. This only served to create creases in one of them, and also served to get him a bit angry. Ace was piloting the boat, Archie throwing more wood into the boiler to maximize the boat speed, which is still slower than the mosasaurs. Of course, Dr. Tong immediately recognizes them as Mosasaurus missouriensis first, then realizes he may be better off shooting his police pistol.
Isla managed to do a small bit of damage (those dinos have a reduction of 4 for their thick skin, and her gun does 1d6 of damage so he needed to roll a 5 or 6 to hurt them). Dr. Tong's shots did a bit more damage (the police gun is a 1d8 and shoots 3 rounds vs 2 for the Mauser). With blood flowing freely now, one of the other mosasaurs decides that his meal is swimming beside him, and the water erupts into bloody waves as the two tussle. The other is moving alongside and closing in, eying Dr. Tong. Archie is doing the best he can on the boiler (makes a good roll so nothing explodes!). We also start the chase mechanics here. Archie has a +1 due to his mechanical abilities. Ace is swerving and piloting, and they move a bit ahead of the remaining mosasaur. Who tries to get a bite on our academic but misses (a chomp attack would, if he failed his save, take him into the river!). More gunshots as Ace is frantically piloting the boat and Archie is stoking the fire to even higher temperatures. The beast is wounded several times, but with 43 hit points, it is a slow job. Yet Archie makes good chase rolls vs the mosasaur not so good. With a final tail attack that does hit the boat but does no damage to the stern, and sorely wounded, the remaining mosasaur decides that this meal is too expensive and swims off. And a good thing as Dr. Tong was also out of ammunition.
The ammo tracking is pretty interesting: each weapon has a reload die. After each round of use, you roll that die and if you roll a 1, go to the next die down. The police pistol starts with a d8, then d6, then d4. He fired enough to be out of ammo whereas Ilsa never rolled a 1 so had constant ammo. Makes it more cinematic and less accounting for every bullet or arrow. It may be a mechanic I borrow for other games (as tracking ammo, unless you are running a very crunchy simulation game, is not a lot of fun).
They continue on a bit, and using Tong's map,get past the relatively small falls and find a good place for the night to settle in. As they do that, Tong realizes that during the battle, there was an odd glow in one of his pockets. Reaching inside, he finds an ancient coin. Both he & Isla recognize it as the Sixth Pentacle Of Mars from King Solomon's Pentacles. He has no idea where that came from. Realizing there may be more, he quickly strips down (and I never asked just how far down he stripped!) but discover no more coins. And that is where we ended the game.
A few things. The chase mechanic was worked a bit better this time I think. We had a boat and two people were working that while the remaining two were shooting. I like to think there was a bit of tension going on. Especially as those mosasaurs can take a lot of damage and hand guns are not too effective against them. Though I do need to recheck a couple of things: I think we forgot to add +2 for Isla's Mauser for damage as well as hitting as that is her favored weapon. I again used my ancient Traveller response rolls, and after enough blood was in the river, the healthy mosasaur took after the shot up one. Had all 3 continued the attack it could have been a total party kill. The final one missed our good academic due to that mysterious coin he now has as well as a sucky roll.
The coins are from a Kickstarter, and as with the maps, I miss playing at a table as I like handouts. I've decided to also get a bit more occult as well as pulpy here, so throwing in a mysterious coin that helps the academic stay alive should hopefully trigger checks by the other players to check for coins.
I picked out a few coins based on what they were purported to do. There are plans, and there are reasons why those coins showed up.
And there should be two more days on the river unless something happens. And I've a few things that could happen based on how we play and player reactions. Then they need to cover those badlands, get past deep crevasses and through a mountain pass to the volcanic valley with the temple and the mythical crystal is. And beat the Nazis who are a day behind them but in a faster boat.
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