Cowboys & Dinosaurs - Session 8

With the disadvantage that Molly & Volgol caused, and using the Apex chase rules, our heroes got to the 50+ head of dinosaurs being herded to Aurora well before the rustlers. A mix of mostly triceratops with some raptors. there were also about 10 Indians driving the herd. Molly got in touch with the Indians, and fortunately at least 1 spoke English. After a quick conference, she took back off to find her friends while one of the Indians peeled back to get behind the rustlers. 

Catching up to Hambone, Jack and Lee, Molly got everyone caught up. Soon, the thunder of dinosaurs trotting along was heard and our characters set themselves up. The herd started getting through, with Jack stationed behind some boxwoods on one side, Lee on the other, and Hambone moving forward a bit more. Molly circled above and was the initial target of the 8 rustlers. Using her dodge skill, and despite several volleys, she managed to get through the round unscathed. Shooting back, she got a hit or two in, then Jack, Lee and Hambone started shooting as well. It was a bit difficult to choreograph what was happening, but I used another Google drawing to get at least an abstract idea of where everyone was.

The battle was again fairly short, and again, only Jack got hit. He is a magnet for bullets apparently, I rolled for each rustler as to who he would shoot at, and the only ones that hit were shooting at Jack. Even with disadvantage for being behind some cover (and I need to see if there are actual rules for that: either disadvantage or increase the defense value would both be viable options). He got hit twice for some fairly serious damage, but between Hambone's barbering skills and Lee's acupuncture and knowing the chi points, he was close to being fully healed in short order. And Lee finally got to use one of the martial arts skills to avoid getting shot after he was shot: he has that ability if he makes a successful save which he did.

While the post-battle cleanup was going on, a lone horse was heard galloping up. Eventually they see it is Sister Cicely, the nun Hambone kissed. She was off chasing after "her" man. And now dressed in a gingham dress. Hambone was a tad flummoxed and the others tried to stay away. While his attempts are explaining things were not going well, along came Father McClurty, Bible in one hand and a rifle in the other. How he was riding his horse is a question that was never answered.

Father McClurdy

More discussions, and eventually the good Father and hopefully the once-and-future sister Cicely head back to Aurora, Hambone promising to have a talk when he gets back. They were going to take the rustlers I think, but now I am not so certain. There was a fair amount of fun role playing in this, though I am still having a hard time running NPCs well. Good enough but I want to have more nuance. 

And there we left that session - another battle, some actual damage this time, and everyone got to use some trait or ability, I think.

Now, they are heading to Bliss Springs, which at the pace Puddin and Milly go, will take a couple of weeks or so.

While Molly can do this in a few hours on Volgol, the others not quite so fast. For playing, we have a couple choices: summarize the journey or play each day. Sort of like Traveller jump: do you role-play the week in jump space, or suddenly it is a week later (which may have been the real-life cadence of a lot of players back in the day: end the session as your ship goes into jump, get back a week later to play and it is almost living Traveller!) 

I do have one book Wondrous Expeditions - Woods from Kickstarter that has travel rules, but I've yet to really read it and pretty sure (1) it is mostly fantasy oriented and (2) is woods, not the rough lands of Utah. Which does have some woods, so maybe I do need to read it and see if I can get anything out of it that may apply. And see if I have other resources covering the journey. I'll try and decide this weekend on how I want to handle it, and if any of my players reading this (as I do send the link when I post the update) have a preference, let me know! I see 3 options at the moment:

1. we arrive near John Chisum's, a day away, after 10-14 days of travel
2. we have a couple encounters, one per session, and arrive near John Chisum's in 2 or so sessions
3. we play the next 10-14 days of travel, which may take 1+ sessions depending on things

Options 2 and 3 are almost identical...except that with 2 I'd just have some plot-point encounters, and 3 means I really need to expand out my random encounter table! Yay, tables! Maybe a hex map for a crawl! Regardless, I have plenty of options thanks to players emailing me with some ideas. Which I will now re-read this weekend to see what sort of options there are that could be fun. It may be better to have them level up before getting to Chisum's!

We've also played long enough that the next session or two should have at least a couple players leveling up, so that is good. Though I feel that there has not been a lot of the cohesiveness I was trying for in this game, we are moving along. Which was one of my goals: run a game long enough to have players level up in what I think is a fairly organic way. I've played some games where the GM had us level up almost every session, and I am not a fan of that. Except for those one shot or short-run games. Of course, I also come from playing Traveller and there was not really any leveling up. Anyway, thinking the end of next session we'll have maybe half the group get bumped up enough. I want to run long enough so that everyone levels up, so at least 2 more sessions. Maybe a lot more as long as everyone is having fun and wants to play on.