Cowboys and Dinos II: Session 2

Travelling northward, the pace is dictated by the Puddin ' Pace as an ankylosaurus is rarely in a rush as well as being loaded down with Hambone's camping and barbering paraphernalia. Molly and Volgol head to Copper Peak, the letter from the caravan leader, Carl, in hand. She gets there late afternoon, winds from the south helping Volgol fly a bit faster. Getting her flying dino set up, she checks in at the post office to find Anaconda Mining, where Marcus Daly (not yet the Copper King), has his offices.

An officious Reginald let's our heroine know he is at the smelter, checking on the copper output but would be back at the office about 6. Not willing to leave the letter with an underling, she indicates she will be back with the letter to properly deliver it. Moving about town, she gets rooms at the Dusty Boot, a small hotel that is right in the middle of pricing. She reserves spaces in the stables (and dino stables are really large!) and awaits the group.

Which is finally approaching, Puddin' taking the occasional bite of grass as he plods along, Pachy and Lee just about dizzy from going back and forth while scouting ahead, and Archibald and Archimedes keeping Hambone and his dino company. The rain is starting to hit pretty hard as they find Molly, who now makes arrangements to get Volgol off the water tower eyrie and into a covered barn. It takes a bit longer than they expect, and Molly is a bit late to the mining offices. Marcus Daly is still in, so she hands off the letter. Marcus reads it, harrumphs a few times and asks about the raiders. After explaining how they helped out, he thinks they could make a good team for guarding the copper caravans. They are getting hit a bit more often, and a flying scout as well as well-armed guards may well be warranted. Molly hands him a business card, and she leaves.

The group meets up with Sheriff John Watson. Lee is wanting any information on Fuentes, the bad guy he is after. The sheriff knows of him but does not know anything about him passing through. He does know that Mason Fuentes was a sharpshooter in the Civil and is an ace shot: can shoot the wings off a fly at a hundred paces". Though he does know Smitty, and Smitty is a source of a lot of information the sheriff can use. He is usually at the Rusty Pickaxe on Fridays, so the group heads there along with the sheriff to see if they can get any info. Hambone lets Molly wear is very heavy bear fur coat as it will keep the rain out. Sheriff Watson thinks Hambone is a find father and no one corrects the impression.

Sheriff John Watson

The bar is a bit more empty than normal for a Friday, what with the rain. Molly takes off her coat and takes a seat at the bar where she can watch. Sheriff Watson finds Smitty at the bar, and he, Lee and Archibald take a table to talk with the snitch. Lee offers a beer and $2, a rich haul, after Smitty at first cannot recall anything. With the aid of a beer and cash, he recalls that Mason Fuentes has a place outside of New Harmony - some plot of land that a woman bought almost 20 years ago but never showed up to claim. Despite another $1, Smitty does not know who the woman was.

Hambone meantime, noticing that one lone customer seemed to be showing a bit more interest in the conversation, wandered over and started a conversation. Which ended up in a few hands of poker, which Bruce, a heavy-set man, thought Hambone was cheating at. Reaching for his gun, Hambone sets Betty, his sawed-off shotgun, on the table. Roll for initiative...

the Rusty Pickaxe (not sure where I found this map)

Bruce gets initiative but manages to roll a 1 on the d20 (traditional d20 to roll high. I get a bit confused as the previous game was roll low for better results. Why the Traveller 5 dice pool thing still confuses me!). His shot goes really wild, shattering the window behind Hambone. Yet the piano player plays on...

Lee, seeing this, moves extremely quickly and manages to both disarm and lock down Bruce before Hambone gets a shot off, and the sheriff is still moving from the table. His arm about to break, Bruce admits to working sometimes for Fuentes. He does say that there is a cabin up in the woods that Fuentes stays at when passing through, but he is not there. Sheriff Watson takes Bruce to jail to wait for the travelling judge for pulling a gun and attempting to shoot Hambone. 

All this time, a well-dressed woman on the stairs watched, and finally comes down the table. Introducing herself as Juanita, she is glad that Bruce is getting locked up. He has been rough with her girls before and is no longer a customer of hers. But Bruce or Mason had managed to steal her diary, and she believes it is up at the cabin. She offers a reward for the diary, with the caveat that she does not want anyone to read her personal notes.

Juanita

And that is where we left the game.

A few things: Archibald needs some attention here, and I need to figure out how to make sure he has things to do as well. And I have some ideas about that diary in fact - may be more than a simple MacGuffin. And I feel I am stumbling in running this game as well. I could blame work, which is always an issue, especially as I was on call that evening so had to check on things. I feel I am good at background and setting up things, not so much actually running them. Some games run well, I know, but I felt this session was not particularly good. 

Anyway - need to see about a cabin in the woods, and I have a couple ideas there for that as well. Some of this was based on a site for generating random wild west game plots (which I can no longer find. For whatever reason I rarely bookmark stuff anymore. as I can usually just find it) While it said AI, I really feel it is probably like most generators and a list of words and combinations to apply to those words.