Cowboys & Dinos II: Session 4

It was mostly single encounter that took a bit longer than expected. Still wish we could play this face to face - I'd buy a bucket of those cheap dinosaurs and probably use Lego minifigs :)

 Anyway: the evening goes well, and other than the noises of scavengers working on the downed T-Tex almost a mile behind them, nothing happened overnight. It was a cold, cloudy night. Hambone salted some of the T-Rex meat, and they had roasted T-Rex steaks for dinner once it was dark enough so that the smoke would not be visible.

Before the break of dawn, leaving their dinos (and Smitty's mule) back at the campsite, they attempt to sneak up on the cabin in the dark. Only Lee, the martial artist, managed this, with two characters rolling 20s (which is a critical fail. I've been a little haphazard with rolls but will explain my logic at the end of the post). I indicated that this as far enough away from the cabin that they are being sneaky enough at this distance. I need to handle fail forward a bit better, but I punted.

The cabin has a light on, and the smell of bacon is wafting through the air. I let them roll again as now they are in sight of the small cabin and can see the outhouse behind it (which while I marked on the map, neglected to let anyone know what that box was). The roll was nearly identical, including Molly making a 2nd critical fail if I recall. She managed to walk through a spiderweb, and the spider was crawling across her face. Never a pleasant experience but worse when you can barely see the tree in front of you!

not exactly right but close enough!

Alerted, Clem comes out of the cabin, an oil lantern in hand, looking out into the woods. Lee makes an immediate attack, and so our side gets initiative as the people in the cabin were surprised. Brandishing his staff he knocks poor Clem down, who immediately drops the oil lantern. Which breaks and a small fire gets started underfoot. Hambone is getting closer, and Molly, Archibald and Smitty hang back but are still moving forward. Next round, Clem does not land a punch on Lee, but a rifle has broken through the window right next to the fight. Hambone sidles around the side of the house, inadvertently next to the outhouse. But there is no marshal inside, nor does he blow it up with dynamite. Lee gets shot at 3 times, twice getting hit but only once actually hit has he made his saving roll. He has a martial arts talent that allows him to save against ranged attacks. A critical save (this time a 20...yes, it gets a bit confusing!) means he actually gets a free action to move and attack. But he took a shot to the shoulder giving several points of damage. He also kills Clem, having moved to his "iron fists" which do more damage than his staff. And the fire grows a bit. 

The other window breaks out, and Archibald attempts to pull the rifle from Wanda (the 2nd rifle bearer). He missed his roll, so between the distance, the darkness, and seeing only part of Wanda and the rifle, he could not yank it from her arms. She fires blindly towards Hambone but misses all three times (she was rolling at a disadvantage between the dark and the ruckus in front). Somewhere along here Hambone yells at them to give it up quietly but they did not want to. 

Lee, after killing Clem, leaps through the window and succeeds in knocking down Bart. Hambone is moving around to the back of the cabin as there are no windows on the side he is on. Molly starts moving up to calm the horses, Smitty moves to put out the fire, and Archibald gets a bit closer. Lee and Bart are tussling, and Wanda decides that shooting into a melee combat may not do well for Bart. Hambone breaks into the back window but finds that it is a bedroom, and no visibility to anyone in the cabin. Molly gets a bucket and water from the trough and aids Smitty in putting out the fire. 

Eventually Lee gets Bart knocked out (he was using non-lethal force). Wanda is about to shoot when I think at this point Hambone got into the cabin and has his shotgun on her. The smell of burnt bacon fills the cabin.

They managed to get everyone all tied up, and Hambone is disgusted by the waste of bacon. They get back to their patient dinos and then back to Copper Peak. Along the way they pass a badly wounded triceratops. It was not tee same one as before. Deciding that it was too hurt for them to actually be able to heal it, and not wanting to use all his healing potions, they decide to let nature take its course. Then we remembered Lee was wounded, so rewound to get the first aid in. Archibald was willing to give a potion to heal him, but Lee can channel his chi once a day and do some healing. He was quite insistent on that. Dropping off the two living and one dead person, the collect a reward as they were all wanted. Most of them gave their money to Archibald to help him with his inventions, and they still had plenty from the last time they got bounties.

And that is where we left things.

How I am handling the rolls

Apex has a few rolls, and I seriously doubt I am doing it even remotely correctly. But what I do is that a roll that can be used against an attribute (remembering something, being sneaky) I use a "roll under the appropriate characteristic" so you want to roll low for that. Action checks (leaping through a window, and yes, there is a lot of overlap here!) uses the action roll which is a d6 and generally 4+ succeeds. There are some modifiers from traits or attributes. So there is some confusion on me asking them to sometimes roll low for something on a d20 vs having them roll high on a d6. And of course, fighting is a d20 roll and you need to roll above the armor class defense stat. 

How I am handling the NPCs

Not well. Not great (or even mediocre) at accents, and a bit overwhelmed with running the game to get the NPCs to do more than barely be there. Going to have to re-read those chapters in the several books I have for running games on techniques to improve that. I've got one NPC they will probably meet in a session or two, but poor Smitty is barely an outline of a character. 

And speaking of overwhelmed...

Running games, even with friends I know and trust, still causes me a bit of anxiety. I want to run a good and fun game and feel I really don't succeed well, and then there is this feedback loop from that. *sigh* And I think I am getting worse at social anxiety, which is related, but not sure if it is really something or just me being a hypochondriac. Which is another feedback loop! It is not helping that I had a conversation with my boss, who is fighting to not lose anyone in our department. Which is already running far too lean. And I managed to drown my work Mac laptop - knocked my tea all over it. And I use travel mugs when near computers for that very reason! But it had just been topped off, and I had not closed off the top. So, I have guilty feelings about that. But I did tell him what happened. He does say I have a "brutal honesty". Can't help it...As I told my coworker: the advantage of getting older is that some of the filters do come off. the disadvantage of getting older is that some of the filters do come off.

Yes, sometimes I am a mess! A self-aware mess at least. At least I think - wonder what I am missing about myself?!

Anyway, I'll try & cover the next section of the T5.10 Book 2 soon. Though we may have a Fantasy Trip game this weekend at my house. I do have a few things ready that should take up the afternoon we get to play, as I mentioned in a previous post. Using stuff I have!