The Forge Archives

Hey again,

Session two of our Dust Devils game went last night, and things started hoppin'. You can see the original session, and setup, here. We left off with Jeb getting the low down on Maria's indiscretions while Sam Grace lurked outside the hotel; meanwhile Santiago had been handed some cash from Quinn to find the girl and the vase. Jeb headed out to confront Sam, attempting an ambush more or less, but Sam managed to escape after kicking some dirt into Jeb's eyes. As an aside, making the NPCs had been a lot of fun. Sam was this whipper snapper gun-dog with something to prove, and his traits ended up as twitchy as a rabbit and cold as stone. During their creation I had gone more for flavor in the traits than actual relevance, but I keep finding that in practice they're vital. The fact that they were made descriptive first without some preconceived notion of their application seems to broaden rather than limit it. Anyway, Santiago ends up making a search around the town for the woman, which he sort of blows, but narrates, and he takes the initiative to narrate himself into a confrontation with the ranch hand that found him over the body in the first scene. We'd already established Billy as not too bright, with a definite dislike for Mexicans. He finds him at a bar attached to one of the hotels, and Billy's loaded to the gills. After some less than witty slurred banter Santiago attempts to walk away; Billy won't have it. Santiago's player wins the hand and narration, roughing up Billy and having him leave in disgrace. Great stuff.

Jeb ends up squirreling Maria away at an abandoned church outside town and also works to nurse back some difficulty. His player made a pretty interesting statement that in his and Maria's big conflict from last time he probably should have had her do secondary difficulty to him in the narration. He'd decided that she's at least starting to get to him, and that the big conflict here may well become his burgeoning relationship with her and of course his devil. Santiago cases the town for the woman and ends up narrating a clue into existence at her abandoned hotel room. We carry that through and he's put on to the fact that she's with Jeb and they headed out of town. He ends up tracking them out to the church, and there's a tense scene between the two of them as Jeb tries to suss Santiago out, and Santiago tries to convince Jeb that he's looking to screw his 'employers' at this point. It looked after a bit that it may have been going going in circles and were looking for an out, so 'lo and behold over the hill comes Billy and few cohorts looking to get back at Santiago for the beating he laid on him. Guns blazing they both let loose on the ranch hands and make short work of them, though both of them take some minor difficulty from the fight. Billy's left over, stuck under his horse, and after a quick interogation he's given final justice by Redemption, Jeb's shotgun.

Santiago's sent off to get the sheriff and explain what happened since neither of them are inclined to get on J.V.'s bad side. After a bit of back and forth with a deputy he brings the sheriff and the doctor out to the fight scene. There's some discussion, the sheriff is rounded up folk's guns and preparing to get them all back to town. He calls for the woman, who Jeb goes to get, but Maria's not inclined to stay put and talk to the authorities. She's off on her horse and a conflict to catch her brings Santiago reigning her in. There's enough time before the deputies get there for another conflict and Maria talks Santiago into letting her go, while cutting a deal with him to share the vase. Everyone's humming at this point, but it's getting late and it's a good break point. We curtain for the evening, looks like three's the charm. We had a fair amount of devil interaction this time around, and we're all quickly becoming more comfortable with sharing the narrations. We had some excellent cross input from folks as individual narrations played out, and the characters and NPCs are really starting to pop.

Any questions or comments are welcome,

-Tim

Hi Tim,

Which, if any scenes or resolution-narrations brought a group-wide "thematic grunt" during play?

I suspect that the shotgun-execution might qualify, but did it? And did any others?

Best,
Ron

Hey Ron,

Pretty much the entirety of the Bill and the Gang scene resloution, both the shootout and the shotgun execution ending. Actually, the initial scene with Billy in the bar and the resultant fight worked as well. There was some approving, "Oh yeah, this is the fight that proves he's a badass before he ends up against the big bad guys." The other one that comes to mind actually came about as part of a difficulty recovery. Jeb had decided to do some target shooting to steady his nerves (guts recovery,) he did so successfully and was adamant about getting a cool scene for it after I'd made the mistake of glossing it. I ended up narrating him doing the shooting out at the old church with remnants of the cross and statuary. The players gobbled it up, it really placed the character for them and also gave the church some weight as this place that was riddled with the bullet holes of Jeb's occaissional shooting practice.

In total there were maybe half a dozen conflicts during the course of the session and a good half seemed to carry pretty good weight with the players. The others worked well enough too, so I think the momentum really built nicely. I was overall really happy with the vibe everyone was getting.

-Tim

Awesome use of recovery, Tim. I love that!

Otherwise, what can I say? I'm looking forward to reading about the third (final?) session.

QuoteAwesome use of recovery, Tim. I love that!

It was really the player's deal. He called for the method, he made sure I didn't drop the ball on giving him a cool scene. Again, I gotta say that this game is bang on fun! If folks haven't tried it, do yourself a favor and do so.

-Tim