Week three of Knights of the Road, Knights of the Rail. As discussed in my last post, the train in New Mexico blew a boiler seal, so three of my 'boes traveled to a nearby farmhouse to seek shelter from the night.

The groups I have together are very well-matched. My trifecta enjoys roleplaying the simple stuff and does some fun actor stance gaming. The two Wobblies spent the train ride trying to recruit the would-be singer into the I.W.W. Once they got off the train they realized they had to formulate a story to explain why a twenty-something woman was in the company of two men. One of them told the rancher she was his sister, so I'm going to use this as a story hook there. But back to the game. From there I made the pitch to put them on the cattle drive, and they went for it. One of them had to learn the basics of riding a horse, so I had him rolling a lot to see how he did. The other two rolled a few times since they decided they had a little familiarity with horses.

As the cattle drive starts, I figure it will play out in about 2-3 sessions. I plan to throw a few Bangs at them and put a couple of them into the Yonder to meet Pecos Bill.

The other pair played out a scenario from my book, The Neverending Night. They took refuge from a dust storm in an abandoned shack, where I decided to set up a haint. The haint was the replaying of a single night in which the man of the house killed his supposedly cheating wife and then killed his 2 young children. Any attempt to leave the shack resulted in them coming back in through the front door. Yes, that forced their hands, but they played it well. They tried to back out the door, walk out of other doors, go through the window.

The first night, one of the 'boes was taken for one of the children and shot in the living room. The second time, both tried to make a lot of noise to disrupt the haint and both were shot. Each time they tried to leave, their wounds were healed up and they had to start the cycle again. The third time, they went into the kitchen where the argument started. They followed the man into the bedroom and saw the two children dead. That was when they realized that the haint was caused by the children, not the father. They remembered that the voices were never very clear and that there were always three shotgun blasts. So the fourth night, they went to the bedroom and got the children out through the window. The next morning they woke up and left the house, putting glyphs all over it.

This pair also did a lot of actor stance work. So I'm starting to see more that this game brings out some fun "conversational" role playing. We were, up to now, more active with D&D, so it was more tactical and there was less characterization. But since combat in KOTR2 isn't really stressed, tactics shift over to a more social setting.

All in all, I'm really pleased with how the finished game is turning out.