I was considering running of Mr. Snyder’s Nine Worlds playtest last night but I sadly did not have time to get my head straight around the setting details I wanted and the intricacies of the rules to my satisfaction. Too busy trying to book myself a holiday for Christmas (it will be Peru, I think!).

So instead I used Dust Devils' introductory scenario at the back, The Hanged Man for inspiration, but with the players rolling up their own character’s before the session started. For a game location, I set the game in 1870 in Boot Hill 3rd edition’s fictional Promise City. The map from this game put Promise City in Texas, not two far from the Mexican Border.

Only it went a bit different from what I expected as one of the characters decided to do his own thing from the start. The other players seem to run with the flow, steered by their own motives. This player had generated a big and hairy character called Pinky Spider (err.. nasty image in my mind!) with high Guts and Heart, Quick as Lightnin' with Gunfightin' as a knack (not shootin'!). Which means while he may not be much good at shooting bottles or with adversaries at distance, but in their face he will either scare the crap out of them or blow them away at ranges of about 1' to 5'. His Devil? Hates The Sheep Lovin’ Sons Of Bitches, which he set at three.

The Sheriff, Tom Meredith just happened to have his family home outside of Promise City where he owned his own sheep farm then!
Given there were around 120,000 sheep in Texas in 1870 (according to a book at hand), it seemed pseudo plausible he may have settled with his own plot of land, bought with money from his ill gotten gains of earlier times. I decided that Meredith would be an adulterer with Clara Harding from the scenario (leaving the Mayor largely out of it in this case, whom I then decided would be the local Mr Big), with his innocent wife and their four teenage sons on left on the farm when he was in town. Clara and the Mayor did not feature much in game play as it happened.

The Sheriff had also just hung someone who had the same name and general appearance of an old buffalo hunter who had just come into town.
This buffalo hunter was once in Quantrell's Rangers. His Devil, Bloody Murderer Of The Innocent, set at two. He gave up originality here and called the character William Munny. OK, I said (ironically as I type this, Unforgiven is on television in a bit). All game we got goddam’ bad Eastwood impressions (– Yay!). He favoured a big buffalo rifle and shotguns for close up work. To hell with pistols, goddam’ it.

The other player character was a “stealthy as a mountain lion” Apache Indian scout, known locally Joe Bearclaw, who had recently quit the army. His devil, a Berserk Raging Temper was set at one. In his back story, he had murdered his own family in a rage and manipulating the US cavalry for his own ends had finished of his rivals. Sadly they had been more thorough than he had planned, so now the rest o the Apache nation wanted him dead. He had his trusty Springfield rifle still or bow for quiet ranged work.

So the opening scene, the hanging started with the town Parson and the congregation singing Shall We Gather At the River? as the jealous Tom Meredith cheerfully hung Clara Hardin’s other bit on the side: “He caught William Munny a notorious murderer of women and children” said a crowd member. This aroused a particular player’s ire from the start.

So the players circulated around town a bit, but ended up eventually at an out of town Cantina run by a Mr. Marchison, who did not mind selling whiskey to Indians at $3 a bottle. The Indian had the money, so got pissed outside. A bent Indian Agent played cards with Pinky and a local farmer. In the middle of the game he realised he was a sheep farmer (the smell). Blam! from under the table. The Indian Agent and Mr. Marchison decided to stay quiet about this for some reason (ie. survival). The Indian, who was getting pissed outside, was bribed by Pinky to get rid of the body.

William Munny happened by the Cantina. In conversation the Sheriff’s name cropped up. Pinky heard he too was a sheep farmer and decided to pay him a visit out of sheer psychopathic tendencies and Munny did not mind the help. They picked up the drunken Indian and brought him a long too.

Joe Bearclaw was used as a drunken decoy while Munny checked out the house. He did pick off one of the sons who had spotted him with his big buffalo rifle, however. The poor boy bled to death in his Momma’s arms. The Sheriff was not at home, but the rest of boys held their own. Munny was not really interested in killing them, anyway. He wanted Tom Meredith as a matter of honour. He picked up the drunken, unconcious Indian and left.
During all this Pinky wandered off to shoot as many sheep as he could, then went back to Promise City to sleep and buy more bullets.

Sadly, it was market day and Promise’s streets were descended upon by hundreds of baying sheep, which rudely awakened Pinky’s slumber. He went out and encouraged a local Cattlebaron’s man to pick a fight with one of the herders (not terribly hard given the animosity between Cattlemen and Sheep farmers), shooting another himself in an apparent attempt to cover the Cowboy’s from being backshot. Everybody did notice how fast he was and by the end of the game he was hired by Mr. Kendle, a local Cattle-baron rival to the Mayor, as a hit man.

The other two, Munny and Bearclaw, recovered from the night’s exertions and set up an ambush on the most likely way from Promise City to the Meredith farm. Munny waited in the open with his shotgun, while Joe Bearclaw hid out of sight. Presently, Meredith arrived on horseback in the company of two of his sons, who had gone to fetch him earlier that morning. A short, sharp fight ensued in which another of the sons is killed by Bearclaw’s bushwackin’ and Meredith injured by Munny’s shotgun.

I decided as Dealer after the first phase of combat to award a chip to the players so that the Sheriff and his other son could escape back to the house where his wife and youngest were. They spurred their horses suddenly and, miraculously riding through the PC’s bullets, made it to the house. Munny decided to lick his wounds (surprised how nasty the fight was) and waited for nightfall.

Munny decided to keep heads down in the house with the Sharp’s big 50 rifle, while Bearclaw snuck up on the house, ostensibly to check it out. Actually, he got inside without the occupants noticing and decided to throw a Kerosene lantern on to the bed where the first dead son was lying in state. He escaped outside and chose his spot from where to pick the Meredith’s off should they have to leave suddenly. Munny does the same, suffering a flashback of earlier events from his past as a participant of the Quantrell massacre, in which he had done something similar!

The poor surviving Meredith’s, unable to fight the flames, were shot down by rifle and shotgun fire in one bloody phase as they exited the building. Breathing his last, Meredith looked up into Munny’s eyes as he stood over him.

“Why?” he croaked, blood foaming on his lips, with his dead wife lay across him (a result of indiscriminate shotgun fire, as narrated by Munny's player).
“Because you picked on an innocent man”, growled Munny.

The game pretty much ended with Munny burying the bodies of the Meredith’s next to the small headstones of the family’s dead infant children, backlight by the burning flames of the house.


So, it was pretty free floating and character driven, easy to run with minimum prep time, a good laugh and easy get into the narration mechanic of Mr. Snyder’s brilliant card driven system. Also very bloody.

A question for Dealers. Do all your players roll up such total bastards? Just curious.
I should be running this again on an evening in a fortnight. Now, I had better do some reading for tomorrow’s long running Middle-Earth game!

Wow!

'Round these parts, we call this kind of play "Blood Opera." It's common in gangster stories of whatever era and in certain applications of The Riddle of Steel. There is something eminently satisfying in playing total bastards with maybe a single redeeming streak apiece which isn't good enough to save them when they make a series of bad choices - especially when those choices intersect.

I think of these as modern morality plays.

In our game, the characters weren't such total bastards, but they were plenty questionable. I especially liked the female con-artist woman who sided with one of the NPC "bad guys" (if we were briefly to adopt the idea that designated villains were involved) and teamed up with him to escape the situation together. Oh, and I liked the vicious Ute as well, who killed a guy with a hatchet in the first scene. And, um, the gambler was a good character too, although I don't recall him doing any atrocities.

Best,
Ron

Hey Neil,

Sounds like you guys had a good, if bloody, time of it with DD. In our game we haven't seen the complete bastard tendency, though there's certainly a fair amount of bastard in there. Check out the Malt & Tease threads for the low down.

Can I ask in your game about how many times you had a deal? How many times were stakes given? Did everyone settle into the narration aspect? Was there anything your group had trouble with?

-Tim

Hi,

Will the real William Munny please stand up? I enjoyed watching that again!

Ron,
I had feeling that the players in question would roll up something nasty for their first characters. I myself would probably go for a sympathatic John Ford character, whether he be a gun toter or not. I actually fancy playing a Mr. Dutton Peabody style newspaper man myself (ref. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance - Edmund O'Brien). I think this might come later, should anything happen to these first characters. I know the guy playing Munny is a Ford western fan too and he is notorious for playing other wierd off the ball characters in RPG's (for example: a Modron "box" in Planescape).

Congrats on a very brave article in Daedelus, by the way.

Tim,

I have been reading and re-reading Malt and Tease for a while. As a fan of Bogey's films you have come with something I will probably ..er..borrow. Congrats to you also.

As for settling into the narration aspect, I think the players and myself should work on the possibilities a bit of this playing style. As we all GM at some point, I felt they were seeing the light a bit better by the end (must have been the burning house). I found myself sometimes just promting with additional narration to keep the game on track or keep things plausible. I hope I get to start keeping my mouth shut a bit more as they gain in confidence with "stealing" the game from the usually perceived GM.

Stakes were offered by myself at the end in the closing scenes as the Meredith's came out guns blazing. Also, again when Pinky was sent to prove himself by getting rid of a Mean 'ol Prospector who could not be physically discouraged from plying his trade on Pinky's new boss' land. I forgot to mention this in the original post - he was quite tough, I decided, to be able to resist the rest of Mr. Kendle's men and it was a key point in the potential long term game, I think. Pinky scared him shitless by walking up to him point blank and facing him down in the 'ol style. He did not have to pull his pistol (High Heart character, remember?).
I awarded one chip to the players for letting my Sheriff and his surviving son escape from the ambush.

Deals were mostly done in armed conflicts and ones in which players tactically manouvered for position against percieved threats. Sometimes I just did not bother dealing when one might and let really logical plot developments occur anyway. I think we had about twelve or so in all over three hours.

It will be interesting to see how things go next time after I have a little bit more of a chat about the game with the players now I have tested the water at last. Previously with my group narrative elements would just pop up as players dressed scenes previously described by the GM a bit, (unless we were playing Amber).

As another little aside I think Warren Oates is about to get ketchupped (again!) in Dillinger. Interesting as ever. Whoops, he just shot his wounded friend in the head to prevent capture by the G-men!

Hey Neil,

Cool stuff! I look forward to the next time around.

-Tim

Neil, what can I say other than "Great stuff?" Yes, Dust Devils often produces some really horrible folks as player characters. It also produces some really heroic folks, too.

Anyway, I'll just sit back and wait for more. I could do worse than to have you decline to playtest my new game because you're busy playing my "old" one.