[DL] questions about a game of illusions

[Bertrand DEHAIS <bertrand.dehais@libertysurf.fr>]

the few messages in the last 2 ml digests i got reminded me that if
everybody was the same lurker type as i, this list would be dead by now.

and i can't imagine what could come out of a harrowed dl mailing list.
so here's the first of my bi-annual post :

we had a very interesting game last saturday.
so far my posse had never encountered anything that could resist a few
soul blasts from the group's huckster, whose player is a very lucky guy
(never gets any black joker in his hexes but most aces and kings from
the action deck, rolls 36 on 4d4 damage dice, you see what i mean).
on top of that, most of the enemy they ever faced in the yarns were
human villains, sometimes a little black magic here and there, but the
outcome of the adventure usually depended more on investigation than
pure combat strength - especially because of the huckster i talked
about.
on the rare occasion where they faced more serious threat (a few ticks,
2 walkin' deads, and, once, a wendigo), they always
managed to blast them away without having to spend lots of chips.
so, feeling that they were beginning to get quite self-confident, and a
little bored too, i tried to come up with something different. i picked
an adventure where the fearmonger was some ancient evil that could
produce collective illusions so powerful that they could really harm or
even kill, and also drive people to harm each other.
when they realized that illusions where just that, they were quite
frustrated because they thought they have spent their chips
for no reason : since they had always negated all of their wounds, they
believed the illusions were harmless.
they even wanted the chips back, especially my famous huckster who had
spent 13 points worth of chips to negate a single head wound inflicted
by a los diablos illusion.
so they tried to avoid further 'wasting' of chips by taking wounds that
turned out to be very real. they were not very happy with that either,
still they didn't seem to learn. they next tried to avoid the danger
by.... not looking at the illusions ! that is turning their backs,
closing their eyes and whistling or chanting not to hear anything.
well, at first i tried to hint it could be very risked, but on a second
thought i decided that it could work, along with good guts
and spirit rolls.
the only problem was, at the time they tried that, the wall crawlers
that were speeding towards them where very real inhabitants of the
canyon the posse was journeying in. more chips spent there than should
have be.
yet, after that disastrous first try, they kept trying and found out it
worked quite well.
finally facing the fearmonger, 2 of the posse members, with the curious
hindrance, couldn't resist the temptation to look up
at the evil, who appeared to each of them as their most traumatizing
nightmares. those two have just begun to learn what fear
can do in the weird west  >:'D

that was the game, now the questions :
- do you think, as some of my players do, that the effects of the
illusion and the solution to them are contradictory ? what could have
been a better way to handle it ?
- do you think, as i do, that a wall crawler is a very dangerous critter
?
i had never read their stats before running that game, and that
combination of quickness, pace, armor, size, sneak and tail strength
seems very effective to me.


now i recall what i don't post much : it took me an hour to put that
message together, hope it reads like i mean it would.
sure, i should have made it shorter.


bertrand "i like those middle-name quotes" dehais