Re: [DL] Are We Doing It Correctly?

[Munch Wolf <munchwolf@yahoo.com>]

--- Seanchai <Seanchai@compuserve.com> wrote:
>
>    We're new to Deadlands and after a recent combat
> are a bit concerned. I
> was the Marshal and had created an NPC which should
> not have had any
> problem getting away from the PCs. He could become
> mist, etc.. But when the
> PCs got in a fire fight with him, he was unable to
> even get an free action
> because one of the PCs went first and wounded him
> badly using open-ended
> rolls for damage. He was stunned and, using
> open-ended rolls for Wind, was
> heavily Winded. It got to the point where he needed
> four Aces in a row in
> order to have a hope of becoming unstunned. So the
> PCs killed him where he
> lay. 
>    Does that sound right? It seems quite...extreme.
> 

There's not really enough information here to give an
accurate answer on how to do it differently, but here
are some ideas:

1) As Daphné suggested, use fate chips to keep him
alive.

2) Did he draw his guns first, or did the players? 
Was this witnessed by other people?  If the players
gunned him down in a town just for making threatening
remarks, they might find the local constibles want to
talk to them.  Just because someone seems evil, does
not make it right to kill them.

3) You said he can turn into mist.  Is he a vampire or
undead?  If so he suffers no wind damage, and mere
bullets might not even affect him.

4) Need to make a stun check, spend chips.

5) Villains have henchmen for a reason, ie buffer
zone.  It doesn't hurt to have a backup thug on a
rooftop with a rifle.

6) Villains hardly ever go up to complete strangers
and announce, "Ah ha, I am the villain and I will make
your life miserable, even though I do not know you." 
They tend to be sneaky (or else everyone in town would
know they are a villain).  If the players ace your
villain and he hasn't done anything yet, have him turn
out to really be innocent, insane, or a target the
real villain sent the player to take out.

7) Guns are lethal, for both the posse and your
forces.  You arn't playing D&D.

8) Again, you can't just go around killing people
without the local law (townsfolk if you are the local
law) getting upset.  Unless the players knocked him
off somewhere far from civilization, they're going to
face reprocustions.

9) Siblings and friends, someone out there likes or is
related to the villain and is willing to seek vengance
(and he won't announce his intentions first except by
the sound of glass breaking as a stick of dynamite
flies through the window).

10) Bring him back.  If not harrowed, make him an
abomination or ghost.  Death is not the end, and no
matter how little remains of a corpse it can always
come back (don't do this too many times though or it
will annoy the players).

-Munch Wolf

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