RE: [DL] Campaign Details

["Jeff Yates" <jyates@poboxes.com>]

As a fellow Marshal, I can offer up what I've done when faced with similar
situations.

>
> 1) How do you deal with the details of reality?
<SNIP>  How do you
> deal with such a dramatic and serious unplaned
> consequence of Player actions?

Shoot them.  Repeatedly.  And use progressively larger guns.  If you're
posse insists on acting like criminals (and that isn't what your campaign is
about), then treat them like criminals.  The lone marshal in a one-horse
town will most likely be killed, but eventually they either run into a city
full of deputies, or a group of skilled bounty hunters.  My personal fave is
a shotgun to the chin, trigger pulled when the PC reached for a pistol.  The
facts that the PC had failed a surprise check, and therefore wouldn't be
much in the way of fast, and that the town marshal had both barrels
literally under the PC's chin, didn't deter the player.  The town marshal
failed the Guts check from seeing the mess the PC's head made on the far
wall of the store. (This happened in the "Worms!" adventure.  The PC in
question decided that the town marshal/shopkeep wasn't doing a good enough
job, and reached out and ripped the man's badge off his vest!  Failed
surprise check on the player's part let me put my shotgun up, and a good
Scrutinize on my part let me see that the player did indeed mean to draw one
of the many obvious guns he had.  So on my up-the-sleeve card I pulled both
triggers.)  The bounty hunters that took away another PC -- while the rest
of the posse pointed fingers and said "there he is" -- put a damper on
public displays of illegalities.  (Is that a word?)

Now, if everyone agrees before hand that they want to play criminals
fighting night terrors, then run-ins with the law are going to be planned
parts of the campaign.  This sort of thing is up to you and your group.

>
> 2) How do you incoporate player free will in
> determining the direction of your compaigne?
>
<SNIP>

I have some "filler" yarns ready in my notebook at all times.  They don't
have requirements as to location or whatever, so if the posse takes a sudden
left turn, I can keep the game rolling for the evening by pulling out one of
the quickie adventures, and then put some meat into the new direction
between sessions.  There will always be bunch of flying by the seat of the
Marshal's pants, but usually just to get the filler adventures to blend in.

>
> An example of how low I've sunken:  I'm a very naive
> person about matters of public record in today's
> world.  My modern day horror RPG scenarios were very
> mystery oriented and I had a planed progression for
> clue revelation and such.  However, my very wordly and
> legal savy players were constantly doing things like:
> "I drive over to the public records office and look up
> so and so's birth certificate."
>
<SNIP>
>
> It got so bad that I'm tempted to create a group of
> outlaws for my Deadlands campaign called the "Privacy
> Posse" who go from town to town doing nothing but
> burning down public record buildings.  And
> mysteriously they seem to be always one step ahead of
> the party.

Old west public records were not as useful as the posse might like.  If the
town even has birth certificates, the person being researched would have to
be born in this town.  One building fire at any point between the subject of
investigation's birth and present-game-day, and the records are gone.  And
if the birth certificate is important, the villain probably already went and
retrieved it, so the posse won't find it until you want them to.  That, and
is birth certificate something kept in the town hall, or would the local
doctor, or even the parents, keep that in the 1870's?

Old west towns probably weren't as interested in birth certificates as
things like water rights, or land deeds, or even mineral rights/mine claims.
And these things are always being "lost" or at the very least appropriated
by powerful men to provide legitimacy to the bullying of others that they
do.

So let them go thru the public records.  Tell them that what they are
looking for isn't there.  If they ask why, ask them how they find out why.
If they start reading all the documents, they might find that a whole years'
worth are missing ("Yep, that there is the year ol' Mrs. Stanley's cow
started that fire. Durn near burnt down the whole town."), or that four
pages of the ledger book have been neatly removed ("They're jumpin' ma
claim, sheriff!"  "Sweetwater Mining says that this is their claim, and
unless you got papers Joe, you better move along."), to say nothing of how
Widow Johnson lost her farm because she couldn't produce the deed, and the
public record copy was missing.

Does a post this long count as only two cents?

Jeff Y.
Marshal for the Dynamite Gang