RE: [DL] Dealing With Wind

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

Well, the easy answer is: cheat.  It's a bad word, I know, but if you and
your players had fun, then having the marshal fudge a few things isn't bad.
I use a screen, and keep my chips and dice rolling behind it.  If I want a
Bad Guy(tm) to stay up, then it stays up.  If I've knocked the posse around
a bunch, and they're starting to make bets on who dies first, then I ease
up.  To that end, when I spend chips I only shuffle them around behind the
screen.  The posse doesn't know how many I've spent, if any, nor how many
I've got left.  If they ask, I try to describe the overall condition of the
baddie as of that moment -- to let the posse know if they are making
progress, or just beating a werewolf with a non-silver stick.  I keep track
of wind for the important foes, and have them get "winded" at dramatically
appropriate moments (rather than mathmatically appropriate).

Another, more difficult solution, is to build better baddies.  Not so much
immune to things, but rather just durable.  Rattlers are fun, because
they've got soooo much wind (if not an unlimited amount), some armor, and
lots of size.  The posse knows they can hurt it, but can they take one down
before it eats somebody?  Some of the varieties of Walkin' Dead are more
durable than the others, try Bloats, or Nosferatu.  My posse is currently
dealing with werewolves.  Just when they thought they had werewolves figured
out (as listed in RVC2), I threw in the crossover adventures using Werewolf
werewolves.  They are just slightly different, and need a different approach
to kill them.  And then made the villain (who's a werewolf) also a Huckster,
so depending on which hexes are in effect, he's more or less durable.

I personally have used the cheat method only once in a while.  It can get
old easy.  The second method is much more fun.  Nothing like the looks of
confusion on players' faces when their plans just don't work! ("Whadda ya
mean my Bullard Express with custom made silver bullets didn't seem to do
any damage?")

Jeff Y.
Marshal for the Dynamite Gang


> So my question is, how do you other Marhsal's deal
> with preventing your climaxes from being anti-climatic
> by having some supposedly powerful creature droping
> unconcious with 1 or 2 shots.
>
>
> Jesse
>