[DL] Plot Point Advice Needed

[Jesse Burneko <jburneko@yahoo.com>]

1) This email contains VERY VERY VERY mild spoilers
for the Deadlands setting in general.

2) I doubt that anyone from my group actually
subscribes to this email but in case they do: This is
JESSE BURNEKO.  If you are in my group DO NOT read
this!

Okay, now that that's over with I can move on to my
question.  The title of my next adventure is "Body
Guards."  And I plan to use the title as a sort of
play on words.

The players are going to be hired by a woman who
claims that her grandfather needs a body guard.  What
she doesn't explain to the players is that her
grandfather is already dead and that they need to
actually guard his BODY.  You see some ghouls have
been kidnapping the dead recently and this woman is
concerned about her grandfathers remains.  What I'm
confused about is how best to effectively use the
punch line of my joke.  Here are the options I've come
up with:

1) Brevity is the soul of wit.  That is after the
players agree she takes them to her gradfathers home
where he is already dead in bed.

2 and 3 are both variations on the mistaken intensions
theme.

2) After agreeing to help the woman the parties
discover that the grandfather is in the middle of a
high-noon style duel that he can't possibly win.  The
idea being that the woman knows that her grandfather
can't win the duel and is going to die.  She doesn't
expect the players to save him from the duel only to
guard his body afterwards.  However, she neglects to
mention this and I'm hoping that the players will rush
in, in an attempt to be body gaurds.  This might be
stretching the joke and might not be as effective as
1.  However it adds for an interesting sub-plot to the
adventure.

3) Same as above, however, this time the grandfather
is about to be hanged for some crime.

The idea is that if I use 2 and 3 the grandfather dies
in the rescue attempt (I can justify this very well
because I have a Grim Servant of Death in my party who
is also Heroic) and the story proceeds as planned. 
The only advantage to 2 and 3 is that it adds some
gameplay and backstroy but I think 1 works better as a
punch line.

What do you think?

Thanks in advance.

Jesse

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