[DL] A question, and some waffling

[Evil Robot Shane From Another Dimension <wishkah@redbrick.dcu.ie>]

 Right, first off, I got a question that I couldn't find anything similar
 to in the accumulated rulings...

 Okay, let's put in context with a (yay) story.  The final showdown with
 a particular cult in an underground cavern, and my posse's huckster had
 been set upon by the cult leader wielding a ceremonial knife, stabbing
 the huckster in the leg.  Frank the huckster casts Phantom Fingers, hoping
 to jostle or even snatch the knife away.  He draws a full house, so
 instead of grabbing the knife, he grabs the guy, hauls him up to the
 ceiling, and lets him go.  By an amusing coincidence, he took five of the
 six massive wounds he suffered in the guts area - the classic skewered on
 a rock end for a villain.

 Anyway, is there an official ruling for targeting a hex?  If a gunslinger
 is being nasty to a huckster while standing in front of the local prison,
 and the huckster wants to jostle his gun but draws a dead man's hand, can
 he instead pick up the prison and club the guy with it?  Or does he have
 to go after the target he nominated at first?

 Same kind of thing with Shadow Walk - if he gets a better hand than he
 expected, can he go to a more distant shadow he can see, or does he
 have to pick his destination before he sets off?

 Secondly, I'm just going to ramble on a bit about The Last Stop, which I
 ran for some newbies, a Doomtown player, and one of my regular group -
 so if you don't want to read spoilers, stop here.

 The two newbies picked character archetypes from the printout of the
 file, one taking a gunslinger and the other the mad scientist.  The
 Doomtown guy made his own character, a shyster with high Smarts and
 Deftness, and the guy from my posse made a fantastically one-dimensional
 character called Ox ("I took Vengeful and Mean As A Rattler - he's not
 the nice kind of ox") with dungarees, an axe handle and a bag of
 dynamite.

 So, the train crashes, and everybody demonstrates a distince disinterest
 in investigating anything.  They find the dead guys after a bit of
 prodding for help from the NPCs, but then head back into the train.
 No matter, the zombies attack anyway.  The gunslinger takes a bit of a
 bashing, some NPCs get eaten, and the mad scientist breaks out the
 flamethrower and torches the carriage a few times, setting it alight
 and injuring other posse members, most notably Ox, who's shielding
 himself with his bag of which nobody knows the contents.  Fortunately
 it didn't blow, but he takes out a bundle of three, lights it off a
 burning zombie, and drops it.  They all run.  BOOM.

 So, sitting around amongst the burning rubble left of that particular
 carriage a while later, they get jumped by the one remaining zombie,
 which had botched an attack roll against an NPC and fallen out the
 window.  The mad scientist starts up his flamethrower again, and the
 trigger jams, leaving it firing wildly up into the air as he fiddles
 frantically with a spanner.  Ox, meanwhile, lines up his shot, and
 whacks the now-burning zombie with his axe handle - rolls location of
 the head, and between his huge strength, his Don't Get 'Im Riled bonus
 and his large club, does six wounds to the head.  Bam, it takes off
 into the night like a miniature comet.  I'd love to see somebody draw
 that scene - the burning rubble, the mad scientist in the background
 trying to fix his flame-spewing flamethrower, and the baseball-style
 zombie-slayer.

 Enough of that, anyway.  The town Marshal shows up, recruits them (I
 got a spare person to play the Marshal) and they head off up to the
 mine.  Set a stick of dynamite above it in case they need to make a
 runner and keep something trapped in there.  When they get to the
 patchwork coyotes, Ox, the Marshal and the Doomtown player fight the
 things (never have I heard such a string of cheesy one-liners as out
 of the Marshal... "You have the right to remain... dead."  "Fetch
 THIS!"  "It's time to put this puppy to sleep."), while the mad
 scientist laments his lack of weaponry or close combat skills, and the
 gunfighter fails guts check after guts check to recover from surprise.
 The Doomtown player's character dies, and the mad scientist decides
 they're fighting a losing battle and takes off for the entrance - with
 the lantern.  The rest run after him, trying to shoot and stab him, and
 eventually the lumbering Ox is taken down by the chasing coyotes.  The
 gunfighter manages to Overawe the scientist, convincing him to hand over
 the lantern, and he and the Marshal race for the exit, while the
 scientist gets set upon by the coyotes.  The two survivors detonate the
 dynamite at the entrance, and the game is over.

 I sure wasn't expecting that to happen...

 Wishkah

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