Re: [DL] That pesky 1st time Marshal, again

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

On Wed, Sep 04, 2002 at 08:13:05AM -0400, Rich Borges said:
> 	I have decided to run "On Harrowed Ground" from the Marshal Screen...I has
> a little combat, so investigating and real human villainy (which I find the
> most appealing part of it!)








 Spoilers, folks who haven't played these scenarios.









 On Harrowed Ground is pretty good, but when I ran it my players didn't really
 do any investigating, and ended up getting their patoots handed to them when
 it came to the combat at the end because they didn't know what was going on.
 My advice would be to work in some kind of personal tie with the carry-on -
 maybe have one of the main NPC protagonists be related to, or an old friend
 of one of the PCs.  Something to motivate them into investigating what's
 going on, because as it stands there isn't really anything to get them
 moving asides from Adventuring Party Mentality.  But it is a good adventure
 once they get into it.

> 	My figurin' is that I will run a set of the written adventures to get my
> feet wet. I will probably do "Coming 'round the mountain" from the Marshals
> Handbook followed by "Perditions Daughter."

 Comin' Round the Mountain was the first Deadlands adventure I ever ran, with
 just two players.  It went smoothly enough as written (although I think the
 stats for the head beastie got errata'd, so you might wanna look that up),
 and we had the most perfect result on the Scart Table ever - the trapper NPC
 from the train hitched up with the two PCs because they wouldn't be able to
 follow a trail out of a paper bag, and when the ambush happened, his dead
 brother climbed out of the ground, kept coming after having his head shot
 open, and then ripped open and had a big baby bug crawl out.  The trapper
 failed his Guts check, had a heart attack and died on the spot.  It was
 great.

 The Pinkerton agent is a nice hook for future stuff, give her plenty of
 character and you'll be able to use her time and again in your campaign.

> 	Now, I don't own "Night Train" I've just been hearing about it from the
> lists and such and I have the feeling that I would like to run it at some
> point. Are there any other suggestions on these adventures or on Marshaling
> a game in general?

 Haven't run Night Train myself, but the impression that's consistently given
 out about it is that if you run it, you'd better not be hoping on many of
 your PCs surviving it.  So that's down to you...

> Anything would helpful and appreciated. I have been
> painting minis and getting my cardstock town ready along time...I really
> want this to be a successful game! Thanks...

 Well, best of luck with it, I hope your players share your enthusiasm when
 it comes down to it, because it sucks when they don't.  :>)

 By the way, if you're picking up Arcane Background sourcebooks, I HIGHLY
 recommend the adventure in the back of Fire & Brimstone, which I had more
 fun with than any other printed scenario for anything ever (not that I've
 played a lot of printed stuff, though).  One of my players was a DJ and
 had some absolutely perfect scary-music (Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works
 Volume II - there's even a scary-small-child-laughing track) and the
 atmosphere was fantastic, real Deadlands stuff.  Check it out.

 Wishkah

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