[HoE] My Divergent Campaign

[Ralph Dula <rdula@ezonline.com>]

In response to how my campaign got way off the beatin' track
Matt Steflik wrote:

>Whoa!  "LAST Crusaders is right!  My posse has messed with my plot lines
>before (they revel in it in fact), but Jeez!  What did they do...HELP
>the Destroyer do it or something?  Drop a nuke on him and miss really
>badly?>>

I was originally going to post a transcript of what exactly happened when I
first asked for help with my campaign, but I felt it was too long and would
bore everyone.  To make a long story short the posse fought Modeen in the
orchard, and got their butts handed to them.  I fudged things so the
survivors could escape back to Boise, to regroup and heal.  Of course they
didn't know Modeen had followed them, and they fought Modeen and one of his
Anti-Templars while Modeen's mooks and two other Anti-Templars fought the
NPC Templars and civilians in Boise.  Modeen again trashed the posse, with
only one surviving.  Fortunately he had a stash of Revivification Elixer,
having bought them before making the journey from the Weird to Wasted West.
 Only one of the posse members actually made the Vigor total necessary to
come back to life, and here is word for word what happened.

Me:  Okay, Brandon's brought you back to life with the serum.  All around
you are the cries of the dying, and you can see Modeen entering the Grand
Temple.  Grandmaster Mercer is within, still delierious and unable to
defend himself, soon to be another victim of the Destroyer.

Player:  We hide.

Me:  What?

Player:  We hide.

Me:  Modeen's going to kill Mercer, the head of the Templars?  Do you know
what that means?

Player:  Right now my lightest wound is serious, and I'm hit everywhere,
and the only reason Brandon is unharmed is cause he hid most of the time.
If we go in there without patching up our wounds we're just gonna get
sliced and diced like before, and that's just suicide!  We are hiding!

Before anyone comments it should be noted that the player who said all that
does not play a Templar, but rather a sleazy individual whose used her
skill in persuasion and bluff to convince the party's do-gooders that she's
a nice person.  Thus this was perfectly in character for her.

Anyway, the pair of them hid while Mercer got decapitated by Modeen, using
medicine and magic to treat their wounds.  They then ambushed Modeen as he
was coming out of the Temple, Mercer's head on the spikey tip of his axe.
They beat him, again because I had forgotten about some of his Anti-Templar
rewards.

Matt also wrote:

>or perhaps its the
>horrible posse that's to blame..."Run! It's the 'good guys'!")>>

Actually, you're not far off with that.  Most of the characters in the
posse were of questionable morales, and the fellow who ran the group's
Templar seemed to think he was the 21st Century equivalent of the Spanish
Inquisition.  I'm kinda sorry he died in battle with Modeen, as I had some
nasty plans for him because of his actions.

I want to thank everyone who responded to my request of aid with my
campaign post-destruction of Boise, both those who replied on the mailing
list and those who e-mailed me personally.  I especially thank Doug, as I'm
(quite) embarrassed to admit that I'd forgotten to factor in the presence
of the Heretic Doomsayers in my plan for the future of my campaign until he
mentioned them.

Second, it looks like fate has given me a sign to go on with my deviant HOE
campaign.  Because of conflicting schedules my HOE gaming group won't be
getting together for at least three weeks, the first time we've missed more
than one week of gaming in the five years we've been playing together.  I'm
going to use this time to prepare my altered campaign, which I'm fast
forwarding to 2095, one year after the Destroyer leveled Boise.  I'll post
an outline of what I have planned soon, but basically the Wasted West gets
much worse, with the Cult of Doom becoming THE bad guys in my campaign, and
norms finally in danger of extinction. The  way I see my campaign of HOE
right now is that it will climax this summer, with the posse getting the
chance to escape Earth and go to the Faraway system, just in time for the
release of Lost Colony.  Like I said, I'll post an outline of what I have
planned when I get a chance, for everyone to comment on or laugh at, as
they see fit.

-Ralph "Who's feeling really bad about getting all this free time to work
on his campaign, after complaining to PEG about how he disliked Law Dogs
because he never had the free time to work any of the characters profiled
in it into his campaign."