Rulings Not Rules #2 - Missed Opportunity: Fear of the Dark

 

I hate missed opportunities. You always feel a little bad, no matter how much confidence you have in your own abilities as a Game Master. One of my players pointed this one out to me after the session, for which I am very appreciative as otherwise I might have not noticed my error and would not know to fix it later. 

In this case it was, once again, a game of Weird Frontiers. During a combat in a dark cave against some undead, the lone character with a light source fell. The lantern hit the ground. A quick roll to see if it stayed lit came up as a fail. The characters and the undead were plunged into total darkness. 

Total darkness.

While fighting undead.

For level zero characters. 

Now, Weird Frontiers has a mechanic called "Grit" which measures a character's guts, gumption, bravery, sanity, etc, The mechanics are simple enough, a Will save vs the source of the fear or horror, and if you fail you lose some grit and suffer a fear effect based on how much you failed by. 

Easy right? And yet as the Judge I just never thought to call for a Grit Check as the combat plunged into darkness and flailing about blindly. That was my missed opportunity. 

I shouldn't berate myself too much, but as I am trying to evoke a mix of western, horror, and action ... I missed a beat that could really have tied those genres together nicely. 

The next time it happens I'll certainly be better prepared. I've learned from my mistake (such as it was), and I'll remember, hey the dark sucks, and when something is trying to kill you it sucks that much more.

Story Seed - Last Goodbye

Image Source: http://neverland281.deviantart.com/art/In-This-Crowded-Room-85763303

The door opened and Graham looked up to the the silhouette of a distinctly feminine form in in the window of light. He cocked his sixgun, the sound broke the silence almost like the gunshot it foreshadowed. "Hi Graham, 'bout time you came to see me," McKenna said as she entered the room. Graham didn't say a word. "Fine, fine, I get it. You're here to kill me. Course if you really had the guts you'd have pulled the trigger already. So what is it you are here for? Gonna pay off your debt to me? It's rather high after what you did to Chuckles." She tsk'ed, "Honestly, shooting him in the back like that. I thought you had better moral character than that."

Graham barked a harsh laugh at that, "Moral fiber; like you'd know anything about it." He flipped the light on with his left hand, "I seem to recall you have been as devious as a snake since you were in pigtails." He shook his head, "I'll kill ya if I need to Kate, but all things being equal I'd just assume you drop this bounty thing and we go our separate ways."

"Why mister McKenna, you are ever the romantic," she smirked, and Graham thought he could see a genuine touch of smile on her face. "I never thought that the great Graham McKenna would stoop to re-negotiating a deal at gunpoint, but maybe there's hope for you yet." She walked closer until he raised his gun, with an obvious look that told her any further would be dangerous. "If you want to call it square you'll want the contract, I assume, so you can destroy it. So if you'd be a peach you'll let me get at my safe so I can get that for you."

"Don't work that way this time. You've burned me for the last time." Graham pulled a pair of ionized binders off the table to his left and tossed them to his ex, "Put those on, then tell me the code for your lockbox."

"You thought of everything I guess. OK, I'll play. I always did like you best when you took charge." As Graham laughed bitterly she locked the binders to her wrists. "It's over there, behind the painting. The code is our anniversary."

Graham stood up and moved to the painting, it was a seascape, one he'd given her oh so many years before just after they had been married. "You're a real piece of work," he said as he keyed in the code. The safe popped open and Graham rifled through the papers inside for the contract. "Ah, and here it is. Most damned fool thing I ever did after wedding you." He tore the papers to shreds.

"So that's it then? The last of our ties severed. What's next?"

Graham turned and looked at Kate, he noted that a tear was running down her cheek. "Croc tears? That's unbecoming of you."

"Whatever you may think Graham I loved you, and maybe I still do. You're the one who left, the one who cheated, and welshed, and broke his commitments."

"Yeah. I do that." The gun thundered.

Story Seed - To Kill the Devil ...

Image Source: http://eddie-mendoza.deviantart.com/art/Red-Planet-506334194

This story is a continuation of the Deal, Another Deal and No Deal trilogy

~~~~~~~~~

Graham exhaled heavily, leaving a cloud of condensation on the inside of his helmet before the air could cycle it away. Precious moisture that would be reclaimed with almost perfect efficiency. Precious water that he would drink up again and again so long as the suit could recycle it to help keep him alive.

The last time he'd tried to cross the blasted lands on foot had almost killed him. He'd been saved by a paradox; a robot that was going off programming, but that couldn't violate one of the three laws and let him perish. The bot had carried him to the relative safety of the Fall and Graham had thought himself safe from Boss McKenna and her goons.

After dealing with Chuckles, McKenna's left hand, Graham had decided that there was no-where far enough on this planet that McKenna wouldn't send people to hunt him down. Instead he was going to pay off this foolish debt of his. It wouldn't cost him much, just a few grams of highly energized plasma and he could be sure that McKenna would never bother him, or anybody else, ever again.

Heading back to Katherine's Bluff by skimmer was a fool's maneuver though; McKenna owned the whole town, and he'd have a half dozen sixguns on him before he stepped off the arrival platform. Instead Graham paid good chits for an enviro-suit and started walking.

The blasted lands weren't nearly so bad when you don't feel the heat or the desiccating air. There was almost a stark beauty to them, to the wind sculpted rocks, and the rolling dunes of sand that collected in the lower areas. Graham trudged on wearily. He'd need to rest up once he reached the outskirts of the Bluff. Rest up and find out how to get close enough to McKenna to end her. In the meantime though he plodded onward, a tourist in hell, on his way to kill the devil.

Story Seed - Plan A

Image Source: http://kheelan.deviantart.com/art/Shootout-Showdown-110091909

The crack-boom of gunfire continued outside, sending bullets whizzing through the thin wood walls. Larry sid sideways a bit and cocked his head to take an oblique angle on the window and peer out. "Ol' Silas has the Truk brothers with him," he said to Keller. "They look mighty irate."

Keller grunted in pain as he pressed his hand into his gunshot thigh. "You don't say?" he quipped back, "Think maybe they figured out we done sold Silas a run out mine?"

"You sons a bitches won't get away with cheatin' me!" a voice roared from outside.

The two men looked at each other. "Yup!" Larry grinned before calling out, "We sold you that mine fair an square. Don't get all sore 'cause you didn't check the vein out aforehand." Gunfire erupted as a response from the men outside. "Seems like maybe ol' Silas don't ascribe to them fancy latin words o' yours."

"Caveat emptor," Keller grunted. "The marshall can't let this go on can he?"

"Yeah, those were them, an' no I don't reckon he can, but that could go either way for us, what with the state of affairs 'tween you and the judge's wife."

"Oh hell, that ain't fair. She hates that old goat, and even he knows it. What's the value in getting all worked up over a little tryst."

Larry rolled his eyes, "'Cause you made a cuckold out o' him an' half the town knows it. Man's got himself a lotta pride Keller, and you done wounded it."

Keller thought about it, "Yeah ..." he reluctantly agreed. "So what's the plan then?"

"Well, Silas shot first, maybe we can gun 'im down before the law steps in?"

"I thought we were already trying that," Keller said hauling himself into a kneeling position on his good leg.

"Yeah, well, unless you got a better idea ... yeah, didn't think so." Larry smashed out the window next to him and started shooting.

Story Seed - Godborn

This is a little something I wrote for a Scion inspired Wild West game I had proposed to run during my Play-by-post gaming days. Enjoy.

Image Source: http://leinilyu.deviantart.com/art/gunslinger-colored-50391195

In ages distant past Gods rose up and warred against the Titans. The worship of humankind made them strong and allowed them to imprison the Titans, locking away the Avatar's of these beings within a magical slumber. The Gods dared not destroy the Titans lest they destroy the very things and concepts that these beings embodied; without Gaia there would be no earth for humankind to live on, without Chronos there could be no time. Instead the Gods locked away the Titans, imprisoned below and beyond the Underworld. 

For millennia the Gods stood strong, sustained by the worship of humankind, but now the spread of the Abrahamic religions coupled with the expansion of the European cultures into the western hemisphere has weakened the Gods. Many now rely only on the meager scraps of essence that the study and knowledge of classical mythology allows them. In the Americas the Pantheon of the Great Spirits has faltered or broken as the Native peoples have been wiped out, displaced, or forcibly converted to Christianity. 

Deep in the darkness beyond the Underworld the Titans are stirring. The magic slumber the Gods forced them into had weakened. Their fitful slumber has disturbed the Underworld and freed Titanspawn into the World once more. War is coming once more to all the realms, and the Gods cannot be certain of victory...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pecos Bill's boots hit the packed dry earth and raised little puffs of dust from the parched soil. The wind whipped away the clink of his spurs and the whinny of the horse. He flipped the leather cord reigns over the hitching post and allowed the animal to drink; or it would have drunk had the trough not been bone dry. The little group of buildings barely had right to be called “town” and yet it went by the name of Ciudad del Río. Two streets meeting in an oversized town square around a dried up well, a dozen and a half buildings, and one saloon cum whorehouse. Something had dried up the well, the land, and everything else worth having within fifteen miles. That something was what Bill's pa called a sandwyrm, a titan spawn of the Titan Vritra.

Bill's footfalls on the boardwalk thudded hollowly as he moved toward the saloon's swinging doors. Inside it was darker, and moderately cooler as a result, if no less dry. A couple of emaciated rancheros sat with glasses of what looked like whiskey but was probably a passing excuse for water. The bartender was whipcord thin and bald as an armadillo with a bushy mustache that looked like it had been grown in reaction to the man's bare pate. The only other figure was sitting at the end of the bar with a slew of empty mugs, glasses, and bottles before him.

“Muchacho, more beer! More whiskey! I'm THIRSTY!!” The man at the end of the bar cried as the last drops of rotgut dripped out of the bottle he had inverted over his mouth. The hombre behind the bar twitched and pulled a bottle from the glass shelf behind him. He walked quickly down to the customer, his footsteps sounding like the scurrying of a mouse.

Bill took a moment to focus, barely an act of effort, to tap into the divine ichor that flowed through his veins. The man at the end of the bar smelled like desiccated corpses and dry sand, not human and unnatural. Bill's rolling gait took him across the floorboards followed by the even clunk-chink of his boots and spurs. He bellied up to the bar just out of arms reach of the sandwyrm's host and took a close look as the thing drank down a quart of whiskey in a single draught and then beckoned for more from the proprietor.

The wyrm had burrowed into the human body it now wore through a bullet wound in the arm it seemed. There was a hole in the shirt that was surrounded by the dark rust of dried blood. Through the hole Bill saw the wound was healed over with scaly cracked flesh. The thing's lips were so dry and cracked they looked like wood from the Petrified Forest, and the rest of its face was similarly dry, cracked, and peeling; sandblasted and sunburnt. It turned and looked at Bill, smiling, its thick swollen tongue lolled out of its mouth. “Ssssscion,” it hissed, “Leave here or...”

BOOM!

The creature's head exploded in a cloud of dust as Bill stepped away from the bar.  His left hand held a smoking gun across his torso. The cylinders glowing red with the fires of Hades where the weapon had been forged. The dry husk of human flesh finally crumbled away revealing the sandwyrm's true form. Bill's revolver fired again as the angry titanspawn lunged forward.

Story Seed - No Deal

Image Source: http://timomimus.deviantart.com/art/Crack-in-History-490009202

From the scorched desert sands the Fall didn't seem very aptly named. The cliffs and broken foothills that gave the Fall its name rose from the dry blasted lands to tower hundreds of feet above the sun baked sand and clay.  Beyond the Fall the land grew sharply more hospitable, and there was even a river that ran less than a mile from these forsaken wastes.

The Fall survived by building into the cliffs themselves, and via cunningly engineered tunnels that fed water through the stone of the plateau from the river.  The Fall eked out an existence on the edge of hell, and somehow I had survived hell itself and returned. The 'bot had deposited me within the shadow the Fall's main gates and then vanished, it had satisfied its programming to the extent that it felt it had honored our bargain.

I managed to signal those within for aid, and within the hour I was resting in a medical suite receiving fluids through a tube into my arm, and curative salves for my sunburnt skin through robotically controlled nozzles. I'd have been appreciative had I been self aware at that time.  In hindsight I certainly appreciate it now.

It'd been ten days and I still felt thirsty, but that was psychological according to the sawbones. I'd had very little in the way of scrip and so I'd pawned my mapper, and a few other bits of tech.  It gave me enough to pay the sawbones and keep myself fed. The interior streets and corridors of the Fall were cool enough and isolated from weather so I slept where I could.  The people were private enough that I didn't get any trouble, so far anyway. My sixgun I'd kept; it was worth plenty, but it was the last thing I had, and my only means of defense.

Turned out that was the right choice. I spied the Boss McKenna's tubby second, Charles Stuber, as he emerged from a saloon.  Thankfully he hadn't seen me.  Most everybody, McKenna included, called him Chuckles. I don't have a clue why, he was as stupid as he was fat, and not at all funny. Thankfully he was also not paying attention.  I shadowed him until he was between the open cavern neighborhoods the Fall used to feel less like a big cave (which it was) and more like a gentile town (which it was not).

Getting up right behind him I thumbed the hammer back, pressing cold steel into folds of fat, "Don't turn around Charlie. Believe me when I tell you that I'd rather face justice here in the Fall than whatever you and McKenna have to offer in Angel's Dig." The big man froze, he was none too bright, but still smart enough to know when somebody had him dead to rights. "The Boss figured that any chance was more than she could accept eh? Sent you here to finish the job if the sun hadn't?" I prodded him back into motion with my gun, forcing him down a dark alley.

He stumbled into motion, nodding and trying to crane his neck around enough to see me, "I don't come back and she's gonna know you're alive. Gonna send everything she can for your sorry skin." I think he thought he sounded tough.

I laughed bitterly and ground the barrel of my sixgun into his kidney, "And you want me to let you live right? Let you go back and claim I'm dead, or maybe that you didn't find me?"

He nodded enthusiastically. "Graham, jus-just listen man," he sounded suddenly desperate, his brain must have caught up with his situation. "Th-this doesn't have to go down like this. L-like you said, j-just lemme go. I ain't no fool, you got me beat."

"McKenna would see through you in an instant." He started to protest, but I just kept right talking, "Hell, I bet you already sent her a wave didn't you? Told her you didn't find my body out in the blasted lands." Slowly he nodded. "Man, you are as dumb as a box of sand," I told him.

"Be reasonable!" he pleaded.

"No deal." His bulk muffled the gunshot.

Story Seed - Deal

Image Source: http://tomedwardsconcepts.deviantart.com/art/n0-M-A-D-003-Military-Assassin-Droid-391893389

It was so dry. I sucked on the little pebble and worked it around, but even that was failing to bring any saliva to my mouth. My canteen was empty, and the backup as well.  I stopped, kneeling down to look at the tracks.  They were growing more indistinct, getting older as I fell behind my quarry.  The ground here was either hard, nearly kiln baked from the sun, or loose like sand.  The latter often filled in any cracks in the former.  This place was death, hot dry, and inhospitable to life.

Which is why I was following my quarry deeper into the blasted lands.  A rogue robot, assuming the blowing sand didn't destroy its mobility it could survive this place long enough to emerge on the other side.  I'd not make it that far. I was already beyond the red line on my mapper. I shook my head, brushing sand out of my hat and sarape.

I was dead either way unless I caught this damn thing. I owed too much to the wrong people, so either I pulled down this bounty or I ran and probably caught a bullet. I stood up, feeling immediately woozy. Damnit, I can't be dehydrated already. I looked up and found the sun, realizing it was probably two hours later than I had thought.

I put my hand on my sixgun and used the other to retrieve the mapper from under my wrap.  The topography was fairly uniform so all I had to go on was bearing and distance.  I was a good forty miles from the last outpost. Ah shit, I really was dead already. I swallowed, or tried to; my throat was too dry and it hurt like hell.  If I turned back now, and was lucky as a two-tailed rattler, I might crawl back into the outpost and survive a little longer.  If I continued I could get my bounty, and then die out here without ever bringing it back in.

I closed my eyes.  There was no way to win.  I'd have to try and go back, if I managed to live I might get lucky and evade my debtors. Big if. Even bigger might.

A crunch sounded behind me.  I spun, my hand yanking my sixgun from its holster.  I was dehydrated however, more so than I realized; my balance was shot, my fingers were clumsy.  I toppled over, my gun slipping from my grasp and landing with a thump just before I hit dirt as well.

All I could make out were legs.  Narrow metal that terminated in spikes. Crap, the hunter was the hunted. Bad news for me I guess. I rolled to my back, looking up at my quarry.  It stared at me, a steel form imitating humanity, a poncho was draped over its body, and blowing in the dry wind. The small orb by its head zoomed toward me, hitting me with a multi-spectral scanning beam. "You doubled back?" I asked, confused.

"This unit waited. This unit has determined that you have passed beyond your maximum safe distance and will perish here without assistance," the 'bot responded.

"Well aint that just a thing? So you waited here to kill me?" I figured I may as well ask, I was already dead by any and all reckoning.

"This unit cannot allow harm to come to humans, therefore this unit waited to determine if you would pursue beyond your capable range." It head cocked to the side, "This unit fails to understand why humans insist on endangering themselves. This unit will render aid and carry you back to the nearest outpost."

"Uhh," I said, pulling my mapper up to my face by its lanyard.  My fingers fumbled with it but I finally managed to calculate our options.

"This units will return south by south-east towar-"

"No. You will take me north to the Fall.  There's a village there," I croaked, my mouth was dryer now for all the damn fool talking.

"The fall is three hours farther, this unit will -"

I interrupted the damn thing again, I wasn't sure why it was determined to help me, but I was damn sure going to force it to take me somewhere safe.  I managed to lever my sixgun up to my head, "The Fall, or I kill myself."

The robot seemed to consider it.  "This unit will comply on one condition."

Seriously, it had conditions? This thing was confusing the hell out of me. "What?" I croaked.

"This unit desires to be free.  After this unit takes you to the Fall you will cease to pursue it."

"Deal."

~~~~~~~~~~

Summary - A bounty hunter tracking a rogue robot. A brush with death, and a deal upon which two lives rest.