The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
In the heat haze and ghostly dead of night the Farmer sees a dozen men on horseback. Each one rides down the salt slope and is blasted apart, shattering like glass and quickly returning to the earth; skin, muscle, tendons, bone—nothing.
The Farmer turns to his allies. He lays out a plan.
Panting, soaked, the Farmer looks back across to the tower. No movement. The slick body falls through his fingers as he turns and leopard crawls back between the dull, starving cows. It’s a slow, laboured, sharp as bastards process, but it’s the only way. As he pulls his body forward he passes a dead rabbit, his shocked eyes reflected the sickle of moonlight. Like jet black pools, the Farmer reflects.
Chance is astride Dog, rifle aimed at the shadow atop the watch tower, some distance back behind a rocky outcrop. River, beside the old mare, has taken a knee, her rifle jammed into a hole in what might have once been two sides of a shack. She’s focused on the main building for now.
Geth roll 1d6 for Farmer Stealth
Geth roll 1d6 for River Stealth
Geth roll 1d6 for Old Mare Stealth
Geth roll 1d6 for Enemy Alert
If they are seen:
Geth roll 1d6 for Farmer Dodge
Geth roll 1d6 for River Dodge
Geth roll 1d6+2 for Enemy Fire
A guttural, vocal cord snapping scream rings out, echoing far across the flat desert. Two blue lights roar into life, but they’re not torches, not lamps, no. They’re the eyes of the shadow in the watch tower.
There is a whirling, a spinning of metal. The Farmer shouts a warning, but it is lost in the violent noise. Hot lead. Noise. Lead. Salt. Blasted stone. Noise. They’ve got a damned Gatling gun!
A cow is ejected from existence as the Farmer kicks off from the earth. He half turns mid-air, and catches sight of River and the old mare—gone. The shack crumples under the rain of fire.
The gatling gun is swung around again, clipping the Farmer—somewhere. No time to stop and check.
River and the old mare sustained 2 damage. They’re dead.
The Farmer took 2 damage, they’re down to 8.
Chance, astride Dog, loses 2 morale, putting him down to 1 morale. He’s shaken.
Chance opens fire, kicking Dog hard to send her into a full gallop. He’s in do or die mode.
Geth roll 1d6-1 for Riding Shot
Geth roll 1d6+1 for Tower Defence
———
A shot, silent against against the unrelenting noise, hits the mark. Chance falls backwards off the sleek horse, his rifle still held high as he tumbles. When he opens his eyes, the rapid gunfire is blasting off into the night sky. It stops shortly after.
Chance gains 1 stress.
25% of the total potential cattle you can win back has been lost. What was that asshole thinking? Was the gunner thinking at all?
The Farmer has lucked out. He was about to need some serious evasive action! As it stands though, the cattle rustlers are up. What’s next? Choose any amount of options. Each one eats up time. The enemy will make as many actions as you do.
A. Have Chance climb and commandeer the tower.
B. The Farmer should take the tower.
C. Have Chance kick the door into the main building.
D. The Farmer should bust into the main building.
E. Both fall back and take cover.
F. Escape on Dog, this isn’t worth it!
X. __________. Surprise me.
This one is more a debate than a simple vote. Gimmi your best shot. You’ll need it.
Just for the new folk/s, I’m going to point out Tiphareth is the wendigo and they give -2 votes to whatever they pick.
Endless_Serpents on
0
FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
edited May 2021
Well, that was a shitshow.
One of our "reliable" support is already a smear whose name and face is already joining all those other dim shadows that were once living breathing people in my memories, the other is shaken and uncertain backup.
We've got an unmanned gatling tower, fog of war, and spooked cattle as our assets. An unknown number of armed rustlers as our opponents.
X.Stampede the cattle toward the building.
A herd of spooked cattle already exists between us and our opponents. Convincing them we're the threat shouldn't be hard, and get a screen between us and people trying to shoot at us. It'll give us the cover we need to get up close and put a haunted shooting iron to use from behind. A. Chance can take the tower to provide enfilade/covering fire. Nevermind, I didn't much care about this anyway. Wait, apparently this is back on the table.
Besides, what fun is a western without a good old fashioned stampede scene?
B: Whatever is in the tower ain't human, less'n they breeding em with glowing blue eyes now and nobody told me. That concerns me. Chance is in no state to deal with that, so I ought to handle that myself.
I don't hold with the notion of a stampede. The cattle are all a-spread, and I reckon the ones without superfluous lead are mainly around the front and far side of the main building.
X: But a gatling gun don't help if the rustlers decide to hole up indoors. Chance is gonna have to give them a reason to come out.
Idle thoughts:
* I declined to take back my coin when River offered, but she probably doesn't need it where she's going
* She deserves a burial anyway, we get the opportunity
* I wonder if the AB has a mounting bracket that'd support the Gatling gun
0
FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
B.
Ain't no-one coming out of the building without eating Gatling.
X.
If Chance wants something to do, he can light the building on fire. Give em a reason to come out.
Wasting our cows on a stampede is just damned foolish. Even if we have one mouth less to feed.
At one point, near the end of the wars, dead and near dead soldiers were not allowed to remain dead. Instead, a hive of Zeta Omni-Macro Builds mk 13 Triage Bots would be loosed upon the battle field to locate critically wounded bodies. Upon detecting a recently (or soon to be) dead body, the starfish shaped robot would initiate the triage protocols, wrapping around the back of the head, a micro stimulator would be inserted into the base of the skull to manually stimulate the muscles of the body until any remaining chemical energy was exhausted, before leaving the body to hunt for the next. Under the control of the Allied Mastercomputer, a shock troop of ZOMB-13s rising on the battlefield could turn the tide of a battle, the dead suddenly turning an enemy push into a surprise pincer attack surrounding them between a legion of the dead and one of the living. Absent this controlling influence, the mangled corpses under the ZOMB-13 control would stagger about the battlefield, discharging weapons in, generally, the right direction.
After the war, a countless number of ZOMB units remain in the wild, most confined to the deep no-go zones where bodies are few and far between. But occasionally a rogue will find it's way closer to civilization, maybe by riding an animal, or just lucking into an unsuspecting traveler who walked to close the the old battlefields. After The Fall shattered the communication networks, the overarching tactical genius of the Allied Mastercomputer lost it's ability to communicate with any sub units outside of a relatively small area. The remaining units follow their basic programming: Locate and triage a body, ride it until more bodies could be located and triaged. Repeat until you can rejoin the hive. Some people believe that a substantial enough concentration of Triages may be able to network into a greater intelligence, and possibly reconnect with AM, but that's just a tall tale. Probably.
@Delzhand
For correctly guessing the twiste Delzhand is now the Fortune Teller!
They can play a Tarot card up to 3 times over the course of our tale, and I’ll try my best to add the card’s meaning to the current situation.
The Farmer: Wrangle them dogies and press ‘em ‘gainst the door!
Chance: Actually, only motherless calfs are called—
The Farmer: Explain later!
Chance hops back on the horse as she races by, and together they round up the frightened cattle, then scare the herd towards the main building... just in time for the rest of the rustlers to burst through the door!
The men, four in total, falter, their gun arms twitching haphazardly as they fall on and are quickly swung away from the cattle. They’re like puppets on strings.
Chance’s efforts have thwarted the cattle rustlers, who are looking for a clean shot. They seem to have more sense than the quickly dispatched fella hanging out near the building and the trigger happy fool in the watch tower. What’s the difference?
———
The Farmer leans over the railing and flings the body back, launching it hard against the ground! He clambers up a moment later, and begins to reload the gatling gun.
Beneath and westward, the rustlers slowly back away into the building, keeping their eyes peeled.
The Farmer: Set fire to the place!
Chance: With what?
The Farmer vaguely gestures at the universe.
Chance makes a I’ll look around motion, then rides around the back of the building... out of sight of the Farmer.
That body, thrown from the watch tower. It’s ruined. The Triage unit dislocates from what’s left of its skull...
Chance, if able, will start a fire. Right now, the herd is blocking the door, but that won’t last.
There is a fleeting opportunity.
A. Leave the tower for a minute. Apply the Triage to River’s head.
B. Blast the remains, destroy the Triage.
C. Keep watch.
If A wins the vote, a die will roll.
1. Failure to resuscitate. The Triage has expired.
2. The body will rise as a hostile.
3. River will awaken as something other, but alive.
4. River will gasp for breath, her wounds healed, and the Triage will expire.
Farmer's one to take risks, but River doesn't deserve to become a... Rivernant?* Whatever comes back won't be her, even if the brain isn't completely whisked into unrecognition by the machine.
*Though I'm halfway tempted now for the sole purpose of keeping that pun going.
GNU Terry Pratchett
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
Spoilered until images are unborked.
+1
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
A: Risky nanomedicine? Absolutely we're going to give it a shot, farming is all about unjustified optimism. Otherwise we wouldn't keep all our crops outside where the hail and drought can get to 'em.
C
River has a 25% chance of making it out alive and intact, but heavy odds are we make a lot more trouble for ourselves
You're not looking at all the odds. Sure, River only has a 1 in 4 chance to remain River...
But River has a 50% chance to make it out alive and not hostile. A 75% chance of remaining not hostile (dead may not be friendly, but it isn't hostile either), and only a 25% chance of rising as a hostile.
I like those odds.
A: River liked to gamble in life. Let her play one more hand. (also, I don't want that damn ZOMB-13 attaching to someone else later and giving us a nasty surprise.)
@Xaquin
You’d guess four of the... used-to-be-rustlers are in there. You’re not sure. Sounds about right.
———
Hubris, the Farmer thinks. Then they just think about the pain of River’s teeth clamped down on his forearm.
His free hand reaches for his gun and blasts her head clean off—though clean here is just a turn of phrase. The Farmer shuffles back and instinctively puts his shirt to his face to rub the steaming blood away. The bright, violet tracer round is lodged into the earth before the building, illuminating the land and cattle. A thousand shadows lean out, grasping, trying to flee. The war was long and it hasn’t ended. It stretches back and forth, forever. All of time, perhaps.
This world should be dead and buried, no one thinks as the gun is gripped tightly by its mark.
Swinging himself upright and staggering on the spot, the Farmer roars into the night.
The Farmer takes 1 damage, loses 3 morale, and gains too much stress.
———
Having reached too much stress, the Farmer’s next actions are limited!
Pick your poison:
A. Climb over the cows and kill everything in the building. The Farmer will succeed in this.
B. Throw the gun at the moon.
Geth roll 1d4 for Affront to Nature
———
Affront to Nature:
1d42 [1d4=2]
Endless_Serpents on
+2
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
Posts
———
Geth roll 1d6 for River Stealth
Geth roll 1d6 for Old Mare Stealth
Geth roll 1d6 for Enemy Alert
If they are seen:
Geth roll 1d6 for Farmer Dodge
Geth roll 1d6 for River Dodge
Geth roll 1d6+2 for Enemy Fire
If they are hit:
Geth roll 1d2 for Damage
The Farmer gains 1 stress.
———
River and the old mare sustained 2 damage. They’re dead.
The Farmer took 2 damage, they’re down to 8.
Chance, astride Dog, loses 2 morale, putting him down to 1 morale. He’s shaken.
Geth roll 1d6+1 for Tower Defence
———
Chance gains 1 stress.
25% of the total potential cattle you can win back has been lost. What was that asshole thinking? Was the gunner thinking at all?
The Farmer has lucked out. He was about to need some serious evasive action! As it stands though, the cattle rustlers are up. What’s next? Choose any amount of options. Each one eats up time. The enemy will make as many actions as you do.
A. Have Chance climb and commandeer the tower.
B. The Farmer should take the tower.
C. Have Chance kick the door into the main building.
D. The Farmer should bust into the main building.
E. Both fall back and take cover.
F. Escape on Dog, this isn’t worth it!
X. __________. Surprise me.
This one is more a debate than a simple vote. Gimmi your best shot. You’ll need it.
One of our "reliable" support is already a smear whose name and face is already joining all those other dim shadows that were once living breathing people in my memories, the other is shaken and uncertain backup.
We've got an unmanned gatling tower, fog of war, and spooked cattle as our assets. An unknown number of armed rustlers as our opponents.
X. Stampede the cattle toward the building.
A herd of spooked cattle already exists between us and our opponents. Convincing them we're the threat shouldn't be hard, and get a screen between us and people trying to shoot at us. It'll give us the cover we need to get up close and put a haunted shooting iron to use from behind.
A. Chance can take the tower to provide enfilade/covering fire. Nevermind, I didn't much care about this anyway. Wait, apparently this is back on the table.
Besides, what fun is a western without a good old fashioned stampede scene?
I don't hold with the notion of a stampede. The cattle are all a-spread, and I reckon the ones without superfluous lead are mainly around the front and far side of the main building.
X: But a gatling gun don't help if the rustlers decide to hole up indoors. Chance is gonna have to give them a reason to come out.
Idle thoughts:
* I declined to take back my coin when River offered, but she probably doesn't need it where she's going
* She deserves a burial anyway, we get the opportunity
* I wonder if the AB has a mounting bracket that'd support the Gatling gun
Startled cows do not stay spread out for long. 30 seconds later they're one big wall.
if we end up dead again it won't matter!
Ain't no-one coming out of the building without eating Gatling.
X.
If Chance wants something to do, he can light the building on fire. Give em a reason to come out.
Wasting our cows on a stampede is just damned foolish. Even if we have one mouth less to feed.
@Delzhand
For correctly guessing the twiste Delzhand is now the Fortune Teller!
They can play a Tarot card up to 3 times over the course of our tale, and I’ll try my best to add the card’s meaning to the current situation.
I’ll update tonight, which is fairly meaningless since I’m on the other side of the earth but I digress.
Chance’s efforts have thwarted the cattle rustlers, who are looking for a clean shot. They seem to have more sense than the quickly dispatched fella hanging out near the building and the trigger happy fool in the watch tower. What’s the difference?
———
Chance, if able, will start a fire. Right now, the herd is blocking the door, but that won’t last.
There is a fleeting opportunity.
A. Leave the tower for a minute. Apply the Triage to River’s head.
B. Blast the remains, destroy the Triage.
C. Keep watch.
If A wins the vote, a die will roll.
1. Failure to resuscitate. The Triage has expired.
2. The body will rise as a hostile.
3. River will awaken as something other, but alive.
4. River will gasp for breath, her wounds healed, and the Triage will expire.
Farmer's one to take risks, but River doesn't deserve to become a... Rivernant?* Whatever comes back won't be her, even if the brain isn't completely whisked into unrecognition by the machine.
*Though I'm halfway tempted now for the sole purpose of keeping that pun going.
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
River has a 25% chance of making it out alive and intact, but heavy odds are we make a lot more trouble for ourselves
Chance should hopefully be able to start a fire
do we know how many people are in the building or if it has a cellar?
But River has a 50% chance to make it out alive and not hostile. A 75% chance of remaining not hostile (dead may not be friendly, but it isn't hostile either), and only a 25% chance of rising as a hostile.
I like those odds.
A
Nothing more demoralising than losing a friend twice.
I can't help but think that sounds like a bad idea.
I mean, Papa Johns? You got to take care of yourself.
We do the best with what we've got, and move on.
You’d guess four of the... used-to-be-rustlers are in there. You’re not sure. Sounds about right.
———
The Farmer takes 1 damage, loses 3 morale, and gains too much stress.
———
Having reached too much stress, the Farmer’s next actions are limited!
Pick your poison:
A. Climb over the cows and kill everything in the building. The Farmer will succeed in this.
B. Throw the gun at the moon.
———
anyway we may as well blast away the people in the building
throwing our gun away and abandoning Chase is no good
This has no mechanical effect but you should feel bad.
The Fortune Teller advises the Farmer to keep his wits about him and his iron in his hands where it can yet do some good.
Blood has already been spilled this night, but the blood god is not sated yet.
A) Everyone. Dies.
I think we've learned some valuable lessons for next time, though.
Due to the work of the Fortune Teller, there is now another option.
C. Climb the tower once more and remove the loaded gatling gun from its mount.
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1