So I had my random encounter chart with some things that I should have researched a little better. Eh, so what. I told the group that if they had looked in the supply floor of the dungeon/facility they would have found a robot body for the AI that they picked up. I was a bit disappointed that they did not pick it up, but then one of my players stated that they were a bit concerned about having an artificial intelligence that could walk around and do what it wanted in the physical world, “Yeah that could never go wrong.” I tried to maintain a look of innocence about what could happen, however my players know me and I did not succeed very well. Anyway back to our story for the day.
So I had them drive toward their final-ish destination Kathmandu, Nepal. It would take them, according to the map I had, about 24 hours so I had them do an encounter every 8 hours. Now this may have been excessive, but I did not want them to think getting there would be easy, so I had some events occur while they were on their way. I told them throughout the weekend that rolling a 99 was a bad idea. The first event, because of the roll, was a pair of elephants fighting in the road. It’s India, it could happen. As they looked at the event I informed them that one elephant was blocking the others way, and that there were a pair of men taking a baby elephant off to be put in a truck. Part of the group decided to stay with the van and chill out, while the other half of the group decided to go help the mother elephant. It turned into a mess.
Beau the Ragabash went to stop the persons putting the baby elephant in the truck and one of the men took a swing at her. And at this point Douglas the Ahroun pulled a gun and fired a warning shot in the air to convince the men to behave, they did not. Long story short, the trainer riding the one elephant, the man putting the elephant in the truck, and one of the men from the front of the truck did not survive the situation. The last guy happened to survive, but they took his stuff, and he had a wallet and a credit card. He belonged to a syndicate of people doing less than admirable things to make money. After stating that he’d rather die than face the wrath of his employer, Douglas gave him one of the dead men’s guns and let him take matters into his own hands.
All the people that had stopped in the traffic jam ran away during the fight. This created a perfect opportunity for the pack to take whatever kind of vehicle that they wanted. One of the Ragabash wanted to take the truck but I pointed out that it was on the wrong side of the highway, and that if they wished to make it away from the area they needed to use a vehicle in the far right lane or their van to get off the highway and away from the scene. They choose the van. This shows that my group has some moral fiber of sorts, poachers are bad and they were given a warning shot, but stealing a vehicle from someone that was frightened is just wrong (IMHO). Also, they rented the van, and it would trace back to them if they left it. That was the event for the first 8 hours of driving.
In the next eight hours I had them roll again. I had put a broken arrow situation on the list and they managed to roll the specific number for that situation. It could happen, the US and allies have lost nuclear weapons before and probably will again. It was a funny situation, one person wanted to keep it and take it with them. Sam said suggested that the pack go into the Umbra and just let the nuke go off. Then a third person made a couple of phone calls and told the local authorities and the US government about it. What happened was that a farmer was blocking the road that the pack had to take to get to their destination. He was speaking in Hindi and told them there was a big bomb in an area of the brush that he was clearing. When my PCs went to look at the bomb, they saw that it had an American flag on it, and one character realized that it was nuclear. The words, “Great, this can’t go wrong” did pass the lips of at least one player. Unfortunately the group did not TPK over the bomb (I have an evil genius reputation to uphold, I’ve got a membership card and everything). The group decided to just hit the road before anyone got there, by having Tom the Galliard use a gift that moved the tractor out of the way, and then they just left. This was a great idea for the survivability of the group. It was less than stellar for any dramatic events that could have taken place, but nonetheless was a great decision. This can happen sometimes, you do a build up and you think that the group will take the bait and then someone decides to just drive right by the whole situation. When this occurs you can’t dwell on it, you have to let it go. There are always going to be times where the group will just drive right by your whole plot point. Anyway, that was the second 8 hours.
I had them roll one more time before reaching their final destination of Kathmandu. This time I had them meet a pair of nuns trying to repair a car on the hillside in Nepal. The roll was for something light and honorable, and I felt having them assist some nuns delivering vaccines would fit the bill. Part of the group was going to go right by them, as the last time they saw nuns in the temple they were bad people. This brings up the point of type casting a group of people in your campaign. It seems that a lot of the Storytellers that I have interacted with about this concur, like when the Storyteller just choses to make a whole group their antagonist. This blog post is getting long, so I will talk about this more at a later date. I had the group get to Kathmandu and drop off the nuns at a church/hospital ward area and then they drove on to where the dagger was leading them. They drove past the place where the book was located and did some light recon. Of course Evie the Ragabash walked up and started talking to the guard. After a few social rolls, she now has a date with him later. That is where we left off for the week.
Talk to you soon,