Death of a Tyrant–Part 2

Again, I’ll keep this brief and generic to avoid spoilers for anyone who buys the Death of a Tyrant adventure. After wandering around in the desert, completely lost, for a week, the group found themselves back in Quollaba, having gone in a complete circle; and it wasn’t long before their enemies found them.

A friendly NPC did the "Come with me if you want to live" thing, but since the party’s fighters are loaded with Hindrances like Arrogant, Overconfident, Bloodthirsty, and Vow: Never retreat, never back down, they ignored him and waded into the bad guys, who had appeared in platoon strength. The party’s spellcasters made adroit use of area effect spells, especially Fear, to break up the pack, after which their foes were defeated in detail. By the end of it, there were very few bennies left anywhere, and a lot of Wounds; fortunately I had dug out some tokens to use for power points, bennies and wounds – not having to record those on scrap paper really speeds things up.

By the end of session two, the party is holed up with one of their erstwhile patrons, who is effectively under house arrest. I left them to plot their next move.

REFLECTIONS

• I’m really pleased I started this campaign. I’d forgotten how much fun it was to GM a group face to face.
• Beast & Barbarians published scenarios stress supporting skills like Tracking and Survival as much as combat skills. My players have so far considered those a waste of points, which is probably my fault; but these adventures should change that.
• Seeing half a dozen PCs faced off against 30+ Extras and a Wild Card made me realise how hard it would be for me to go back to a system where every opponent had its own hit points to track. That combat took almost an hour to run under Savage Worlds, although I am still a bit rusty as a GM.
• Running published scenarios for the first time in a while also brought home to me how much time I could save by doing that in future.

ARTWORK – SPOILER WARNING!

I’m not sure how much this gives away, but here are the drawings made during the first session of Death of a Tyrant by Tenchi Montano, who plays Gutz. The female character at center right is Nessime the paladin, played by Tenchi’s wife Giulia; the male figure with a long ponytail is Gutz.

Artwork © 2012 Tenchi Montano, used with permission.