People, Plots and Places of the Wild West: Military Fort

 "People, Plots and Places of the Wild West: Military Fort" is now available from DrivethruRPG.

This six-page supplement presents a layout for a U.S. Army fort and location descriptions, an overview of life in the United States Army of the frontier, stats for soldiers and other personnel, more than a dozen plot hooks and two Dramatic Tasks, and a map of the forts and battle sites of the Old West, all for use with the Savage Worlds RPG. 

-Nate

People, Plots and Places of the WIld West: Military Fort

A Tale of Two Parties: Con of the North 2025

At Con of the North 2025 I ran two sessions of this year's scenario, and it was interesting to see the differences in how the sessions went.

The first table had three players, who picked Thaddeus, Linh and Magdalena as their characters. Those three lean into the non-combat skills, and so the players tried to approach situations with that in mind. They seemed to enjoy the puzzles, which were a bit more frequent in this scenario. They also called upon characters met in scenarios from the previous years, and tried to avoid combat when possible. They really seemed to enjoy finding the lost Crown Jewels of England, and then making a run for it with Linh behind the wheel.

My second table, on the other hand, had six players—one more than I'd listed as the maximum. I doubled up on Gavin, the retrieval specialist, since I didn't want an extra version of Vaughn, the heavy. I had done this a few years ago, and that player happened to be present again, so it added some continuity. These players seemed more interested in a fight, however, and the characters were much more ready for combat. With two shooters and a brawler, and the holy person and occultist to Boost their Traits, they steamrolled the bad guys. I worry that they might have been disappointed by underwhelming foes, but I didn't think it was appropriate to stage an all-out assault. I need to do more work to create tougher bad guys, someone equivalent to the German Mechanic from Raiders of the Lost Ark. I have next year's scenario planned, though, and I think it might give them a more satisfying final fight.

-Nate

Sources of Inspiration: The Recovery Agent

Sources of Inspiration: The Recovery Agent

Recently I needed to do some solo driving, looking at a few hours in the car each way, by myself. For that reason I checked out an audiobook on CD from the library, one that I'd noticed in print but had not made time to read. That was The Recovery Agent by Janet Evanovich. Here are my thoughts.

• Admittedly, I'm not usually one for reading popular novels. The cover of this one caught my eye when I saw it in Costco, however. When I learned that I would need to drive to Duluth for a board meeting and a conference, then, I thought of it and checked out the audiobook on CDs from the library. I enjoyed it!

• There is a lot of bickering between the two main characters, who are ex-spouses. That doesn't interfere with the story, however, and I grew to like both characters. It would be interesting to see this dynamic used in an RPG campaign.

• The story digs into local superstitions, such as the Incan death deity Supay. This was an interesting decision by the author; I wonder how native people of Peru feel about the portrayal.

• Listening to the audiobook was a good lesson in using voices for NPCs. The reader, Lorelei King, needed to voice up to four different characters at a time, and did a good job of making each one pretty distinct.

• I was surprised by the amount of combat in this story. There was a lot of shooting and explosions, not something that I was expecting.

• The story also left some elements unresolved. Specifying which ones would be a spoiler, though, so I'll leave those for another time.