Behind the Screen: Badlands #1

Last night we had the first session of the Badlands campaign.  The actual adventure time was pretty short, since we had to finish the last encounter of the Slipstream game, and roll up characters.  Nevertheless, I got a number of impressions to chew over.

The Meet-Up:  I really hadn't had a meet-up idea in mind.  At one point early in the planning I was considering having the players already be part of a charted exploration company, in a similar fashion to the Brown Trousers campaign, but decided not to go down the same road again.   Andrew threw out a lot of good ideas (all from the same orphanage, all from the same school etc.).   But once the characters were finally settled, it was to Raymond Chandler that my mind quickly turned (as it often does).
       "Why would 5 of these hard-nosed mooks band together in this crazy world?  Only three possible reasons:  a dame, a big score, or somebody betrayed them and left them alive." (Raymond Chandler "Fake Story I didn't Write", Fake Publisher: Fake Town:  1939).
       Of course, they all met because some jerk swindled them and left them standing around holding their johnsons.  So, enter Bosco Stan who had swindled them out of "charter application money" and we were off and running.  I decided to make him a halfling, rather than a gnome, because I would have made the gnome too clever and he would have surely escaped, halflings always get caught.

The Flunky Deck:  my deck of hirelings, lackeys and mercenaries was immediately useful.  Chuck pulled a card from the property deck that said he could draw a free hireling for a month, and he got Angry Steve the Pack Hauler, who was immediately a scream, and turned Chuck's fighter into Angry Chuck's Fighter.    Later Noah hired "Loud Larry" who was also a scream, shouting at everything.  I might have come up with similar guys on the spot, but they probably wouldn't have been as cool as what I had put in the deck.

Hit Points:  the players took little damage, so I can't say how the extra die will work out for them, but I am convinced that systems where the bad guys, at least, roll for hit points really has its good side.  I made Bosco Stan a 2nd level thief, with 3d6 hit points.  I just happened to roll 3 sixes (where were they when I was rolling a character?).  As a result, Bosco took a whole lot of beating before he went down, which was pretty awesome.

30-Sided Character:  when I was searching for my old DM screen, I found an old booklet called "The 30 Sided Character" which the Armoury published, presumably to sell 30-sided dice.  It was filled with a large number of random tables (with 30 entries each).  The "People You Meet in a Tavern" was a life-saver and gave us Yerkmenric the Lawyer,  the 3 dancing girls and lute player, Sammy the Bouncer at the Pie-shop, and the 3 nomads (not the names, but the description).  These results really set the parameters of the encounters.

Wound Table:  the wound table is going to be pretty deadly.  It's going to be really important to avoid going below 0 hit points, since there's a 1 in 3 chance of ending up dead each time.  I like that they tried to subdue Bosco Stan, but he died anyway.  If you beat someone into unconscioussness, they die sometimes.

Rolling Characters:  I had forgotten how long it takes to roll up characters.  I suppose it was the fact that so many people were doing it at once.  One on One would have made things faster.  I also suppose I should make up a few pre-gens in case we need them.