Re: [HoE] Posse Stagnation

["Everett E. Proctor" <spiritmast@globaldialog.com>]

Make it personal.  Have the baddies go after the posse, their possessions,
their friends, and their family.  Make it so that they can't ignore or
run away from the trouble.

For HoE:   Infect them with a plague that can only be cured by a drug in
an old, high-security, military hospital.  One of the road gangs they
picked up was only a small scouting party of a larger, much tougher gang,
and they're prepared for the posse with an ambush. Have them run into an
abomination/psycher/doom bringer that has the power to set their
automobile's fuel on fire, watch them walk through the great basin
carrying as much stuff as they can.  Any Psychers? have another psycher
steal his banshee stone.  Any doom sayers? Silas decides to squash this
bug.  

For Deadlands:  Give one of the characters night-terrors that can only
be cured by destroying the abomination causing them. Have the family of
someone they killed come seeking vengence. Have someone frame them for a
bank robbery.  Any hucksters? have the Pinkertons become very interested.
Mad scientists? Hellstromme *really* wants to get his hands on that
gadget.

For Either:   have someone they killed earlier come back harrowed, with
a grudge to settle, make him smart and just hang around and sabotage the
posse rather than fighting them directly.  Use powers like Marked for
Death, Jinx, and Possession to harm the characters without the posse
being able to figure out exactly what's going on.  Give him powers that
will be particullarly frustrating for your players. Arcane Protection and
Bad Mojo will give a posse with a huckster tons of trouble.

Also, skew the rewards so that it is much more profitable to do the
"right" thing. When the
posse defeats a road gang, they only find 2-nd rate weapons, little ammo,
junked cars held together with bailing wire, etc.   But when they take
out the abomination you wanted them to go after, have him sitting on a
lost ghost-rock shipment, or forgotten weapons cache. 

> I've had this problem in both my HoE and Deadlands campaigns, and I need a
> bit of advice.
> 	My posse seems to have lost motivation to do anything meaningful in
> the game.  I throw clues their
> way, but they just sit back and go about their lives as if nothing happened. 
> In HoE, they got a few
> cars and some weapons, and are content to while away the days picking off
> road gang members and
> trading their vehicles for supplies.  Then, they go out and hunt more gangers.
> Never mind that the
> world around them is going even more into Hell, they just want to go shopping.
> 	In Deadlands, they're getting so concerned with the pedantic details
> of life that they pay no
> attention to the real threat.  When things start to look bad, they LEAVE TOWN
> to escape, leaving the
> citizens to be eaten by some unimaginable horror.
> 	I'm trying to include an element of mystery here, and they're just
> not taking the hint.  Anyone
> have any ideas?
> 
> -- 
> And so ends the case I call "The Case Of The Guy Who Was So Stressed-Out
> About His Lost Keys That He
> Eventually Had A Heart Attack, And It Turned Out They Were In The Sofa The
> Whole Time.
> 
> Richard A. Ranallo,
> The Man They Couldn't Hang
> 
> 
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----
Everett Proctor
Agency Field Op
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