Re: [HOE] Junkyard Duels and Challenging Sarge [SPOILER]

[toadpooka@juno.com]

In


Spoiler


Space,


Can


We


Still


Hear



You


Scream?



I had a character who did this in a game I was running.  He was a Vet o'
the Weird West Harrowed Texas Ranger.  Basically, except for the cyborg
stuff, his stats were exactly the same as Sarge's (I think he made up for
some deficiencies with powers).  I figured, fair fight, let's go for it.
We did the staredown.
Sarge's card came up first.  Unfortunately, the person playing Sarge (me)
was dumb, and held it so he could get +2 on the shot.
The Ranger's card came up.  He wasn't quite so dumb, and took the shots. 
Ironically, the two of us had exactly the same plan in mind, only he
worked faster.  Four hollow-point rounds fanned from a single-action
revolver, two at each of Sarge's hands.  Did enough damage to maim each
of his arms.  The Ranger finished him off at his leisure.
I ruled that about 10% of the cash was taken in taxes (even this
character couldn't aruge with the Junkyard Militia).  Some went to pay
the accountant he needed to keep track of it all.  He had to become a
citizen of Junkyard, since anything he bought in town with that three
grand would be tough to drag around outside of Junkyard and probably not
worth as much at any given trading post.  To get citizenship, you need to
have a residence in town.  The Ranger had to buy a reclaimed house.  To
protect all his stuff, he had to install a security system.  Some of the
cash, he spent on a cache of arms and supplies to be stored at his place.
 He bought a hoverbike and a ton of fuel, took what he could in tradable
goods and took off to search for Deus Ex Machina.  He decided that he had
to get a spirit fetter installed, because his manitou had a Spirit of
something like 5d12+6, and would take over every time lead started
flying.  He didn't want any other nifty cyborg junk, just the fetter so
he didn't have to worry about the pesky demon anymore.  My only beef was
that he didn't wait up for the rest of hte posse. I had a hell of an
adventure planned for them to actually find Deus, but he didn't want to
be slowed down.
Basically, unless this character is already very badass, he's goin' down
in front of Sarge anyway.  The shots in both his hands is a nice way to
not only take a character down, but to prove what he's dealing with.  I'd
do that and then leave the PC alive.  If he's bad enough to take Sarge on
in a fair fight, three grand isn't gonna make him much worse.  The best
it could buy (powergaming-wise) is a bunch of cyborg stuff.  If he does
win, remember that Junkyard thinks it's a real city, and tries to act
accordingly.  Think of what happens to three grand if you win the
lottery.  Taxes, rent, accountants, banks and security are minor worries
(there's also protection rackets, organized crime and embezzlement, too).
 That money isn't worth much outside of the 'Yard, so he'll have to stick
around for a while, and that generally means getting all the stuff I
mentioned up above.

From Whom It May Concern,
Rich Ranallo

"Rock and Roll will be the new planetary culture, believe it or not."
-Prof. Michio Kaku