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World War II: Mission 4, Holding the Bridge

War Master (Owen): Yes, a great War Master Indeed.

Lambert’s Losers
Lt. Dick Dan (Ben): Our fearless squad leader, Distinguished Service Cross.
Private (E-2) Destry Lambert (Evil Mike): Our commando medic.
Private (E-2) Charlie Winters (Mike): Not sure what he does, Distinguished Service Cross.
Private (E-3) Hector Goldman (Steve): Armored Vehicle Crewman, bronze metal.

We’d had a long hiatus from our Savage World War II game. I think we were all ready to see just how well we could hold the bridge against the German onslaught. Some of us were less than prepared. I brought an old character sheet and Ben’s character was still written on a small yellow piece of paper. Oh well. (Later, I did find my latest character sheet tucked away in my Weird War II book.)

Since it’s been awhile, I’ll recap our mission. Hold the bridge until reinforcements arrive. If we can’t hold the bridge, we’re to destroy it.

Lt. Dan and Goldman check the buildings on the German side of the bridge. The buildings are clear. Winters and Lambert do a dramatic task to set the demolition charges under the bridge. On the first round they get a club and Winters needs a 7 (after all of the penalties) for a success. Lambert’s help gives him a +1 and together Winters ends up with exactly a 7! …using his d4 demolition skill. One success down and four more to go. Things didn’t go well after that. On the fourth round they still need three successes to get the charges set. They managed a single success for the round. Now they needed two on the last round. Winters critically fails his demolition roll…BOOM! The damage is rolled. Lowest damage ever—only 6 points. This Shakes Winters and Lambert. That could have gone much worse. Thankfully they are lousy at demolition.

A German truck followed by a Panzer IV appear at the edge of town and are heading towards the bridge. Lt. Dan and Goldman open fire. About that same time a French women with a baby carriage is also heading along the banks of the canal towards the bridge. She loses her grip on the carriage and it rolls into the water. “Epargner mon bébé !” she cries. (Translation: Save my baby!)

Winters rolls another critically failure while trying to climb around under the bridge. He falls into the canal. He can’t swim.

Lt. Dan fires the bazooka at the German truck and rolls 8 points of damage. I point out that he’s rolling the wrong dice for the damage. He rolls the correct dice and gets 13 points of damage—still not enough to stop the truck. (Loser.)

The French woman jumps in the canal to save her baby. She doesn’t appear to know how to swim. Lambert skillfully does a somersault dive off of the canal bank into the water. He plans on saving the baby and the women. Winters splashes to the canal’s steep bank. (At least he didn’t drown.)

As the truck turns down a side street near Goldman, he throw a potato masher into the open window of the truck. Goldman doesn’t have a throwing skill and its medium range and it’s a difficult shot. A -6 penalty. Goldman rolls an eleven and makes it! The explosion kills the driver and the truck hits the building Lt. Dan is in. The Panzer IV shoots at Lt. Dan’s position in the building and misses. The shot goes wide and hits the building across the street where Goldman is. The building partially collapses, but Goldman is unharmed. Lt. Dan jumps out of a second story window onto the truck and rolls a critical failure! He takes 18 points of damage. Lt. Dan soaks it all. (That’s our leader!)

Write-up note: My notes from my iPad says “Winters doors a German.” I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean, so I’m going with “Winters shoots a German.”

Winters shoots a German. He was one of two German officers that were heading along the canal banks apparently searching for the French woman. Lambert is able to grab the baby.

Now the battle with the Germans is in full swing. Goldman is having a continual firefight with Germans who are continually outflanking him, but he is holding his own. Lambert now has the baby and the French woman and is heading for the Allied side of the canal to get them to safety. Winters has scrambled out of the canal and moves towards the action to help Lt. Dan and Goldman. (Write-up note: it occurs to me that for this entire time Lt. Dan and Goldman have been holding off a truck full of German soldiers and a Panzer. Yeah, that’s the stuff we’re made of.)

Lt. Dan drives the truck out of sight of the panzer. A German throws a potato masher through the window of the truck. Lt. Dan takes a wound but soaks it. The truck takes a wound (its door is blown off and the steering is affected. The truck can’t turn left.) Another German notices the truck but not Lt. Dan. He assumes a German is driving the truck and jumps in beside Lt. Dan. Lt. Dan draws his pistol and shoots the German besides him. This is the beginning off a short, up-close gun battle between the two. It ends badly for the German.

We sight more Germans entering the town—a tiger tank and halftrack. The allies are coming towards the town from the other direction, but we can see they are woefully outgunned by the Panzer and Tiger tanks. Lt Dan calls for us to blow the bridge. Unfortunately the bazooka is laying in the road. Only Goldman has a chance to grab it, but he’s doing a fighting retreat against a squad of Germans. . Lambert, the baby, and the French woman all make it out of the canal and head for cover.

As I said earlier, the gun battle in the truck ends badly for the German. Lt. Dan Kills him then throws the truck into reverse to get the back to the bazooka.

The panzer destroys the oncoming Allied Sherman tank.

Goldman runs across the street and grabs the bazooka.

Lambert and girl run towards the Americans.

Winters and Goldman jump into the truck.

Another German Tiger tank shows up.

Lt. Dan backs the truck out from behind the building and heads towards the bridge…in reverse. Somehow Goldman and Lt. Dan switch positions in the truck. Goldman’s now driving and Lt. Dan has the bazooka in the back of the truck. Winters grabs the bazooka from Lt. Dan and shoots the panzer IV for no effect.

Us escaping backwards in the truck trying to cross the bridge and escape the advancing Germans.

Us escaping backwards in the truck trying to cross the bridge and escape the advancing Germans.

Goldman crashes the truck (intentionally) on the Allied end of the bridge and bails out. Knowing the Panzer will shoot the truck next, the smart move would be to jump into the canal. Goldman has a phobia of water so he instead jumps to the nearby shore—well within the burst radius of the panzers shot. Winters and Lt. Dan are still in the truck.

The panzers shot misses the truck and hits the bridge! The bridge collapses. The truck falls into the canal. Winters and Lt. Dan jump free.

A perfect ending for us! The bridge is destroyed. We’re all safe. And by the looks of it, we followed our orders perfectly.

Lt. Dan gets the Distinguished Service Cross for acts of heroism. Goldman and Winters get nominated for metals, but only Winters gets one—the Distinguished Service Cross! Unfortunately Goldman’s goldbricking past still haunts him when it comes to medals and such.

Write-up note: I know the guys (especially Mike B.) will read this and catch that the account for Winters is a little off towards the end. That’s because my notes conflicted about just where he was during the end of the battle. So I went with something I made up.

Oh, and image you just read this as an entry in the journal of Pvt. Goldman. I forgot to write it that way, but I’m sure you have a good imagination.

Pvt. Goldman, E-3

Savage Star Wars – Game 2

Worf – Wookie (Lee)
Elderkin Something – Padawan (Steve) (Absent this month)
Sy (Orion) Kentaurus – Padawan (Shawn)
James Border (Bond) – Padawan (Alex)
R4-GMM – R4 droid (Grace)
Obi-Wan – Padawan (Ben)

This Month (supposedly): The resolution of the meeting with Dubu and Lightsabers will be constructed!

So our intrepid Star travelers cleaned up the monastery and took the scientist (Madicus Rex) as prisoner. The Padawans discovered that the crystals they found were of poor quality and would not last long if used in Lightsabers.

Their Jedi Masters then tried to complete negotiations with Dubu the Hutt. But as usual, negotiations with the Hutts are not easy. The Hutts required additional payments be made to them by the Empire in order to sign the treaty with the Empire.

While the negotiations were going on, the Padawans did some interrogating of Madicus Rex. Eventually they discovered that Darth Tyranus is prepared to slaughter his entire family in order to keep his experiments with The Force secret. So the Jedi agreed to rescue Madicus’ family in exchange for the location of a planet with crystals that can be used for making Lightsabers.

The Jedi Masters needed to head back to the Jedi Council in order to work out the deal with the Empire and the Hutts. They agreed to let the Padawans decide what the best course of action for them would be. They could either come back to the Jedi Council or go searching for crystals. The Padawans chose crystals.

Since they had no ship, they decided to take the one that the Confederates were using and that Madicus had access to. Their plan was to have Madicus claim that he needed to get something off of the ship and that he had brought the rest of these people as bearers. However, when asked for identification code, Madicus found that his code was no longer any good and a firefight broke out. They were attacked from the rear by a group of mercenaries that they recognized from Dubu’s throne room. They seemed to be led by an Empire ambassador.  After a couple of crippling attacks on the Padawans, they were able to get aboard the ship. The guards then dropped their weapons and backed away to let them leave when Obi-Wan (Ben) shot the unarmed guard and killed him!  He drew 3 corruption cards! I suspect he will be the first to succumb to the Dark Side.

The Padawans sent a message to the Jedi Council that there may be an Empire traitor in their midst. Then R4 made a critical failure on her Navigation roll (again). They wound up at the wrong planet; however, all believe they were on the right planet to find the crystals.  What they found was a large angry creature and a cave full of guano covered crystals of very poor quality. After Worf took the creature down with just one shot, James Border critically failed his roll in the guano cave and was made very sick.

Next Month: Lightsabers will be constructed?  I’m not holding my breath on that.  :)

Savage Star Wars – Game 1

Worf – Wookie (Lee)
Elderkin Something – Padawan (Steve)
Sy (Orion) Kentaurus – Padawan (Shawn)
James Border (Bond) – Padawan (Alex, 10)
R4-GMM – R4 droid (Grace, 10)
Obi-Wan – Padawan (Ben, 9)

Our first game playing Evil Mike’s Savage Worlds Star Wars rules. I basically used the best ideas of other people and added some of my own.

Our game started with the Padawans and their Masters, being asked to visit Dubu the Hutt and secure his agreement to either join the Galactic Empire, open up travel through Hutt space, or at least not join the Confederacy of Independent Systems. The group is sent to Tatooine with a wookie and R4 droid on one of the Jedi transport ships.

After a critical failure on a navigation roll, the wookie was able to escape the scout ships from the confederacy that had spotted them. Back on track they arrived a day late to meet with Dubu. Upon arriving, the Jedi Masters were called away on an emergency mission, leaving the Padawans to begin negotiations with Dubu. Dubu asked for a good faith showing from the Jedi (after remarking about the lack of even one Jedi Master to negotiate with). He wanted the Jedi to clear out a neighboring monastery that Dubu was interested in acquiring. After some trepidation the padawans agreed to see what they could do. There was one catch, they had only 2 days to get it done since the Confederacy was coming the padawans wanted to have a deal with Dubu before then.

The padawans went to the nearby town and did some digging around on the monastary. They found out that Dubu had been trying to get his hands on it for several years. R4-GMM discovered the plans to the monastary and they quickly (like 45 minutes!) decided to go through the back door that led into an underground cave.

Upon sneaking into the cave they discovered a giant worm that was guarding the back door. After several useless attacks, they determined that they could shoot the stalagmite off the ceiling and crush the worm! After several rounds of attempting this, they finally succeeded. Obi-Wan and James found crystals for their Lightsabers and Worf found a dead body. Elderkin and R4 determined that the body was that of a “reborn”. A dark side force re-animated corpse that had been imbued with force powers. With R4’s help on the door, they got into the monastary.

Going to the control room first, R4 tapped into the cameras and discovered a lab where it appeared a scientist was using huge “force batteries” to transfer the force from a couple of victims (or volunteers?) into two new corpses. They quickly went to dispatch the scientist. Again with R4’s help to unlock the door, they nearly killed the scientist and asked him to surrender. He accepted, but not before sending a message off to some unknown person at some unknown location. Just then the Padawan’s masters showed up to offer their aid.

Next Month: The resolution of the meeting with Dubu and lightsabers will be constructed!

Savage Worlds Pirates of the Spanish Main Episode XI

Savage Worlds Pirates of the Spanish Main Episode XI

Ben as the GM: a wacky engineer who run a great game of Pirates.
Evil Mike as Buck U Charlie: a dual knife wielding maniac who lusts after a bigger ship.
Owen as Nicholas Hawksworth: a lover, not a fighter, who lusts after all the beautiful women.
Mike Byrd as Thomas Longshot: a branded pirate who sleeps with his musket and steals clothes.
Steve (me) as Duncan Crain: a schizophrenic who makes poor decisions, but still comes out on top.
Steve (also me) as Desmond Crain: the imaginary brother of Duncan.

Words of the week: saucy wenches and adieu.

The adventure began with Nicholas arriving at our ship after his midnight frolic in a haystack with the beautiful Carmen. He was still picking the straw from his impeccable clothes when Robert Rook arrived to meet with Buck concerning a topic of mutual interest. Unfortunately the topic was a closely guarded secret and Buck, after trying many, many times, could not wrench it from the closed mouth Rook. Just why had he come here? Why did he want to meet with Buck? Will he accompany us back to see his father? Just what was his embarrassing predicament?

Time passed. Seeing that Buck was just about ready to kill him (or kill Ben the GM, it was kind of hard tell which), Rook decided to spill the beans. He had the Governor’s wife, and was willing to turn her over to us if we’d only help him get his ship off the sandbar which had him stranded here in Tobago. We agreed.

We sailed our ship, the Misery, around to where Rook ‘s ship, the Black Prince, was stuck on the sandbar. (How embarrassing.)  We expertly maneuvered our ship in front of his and began attaching ropes to pull his ship free. Then we spotted two Spanish ships heading directly for us. There were tense moments as we towed the Black Prince to freedom, hoping we could get it free in time so it could help us battle the Spanish ships.

It just so happened that Buck was on the Black Prince. He took over control of the ship during the battle. Nicholas handled our ship. I fell asleep. Then Ben woke me up and offered me the captains-ship of one of the Spanish ships–the one attacking Buck. I jumped at the chance of sinking Buck for the glory of Spain! Unfortunately a poorly timed joker (that Buck got) kept me from ramming his ship and sending her (and him) to the bottom of the sea. Seeing how I had steered the ship into an oncoming sand bar, I surrendered.

Buck was a gracious and gallant victor allowing the Spanish to flee for their lives with their personal belongings. This left him with their ship. There was some contention with Robert Rook over just what to do with the ship, but Buck eased his fears by reaching for his knives.

As for Nicholas’s ship battle, let’s just say there was very little left of the Spanish he fought.* Nicholas sent her to the bottom of the sea…which wasn’t really that far, so some of the ship jutted out of the water. Buck sent a few canon shots into the Spanish as well.

*Technically, Nicholas was below deck warming himself by the fire. But since he was the only wild card on the ship, he gets all the credit. Ok, Thomas was on board too, but the guy playing him (Mike) had to leave early. This left Owen in charge of his character; which leads me to the final action of the night…

Thomas nearly shoots the governor of Cartagena.

So let it be written. So let it be…uh, so.

Chaos Steve

Savage Worlds Pirates of the Spanish Main Episode X

Savage Worlds Pirates of the Spanish Main Episode X

Ben as the GM: a wacky engineer who run a great game of Pirates.
Evil Mike as Buck U Charlie: a dual knife wielding maniac who lusts after a bigger ship.
Owen as Nicholas Hawksworth: a lover, not a fighter, who lusts after all the beautiful women.
Mike Byrd as Thomas Longshot: a branded pirate who sleeps with his musket and steals clothes.
Steve (me) as Duncan Crain: a schizophrenic who makes poor decisions, but still comes out on top.
Steve (also me) as Desmond Crain: the imaginary brother of Duncan.

Word of the week: Topiary.

If you remember from last week’s write-up, lots of fun things happened. This week’s adventure was no different. We continued our search for James Rook and in the process attended a ball put on by the governor or Tobago. I’ll skip right to the highlights…

Buck bought a mask. It was half black and half white. It was important that his mask matched many others at the ball. Buck was in thieves’ heaven relieving the various guests of their ball sacks. Uh, I mean money sacks.

The front of the governor’s mansion was covered in pea gravel and protected by an elegant iron fence. No carriages were allowed close to the mansion, so we had to walk. The mansion was constructed of a fine, lightly colored stone that brought out the blue in Nicholas’ eyes.

Nicholas attended the ball as himself, escorting the lovely lady DeVrey. The rest of us weren’t even announced. This actually worked out well for us.

Once inside the ball room, Nicholas immediately zeroed in on the most beautiful women in the room, Sophia. She was the niece/daughter of the duke of Cartagena. His full name can be found on page 149 in the Pirates of the Spanish Main book. We shall henceforth call him Duke Rafael. Sophia was surrounded by suitors, but none had Nicholas’ wit and charm. Buck used this opportunity to relieve the suitors of their ball sacks.

Thomas made a complete fool of himself “stealthily” watching a dubious fellow at the ball. (Somehow this fellow was more dubious than Thomas himself.)

Duncan was completely taken in by the charm(s) of a beautiful senorita. The story of her oppression under her evil uncle, Duke Rafael, touched his heart. All she needed was the chest from the duke’s room and she and Duncan could run away together and be free. Needless to say, Duncan was up to the challenge. Using his wits and end of his fists (Hey, that rhymes.) he found the small, heavy, bejeweled chest. Unfortunately on his way back down to the balcony, the guards were not as friendly. This forced Duncan into his “fight or flight” mode. He chose “flight”. Bullying past the guards, he smashed through a glass door and then leaped from a balcony into the governor’s garden topiary. (He had a joker.) Duncan escaped over at +1 red brick wall.

Buck and Thomas were on the balcony when Duncan went leaping off of it. Buck asked the beautiful senorita what was going on. She told him of the madman’s rush through the door and off the balcony. Bucks, feigning drunkenness, also interferes with guards seeking to chase Duncan (said madman). The beautiful senorita mentions how she is feeling faint and goes back inside to retreat to her room. Buck hears a shot from inside and goes to investigate. The beautiful senorita is lying on the stairs, bleeding from a musket wound. She whispers to Buck to avenge her. But Buck has more questions and stays by her side until she grabs him and with all of her remaining strength tells him to AVENGE HER!

Buck finally gets the idea and heads upstairs.

Thomas, during this time, had climbed down into the topiary. He headed to the spot Duncan jump down to. There he finds the dead body of a guard who had broken his neck trying to jump from the balcony to give chase to Duncan. He immediately begins undressing the corpse.

Meanwhile, back in the ballroom, Nicholas is trying his best to seduce the lovely Sophia. After hearing the shot and shouts from outside, everyone panics and rushes from the ballroom. Nicholas stays close to Sophia, showing his gallant side, protecting her during the crowed rush.

Buck spends some tense moments upstairs trying to locate the assassin who has set a trap for him. Buck sees through the simple ruse and confronts the man (who has stolen Spanish documents). The assassin/thief turns out to be none other than James Rook. There is much banter as James escapes.

Recap:

Uncharacteristically, Buck killed no one during this session.

Uncharacteristically, Nicholas had no trysts during this session.

Uncharacteristically, Duncan actually did something that gained him treasure.

Hopefully Uncharacteristically, Thomas undressed a corpse. Let’s hope this doesn’t continue.

Final Scene:

The Lady DeVrey was very drunk by the end of the evening. Percy, the governor’s personal secretary, offered both her and Buck private rooms for the evening.He was happy to do so after the noble conduct of Buck during the theft. As Buck was getting settled into bed, the door to his room opened. A lithe form wearing a flimsy robe silently moved to his bedside. The robe is discarded and the slender form climbs under the warm covers next to Buck. There is a scream as Buck realizes the form is not that of the Lady DeVrey, but that of Percy the secretary.

 Chaos Steve