The deathlands creates a delightful set of constraints and opportunities for objectives / rewards / treasure. What are the coolest ones you’ve run into? I’ve compiled a set of 6 random tables of objectives for my table. Feedback is invited and greatly welcomed. Creative commons so mix at will :).
These random tables go along with the previous ones I’ve created for Locations & Obstacles.
We trade off GM-ing our campaign. I ran a Deathlands score where a portal from the subbasements of the Dimmer Sister’s Mansion. Just getting to the portal was an ordeal of investigation, undermining, and a group trap disarm using a critical gather information roll with Petra, our Lurk’s girlfriend, and an asset from our Hound’s Ghost Hunter large cat to sniff out the best point of attack and a great group Wreck to burst through. (As an aside, our season finale, a three session funhouse run by our other GM, had Scurlock paying back the favor we earned on this score by opening their magical defenses for a frontal assault with three Tier 2 cohorts of a dozen or so each.)
We had been tasked by Scurlock to recover diamond necklaces that were binding the original Dimmer Sisters in a remote wizard’s tower deep in central Akoros. Scurlock needed them as a component in a ritual to bind a bunch of elemental demon power to him. If I recall, they helped him bind and focus the dark desires of all the demons. The crew had to scramble across a bunch of the Deadlands barely outrunning a huge pack of ghosts with setup flashbacks and pushing (and maybe a Devil’s Bargain–it was touch and go). There was, of course, an x-bow armed ghost guardian with his own Ghost Hunting hound dog lying in wait for intruders. The way I played it, our lurk was slinking up the stairs and shot with a ghost bow for level 3 harm as cresting the stairs; simultaneously, he had set his ghost hound loose to attack and everyone has to resist supernatural terror. So, how are you going to play this? The sisters themselves were about as terrifying as anything we’d ever seen, but through a clever device rigging by our Leech and incredible finesse on the part of our Lurk, they yanked all the necklaces at once through an elaborate block and tackle, grabbed the necklaces, and slammed the warded door shut.