Tornado Warning Issued For Your Area!!!

This is not a gaming post, but I should try to find a way to turn it INTO one... hmmm...

We had storms go through the Atlanta area last night. Some pretty nasty ones too. I believe that an EF0 Tornado passed just to the northwest of where we live. I'll look into that, to see if it is confirmed by the National Weather Service. (UPDATE: Although storm-relative motion radar views did show rotation for this storm cell, a tornado was not confirmed by NWS. So, it is likely that the rotation within the cloud did not develop into a funnel touching down.)

In the mean time, I took some really cool pictures of the hail that fell. I went outside and used a small plastic bowl to scoop up a bunch of hail stones from this "drift" that had formed in front of our building.

Here are some nice ones from the top of the bowl.

A particularly nice example:

Some internal structure images:

This stuff is particularly relevant to me because I'm a meteorologist. Weather fascinates me.

Oh, I know how to relate this to gaming... last year, I ran an encounter that, personally, I deemed to be a failure. Granted, I had some high expectations of myself, but ultimately the effect I was going for failed... fell flat... whatever... and really only served to piss off one of the players, and I think the others were just unimpressed. That might not be the case, but that's how I read it from my end of the table.

The encounter itself was fairly normal... 4 hobgoblins and a bugbear are guarding a bridge that the PCs have to cross. Fight ensues.

But then I threw in this:

This is a natural tornado that was ripping through the area. As a little background info, the encounter took place in a ruined Dragonborn city that had a perpetual storm churning in the skies over it. So, it was constantly raining, and I thought I'd throw this in to make an encounter a bit more interesting.

The tornado's effects are all based on progressively-smaller auras. From 6 to 10 squares away from the tornado, anyone who entered that area or started their turn there would be subject to the Microburst attack, which was just a slide effect. I just noticed a typo in there too... I called the aura "gusting winds" in the Traits block, but "driving winds" in the power block. Oh well. heh. Anyway, as you got closer, you passed in to the Blasting Winds aura at 5 squares away, and then into the Shredding Winds aura at 2 squares away, each adding damage to the attack and a stronger slide effect.

This was an example of a "directional slide" too. A push effect wouldn't work, because a tornado wouldn't push you away from it. A pull effect wouldn't work, because a tornado doesn't pull you towards it. Only a slide worked, but it had to be in a specific direction only, as the winds would be swirling around the tornado in a counterclockwise direction. That's not ALWAYS the case in reality, but it is statistically the most likely.

The encounter fell short of expectations, and was deemed a failure (by me) because I was stressed, I didn't eat before the session (bad move since I'm hypoglycemic), and this all exacerbated my ADHD, causing me to forget some important details until it was too late to implement them. Only one character was affected by the tornado, and it only served to piss off the player, as the "slide" slid her character right off the bridge into the raging waters of the canal below. She was playing an Eladrin, though, so that was easily solved.

I still like the idea, though. I hope to use it again at some point.

When will it end??!!

How much fun can you have with tiles, I ask you??!!

Well, for starters, I updated tile pickup truck that I made. This was a good start, but I put the design through a couple of revisions, and I took new images of the original model, and the result was this...

After I was done, I brought that over to Craig's where it will stay for the duration of our Gamma World adventures, because it is a little bit fragile. I decided to put some rubber cement in the slots, to make it hold together better, leaving only the roof as a "free" tile, so that minis can be put inside the truck.

Just the other day, I decided to try a motorcycle (since my Gamma World group has one). This design took a little bit of thought, since I would have to accommodate the base of the miniature. My first idea was to make three pieces, the front of the bike, the back of the bike, and a flat piece that the miniature's base would sit on, and which the front and back would slot into. That would work fine, but it suddenly dawned on me yesterday that each miniature comes with a built-in "flat piece". So, the final design became a front and back piece, each supported by a cross-piece for stability, and then a slot was cut near the bottom of both pieces which the miniature's base would slot into.

Check this out!

It's a little rough at the moment. I'm tempted to cut some of the white parts a bit closer to the graphic.

Now, I just need to make a few more of them, in other varieties of motorcycle. Next up... The Chopper. :)

The Big Chicken

When we finished our last D&D campaign arch, Craig said that he wanted to run Deadlands, the horror western game. I'd heard of Deadlands, but I'd never played it, and I'd never played in a western game before. I came up with an interesting character, and I'd been enjoying the game. Craig had this boxed set of 8.5"x11" Old West Town tiles, but they lacked any kind of reference grid to track movement on, so I offered to scan them in, add a grid, and print them out on cardstock. That way, we could use the printouts, and pretty much muck about with them however we liked, and still preserve the originals.

In the process of working on this, which I found to be an interesting project, I started looking into whether or not anyone out there in the ether had put together 3D models of an old west town. I was looking for plastic toys, basically, but this is when I stumbled upon Papercrafting.

This is, apparently, a big thing. There are many many sites out there with paper models, and there are even sites that gather together links to other sites with paper models on them. Buildings, monuments, cars, trains, planes, etc.

The page I originally found was on the "Rules with No Name" site, which gave link after link to Old West models, miniatures, and papercraft. Many of the papercraft items were free when that page was originally written, but times being what they are, most of those have disappeared or have gone commercial, as people realized they could sell the pdfs of the papercraft models. I don't fault them, but it's really a shame I didn't discover this sooner.

Anyway, I hadn't really done anything with the whole Papercraft idea until a few weeks ago. I'm running the Famine in Far-Go campaign for Gamma World, but I converted the Far-Go and East Dah-Koh-Tah setting to Full-Ton and the North Jee-Ore-Jah area. My group started off in LJ (Ellijay, GA), and traveled down to Marietta, GA to investigate why a shipment of food was late. This kicked off the campaign, as the group encountered herd zombies, obbs, and vegepygmies who were attacking a small area north of the town.

When they reached the town center, they beheld The Big Chicken, in all its glory...

Marring the sight was a bunch of zombies and vegepygmies chasing the unfortunate citizens of Marietta towards their save haven! The group dispatched the menace, albeit with some difficulty (Rad-Cat almost died!), and they met Sanders, the current Manager of the Church of Pesco, the Big Chicken.

Constructing the Big Chicken was an idea that came to me a few days before the game. I was trying to use Google Maps to download a satellite image of the area and convert that into gaming tiles to put down for the map, but the resolution was so bad that the tiles were coming out far too pixelated to be of use. In a google image search for any possibly-higher-resolution images, I saw picture after picture of the Big Chicken itself, and it suddenly dawned on me that I didn't need the overhead view... it would be MUCH more impressive to make a papercraft Big Chicken!

It didn't take me too long to work it out. I grabbed a side image of the Big Chicken, doctored it so that it was more "post-apocalyptic", and then grabbed images of the KFC it's attached to... the front, the north side and the south side. I made sure everything was to the 1"=5feet scale, and all the pieces were to scale with each other, and everything looked right. Then, it was a simple matter of printing it all out on cardstock, cutting it out, and slotting it all together. I had to apply some glue to the Big Chicken, gluing the front together so there wouldn't be a seam, and I cut slots in the front of the building to fit the sides of the Big Chicken down into. I even made sure that the doors lined up with the battlemat squares, and that there was a "passage" cut underneath the Big Chicken (since such a passage exists in the real thing). Then I drew the building perimeter, interior and parking lot onto my battlemat. I even created a roof out of foam, but it was too much of a hassle to use, so I just left it at home when it came time to head to Craig's for the game.

I think this has to be one of the best things I've created for a game so far. :)

More Fun with Tiles

Back in this post, you can see that I used a model of a Ford F-100 pickup truck for the pickup truck Jennifer's character started out with.

The model was very neat, and I think everyone enjoyed using it, however there is one problem with it... it is too small. I was hoping that I could play around with the model and make it possible for miniatures to fit in the cab and in the back, but it's just too small for that.

Craig has offered the tiles he has made using an old battlemat that got marked up, which he turned into various vehicle tiles (wagon, pickup truck, motorcycle, dump truck, etc), which are very neat, but I'm still keeping to my use of 3D terrain as much as I can.

So, in keeping with that, I turned this...

into this...

and here's a top view...

I used the same design as the cart tiles in the Desert of Athas tileset. In this version of the pickup truck, the back is 2x2 squares, and can now hold 4 miniatures, as it should be able to, and I'm designing the cab so that it can hold two miniatures inside. I'm just putting together the "seat" tile that will go directly underneath the roof, with enough vertical space to allow two miniatures to stand inside and still put the roof on. Once I've done that, I'll likely glue the truck together, to give it more stability, and only leave the roof tile as removable.

I'm really excited to put this into use in the next session, and I'm pretty sure that my players will like it.

Gaming whenever, wherever, however...

I have played rpgs over a variety of mediums.

I started off with tabletop, of course, because the internet didn't come around until 15 years after I started playing. I still played tabletop games, even after the internet was available, although that started me talking about roleplaying games with people online, introducing me to new people, sometimes a city away, sometimes a hemisphere of the planet away.

My first experience with online gaming, if I remember correctly, is when I moved to Ottawa, Ontario, in the fall of 1998. I had been running a Star Wars game for my friends up until that time, and I really saw no reason why that shouldn't continue. I had been chatting with people over IRC (Internet Relay Chat) for some time, and the mIRC program had some very nice features that would be useful for running a game. It even had a built-in die-rolling script. So, once a week, on Sunday nights, my friends from the Toronto area and I all got online, logged on to IRC (on the MagicStar server?).

After that, I got into Play-By-Post games, on internet forums. DnDAdventure.com was one site, and DrunkenDwarfInn.co.uk was another one. I also played in some "freeform" roleplaying games, such as the Xavier Institute game that was based out of Forumopolis.com (which was PvPForums.com at the time). Freeform was interesting. No rules set used, just a set of common rules of conduct. I guess they had their roots in the MUDs of the early days of the internet. I liked the storytelling aspect of the freeform games, but the D&D player in me always was a bit more interested in die-rolling mechanics to resolve things, rather than just a "whatever I think is best at the time". Too many players getting full of themselves and always wanting whatever was best for THEM, as opposed to what was best for the story.

I digress, though.

Play-by-post games are, by their very nature, slow. They are usually played by people in many different time-zones, sometimes on opposite sides of the planet, and sometimes people's lives get busy, and there can be times when days go by between posts. My ADHD compounded the problem at times, since if things slowed down at all, I'd usually lose interest fairly quickly, and I'd have to be prompted a few times before I got around to posting. In general, though, they usually went fairly well, but still slowly. I ran an experiment once, involving my D&D3.5e Dragonlance gaming group. I arranged for everyone, no matter where they lived, to sign on at a specific time one Sunday, and we all played together at the same time. There were some rules to keep things orderly, and it worked fairly well. In the end, we went through as many posts in that day... playing for about 4 hours... as we had gone through in the past 4 months of regular play-by-post gaming! That, unfortunately, was the death knell of that game. I was running them through the entire set of 16 Dragonlance modules, and they were in the middle of module #2 at the time. It had already taken us about a year and a half to get to that point, and I didn't want to still be playing this game 20 years from then, so I basically gave them an ultimatum. Either we continue to meet each week like this, with posting allowed in between, or the game was over. Noone could commit the time regularly, so that was that.

One thing I did like about play-by-post gaming was that it allowed me time to come up with good, well-thought-through posts. I could be rather impulsive when playing tabletop games, and it frequently got my characters into trouble, and sometimes caused some conflicts with other players as well. I didn't think very well "on my feet" either, so coming up with good plans wasn't exactly my strong suit. The story I wrote about Alron leading a band of elves to rescue prisoners from an army of orcs is a good example of that. I couldn't come up with anything right then, so I basically said "I'm sure I'll come up with something good when we get there". Steve's expression, showing the reaction of the elven leaders to that, is something I think I will always remember. heh. Playing in the Xavier Institute game held its challenges as well, since in that case, people usually were all online at the same time, so I had to think and post quickly. I caused some very angry reactions at times, because it took me awhile to write good responses, and I probably caused a couple of players to quit over it. I don't blame myself, honestly. I didn't know I had ADHD at the time, and they were pretty jerkish about it overall, so whatever.

I digress again, though. heh.

Okay, where am I leading to...

Last year, I started a D&D game. I was already playing in a weekly group on Saturday afternoons (run by my friend Craig), and running a 4eD&D conversion of the U-series "Saltmarsh" adventures on rpol.net, but I had some ideas for a tabletop D&D game. Most of all, I wanted my wife, Caroline, to be able to play. So, I got a small group together (Craig, Jennifer and Caroline to start), and we started playing on Sunday evenings.

Unfortunately, things started getting complicated due to Caroline's schedule. She works night shifts, and gets off of her last shift of the week on Sunday at 5am. Her ability to participate in the game was highly dependent on whether or not she was able to get enough sleep Sunday morning/afternoon. In addition to that, playing at our place meant that our dog, who is not fond of men (other than me), especially those who come into her territory (our apartment), would spend much of the night barkhowling and trying to dominate the man in question (Craig) into leaving. Playing elsewhere would limit our time, and switching to another night, like Monday, would also limit our time (since we couldn't start until around 8pm), so we looked for a compromise. The solution I came up with, which would also allow me to add a few new players, was to play online.

I looked into the various gaming platforms... GameTable, MapTools, etc, and started building the necessary library of pictures and the like that I would need to run the game to my satisfaction. However, there was some disappointment with this idea, since it would not allow me to use the miniatures and tiles I had bought, nor the 3D terrain that I had spent time building. So, instead, I figured we would try playing with Skype and a webcamera, and if that didn't work, we'd switch to something else, like GameTable, and go from there.

This was a completely new way of playing for me, so I was excited. When the next session rolled around, I set up my tiles, terrain, and minis for the first encounter, and started up Skype and the webcamera from my laptop. The first snag we discovered is that you can't send video to multiple recipients using Skype. At least not with the older versions or even the Beta version we were using. A quick setup of a U-Stream account solved that problem, but it was a tad unsatisfactory, since the view was rather small, and the webcam was pretty old, so the view wasn't very good. Further still, switching between encounters took a long time. After the first encounter, the group took a completely different direction than I'd hoped, and I was basically scrambling to come up with an alternate encounter. In the end, I took too long, and by the time I had the encounter set up, it was time to call it a night.

We hit a further snag when, the week before the next session, Craig admitted to me that playing over the web wasn't for him. It caused too much of a disconnect from the game for him, and removed the more social aspect of the game as well. I totally understand his position on that. There is a definite disconnect, especially for someone who isn't used to playing online. I almost canceled the game then, since I was finding that running the game was very stressful, and I wasn't spending the proper amount of prep-time, but he convinced me to hold off on that.

Taking a step back to examine the situation, then moving forward again, I purchased a new webcam, got a few new players, and one of the players suggested using the Mikogo interface. It is a free desktop-sharing service, which allowed me to run the webcam software, giving me more options to adjust to get the best resolution and clarity possible, and we used Skype to talk. With this new group and setup, I started a Sunday night Encounters game, which also eliminated the need to switch between encounters, and we only play for 2 hours, so it keeps things from getting boring.

What my players see in their browser is this:

Now, I will say right now that image in the webcam view is not the real image they saw in the webcam view that night. It turns out I didn't take any images of that fight with the webcam, I only streamed video. That picture is from my Canon Powershot, copied and pasted into the image to give the proper view of that encounter.

The webcam view is still a little grainy for my tastes, as it sometimes makes it hard to see the map/tile grid, and there is some confusion at times about which miniature is which, but I think we're getting better. I think it is a lighting issue, so it's something I can work on for future sessions. I've been toying with the idea of using the zoom on the camera more too... perhaps zooming in on a particular character when it is their turn, zooming out to show the whole map when needed. I picked up some correction-fluid pens the other day and marked the miniatures with numbers, so they're more easily identified, and I'm going to make or get something to put around miniatures or miniature bases to denote them being marked, quarried, bloodied, etc. I have Post-It tags that might work for that, with different colors denoting different things (and writing on them any extra info, if needed). The only issue I can see with that is that some miniatures don't lend themselves easily to sticking tape to them. I'll give it a try tonight, and see how it works. If it doesn't, maybe something with different colored clay would work better...

Gamma World

No pictures from last week's game. I forgot to bring my camera to the session. Too bad too, because I showcased more of my miniature "proxies" in this session. More on that, further down.

I think the game went really well again. I'm enjoying it. My players seem to enjoy it as well. They seem quite well invested in the wackiness.

There are times, though, when my brain kind of takes a step back from the game, while I'm running it, and points out how dull it seems... or how dull I'm making it... going around the table, each person taking their turns... the monsters taking their turn... ho hum. Then the moment passes. Or sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it lingers on for awhile, which causes part of my brain to start thinking "Why am I doing this? I'm clearly horrible at this."

I'm left wondering if this happens to "Neuro-Typical" DMs (if there is such a thing. ha ha). In this case, "Neuro-Typical" being those without ADHD. It's a simple matter of the dopamine response, really, but I am curious.

When I plan out the adventures, I have a lot of fun with the creative process. I laugh at the little puns or in-jokes that I insert into the encounters. I have one coming up in the next session that I've called "There's Yur Problem!", which the players will understand once they're into the encounter. heh.

It's just when I'm actually running it that this problem comes out. I wonder if I'm being boring. If everyone is just sitting there, just waiting for their turn so that they can get it over with and the whole ordeal will just be over and done with that much quicker.

I highly doubt that they actually ARE thinking that, by the way. At least in the Gamma World game, they're laughing and having fun, so I have to take something positive from that. Right?

Anyway, the session went pretty well. I still forgot a few things, but that was from the fact that I grabbed the encounter locales from the rulebook, and didn't read up on them sufficiently beforehand. Had I written everything myself, the details would have stuck in my mind better (hopefully).

Still, it was fun.

Now, to relate this to the purpose for the blog, I had snagged some Warhammer 40k Tau Drone miniatures off eBay.

I paid $8.50 for the lot (17 of them) plus $5 for priority shipping, when sets of 4 typically retail for $10. As you can see, they are mostly pre-painted, and they have these tiny little magnets on the bottoms of the drones, and the tops of the flight bases, so that you can transport them easier and then just pop them onto their bases when you need them. Very cool! These only had three bases with magnets, but I bought some more of the "rare earth" magnets off the internet, so I can now complete the other ones. I'll probably end up selling most of them, as I don't need that many. heh.

My players thought they were pretty cool. It's also remarkable how much these match the look of the various Gamma World robots that are stat'd up. Sentrybots and Laserbots, especially.

A while ago, I'd bought some "Rocket Raccoon" Heroclix figures on the cheap (about 25 cents each), and I'd won an eBay auction of mixed miniatures, which included these Heroscape "Airborne Elite" soldier figures. Some quick head, tail and helmet transplants, and I came up with these Dabbers (raccoon men):

They were similarly impressed with these. Craig, our usual DM, said "Well, I can't DM you guys anymore!" He better not carry through with that threat. I like DMing, but I don't want to take over his game. :)

Progress of another kind.

Speaking of progress, I ran a Gamma World game session today.

It went really well. Oh, there were a couple of things I'd have liked better... like the encounters lasting a bit longer, especially the second one, but they were damned fun, and I really liked the way they ran and the way they turned out. :)

The first encounter was the group - a radiation/felinoid named "Rad-Cat", an android/cockroach named "Unit D5", and an android/yeti named "George" - exiting a mountain trail and discovering an apparently abandoned property. A barn was the first thing they saw, looking run-down but still intact. Walking around to the front, they spotted the house, which appeared to be in the same condition as the barn.

Investigating the barn, they found the door chained shut and secured with a padlock. After a mix of success and failure in opening the door, Unit D5 picked the lock and they were in! Pushing the doors open, they discovered a completely intact Ford F-100 pickup truck, avocado green. Moving further in, they found what appeared to be the remains of a moonshine still, with only the glass and metal components still intact. Under the cabinet the still was on top of, they found three jugs of moonshine, still extremely potent after all this time.

Just then, a mass of black tar flowed out from under the truck and attacked!

(Yes, indeed, that is a Tar Horror miniature that I made myself out of black clay the night before the game. :) )

Rad-Cat stepped up to the plate, slipping Rad-Cat's skateboard off Rad-Cat's arm and zipping over to the Tar Horror, slamming it with Rad-Cat's sledgehammer! The impact of Rad-Cat's blow damaged the thing, but also set off the thing's "Noisome Breach", exploding acidic tar back onto Rad-Cat, wounding Rad-Cat, slowing Rad-Cat, and burning Rad-Cat with ongoing 10 acid damage (save ends both)! Dee went next, hopping into the truck, trying to start it up (and failing), and then shooting the Tar Horror. He damaged it, and it spewed tar onto the truck in response, but it missed Dee. George grabbed two of the jugs of moonshine and hopped into the back of the truck.

The Tar Horror attacked, slamming Rad-Cat, burning Rad-Cat with more acid and immobilizingRad-Cat (save ends). Rad-Cat went again, activating Rad-Cat's Artificial Blood omega tech, which allowed Rad-Cat to replace any save with a 10, until the end of the encounter. This allowed Rad-Cat to shed the immobilization and ongoing damage at the end of Rad-Cat's round.

Dee got the truck started about this time, the exhaust giving off a terrific backfire as the engine turned over. Dee and George shot at the Tar Horror, and then Dee tried to run the thing over as they exited the barn, but it flowed out of the way, and tried (and failed) to slam them in response.

Just then, the back door of the house burst open and a hulking brute shambled out. Sickly grey skin stretched over its massively obese form, and it gave off a horrid stench of death. It let out a groan and moved forward to slam Rad-Cat, but Rad-Cat dodged out of the way, and shifted backwards, in front of the truck, where Rad-Cat grabbed hold of the front, and held on while Dee drove them off the property and to safety... but not before Dee hocked an acid/bile loogy at the zombie, missed, hit the corner of the house behind the zombie, burned through the support beam of that corner, causing the entire house to collapse as they drove off.

Proceeding further up the mountain, driving along the winding Chatsworth Highway, with Dee driving, George in the back, and Rad-Cat being pulled along on Rad-Cat's skateboard, their noisy truck drowning everything out...

they did not hear what was coming until the last moment...

as a gang of bikers crested the next rise and came into view! It was the Porker bikers, Kewl, And, and The Gang! George won initiative, and dropped a Gravity Well behind the gang. The well pulled Kewl off his bike, giving him a nasty case of road-rash! One of The Gang was pulled off of And's ATV, meeting his death under And's wheels, and the well continued to influence the area, doubling the cost of movement into any square within 5 squares of it.

Rad-Cat held off for now, falling back behind the truck for cover.

Kewl, recovering from his face-plant, quickly jumped to his feet, ran against the pulling force of the gravity well, until he caught up with his bike, which was still rolling forward at half-speed. Reaching it, he jumped back on and kept driving! He's so Kewl!! ;)

Dee wove the truck between the wrecked cars on the road, targeting Kewl with his next attack. He bloodied Kewl, which knocked the Porker gang boss off his bike, and caused his bike to be destroyed... and after such a great recovery too! Oh the indignity!!

And drove his ATV around the wrecks and came up on the driver side of the truck, hacking at Dee with his axe, but his attack bounced harmlessly off the door! George used his Disruptor Pike and launched an attack on the bikers, killing one of The Gang and damaging his motorcycle, which crashed. Rad-Cat worked Rad-Cat's way around to the other side of the truck, pulled Rad-Cat's pogo-stick off Rad-Cat's back, and jammed it in the spokes of the front left wheel of And's ATV!

Two of The Gang zipped up along the passenger side of the truck and swung their chains at George, trying to pull him off the truck, but whereas they were able to hit him, they were unable to unseat him from the truck. Kewl pulled a scattergun off his back, and waited...

Dee gunned it, ran over the back left wheel of And's ATV, then pulled a 180 degree hairpin turn, swiping the back of the truck at Kewl to hit him.

When they got close, Kewl got his readied action and let off a blast from his scattergun! Fortunately for George and Dee, the truck was adequate cover and protected them from the shot!

Dee completed his swerve nearly plowing into Kewl, but he managed to dive out of the way, ending up prone on the ground!

Dee followed up by blasting The Gang member "Lenny", who was driving the go-cart in the back, killing him! Poor Lenny! He just wanted to belong to something!

And jumped off the back of his ATV as it ran over Rad-Cat and then skidded to a stop, both left wheels ruined. Rad-Cat used the opportunity to use Adaptive Resistance, overcharging it successfully and becoming immune to physical damage for the rest of the encounter!! Ending up prone next to And, And swept out and attacked Rad-Cat with his axe, but the axe blow just bounced harmlessly off Rad-Cat.

George took his heavy crossbow off his back and fired a shot at Kewl, putting the heavy bolt right through Kewl's eye and pinning his head to the ground! It took a crit to kill the porker... he was just that Kewl! George then hopped out of the truck and made his way towards the last of The Gang.

Rad-Cat stood up, pulled his Leaky Fusion Rifle off his back, and blasted poor prone And, doing more than twice the number of hit points And had left...

completely disintegrating him!

The last member of The Gang, seeing the rest of his gang torn to shreds in a matter of about 18 seconds, guns his engine and takes off, exiting the map.

That entire fight with the gang took only 3 rounds. Wow. The group had some very high-powered Alpha and Omega cards, so it's no surprise, but wow, did they tear that gang apart! :)

Continuing on up the mountain, they found where they were supposed to be... the "Ft" in "Ft Mountain"...

and discovered a secret set of stairs down under the shale fort, leading into a very out-of-place technological underground base. They will explore the base next session, but this session was lots of fun. :)