Mentioned most of my thoughts in the recap over on the Portal, and I don’t have a whole lot to add there apart from maybe touching on the Rostya – Captain O’Rourke thing a little bit more. And then, of course, fumbling with a plan to go forward.
So … yeah. I’d originally intended for O’Rourke and Ilik to have a thing – I actually implied that they had a thing in the past previously – and then Rostya’s player wrong-footed me by jumping in and declaring that he was essentially pursuing her. I still don’t know if he was being completely serious or trolling me since he’s pretty good at doing so while maintaining a straight face. As stated in the recap, after I’d declared that O’Rourke had been shot and was ‘pretty much dead,’ he decided to roll a Medic check and, naturally, rolled double sixes. Despite that, in retrospect, even if I had called for Medic check, he should have done so at Bane because he did not have any medical gear. Finally, she was dead. I prerolled damage long before we played and the first gauss shot blew right past her vacc suit and did enough damage to kill her straight away. This was probably due to my brain operating on less than 100% and me not relaying everything properly.
Anyway, onto session 3 which we’re playing tonight. It took until yesterday for most of the stuff to really fall into place, so huzzah for that. We’re also down two players – one due to work obligations and the other because it’s his wife’s birthday – but I can work around that; if we lost one more player, though, I’d have called it.
To begin with, we’re going to need to resolve a bunch of stuff that I should have done at the end of last week, not the least of which being how they’re moving forward with regards to the ship. There was a throwaway line near the end of last session from one player about ‘starting the paperwork’ to declare a legit salvage, but beyond that, PCs need to know what shape the ship is in and how much work is ahead of them.
During the planning, I also realized – almost too late – that more than 50% of the crew are going to throw red flags with the locals at the place they’re taking their passenger, so that’s a potential thread to tug on. I’ve also decided to officially pull the trigger on my ‘in-system’ redo of the Tripwire adventure that is also working in Abzu’s Bounty. So the PCs will be able to pick up the new passenger who sets off Tripwire, then proceed into pieces of chapter 2 for AB, then (likely next week), enter Tripwire proper.
Presuming, of course, I don’t change my mind again.