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Decent into Dallas Station: Session 3

Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2007 1:45 am
by trevor
To catch up with previous sessions, check here:

Session #2

Session #3 had 7 (that's right, 7) players, not including snikle the GM. There were 2 new players to the game, and several returns.

We got a late start, and had some issues with ventrilo for a bit, so we didn't get very far this session, but we still had a great time and everybody learned tons about Savage Worlds and MapTool

Without further adieu, here is the video in xvid format:

Video of Session #3

We started where we left off. We had just had a major firefight with the aliens, and a couple grenades where thrown to the north, which made the hallway totally impassible. We had also broken the keypad for the airlock that would take us directly to the Dining Facility where the incriminating evidence was hidden. So the only thing we could do is go back the way we came, which turned out to have been a Good Thing after all.

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Note the use of colored halos to indicate who owned which tokens. This worked out super great.

We headed back south, passed through the sci lab room and took the south exit. The room we entered had signs of battle, with gun shot blasts on the walls. We also noted a door across from us that had water leaking out from it

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Thompkins, being quick on his feet, ran down to the computer terminal and started hacking on it. Little did he know there were two bugs hiding behind the table in the corner

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We made quick work of them, blasting them into pools of green slimy acid, which quickly began to melt through the table. The noise of the battle had informed someone of our presence, and we heard a female voice calling for help, seemingly from the room that was pouring out water.

As we started for the door to help the woman, three more bugs jumped out of the corner and got right in our faces

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It was a pretty good fight that we tried to keep the bugs from getting too close, but in our haste to prevent the aliens from attacking, we machine gunned them into acidic mist that engulfed poor Pudilla (the Pink halo).

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The battle was over, but Pudilla was having a hard time with the acid on him and get going from unstable, to stable, to unstable again. We ignored his screams and went to the terminal to see if we could figure out the open codes for the south door.

We were able to get them and the door opened slightly. The door was apparently off the tracks, but a couple good heaves and it opened enough to allow the woman to exit.

Turns out it was Dr Croft herself !

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While she was giving us her life story, Gordan finally helped Pudilla over to the inpouring water and washed off the remaining acid. He'll probably be wearing bandaids for the next week or two, then a paper bag over his head for the next year or so.

This is where one of the more original technical aspects of the game showed up. You'll note in the screenshots the water pouring into the room. That's a water texture, drawn directly in maptool. It's not part of the underlying map. So when we open the door and the water came flooding in, snikle just PAINTED more water coming in.

Took seconds to do, but really added a great deal of ambiance and immersion.

Here's an animated gif to give you an idea (I apologize for the crappy gif quality, gif sucks)

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You can even see some of the acid being washed away in the last frame.

He were having a hard time convincing Dr Croft to continue with us to retrieve the hard drive with the data we needed. She kept wanting to leave or something. Pansy. So we told her she could come with us, or die like the rest.

And the session was over.

Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2007 1:56 am
by Emryys
Looks cool and sure was fun... 8) :)

Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2007 3:04 am
by heruca
Nice water/flooding effect.

Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2007 11:33 am
by RPMiller
Yea that was a great session! It only really slowed down when we had ventrilo problems and poor snikle had modem problems. Otherwise it was fast paced and pretty smooth.

Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2007 11:34 am
by Hawke
heruca wrote:Nice water/flooding effect.
Definitely! It's nice too if you set the opacity (right term?) of the water lower with the drawing tool... as you draw over originalit can create a varying depth effect. It's nice for a quick pond that ends up looking cool.

Sounds like you guys had a great time! I know Snikle has been talking about releasing this as a campaign for other use... it'd be cool to run through it with some people. I'm eager to see what he does with his Wasteland campaign...

Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2007 11:44 am
by snikle
Hawke wrote:I'm eager to see what he does with his Wasteland campaign...
Me too....keeps getting pushed back. I am stuck on this cool cartoon I just saw, Storm Hawks, thinking of Savaging it now...ADD and all...

Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2007 11:28 pm
by crazybear
snikle wrote:
Hawke wrote:I'm eager to see what he does with his Wasteland campaign...
Me too....keeps getting pushed back. I am stuck on this cool cartoon I just saw, Storm Hawks, thinking of Savaging it now...ADD and all...
Ohhh...I wanna play Storm Hawks!

THe game was great. My fondess for Maptool also grows each session. I am currently setting up a game in Maptool and hope to run it soon!

Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 2:04 am
by Greyloch
That was a cool session, as usual. Oppedisano was fun to try out, seemed like a pretty effective character.

Hey, on a side note, I just got my copy of SW:EX in the mail (along with the hardcover book of the RunePunk setting, though I'm avoiding the GM section for now because I want to play it). Pretty nice.