#CopperheadCounty AP: The continuing adventures of my playtest for my modern-southern-criminal hack.
More on the hack at:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JasonEley/posts/5LhUpew5xRK
For previous adventures, check the tag.
Our last Copperhead County session was a doozy, so this is pretty long! The crew ended up overseeing a five-faction firefight, multiple rocket launchers were fired, buildings and vehicles were exploded, old enemies were slain, and new allies were made. All in a day’s work for the Hellraisin’ crew known only by their rural dive bar, Marlene’s.
Technical notes: This session had a lot of clocks flying around to track multiple sides fighting each other, and it worked super smoothly. I also tried the Uncertain Resistance rules for the first time, and really, really dig them and am adopting them for this game.
This was our second game back from a holiday hiatus, but I’ll dispense with the first one quickly: The major issue facing the Marlenes is that, after foolishly starting a war with the Heathens MC (tier 3, bad biker dudes) in season 1, the Heathens have taken over their bar and made the PCs pay them 2 Cash every downtime. Last week, Zeke, the Heathens captain put in charge of Marlene’s, bade the PCs to accompany him on a heist of the nearby historic Lester Hawkins Distillery, in order to make off with their valuable rare whiskeys. This was also part of the Heathens’ plans to weaken the Barnett Organization (tier 3, a no-drama weed-growing mob), who had their hooks in the distillery.
Dubious of the plan, Camila the Wheeler tried to set up a meeting with the Barnetts and critted, as her musician friend Baird hooked her up with a Barnett captain, Gabrielle. Camila impressed her with the need to kick the Heathens out of town, and received permission to hit the distillery, in exchange for terms TBD.
Later, the PCs and Zeke attempted the heist, and after looting a few expensive bottles from the gift shop, split up. Half of the crew ran afoul of security, who radioed another guard, who called the cops. Not caring enough about Zeke’s heist to risk the cops, the crew high-tailed it out of there, gaining barely any Cash and a good amount of Heat.
For their next job after that flub, the crew was eager to finally make their stand against the Heathens. They soon got their chance when Zeke came to them again, this time needing their help against the Pettimore Clan (tier 4, a brutal mountain crime family), who the crew had gotten mixed up with in season 1. The Heathens had scoped out the Pettimore’s drug pipeline, and discovered they were getting heroin shipments from a Mexican cartel via a mountain airstrip. The scheme was for Zeke and the crew to put eyes on the airstrip before an upcoming delivery, and when the time was right, signal the motorcycles to come in and take the product.
Meanwhile, Marvin the Brick completed a long-term project he’d had for a while: Directing Starla, one of the escorts in their employ who was often in the company of Zeke, to find out what his plans were. This was great timing, as Starla soon came to Marvin stricken: she had overheard Zeke on the phone with the Heathens MC President, intimating that after the airstrip deal, the Heathens would turn on the crew and take Marlene’s for themselves.
Obviously, it was time to take down Zeke, so the PCs made their own plan. Using their own gang of Soldiers, and their alliance with Jensen Allbright (tier 1, a rich Californian intruding into the local market) and his bodyguard, Houston, they would wait for the airstrip battle to begin, then assault the Heathens themselves.
As the job began, the crew and Zeke arrived at the airstrip in one of their heavy vans, finding a simple setup: in a small valley surrounded by hills was a rough airstrip and a small outbuilding. Their engagement roll was a 3, and so they soon found yet another faction busting up the deal: the Copperhead Patriots (tier 2, a militia with very bad opinions) came flooding over the hills across from them in trucks, firing on the Pettimores and threatening to take the loot for themselves. (In retrospect, I wish I had spawned these dudes behind or nearer to the PCs. My intention was to complicate the PCs’ planned approach and have the Patriots threaten the plane. That worked out, but as a result most of the crew were insulated from the firefight, and I would have preferred to threaten them more directly. That’s life!)
As a flashback action, Jesse the Stringer had reckoned that someone might come in from that direction, and so had already set up Willem the Cleaner in a deer blind with his trusty sniper rifle. Rather than charge down into the bulletstorm, the PCs decided to hang back for a round while Zeke signaled his Heathens calvary to charge down to the strip. At this point, I created a status clock for each of the enemy gangs, as well as a Plane Distance clock measuring the approach of the cartel plane, and a Sheriff Response clock measuring the response time of the county cops (who are allied with the Pettimores). Then I rolled quality for all of the gangs to see how much they shot each other, and periodically advanced the Distance and Response clocks after the PCs and gangs had acted.
As the firefight raged, Willem started to pop off individual Patriots with his sniper rifle, not wanting to give up the game with the Heathens just yet. Then Marvin recklessly (his Trauma) charged down the hill, wielding an RPG launcher he’d thoughtfully brought along, and fired a rocket down into the airstrip outbuilding. As a Devil’s Bargain, he agreed that in his reckless haste, he had left all of his other rockets in the van, and so this was his only shot. The outbuilding blew up good, hurting the Pettimores’ defenses, but Marvin’s body armor was shredded by their rifle fire.
Meanwhile, Jesse had a complex plan to take care of Zeke. As a flashback, he and Haddie the Hazard had trapped the locks of the van, so that when he directed Zeke to stay in the van while they all went outside, the van became an unescapable deathtrap. Then Jesse and Haddie doused the van in gas, and Jesse threw the fateful match before Zeke had a chance to alert anyone. With Marvin’s extra rockets still inside the van, it blew up immediately, completely incinerating ol’ Zeke. RIP to an NPC I really liked playing, who the PCs hated intensely. (I later gave them a Cash penalty to the job for destroying their own van.)
As this was going on, Marvin and Willem continued firing into the chaos, rolling well on their resistances and taking lots of stress to avoid harm and shoot good. As the cartel plane approached, Willem saw one of the Patriots go for his own RPG, but used his superior Reflexes to shoot him down before he could wreck the plane. The plane, seeing that the airstrip had become an explosive free-for-all, banked back up and flew into the night (after Marvin’s player called for a fortune roll to see if they still had fuel, and they did. The cartel comes prepared!).
With the enemies weakened, Camila directed Houston’s gang, as well as the crew’s own gang, to sweep down to the airstrip in their trucks and open fire on the Heathens. The battle continued to rage, and even young Haddie got into the destruction, using her own rocket launcher to blow up the Patriots’ trucks, leaving them at the others’ mercies. The remaining Pettimores were soon destroyed before the allied forces took down the rest of the Patriots, and then mopped up the final Heathens, suffering only minor losses to Houston’s crew (who never rolled above a 3).
Left in the bloody, fiery aftermath, the crew and their allies high-fived and worked on an escape plan. A fortune roll revealed that one of the Pettimores’ trucks had survived the outbuilding explosion, and Haddie hotwired it as Camila surveyed the wreckage, finding a big bag of money that the Pettimores had brought for the deal. By this point, the Sheriff Response clock was almost complete, and it came down to the wire as Haddie got the truck working and sped everyone away before they arrived. If not for her quick driving, the crew would have probably gotten into a firefight with the cops and would definitely have gained a Wanted Level.
With Zeke dead and the Heathens’ plan foiled, the MC’s grip over Marlene’s was gone, and the bikers frittered away back to their holes. The crew now had their own turf back, and with all the Rep gained from this job, could afford to increase their Hold, and are now halfway to Tier II. Camila met with Gabrielle Barnett again and agreed to her terms of friendship: the Marlenes would stay out of Barnett territory in the city, and stay out of the weed game. Then Camila lingered in her company… could romance bloom between these crime lords?
Find out next time on… #CopperheadCounty
