JabbaJeff - Unfit, Very Fat Scavenger
Jack Jackson - Cowboy Hunter
Lan Williams - Mechanic Trader
Storm the Gates
The party piled into their car and sped down the dirt road after Scar, to stop the raiders before they fired the artillery at the town, and came to a stop once they saw the walled pre-war estate the raiders were using as a camp in the distance. The walls were 8' high concrete, and the old wrought-iron gate had been reinforced with scrap metal, so just ramming through wouldn't be a good idea. They could make out a mansion at the top of a slight hill, and a long driveway, but no more detail.
Realizing that surprise was not an option due to the dust cloud that their car had kicked up, Lan decided to try to talk their way inside the gate to spring an ambush. As they got closer, they could see that there were two guards keeping watch, just their heads and upper torsos visible over the wall, and, after pulling up in their windshield-less, bullet-hole riddled car, he convinced the guards that they wanted to join the gang. One of them ran off to go get somebody in charge while the other kept watch.
Several minutes later, a woman in a cowboy hat showed up and told them to come through, but with their weapons down. The gate was pushed open by a group of slaves in tattered clothing, and Lan drove inside, revealing another four raiders, for seven total, all with rifles ready, watching them. His Danger Sense went off, so he ran one of them over while Jack and Jabba opened fire but missed because of the "bumpy road". The woman drew a pair of revolvers while running to cover, while the goons opened fire with their rifles.
Lan got the car partly behind a pair of boulders, and they disembarked, keeping the car between themselves and the bandits. It proved to be less than ideal cover, as their rifles could penetrate its armour fairly easily. Despite being pinned down and outnumbered, the party held their own, each taking down another goon, though Jabba was wounded in the process. The woman rushed up to the boulders, got both of Jabba's barrels for her trouble, and then yelled out for the rest to "take down that fucker with the shotgun!"
Only two of them followed orders, but both hit, and knocked Jabba down, mortally wounded. Lan took out another raider when he popped out of cover, while Jack sprinted out into the open to flank the woman. He managed to hit her with two bullets, and Lan finished her off with an aimed shot, but Jack was shot twice himself before he was able to get back behind the car. One of the bandits moved up to where the woman was, but Jack took him down, while Lan killed another, leaving only one survivor.
The last raider hunkered down behind a 4' stone block beside the driveway and yelled out for the party to surrender, as reinforcements were coming, and they were wounded. If they threw down their arms, they might be allowed to live. Lan shouted back insults as a distraction while Jack snuck up to the other side of the block, climbed on top, took aim, and fired... only for his gun to jam.
The bandit looked up, and missed a shot with his rifle, while Lan started running around to flank. Jack grappled the bandit, who immediately broke free, backstepped, dodged the next grab, and fired another round, this time hitting Jack square in the chest before Lan managed to get in position and bring him down.
The Ruse
Jack and Lan heard yelling from the mansion, so they tried to start the car to leave, but it wouldn't even turn over. They shoved Jabba under it, and then Lan had the idea to wear the clothes of some of the dead raiders, and pretend to be them in order to either ambush the reinforcements, or buy time to escape. Just as four men came running out of the mansion, they finished putting on their new clothes and equipment, and shouted "We got 'em!".
The men turned out to be Junior Ibanez, with a shotgun, Scar, with his fully automatic revolver, and another two goons, one with a rifle, the other a shotgun. Lan told Junior what had happened from the perspective of the raiders, and the bandit leader almost bought it, before realizing with a shock that Lan was black, and none of his men had been.
Junior ended up getting the jump on them, and badly wounded Lan with his shotgun; in return, Lan and Jack each fired a bullet into Junior's skull. It took the bandit leader down, but Scar took out Lan with a burst from his revolver, while the shotgun goon finished off Jack. Scar leaned over Junior, reloaded, and finished him off before ordering the goons to make sure both Jack and Lan were dead.
Notes:
I had thought that the party might try to lure the bandits into a chase, or do some recon and sneak in an unguarded portion of the wall (the entire thing except for the front gate), rather than just going right in and getting into a prolonged firefight, but they thought that the bandits would just stay inside and take potshots, and that the dust cloud would have set them on alert.
Lan's Danger Sense pinged because the woman was informed by Scar to look out for their vehicle, and succeeded on a an (easy) check to identify it, so she was planning on ambushing them once they were inside.
The dice gods were very much against the party tonight. Two morale crits meant that the initial bandits never broke, Jack's gun jamming resulted in him getting shot, Junior Ibanez crit on his Fast-Talk resistance avoided an ambush round (which would have almost assuredly resulted in their victory), and a 6 on morale after his incapacitation meant that his surviving goons didn't surrender.
Misreading of cover rules resulted in people being easier to shoot in cover on both sides, and the car providing less protection than it should have. Jabba would probably not have gone down as a result of this, but the mistake was weighted more against the bandits, who were shot despite being in full cover with relative ease, but had too low of skill to return fire.
Another mistake was in using only the car's DR5 as what they'd subtract for shooting through it, when it should really be double that, because they have to shoot through both sides.
I didn't properly describe the size of the camp/mansion, which resulted in Lan's player thinking that there were way more bandits than there were (23 including leaders, they killed 6 during the chase from the ghost town, 3 at the Buffalo Bill, and 7 more today, which meant total max reinforcements of 7, but 3 were further away guarding slaves or sleeping).
We're going to keep playing with new characters; it sucks that there was a TPK, but it doesn't really matter other than some lost gear.
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