Adding a Second Track to One Sheets in Your Game

For the second time, I had to run a game last minute and used a Deadlands Reloaded One Sheet from the Pinnacle website. The advantage to these short adventures is that they are free, they work well for a short session (3-4 hours), there are dozens of them for a variety of Pinnacle’s games, they are self-contained and contain pretty much everything you need to run the adventure (plot and stats for major characters). The downside to them though is that sometimes they don’t have enough content to either fill the full night or the plot it too straightforward for any serious investigations.

I ran into this problem with the Lynched! one sheet. It’s a great little adventure featuring a Hanging Tree that is terrorizing a small town with its victims coming back as zombies that are now finding new victims for the tree. I like the set up and the creature, but knowing my players, as soon as they enter town and find out people are being hanged in a tree, they would investigate the tree and likely cut it down or burn it immediately. It’s just too obvious a target.

When I set out to run it, I realized I would need a “second track” to distract the players and give enough hooks so that they wouldn’t just cut down the tree in the first scene. This is sometimes necessary with a One Sheet and not a bad thing, as this second track is where you can really adapt the adventure to your own campaign or game’s flavour.

In this case, the second track needed would be another possible explanation for the lynchings.

Using my group’s decision to be a group of enforcers for the railroad to help identify a good second track, I relocated the ranching town to be a logging camp that provides wood for the railroad. It then fell into place, there would be a secret union organizing drive, the victims would be the foreman of the site and a couple of his supporters and finally, a new protagonist, a Pinkerton (private detective) brought in from the outside to break it up whom the PCs were directed to escort and assist. Finally, the Tree was adapted to be the guardian of a Sioux burial ground in the area and the homes of the victims were also the closest to the tree.

The only thing left was a review of the adventure outline, which now included this new plot element. They would meet their new charge, go to the camp, learn about the murders, investigate them, the Pinkerton would accuse the union organizer, a chase involving him trying to escape would ensue and then that night (as per the original adventure), the tree and zombies would strike again.

I liked it, but I also like jumping into action. With this adventure, the action doesn’t begin until the union organizer flees, much later in the evening. So, I needed one last piece – an assassination attempt at the beginning of the adventure to start with excitement and to give the players a sense of who they were dealing with in the Pinkerton.

This added three new NPCs to the adventure (Pinkerton, Assassin & Union Organizer) and that I create a map of the town that showed the locations of the victim’s homes and the tree’s location. The map was easily drawn up after a quick search of the internet failed to show good maps of logging camps. As for the NPCs, I grabbed stats for these from the Deadlands Reloaded book (Guardian Angel, Outlaw, Townsfolk respectively).

It took a little more work than normal, but I felt good that I had a strong adventure with enough depth for the evening’s play.

Here’s how it went:

Our group of railroad enforcers were contacted by their boss, Mordecai, with a new job. They were to escort and assist a Mr. Black up a mountain trail to a logging camp. They were told he was a Pinkerton who did special assignments for their boss, the rail baron. They had also heard of him, that he was the kind of guy who always got his man, even if it wasn’t the right man.

They met him in a saloon nearby, but just as they were sitting down to share a drink with him a man burst in the doorway shouting, “Burn in hell Black, you bastard!” and threw in a pack of dynamite, fuse burning. I dealt cards to the shocked faces of the players.

Black drew Ace of Spades and calmly picked up the dynamite and pulled out the fuse, then turned back to have his drink. To the still shaking players he said, “Well, are you just going to sit there? Get him!”

The posse quickly caught the would-be assassin and he was taken away to be hung for his attempted murder, all the while crying out that Black had ruined his life and destroyed his family. The players didn’t inquire further and instead went back for drinks. Black got up and told them not to drink on the employer’s time. It was time to head out.

They had to hike up to the logging camp in the nearby hills, following the winding river that logs were sent down. A couple survival checks later, everyone was exhausted. The priest sang a hymn which revived everyone else but him. Unfortunately, the scout got the group a little lost and they arrived later than expected after dark in a torrential downpour. The camp was locked up tight with its residents peering from windows at the new arrivals banging on the door of the local drinking hole.

They learned from the barkeep that there had been a number of lynchings, but no one knew who (or what) was doing it. Doors were broken down and men hung from a tree. Black stated that was a very interesting development, which made the players wonder just what he knew, not that he was telling.

The next day they checked out the homes of the dead, the mill and the hanging tree. Black wasn’t so much interested in the tree as who was killed. He quickly assessed that the dead were the foreman and his supporters. Meanwhile, the posse checked out the tree, which had Sioux markings on it. They determined there was a curse on the tree and it was some kind of burial place (not a good sign!). Also, the gunslinger stabbed the tree to see if it made any reaction. There was none.

Black returned to the mill and called out for one of the men, “Joe, come here right now.” Joe ran. He jumped into the stream onto one of the logs and began floating away in the fast moving water. The posse gave chase and managed to wing him, wounding him badly enough that he surrendered. They brought him back to Black who had them empty Joe’s satchel. Inside, union organizing pamphlets.

“Clearly, this is a union agitator. Unable to win over the men through his lies, he turned to murder, killing those who opposed him. Lock him up. We’ll take him back to town and hang him,” Black explained.

The posse complied, but weren’t so sure.

After Black retired for the evening, they returned to investigate further. The door to the foreman’s home was broken down by several men, not just one. The other homes, only the locks broken. The tree, still strange but no other clues. What they did notice though was that the homes of the dead were all the closest to the tree. They decided to stake out the next closest house, which happened to be vacant.

That night, they took shifts. The scout almost fell asleep during his shift (chipped it), but failed to notice some noise until it was too late. He woke up his compatriots and they all headed out to see what was up. Drag marks in the direction of the tree didn’t bode well.

At the tree, they found three “men” with their heads hanging back, necks stretched (zombies) who had just strung up the barkeep (bar was next closest building to the tree) to the hanging tree. As the heroes moved in, the tree came to life and shot out nooses catching the scout and pulling him up. It was a tough battle and nearly everyone was killed, the priest overcome by the zombies and the scout repeatedly hung and thrashed by the branches. The gunslinger did fairly well, but he is a grim servant o’ death and in trying to rescue the barkeep, he wound up shooting him to death. They realized plan A was not working, so quickly devised plan B.

All three broke free and managed to lure the tree to the mill and tricked it into falling onto the saws and was cut apart by them, the zombies dropping down once the tree was dead. They returned to the saloon and explained to Mr. Black what had happened. They convinced him the union organizer was innocent and everyone agreed to just walk away and not speak of this event (especially the barkeep who was shot to death and not lynched!).