The Parcel

A Norazona 2 Braunstein

On Braunsteins

On Saturday night I joined the boys over in Living Urf Gaming Club™ to play in a Boot Hill Braunstein run by Crom.
I will be heading to Dave Con in less than two weeks and am holding out hope I can get to play in Dave Wesley’s Braunstein while I am there. (I am first on the waitlist).
Lastly, on May 10th at 7pm EST I will be running my own Sav’Mon Braunstein and all Bros, Living Urf members, and Ghost Planet members are invited to join. Just message me on Discord.

There is a lot of chatter on the internet right now about this style of gaming. Shadowdark’s latest multi-million dollar Kickstarter has exposed it to a wider audience, but other than the Bros, and Wesley at Cons, no one is really running them. I have urged Ghost Planet members to read BROZER and watch BDub’s appearance on ACKS to Grind to help them understand, but you can’t really understand it until you do it. Maybe this after action report can help. It is impossible to get a full understanding of what happened in a Braunstein from just one persons telling, but here is my perspective of Norazona 2. Spoilers it was amazing.

The Set Up

The week leading up to the event I was working 12 hour overnight shifts, and could not be involved in any Club activity, but I still managed to read the Boot Hill rules during my lunch breaks, and send Crom, the Referee, my character. I didn’t have a strong idea, but from hearing about Raptor’s hijinks with his character, Frogan “Nutcracker” Zappa, I knew the game would not be a serious one. I expected some flavoring of Blazing Saddles, Three Amigos, Support Your Local Sherrif, or McClintock! I was both right, and very wrong. Before the session I watched some Brisco County Jr, picked a picture of Bruce Campbell to represent my character “Sam Slater” and decided he would be a cheat, and extremely neutral.

This is what I was sent before the session:

You’ve been privately hired by the Vanderbilt family to recover a stolen parcel that is believed to be in town. You know there are two others that have been hired, but the letter explaining their identities has been weather damaged and rendered illegible. You know that one of them is a local. Discretion is advised, and you’ve been offered a cut in a $10000 reward for its intact recovery. The parcel must not be opened under any circumstances. Objectives:

1. Recover the parcel, unopened and intact.

2. Acquire $200

3. Avoid being in jail at the end of the night.

Resources: One long gun and one pistol of your choice, stored safely at the Sheriff’s office $25 spending money, Personal items, Good Horse

Alright I can work with that. Do some gambling, ask around about someone who might be able to “transport a package” to my family back home, and don’t get arrested. The game would be played over Discord Voice chat with several voice channels each representing a location. There were a few locations that were noted as (quiet) and you had to ask the inhabitant’s permission to join by messaging them. The player running the Barkeep “Turkey Creek”, let us know ahead of time that there would be games of Faro in the Saloon we could gamble on and most of us posted a picture and the name of our characters.

Sam Slater

The Game Begins

Crom addressed us as we all joined in one of the 8 Voice Channels and posted a list of all the player characters:

Locals:
Sheriff Bass Armstrong - Sheriff
“Turkey Creek” Oglethorpe - Barkeep
Rev. George Stuart - Preacher
Drifters: Sam Slater, Zan Van Gief, John Marinier, Frogan Zappa, Seabass Jackson, Barnum Bailey, Cody Flynn

We were off to the races! Barnum Bailey posted about his character hosting a knife throwing competition which Frogan and Gief took him up on. Geif also challenged people to wrestling outside, the Sherrif was in his office, and the rest of us, including the Rev Stuart, began to gamble.

I put my +20% for cheating to full use. If we are just rolling percentile dice that gives me only a 30% chance of losing. My Gambling Score, or chance of getting caught, was only 9%. I reminded myself I was not playing my AD&D character Yngve Steinersteen, and resisted busting out the Steiner Math promo, instead always gambling the maximum amount. Almost everyone was in this room, and I would take the chance to try and earn the $200 I needed for my second goal first.

Well, that is all fine and dandy until you roll a 92 for a total of 112 out of100! Fortunately, the barkeep didn’t catch me, and we continued. It was at this point that Seabass Jackson asked me if he could “rub my shoulder” for good luck. I could tell he was trying to pick my pockets, or something, but I had all my money on the table, so I showed him my lucky rabbit’s foot and didn’t fight him on it.

There were 3 Locals and two of them were in this room. The wording on my objectives lead me to believe there would be players who were going to try and prevent The Parcel from being taken out of town so I did not want to mention it in front of everyone. For better or worse my luck would soon turn, and I would roll 99+20% for 119 out of 100… Oglethorp caught me cheating this time.

I had tried to get people to place bets on other things than cards hoping to draw them aside, but had been unsuccessful. So, I gave my winnings back, tossed up my hands and headed outside the saloon.

Objective One “The Parcel”

With my winnings gone it was time to start looking for this package. I had absolutely no details about it, and no clue how to look for it. One thing to note here was that as we were playing with what most anklebiters think 1:1 time is many of the guys were also 1:1 drinking, including the Ref. I was unsure of how involved he was going to be as he silently he jumped from channel to channel, and my luddite ass forgot that I could DM him to ask him questions. I don’t know why, if it was because I had Dave Con on my mind or what, but in my head I was not going to stick to voice only except to get into the quiet rooms.

So, I made my way to the only Local I could talk to alone, the Sheriff.
(I clicked on the voice channel labeled Sherrif’s Office and joined it.)
I felt I had to be real careful here as I didn’t know how illegal this package was, and didn’t want to get arrested. I asked him about sending a letter to my dear aunt sally, and if he knew anyone around here that was in charge of transporting parcels. He very clearly had no clue what I was talking about, so I made my way else where. There was a voice channel labeled “Outhouse” and I took a 1:1 bathroom break. Haters eat your heart out.

It was around now that Marinier was challenging Geif to a wrestling contest. Perfect, I will try and make some connections by putting money on Marinier.

He was promptly knocked unconcious.

Most of the gang was now in the street for the wrestling match, and we were letting the Rev Stuart hold on to our money. So, I decided if Geif was going to take more challengers I would go for it, earn some big money, and opportunity to talk to the Priest. If he didn’t know anything about the parcel that meant it must be the Barkeep. Hopefully, in that event he wouldn’t kick me out of the saloon for cheating.

I then proceeded to use the brawling rules and defeat Gief! Winning over $100!

After Midnight

Another thing to note here was that we were started at 8pm… California time. So for us East Coasters it was already past midnight at this point. Therefor, when I asked the Priest to meet me in the church, and tried to ask him about The Parcel he responded with: “Sorry guys, I am falling asleep at the wheel here, I am going to have to call it a night.” He then enacted 1:1 bedtime.

Well shoot. I have no clue if he was the guy or not, but Barnum was in the church as well, and he DID pick up what I was putting down. The Rev said he was locking up the church and kicked us out into the street. It was here everything went south.

A few minutes earlier I had seen Seabass and Turkey go into one of the private rooms; Turkey then left all chats, then reappeared as a new character named Little Tex. In addition, I had the notion that there would be an opposing force working on The Parcel, but thought they would be trying to keep it for themselves, rather than leave town with it. This is how my first major blunder came about.

Cody Flynn joined Barnum and I out in the street, but Barnum knew about The Parcel and indicated he had also received a letter. I figured he must be one of the other men hired by my employer, therefore, Flynn could not be. So we basically shooed Flynn away and went to the private room where Seabass and Turkey had been.

Flynn, I would later find out, would then go pick up The Parcel.

The Murder

Frogan was running the bar, and Barnum and I slipped into the private room to discuss how to get the parcel.
(I will also note one of the guys joined late and was hanging out in the Street Channels as a hooker).
This is when Crom joined the Voice Channel and let us know we found a body stashed in the corner beneath a bunch of chairs with its insides sucked out.

This is when I made my second blunder.

Not knowing that there was supernatural stuff in Norazona I was pretty surprised to say the least. Barnum went to go get the Sherrif, and I stayed in the room to make sure no one else would return to the scene of the crime. My mistake was that I misinterpreted the description, and thought ALL of the insides had been removed. This lead me to believe the murderer was a Skinwalker. I was very wrong.

Marinier tried to get into the private room, I didn’t let him in. Sherrif came and brought everyone to the Sherrifs Office, and by this point somehow Geif had become a deputy.

Accusations were laid, I was trying to resist meta-gaming, but I was 95% sure it was Seabass. I was given back my gun after some smooth talking, but Barnum was placed in lockup. This is when everyone was asked to empty their pockets.

Frogan decided he would rather draw a stick of dynamite!

We rolled Initiative and I shot him. I shot him through the heart.

RIP FROGAN YOU BASTARD I DID WANT TO KILL YOU!

I was able to convince the Sheriff to lock up Seabass for a bit too, but it was decided not to place him in the lock up with Barnum. Instead, I would take him over to the County Jail (Voice Channel). I got a few hundred bucks from Frogan’s body, had completed my 2nd mission, and was pretty sure I was not going to get locked up. Now to find The Parcel

Beginning of the End

Flynn had managed to escape in the dynamite chaos and the Sherrif and Little Tex went to track him down. He stole a horse, I THINK MY HORSE! And got away. Meanwhile, Seabass and I got to talking and I asked him if he know about the parcel. He said he knew who had it. Marinier he had been checking everyone’s pockets all night and he was the only person he hadn’t gotten too. This checked out, he had done that too me. I also get along really well with Seabass’ player and Sam Slater was intended on being exceedingly neutral. Finally, I thought he was a Skinwalker and would be able to escape any handcuffs or jail cells via body contortion, so I would rather him be on my side.

With that in mind I offered him $100, to uncuff him, and his freedom if he helped me get the package, and we headed back to the Sherrif’s Office.
As we got there the door was flung open and Gief was blasting Marinier through the chest with a skattergun. I searched the body, and he did not have The Parcel. I asked Seabass to explain himself, but he seemed legitimately confused and that is when Little Tex and Sherrif Armstrong returned. Gief, Seabass, and I all claimed that Marinier had stolen something from me and drew his derringer before Gief gunned him down.

I did not know what Gief was after, but hopefully I could turn him into an ally to find this package, and he clearly had something he wanted to hide. Gief let us know that Barnum had a weapon in his cell. So we yelled in to him to toss it out. It was just a tomahawk. We told Little Tex he could leave with Frogan’s body to collect his bounty, and the Sherrif went to go pick up.

This is when Gief drew on the Sherrif!

Worst thing about Norazona? All the Damn Vampires.

Damn Vampires

Geif blasted Sherrif Armstrong and Barnum took a hit from being in the line of fire. I witheld my fire: If the Sherrif died that only left Gief, myself, the Skinwalker, and Barnum. If Barnum lived him and I could split the reward, let the Skinwalker become the new Sherrif, and everyone would be happy.

Unfortunately, he was not a Skinwalker…

Barnum was let out of his cell when Gief once again went for an attack shouting, “I WANT TO SUCK YOUR BLOOD!” Fuck, it was a vampire. Seabass guns down Barnum, but runs out of ammo, I shoot Gief two out of three times, but he is still alive. New round.
I beat Geif for the kill shot. Good. The Vamp is dead. Was Seabass really the killer, are there Skinwalkers AND Vamps, was I just mistaken?

Oh, he was the killer alright, AND A FUCKING VAMPIRE! Would have ben real nice to have priest right now.

Seabass beats my speed and goes for the grapple. He gets a takedown. Even worse, Vamps have a 25% chance to kill on grapple…

Sam Slater was dead.

The town was on fire, Flynn escaped with The Parcel, and I can not wait to play again.

~Read a book, hit the gym, have a great week.
Jake