Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

[Kaspar]

My group and I are getting ready for our first dive into Tour of Darkness and I wanted to know if anyone has any good suggestions for an introdution mission?

All the players are elite.

I want to use the savage tales, but don't want to throw it right at them from the beginning.

[kronovan]

If your players are new to Savage Worlds as well, I‘d recommend just using the mission generator on page 73 of the book for the starting mission. If you were to manually choose a specific type, Civic Action is often good because it allows for some potential RP‘ing with the locals. You can use the Opposition table to ensure your players are up against some NVA or VC and it‘s always fun to have a some Complication thrown at them.

[Kaspar]

[steelbrok]

I haven't tried this but thought about having a one shot set during the French period to allow players to get used to the setting rules and then having the main campaign take place a generation later, possibly using the characters from the first campaign as contacts, revenants, parents, maybe a grizzled former legionaire who joined the marines

[kronovan]

OK cool. Didn‘t realize your players were experienced SW‘ers. I‘d still use the mission genereator, but I do something more challenging like a Relief mission so that the PC‘s get into the action more quickly. A note on the mission generator - it only provides a simple framework for an adventure and you still have to provide the flavor and story that supports it. I personally found it quite easy to come up with original ideas that suited the loose framework it provided. Which was a good thing, because the majority of my campaign was set in the earlier French Indochina war and there‘s only 3 adventures in the book that are applicable for that era. I‘d recommend generating a mission and see if it gets your creativity flowing.

OK if it was the 1st adventure I mignt want to throw some weirdness at the players.
So maybe...the players receive an emergency call to relieve a patrol team under heavy fire in the jungle near FFB Joan. When the players arrive the team is till under fire from a VC company. The platoon has received heavy casualties, but oddly enough many of the soldiers wounds are mauling and bites - wounds of an animalistic nature.

Only a few soldiers are alive and are too shocked to speak, but a few mumble and point towards the jungle oddly in a different direction than the VC fire. Suddenly the VC fire halts and you observe rapid movements through the foilage in their direction - worse its coming towards you. It apears to be an assault charge, but as the VC emerge into a clearing they have a look of terrror on their faces and almost run the players over and continue running helter skelter in the opposite direction. Moments later the team knows why - a squad of Ape Demons emerge from the jungle at the edge of the clearing! Good thing the team has air support this mission, but wait...the damn radio keeps cutting out on the RTO!

[Kaspar]

Thanks for your advice Kronovan. Yeah the mission generator is a great tool for getting ideas.

That is quite a good idea, them thinking that the VC are charging but finding out that the real threat is much greater.

Tell me did you have your own overall campaign?

[Kaspar]

[kronovan]

[quote="Kaspar"]Tell me did you have your own overall campaign?[/quote]

Yep, it‘s still sitting on 1 of my USB sticks somewhere in storage. My caqmpaign was set primarily around the Binh Hoa theater in 1952, which was historically quite a nasty affair in which the French had to retreat and then retake strategic objectives a few times. It also has the Black river throwing through it which sort of splits the area between the Annan and Tonkin highlands. In other words there‘s lots of possibilities geographically and thematically for adventuring there. For adventures I just ran the generator and filled in flavor based upon history and what seemed like fun. When PC‘s ranked Veteran I moved them into the deadly-narrow tracts and treacherous limestone carsks of the infamous Rural Route 4 theater in northern Tonkin.

As much as I really enjoyed running a campaign in the Indochina War, I‘d cautione against taking it on for a 1st ToD campaign. As I already mentioned, there‘s only 3 savage tales that apply to the era, so it‘s a lot of work for the GM and you really need to be comfortable with the adv generator. There‘s also quite a few French ranks missing in the book and no details on the Foreign Legion & Elite Para units. It‘s also a bitch for medivac because the French didn‘t get their Flying Banana (Sikorsky helo) until the end of the war, so if the players Medic goes down and there‘s wounded PC‘s it can be a challenge to get them to safety. There‘s also a heckuva lot missing for French vehicles (despite the extra ones in the eratta) to the extent that I found it necessary to purchase WW II for them. Thankfully the French mostly used all of the Allies WW2 leftovers, so that book made it easy to obtain stats.

[Kaspar]

[kronovan]

[Jonah Hex]

I'm just about to run a ToD game myself and I'm tempted to run an Indochina adventure with french (green) troops, crank up the difficulty (to make sure they die) and treat it like a teaser for a horror movie. Then start the US campaign, possibly with Seasoned characters, or at least keep their xp.

My only worry is that my players, who are being poached from my DnD encounters players, jokingly call me a mean DM already, and this probably wouldn't help my reputation. They do keep coming back however and always enjoy themselves.
_________________
Playing: GURPS Pulp
Running DnD 4e War of the Burning Sky
Running Rippers
Working on GURPS Deadlands

[Sadric]

There was a onehseet about a mosquito demon, even with battlemaps.
I really liked it as one-shot. Maybe this could be an introduction to the secret weird war.

[kronovan]

[Jonah Hex]