Today I split the party. Every GMs favorite thing. While the rest of the group took the train to the opium/gambling town of New Shanghai, I looted some of the bandits and took one of their horses to the river. I figured I'd find a crossing and keep heading towards Colorado. I've got wilderness survival skills to rely on...

Of course I then found a group of murdered soldiers in Confederate uniforms and a blown up bridge. So I moved on up the river, hoping to find a crossing the next day. Unfortunately I was captured by a group of Confederates heading FROM upriver, planning to hook up with some delayed compratiots. Ones who apparantly had some kind of big treasure on them...

After deciding to head to New Shanghai for some answers the soldiers backshot my character and left him to die. Fuck that. He dragged himself the 40 miles to town, thru deadly desert heat the first two days and then (with one of the wounds becoming infected) a raging hailstorm. And with the town finally in sight, he finally collapsed...

The GM did decide that a local Chinese doctor found him and managed to save his life. Of course he hosed a couple of his medicine skill checks and so some of my ribs set wrong (giving me long term penalties to accuracy and initiative). And Robert Joseph McCoy is now side-lined for 70 days to heal up. Meaning I'll still need a new character, at least temporarily. But once he's healed? Bobby Joe is riding for revenge. Because no one on God's green Earth holds a grudge like a wounded McCoy...

And this week we actually begin playing. Our players are all traveling on a train passing thru the Sequoyah Nation to the town of Lazarus. A train which is turned back by a blown bridge. This is of course a setup by a band of Chinese bandits. Also a reason to field test the unfamiliar combat system. Guns in A&8s is resolved using a d20 attack roll, modified by a draw from a standard card deck and then referenced to a hit location overlay on a target profile. Sounds complicated (and it is) but once you get into the groove of it, it runs pretty smooth. Using a sawed-off I'd found my broke ex-farm boy, Robert Joseph McCoy, managed to do some evil damage on one bandit as he tried to climb in a train window. Shotguns are EVIIIIIL in this setting. The session ended after Jeff's Texas ex-cattleman shot one of the bandits lurking in the coal car, causing him to drop his lit stick of dynomite. Boom baby. Two hours of play time for three players to take down six or seven bandits. Pretty decent for a combat system none of us were that familiar with...