The Wolverines Take the Highway to the Danger Zone

I finally ran a game!

For about a year now I’ve been meaning to run a one-shot. I started thinking about it in winter 2021, but that wasn’t a good time for me. (I really should finish up that “2021 in review” post.) In the summer I finished my Pirates campaign, and after that I wanted a good long break. Then there was a Christmas one-shot I worked on, but I didn’t finish it in time.

Update: I ran it the following Christmas. See Christmas One Shot for details.

Earlier this year I did the unthinkable: I signed up to play a game with online strangers. (Also known as “people on a friendly Discord server”.) Chatting on video with people I don’t know in real life is outside my comfort zone, but I was interested, so I signed up for a mini-campaign called “Angels over Bourbon Street”.

It was fun! And it was good to play with other people. My Savage Worlds experience is almost entirely as the DM, so it was instructive to see how someone else approached the job.

With that committed and pushed to master, I figured it was time. I reached out to people and set up a session of The Wolverines Take the Highway to the Danger Zone. It’s a module I first heard of through the Fear the Boot podcast, and the idea of playing a mash-up of 80s teen comedies and action movies sounds great to me. 😀

I played with a completely different group than the Pirates campaign. One guy had never played a TTRPG at all; another had played some, but never a SW game; the other two had SW experience.

I think it went well. It went longer than I wanted, but I think everyone enjoyed themselves.

Takeaways:

• Next time I should prepare stronger NPCs. The ones I used were pretty flat.
• I should’ve reviewed some of the rules first, particularly the Dramatic Task subsystem. I used it twice, and I think I could’ve done a better job.
• I could’ve hooked into the characters a bit better. The PCs all have other people worked into their background, and I didn’t draw on that nearly as much as I should’ve.
• Lastly, I should’ve dialed back the big climatic showdown a bit. I went for a big fight, but it slowed things down right when we should’ve been wrapping them up. This would’ve actually been a great opportunity for a Dramatic Task instead.