I had a whole lot of fun writing up the fluffy Scenario intros for our free downloadable mini campaign, Marple Syrup or The Man with One Red Boot, and of course if you’ve been paying attention to my Being the Fucking Governor posts, you’ll know how important it is to write enjoyable Scenario intros.

After a bracing train wreck, our intrepid heroes find themselves not only lost in the middle of the woods, surrounded by angry bad Guys, but also with a passel of innocent bystanders looking to them for help!

“I think his leg might be broke.” Cherry Dickens considered ‘Prince Cunningham’ as he writhed on the ground. The man was deathly pale, and his leg was bent at an unnatural attitude.

“Leave’m.” Caroline Canaan finished swaddling her baby and stood up, cradling the infant like a sack of flour. “Put’a bullet in’em if you’re feelin’ sen’mental.”

“Hold on there, Carrie,” Cherry said, “we wouldn’t want to go startin’ an international incident, now would we?” The Prince wailed in anguish as Dr. Dickens poked at his injured leg. “Besides, he’s colorin’ up fine!”

Trigger looked down at the injured gentleman, flush with sudden pain. She looked at the frightened passengers, huddled together in their city clothes. And she looked at the vast wilderness that surrounded them, pierced only by a thin trail of steel and wood. “We’re in a bad way here, Cherry. It might be best we leave him.”

“Nonsense!” Cherry stabbed her patient in the neck with a syringe and stood up. She kicked the man’s leg and watched him winch lethargically. “See. Good as new. We’ll be outta here in no time! Just gotta follow these here tracks.”

Trigger shook her head. “No good, Cherry. Whoever hit the train might have friends nearby, and they’ll be watching the rails. Charlotte, is there another way outta here?”

Charlotte Canton studied the surrounding trees and glanced up towards the slate-grey sky. “I think we could make Old Woman Butte from here, but it ain’t gonna be easy.” She pointed toward the looming bulk of a thickly timbered slope. “We’ll have to cross that ridge yonder.”

Canaan skinned her pistol in a flash, cocking the hammer at the same time. Her head darted left and right, though the circling trees were still and silent. “W’need to move. Now!”

One of our rules when writing these scenario intros is that there’s always four Exiles characters in the story, and every one of them is featured in each Scenario intro. This can be a tall order when you have to write with enough brevity to fit on a single Dime Novel page! We try to make sure that our four man posses are also solid, survivable groups of characters.

Here we have a funky, but damn effective combination of Bandit, Doctor, Trapper, and Gunslinger. You’ve got two characters with access to Revival (a must-have), plenty of long-range firepower from three Personas with access to the Rifle skill, and a nice combination of useful skills from the Trapper and the Bandit. This crew is a little weak when it comes to Fightin’, but Cherry helps to balance that out with her proclivity for poisons and stabbing.

You can obviously play our campaigns with whatever characters you want (even your own!), but we like to make sure that even the characters in our fluff are playing smart!