Setting: Dark West, Northern New Mexico Territory, Town of Redwood

System: In The Cards (homebrew)

Characters:

- Leah [Sheri] :: The new postmistress

- Victor [Tim] :: Rancher coming to visit his sister

- Oliver [Dave] :: Company man come to find out why coal shipments have stopped

- Roxanne [Taylor] :: ???

- James [Tony] :: Traveler looking for a fresh start in a new place

Session Highlights:

- A group of travelers meet up on the road and camp together with a man called an old prospector a few hours outside the town of Redwood.  They all shared dinner and had a nice chat about the area.  Elijah, the prospector, told them that the area had been declining quite a bit since the coal mine closed and the trains stopped coming into town, but he was hopeful that the area would stick it out and survive. 

- Late that night, the group was awakened to the sounds of Elijah hurriedly packing up his things in a near panic.  They found the stagecoach driver and his two guards dead from apparent stab wounds, and Roxanna saw something moving outside the camp.  Whatever it was, Elijah apparently caught sight of it too, and went screaming into the night in the opposite direction as Leanne swore she heard a distant train whistle.  On edge but unwilling to risk the horses in the darkness, the group holed up in the camp until morning.

- The next day they headed into Redwood.  While Leanne and Victor delivered the mail to the town hall and spoke to the marshall about what had happened, Oliver, James, and Roxanna went to the Bucksaw Saloon for some breakfast and an early drink to calm their nerves.  They spoke to the bartender about the previous night's events, and James asked if there were any local natives that might have stories about "things" roaming the wilderness.  He told them he could only think of one natve that lived in town - the widow of a miner by the name of Caleb Solomon.  One of the barhands seemed to be listening to the conversation and seemed, for some reason, to be growing very angry because of it. 

- It was then that another man appeared in the saloon entrance.  He wore a nice, grey suit and was looking at a gold pocketwatch.  The already quiet saloon fell completely silent.  As he looked up, he smiled and said in a low voice "Can you hear that train, a-comin'?"...

GM's Note: The idea for this game came out of a conversation a month or so ago when someone suggested we do some kind of horror one-shot on halloween.  I kicked around a few ideas while putting it together, but pretty quickly decided this would be a great opportunity to finish the idea I had for a western-themed game system that used only cards and poker chips - no dice or even character sheets.  Over the course of a week or so, I fleshed out the basic ideas and put together a creepy, Dark West game to run with it.  It didn't take super long to explain, seemed to run quite well, and everyone really loved the feel of it.  I may make further tweaks, but I'm quite happy with how it came out.  Of course, I cannot "one-shot" a "one-shot", so we only made it through about 1/3 of the scenario, but everyone liked it enough that we decided we would try to get together soon to see if we couldn't continue it.

Yes!! It was a blast!!