#RangerWeek
Tell us your DW Ranger stories!
I played the Ranger once in DW. It was a Warforged Ranger (their animal companion is robotic too and gets an additional strength because of it)
named RNGR-1. He was a crossbow-sniper and wilderness guide and really loyal to the group. He had a robot cat named RNGR-2. As it was a cat it had the stubborn weakness. It just made so much sense because
1. the programming was faulty
2. it is a freaking cat. Stubborn bastards…
The fun of the character came because of the voice i used. It was fairly emotionless and steely, maybe channeling HK-47 a bit too much he also used fairly mechanical and scientific description of things. Like:
“Warning! Arcane Phenomenon. Artificial miniature humanoids detected!
Idea! Use artificial miniature humanoids as distraction to engage gryphon beast!”
The stubborn cat showed it weakness by being completely unhelpful to RNGR-1s teammates. They had to bribe the cat with rations to get it to do anything. To RNGR it was more helpful. We treated it as a team ressource though and so everyone cared more about the stupid cat.
It was also build for stealth with quick reflexes stealthy and keen senses. So it was more used fictionaly to scout rooms instead of just being a damage boost.
How about you? What made the Rangers in your games great?
In a one-shot, I played a reluctant Ranger, named Steve. His true path in life was that of a simple farmer, whittling the time away in the company of his two award-winning sheep: Betty and Bessy.
However, one day, Betty was lost, without a word of warning or note of ransom. Steve took on the mantle of would-be adventurer, tagging along with the remaining half of his two sheep–Betty. At one point in his travels, he guided a small group of halflings to an orc encampment. Orcs were slaughtered. Towns were saved. And they just sort of…stuck.
Bessy was stubborn and forgetful and stalwart–the perfect guard sheep. Her traits led to, on several occasions, being sent out to scout dangerous locations, only to wind up in trouble. Some famous incidents of her one-shot career include: running headlong into the cave of a goblin shaman; prancing through an urban sprawl to locate horses; and my favorite, into the swirling mouth of a monster-inhabited whirlpool.
As night follows day, Steve was sure to follow Bessy, risking (party) life and limb in order to save his dear sheep. And then he failed. Scene: not long after exiting the goblin cave, the two of them swirling around, in aforementioned whirlpool, battered by water and earth, bound together by a thin piece of rope. Air running out, sheep weighing him down, Steve has no option but to let go.
The battle rages around Steve. A group of halflings (proud leader, young fighter, and crafty ranger) ward off the onslaught of the goblin shaman, his mirror entities waging war on several fronts. Steve stands, staring into the dark whirlpool. A tear falls from his eye. His quest is lost…or is it? A tentacle rises, followed by another, and another. An entire Kraken-like creature emerges from the whirlpool. And in one of its tentacles, ‘baaaah’ing for sweet mercy? Bessy!
Arwen the Elf was pretty damn cool 🙂
http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=2305.0;wap2
I ran an on-the-fly adaptation of Dyson Logos’ Challenge of the Frog God, which ended with the Ranger’s animal companion killing an evil Warlock PC, but then going berserk and attacking its master. The Ranger tried to subdue it and in the process got his right hand stuck in the bear’s mouth. He said he wanted to pull the bear close, look into its eyes, and convince it to calm down by creating a sense of positive and peaceful well-being, so I had him defy danger with WIS.
He rolled an 7 and I told him, “You can calm it, but at great personal cost. Or you can break its neck and kill it immediately.” He asked what the cost would be, and I told him he’d have to find out — not something I usually do, but I wanted to maintain the tension by keeping the consequence mysterious.
His bear had been a loyal companion up until that point. He chose not to kill it and suffer the consequence. So the bear tore off his right hand.
A Ranger without a right hand faces certain… challenges. But to his credit, the player immediately set about figuring out how to acquire a magical replacement, which ended up being a fun adventure in its own right.
In a one-shot at this last Origins, I joined a couple of newbies to play a human ranger named Emory, who busied himself springing animals from nobles’ menageries. His animal companion was Sir Anthony, a former show dog trained to perform, which Emory later taught to search and fight humanoids. I took the cleric multiclass move figuring I’d get to at least demo spellcasting, calling it a totem of a forgotten nature god Sir Anthony just found one day.
Highlights included keeping zombies at bay with a magic bow, creating holy water to disrupt a dark nexus of power, Discerning all the Realities, and I think short-circuiting a big final battle the GM had planned for us. I had a hunch we were being followed, so I helped the party set traps around our camp, picked out a hiding spot, and then stunned the werewolf that jumped us with a called shot to the head so the druid could push it into one of the traps.