I have a number of one-off encounters as low-probability results in my random encounter generator. Here's a brief selection:
* * *
This is a bridging unit consisting of seven Experienced combat engineers with small arms. They have a 5-ton truck with a Mk. 19 AGL and a
Biber (the bridgelayer variant of the Leopard 1 MBT) carrying a DShK on an improvised mount at the commander's hatch.
The engineers are Canadians who were attached to the US 5th Infantry Division's combat engineer battalion before the Kalisz breakout. Their ranking NCO is Master Corporal Wynona Campbell (charismatic [spade ace], moderately sociable [heart 5]). Predictably, the AVLB is named, and prominently labeled,
Wynona's Big Brown Beaver.
* * *
This is a group of five Hungarian refugees traveling by horse-drawn wagon. Four of them are musicians who comprise a string quartet. They travel between settlements, playing both classical music and their own arrangements of 1980s and early '90s Western rock songs. Their leader is Rebeka Dobos, the cellist (very sociable [heart 10], somewhat violent [club 3]). The other musicians are Adam Fulop, the cellist, and Lajos and Katica Bartha, the violinists. All four are unarmed Novice NPCs.
The party's fifth member, and the reason a group like this is able to travel safely, is Laszlo Bathory. Laszlo is a former special operations trooper, now mute from a massive throat injury, who communicates through sign language and a small slate. He is an immense Elite NPC armed with an AK-74/BG-1, a suppressed Stechkin, and a sharpened entrenching tool.
* * *
The characters encounter a well-concealed ambush. The opposing force is an American straggler unit composed of [1d6+6] Veteran NPCs with military small arms, a [random heavy weapon], and a [random heavy weapon]. They occupy expertly-located firing positions. Their leader is the biggest damn Mexican any of the characters has ever seen: a 50% scaled-up Danny Trejo lookalike in piecemeal camouflage, carrying a PK MG backed up by a pair of M1911s chambered in .38 Super.
Unless the characters appear to be Warsaw Pact troops or have earned a reputation for criminality or war crimes, the leader hails them. He introduces himself as Horrendous Gonzalez. He is friendly and affable (charismatic [spade ace], very sociable [heart 9]). He and his troops are former 5th Infantry Division personnel who've been operating behind enemy lines since they were cut off during the Pact's fall 1997 counteroffensive. They've settled into the role of local defenders, with several communities in the area supporting their efforts to keep their AO clear of slavers and marauders. Several of them have taken local spouses and they have little interest in returning to the United States or traveling elsewhere in Europe.
The group has set the ambush in anticipation of encountering [randomly-selected adversary group]. If initial discussions remain friendly and the characters impress Gonzalez with their competence, he invites them to join his group in dealing with their target. Success in this operation will earn the characters local allies in both Gonzalez's band and the villages under their protection.
(If the characters
do have a reputation for war crimes or look like a Warsaw Pact patrol, and if they don't have obvious overwhelming superiority, Gonzalez orders his troops to engage. He orders a withdrawal if he takes 25% casualties.)
- C.