RPGaDay Day 21 2020: Push

       The most epic Push I ever heard in a game was in Dice Funk Season 4. Katarina Brooks pushed the head of Crown Corporation's Agriculture branch right off his own pleasure Zeppelin. The iguana lizardman flipped her off as he plummeted for ten minutes to his death by skydiving.

       Something similarly happened in Earthdawn. The famous total party kill (TPK) from Terror in the Skies. Earthdawn had a lot of these. Mists of Betrayal was a TPK (Twice!). Throal Adventures had a TPK from an avalanche. I even had a TPK from Cavalrymen early in the Vivane Resistance quest (Where I learned that First Circle Cavalrymen against a First Circle party is death).  Earthdawn Cathay Quest ended with half the party dead and half Horror-marked. We even had a party killed by a flood. And a TPK in the first session of a game right after we made characters. Dead in media res trying to save the village we started in! Bonus dice and lots of dice to roll are often a cruel combination. And players wanting you to roll in front of them. The successes were the Earthdawn Ten Year campaign and Earthdawn Kratas Quest. But we had a lot of failures around those successes.

       Back to Terror in the Skies though. The group was fighting a Horror and his crew of undead cadaver men on an airship but were losing. So their human Air Sailor Cid grabbed the ship's wheel so the Horror couldn't navigate and jumped off the ship! He then tried to use Wind Catcher to save himself but botched the roll so fell to his death holding the ship's wheel staring at the Horror as he fell. The last survivor was the ork Thief Bane who was pushed to the bulwark of the ship by the surging wave of undead and jumped to his death in a tree below refusing to die and be reanimated as part of the ship's crew by the Horror. With no way to navigate, the Horror ship crash landed which saved Travar. They died, but they died as heroes. It may have been a TPK, but it was a satisfying conclusion to their arc. I can't say that about most of the TPKs.

      Never forget that the Push maneuver exists in Savage Worlds when fighting in positions of height like on a ship over water, in an airship, fighting on a cliff or mountain, etc. Against a very tough opponent, it might be the best way to get rid of them permanently or for a breather to give you time to recover.