Dark Western

I played another game last night with the Dark Australia setting...and it was awesome!

I think part of that is aided by my playing style, which is leaning more towards storyline, slow build ups, and action only when it would make sense (and then it's kind of unusual a lot of the time, because of that point).

Here's the essence of the plot to date:

Our hero (Fritz Fuchs, the Prussian Hunter), has claimed a Banjo dinosaur and set off a hex against himself, which nearly killed him.
The next night, the mate of the captured creature methodically hunts down and kills dozens of cattle and sheep, sending the town into a panic. It couldn't get too close to the barn where its mate was caged, because a series of copper rods (with very steampunkish copper balls on their ends), were set around it by the Prussian inventor Schultz who also lives in the town - they make an electrical field around the barn, and anything entering it gets shocked - it can be fatal.
That very evening, returning from Schultz's house, Fritz sees an aboriginal elder standing on the hillside, watching him. He's sure that's the guy who's been cursing him, so he takes a shot - and hits him! Then, as he turns around, he finds the stream behind him has started to fog over - and black, ghostly figure has emerged from it. Fritz shoots it, but the bullet has no effect (it wasn't runed), and the figure plunges its hand into Fritz's chest. Schultz lets rip with the zap-gun, and the thing vanishes, along with the mist.
However, something is very wrong with Fritz, and he soon discovers (thanks to Dr Bones, his alluring witch doctor), that he has lots his shadow...which doesn't really feel very nice.
The next day, with the outraged turn turning on him and saying that he had caused all this mayhem, and with an outraged mother after him too (uh oh), Fritz asks his Aboriginal tracker Charlie what's going on. Why are the elders out to get him?
Charlie says that it isn't the elders at all - they were trying to warn him. Instead, it was "old swamp man" who lives in the billabong. He's a dreamtime spirit who's been around there long - long long time.
Bugger.
Fritz decides to head off and see the elder he just shot at (Pilli Pilli, of the Oonbarra tribe), to see if he can work out what to do about all this.
They reach the Oongbarra camp later that day, and Pilli Pilli appears to be unhurt, despite a bullet clearly hitting him in the chest last night. Fritz doesn't quite know what to make of that.
Fritz apologises, and Pilli Pilli says that the apology is incomplete. To achieve forgiveness he must allow Pilli Pilli to cast a spear at him.
Well, nothing for it really!
Fritz takes off his shirt and stands at the ready in the middle of the circle of old boab trees. Pilli Pilli winds up, then casts with such blinding speed that Fritz scarcely sees it. He drops flat, and the spear glances across his chest, lancing pain and shock through him - but leaving him alive. Wow...lucky!
Suitably impressed, Pilli Pilli forgives him, then they get down to business.
After some conversation, in which Fritz promises to get rid of Useless Loop (the town), because it's sitting on an old sacred site (but skillfully avoids the blood-bond promise with a beer-bond promise, "that's even more solemn and important in Prussian culture!"), Pilli Pilli agrees to take him down to the river and summon Old Swamp Man.
The problem is, Old Swamp Man derives his power from an Aboriginal rock carving. But outsiders aren't allowed there. If anyone outside the tribe goes there, all those in the tribe will see the person as a marked man, and will do nothing to help them. Furthermore, they will send medicine men after them to point the bone and hex them with death.
Instead they try to summon the spirit and talk with it.
It doesn't go so well. The spirit watches them malevolently, then starts changing its form, to look like Fritz, the girl from the town, her father, and others... then Fritz shot it in the face with his zap gun. Aha! Killed it!
Oh... no...
Pilli Pilli left saying that Old Swamp Man doesn't die so easily. You don't really want to upset him. Just leave when he's upset and come back later. He'll be asleep then. He's only woken up because the town is so noisy and breaks so many trees and doesn't let him sleep.
Instead, Fritz decides to have Dr Bones summon Swamp Man so they can kill him.

As she chants by the summoning circle, the river starts to dry up, the water flowing back up the stream. Then the snakes, frogs, birds and everything that can move start slithering and hopping away... and Fritz decides to run, just as the ground begins trembling and a surging mass of dirty brown water comes hammering back down the stream, tearing up small trees, tossing along boulders - and nearly swatting them all flat.
When they get back to the village, they find the Aboriginals leaving. Fritz tries to tell Pilli Pilli to gather all his warriors and kill it - but why should he? He can just go away and come back again later. And soon enough, Fritz's small party is alone in the steadily darkening day. They try to head down to cross the river, but they see figures rising out of the water... waterlogged, rotting figures... not good.
So in the end they take the long way round, which takes four days! Avoiding every scrap of water, they finally reach the town, and have to charge through a massed knot of dripping zombies blocking them at the river. They bring Schultz with them and race to the barn, which is fortified with the electrified rods. For all down the river, come hundreds of shambling, drowned people.
Inside, they shoot down at the mass, barricade themselves in and hurl out molotovs, as the mob tries to force its way through the rods. Countless corpses burst into flames and explode with the electricity frying them. Many still get through and bash at the barn walls.
Meanwhile, the water is rising... and then the Old Swamp Man comes surging forward, heaving his immense bulk out of the river and unleashing a flash flood on them, tearing away half the barn. It's a huge monstrosity, half the size of a bus, a mass of mud, rotting wood, and countless corpses, reeking of death and raw power. It slams into the barn and tears it apart, tossing Fritz into the water. He holds on under the flood, and kicks the power supply of the electrified fence towards Old Swamp Man... then shoots it.
Pop. The whole world turns into a ball of frying electricity.
Finally, he wakes, seeing Dr Bones staring down at him...and knows that he should be dead. Why is he not?