Author Topic: Holy CRAP is the grand story arc of Deadlands awesome.  (Read 16478 times)

iamfanboy

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Holy CRAP is the grand story arc of Deadlands awesome.
« on: 10 September 2011, 13:07:08 »
So, I just finished reading all of the Deadlands sourcebooks that I have, from the original Weird West setting, to the postapocalyptic setting, to the space colony setting, and man....

I am... just... left in awe.

I have to run this campaign. Absolutely have to.

(minimal spoilers ahead; only broad strokes of the plot revealed with no details about Hellstromme's - nope, can't do it!)


At first, while reading the Weird West setting, I said to myself, "Well, this is pretty cool, a steampunk and sorcery setting. We've got gunslingers, zombies, poker-playing wizards gambling with evil spirits to cast spells, mad scientists creating  machines, Men in Black Dusters trying to keep it all quiet, and an overarching evil will behind it all in the form of mysterious Reckoners. Seems like a great setting for a quick change of pace."

Then I read more of the adventures and I got more and more enamored of the story behind it, so I decided, "What the hey, I'll give a glance at the next setting they put out, Hell on Earth. Maybe I'll do an adventure or two in this setting to give them a glimpse of what happens if they mess up bad enough."

At first, I thought there was no way it could interest me as much as the Weird West setting, but... holy koi. The Reckoners come to Earth as the Four Horsemen after instigating World War III and walk the planet bringing ruin and fear wherever they go... and your poor dumb bastards of players have to fight back by bringing hope and joy to what's left of humanity. Oh, and blowing the Hell out of any Reckoner's servants that cross their path.

At that point I almost - almost! - turned my nose up at their next setting, Lost Colony. "Awh, man, seems like they jumped the shark on this one. Still, I'll give it a read... through... OMFGWTFBBQICBI!"

Instead of being a jump the shark moment, it's a perfect climax to a huge, HUGE campaign that pits the players against Death, War, Pestilence, and Famine over the course of three hundred years.

I mean, I'm no amateur when it comes to these things, but I am left in awe of the amount of writing that went into this. I thought my Earthdawn campaign that involved the players trying to harness a Dragon ritual to go back in time and kill Verjigorm, screwing it up, imprisoning themselves in a dragon memory crystal, being freed in Shadowrun times, getting the Draco Foundation's help in achieving their original goal, only to find out that Verjigorm is/was the mother of the Namegivers and killing her would mean no life at all but Horrors was a good campaign, but this...

Oh man. I am left in awe.

I just want to shake the hands of the guys who wrote this. I want - no, need players to do the game. Too bad most people up here are flakes who never show up twice in a row. <_<

Daryk

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Re: Holy CRAP is the grand story arc of Deadlands awesome.
« Reply #1 on: 10 September 2011, 14:25:20 »
... Too bad most people up here are flakes who never show up twice in a row. <_<
Don't be too hard on folks around here.  Play by post is hard no matter where you do it.

iamfanboy

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Re: Holy CRAP is the grand story arc of Deadlands awesome.
« Reply #2 on: 10 September 2011, 16:32:46 »
Don't be too hard on folks around here.  Play by post is hard no matter where you do it.
Sorry, i meant 'locally' as in my area IRL; i'm unfond of play by post.

Mostly because then my 30 or so expertly tuned voices go to waste. ^_^

Daryk

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Re: Holy CRAP is the grand story arc of Deadlands awesome.
« Reply #3 on: 10 September 2011, 16:38:53 »
Ah, sorry, then.  Good luck finding some folks to game with.  There's a guy up on the "Roleplaying" board trying to organize something over Skype.

breakdaddy

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Re: Holy CRAP is the grand story arc of Deadlands awesome.
« Reply #4 on: 14 September 2011, 18:35:14 »
I've played my share of Deadlands, from the original to reloaded to the boardgame. It's a fun setting, for sure.

E. Icaza

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Re: Holy CRAP is the grand story arc of Deadlands awesome.
« Reply #5 on: 15 September 2011, 22:45:19 »
As one of the play testers for various Deadlands, Hell on Earth & Savage Worlds products, you're welcome.   ;)

The guys (and gals) involved in making it are great folks and I used to be a regular at the FLGS that some of them ran in Blacksburg, VA.
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iamfanboy

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Re: Holy CRAP is the grand story arc of Deadlands awesome.
« Reply #6 on: 17 September 2011, 19:13:16 »
I've been disconnected from the 'net for a few days thanks to my laptop's power supply going out, so I spent the time to make a great Deadlands player's guide from the free pdf.



My favorite picture from the Deadlands book - Engine 666. I have other pictures on the backside and inside.

Oh, I did a faux leather look by painting layers of brown, and the clear plastic book covering has an almost leathery feel to it. The image is artificially aged with teastaining - which I did to EVERYTHING.


...As you can see here. The book itself, despite being printed out this week (!!) looks years or even decades old.


Some of my more favorite Deadlands images - though there are some also on the inside covers as well.

The open book - the pages are, as I said before, artificially aged, and almost all of them are perfect looking.

And here's the map I made - though I did let my girlfriend do the scorching along the top quarter.



Speaking of my girlfriend... she created her character using a Red Dead Redemption poker deck.

OH. MY. ******. GOD.

First, she draws a joker for one of her stats - and of course draws a Spade for the trait level.

Then, I draw for her mysterious past.... RED JOKER. Harrowed with total Dominion. (and a d8 Spirit, so the manitou is gonna have some small problem getting control at first.)

Then, she picks Veteran of the Weird West and draws...

You guessed it....

RED JOKER. Eternal Hero.

And yes, we did shuffle and cut the cards - I've been playing MtG too long to let something like that slide.

Other than that, she has no exceptional stats, nothing above a d8 which isn't so good since she latched onto the Hexslinger right away (and she put that 4d12 into Deftness like a good l'il gunslinger), but still...

She's a runaway bride from a Mormon family who doesn't want to marry someone three times her age who got plugged by the abomination hunting lawmen after learning something of hexslingin' from a local hexslinger. Because she was so purty and young, the undertaker put her out on display for a little while... which is where she woke up with the Prospector just about to pour his elixir down her gullet.


...I just.... well... I wasn't wanting to start with Harrowed in the campaign. I was actually planning on running a modified version of the adventure in the Book o'the Dead for anyone who wanted to become Harrowed but... let the dice fall where they may.

I keep asking her if maybe she stole a bit of her friend's luck (who rolled in front of my eyes, with MY DICE, three 18s for a Pathfinder character), but thus far my girl has denied any such thing.

Daryk

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Re: Holy CRAP is the grand story arc of Deadlands awesome.
« Reply #7 on: 17 September 2011, 19:22:19 »
 :o  Wow!  That's... just amazing.  Great work! O0

E. Icaza

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Re: Holy CRAP is the grand story arc of Deadlands awesome.
« Reply #8 on: 17 September 2011, 20:46:01 »
Absolutely gorgeous work!
The Clans: the Star League the Inner Sphere deserves, not the one it needs.

Darkmentat73

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Re: Holy CRAP is the grand story arc of Deadlands awesome.
« Reply #9 on: 12 June 2012, 18:01:16 »
Have always been a fan of the Deadlands story line and hasve more than a few hexslingers, blessed,and kung fu characters in my portfoilio.

iamfanboy

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Re: Holy CRAP is the grand story arc of Deadlands awesome.
« Reply #10 on: 13 June 2012, 09:46:34 »
I'm just glad I finally found a group to play the game with! We've actually had three sessions thus far, which is two more than most of my previous games have run to while living up here since 2008.

However, I'm also re-qualifying for my bastard GM credentials this campaign - second adventure, they meet a sweet little girl and her sick mother (and stay at their house), third adventure they ride back into town and rescue her from a vampire trying to drag her back to the Night Train, and fourth adventure... they're going to ride into town just in time for her funeral.

3rdCrucisLancers

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Re: Holy CRAP is the grand story arc of Deadlands awesome.
« Reply #11 on: 13 June 2012, 09:54:37 »
I liked Deadlands, but like almost all neat settings with a proprietary engine, I preferred to run it with GURPS. I know there's a Savage World version out now, but I almost never game anymore.
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iamfanboy

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Re: Holy CRAP is the grand story arc of Deadlands awesome.
« Reply #12 on: 13 June 2012, 12:17:03 »
I liked Deadlands, but like almost all neat settings with a proprietary engine, I preferred to run it with GURPS. I know there's a Savage World version out now, but I almost never game anymore.
My problem with GURPS, overall, is that on the simple-complicated-complex scale, it's complicated with a capital COMP. Sure, there's a lot of possibilities, but actually DOING it is such a grand pain in the rear - and yes, I know that part of it is having a good GM who knows the system and can reign in the complication (same way that I reign in the complication when I do Shadowrun).

Overall, though, I prefer a complex system - simple enough to learn and explain, deep enough to allow a lot of variety, like Big Eyes Small Mouth. Savage Worlds is pretty good at complexity.

Plus, the d12 is the biggest die most players use; I love any system that gives the d12 some lovin'!

3rdCrucisLancers

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Re: Holy CRAP is the grand story arc of Deadlands awesome.
« Reply #13 on: 13 June 2012, 12:27:51 »
My problem with GURPS, overall, is that on the simple-complicated-complex scale, it's complicated with a capital COMP. Sure, there's a lot of possibilities, but actually DOING it is such a grand pain in the rear - and yes, I know that part of it is having a good GM who knows the system and can reign in the complication (same way that I reign in the complication when I do Shadowrun).

I never found it all that complex, aside from the vehicle rules, which were terribly, terribly complex, and basically made it almost impossible to run a vehicle-centric game without way more work than anyone should want to do. I liked the granularity for firearms, though; I feel it really shines when doing modern conspiracy horror (Conspiracy X, Delta Green) or western games. I suppose it might work well for a gritty fantasy thing a la Game of Thrones (though I've not read nor seen it).

NB I only ever played 3rd R GURPS.
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iamfanboy

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Re: Holy CRAP is the grand story arc of Deadlands awesome.
« Reply #14 on: 13 June 2012, 14:37:26 »
Never played third edition GURPS - I'm not sure WHAT edition it was, but the books were crispy-new in 2007. It didn't help much that he was fairly new to GM'ing (I'd let him run some precons and gave him hints) or that he wanted to do a superhero game (which meant using a LOT of different rules from a half-dozen different books).

I enjoyed it; I created an uber-powerful kid mage and though the game wasn't challenging, it was fun from an RPG prospective. One guy had super-strength and telekinetically animated the dumpster he lived in as our group transport... yeah.

Like I said, it comes down to game mastery and knowing the books well. He really didn't, and that didn't help the feeling of complicated-osity.

But SW... oh, it's elegant. I could run an Avatar: the Last Airbender or Avatar: The Smurfkittens of Unobtanium from just the main rulebook with perhaps a page of typed improvisation, and anywhere in between. I like it.

3rdCrucisLancers

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Re: Holy CRAP is the grand story arc of Deadlands awesome.
« Reply #15 on: 13 June 2012, 15:31:07 »
Never played third edition GURPS - I'm not sure WHAT edition it was, but the books were crispy-new in 2007. It didn't help much that he was fairly new to GM'ing (I'd let him run some precons and gave him hints) or that he wanted to do a superhero game (which meant using a LOT of different rules from a half-dozen different books).

Probably GURPS 4e, the newest edition. Supers is not a great choice for GURPS, IMO. The game can break down at higher power levels.
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sandstorm

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Re: Holy CRAP is the grand story arc of Deadlands awesome.
« Reply #16 on: 27 June 2012, 05:36:58 »
Deadlands looks like something I -want- to play or game.

With the lack of local RPG friends at reasonable chance for meeting, I have started to consider FantasyGroundsII and their SW/Deadlands ruleset; my brother has been running a SR4th campaign on a fanmade ruleset on FGII, and it's passable.

But I guess I'll ahve to see how it is at couple local RPG conventions in July and September, if I can talk couple of my more remote friends to consider joining.
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