The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Curiously, the Old West has been a much under-represented genre in the role-playing arena. Sure there was Boot Hill way back when, but it was as abstract and poorly written as most of the TSR products from that era, and hardly did the genre justice. And then there was the Outlaw supplement for Rolemaster and it's cousin Western Hero for Hero System, but both of these products were quite light on the mechanics which would allow fans of Leone and Peckinpah to blaze away with two-fisted deadliness.

My copy of Outlaw is fully 70% NPC stats and town settings at the expense of the rules, which play very much like Rolemaster in it's usual swords and sorcery configuration. Recently the Old West has been addressed as an afterthought in systems like Castle Falkenstein and Werewolf, which suffer for being appendices of more detailed world settings.

That leaves us with Deadlands, which is, in my opinion, the first well-rounded and complete attempt at a role-playing system dedicated to the myth of the West. So is it any good?

The answer depends very much on what flavor of the Old West appeals to you and your players. If you are looking for the gritty realism of Unforgiven, or even the melodrama of Once Upon a Time in the West, coupled with subtle or "off-camera" horror, Deadlands might require a liberal amount of editing. Coincidentally, that is the tone I was shooting for, so found myself ignoring large portions of the provided background. The problem being it tries to be everything at once, so the Universe according to the rulebook is busy and cluttered with magic-wielding Hucksters, undead gunslingers, mad scientist who have introduced a decidedly "steam punk" feel to the world, and shamen whose Ghost Dance is more than a morale boosting activity.

Since I have always believed that the truth of the Old West is as interesting as the fiction, I found myself overwhelmed by the mixture of genres, some of which are conflicting in tone. Horror, for example, works best when the characters feel alone and at the mercy of the unknown. In Deadlands, however, characters can confront the faceless forces of Evil in bulletproof vests, wielding Gatling pistols or flamethrowers, or their Huckster can incinerate the gibbering mass with a few well-drawn cards. Still and all, it is nothing which can't be corrected by ignoring a few chapters of the book.

If, on the other hand, your players enjoy multigenre worlds painted in broad strokes, then this system is ideal. The very aspects which will be viewed as problems for players looking for a more staid version of the West provide a tremendous pool of background to draw upon. Characters can play any of the stereotypical Old West types, including gunslingers, Army scouts, soiled doves, buffalo hunters, and muckrakers. Deadlands adds into the mix magic Hucksters, mad scientists, faith-driven priests and nuns, powerful Indian shamen, and the Harrowed; undead who constantly struggle for control of their cold, possessed bodies. The character combinations are infinite and the potential for character conflict/interaction is tremendous. This is partly due to the rich nature of 19th century Western history and partly due to the flourishes provided by Hensley, and the two combined are fertile ground indeed.

Deadlands takes place in 1876. Evil beings known as the Reckoners exert control over the Earth via their armies of unseen Manitou and the more concrete Abominations. These sprits were given re-entrance to the world in 1863, and that is the year that the Deadlands history diverges from our own. The War Between the States has raged on for 15 long years, a monumental earthquake sent the fractured coast of California into the Pacific in 1868 creating the Great Maze, magic has returned to be wielded by a gifted few, and monsters walk the Earth.

The Great Quake in California revealed rich veins of ghost rock, a mineral that burns longer and hotter than coal and gives off a mournful wailing sound when alight. This serves as the fuel for many steam driven inventions being cranked out by mad scientists, who also manage to produce Gatling pistols, rocket packs, and acid guns amongst others. To say too much would be to give away the secrets, which are carefully segregated into the last portion of the rulebook, away from the eyes of players (see below).

The layout of the book is well done, and most of the rules can be located quickly using the detailed table of contents. The book opens with the usual introduction a la short fiction, in this case being an old prospector bringing a Harrowed marshal up to speed on the state of the world. I would much prefer a simple and brief preface, as I usually skim through these attempts at fiction to get to the good stuff. In this case, the intro does more than set the tone of the game, so skip over it at your own risk, as I soon learned. It functions rather like a timeline of events in the world of the Weird West, except it lacks the convenience of a list of important happenings. To find out when the Great Quake took place, for example, you might find yourself scanning the 8 pages of "coot'ified" text. It's a minor point, I admit, but it seems more annoying coming as it does after such a long line of clever story forewords.

The chapters then follow the standard flow of dice conventions, character creation, equipment, combat, archetype-specific chapters, monsters (or critters here), and GM-only (or marshal-only, as the GM is called in Deadlands) information. These are divided into 3 sections: Posse Territory, No Man's Land, and the Marshal's Handbook. All players are expected to be familiar with the rules in the first, can access the second only if they have cause to do so, and are verboten in the third. This allows for some nice misleading comments to be planted in the first two sections, only to be corrected with the Truth in the Marshal's Handbook. This should allow the marshal to keep the posse guessing.

As I bought a later printing of the book, it is virtually typo-free, which is a refreshing change, especially as I found it side-by-side with notoriously illegible systems such as Armageddon. The artwork is hit-and-miss, with far too many illustrations bearing a striking resemblance to comic book art circa 1973. It is somewhat disappointing to see that game designers still so frequently overlook the importance of art (anyone remember the original Skyrealms of Jorune?) in evoking the appropriate atmosphere. If this were a superheroes system, then I would have no problem with the sketchy, cartoonish drawings, but they hardly set the mood for a horror Western. The text is clearly printed in large font on mostly white pages, double-column, with adequate margins, so it reads very quickly.

The mechanics are positively original, but leave some question as to their statistical soundness. The system uses d4 through d20, which is a curious eccentricity for a game published in the late 90's. It is clever enough, but do not be surprised when players drag out the T.I. to determine whether a 3d6 is superior to a 2d8. The confusion arising from the fact that these dice are not rolled and added together, but rolled and the highest single die total is used as the score.

This is further complicated by the possibility of Aces, which are open-ended rolls and Busts, which is when the majority of the dice the player is rolling come up 1's. So an Ace is more likely with 3d6, while going Bust is more likely with 2d8, while pure average per die would favor the 2d8. I am not sure if it is accurate, but it surely helps reduce players comparing stats during the games to decide on who is the strongest or fastest. It provides a rather organic doubt. In combat, characters draw a number of playing cards from a standard poker deck, determined by a Quickness dice roll. These cards determine the order in which characters move in combat, couting down from Ace through 2. So quick characters get more cards/movements each round on average, but the luck of the draw might result in them moving five times after a very slow person who draws a single face card. Whether this is glaringly artificial or believably random in a five second snapshot of deadly combat was the source of much debate on the Deadlands list.

Characters are rewarded with Fate Chips, bounty points, and Guts if they face the supernatural or shocking elements of the world and live to tell about it. Each of these function in different ways, with Fate Chips having three distinct effects with three distinct levels (white, red, and blue, as standard poker chips). Fate Chips are awarded during the game for effective role-playing, which is a definite encouragement for playing in character.

Characters are created using a point system, with Traits (strength, nimbleness, etc.) being generated by the drawing of cards. This is a twist on the old random number generation traditionally accomplished with dice, but is one of the few aspects of the rules which curiously does not call upon all of those funny shaped dice. It provides a few minutes of fun and thrills, and provides a much-needed fix for any members of Gamblers Anonymous you might have in the group.

Edges can be purchased, and include such varied advantageous genotypes as Purty and Tough as Nails. Hindrances are Edges' evil cousins which give the character points, and it is here that you will find such social ills as Hankerin' and Greed. Fate Chips are awarded based largely on the role-playing of Hindrances.

Overall the system is quirky, but it is well-choreographed quirk at that. With a few alterations and a bit of red ink, you can tailor the system to fit your desired tone. At some point, however, you might be better off buying Call of Cthulu and adding your own Old West background and rules, if you are looking for a more horrific horror Western setting. Pinnacle has a Dime Novel supplement which would also allow you to adapt Deadlands rules to fit CoC, if you have a hankerin' to do so.

Personally, I found the system offered just enough general Old West feel to use after cutting out the steam punk, toning down the magic, ignoring some of the NPC's, forgetting about Fort 51 and Roswell, and axing some of the critters (tumblebleeds being an example of how kitsch things get at times). If you are looking for the Wild Wild West meets George Romero with a whole lot of gunslinging, flamethrowing, and hex casting from atop a steam wagon, then this is exactly what you are looking for.

In closing, I would like to address what I truly hope is not a trend developing in the RPG industry. Deadlands is chock full of references to upcoming products, even to the degree that the very history of the world attempts to strong-arm players into buying future products. Whether systems actually require 100 supplemental products or not is not a question within the scope of this review. But I implore game developers to cease with the product placement within the core rulebook. At one point in Deadlands, a sidebar hints at a great and crucial Secret which will rear its ugly head in a future release (we even get the date of release, like some summer blockbuster), and the book refers readers to forthcoming supplements several times.

Then there are the fictional rail lines, many of which have colorful names like Vermillion Bayou, Union Blue, and Black River. Forgetting about how curious these names sound compared to their historical counterparts, they all sound suspiciously like mnemonics to remember which line or counter you are playing on a strategy game board. Cue the $30.00 Rail Wars Deadlands-related product. What is next? Will there be ads for Pepsi at the foot of each page? Will prominent NPC's be named Bob Hot Pocket(TM)? How about rules which can only be decoded if you buy specially marked packages of Doritos which contain the secret decoder ring? Advertising your forthcoming products at the end of the book, in those dead pages, is one thing. Including ads within the rules is simply obnoxious. And hinting at rules which will be available in future supplements, rather than making the rules a little longer, is extortion. Is the inflated cover price not an adequate source of lucre?

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 3 (Average)

Deadlands The Weird West
Author: Shane Hensley Category: game Company/Publisher: Pinnacle Entertainment Group Line: Deadlands Cost: $30.00 Page count: 224 ISBN: 1-889546-01-1 SKU: 1001 Capsule Review by Roger Taylor on 08/17/99. Genre tags: Horror Old_West	Curiously, the Old West has been a much under-represented genre in the role-playing arena. Sure there was Boot Hill way back when, but it was as abstract and poorly written as most of the TSR products from that era, and hardly did the genre justice. And then there was the Outlaw supplement for Rolemaster and it's cousin Western Hero for Hero System, but both of these products were quite light on the mechanics which would allow fans of Leone and Peckinpah to blaze away with two-fisted deadliness. My copy of Outlaw is fully 70% NPC stats and town settings at the expense of the rules, which play very much like Rolemaster in it's usual swords and sorcery configuration. Recently the Old West has been addressed as an afterthought in systems like Castle Falkenstein and Werewolf, which suffer for being appendices of more detailed world settings. That leaves us with Deadlands, which is, in my opinion, the first well-rounded and complete attempt at a role-playing system dedicated to the myth of the West. So is it any good? The answer depends very much on what flavor of the Old West appeals to you and your players. If you are looking for the gritty realism of Unforgiven, or even the melodrama of Once Upon a Time in the West, coupled with subtle or "off-camera" horror, Deadlands might require a liberal amount of editing. Coincidentally, that is the tone I was shooting for, so found myself ignoring large portions of the provided background. The problem being it tries to be everything at once, so the Universe according to the rulebook is busy and cluttered with magic-wielding Hucksters, undead gunslingers, mad scientist who have introduced a decidedly "steam punk" feel to the world, and shamen whose Ghost Dance is more than a morale boosting activity. Since I have always believed that the truth of the Old West is as interesting as the fiction, I found myself overwhelmed by the mixture of genres, some of which are conflicting in tone. Horror, for example, works best when the characters feel alone and at the mercy of the unknown. In Deadlands, however, characters can confront the faceless forces of Evil in bulletproof vests, wielding Gatling pistols or flamethrowers, or their Huckster can incinerate the gibbering mass with a few well-drawn cards. Still and all, it is nothing which can't be corrected by ignoring a few chapters of the book. If, on the other hand, your players enjoy multigenre worlds painted in broad strokes, then this system is ideal. The very aspects which will be viewed as problems for players looking for a more staid version of the West provide a tremendous pool of background to draw upon. Characters can play any of the stereotypical Old West types, including gunslingers, Army scouts, soiled doves, buffalo hunters, and muckrakers. Deadlands adds into the mix magic Hucksters, mad scientists, faith-driven priests and nuns, powerful Indian shamen, and the Harrowed; undead who constantly struggle for control of their cold, possessed bodies. The character combinations are infinite and the potential for character conflict/interaction is tremendous. This is partly due to the rich nature of 19th century Western history and partly due to the flourishes provided by Hensley, and the two combined are fertile ground indeed. Deadlands takes place in 1876. Evil beings known as the Reckoners exert control over the Earth via their armies of unseen Manitou and the more concrete Abominations. These sprits were given re-entrance to the world in 1863, and that is the year that the Deadlands history diverges from our own. The War Between the States has raged on for 15 long years, a monumental earthquake sent the fractured coast of California into the Pacific in 1868 creating the Great Maze, magic has returned to be wielded by a gifted few, and monsters walk the Earth. The Great Quake in California revealed rich veins of ghost rock, a mineral that burns longer and hotter than coal and gives off a mournful wailing sound when alight. This serves as the fuel for many steam driven inventions being cranked out by mad scientists, who also manage to produce Gatling pistols, rocket packs, and acid guns amongst others. To say too much would be to give away the secrets, which are carefully segregated into the last portion of the rulebook, away from the eyes of players (see below). The layout of the book is well done, and most of the rules can be located quickly using the detailed table of contents. The book opens with the usual introduction a la short fiction, in this case being an old prospector bringing a Harrowed marshal up to speed on the state of the world. I would much prefer a simple and brief preface, as I usually skim through these attempts at fiction to get to the good stuff. In this case, the intro does more than set the tone of the game, so skip over it at your own risk, as I soon learned. It functions rather like a timeline of events in the world of the Weird West, except it lacks the convenience of a list of important happenings. To find out when the Great Quake took place, for example, you might find yourself scanning the 8 pages of "coot'ified" text. It's a minor point, I admit, but it seems more annoying coming as it does after such a long line of clever story forewords. The chapters then follow the standard flow of dice conventions, character creation, equipment, combat, archetype-specific chapters, monsters (or critters here), and GM-only (or marshal-only, as the GM is called in Deadlands) information. These are divided into 3 sections: Posse Territory, No Man's Land, and the Marshal's Handbook. All players are expected to be familiar with the rules in the first, can access the second only if they have cause to do so, and are verboten in the third. This allows for some nice misleading comments to be planted in the first two sections, only to be corrected with the Truth in the Marshal's Handbook. This should allow the marshal to keep the posse guessing. As I bought a later printing of the book, it is virtually typo-free, which is a refreshing change, especially as I found it side-by-side with notoriously illegible systems such as Armageddon. The artwork is hit-and-miss, with far too many illustrations bearing a striking resemblance to comic book art circa 1973. It is somewhat disappointing to see that game designers still so frequently overlook the importance of art (anyone remember the original Skyrealms of Jorune?) in evoking the appropriate atmosphere. If this were a superheroes system, then I would have no problem with the sketchy, cartoonish drawings, but they hardly set the mood for a horror Western. The text is clearly printed in large font on mostly white pages, double-column, with adequate margins, so it reads very quickly. The mechanics are positively original, but leave some question as to their statistical soundness. The system uses d4 through d20, which is a curious eccentricity for a game published in the late 90's. It is clever enough, but do not be surprised when players drag out the T.I. to determine whether a 3d6 is superior to a 2d8. The confusion arising from the fact that these dice are not rolled and added together, but rolled and the highest single die total is used as the score. This is further complicated by the possibility of Aces, which are open-ended rolls and Busts, which is when the majority of the dice the player is rolling come up 1's. So an Ace is more likely with 3d6, while going Bust is more likely with 2d8, while pure average per die would favor the 2d8. I am not sure if it is accurate, but it surely helps reduce players comparing stats during the games to decide on who is the strongest or fastest. It provides a rather organic doubt. In combat, characters draw a number of playing cards from a standard poker deck, determined by a Quickness dice roll. These cards determine the order in which characters move in combat, couting down from Ace through 2. So quick characters get more cards/movements each round on average, but the luck of the draw might result in them moving five times after a very slow person who draws a single face card. Whether this is glaringly artificial or believably random in a five second snapshot of deadly combat was the source of much debate on the Deadlands list. Characters are rewarded with Fate Chips, bounty points, and Guts if they face the supernatural or shocking elements of the world and live to tell about it. Each of these function in different ways, with Fate Chips having three distinct effects with three distinct levels (white, red, and blue, as standard poker chips). Fate Chips are awarded during the game for effective role-playing, which is a definite encouragement for playing in character. Characters are created using a point system, with Traits (strength, nimbleness, etc.) being generated by the drawing of cards. This is a twist on the old random number generation traditionally accomplished with dice, but is one of the few aspects of the rules which curiously does not call upon all of those funny shaped dice. It provides a few minutes of fun and thrills, and provides a much-needed fix for any members of Gamblers Anonymous you might have in the group. Edges can be purchased, and include such varied advantageous genotypes as Purty and Tough as Nails. Hindrances are Edges' evil cousins which give the character points, and it is here that you will find such social ills as Hankerin' and Greed. Fate Chips are awarded based largely on the role-playing of Hindrances. Overall the system is quirky, but it is well-choreographed quirk at that. With a few alterations and a bit of red ink, you can tailor the system to fit your desired tone. At some point, however, you might be better off buying Call of Cthulu and adding your own Old West background and rules, if you are looking for a more horrific horror Western setting. Pinnacle has a Dime Novel supplement which would also allow you to adapt Deadlands rules to fit CoC, if you have a hankerin' to do so. Personally, I found the system offered just enough general Old West feel to use after cutting out the steam punk, toning down the magic, ignoring some of the NPC's, forgetting about Fort 51 and Roswell, and axing some of the critters (tumblebleeds being an example of how kitsch things get at times). If you are looking for the Wild Wild West meets George Romero with a whole lot of gunslinging, flamethrowing, and hex casting from atop a steam wagon, then this is exactly what you are looking for. In closing, I would like to address what I truly hope is not a trend developing in the RPG industry. Deadlands is chock full of references to upcoming products, even to the degree that the very history of the world attempts to strong-arm players into buying future products. Whether systems actually require 100 supplemental products or not is not a question within the scope of this review. But I implore game developers to cease with the product placement within the core rulebook. At one point in Deadlands, a sidebar hints at a great and crucial Secret which will rear its ugly head in a future release (we even get the date of release, like some summer blockbuster), and the book refers readers to forthcoming supplements several times. Then there are the fictional rail lines, many of which have colorful names like Vermillion Bayou, Union Blue, and Black River. Forgetting about how curious these names sound compared to their historical counterparts, they all sound suspiciously like mnemonics to remember which line or counter you are playing on a strategy game board. Cue the $30.00 Rail Wars Deadlands-related product. What is next? Will there be ads for Pepsi at the foot of each page? Will prominent NPC's be named Bob Hot Pocket(TM)? How about rules which can only be decoded if you buy specially marked packages of Doritos which contain the secret decoder ring? Advertising your forthcoming products at the end of the book, in those dead pages, is one thing. Including ads within the rules is simply obnoxious. And hinting at rules which will be available in future supplements, rather than making the rules a little longer, is extortion. Is the inflated cover price not an adequate source of lucre? Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 3 (Average)

Deadlands The Weird West