Note: This review contains some mild spoilers.
Steve Jackson Games deserves a big thumbs up for reviving the Dime Novel format for Deadlands adventures. The combination of short fiction and adventure perfectly matches the Old West setting. Micah Jackson’s Aces and Eights, the first in the GURPS Dime Novel line, is a worthy initial offering. While I have some small quibbles with the handling of the Deadlands setting in the Origins Award nominated story, the adventure is a well designed challenge for beginning posses. Aces and Eights also includes conversion rules, written by Michael Suileabhain-Wilson, for negotiating between Pinnacle Entertainment Group’s Deadlands rules and GURPS rules, opening up a host of supplements to players in both systems. All in all, $10.95 is a fair price for a solid product.
For those unfamiliar with the format of Deadlands Dime Novels, the sourcebook opens with a short story. Pinnacle Entertainment Group’s ten Weird West offerings followed the adventures of a harrowed gunslinger named Ronan Lynch. Due to copyright and licensing considerations, Steve Jackson Games’ dime novels do not include Lynch. Following the story is an adventure, which allows the Marshal to make his posse the heroes of the tale. For this reason, players should not be allowed to read the story before participating in the adventure.
While aficionados of Pinnacle’s Dime Novels may miss Lynch and his friends, Jackson introduces us to a new set of heroes, led by Agency operative Jim Wright. Jackson’s story is good and deserves its nomination for Best Game-Related Short Work. The characters are compelling enough to keep a reader interested in their survival and development. That being said, Jackson’s fiction comes with two small flaws. First, the dialogue style does not shift from character to character. Any given quotation could have been spoken by any of the characters, whether it is the male Agency operative (initially identified as a Pinkerton) or Haitian voodoo priestess. Given the limitations of space, however, this is an understandable flaw. Fourteen pages doesn’t give much room to develop a any catch phrases or give a character an unique vocabulary. The importance of the second flaw will vary with the reader’s impression of the Deadlands’ world. At one point, one character accuses another of being “a damned huckster.” This accusation, along with several other references to the supernatural, leave the story feeling more like a fantasy setting than one where magic is secretive, strange, and unusual. Apart from these two small quibbles, I enjoyed the story – especially the many small nods to Pinnacle’s stories and settings. For example, one of the characters on the steamboat at the beginning of the story is named Skinner – a possible tip of the hat to Pinnacle’s penultimate Dime Novel Skinners, which was also set on a steamboat.
The adventure itself is designed for a posse with some experience but not so much that you cannot use it soon after beginning a campaign. It is a solid adventure that balances investigation and action well. Although moving the setting would be very difficult, as Aces and Eights relies on the atmosphere and traditions of New Orleans (Marshals preparing to run this adventure will find Pinnacle’s River o’ Blood box set useful – especially if they plan to center their campaign on New Orleans), including players in the adventure shouldn’t be too difficult once you get them to the Mississippi. This being said, posses that include Texas Rangers will require some special handling, as one encounter involves fighting some bad guys masquerading as Rangers. Although Marshals can run this encounter as-is (observant players are supposed to notice they are fake), they can also solve this by having the fake Rangers changed to fake Nightwatchers or some other law enforcement agency.
If there is a flaw with Aces and Eights, it would be that the adventure is somewhat linear in design. Again, the short space is the likely culprit here, as the page count prohibits any detailed description of alternate paths of investigation. Jackson makes up for this by briefly offering possible alternative solutions and optional approaches that Marshals can quickly flesh out. Marshals who want more options for their posse, or who expect their posse to take any path other than the one designed for them, should consult River o’ Blood for other ideas and locations.
The conversion rules are straightforward and a welcome addition to the Dime Novel. This alone makes the Dime Novel a worthwhile purchase for players of Pinnacle Entertainment Group’s rule set, as it makes using GURPS sourcebooks much easier. As with all conversion systems, this one requires a certain amount of judgment on the part of player and Marshal when translating characters.
Given the limitations of space it operates under, Aces and Eights is a strong and attractive product. Marshals may have to tinker with the adventure somewhat, depending on the composition of their posse, but will find the work worth their time.
Go to forum!
(Due to spamming, old forum discussions are no linked.)