Blessed Be

Sunday afternoon was the first session of my Deadlands Reloaded campaign. A few observations:

• Blessed freakin' rock. I knew that they were pretty buff on paper, but I really wasn't prepared for just how potent they were. In theory, they're kept in check by not being able to sin, and getting penalties for attempting miracles that aren't direly needed. Given the questy nature of the campaign -the PCs are hunting supernatural evil- that second restriction isn't going to factor in as often as the rules may be assuming. This session, for example, the two Blessed in the party were the dominating force in the game, and the penalties I applied weren't even effective speedbumps. Who'd a thunk Clerics would be such powerhouses? This will take some getting used to.
  
• Savage Worlds is "Fast! Furious! Fun!", but Deadlands Reloaded definitely notches up the complexity. Poker hands, magic rules, and 3 flavors of fate chips seem to be the tangled roots of it. It's a little more fiddly than I'd like, to be honest.
• One player maintained it was more complicated than d20, but I have to strongly disagree there. What the player wasn't taking into account was that this wasn't the equivalent of a 1st-level d20 game. The Blessed each cast multiple of what would be a 5th level spell in d20, and the nasty they were battling was a pretty huge challenge. If 3 out of 5 players have no previous d20 experience, and you handed them 9th level D&D spellcasters to play, and then threw them up against a CR13 vampire, I dare say your first session would be rather painful. (Especially if the GM had never run D&D and had only 20 hours of d20 Modern GMing to handle things - which is roughly my situation, except in regards to Deadlands Reloaded and Savage Worlds.) Compared to that, this was a pleasant walk in the shade while a comforting breeze blew at my back.
• Next time, I'm carrying the lego minis to the game in a hard-sided tub, not a cloth bag. Within that tub, everything will be ziplock-bagged. When the fight started, I was shocked to discover I had to fish for pieces and put my pre-made terrain back together, which rather sucked. Once that delay had been solved, things went pretty smoothly, but the rocky start to combat had me scared for a bit.
• Blessed kick butt. I know I already said that, but it bears repeating. I'm gonna have to play hardball when enforcing the sinnin' rules, as that's the only easy way to maintain/restore balance. If I don't, then Blessed are the best character archetype, no contest.
  

Clerical concepts from Lucy

A month ago, I went to the Lucy exhibit at the Pacific Science Center. Surprisingly, it was really more of an Ethiopia exhibit, focusing on their culture, history, and religion. I learned several very fun facts that I think have applications for fantasy gaming. I've been sitting on them, for lack of a good fantasy campaign to use them in. Perhaps someone out there will find these ideas useful...

• Kiss the Cross: Old Ethiopian Orthodox tradition dictates that all priests must carry their Crosses prominently. Any of the faithful who encounter a Priest kiss his Cross for good luck. The Priest is expected to touch any stranger he meets with his Cross to bless them. Apply that concept to your next D&D Cleric for some very cool role-playing opportunities. "I walk into the tavern, and make the customary rounds of touching every patron with Pelor's Sunsign." If someone resists, it might mean they're a vampire, or just a follower of a competing God.
  
  
• St George Church in Lalibela, Ethiopia is a work of awe-inspiring architecture. It's a church in a pit, the whole church literally carved out of a single rock. I could picture a world where every Church of Moradin were built the same way - or maybe every Dwarf settlement. Entire castles built this way might be practical in a setting with Move Earth spells, provided more aerial threats exist than burrowing threats in the game world.
  
  
• Red Ink is the Word of God. The exhibit featured old hand-copied Bibles and Korans. In most of them, everything that was the word of God was in red ink - descriptions, narratives, and dialog from other characters was in black. The fantasy gaming interpretations of this are pretty cool. Just as in certain kingdoms only royalty could wear purple, you could have a fantasy priesthood claim a monopoly on a certain color of ink. "Only the words of Correlon may be written in Cyan, you Heathen!" Or perhaps spellbooks / scrolls could require certain colors of ink to function, and so seeing a particular color of writing was a tip off that it was magical in nature. Some Magical Order might have convinced the King into granting them a monopoly on a color, and without access to the orange ink, no other wizards can pass on the secrets of Transmutation spells.

Feel free to use those ideas in your campaigns - they aren't mine, they belong to Ethiopia. :)

P.S.: Go to the Lucy/Ethiopia exhibit at the Pacific Science Center if you live in Seattle. It's chock full of cool information.