Burning the Clocktower, Damming the Gulch

For the majority of this year, I was running a Deadlands Reloaded game, a campaign entitled "Guns of Shallow Gulch". I ended it several weeks back (has it been a month?), and to this point I haven't blogged about it, because the ending was uncomfortable*.

The plot never full resolved. Here's where it left off:

The big bad, Cobb, was temporarily defeated, but was a few days away from being able to rematerialize, and the PCs knew it. The PCs were presented with the big clocktower in the middle of town, an enormous architectural ghost trap. Cobb's wife had told the PCs they could use the tower as a weapon against Cobb, that it might be able to destroy him. However, there was the danger that whoever built the tower would be able to harness his power in the process. The PCs had already dynamited the leader of the faction who built the tower, but they didn't really know for certain if they'd killed him.

As you can see, we were using legos for miniatures in this campaign, and I made a fairly intricate model of the clocktower, complete with corrupted altars, 1,000-year-old vampire coffin, and flayed souls dangling from spectral chains.

The clocktower was eating spirits and ghosts left and right. It was even gobbling down harrowed who got too close. One harrowed the PCs were hunting had tried to take shelter in it, and was destroyed. Another harrowed that was helping the party got attacked by the tower. I had the tower make some ballsy moves. It was just a minor variation on the evil clocktower in my old "H.O.D." LARP, which most of the play group had a love/hate relationship with back in the day, from that LARP campaign. At the LARP, various people had tried to destroy the tower, but no one ever succeeded. It was too powerful, and too well defended, and the players had that pesky Masquerade to worry about.

So, I kind of expected the same in this campaign. To their credit, the players really surprised me. They burned the place to the ground. It was a pretty good fight, they had to put down the ghosts who had bargained with the Tower (to be minions instead of lunch). All the PCs got away with their lives, but one lost his horse and took a bunch of wounds himself. Another got trapped inside the tower for several rounds, and had to fight his way out. In the end, they fled just as the reinforcements were arriving from the Templar Lodge that had built the tower. I really wasn't expecting them to be able to do that much damage to it - the tower was a goner.

Mind you, destroying the clocktower would have meant the PCs had to fight with Cobb again in a few days, and no good leads on ways to put him down permanently. As it was, the campaign wrapped, the gaming group disbanded, and we didn't have to deal with that.

More on the Clock Tower:
in this Deadlands campaign
in the old LARP

Lego miniatures:
The PCs
Chuckwagon

Other posts about the campaign:
starting each session with storytime
Blessed are powerhouses
every post about the campaign on a single page (includes all the above plus several more posts)

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*: I ended the campaign for purely out-of-character reasons, which is why I've been slow to blog about it. I'd decided to end my friendship with two people - and since those two people played in the game, the game was going to have to go as well. I'm still too close to the events to write about it with wisdom. I expect I will look back at it years from now with remarkably few regrets, but for now, there's still a measure of guilt and worry that I could have done it in a less painful way. As an observer said to me about it: "Unfriending people in real life is a lot harder than on Facebook."

Familiar Territory

Yet another post about my current Deadlands campaign.

Given my druthers, I'd have been happy to have the answer to "Where is Shallow Gulch?" be answered with no greater level of detail than "In the (Weird) Wild West". After all, when you watch a bunch of westerns, you realize one town is pretty much like another. If a western isn't in Deadwood or Tombstone, it's set in Generic Western Town #187. And that's just fine with me.

One of my players, however, appeared to need more detail than that in order to enable willing suspension of disbelief. During character creation and the first session, he kept asking questions about where Shallow Gulch was, what the nearest big city or army post was, etc. I tried to dodge such questions at first, but it would have been a mistake to ignore his repeated requests for verisimilitude, especially in a game with a chase plotline where knowing the terrain ahead can be beneficial. So, Shallow Gulch was placed in the Dakota Territory, rather West of Fargo. Cobb's trail was leading into Indian Territory.

Somewhere along the way, a card got played (by a player) that turned an old Indian burial site into some sort of spatial portal. Cobbs trail lead into it, and following in his wake meant the PCs didn't lose the time the NPCs had spent cracking open the gate. It being a magical portal, I wanted things to feel like they'd gone a good distance, which meant environmental changes. That left 3 options. We could leave the Wild West completely. We could end up at the shore, still within the Wild West, but now in California or the like. Or we could end up in the desert of the American Southwest.

So I start describing cactus and hot sun, 'cause I know that kind of terrain better than California, and because I didn't want to stop the game while I read up on what The Big One did to Cali in the official setting. I'm relying on visual cues from the area around Albuquerque, 'cause I used to live there and can improvise it well enough.

Players see Cobb from a distance, a card gets played that makes him mistake them for someone else and set up a parley. Two sessions ago, that's where we ended. The next scene was pregnant with possibility. There was a good chance a fight would happen, and a very good chance that fight would result in one or more players needing new characters. Which meant I needed to be prepared for how they'd draft new PCs. The existing ones lacked the money to hire mercenaries. They were chasing after death himself, which takes a particular breed of character to do. I didn't want to just wreck another town to make more embittered survivors. So I needed a place where fearless monster-hunters would logically congregate.

Conveniently, I'd just described visuals based off Albuquerque, and I used to run a LARP set in Albuquerque over a 60 year arc (from 20 years before to 40 years after the Deadlands era). A version of Albuquerque frequented by monsters and monster hunters. Familiarity with that Alb on the part of 4 out 5 players meant if things went badly, they'd be able to easily whip up replacement characters with established backgrounds by just referencing the old campaign. No need to pull my punches when Cobb regrows his body and round two of the showdown starts up. The benefits go beyond that...

When Sapphirra Cobb's last words were "the Clock Tower might be able to stop him" my players didn't stand around scratching their heads. They knew that old LARP had a creepy magic Clock Tower (which the real Albuquerque lacks) that was known for sucking souls, entrapping ghosts, harboring a torpored Salubri Methuselah, etc. Instant recognition, even though they'd only ridden through the tower's shadow but briefly in Deadlands.

Likewise, they knew the names Jean Luc Martell and Cristos D'Anconia. Both bore the same weight as if I'd told them "On behalf of Lord Dracula, Mayor Renfield welcomes you to Albuquerque, affectionately known as Little-Transylvania-On-The-Rio-Grande".

Things were just falling into place, and I am pretty pleased with myself. There is, of course, some danger involved, as I mentioned in the previous post. That old LARP:

• Was set in the World Of Darkness (well, an alternate World of Darkness), not the Weird West. Deadlands Vampires are far less numerous, but also more powerful than caitiff neonates. The political system will be rather less complicated here.
• Had two thirds of it's plot set after the 1870s. The players may make assumptions based on things that haven't happened yet, and/or which likely won't in Deadlands.
• Lacked many details that Pinnacle's Weird West brings along. New Mexico is part of the Confederacy. House Iron Horse was a big player in the Railroads of HOD LARP, but it's not one of the major lines in Deadlands. Fear and rumors manifest, and a place like Albuquerque's gotta have a pretty hefty horror level.

So, yes, this alternate-alternate-Albuquerque has got some drawbacks. From a certain point of view, however, those drawbacks are advantages. I get to try out elements of an old campaign a second time, and do differently the things I made mistakes on in the first pass.

It also means that I have my answer to "What do I do when and if they beat Cobb, and the main plot of the campaign is resolved?" They don't have to wander the wilderness anymore, as they've stumbled across a place that has a two campaigns full of evil for them to put down.

Albuquirky Resonances

In my Deadlands game, the PCs are currently in Albuquerque, where they met a feller named Jean Luc Martell who works for another feller named Cristos D'Anconia. They passed through the shadow of a clock tower on their way across town.

My readers here who played in my old HOD LARP will recognize some of that. In that campaign, D'Anconia was the first PC Vampire Prince of Albuquerque. Martell was his right-hand ghoul. The Clock Tower was a major location / plot point. 4 of the 5 players in this campaign played at that LARP. I think John (the one Player who didn't play in that LARP) has the advantage, as I've already noticed the others being blinded by the parallels. This isn't the same world / setting as that game, even if certain elements are reflected.

For that matter, I made a reference in-character during storytime yesterday to The Gun being a Spikard, but we clearly aren't in Amber.

The Red Right Hand (vs The Adventure Deck)

Yesterday's Deadlands game ran long, but it was well worth it. The PCs caught up with Cobb and "possed up" with him, ostensibly to capture his fugitive wife. So, having a moment to talk, I turned on fanaticism and symbolism nobs to 11.

The party had 4 horses and a flying machine. As part of their approach plan, though, they left one of the two white horses behind. (Legos keep being a real boon. Everyone had, several sessions ago, chosen between three colors of horse.)

Cobb had a red right hand, just as Belial describes God possessing in Book II of Paradise Lost. This started significant theological debate. Cobb indicated that between his horse, and the three the PCs brought, they had four horseman, and exactly one horse was pale. He confessed a recent crisis of faith, but that their arrival and joining up with him now convinced him that he was indeed following the correct path. He'd been just a touch worried that he was unwittingly serving the devil, but now, thanks to the PCs, he was certain that all the signs were right and he was God's punishment for the wickedness of man. The debate raged for several scenes, the two blessed in the group arguing quite vehemently against him, while the least moral PC negotiated a power deal with him. Eventually, it ended with an understanding that the Blessed would lead him to the river and baptize him.

Turns out the water they blessed was like acid to him, and thus the fight began.

It was the nastiest battle I'd run in a while. Cobb's very first action was to rip the face off one PC. One character in particular was saved from death three times. Two cards from the Action Deck were used on him: Lucky Break and Out Of The Frying Pan, both of which cancel an entire attack. The third time he was shot by The Gun, he spent every bennie he had to soak up the wounds. Two PCs sat at three wounds for most of the fight (and one of them had some fatigue as well). Several characters had to take cover in the blessed river. They went to all sorts of trouble to reach Cobb's wife and get her help in the fight, too, and she died.

They blew off Cobb's head, and he kept fighting (it's good to be a Liche). In fact, he put on the face he'd stolen from a PC at the start of the fight. The PCs spent every power point available to them, then played cards for more. The two blessed used miracles every round. 4 out of 5 PCs ran out of Bennies at one point or another, and all 5 spent their Adventure Deck cards. The Mad Scientist wrecked his flying machine taking Cobb out. They fired quite a few magic bullets. In the end, all that was left of Cobb was his red right hand, still clutching the cursed pistol. The hand spent most of its remaining power points to escape and regrow his body. They did kill "Skin'n'Ash" his mount / familiar / boneless horse husk. There's also a pile of demon corpses in the Rio Grande.

The PCs now have the Necronomicon. It'll only take 7 hours of work to get the flying machine mobile again, but 120 hours for Cobb to get back all the power points he spent. They have breathing room, a couple leads on more effective weapons against him, and a window of opportunity if they figure out what to do with it. Wish 'em luck.

2 out of 3 have climax

Heavy gaming week for me. Wednesday night I ran Trail of Cthulhu. Last night I played in a Savage Freeport game. Sunday I'll be running Deadlands.

Wednesday night's Trail of Cthulhu for my wife was mostly a wrap-up session. Campaign's not over, but that story arc was essentially post-climax. I'd been tempted to just jump ahead to the next story, but there was still some possibility for her to screw it up and let the bad guys off the hook (she didn't), so we kinda had to go through the motions. I kept it short, and freely dispensed with relevant facts in the few minor areas of inquiry she had to track down. Having effectively disarmed the villains, she was able to hand them off to the police without having to expose the authorities to any supernatural elements. Good moves on her part.

Thursday night's game I played in (at the weekly Game Feast) was a one-shot that turned into a two-shot due to getting started a little late. Pirates are fun, as is the notion of the Wizard-Lizard. Not much more to say on it till I see how it wraps up next Thursday.

Sunday's game is hard for me to predict. PC's are either posse-ing up with, ambushing, or getting ambushed by, the Big Bad. Way ahead of schedule, to their credit. But that makes getting the balance very tricky. Make him too weak, and it'll be cheap and anti-climactic... which might burn-out the campaign despite significant plot that will survive his defeat. Make him too buff, on the other hand, and they'll feel railroaded or ineffectual. The ideal scenario is probably PC success, at the cost of 20%-40% PC casualties. The plot would then continue into the city they're approaching, where the dead PCs could be replaced by new characters (provided they don't get "lucky" on Harrowed draws). There's a palpable tension for me as GM, as I can either bungle and implode the game, or make what follows far more interesting.

A bit more on Storytime

For my current Deadlands game, we've been starting each session with "Story Time". I also used the technique for a Vampire LARP (named Hearts of Darkness, often just called HOD), I ran several years back, and IIRC, the idea of Storytime came from then-Co-GM Dave Hearn.

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Vampire:
At the LARP, we had 50 players, and needed a way to convey plot-points more reliably than the grapevine of PCs telling each other what had happened "off camera". So, when a scene was really important, we'd recreate it (or a trimmed-down version of it) for the whole group at the start of the next session. We also used pre-game scenes to foreshadow events, play out the arrival of NPCs, tell backstory and spread rumors. It was a lot of fun, and a very useful tool for our bag of tricks.

We opened Storytime up to players as well, saying anyone who requested it could have 2 minutes of stage and spotlight at the start of any session. We'd usually get about 15 to 40 minutes of material between the GM-prepped stories and the player-performed ones. The stories were for the players, not for their characters - you could use the information gained, but really shouldn't directly reference it in-game.

This being a LARP, sometimes the story-times would end up with some serious production qualities and some real suprises. I remember one time someone told a tale about how their character disposed of a body (torpored vampire, actually), and they brought a bloody (painted, actually) mannequin, complete with stake (painted styrofoam, actually) through the heart. In retrospect, that was awesome, but at the time I nearly wigged out over it, since we were playing in public (college campus) and it looked convincing from a distance.
Then there was this other time when someone else thought it'd be fun to try to do a magic ritual, complete with blood and candle, before the group. I did wig-out that time, and put the player on notice. Never let him do another storytime after that, nearly kicked him out of the game over it.

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Deadlands:
What I'm doing in the Deadlands game is on a much smaller scale, since there's just 5 players. At the start of each session, I tell one story related to the plot. If players care to tell one, they can do so, and will even get a Bennie (it's like the Tokens in F#) for doing so. My stories are clue-laden, and reveal things relevant to the plot. The players mostly use theirs to develop their characters more. The tales are considered told around the campfire as they travel - they are encouraged and expected to use the information in-character. I wrote a bit more about it a month ago, if you're interested.

Chuckwagon

As mentioned in my earlier post, the timely application of three cards from the Adventure Deck completely short-circuited my plans in yesterday's game. I'm almost completely cool with that - my only regret is that I didn't get to use the minis I made.

I'd mentioned the possibility of a 3-way battle between the PCs, a witch, and a bunch of cowboys. The cowboys were mostly extras - the Cattle Baron was technically a Wild Card, but with underwhelming stats other than for commanding his "troops". Their cook, however, was a one-legged retired bank robber, a real badass Wild Card. I had a campsite prepared for the battle scene, complete with his chuckwagon. You can see it in the picture, above, with the cabinets open (and decked with food, pots and pans, and knives).

Deputized by Adventure Cards

Okay, that headline's neither fair nor accurate. The players in my Deadlands campaign did an astounding job of deputizing themselves yesterday. They were relentless in their pursuit of Finnegan Cobb, regardless of how many diversions, distractions, red herrings, and "wandering encounters" I dragged across the path. They were single-minded bloodhounds, even before the Adventure Deck came through with perfectly timed hole-card aces to every dilemma.

It's just that three Adventure Cards got played, and each one put a hard 112-degree turn into my prepared narrative.

My main plan was to tie them up in a complicated situation. I often throw "Kobayashi Maru" scenes at players, where there is no right course of action, and a high likelihood of misery and trouble no matter what they do. The idea being that you great roleplaying and memorably intense scenes, at the small cost of bogging down the plotline for several hours. In this case, the prepared scene could easily devolve into inter-party feuding (or even one PC arresting another), a very bloody 3-way battle with cowboys and a witch, curses on the whole group, death by evil tumbleweed, and a knife-fight with the peg-legged cook.

Yesterday, though, the PCs were able to sidestep everything easily, thanks partly to the Adventure Deck. Everybody drew real powerhouse cards. One got played that made peace break out. It took most of the wind out of my sails, diffusing the tension, and the players thought and acted quickly in its wake. Problem solved (about 2 hours early) without any bloodshed.

All of two minutes later they played a card that gave them an additional supernatural advantage in chasing after Cobb. I had easy ways to counter this, and would have felt justified, since no one card should short-circuit the plot. However, I really wanted to reward the PCs for handling things so well and being so determined. So I gave them a glimpse of Cobb high on a ridge before them, now only a few hours ride ahead of them (minutes if they left their horses behind and piled into Dr Immelman's flying machine). Cobb spots them, and starts testing the wind, like he expects his pistol to have the range of a modern sniper rifle (it is The Gun, afterall).

Down comes another Adventure card. This one causes a case of mistaken identity, to the players benefit. Cobb thinks they're someone else. So he shoots a bird, reanimates it, and sends it flying to the PCs. It lands in a tree, and it's beak twitches with Cobb's voice. "Which one of you is Hoyle?"

An aside: In Deadlands, the laws of magic were codified and "popularized" by Edmond Hoyle, author of the book of rules to card games. Officially, he's been dead 100 years, but then, Cobb's got several slugs lodged in his eye, so it's not impossible Hoyle might be up and about, too.

The session ended with the PCs bluffing a bit to their intentions, and arranging to meet up with Cobb and "posse up" together.

For the record, I'd planned on having the chase for Cobb last about 8 sessions (and I tend to over-prep, so 8 could easily become 10 or 12), but between determination, cleverness, and good cards, it looks like the PCs will be in pistol range on session 4. (We'd been playing once a month, due to scheduling conflicts, but that's cleared up a bit, and the next session will be two weeks from yesterday.) I'm excited, as much fun as the chase has been - the confrontation should be far better.

Power to the Players

In my Deadlands campaign, the PCs have a lot of power.

• 3 of them started out with the Veteran O' The Weird West edge.
• We're using the fate chip rules, so Bennies have a bit more power than vanilla Savage Worlds. What's more, I hand out the bennies like drama dice were goin' out of style.
• Two of the PCs are Blessed, the arcane background with unlimited power (as long as you don't sin).
• We're using the Adventure Deck*, which really empowers the players. I'm using some house-rules on damage that favor the posse, too.
• During story time (the start of every session) they can improvise elements into the setting or back story with really no restriction.

Honestly, I have zero control over this campaign - all the power is in the Player's Hands. It's a hoot!

Of course, that'll change a bit when they catch up to Cobb. [Evil Laughter] I have plans for that session (or sessions, 'cause it might involve a cliff-hanger).

* = The Adventure Cards are a downloadable PDF (available at Drive Thru RPG for like $5 or $10) that you print off on cardstock. The cards have various one-time-use benefits. Some are bonus dice, some are plot elements, etc. Each player gets one at the start of each session. The players can trade them if they get something that doesn't fit their character, or if one player hates his card but the others like it. They go away if unused by the end of the session, so you can't horde them.

Four example cards to give you a feel for what they can do:

• Villainous Verbosity - play to make an NPC lose his next action by gloating or talking about his master plan.
• Love Interest - the player plays this card to create a romantic connection between them and the target NPC.
• Backstab - add +1d20 (!) to any single trait roll or damage roll vs any allied character, including PCs.
• Folk Hero - play after you save a group of people from dire circumstances. The community adopts you and your party as local heros, and you can always find aid there.

The cards give a lot of power to the players, but in really narrow and unpredictable ways - there's around 50 in the basic deck, IIRC. I love how they spice up the game. I put my in opaque-backed sleeves, and deal them out face-down, so the PCs can surprise me. Shakes things up nicely.

Git along, little undead doggies!

I was very pleased with Sunday's session of Deadlands. We're settling in pretty good, and the mechanics were less of a burden this time. I'm taking some liberty with the setting, but I think it's all for the best.

• Campaign Backstory

As the PCs have chased after Finnegan Cobb, I've established a few important trends. He's leaving some very peculiar undead in his wake. They've put down a Vampire, a skeletal coachman, 3 zombies, and some sort of pedophile werewolf miner. All of them have defied gravity to one extent or another - even those that resembled zombies were able to float in three dimensions - and they've got some insanely gory regenerative capabilities. When a PC uses a fate chip to soak a wound, we describe how they were just barely grazed, or some lucky break protected them. When I spend a fate chip to soak for one of Cobb's undead, however, I describe the awful wound the player definitely gave them, and then put some eerie twist on how it heals up. Blood baths, bone fragments, whirling revolver cylinders where the internal organs should have been, fleshy masses and flayed skulls, etc. The players have to overwhelm the monsters regenerative powers, and then burn the still quivering remains.

I've also been having the hunt grow larger. Cobb's apparently chasing his wife, but is in turn being followed by the undead he's created. There's also a ghost (or crazy man?) in a 100 year old British Officer's uniform, a creepy family from Back East, and the Necronomicon somehow tied up in everything. Eventually I'll reveal more here, but at the moment I don't want to spoil surprises for my players. It's not just random, I've got an arc planned out.

Every session starts with "story time", the tales told round the campfire. I have one prepped for each session, and the players are free to add their own. So far, I've given them tales from the point of view of Ol' Smokey, the ghost of a man who burned to death in the drunk tank when Shallow Gulch got put to the torch by Cobb. This has let me hint plot elements and character details in anticipation of the sessions, and the players have followed those leads quite nicely. Very much enjoying the avenues this opens up for the game. Finnegan and Sapphira Cobb have yet to appear "on screen", but it feels like the PCs have a real good sense of who they are from Ol' Smokey's terror-striken anecdotes and the clues they've puzzled out on the trail.

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.
  

Meet the Posse

Shallow Gulch has been destroyed by Finnegan Cobb and his damned gun. Only a handful of folks survived.
From left to right:

• Jebediah Hunt, semi-retired Texas Ranger
• Sister Josephine, Blue Nun
• Natalie Bliss, the sunday school teacher and town gossip
• Dr. Immelmann, creator of an amazing flying stagecoach
• Baucum Pike, Hexslinger and schitzophrenic drifter

Some changes may still happen. Our lego collection only included one body that you'd really call feminine, so it went to the school teacher, as the Nun didn't need to be winning any beauty pageants. However, it is a blue body, and she is supposed to be a Blue Nun of Texas. So, I bit the bullet and ordered up a couple of females on Brick Link. Not only will that allow the ladyfolk PCs to be a bit more distinct at a glance, it'll also get me some proper saloon girl attire for NPCs. ;)

Dr. Immelmann's flying coach may also undergo some modifications. I built it to Kevin's rough specifications of size and shape, but he hasn't seen it yet as of this writting. Since it's a vital part of his character concept, I certainly won't give him any grief if he chooses to rebuild it some. He'll have to come over to my place between sessions to do so, though, 'cause I know what a disaster it would be to just pop open the lego collection while we're trying to roleplay. Everyone, me included, would be distracted.

1 hit = 1 wound, except for duels and drops

I want my Deadlands Reloaded campaign to feel cinematic, with PCs only dying at dramatically appropriate moments, not random first round of combat just 'cause of a lucky roll. So, I was considering using the 1 hit = 1 wound houserule. That, however, may be a little too cinematic as originally proposed, and it completely underplays the tension of duels at high noon and holding someone at gunpoint.

Duh, that has a simple solution. Here's what I'm running with. Any hit only does at most 1 wound, except in the following circumstances:

• During a duel, when the poker-hand mechanism is in play. That way it's entirely possible that the first shot of a duel can result in death or disability against your stationary target. After the first shot, the 1 hit = 1 wound rule kicks back in for the rest of the fight.
• When someone has The Drop on another character, their attacks ignore the rule, in addition to getting the +4 bonus to attack and damage. Stick a gun to someone's head, and they better play along.
• Get caught in a "Mexican standoff" (my apologies for the racism-laced term, but it's a trope of the setting) - that's probably gonna use the duel rules unless there's a threeway (or more) standoff, then it'll be counted as everyone having The Drop. Roll the final scene of Reservoir Dogs... and get ready to make some new characters.
  
• Anytime The Gun is present, as it's a harbinger of supernatural disaster. This will likely just be during the Season Finale, and players should have a good idea a few scenes ahead of when that's happening.

Note that Heavy Weapons are NOT on that list (unlike my previous version of this rule). Deadlands isn't military-heavy, so PCs won't be packing LAW rockets, and jumping away from a stick of dynamite unscathed fits the setting plenty well. I may however make exceptions for big nasty monsters that can't engage in a duel. Say - if there were a T-Rex attacking the party, I might suspend the rule. That sort of thing shouldn't come up often, though, and will be foreshadowed/announced while avoiding the combat is still an option. Just don't let ol' T-Rex get The Drop on you.

Other than those situations, no single attack can do more than 1 point of damage, and a Soak roll of a 4 will suck up the one and only wound. Not only does this protect PCs from random anticlimactic death, it also really reduces the math in the game, thus speeding up combat. "Fast! Furious! Fun!"

The Gun

Here's the framework of my Deadlands campaign: The Gun.

• The PCs backstory is fairly open, but they must have settled in a particular town and been livin' there for at least a couple of years. Then the town burnt down, and they lost everything. The PCs (and any NPCs suggested by their Edges or Hindrances) are the only survivors. More about that in a bit.


• One extra step in character creation will be to document what you lost when the town burned down. Could be family, could be your ranch that was finally starting to turn a prophet, could be that gal you was a courtin' and about to ask fer the hand o'. Obviously, there's a revenge motif comin' up. Not only what did you lose, but how, and how did it spring from The Gun.
  
  Tangent to that, you'll be documenting what, other than revenge, motivates your quest for The Gun. Could be you want to stop it from churning up a swath o' destruction all the way to Back East, could be you wanna save the life of the innocent girl The Gun is hunting, could be you think there's an extra special irony if you use The Gun to put Finnegan Cobb back in the ground, could be yer a Whateley and you covet the awesome supernatural power of The Gun.


• I'll be using "Story Time" similar to what I did back in my old Vampire LARP. At the start of every session, each player has the option of taking a minute or two to tell a short tale. You can share your character's backstory, legends about The Gun, or rumors you've heard of what's coming up ahead. If I like your tales, I'll work them into upcoming sessions. The context is these are tales being told round the fire on the trail - so you can make up any detail you want, and we'll determine the level of veracity later.


• The Gun is cursed. Ever since Finnegan Cobb got his hands on it, he started acting ...different. Prior to that, he'd been a mousy little man, barely able to keep a roof over himself and his wife. The Gun made him cocky, fiery, vengeful. He pistol whipped a man to death in town square, over something inconsequential. Cobb shot one of the Deputies in the back, then stared the Sheriff down cold.
  
  He was never without the gun - he slept with his holster on. He'd started cheatin' on his wife, and beatin' her too, so one night, she tried to slip it out and bury it. He woke up when she lifted it. She swares she doesn't remember pulling the trigger, but his corpse had six slugs in the head. She hocked the gun at the General Store, went to Confessional, and then headed out of town. Her hand was bandaged and bloody as she left - the Priest said she chopped off her trigger finger because he couldn't drive the devil out of it. Three days later, Finnegan Cobb clawed his way up from Potter's Field. By sunup the next morning, the town was burning, and any number of supernatural things were on the loose. The details of the Town's destruction will remain mercurial to fit whatever gets filled in at storytime.



• The players are on the trail of The Gun, Finnegan Cobb, and/or his Wife. Every session involves them arriving in another town on the trail. Someone in that town has been touched by The Gun. There's a standard place to start - askin' round 'bout strangers who come through a couple days before, an' whether or not said strangers shot anyone. The Gun has transformative properties on those it comes in contact with, and on those it shoots - this will provide Episodic diversions. There's a pursuit subplot, but it's more of a story conceit - and I'm being upfront about it with the Players. Catchin' up with Finnegan is the sort of thing to happen in a season finale, not some random mid-season episode just cause a PC got a lucky Tracking roll. In the meantime, the players are passing in Finnegan's wake :) putting down the beasts he done stirred up.



• I cracked out my old Doomtown CCG cards, and sorted out all the Deeds. I figure I'll need a way to lay out the towns they head to in the campaign, and I don't want to sweat trying to make a bunch of believable maps. Instead (and I'm stealin' a page here from my wife's Cyberpunk campaign) each town is lain out via a dozen random draws from the Deed Deck. This is very much gonna be a "seat of your pants" game, most likely featuring "monster of the week" if you hadn't figured that out yet.



• Deadlands (and Savage Worlds in general) rewards the use of miniatures (indeed, any game involving gunfights benefits from knowing who can draw a bead on whom), and normally that makes me happy. I've got tons of minis. But, upon looking through my stash, I realized there's not much in terms of Western minis on my shelves - and certainly nothing becoming of a Huckster. I searched high and low for Western minis, which is a tale for another day. Eventually, I settled on Legos. I've got some old Western lego sets, and I'll have the Players build representations of their characters from those bits. Lego minifigs on a map made of Doomtown Deed cards... looks like I'll be abstracting the movement rules a bit.