Deadlands:Reloaded (Savage Worlds)

What will I need to bring?:

Just you and the desire to have fast, furious fun of a Sunday.

Deadlands:Reloaded (Savage Worlds):

Deadlands:Reloaded is a roleplaying game set in the Postbellum Weird West around 1884. Player characters confront evil and attempt to vanquish it at the local level, and reduce the prevailing level of fear in the larger scale as a result.

The characters may be lightnin' fast gunslingers, magic-wieldin' Hucksters, miracle-workin' Blessed, Mad Scientists wieldin' marvelous inventions or just ordinary cowpokes, tryin' to earn a grubstake but pulled into events beyond their control. 

All these have in common is their courage an' drive to succeed, but all should work together in a posse to beat drygulchers, backshooters, varmints o' legendary size an' so forth.

The Adventure will pit the PCs against an enemy so horrific that ... but I've said too much. A selection of pre-generated characters will be provided, and if you have no dice, those will be provided too.

Characters:

The available character types will be:

Gunslinger - These folks are masters of slappin' leather an' sendin' their targets to hell.

Blessed - These are preacher types, though mebbe y'wouldn't know it from their looks. They can perform miracles, like fixin' that bullet wound, and mebbe a whole lot more.

Hucksters - Gamblers. Well dressed they may be, but rumor has it they're in league with the devil and can cast magic hexes. If these rumors are true, they're headin' for a hemp necktie party in any decent, law-abidin' town.

Hexslingers - Gamblin' types who tote around shootin' irons carved with strange runes. Smacks o' more devil's work if'n you're askin' me.

Mad Scientists - Stand well clear when one o' these fools fires up one o' their "miracles o' science" is all I'll say. Yes, their devices are pretty spectacular, but they're all mad as a jackrabbit on locoweed.

Dice:

As mentioned before, I can provide dice to those in need, but you are welcome to use your own, especially if they are newly acquired from a vendor at the expo. After all, you need to roll the shine off them.

You'll need a D4, D6, D8, D10 and possibly a D12. Having two of each would be a bonus. You'll also need a D6 that can be told apart from all your other D6s. This is quite important, but if you don't have a distinctive D6 I will provide that too.

Deadlands:Reloaded uses the Savage Worlds game engine.

Savage Worlds:

Savage Worlds is just about the easiest RPG system to learn quickly so the players can forget about it and start having fun.

Attributes and skills are represented by die types rather than scores. Characters roll tests against these "traits" using that die and attempting to hit a target number, which is usually 4.

Characters come in two types - Wild Cards and Extras. Wild Cards roll an extra D6 - the so-called "Wild Die" - along with their trait die for tests and take the best result. Wild Cards have three wounds before they are incapacitated (don't worry: Savage Worlds combat is not a "hit point attrition" business and three wounds is plenty). Players will be using Wild Card characters.

Everyone else is an Extra. Extras have no wounds, so they become incapacitated when damaged. Extras do not roll the extra die when testing against traits.

Players will be allocated "Bennies" which can be used for re-rolls and to make wounds "didn't happen".

This has already taken much longer to type than it takes to get into a game. My favorite way to get players into Savage Worlds is to have them jump in and just try stuff, with me (The GM) explaining the mechanics needed as and when. I typically only have to do this once or twice in-game for new players to understand how it all works.

If people have already played Deadlands:Reloaded they should know I propose using the Fate Chip Bennies from the older edition as I think they are more fun than the newer generic type.

Discworld RPG

The Discworld:

The Disc sits like a dinner plate, turning slowly and endlessly spilling water over its rim, on the backs of four giant elephants, which stand more or less stoically on the back of  an humongous turtle, the great A'tuin. The moon and the Sun zoom around the Disc with scant regard for fanciful theories of ball bearings rolling across rubbery space-time dished by heavy globes of rock.

Ankh-Morpork:

Arguably the greatest city on the disc (certainly the most diverse in terms of population), Ankh-Morpork straddles the river Ankh, which flows sluggishly under a crust best not broken by the faint of heart and sensitive of nose. The city has many wonders, chief of which must be the Tower of Art of the Unseen University, which soars into the sky like a giant, soaring thing. The city is host to a number of guilds (a number not easily counted by most citizens, but The Patrician probably has plans to improve the public education system to address this lamentable lack); it will be the Thieves Guild that interests out players the most, as they are fully paid-up members in, if not good standing, at least standing with both legs intact.

“Poets long ago gave up trying to describe the city. Now the more cunning ones try to excuse it. They say, well, maybe it is smelly, maybe it is overcrowded, maybe it is a bit like Hell would be if they shut the fires off and stabled a herd of incontinent cows there for a year, but you must admit that it is full of sheer, vibrant, dynamic life. And this is true, even though it is poets that are saying it. But people who aren’t poets say, so what? Mattresses tend to be full of life too, and no one writes odes to them. Citizens hate living there and, if they have to move away on business or adventure or, more usually, until some statute of limitations runs out, can’t wait to get back so they can enjoy hating living there some more. They put stickers on the backs of their carts saying “Anhk-Morpork—Loathe It or Leave It.”

The Discworld RPG:

This new offering looks very interesting, and a vast improvement over previous attempts to model the Discworld comedic-with-a-message near chaos of the Terry Pratchett books. 

 The system looks to have lifted ideas for a variety of game systems and stirred them into an very interesting way of "agency negotiation" in a Discworld milieu. 

 The mechanics are simple, but may seem strange to conventional RPG players. A character sheet is a set of statements defining the characters in the most nebulous fashion possible while still nailing the essence of the character in question. (This looks remarkably similar to FATE to these old eyes). 

The GM and players can use these statements to adjudicate those points in an adventure where randomicity might otherwise hold sway, and the way it is done allows players to be as inventive with their "defining" statements as they think they can get away with as justification for the ability to get something done their way. Word play is encouraged, as is a light-hearted approach to the game. 

 The GM's job as far as this goes is to hear out the players vocal shenanigans and determine the difficulty die rating for the task accordingly. Die types that may be assigned are: D4, D6, D10 and D12 for increasing GM buy-in and likelihood of gaining control of the narrative. The GM rolls a D8, and scores are compared. The winner gets control of that part of the narrative. 

 Example: Cheery Littlebottom, forensic alchemist for the Night Watch, wants to use her "Expert Alchemist" trait to allow her to construct an ad-hoc explosive to blow open the door of the dungeon she has been incarcerated in by troll mobsters. The GM says this is a great idea and alows a D12 for the attempt. Said GM rolls a D8. 

  Cheery's player wins the roll: "Your scavenging results in a foul-smelling mixture you *think* will do the trick. Striking one of your boot heels against the flagstones, you hit the stinking pile with a spark. There is a very loud BANG and the door disappears outwards in a hail of wood, red hot nails and sundry bits of the lock, causing some serious damage to the troll standing guard outside. You are flung into a pile of old sacks, your ears ringing but otherwise you are unharmed." 

GM wins the roll: "Your scavenging results in a foul-smelling mixture you *think* will do the trick. Striking one of your boot heels against the flagstones, you hit the stinking pile with a spark. There is a very loud BANG and the ceiling falls in on you as the door disappears outwards in a hail of wood, red hot nails and sundry bits of the lock, causing some serious damage to the troll standing guard outside. Cheery now has the "badly beaned" consequence." 

 This is a poor but reasonable account of an imaginary encounter in this imaginary world.

Dungeon Crawl Classics

Dungeon Crawl Classics is an "old school" style RPG with an interesting way of promoting characters from "villager" to "adventurer": The so-called "funnel".

The idea is that a player will take several level-0 villagers on a coming-of-age adventure, after which (assuming they survive) they will be level-1 adventurers and get to select all kinds of new abilities.

But right now, all characters in the party are villagers, armed with loaves of bread or sacks of grain or ... well you get the picture.

The system uses the familiar D20 for most tests, but introduces a bunch of perhaps unfamiliar dice such as the d16 or d24, which will be supplied, along with paper and pencils, and pre-generated characters.

The Adventure:

The brothers Molan and Felan were two Chaos Lord champions. 

Vicious and cunning beyond measure, and without a scrap of mercy in their war-hardened hearts, they led hordes of bestial humanoids to victory against the armies of good. With the spoils of their bloody campaigns, they raised a mighty keep and rained terror and violence down upon all in their demesne.

In the end, the brothers’ success was their undoing. Disparate forces of men, dwarves, and elves rallied together in a crusade against the wicked chaos lords. For thirty-nine days, the allies laid siege to the foul keep. And on the fortieth day, the captain of the elves dealt Felan a mortal blow.

Realizing that his own end was drawing near, Molan retreated into the ancient caves beneath the keep., never to be heard of again.

Then, as the armies of good laid waste to the keep, Molan gave up his mortal shell, commending his damned soul into the writhing limbs of the gods of Chaos.

Molan made only one request. When ages had passed, and the armies of good fell into disarray once more, he asked to return and lay waste to his ancient foes.

That time has come.

Mutant Crawl Classics

The Mutant Crawl Classics game system is derived from the popular "old school -ish" Dungeon Crawl Classics, and presents the players with an opportunity to game in a fanciful future post-apocalyptic world where the definition of "a person" has, of necessity, been broadened to include mutants and sentient plants.

Similar game settings such as Metamorphosis Alpha and Gamma World might already be familiar to the prospective player.

The system uses the standard D20 for most tests, but can use more exotic side-counts if required (e.g. 16- or 24-sided dice). Such dice will be provided, along with pre-generated characters, scratch paper and pencils and so forth.

The game we will be playing has the players wielding multiple "level 0" characters, and their objective will be to get at least ONE of these to the scenario's end to be promoted to Level-1 and to return to their village with a prized Old World Artifact.

The Game

Having left their village for their Rite of Passage, the PCs awaken in the midst of a pitched underground battle, only to discover that they have been abducted and enslaved by semi-sentient ant-men.

Trapped in this hellish anthill, they must find a way to escape, to acquire artifacts, and to foil

the schemes of the ant-men.

If they fail, they die—and the ant army will inevitably spread further, enslaving their home village and

perhaps even the world of Terra A.D. itself.

ALIEN RPG - Destroyer of Worlds

The game uses the ALIEN RPG system which provides an exciting player experience exactly in line with expectations from the movies, in this case, especially ALIENS. Players will get the most from the game by "leaning in" to the milieu and scenery chewing a-la Hudson (at the right moments) is of course to be applauded. 

As characters progress through the story they will accumulate stress, which can be beneficial by increasing chances of success when skill rolls are called for, but can trigger panic too. Stress can be relieved by finding a safe place and resting for ten minutes or so. Are there any safe places? Better hope so. 

Combat is deadly, and PCs should strive to only involve themselves in it in a manner that emphasizes their advantages, namely the pulse rifle, the grenade launcher, the incinerator unit and (of course) the smart gun. Lock and load, marine! 

The PCs will be organized (most likely) with a command structure, and best use of game time will be for all players to remember they are pretending to be military personnel with a pounded-in respect for that hierarchy. Mutinous dissent will almost certainly bring disaster down on everyone.

Background:

Located within the Outer Veil, Kruger 60 and 61 Cygni are two colonial systems located very close to the UPP border in an area of UA space called the Advance. The Advance splinters off the American Corridor and juts Spinward into UPP territory. 

The Kruger 60 system has been a key oil supply and military staging post for the United Americas Allied Command (UAAC) and the Colonial Marines for years, and has been strategically important during the so-called Oil Wars. The severe petroleum shortage throughout the colonies has led the United Americas, the Three World Empire, and the Union of Progressive Peoples into a race to secure new sources of crude oil. 

These Oil Wars have created severe border tensions. Stretched too thin, the UAAC and the Colonial Marines maintain an uneasy peace throughout the colonies. Tired of severely rationed supplies and the mega-corporations’ mistreatment of the working class, insurgency groups have cropped up in defiance of their local governments—and the resource poor UPP is poised to take advantage of this development.

Recently, the UPP expanded their borders to engulf 61 Cygni, annexing the colony on LV-038 in the process. Allied Command sent a task force to challenge the claim. The nearest system, Kruger 60—and the moon the PCs are on—is feared to be next. 

(Courtesy Free League, no infringement of copyright intended).

Ariarcus colony is based on a moon in the Kruger-60 system. It is extremely cold and dark, and any colonist that could afford to get offworld has gone, either because the original opportunities for free enterprise have evaporated or because of fears of war, leaving large parts of the town derelict.

Current population is about 2200 colonists, some 400 marines (split between the ground and in orbit) and around 40 military scientists.

Pipes of various diameters, from a few inches to several feet, run overhead in most of the streets to convey the oil form the refinery to the elevator cable, which also serves as a pumping conduit to orbit as well as providing the space elevator with its anchor. The old on-,moon refineries are long closed down and gone cold.

A military lockdown has recently been ordered, grounding all spacecraft and immobilizing the space elevator. This has only fed the already rabid rumor mill and induced panic in some colonists, fatalism in others and rebellion in a select few.

You've been assembled with your regiments, all eager to take it to the UPP and show them some tough love (Marine style), but now you've been pulled off the line and are standing here with a bunch of mostly strangers for some bulls**t "Important Mission".

The Games

ACT 1 - The marines are tasked with finding and capturing a small group of AWOLS with stolen intelligence. They will have to deal with disgruntled colonists, insurgents and possible UPP agents. All materials required will be supplied, including paper, pencils and a pool of the dice needed to play. Pre-generated characters will be supplied.

ACT 2 - The marines have their quarry (hopefully) and must now return them to Fort Nebraska through an increasingly hostile environment. They have their weapons, equipment and a nice cozy APC, but will need their wits to survive this one. All materials required will be supplied, including paper, pencils and a pool of the dice needed to play. Pre-generated characters will be supplied.

It will not be necessary to have played in ACT 1 to take part in ACT 2 - though any who wish to do so may of course join the "fun".

The System

Alien uses a variant of the Year Zero RPG engine. When called upon to test against some challenge, the player rolls a pool of black dice and looks to get one or more '6's - successes or 'hits'. One is all you need usually, but each extra success may grant a 'stunt', some way of improving or augmenting the success, dependent on the skill being used.

Certain events call for the accumulation of STRESS by a PC. This manifests as adding a number of yellow Stress Dice to the pool of dice rolled. Stress dice succeed on a '6', but also can force a panic check is a '1' is rolled. Panic events force PCs into some line of activity (freeze, run, drop some item) until the panic is over.

In addition to Skills, PCs have TALENTS which modify the character's abilities in unique ways - life saving field medicine, turning a panic event into a 'shoot until the bad things go away (probably while screaming a battle challenge)', or being VERY persuasive. Many games have a similar feature, so this should not be new to most players.

West Side Warriors - a Savage Worlds game for 3-12 players and a GM

Think The Warriors, played out in a post-appocalyptic NYC, using the same methods as in West Side Story

New York is a wasteland by night. Vicious gangs run rampant, stealing, vandalising and using unrestrained threatening choreography on each other and any poor bugger who wanders into theater.

The players take the part of members of the mostly unknown gang The Warriors, after gang delegates (the players) have attended a meeting of gangs in The Bronx.

The object is to get back to Coney Island with everyone as undamaged as possible. Unfortunately, unbekownst by The Warriors, they have been framed for the killing of Mr Big, an important member of NY's most powerful gang The Riffs.

The Riffs have put a bounty on The Warriors!

Every gang in NY is looking for The Warriors, and the road back to Coney Island will be a difficult one.

Navigating NYC

The Warriors move across NY using a map broken into zones. Crossing zones takes cinematic amounts of time decided by the GM, but at least one gang must be overcome in every case in order to enter a zone. Gangs can be confronted and overcome by combat, or The Warriors may attempt Stealthy Passage, avoiding contact by EITHER a series of standard group stealth rolls (in which the least stealthy PC determines the outcome) or by Stealth Choreography, which consists of a series of group performance rolls (using the least able performer's skill). Success in either will grant a conflict-free passage into and out of the zone. Choreographed Stealth can also grant bennies.

Confrontation

When confronted by another gang, initiative is determined, and the winner gets to choose the mode of combat:

1. Ultra violence - a vicious no-holds-barred brawl using whatever weapons come to hand (no guns, no-one can afford them). PCs may use a single skill to elaborate on their combat technique, using athletics in conjunction with a descriptive narration, or taunt (with a suitably humiliating descriptive narration) to put opponents on the "back foot" until their next turn. Winners incerease their gang reputation (which affects combat bonuses and penalties) losers lose reputation (as well as getting sliced up a treat). Losing reduces the Warriors's reputation and blocks their way forward on the map, forcing the choice of a new route or a re-match.
2. Choreography - a vicious no-holds-barred dance-off that wll grant the winning gang bennies. (Bennies are used for re-rolls and avoiding damage). Losers slink off or faint away with shame.

Whoever has Gang Initiative decides the nature of the battle - either Choreography or Ultra-Violence. Th GM plays the NPC gang.

Choreography battles are "Dramatic Challenges" of a random number of rounds with fixed initiative. Whoever wins determines the performance troupe size AND dance formation, which must be matched by the opposing gang as best possible. Non-performers sit out and watch. The gang that wins the most rounds of performance wins the choreography battle. If that is The Warriors, they continue on their way and each PC gets a benny.

How it works:

1. The GM rolls for the challenge length, and determines the NPC Performance "target number" to be beaten by The Warriors' performance.
2. The Warriors' leader makes the group Perform roll using their Perfom skill
3. The leader may elaborate their performance with a skill roll for +1, or +2 for a raise.
4. Each member of the performing troupe within 5 inches of the leader rolls their own Perform and adds +1 to the leader's roll for a success or +2 for a raise.
5. Each member of the performing troupe within 5 inches of the leader MUST then use the same elaboration as the leader, granting an additional +1 or +2 for a raise.
6. An un-bennied failure of the elaboration OR the performance roll of a trouper removes them and any bonuses they may have contributed from the performance AND can run the risk of tripping other adjacent performers of their troupe, forcing an immediate athletics check to recover or be removed from the troupe along with any bonuses the tripped PC may have contributed to the performance roll.
7. The losing team must remove one performer from the stage for the next round due to twisted ankles, hamstring problems or histrionic meltdowns.

Most number of wins after the challenge ends determines victory. Winner sends the other gang skulking away and if the PCs are the winners, each member of The Warriors who performed (including those who were eliminated during the performance) gets a benny, and the Warriors may progress on the map as they wish. Draws are determined by single combat Perform challenges Leader to Leader. At this point player might announce that they are opting for a vocal performance, and could describe the nature of this song and what it is attempting to achieve. Extra bennies or other bonuses might be granted for a clever enough use of this tactic.

Any member of The Warriors may contest the leadership if they feel agrieved. This can be settled amicably, by a gang vote or by the above combat methods, PC on PC. Players might be wise to avoid Ultra-Violence challenges for the good of the gang, but the choice is theirs.

This is a musical. No-one dies.

Characters who take enough damage to kill them faint instead. The wound penalties do accrue though.

Players may at any time "chew the scenery" by announcing they are going to sing. They must say what the theme of their song will be, and what they are hoping to attain by singing it. Examples might be attempts to gain sympathy for imagined (or real) wrongs by other gang members, pleas to reconsider decisions already made and so forth. The other players may take the performance to heart or with a pinch of salt, but a simple success will grant a benny if the technique is not over-used.

Bennies are a feature of the Savage Worlds game system. They enable players to re-roll bad dice results, to soak away damage as though it never happened and to change features of the encounter in minor but possibly important ways.

This scenario uses three different colors of benny.

1. White Bennies are used as described above
2. Red Bennies are used either as White Bennies or to add 1D6 to any single roll. Using one grants the GM a benny
3. Blue Bennies work like Red Bennies but do not grant the GM a draw
4. In-game benny draws are done blind, for a random color

More New Purchases

I obtained a number of old school games made by Parker Brothers and Waddingtons recently.

These games were designed by masters of the form, usually complex enough to hold the attention of an adult while being easy enough to play to allow for children to join in (or possibly the adults post Christmas Dinner c/w copious quantities of alcohol). Waddingtons' Formula One was a purchase that was voted a damn good waste of time at my local friendly game store three months ago, and I just picked up copies of Waddingtons' Blast Off, a Space Race game I had played in the early 1970s which was in excellent condition, and Parker Brothers' Masterpiece which is an art collector game where the object is to collect works of art that are highly prized while dumping your acquired forgeries on the other players. Each artwork card is a reproduction of an actual painting, and gets assigned a random value known only to the owner as it is drawn. A very clever mechanic and a game I've wanted to play since I was an older kid. Never knew anyone who had it though.

I also picked up a copy of Waddingtons' Spy Ring, which I had played at university in the mid-1970s but it turns out there are two different iterations of the game. The one I had played was the original. The one I bought turned out to have a different game-play and objective while using many of the same pieces. Sadly, the one I want to play is the other one. Oh well.

Can't wait to get a crowd together for some old-school gaming.