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.