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.

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

Savage Worlds Kickstarter And More

And speaking of Savage Worlds, a new version is being kickstarted.

Funded in 3 minutes. Oversubscription to this level should speak volumes about the quality of the product line to date. I believe Savage Worlds is more fun than a barrel full of monkeys poking one in the eye, and I recommend it to anyone not moving quickly enough to get out of the way. It is simple to riun, easy to teach and fun to play.This is the most entertaining explanation of how it works that I've come across to date.

You can use it to build your own RPG games or you can bolt it onto any of the many available pre-written settings: Deadlands Reloaded, Space 1889:Red Sands, 50 Fathoms, Slipstream, Flash Gordon, Rifts, Necropolis, Realms of Cthulhu, Sundered Skies, Lankhmar, Rippers, Gaslight, High Space, Kerberos Club, Weird War, Mars, High Space and more. Call it a sort of math-light GURPS in concept.

Two self-contained games don't even require a separate purchase of the basic rule books: Solomon Kane and Pirates.

I can personally recommend Pirates and 50 Fathoms to would-be Jack Sparrows , Flash Gordon and Slipstream to 30s SF serial buffs, Rippers, Realms of Cthulhu and Gaslight to the Steampunk and Horror fan bases, Space 1889 to anyone who loved the 60s movies based on Jules Verne and H.G. Wells stories, and Deadlands Reloaded to everyone - even those with no interest in the wild west, as I found it to be exciting and enjoyable after over a decade of avoiding it. Of the stand-alone games, Solomon Kane is a personal favorite.

Coming soon will be a new mashup Fantasy/SF/Horror setting called "Crystal Hearts", set in the world of this webcomic about an RPG campaign, kickstarting in mid-November.

Intro To Savage Worlds

I came across this excellent primer on the Savage Worlds RPG game engine and think everyone will find it entertaining and informative.

And you can join a game running in the Crystal Heart setting. Well, you can watch the others play.

After reading, bet you wish the writers played your favorite system.

Space 1889:Red Sands Session 1, And Deadlands:Reloaded.

So on Sunday I finally convened the delayed start of Space 1889:Red Sands.

I am glad to report The Curse is alive and well. This game has collapsed twice due to players having conflicting schedules that eventually killed it. These people assure me that the problem isn't my GM style (my first suspicion), just events.

This day there were supposed to be two players, Matt and Chris, but at the last minute Chris had to beg off as he had contracted a bad cold.

Rather than not play - I had had a rotten month and badly needed the break from suckage - I decided to play with only one player and a GM, padding the numbers out with an army column of 25 troopers, a sergeant and an officer. Matt would be a civilian being escorted through the Libyan desert by the army.

Savage Worlds lends itself very well to this sort of kludge because it splits characters into two types:

• Wild Cards like the players and "boss" baddies who have a number of wounds they can suffer before being taken out (the consequences of that can vary according to the setting), several "bennies" that can be spent to re-roll failed trait checks or "soak" wounds (shrugging off attacks cinematically) and access to certain edges (feats/advantages) restricted to Wild Cards, and

• Extras who are downed by a single wound. Think of the enemy soldiers in a Rambo movie or bandits in a western - extras are characters for players to shoot if opposing or to give support if allied. Extras can be made very quickly. In fact, I used templates from the back of the Space 1889:Red Sands setting book.

 The number of allied NPCs meant I could terrify Matt with a huge number of attacking Bedouins as he raced for Fort Oublié.

I gave him a good run for his money and threw in a Lame GM Bone (LGMB) so that he survived with some soldiers to enter the fort and suffered attacks by what waited within.

And he had a ball. I had a ball. Things can only get better when Chris joins next session.

The preparation involved reading the scenario and setting rules to re-familiarize myself with them, and turning text-block clues into first person diary entries for touchy-feely clues a-la Call of Cthulhu.

I think this time we might get all the way through. I might even finish the Globe of Mars I was working on when the last game collapsed in a puff of weddings and postings abroad.

That was in the afternoon. In the evening I stepped into my friend Craig's game slot and ran Deadlands:Reloaded, the Weird West setting for Savage Worlds. I ran Deadlands a few years ago and had a great time doing so, using a module called Coffin Rock. When it was over I calculated we got 18 3 1/2 to 4 hour sessions from that module, and I could have run another 9 without breaking a sweat. Coffin Rock is just about the best value for RPG dollars I've ever bought.

This evening I ran "Shootout at the Circle R Corral", an inexpensive pdf I bought from the Drivethru RPG website. We got about halfway through before we had to beak for the evening. During that time much Mad Science was deployed on both sides of the GM screen (actually, the screen was off to one side because I prefer to run "in the round" with open die-rolls. The screen is just an aide-memoir for the various once-in-a-blue-moon rules I normally can remember but have trouble with after running D20 most of the time). Mine was largely ineffective, theirs was devastating, blowing my mighty steam wagon to shrapnel with one shot and taking down my clockwork mech with riflefire. The mech proved delightfully incapable of directing gattling gun fire onto any of the many targets and eventually blew up due to over-the-top damage the likes of which have not been seen since Kirk activated the self destruct on the NCC-1701A while Klingons were rifling it.

It was all great fun and we shall be meeting again in two weeks to do some more.

UPDATE: Future posts concerning the Space 1889:Red Sands campaign will be posted in a purpose-built blog rather than here.

All Good Things Must Come To An End

"So what happened with Beauregard Tucks and Co?" I hear you ask¹.

Surprisingly, he didn't get killed, at least, not for a good, long time. He survived the deaths of just about everyone else in the game, ending up in the final confrontation as the only PC to have witnessed the demise of The Earps.

Stone ² was killed twice (he didn't stay dead for reasons I won't spoil). The first time in mano-y-mano duel between Stone and a character played with gusto by Matt, using magic bullets it took a couple of PC lives to recover from their resting place, and the second in a bloody drawn-out slugfest ³ that ended up with two more PCs dead before Stone engaged, and the final death of Tucks when he decided that the epicness of the situation called for an all-out effort, shot at Stone, missed and was backshot to instant death by Stone's posse.

This behavior of Tucks' was so at odds with his usual "go invisible and fly over the enemy, blasting them with a shotgun and/or magic attacks for the quick kill" tactic that he had used so effectively in the past (while Matt's character was dealing with Stone's challenge, Tucks was dealing very effectively with the twenty or so henchmen trying to add their voice to things for example) that the others might have been forgiven for thinking that Tucks was simply trying to steal the show.

That wasn't what was going on.

First, Tucks was hamstrung by a dearth of magic resources to hand. He could have borrowed the resources needed from demonic forces, maybe, but with Stone out and about he thought that might be a foolish thing to try. Long explanation short, Tucks could not afford the resources to go invisible.

Second, Tucks had opted to cast a spell with a cheesy "get two moves for the price of one" effect, which I interpreted as "you only have three seconds instead of the usual six in which to think and act in each move". This was entirely subjective and I discussed it with no-one, but it seemed immersively right from my seat, and I refused to pause for long decisions and discussions with the other players as I made Tuck's moves. This probably didn't go over well with the other players but I had broadly hinted at what was going on and some of them were role playing their own parts well.

Third, Tucks was the only character in play by then who had seen the horrible deaths of the Earp family, and was carting Wyatt Earp's marshal's badge. That badge was magic and had save Tucks's hide several times, but I (as a player) honestly thought our party had over-reached and were doomed, and decided that Tucks, realizing how bad the situation was, would decide that the time was come for playing out the hand as dealt and living up to the totem he carried by trying his damn' best to take down that Son of a Gun Stone as quickly as possible, with a shade less thought for his own skin than had been the norm before, so that the others could have time enough to flee for their lives if they so chose.

In other words, an epic scene from an epic campaign required epic participation. Tucks was, after all, a Legendary character⁴ by this time.

Had Tucks had one more round and ten more magic points, perhaps he would have made different tactical choices. But you play the cards you are dealt, as Tucks might have said.

In the end Tucks managed to find the one weapon that could kill Stone, but flubbed the shot and was killed for his failure. Appropriately epic in my estimation. I'd have liked him to survive, but I was happy the way it went down.

Until he rose from the dead as a Harrowed character⁵ that is.

Should the opportunity to play Tucks arise again, he will be constantly fighting the same horror Jim Dandy ended up losing his battle to - permanent demonic absorption.

The other players were magnificent.

Matt - Died once, then got smart and survived until the end

James - Died several times, but always from chance critical hits while doing the right thing.

Sam - Died once but couldn't make many of the sessions, including the last one.

Ali - Missed many sessions, but her portrayal of Dr Honeydew as she slid ever deeper into madness was brilliant

Jeff - Died three times. Became Harrowed and lost the dominion battle once. A martyr to ambushes and multiple critical hits.

Craig - Our GM who threw us Lame GM Bones when required and did his very best to keep it unreal.

I haven't had so much fun in years. I looked forward to the games and dressed-up as Tucks faithfully each time to maintain the image. By the end I had the black hat, dress shirt, studs, Poker Hand Cuff-Links, a smart waistcoat, a monogram bolo tie and a fob watch. I've never done at-table cosplay before⁶, but it will become part of my RPG kit-out whenever opportunity knocks.

1. When I put those words into your mouth, dear reader↑
2. the personification of Death in Deadlands:Reloaded↑
3. in every sense of the word↑
4. A game term for the experience level the character had earned that also carries repercussions in-game↑
5. I suspect a cheesy GM finesse used as some sort of comedic come-uppance here, but them's the breaks.↑
6. A lie: I wore a robe to A Song Of Ice and Fire once↑

What Am I Playing These Days (A Ransom Note Test Of My CSS Code)

So, let's inventory the regularly scheduled games I'm involved with, just for fits and wiggles.

Friday nights alternate. Last week I ran Gamma World, this week I'll be playing in someone else's Dungeons & Dragons game. I'm having more fun playing in the Dungeons & Dragons game than running the Gamma World one, but the Gamma World players are reportedly having a ball. I'll run the scanrios in the set until they are played out and then will happily drop Gamma World like a radioactive spud.

Saturday, being the first Saturday in the month, I will be running Delta Green, continuing a campaign set in the mid '90s using the D20 rules for Call of Cthulhu that has been chugging along claiming PC sanity and lives (and in one case the entire observable universe) for around five years on a once-a-month basis. This can be a lot of fun, but it is always a lot of work. I'm having difficulties with the current plot instalment but it should all smooth out and run better after a couple of hours of Investigator Effort.

Sunday evening will be the next installment in the Deadlands:Reloaded game I'm having so much fun with. This is another game in which I'm a player rather than the GM, and I haven't had quite so much fun in years.

Candidates being considered for the Friday slot when I'm done with Gamma World include Solomon Kane and Space 1889, both of which I've had a lot of fun with in the past, but that is way off in the future. I've probably got enough Gamma World stuff to take us into the summer.

Deadlands Fun

So life has been getting more and more fun in the Deadlands:Reloaded game in which I am currently playing a huckster (a sort of card-playing magician) by the unlikely name of Beauregard Tucks.

So much so that I decided to dress the part, at least from the waist up (no-one can see the legs while we are seated at the table). So I augmented my fake Stetson with an inexpensive tuxedo waistcoat, a fancy shirt, a western-style bow tie and a "fan of aces" set of cufflinks. This outfit drew admiring comments from the other players with the exception of Jeff, who regards such shenanigans as unnecessary hi-jinks and game distractions.

For the longest time now I've been theming my dice for the milieu I'm gaming in, with my go-to Deadlands dice of choice being either the two tone copper/black and copper/green set or the steel and green,blue or copper set. These evoke the mineral nuggets the NPCs were grubbing for during "Coffin Rock" (possibly the best value for RPG dollars I've ever added to my library and highly recommended to all Deadlands GMs as a source of hours of fun). The look of he dice adds an indefinable element to the ambience that helps me get in the mood.

Adding the "Stetson" - discovered in January in a gas station store on the way back from Florida and actually made from a hard but flexible plastic shell covered with some sort of textured flock rather than felt, and very comfy to wear - was an obvious step after reading the Cattlepunk episodes of the Knights of the Dinner Table. I discovered that wearing it helped me focus on being a character in an imaginary western setting rather than a player at a table in New York.

And so the extra bits and bobs. And it worked great. When I fiddled with my ridiculously cheap Steampunk fob watch I was doing so as Beauregard Tucks, hard-gamblin' master of matters arcane, set by fate upon a path to death or glory, most likely both, not as Stevie, timid and aging no-account computer botherer and captain of all things sad.

I've no doubt that this effort will precipitate events in which Beauregard Tucks will be shot into mincemeat, rendering the whole wardrobe effort moot. Given the current state of Jim Dandy (Jeff) it is highly likely that Beau's demise will come at the hands of - or because of the treachery of - Jim Dandy. This time at least Jeff will have a plausible excuse for his character's lack of loyalty, what with him being not entirely in control of his life any more on account of him being harrowed (undead and hag-ridden by a demon about sums it up).

But by the pricking of my thumbs it is a rip-roaring experience, the best RPG-as-a-player one I've had in memory.

Resources:

Black/Copper dice at Chessex
Green/Copper dice at Chessex
Steel/Copper dice at Chessex
Steel/Blue dice at Chessex

Deadlands:Reloaded at PEG
Savage Worlds at PEG

To play Deadlands:Reloaded you'll need a copy of The Savage Worlds core rules and a copy of the Deadlands:Reloaded Player Guide. To *run* Deadlands:Reloaded you'll need to add a copy of the Deadlands:Reloaded Marshal's Handbook. Adventures run the gamut from free "one page" affairs to quite costly (but still reasonably priced for what you get) campaigns of linked "plot point" adventures and stand alone encounters. All available in comparably reasonably priced PDF form.

The Trials of a Gamblin' Man

I've been playing in a Deadlands:Reloaded game, and having a ball.

Run by my friend Craig, who introduced me to the game some years ago when I needed to get up to speed on the Savage Worlds rules engine and hooked me on the setting quite unexpectedly, this game is one of four world-changing "quests" pitting player characters against elemental forces of nature personified.

I started out with a gunslinger character, one quite badly hampered with the sorts of "realistic" hindrances Craig had moaned about never seeing - one eye, abrasive personality and so forth. I was up to the challenge. My friend Jeff wanted in and made a Texas Ranger character. Jeff is an accountant by career, a very successful one, and an Alpha Character (in spades).

Jeff did his usual min-maxing thing (which took forever because he was unfamiliar with the rules) including taking an "edge" that gave him a free experience level, making him Big Man At The Table. I was a bit nonplussed that the numbers on the page dominated things to the point that he refused outright to name the character, making it awkward to interact with him. He eventually stated his character would be called "Tex", but we pointed out that a character in the Texas Rangers who was currently operating entirely in the heart of Texas calling himself "Tex" was likely to cause NPC hilarity and/or distrust. We just called him Ranger Jeff and moved on.

My Gunslinger (John Dray) was then involved in a number of firefights in which he saved the miserable hide of Ranger Jeff, despite being hampered with one eye and the depth perception issues that involved any time there was need for extreme measures. Ranger Jeff was tending to face encounters "D&D style" in frontal assault mode, which made for simple if bloody lead-filled conversations with the enemy. Don't get me wrong; the game favors that approach early on and I participate readily in such stuff when the odds are right, but this campaign was likely to get too damned dangerous too damned fast for it to be a modus operandi for every confrontation.

It was shortly after one such battle that Player Jeff interrupted a spate of role-playing between me and a third player (a lady joined only for that one session to see how it all worked) and opined that I (as John Dray) was lying to her. This was an unkind way to put matters, to say the least, and Ranger Jeff had no knowledge of the events I was discussing (how John lost his eye; something I was toying with making a "running gag" by telling it different every time I was asked).

Now Savage Worlds is not like D&D or Pathfinder, the games Jeff had played before, in that there is provision in the character build system to saddle the characters with hindrances. I, as I have already said, chose to saddle John Dray with "one eye", and also "quirk" and "vengeful". Among the raft of stuff Jeff had opted for was "loyal".

So I was a bit put out that this bastion of Law'n'Order would call John's word into question so casually, but went with it and demanded an apology. Jeff refused to back down and so things escalated into a "high noon" style gunfight (a feature of the Deadlands:Reloaded game setting).

And it ended badly for John, as I knew it would, because of all those negative die modifiers to his shooting roll due to the "realistic" build and my legendary skill at rolling low when the chips are down. The only fun part was pointing out to Jeff that Ranger Jeff had drawn first in the duel, which made him - according to the Code o' the West - a murderer. Jeff the player was pissed and tried to talk his way out of things but the witness was laughing her head off and confirming the situation as was the GM.

I spent the rest of that session doing some thinking and making a new character, but I was mildly pissed because if Jeff had played the character he had built the situation should never have arisen, since his own hindrances would have required him to either not make the unfounded remark that set matters in motion or to take back the slur when given the opportunity to do so. I think Player Jeff's alpha personality just wouldn't let Ranger Jeff back down even in the world of make believe.

Later I quietly advised Craig in a private conference that if the GM wasn't going to step in and "remind" Jeff that his own character limitations - starting with "Loyal(!)" - were true limitations on his player actions in that sort of situation then I wasn't going to attempt to play the sorts of character he, Craig, was complaining never saw the light of day in his Savage Worlds games.

I decided that my next character would be a "huckster", a magic using gambler by the name of Beauregard Tucks. I almost never play these magical characters as they require too much complex rules uptake, but the challenge of using magic under the nose of a Texas Ranger (an organization dedicated in part to stamping out such abominations) was too good to miss. Plus, I already had a pretty good grasp of the magic system of the Savage Worlds engine and the refit to Deadlands:Reloaded is no big deal.

And while Ranger Jeff was alive I had a ball. Jeff's Character (who Jeff eventually gave a name which I can no longer remember) would be looking the wrong way each time Beauregard used magic to save Ranger Jeff's miserable life. I made up a code sheet so I could tell the GM what I was doing magic-wise without telling Player Jeff. It drove him nuts, but he couldn't come up with an excuse to have Ranger Jeff discover Beauregard's shenanigans.

Best of all I gave Beauregard a magical birth "knack" that enables him to "lay on hands" and by using up a mulligan chip cure one wound automatically, including any permanent injuries arising from said wound. So when Ranger Jeff had each arm smashed beyond use in two separate encounters, each time Beauregard would put a poultice on his injured arm, get him soused until he fell asleep, then lay on hands and fix him up good as new.

Jeff the Player was going nuts. He couldn't do what he wanted to do and inconvenience Beauregard at noose-point because Ranger Jeff literally owed him his life and both arms - and was now properly Loyal to boot.

And then Beauregard learned how to fly, which I disguised as "sneaking" through long grass (i.e. hovering three inches above the ground) or "climbing" sheer rock faces with ease. It was just great, until Ranger Jeff, in a move so suicidal it beggars the imagination, went toe-to-toe with a hugely powerful undead character, armed only with a rifle and posse of five NPC buddies, rolled several bad rolls and died while Mr Tucks was taking position on top of a cliff to give supporting fire.

Jeff then announced to the world that it was obvious a person could not succeed at this game on his own, so the secret was obviously to make a character that could persuade others to act in his stead. I kept my mouth firmly shut as he built a new character, "Jim Dandy", with a staggering level of Charisma (normal characters usually have a Charisma modifier of 0, Jim's is 4). It was a Knights of the Dinner Table sketch made manifest.

Long story mildly shorter, Jim and Beau ended up in Tombstone when the Earps were assassinated and a new marshal was required - a job no-one in their right mind would want. Jim decided to advocate for Beauregard Tucks as Marshal, but I had gotten the jump on things by having Beau spend a fortune on sketches of Jim that became fly-posters (Jim Dandy for Mayor of Tombstone, Jim's just the Dandy choice for Mayor etc), people to stick same up all over town, performances by marching bands and temperance ladies' choirs, rallies, banners and all manner of nonsense.

Jeff loudly protested that Jim Dandy was going to spend an equal amount on the same tactics, but I countered with two telling blows: first, I got in first and should be considered to have a considerable advantage in the promo war, and second, Beau was currently disfigured after the aforementioned run-in with undead that killed Ranger Jeff. When it came to interacting with people, Beau was taking a -1 Charisma modifier whereas Jim Dandy, The Dandy Choice for Mayor was charming the very planks out of the boardwalk with his +4 Charisma modifier.

At this point the GM got fed up with things and made us move on, which was a shame since I was about to have Jeff/Jim hoist on his own cheesy Charisma petard.

Which I think would have been hysterically funny.

So, What Am I Playing These Days?

I spent last night playing in someone else's Space 1889 game, using the Savage Worlds rules.

This setting is more fun than a poke in the eye. Set at the end of the Victorian Age, sometimes on Mars where the miracle of Liftwood makes flying ships a reality. Steampunk on toast.

The GM had pregens but I begged to be allowed to play a home-built character, and turned up with a Weird Scientist with a mania for the wondrous powers inherent in Radium. He was toting a Raduim-Enhanced pistol (SMITE power), a Radium Enhanced cricket bat (aka club, c/w SMITE power) and a flask that used Radium Infusion to produce a beneficial healing elixir (HEAL power), and much scenery chewing was done in the two hours or so we played out.

Pure delight watching the others who took full advantage of the GM's wonderful photo-printed cliff scenery to leap aboard a land ironclad (tank) right before another player blew it up with more dynamite than I thought existed in the world. I merely hid behind rocks shooting at the enemy for most of the time, but my awesome Radium Enhanced attacks were quite ... average if I'm honest. Fun though.

If you get a chance to play this system and setting I urge you to have a go. It is just about the best fun one can have with one's clothes on.

If you are in NYC and happen by the Citicorp Atrium around 7pm next Thursday, drop by the table and join us.

New Arrivals

The Stripey Hole by Inner City Game Designs is an old-school indy boardgame in a bag, with pages and pages of rules. The basic idea of being cons in the slammer planning to be the first out either by serving out one's sentence or bustin' outta the joint is a nice one, but to pull it off and include activities like tunneling, crawling through sewer lines and/or air ducts etc requires a bunch of rules I doubt I'll get anyone from today's audience to sit still for.

I found this one at Men at Arms in Center Island and couldn't resist it, or another Inner City game Gargantuan which is an attempt to survive a sinking ship as the decks flood under one's feet. Both these are sold in 8x5 baggies like the old Task Force Pocket Games used to be, have components that must be cut out and eschew color - actually, the standees for Gargantuan are in color, printed on photo paper.

If I said I had a weakness for games produced on a shoestring in someone's front room would I be surprising anyone? Anyway, if you are in New York of a weekend and want to play an old-fashioned board game of easy-to-moderate complexity, give me a shout.

Back in 1977, as my college days were coming to an end, I remember playing a wargame set in South Africa in which players took the part of Black South African rebel forces and White South African government forces as the two sides fight for control of the country still at that point being run under apartheid. I was the rebels. I lost.

The game in question had been given away in Strategy and Tactics magazine. This was an every-two-months publication from Simulations Publication International (SPI) and I often wondered what it would be like to replay it. The nature of the changes in South Africa would lend the game a surreal feel, I thought.

And so it was with some surprise that I found a copy of said magazine c/w an unpunched copy of the game inside on Amazon for a reasonable price. The game is now mine and I await the discovery of a worthy opponent so I can wreck my investment's collector value by punching out the components and playing the game with them.

I miss SPI wargames something fierce. Some of my best friendships were born over those four color maps, including that with Paul, the globetrotting wargamer of previous mention in these e-pages. But most of today's kids are scared of anything with more than a page of rules and won't try such games out.

Also scored a decent copy of Avalon Hill's Starship Trooper, a game put out in the early 1980s depicting the action from the Heinlein book. Like all Avalon Hill games it features a proper ("mounted" in game parlance) board in place of the paper maps of SPI. The humans get to fight two different sorts of alien (not at the same time), and the insectile sort have a hidden tunnel mechanism that looks like it will generate much fun for all.

Assuming I can find a player who isn't frightened off by the rulebook of course.

I picked up a digital handful of pdf game publications too.

More Lankhmar products for Savage Worlds including Savage Foes of Nehwon, a book of characters and adventure seeds featuring them - I have a similar book for Solomon Kane and it was great value for money - and Lankhmer Archetypes, a sort of quick start for players wanting to get a character up and running in double quick time.

I kickstarted into the Weird War I product launch and have a bunch of pdfs for that setting, including the GM and player handbooks and some scenarios, maps, archetypes and so forth. The product seems to be well worth what I kicked in and I can recommend these quick-delivery e-product kickstarters from PEG without reservation. I've been a part of two PEG kickstarters and each delivered in about a month or so.

Lastly, I grabbed me an e-copy of The Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition. Expensive at about $25 plus tax etc but people were singing up the changes, which for the first time since second edition were more than a cosmetic change in the rulebook and some tweaks to make the mythos bits even more unplayable.

I've some very strong opinions about what has been done to the game over the years. I honestly believe that by 6th edition what had been a very simple and easy to play game had become a nightmare of contradictory nonsense, mostly concerned with implementing rules that emphasized a certain set of "realistic" views on certain crucial factors in the game that sucked all the fun out for everyone except for a few moody teens.

But 7th edition was written as an attempt to drag back an audience lost to Trail of Cthulhu and Realms of Cthulhu and umpteen other game systems' <Insert Verb> Of Cthulhu offerings. It has been back to the drawing board and emerged a different beast (or so they say). I haven't gotten too far into it, but already I'm gritting my teeth over certain pesonal hot buttons.

However, I've cut the vitriolic story-so-far I wrote and I'll post a more considered view when I've read it through again.

New Arrivals

So I went a bit crazy on the PDF acquisition front in the last three months or so.

I began the slow process of converting some paper resources into more space-saving and generally more useful for my commute-friendly RPG research needs by buying Carcosa and Isle of the Unknown pdfs for Lamentations of the Flame Princess, an "old school" RPG very much in the vein or White Box D&D that bills itself as "Weird" while having absolutely no in-game mechanics I can discern to bring on the weird tone at all. I also picked up Hammers of the God, The Grinding Gear and The Random Esoteric Creature Generator. I already had the rulebook. Not sure whether I'll run LotFP. To be honest the game is aspiring to be Solomon Kane is as many ways as I care to notice, to judge by the suggestions in the rulebook itself. The artwork is both disgusting and awesome by terms.

I picked up a metric tonne of original GDW Traveller books in a "Bundle of Holding". Traveller is a game close to my heart and I'm dying to run it in campaign mode again, but I cannot get anyone interested in playing. In any event, the bundle provided the three rulebooks, five expansion rulebooks and a selection of the supplements. Not as complete a set as I would have liked, but not bad at all for what it cost me.

I picked up Stone and a Hard Place and a collection of Trail Guides. These represent episode three of a four part campaign of campaigns for Deadlands reloaded, and a collection of one-off adventures. Stone also contains rules re-introducing the long-gone Deadlands "Hexslinger" character type, and expanded rules that allow a player to play a so-called "harrowed" character. I am still mulling over the content of this volume, and can't say more without spoiling anyway, so perhaps I'll keep a detailed discussion of Stone for another time. In any event, after my attempt to run Last Sons hit player fatigue I am disenchanted with Deadlands campaigns for a bit. Hence the Trail Guide adventures. I'll review those as we play them.

Rippers also arrived, in record time for a Kickstarted project too. Not bad, and people will definitely take to the Gothic Horror/Victorian Steampunk Super Hero aspect of the setting I imagine. There are a few small changes to the original rules (which were included in the bundle but which I had bought recently anyway) alson with some modification of the settings backstory. The ancilliary products that were bundled in, like maps and adventures, were a welcome addition. The usual high quality graphic design is front and center but to be hinest I preferred that used on the older version. The deal included a set of inserts for the GM screen too. Nice.

I picked up a copy of Microscope, a co-operative game involving RPG elements in which the players work to build a history of, well, whatever they decide. It has an innovative approach to what would seem to be an anarchic process, and it can be used to play just for its own sake or, perhaps more interestingly, to arrive at a setting in which to place a home-brewed RPG, especially one in which the players share GMing duties. I'm looking forward to trying out this one, though th eidea is harder to convey as an exciting prospect than I imagined it would be.

I bought Weird War II after ignoring the Savage Worlds setting for years. I was trying to build my own setting and realized I might be re-inventing the wheel, so decided to take a look. The pdf is a far more lavish affair than the last paper copy I had in my hands, with color illustrations to boot! I'll be reviewing this one in more depth at a later date. Given the way the Weird West caught my attention after years of "meh" I may have a new fad on my hands.

While on the subject of Savage Worlds I decided to buy a pdf of the Kerberos Club setting, which I have in paper form and have not really taken much a liking to, but on re-reading find a little more interesting. The setting is Victorian England (my original reason for buying was to increase my library of Space 1889 resources) and the conceit is that of the Victorian Costumed Hero. Think League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and you are in the right neighborhood. The paper copy is of rather indefferent quality to be honest, far below the general Savage Worlds accepted standard. In pdf these things matter less. More to come later.

I finally weakened and bought The Vorkosigan Saga, a self-contained RPG set in Lois McMaster Bujold's "Barrayar" universe and a gorgeous production. It took so long to bring it to press it became that rarest of things, a fourth edition setting book for GURPS (for the rules in the book are GURPS-Lite). This is a great thing if you are a buying in hardback (I was an early adopter). Buying the pdf perhaps will inspire me to run a GURPS game for a bit, though I find the though terrifying. It's like trying to interest people in tax instructions. The base rulebooks are hysterically funny, insisting on the essential symplicity and stripped down feel of fourth edition GURPS in a sidebar on a page containing dense type explaining how to calculate fractional characteristic values. But nobody does a setting book like the GURPS guys do, which makes the idea of porting the thing wholesale to a different engine if not easy, at least not a herculean task.

Please note that while I find GURPS unattractive for many reasons as a GM I do acknowledge the awesome flexibility of the engine itself and also the people who built it. An achievemment that is underappreciated by many, including (of course) me.

Perhaps the most unlikely new purchase for me has been that of the Firefly RPG and a couple of scenario books for it. I got one of these in a "for charity" bundle I coughed up for, and was intrigued despite never having been a fan of the Firefly series or the Serenity movie. Some reading, and I was hooked. Hooked enough to start planning a game and start researching by buying and watching the series and the movie on Blu-ray, both soundtrack albums for planned background music (I rarely use music in my games as it usually becomes a distraction, but the "feel" I got from my reading was that it might work positively here. And I buy and listen to soundtrack albums anyway. I also felt the need for a small model of the ship as a focus item for the table. The cheapest way to that goal was the Firefly Yahtzee set, which has a very nice model of the Serenity as its dice cup. So yes, I bought in to the FIrefly game bigtime and can't wait to run it.

And despite my feeling that the Sixth Edition of Call of Cthulhu is the least accessible rulebook for the game ever published, making what should be a simple and quick assimilation by a new GM a tortuous trip through contadictory and confusing nonsense, I bought that in pdf too. I was about to start running Call of Cthulhu again from the BRP rules (I've been running a Delta Green game using the much-maligned D20 rules for more than five years for perhaps the best Call of Cthulhu gamers I've ever had but missed the 20s and BRP experience) and needed an electronic form of the book. I'm using 5.2 for the game itself, but couldn't source that as an e-book for luvner money.

This brings me to the lamentable quality of comparably high-cost Chaosium e-books. Chaosium have been coasting on their quality for some years, with customers acting as appologists for the horribly dated look and the fact that the lack of production values has resulted in every case I've paid for in a book that is functionally useless as an in-game resource.

The products are consistently higher priced than lavish equivalent products from other publishing houses, lacking any sort of relief from the tedious greyscale. Compare, for example, the monochrom but much more interesting Trail of Cthulhu with Call of Cthulhu and you'll come away with a sour taste in your mouth.

Forget the artwork for a moment. Let's look at the way a pdf is navigated. Hyperlinks from the table of contents to the content itself is best, but not essential. Bookmarks are absolutely essential, the more granular the better. These become most useful if they approach index levels of depth, but don't have to go that far, as long as they can be used as anchors in which to page back and forth as a game progresses.

Not one of my Chaosium pdf products has bookmarks, meaning that one is reduced to using "search", just about the lousiest, most useless way of using a rule or setting book in-game. And I'm not talking about old products here. Gold Book BRP, Cthulhu by Gaslight (the latest one that was delivered by the author as an electronic version for Hastur's sake!), Beyond the Mountains of Madness (a magnificent but most of all HUGE book that cries out for bookmarks), House of R'lyeh and, of course, the Sixth Edition Rulebook. All came without bookmarks.

And Chaosium are not alone in "not getting it" when it comes to how pdfs get used by GMs. Wizards of the Coast finally published pdf versions of their D&D 3.5 core books. As locked-down pdfs.

Now you may be wondering who would lock down a pdf of an obsolete version of an RPG which for all intents and purposes is available at a fraction of the cost under a different name in an unlocked format, and so am I. The locking of the pdf means that the GM cannot annotate the rulebook they have just bought (and not cheaply either I might add; Pathfinder is a better buy on cost grounds too). So no highlighting and no post-it notes, something I have come to understand is more than just extremely useful to me as a GM, it is essential. Way to protect your IP, Hasbro. On a game nobody wants to buy anyway. Pfft!

I am told that the Seventh Edition rulebooks (plural, there are now two sold for the game) for Call of Cthulhu do have bookmarks, but I am not remotely tempted to pony up almost thirty dollars for the GM manual to find out. Chaosium have burned out all the customer brand loyalty from me with mediochre and half-hearted attempts to "serve" their audience. There has been a change of management there of late in an attempt to revitalise the company still reeling after a financial misstep in the 1990s (!) but we can still see self-defeating behavior such as floating the Seventh Edition Kickstarter before they had fulfulled the long over-running Horror on the Orient Express Kickstarter, with predictable results wioth respect to both products and unhappiness in the backer ranks.

Oh, and I picked up Legend, the pdf that replaces Runequest in the Mongoose line of products (lapsed licence) so I could contemplate running an Elric or Hawkmoon game, but that is way off in the nevernever future.

A Reboot For A Gothic Horror Classic

PEG are calling for backer on the reboot and rewrite of the spiffing Rippers setting for their Savage Worlds engine.

Werewolves, vampires and Jack the Ripper are examples of The Enemy. The Good Guys fight them, and neutralize The Enemy's (un)natural advantages by ... stealing their organs and surgically implanting them in their bodies.

Unfortunately this causes a strain on the body and mind, leading to organic rejection of the new parts and looming madness. Omelets, eggs etc.

You can get the original version in PDF from DrivethruRPG or RPGNow. It is my belief that these are actually the same outfit with different branding, though I only have personal observation of the sites to back that up.

You can support the Kickstarter project for the new version too.

You will also need a copy of the Savage Worlds core rulebook, which can be had in PDF for for about $10.

This sort of cinematic action/adventure horror setting is exactly what the Savage Worlds game engine was written to handle, so the game should play well. Actual game mechanics are simple to pick up and very easy to mediate as a GM.

The system has its weaknesses, mostly in the way damage has a nasty tendency to snowball at the end of a session because for most of the game players have the ability to shrug off damage suffered by their PCs using "bennies". As the game session nears its end, the players run out of bennies. This tends to manifest as a sudden escalation of PC casualties.

Not only that, players only have three "wounds", the fourth putting them down for the count and possibly killing them (though that is not the most usual outcome). This contrasts rather starkly with other systems that use "Hit Points", systems in which combat is a matter of slow attrition rather than sudden overwhelming catastrophe.

That said, I'm fond of the system for a number of settings, and have been toying with the idea of a short "Rippers" campaign for a while. Now I have a new incentive.

Savage New Acquisitions

As people may of may not know I am greatly invested in the Savage Worlds game engine, which I fell in love with after one game of Deadlands:Reloaded, a game that gave me more enjoyment as a player than any other I've played in for over 20 years.

Characters are built using points to buy "die types" for basic attributes like strength and agility, skills like fighting or swimming and edges like Quick Draw and Charismatic. Points are strictly limited and in short supply, so the opportunity to get more by taking on hindrances like Short Sighted or Mean is a welcome feature of the game. This gives Savage Worlds a similar character build to GURPS without the need for a degree in tax accountancy or a spreadsheet program (and, of course, without the richness that system provides).

It has its problems like any RPG rules engine does, most notably when it comes to the magic system, that many feel lacks the "oomph" of a proper High Fantasy setting.

There is some justification for this. The spell lists are deliberately foreshortened compared to other systems, and presented in a generic format intended to be padded out with "trappings" to give individual iterations of a given generic spell special feel and side-effects. One can, for example, easily imagine the difference in feel between an area-effect spell with an electrical trapping (call it "ball lightning") and one with a nuclear trapping (call it "ridiculously broken").

The spells are also of less over-the-topness than other systems, which means that problems can arise when it comes to player expectations. My gaming friend Will grumbles that a Deadlands:Reloaded Mad Scientist cannot make an ornithopter that would fly for more than a minute or so, and he's right unless the GM imports a certain "edge" from the Slipstream setting (or invents one of his/her own to do the job).

There is also the problem that in combats the game tends to be one of invincible players right up to the point the mulligan points ("Bennies") run out, at which point it can very easily become TPK time.

The GM must be aware of and cater for these shortcomings in the system.

What makes that worthwhile is the sheer number of settings that this engine has been pointed at. Deadlands was perhaps the first and remains the flagship setting, but one can also game in the Space 1889 steampunk setting, the Rippers gothic horror setting, pirate settings both with and without high fantasy elements, 1930s Saturday Space Serial settings, any number of fantasy settings. The list goes on.

Most recently, Pinnacle Entertainment have released a Lankhmar sourcebook and a book of adventures for that setting. Lankhmar is, of course, the city in which Fafhard and The Grey Mouser met and had so many adventures in the short stories and (one I think) novel by Fritz Leiber. I loved the books and so could not resist picking up these offerings in the hope that one day I can get the apathetic youth I'm surrounded with to play in that urban setting.

The books are lavish affairs, as so many of the Savage World books are. At least, they look like they should be lavish affairs. This represents one of the first times I've bought electronic only, having realized my house can hold no more books

And anyway, I usually do most of the referencing of my game books while on my interminable commute, which means reading e-versions on my laptop. I often need to synthesize an adventure from two or more books, and the lack of space while traveling makes using paper books impractical even before the extra weight they represent is considered.

Besides which, I have a tendency to start regarding the books as a treasure to be kept from the hands of others, who will handle the glossy-paper with grease smeared hands without a thought. I realize this is a problem, a minor obsession, but I can't do anything about it. I often make up player manuals with copied pages in greaseproof plastic sleeves for the players if they need such a beast. The players can paw that without triggering my "book anxiety".

I also took the chance to obtain electronic copies of The Path of Kane and The Savage Foes of Solomon Kane, adjuncts to the excellent Solomon Kane RPG (also based on Savage Worlds) that provide adventures and NPCs to star in them and which I already owned in hardback. The chance to run Solly Kane has come up and the price was right. I've been looking for these books for some time in an affordable e-package. I bought an e-copy of the rulebook years ago. Now I'm champing at the bit to get a Solly Kane game up and running.

I also chose to obtain a copy of the second edition of the One Ring rulebook.

One Ring is set in the time between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, mostly in Rhovanion. It aims to provide a different sort of game experience to D&D and its fantasy clones, concentrating on roleplaying and highlighting the difficulties of going from A to B over long distances in the wilderness. It is, in other words, what Wilderness Adventures should have been in White Box D&D.

I've agonized in the past over how to represent the epic levels of privation expeditions int The Wild should have without the need for soul-destroying shopping lists and endless Constitution tests. Well, the people at Cubicle 7 have engineered that into One Ring very neatly, taking a cue from old school wargames by using the concept of attrition and melding it all very nicely into an RPG that to me has a very "Tolkienesque" feel to the whole approach of adventuring. No "kick in the door and steal the treasure" game this.

Naturally, I can't get anyone interested in playing.

The game originally came as a player manual, a GM manual, a couple of maps (one for the players, much like the one that came in the back of The Lord of the Rings, and an identical one with a hex grid and a key for the GM to calculate actual distances) and some dice in a slipcase. The second edition, tidied up a little and somewhat re-arranged, now comes in a single book. If your taste runs to a less adrenaline-powered RPG you might like this game too.

You can download these and many, many other titles from DriveThroughRPG.com, my e-seller of choice these days. Paper copies can be had through your LFGS for the asking.

Resources:

One Ring RPG A system for playing epic adventures in The Wild
The Savage Worlds of Solomon Kane The core rulebook (does not require the purchase of Savage Worlds)
The Path of Kane Adventures for Solomon Kane
The Savage Foes of Solomon Kane Major foes for your SK game, and adventures in which to showcase them.
Lankhmar sourcebook for Savage Worlds (requires the Savage Worlds core rulebook to play
Savage Tales of the Thieves GuildFourteen adventures for Lankhmar-based campaigns

It's a Deja Vu Reboot All Over Again Once More

Okay, time to do some game talk.

It's been a while and I've done quite a bit of gaming in the year and a half I've been gone from here.

I started running Masks of Nyarlathotep a newly reprinted campaign for Call of Cthulhu that my wife bought for me for Christmas, but the campaign has stuttered a bit this time through, with players dropping out before I can kill their characters or drive them mad. Oh well. The advantage of running the game in a Game Store is that there is always an audience, and that audience has recently been knocking on my door asking if they can join in. Naturally I say "Hell yes!" I'll be starting a thread for this game and the observations that arise from it from now on.

The monthly Delta Green campaign sessions are as popular as ever, over-subscribed now with eight players sometimes at a sitting. I enjoy running for this group very much. Their buy-in is atypically fervent and they are a total joy to GM. This game will soon be kicking into higher gear and I will be threading this game in it's own subject too. I have a lot of thinking to do when it comes to D20 Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green.

The recent (read: end of last year) launch of the Savage Worlds Space 1889 setting and my love affair with all things Savage Worlds has resulted in my convening not one but two separate parallel campaigns, each being an iteration of the Red Sands campaign from the eponymous setting book. I'll be threading these games both together and individually for pontification purposes.

I've also begun playing Solomon Kane, another Savage Worlds-derived game setting (though in this case one that is self-contained and that requires no additional purchase of a Savage Worlds rulebook). It looks to be a very interesting way of presenting a nuts-and-bolts action-adventure/horror game and I love the rulebook.

My attendance at this year's RetCon was a success, with all four of my games subscribed to the right level. I ran a Realms of Cthulhu scenario set mostly in the Peruvian Rainforest, A Deadlands:Reloaded game set in Great North Woods, A Space 1889 scenario set in the Martian desert at the juncture of the English and German fields of influence and a Call of Cthulhu session late on Saturday night which was a shortened version of A Cracked and Crooked Manse. It was a great success and greatly simplified by the decision to this year go with an all-Savage Worlds program (with the exception of the Call of Cthulhu session).

There were some failures to aviate.

Notably, my friend of many years decided that he no longer wished to play Call of Cthulhu since he did forensic paperwork for a living and was not keen on doing it in an RPG for relaxation, and an attempt to start the D20 Conan campaign Trial of Blood fell flat. That was sad because I was hoping the milieu would appeal to my friend so we could game together again, but it was a total non-starter.

Then there was the Paranoia game I tooled up to run only to find that no-one who had said they wanted to play was actually prepared to turn up. Fiasco! drew no players at all in three weeks of advertizing the session.

And a Dresden Files RPG campaign I was hosting every other Friday, and for which I was taking vacation time to be able to do so, eventually resulted in an evening where I and one other were the only people to show up after a dozen sessions.

Lessons learned:

Dresden Files has taught me to be absolutely without compunction when it comes to giving away a players seat if they haven't RSVP'd for the game (all the store's available slots are booked using Meetups). My campaigns sometimes feature a floating cast list these days but I don't get messed around by losers.

Paranoia taught me that people talk a lot on the web but often don't follow through, even if you know them personally. Don't spend money on rulebooks unless you have at least three "I'll be there's".

Conan taught me that sometimes it is just that the right mix of people isn't there and motivated to play. Two of those who did show interest found they didn't like my style and rather than say so simply faded from sight.

But all this has also shown me that the facts of life are that there are four to eight times as many people who want to play a given game than are willing to sit the other side of the screen and run the bugger. The GM in my neck of the woods who is willing to bide their time will end up beating them off with a stick when word gets around (and if he is any good).

My problem now is time. I don't have enough, otherwise I'd be playing in at least two more games (One Ring and Eclipse Phase) and running even more, like Deadlands:Reloaded, and Slipstream, and Sundered Skies, and The Laundry, and Amber, and Traveller, and Dresden Files - which I dislike the complexity of but feel there's a great game in there struggling to get out - and that doesn't even mention the board games