We are beginning a Deadlands campaign, because we royally f***ed up Rise of the Runelords. No established adventures this time.
The Characters
Joe: He’s the GM of this game, referred to as a Marshal (Marshall?)
Brandon (Me): Playing Carter Parnam, a huckster. Think Spellcaster who uses playing cards, like Gambit with variety.
Nick: Playing another Huckster whose name is Ray Twisted Fate, basically a League of Legends character from what I’m told.
Kate: Playing Shikoba, a Native American Shaman who as of this posting has taken an oath to never use any technology.
Brad: Playing Miles Wormteeth, a gunslinger with a bounty out on his head.
If you can spot at least three problems already, you get a cookie.
A little backstory on the game. The year is 1879, the civil war has only recently ended after waging for 20 years, only to be replaced by the great rail wars as rail companies vie for control of the country.
Magic has resurged in recent years, though the reason is unknown. Many horrible creatures roam the land such as sasquatches, vampires, werewolves and wendigos.
A strange material called ghost rock has led to massive scientific advances, henceforth known as weird science, creating everything from faster trains to Ray guns and rocket boots.
The story starts in a little town in Kansas.
Our group all meets at the local tavern run by a half-blooded Indian woman named Ivory. Shikoba enters last, fleeing from her backstory I will touch on later and seeking sanctuary. Nick and I volunteer to help her. Brad sits in the corner with his face covered, says nothing, but follows us as we head upstairs.
Ivory threatens him, But he swears he wants to help and won’t cause trouble.
We are given the basic mission of getting Shikoba farther west and away from the people pursuing her. She currently has a small bounty on her head.
Brad continues to sit in the corner and be anti-social and creepy.
Deciding to wait until morning, Nick and I set out into town with the basic plan to get her bounty off the board.
There we see Brads. Wanted Dead or Alive for $6,000.
Keep in mind, this is a time where wages are around $30 a week if you’re lucky and a pound of bacon costs .15 cents. It’s a hell of a lot of money for a guy in character who has been nothing but creepy and annoying.
We also meet a bounty hunter named handsome Tom who has been tracking Brads character and offers to split the bounty if we help.
So, after another small event involving Shikoba that I will get into next time, we return to the Inn and confront Miles.
My response is to call him by name as he has been using a fake one, out of character giving him a chance to lie or give me a reason in character not to turn me in.
He does neither. Not really. He explains that he didn’t kill the people he was accused of and a skill roll tells me that he is being honest. He did not, however, give a reason for me not to kill him.
About this time, there’s a knock at the door. It’s Handsome Tom, saying he has hurt his hand and asking for a cloth.
Shikoba turns into a bird and flies away.
I do all I can think of to do. With Handsome Tom at the door and Brad with his hand on his gun (yeah he did that too while we were talking), I cast one of my spells.
Now, spellcasting in Deadlands (or Savage Worlds depending on how you look at it as Deadlands is really more of a setting) is one of my favorite things about the game. Instead of hundreds of spells you have trappings. What these are basically amounts to templates. For example, the power is Bolt. You can decide outside of base damage what the attack does and what it looks like, as well as give it a name.
The spell I choose is Entangle, what I call the Chains That Bind. Iron chains that are on fire come from my playing card and bind him. I roll really well and the fire puts him about an inch from death.
Ray tries to stop me with his own entangle spell, but fails his roll.
So, I slit Miles’ throat so I can collect the bounty.
Ray then attacks me with an explosive blast of fire, but I’m the better spellcaster, having chosen to max my skill at creation, and deflect it. My intention was to simply stop it, but that’s not what happened. It his the door, sending a hurricane of fire into Handsome Tom, the door into him as well, and forcing him to crash through the banister and onto the bar below. He is very dead.
Ray, having some sort of mental breakdown, puts his gun to his head and kills himself.
So I am left alone with two corpses and a stunned and frightened crowd below.
I explain as best I can, blaming the magic on Miles because it’s taboo and seen as witchcraft, and explaining he had a bounty on his head.
I promise to pay for the repairs and the two other men are buried. I take Miles’ corpse and send it off to collect my money.
Brad is fuming, though admits he can’t blame me. Ironically, I had spent an hour a few days prior explaining why he shouldn’t take the Wanted Hinderance for his character. Yes, the bounty was his choice. Just not the amount which was determined by die roll.
But the story isn’t over yet. See, in Deadlands, when you die, you don’t always stay dead.
You draw a card from an action deck of playing cards. Ray TF got a red joker, meaning his character returned to life as a Harrowed. Harrowed are like zombies in a way, but they have intelligence, don’t really rot unless they want to, and are in fact sharing their body with a demon that could come out and destroy everything around him. The only real condition is that the wound that killed the person will never heal.
Handsome Jack also rose as a Harrowed, but his death wound was most of the front of his body being burned off and large shards of glass embedded into his back.
The locals dealt with him quickly.
So, we haven’t left town. We haven’t entered combat. Two PCs and an important NPC are dead. One oarty member is a zombie. And I have inherited the modern equivalent of about 600,000 or 6,000,000 dollars. (The mark up is hard to tell because I am paid in gold coins) all before we even walked more than 200 feet.
Needless to say, everyone needed a few minutes for a break.