Rangers of the Dusty Trail

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Deadlands is a setting about a group of heroes in the style of the Lone Ranger or the Man-With-No-Name who venture into the Old West, to fight villains, monsters or threats to the land. It mixes the western genre with horror, steam-punk and some other fantastical elements.

Player Characters

Links

Files

Premise

The world is much the same as our own. History progresses, the United States is founded, those of European descent push West and no one is the wiser. Sure, maybe the supernatural has always lurked deep in the shadows, somewhere in the background of history. But most people don't have anything to do with that.

However, one day in 1863 things begin to change. At the Battle of Gettysburg the dead are said to have risen from the battlefield; a Great Quake strikes California, parts of it sinking into the sea and leaving it shattered into a maze of narrow sea channels; a new mineral called Ghost Rock is discovered, leading to a wave of mad science-like inventions making use of the stone. All this activity seems to be centered somewhere out West. People whisper, many in disbelief, that horrors are said to stalk the nights way out there. The West is in need of a few brave and hardy fellows to protect it.

The campaign will center around a group of these people who roam the villages and the wilds, doing good deeds and telling their tales. It will probably center somewhere around the West Coast, will make use of a fair number of western tropes and will be a game where discretion is advised before rushing into every potential situation. Themes of the game will include discovery of the underlaying truth of the world, the roughness of the West and the desire to help those in need.

Characters will be discussed and created during a group character creation session, to help ensure that we have a functional party.

Initial Hook

Although it is subject to discussion and change if it turns out not to fit the party in the end, otherwise assume that at the start of the campaign the PCs are associated somehow and are waiting at a small mining town in Colorado to catch the next train west to the Great Maze in California. The exact reasons for travel to the Great Maze and how the party came to be associated we will decide as a group during the character creation session.

Player Knowledge & Spoilers

The Deadlands settings draws a clear line between what players are expected to know going into the game and what are the secrets going on behind the scene. Because of this every Deadlands book is broken up into a Player's Guide, No Man's Land (things some players may know with the right background) and the Marshal's Section (GM's Section). If you're the sort that cares about not seeing spoilers, be careful what you read up on the setting online. And even if you don't care about spoilers, take care not to spoil elements of the setting for other players who might care about such things.

About the System

The edition of Deadlands we are using makes use of the Savage Worlds system. It's an easy-to-learn system that uses die types to represent your skills and attributes--so it will be necessary to have a set of dice d4 through d12, at the very least. The system also uses a deck of poker cards for initiative and one possible type of magic, but not all players need their own cards. Miniatures are optional in the system for combat, and short of majority player rejection, we will probably be using them from time to time.

The setting has two potential character creation methods--one that is deterministic and revolved around assigning points to your skills, attributes and edges (special abilities). The other is non-deterministic and involves drawing a hand of poker cards and assigning them to different skills and attributes. We will be deciding as a group which method we prefer to use, and everyone will use the same method.

Edition Clarification

There are several editions of the Savage Worlds rulebook out there, with minor differences between them. I personally own the Revised edition, but for the most part we will be using the rules from the most recent Explorer's Edition. Just to be clear, here are the differences between what we're playing with and what you might see in my printed book:

  • The Way of the Brave (a combat tweak also printed in the Deadlands book) is in effect.
  • Fate chips [bennies] cannot turn into XP.
  • The injury table has been tweaked a bit.
  • The chase system has been updated, but we may or may not be using it, depending on if I get my hands on it.

House Rules

The following house rules are in effect.

Codified Knowledge Skills

It is useful to have a codified list of skills so that one can know what to expect in terms of calling for a specific skill to be rerolled. Therefore, treat the following as the list of available Knowledge skills.

  • Academics: Knowledge of the humanities and social sciences.
  • Area Knowledge: Knowing about the geography and customs of a specified area.
  • Battle: Knowledge of strategy and tactics. Used in the Mass Battle system.
  • Language: Knowing a specific language.
  • Mechanics: Knowledge of getting a machine to do what you want.
  • Occult: Being adept in knowing about the occult and supernatural.
  • Science: Knowing all about the hard sciences.

Skill for Native Language

At character creation you get a native language free. Go ahead and codify this on your sheet as Knowledge (the Language) at a skill level one higher than your Smarts attribute. If multi-lingual, then pick one as your language primary. You receive it at a skill level equal to your Smarts and the others at a skill level equal to one below your Smarts. Normally these language skills won't be rolled unless some particularly difficult aspect of language comes up, but its good to know how skilled you are linguistically.

Languages Likely to be Applicable

By far the most common language likely to be used in the campaign is English. Other languages one is likely to come across include Spanish (since much of the west used to be part of Mexico), Indian Sign Language (since it is something of a basic common language between many Native American tribes) and Chinese (since there are many, many Chinese immigrants in California).

Gaining New Skills

Gaining new skills not previously possessed are now part of the same costs as raising skills instead of having their own costs. This means on an advance one may raise two skills that are below their attributes and one may be a new skill previously unknown to the character.

Rolling Lower Dice

On any trait test, any player may choose to voluntarily roll a lower die type than she would normally roll. This can be thought of as not trying as hard on an action as one could.

Replacement Characters

Instead of replacement characters (from death or retirement) starting with half the experience points of the old character, such replacement characters now start with the same number of experience points of the old character. The idea behind this is I believe players shouldn't really be punished for their character dying or choosing to retire.

Unshake With Grit

A character's Grit now applies as a bonus to Spirit rolls to become unshaken. This allows PCs (being the most common characters with grit) to unshake and get actions more of the time, while still maintaining as a viable strategy the locking of monsters (and most other antagonists) out of getting actions, by keeping them shaken (as this seems to me to be the most tactically interesting part of the shaken mechanic).

Old Ways Oath

Since the Old Ways Oath hindrance can pose problems when taken in conjunction with certain other party abilities or when required to travel by train or other locomotive, we will be ruling that exceptions for riding on these vehicles are granted to the character by the spirits so long as the character offers penance of some kind--the details to be worked out between the player and GM, should the Old Ways Oath hindrance be taken.

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