Halfway Station: Review: Deadlands

And if California slides into the ocean
Like the mystics and statistics say it will
I predict this motel will be standing until I've paid my bill
- Warren Zevon, Desperadoes Under the Eaves

Deadlands is Pinnacle's flagship setting for Savage Worlds, and I recently acquired the upSWADEd 2020 edition as part of a bundle. This review is based not only on reading it through, but also being a player in some 30 sessions of the game totalling 150 hours of play over the last year; that campaign looks like it's about one-third complete at this point.

In a Nutshell: The Weird West for SWADE, which is to say a supernatural horror steampunk western. 200 page PDF from Pinnacle Entertainment, available here for $20 at time of writing.

As you can see from the chapter page counts, this book is light on extra rules, heavy on setting material and monsters. As you can see from the chapter titles, the book is written in 19th century cowboy English. Those things are not good or bad, they just are.

Deadlands as a setting is almost 30 years old now, and has gone through multiple editions using different sets of rules; the timeline has also evolved, partly because players and publishers are more woke now, partly because Deadlands is part of a clade of other settings - at least four to my knowledge, ranging from the Dark Ages to the era of interstellar colonisation, all in the same sheaf of timelines - and as each new one comes out, it necessitates tweaks to the others. I have no opinion on any of that, and mention it only because if you are familiar with one of the earlier editions, this one might surprise you; this is the only version I have any experience with, so although I know the others are different, I came into it with no expectations.

But I digress. What has it got in its pocketses?

Into the Weird West (6 pages): The obligatory introductory fiction, followed by an overview of the setting and how it differs from our own history. In this timeline, the American Civil War dragged on a lot longer, and California was destroyed by a great earthquake which exposed veins of a superfuel called 'ghost rock'. These two changes allowed other powers to rise in addition to the Union and Confederation; the Mormons and several native American groups have carved out independent nations for themselves.

Makin' Heroes (14 pages): Basic (i.e. mundane) character creation, which follows standard SWADE rules except for a few tweaks to skills - no Electronics or Hacking, add Trade which is a catch-all professional skill, and note that Outsiders speak something other than English as their native tongue, and need to put points into English to use it. All PCs are human, at least initially; and the rules do cater to the setting with 10 new Hindrances and 29 new Edges. You also need to specify your PC's worst nightmare, which obviously the GM will never use against you.

Gear & Goods (14 pages): PCs start with $250 rather than the usual $500, so naturally this chapter starts with how to buy cheap, used gear, which is more likely to break on you, and how to sell spare gear you've acquired on your travels. Then, it's into the lists of gear; common gear, services, transport, ammo, setting-appropriate weapons, explosives, vehicles and infernal devices - steampunk equipment powered by ghost rock. I especially like the hat periscope and the powered de-moler.

Life in the Weird West (89 pages): Day-to-day life in the setting; travel, money, communication, ghost rock, the military, the law, common superstitions. I won't dwell on these, because you must have seen Westerns at some point, beyond saying that this chapter pulls out some interesting snippets about the milieu, both historical (like the surcharge from shopkeepers if you pay with paper money) and setting-specific (zombies are common enough that cremation is becoming popular).

Setting Rules (4 pages): Savage Worlds uses setting rules to tailor the game to specific milieux, and Deadlands is no exception. The most significant are the rules for Duelling, which emulates showdown gunfights like the ones in the movies; this involves building hands of cards as the combatants Test each other over several rounds, then use the best card for the final round, when they draw and fire. (Hucksters play poker with demons to energise their Powers, but that's part of the Arcane Background rules in the next chapter.)

No Man's Land (28 pages): Now we move out of general player territory and into topics that require GM approval; most of these relate to setting-specific Arcane Backgrounds. There's the obligatory secret organisation fighting the supernatural and recruiting PCs to help - there's almost always one of those in a Savage Worlds setting. While the Makin' Heroes chapter is aimed at creating ordinary heroes, this chapter explains other possibilities; Agents (the setting's version of Men In Black), the Blessed (clerics), chi masters (wuxia martial artists), Harrowed (demonic undead), hucksters (supernatural card sharps), mad scientists (steampunk gadgeteers), shamans (what it says on the tin), territorial rangers. Each has their own rules, Edges, and (except Agents, Harrowed and Rangers) list of available Powers. Speaking of which, there are half a dozen new Powers.

The Reckoning (4 pages): From this point on, we're into GM-only territory. This section explains what is really going on in the setting, why, and how. 'Nuff said, no spoilers.

Marshall's Setting Rules (10 pages): In this setting, the GM is called the 'Marshall', and this section adds further setting rules that the players need not concern themselves with. The most important of these is Fear; each area of the Weird West has a Fear Level which affects how things look and how rattled people are; there are rules for how the Bad Guys make it worse and how the PCs can make it better. The section also covers black magic, the awful truth about ghost rock, further details about the Harrowed, hucksters, mad scientists, and other facets of the setting.

Encounters (12 pages): Like most Savage Worlds settings, this one has a random adventure generator, and here it is. The chapter also has random encounter tables intended for use in the wilderness between towns; events in towns are more deliberate, and driven either by the GM's scenario or player machinations.

The Weird West (40 pages): This is the GM-only version of Into the Weird West, with the true secret history, geography, and politics which lies beneath what the PCs think they know. 'Nuff said, no spoilers.

Rascals, Varmints, & Creatures (50 pages): Here we have a couple of setting-specific monstrous abilities, followed by selections of stock NPCs, ordinary animals, and creatures of supernatural evil. Emphasis on the last of those, for the Weird West is a place of action horror.

...and we close with an Index.

Comments

The game treats sexism, racism, and slavery in a more enlightened way than real history did; it explains why, both in game and metagame terms; and it doesn't make a meal of it, restricting the explanations to a few short paragraphs. That's how to do it; other publishers take note.

I like the way the book is divided up into sections which are for all players, only for players that have GM approval to read them, and only for the GM.

If I'd just read the book, I'd consider drawing cards during duels and when casting spells as a huckster to be unnecessary complications which slow the game down, but I must say both of them are faster than I expected in actual play.

Another thing I've noted from both read-throughs of various materials and being a player is that Deadlands boss monsters are typically invulnerable unless you know their weakness, so the first part of any adventure is gathering clues and identifying that weakness, the second part is collecting the items you need to exploit it, and only then can you confront the monster and destroy it.