Has anyone tried Deadlands Hero?

[Talon65]

I've been thinking of about this for awhile and seems like a genre that would work well with Hero system. Take Western Hero, mix it with Horror Hero and sprinkle in some Fantasy Hero. Has anyone done so? How did it go? What problems popped up?

[Maur]

Re: Has anyone tried Deadlands Hero?

 

I think the hardest part of Deadlands to bring over would be the resolution system via the poker deck.

[BlackSword]

Re: Has anyone tried Deadlands Hero?

 

I've been thinking of about this for awhile and seems like a genre that would work well with Hero system. Take Western Hero' date=' mix it with Horror Hero and sprinkle in some Fantasy Hero. Has anyone done so? How did it go? What problems popped up?[/quote']

A lot of Deadlands comes from the rules of the game reinforcing the feel of the game. Magic is low powered and dangerous. Most magic is performed by drawing a hand of cards and comparing it to a hand that is required to complete the spell. The original Deadlands, and the current Savage Worlds ruleset both use card decks to determine intiative. Life can be short, and some of the creatures that you face may easily drive the character insane.

 

All of the genre elements can be ported over, but to really get the feel special rules would have to be written to include magic at the very least.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Has anyone tried Deadlands Hero?

 

We had a discussion about this a few years back. I put together a tentative system for huckster magic, although I never did settle on what sort of limitation "Requires Royal Flush" would end up being.

 

I'm sure it will come up if you do a search on "deadlands" and/or "huckster".

 

Most of the other magic styles are pretty straightforward. Mad Science is just a Power skill and some gadgets, and the miracles of the Blessed aren't much different from clerical magic in a regular FH game. Shamanistic magic is a little more difficult, but I'd do it with an END Reserve with limited Recovery. The character would recover more with the self-mutilation type things, and would recover less with quick chants. You'd have to work it out based on how much END the spells actually used, and figure out how much REC each action would provide from there.

[Talon65]

Re: Has anyone tried Deadlands Hero?

 

Well, I was more concerned with the background concept as in Western Hero with Horror and some magic.

 

I'm only passing familiar with Deadlands so all I know about Hucksters is that they use a deck of cards somehow to do magic. I would probably just make a "Card Magic College" ala Fantasy Hero with cards as the foci and Gambling Skill as the magic skill using the possible affects of Huckster or maybe some kind of random Power Pool that's based on the hand that's drawn if I want to include cards in the game.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Has anyone tried Deadlands Hero?

 

Well, I was more concerned with the background concept as in Western Hero with Horror and some magic.

 

I'm only passing familiar with Deadlands so all I know about Hucksters is that they use a deck of cards somehow to do magic. I would probably just make a "Card Magic College" ala Fantasy Hero with cards as the foci and Gambling Skill as the magic skill using the possible affects of Huckster or maybe some kind of random Power Pool that's based on the hand that's drawn if I want to include cards in the game.

Perhaps you could create a magic system based on Activation rather than RSR. Maybe the Gambling skill could act as some sort of Compliment to the Activation in much the same way as one skill could compliment another.

 

I would call needing a Royal Flush 8- (or maybe even less than 8-) and a Pair could be 14-. As I recall, Deadlands actually used a five card stud draw from a real card deck to determine success. That sounds like a pretty straightforward "up to chance" sort of thing, so I'm not sure if Gambling would do anything for you.

 

As far as any bad things that happen because of the magic, Side Effect is your friend.

 

And as another note, you could do either a card draw or default to a die roll. Assign the Required Hand value based on an Activation roll. If you have a deck of cards, then you can offer that option to the player instead of the die roll. In a pinch, such as leaving the cards at home, you could just roll the Activation roll.

 

It's late and I hurt myself real bad today, so I may not be making any sense. If my post is confusing, maybe I can sort it out for you later.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Has anyone tried Deadlands Hero?

 

I would call needing a Royal Flush 8- (or maybe even less than 8-) and a Pair could be 14-. As I recall, Deadlands actually used a five card stud draw from a real card deck to determine success. That sounds like a pretty straightforward "up to chance" sort of thing, so I'm not sure if Gambling would do anything for you.

 

Cards would work fine as an alternative randomizer. The problem here is that a Royal Flush is literally a one-in-a-million thing, while 8- is about 1 in 4. A Full House or Three of a Kind is a better fit for 8-. It's the extreme low likelihoods of anything higher than that that makes Huckster magic hard to work into Hero.

[BlackSword]

Re: Has anyone tried Deadlands Hero?

 

As I recall' date=' Deadlands actually used a five card stud draw from a real card deck to determine success. That sounds like a pretty straightforward "up to chance" sort of thing, so I'm not sure if Gambling would do anything for you.[/quote']

I never played a huckster, but if I recall, the rules were something along the line that you rolled your gambling skill, for every raise you got you received an extra card, so with a good roll you might get two extra cards giving you 7 cards and from that you made your five card hand. In Hero you might make it so that for every two you make your gambling roll by you get an extra card. Also if you botched I believe bad things happened, and if you drew the black joker bad things would happen. IMO if you drop the deck* and just make it skill rolls then don't call it Deadlands, just call it zombies in the old west.

 

*there is more to the Deadlands setting than just the deck, but ultimately the rules give the game the flavor and make it such an interesting setting.

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: Has anyone tried Deadlands Hero?

 

Western Hero Resources

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55990&highlight=Deadlands

 

 

Hmmm...

 

 

QM

[Maur]

Re: Has anyone tried Deadlands Hero?

 

I never played a huckster' date=' but if I recall, the rules were something along the line that you rolled your gambling skill, for every raise you got you received an extra card, so with a good roll you might get two extra cards giving you 7 cards and from that you made your five card hand. In Hero you might make it so that for every two you make your gambling roll by you get an extra card. Also if you botched I believe bad things happened, and if you drew the black joker bad things would happen.[/quote']

 

Another difference in the systems was that Deadlands is an open-ended rolling system. Roll max on a Die, pick it up and roll again and sum up that die's result. Keep doing that till the die stops rolling max. This can lead to a potential where the player could draw quite a few cards out of the deck to make a hand with, which would increase the probability of pulling a Royal Flush since you are forming the hand from more cards.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Has anyone tried Deadlands Hero?

 

I never played a huckster, but if I recall, the rules were something along the line that you rolled your gambling skill, for every raise you got you received an extra card, so with a good roll you might get two extra cards giving you 7 cards and from that you made your five card hand. In Hero you might make it so that for every two you make your gambling roll by you get an extra card. Also if you botched I believe bad things happened, and if you drew the black joker bad things would happen. IMO if you drop the deck* and just make it skill rolls then don't call it Deadlands, just call it zombies in the old west.

 

*there is more to the Deadlands setting than just the deck, but ultimately the rules give the game the flavor and make it such an interesting setting.

Good point. I did not ever have the chance to actually run/play a Deadlands game, so I was not able to commit the rules to memory.

 

So, in order to abstract the concept to a die roll, perhaps the Activation with a Complimentary Gambling roll. As Cap. Obvious pointed out, the odds are different, so reduce the Activation to as low as appropriate to simulate the odds.

 

Regarding the Deadlands setting itself, I loved the concepts presented in it. At the time, I didn't have any players, so I was unable to run an actual game.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Has anyone tried Deadlands Hero?

 

I have actually played a Deadlands Hero game, a few actually.

 

I'm a flat gunslinger so I don't have Magic. I can post the Character if you'd like.

 

I'll get with the GMs to see how they set up the magic; it works very well, good setting for Hero.

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: Has anyone tried Deadlands Hero?

 

House Rules : Luck Chits

 

At the beginning of each session the Players draw randomly one Luck Chit from the Bag. Player Characters with the Luck Power randomly draw an additional Luck Chit for every d6 of Luck.

 

At the End of each session all Players return any unspent Luck Chits to the Bag. Sometimes you want Quantity, sometimes Quality. The Luck Chits go away at the end of the game, no carry over. Use 'em or lose 'em... which encourages interactive use and not hoarding.

 

White Luck Chits: x 30 [1W = 1W] Allows a Reroll of any one roll you control. Or allows an Abort Manuever (to Dodge, Block, Dive for Cover, etc …) without using an Action. It also allows a single Recovery, without using an Action. It also allows Players to modify the Hit Location Chart (Defensively) and move the hit location by One (up or down).

Green Luck Chits: x 30 [1G = 2W] Same as White, plus you can spend a green to take away a single die in a "to hit" or "skill" roll, to gain a success. Rolled a 15... Spend a Green, take away that 6, now you have a 9! Success! (The GM randomly draws a chit for the villains, if you spend a Green) It also allows Players to modify the Hit Location Chart (Defensively) and move the hit location by Two (up or down).

Blue Luck Chits: x 30 [1B = 3W or 1G & 1W] same as Green, without any benefit to GM. Blue is also a way to "flex" powers in a supers game. It allows a power to be used in a way that fits the SFX, but they haven't paid points for. [Ex: Flame character... wants to reduce the fire in a room to save a child... but doesn't have this power. Spends a Blue for this one action, his EB (or whatever) becomes Suppress normal fires, and he can do it.]

Blue also allows for "dramatic editing" so that the character can simply say, "I grab the broom handle and snap it off, so I have a stake to fight the vampire!" rather than asking, "Is there anything wooded around?" In the case I highlighted in the last Secret Worlds adventure... on PC was way out of the combat, and spent the Blue to come up with a creative way to get his character there "right now!". It also allows Players to modify the Hit Location Chart (Defensively and Offensively) and move the hit location by Three (up or down).

 

Yellow Luck Chit: x 1 [1Y = 2B or 3G or 6W] There is only one in the bag, but if drawn, the player can become GM for a scene. They get to create and event or subplot or something along those lines, that fits with their character concept and long term goals. I've had one person spend it so his character finally got his Thesis on Paranormal Gestation Theory published, and to wide acclaim, so he became famous in those circles as THE expert on metahuman bio-genesis.

Another spent it, so that during a mission, he accidentally stumbled across some critical information about villain financing... this changed the entire SHAPE of the campaign, as the villains funding was exposed, and they had to come out of the shadows, rather than manipulate from behind the scenes.

 

The Yellow Luck Chit is usually just one "scene" or "event" They don't tend to really run the game in terms of controlling NPCs... They just say, "Ok... here's this cool thing that I want to have happen, with this or that character..." They often don't force a certain outcome, they just want to have something that really shows off their character, or allows their character to have a really big impact on the plot. (I guess it could be abused, but I've got great players. They tend to enhance the story and the world... not control it.)

 

Luck Power: [ each d6 Luck = 1 Luck Chit ] Drawn randomly and still allows the Player Characters to use the Luck Power as written in HERO System 5th Edition .

 

It's a great system ... players seem to really love it ... and it gives flexibility within limits. I've been doing it for probably 6 years or more at this point. I'd never go back. .

 

I'd created a generic "luck roll" to help determine random events. Roll 3d6... sixes good, ones bad. So if a player asks something like, "I need a rock to throw at the wild dogs making off with the baby!" I'd say, "Roll a luck roll," to determine if there just happened to be a rock around. Good luck, there is a perfect throwing rock, right at your feet. Bad luck... no rock to be found. Neither/nor... there is a rock, but its’ 20 feet away, and will take a turn to get it.

 

Luck (the Talent back then, now a Power) allowed characters to roll an extra die for each luck die they had... and that die could only be good for them (ones didn't count.)

 

RDU Neil’s Dark Champions: Secret Worlds Thread

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12191&page=3&pp=30

 

This worked pretty well, but for years there was a need to open up Champs/HERO System, to allow some flexibility with powers and give players a little more control over their characters destiny and story.

 

 

Cheers

 

 

QM