Magic Items in Deadlands - I Handed Out a Few

 

Now magic items in RPGs are fairly common but not all games use them the same way. In D&D and similar games they are built into the game's assumptions - and the players' as well. If your character has few levels under their belt and you don't have a magic item of some kind ... well that's an unusual game in my experience. 

Yes, Deadlands does have magic items. In general though they are not run-of-the-mill things one finds and then replaces as one "levels up". They tend to be fairly powerful for a character and retained regardless. Nor are they 100% beneficial as most of them have a "taint" which inflicts some negative effect on the character while they retain the item. There are roughly 3 tiers of unusual items in Deadlands:

• The Steampunk level stuff that is somewhat mass-produced. These are things that can be found in the Smith & Robards catalog. These are not overtly magical but they are a bit more than conventional physics or engineering would allow which is typically explained by "ghost rock" - powered by, shavings of, steel forged using ... etc.  Many of the more complex devices have a malfunction effect to remind players of the risks of pushing the envelope.
• Mad Science Devices can be created by a mad scientist is you have one in your party or know a really benevolent NPC. These can often do more - basically replicating a power - but tend to be limited to a fixed number of charges or a hard time limit. They are unique and cannot generally be sold or traded. They operate similarly to supervillain gadgets in a superhero campaign in that respect. 
• Relics are the permanent big time magic items in the Deadlands setting. They generally are not "crafted" but are instead created in the heat of a catastrophic or tragic event. They are not really something one can buy or sell and there is no known list of common relics because they are not common!

So now that we have that breakdown I can explain that although I have been playing around with Deadlands in various forms since the 90's when it came out I have never placed a relic in my games. There have been mad scientists whipping up flamethrowers and the like, and Smith & Robards has done some business, but I haven't dropped a single relic ever. It's a little strange for me and once I started thinking about it I wondered if I had developed a blind spot for them in this setting.

The reason for this realization is that after 20 sessions of The Flood campaign we were finishing up the Shan Fan arc (if you've played it you'll know what that means) and there comes a point where the party helps to defend a secret society's vault of artifacts. The suggestion is to reward your players with some unusual items or a bunch of money for doing this. As I contemplated how this could go I realized my lack of prior relic drops. As I dug into them with the aim of making it like a traditional D&D treasure horde where you conveniently find a range of items tailored to the party or at least generally useful for a D&D party I realized this might not be the best approach. 

No, there is no "random relic table" in Deadlands. Sure, I could make one, and as much fun as that might be it didn't really feel right either. 

So I went full 4th edition D&D: I let my players tell me what they found in the vaults. 

Each one got to pick one item from the relics list or from the S&R catalog, subject to GM veto if they got way too ridiculous. I told them to think about their character, both how they've played them up until now and also where they want to take them in the future, both mechanically and conceptually, as this could be a turning point in their life. They have insight into the big picture of Deadlands now and they just survived a war between triads - things might go in a different direction for them after this and finding some relic or infernal device could be a part of that change. 

I trust my players and they did not disappoint. No one tried to break the game.

• The very practically-minded bounty hunter took Owl-Eye Goggles - steampunk night vision goggles - they're not even a relic but they fit the character perfectly.
• The mad scientist chose an Epitaph Camera, which is an in-universe thing that is used by the Tombstone Epitaph to publish pictures of unusual events and this totally fits with his interest in making moving pictures for education and entertainment purposes. This is also not a relic.
• The huckster/hexslinger finally got a decent Book of Hoyle. She's been searching for one the entire game and finally got what I believe is about the third best type in the game, the 1801 version. This is a major way for this type of magic-tosser to learn new powers and her capabilities will expand quite a bit now. 
• The martial artist had a really hard time deciding but ended up taking a lucky jackalope's foot. This basically just gives him 2 extra bennies per session (which can be super useful) a the risk of making critical failures a whole lot worse if (when) one happens. It is a relic but is pretty generally useful. Considering he is the stealth guy, the melee guy, and their liaison to the Chinese community I am sure he will find them useful. 
• The gunslinger of course had to pick a gun - in this case the Guns of Jericho ... which are bad ... but also kind of awesome. It's a cursed Gatling rifle that stains the wielders hands black, make the user Greedy and Mean (these are Hindrances in-game), and on a critical failure the guns disappear and reappear somewhere else. Oh, and the evil hombre that created them is still out there looking for him and might show up if word gets out that someone is using his guns somewhere - what GM doesn't see the potential in THAT kind of setup!

So I am very happy with this set of choices and for now I think my decision to let them pick instead of picking for them or going random was a good call. We are already into the next adventure which involves a haunted island that may have one of the marks they need to find so I will update as the game progresses. 

Meme-ish Monday

 

Meme-ish Monday

 

40K Friday - Pre-10th Edition Roundup

 

The updates keep coming:

• Faction Rules
• Leaders are joining units again
• Vehicle rules are a little different
• Weapons have some changes

I have to say so far I remain cautiously optimistic. It does feel like concerns about the 8th/9th edition rules have been heard and are being addressed. I'm sure it won't be perfect but it feels like a move in the right direction. Shooting out of a rhino is a real throwback as is moving back to characters in units. People are worried about the faction rules eliminating a lot of flavor but I suspect many of the bigger subfactions will become separate factions on their own. 

Looking forward to the edition change I decided to focus in on a few of my armies. I say this because one of my long-term issues is that I tend to jump around between them picking up a unit here and a unit there, something for Orks one week then something for Marines the next and then something for Chaos after that and then a lot of it sits around half done for years. So I have unit X, and it's probably built so it's technically playable, but it's at best primed or basecoated. Over time I will build up a sizable group of mostly-painted or "almost done" units for a given army and it's damned annoying even though I'm doing it to myself. This can happen even when I pick up a model that is technically painted because I usually need to do some touch ups and work on the bases to make them fit into my existing army.

I'm sure there's room in there for another landspeeder and another predator ... and maybe another redemptor ...

I go through bursts of finishing up these half-completed units every so often and right now I'm working through my Crimson Fists backlog of "blue but not yet completed" miniatures which has a lot of things that were built and basecoated in a prior decade but never finished. This week I managed to close out a Gravis Captain (the fat one from Dark Imperium), a land speeder I originally got in the 3rd edition starter set (yes, it took me around 25 years to get it from "on sprue" to "done" and no that is not a record for me), and a squadron of 5 bikes which I have wanted to do for a long time but had not. 

With those actually finished I now have some Fast Attack options to choose from which has always been a back burner kind of thing in my marine armies. I did something similar a few years back with Elites when I added a couple of Terminator squads and a bunch of dreadnoughts to expand my choices there. A trio of attack bikes is in progress now along with a third landspeeder to finish out the speed options. I'm also close to completing an old MKII Predator to complete my Predator trio for this army. 

It feels like I'm making real progress on reducing the pile of shame here so naturally I had to go and complicate things by deciding it was time to add in some real primaris options too. Right now there are intercessors, assault intercessors, heavy intercessors, aggressors, another captain and a pair of lieutenants either newly arrived or on the way and I already had a repulsor, some inceptors, some hellblasters, and a captain and a chaplain waiting for an opportunity to join up so that's going to be a significant project for the next month. I originally chose the Fists because they were a much simpler paint scheme to do after doing Howling Griffons for my old RT/2E army. I'm going to force myself to remember that and burn through some intercessor squads now instead of letting them gather dust on the to-do pile. More to come on that. 

Of course I'm not just focusing on one army - that would be too easy. I've picked up a few Death Guard units recently and I'm slowly working on making them into a real army and not just a collection of interesting parts. I've finally added some of the newer plastic plague marines to the force after resisting the temptation as I want to build some melee squads and they have a lot of options there. I'm also getting the terminators and vehicles sorted out and figuring out how I want to paint them all in hopes of looking like a somewhat cohesive force. 

I also added some options to my Grey Knights force - like an actual metal Draigo! - but the main focus there has been painting up the rhinos/razorbacks/land raider/dreadnoughts to get their vehicles sorted out as well. Not as big of a project but still important to "finish" the force.

Not mine but "Goals"

Finally the other focus area is my Black Templars. I've had a lot of built and basecoated stuff for them for a few years now, enough to play some games, but not much is really "done". I really like their updated crusader squad sprues and some of the other chapter-specific bling that's available for them so I picked up some more of those sets as well and have plans for a couple of big footslogger squads to try something different. 

Anyway there's a Friday brain dump on the 40K situation. Lots of power armor to paint - more next week!

Deadlands, Star Wars, and the Sentinel Comics RPG

 

It's been an interesting year so far. Besides working on mini's in anticipation of the new edition and catching back up on STO I've managed to run a fair number of games. So far that's 4 sessions of FFG Star Wars, 4 sessions of Deadlands, and 1 session of the Sentinel Comics RPG.

We play on Saturday evenings and things have settled into a steady average of 3 out of 4 weekends in any given month. It's not bad considering everyone has jobs and families and I no longer have my in-house crew to run for in between the big sessions.

I talked about scheduling issues here and how I planned to overcome them and the plan is working pretty well ... with a few adjustments.

• Deadlands is still the "main" game and is still set for the 1st and 4th weekends. We miss one here and there but this is working.
• Star Wars is 2nd weekends and has been hit and miss but the players are still interested so it's still in the rotation.
• 3rd weekends ... for some reason 3rd weekends have been a regular gap for us. I'm not sure why but for now I've decided to stop fighting it and just stay flexible. 

To adjust to this we discussed options for a backup game and for a while we leaned towards something like Battletech but there is a certain amount of setup time and haggling over when and which mechs and tonnage or points and it just was not feeling like the right answer. This led to the re-realization that a supers game has near-infinite flexibility for characters to come and go each session and with the 3rd weekend - penciled in as a supers game - not happening it was an easy call. So that's how I came to run a SCRPG game last weekend. 

I'll post up a session report later since it's a new campaign and I really need to get back in the habit of doing those. For now though it is the ongoing, intermittent, backup game. I have 5 players. If at least 4 of them can make it we will run the scheduled game. If we are at 3 or less I will run the Superhero option and we will get back on track the next weekend. 

Of course I get all this figured out and then realize this month has a 5th weekend ... ah well we will figure something out.

Meme-ish Monday

 

40K Friday - Monday Edition: Tenth Edition

 

Well, it's here. After much rumor-mongering over the last six months GW went ahead and announced that we will be seeing the next edition of Warhammer 40,000 in June of this year. If you haven't seen it all here's the page where they are posting the information as it comes out. 

So far I am cautiously optimistic. It sounds like they recognize the issues with the way the game has developed over 8th & 9th and that multiple layers of complexity in play do not automatically make for a better game. Some high points for me:

• The new datasheets do not appear to be simplifying the units themselves but putting all of the information onto them and then making them available as card packs is a huge improvement. A one-stop reference to use during play is a great step and we do not appear to be losing any stats (like the rumored Toughness elimination a while back) or any flavor as of now.

• The new detachment system sounds like they are implementing some modern game design thinking. The way to allow for a wide range of options for players is not to pile on more and more layers but instead to have a fixed number of "slots" that can change based on what kind of army you want to play. All-terminator army? It probably won't be locked into the Dark Angel Deathwing only but will be an option any marine army can use that will have different options than a standard marine strike force type army. Same with an all-biker army or a tank army or really any themed force you can think of. This -should- give us a ton of flexibility without drastic power differences or weird rules hiccups like only being able to use Dark Angels characters if you want to run and all-bike or all-termie force or even crazier stuff like an all-character force. We shall see but it sounds good right now.

• The new army construction approach looks promising beyond the detachment piece too. I was a fan of the old one (HQ+ 2 Troops!) as well as the more recent versions most of the time but it could really get in the way at times and turned troops into weakened units commonly seen as a tax to get to the good stuff. This looser approach has a lot of potential but of course the obvious question is "why wouldn't you just take all the good stuff now and skip the troops type units?". They say they will be adding some unique capability to units but only the first one will grant it or it will only be usable once per turn regardless of how many of those units you have so there is less of an incentive to  spam things and more incentive to include a wider range of things. This seems like a great way to do it if they a) get it right and b) maintain the approach going forward and don't break it 3 codexes in.  
• The approach to the launch is refreshing as well. Free rules plus free indexes for all armies will give players a chance to try out the new edition with all of the forces at their disposal. I'd love to see this time used as a giant playtest round to sort out the rules and possibly the armies as well but I doubt the rules will benefit much from this as they are not calling it a playtest. The codexes will as I am 100% sure index feedback will drive some of the changes that will be made for the codex versions of the army, especially the later codexes, so we have that at least.

 Some other interesting implications of what they've announced so far: They do specifically mention "datasheets" and right now for example Space Marine armies have 3 different types of land raiders and two types of predators, Orks have their various buggies that are individual sheets, Imperial Guard now have 3 types of Troop infantry squads ... depending on how those kinds of things translate to the new edition it may be possible to field some really interesting armies. Assuming some kind of Forge World style HQ land raider shows up in 10th we could field the old Epic land raider company in 40K ... all on its own.

Also there will be effectively two releases/updates/stress points for players. There is the initial release with the indexes which will look and play one way and then a later update for each army when the codex comes out and inevitably changes how the army plays to some degree. We saw it with 8th where some index armies could go toe-to-toe with new codex armies and some were ... less capable. It's bound to happen this time as well as I do not think their approach is changing so much that we will get all of the codexes released at the same time or even in a very short window. It would be great if they could shorten the usual pattern for these but who knows at this point. I'd much rather see all the codexes released in say, Year 1, then campaign books and the like released for the rest of the edition. 

So, for now at least, I am pretty optimistic about the whole thing and looking forward to exploring a new arena with some old and new armies.

Meme-ish Monday

 

Meme-ish Monday

 

Miniature Musings - Building for Age of Sigmar

 

Well, I've let it happen. Pretty much every one of my 40K armies has some kind of backlog but they also can all make playable and at least partially painted armies. I try not to let a gathering of plastic sit too long in an unplayable state even if it's not painted. So having achieved that state some time ago I decided to start expanding my Age of Sigmar forces ...

Yep, that's a big ol' pile of angry dwarfs waiting to be built. They are completely unplayable as nothing is built. I wanted to do this one a certain way so I ordered custom stonework-looking bases for the whole damn army and that meant I couldn't really buy already built or painted units so here they sit ... on the sprues. Now this has all developed this year so they are not too backlogged but I haven't made much progress beyond the "acquisition" stage. That's multiple Start Collecting boxes because they are a hugely better deal than the newer options and some individual unit pickups of Vulkites and Hearthguard. Grombrindal there in the blister pack will be my first Grimwrath Berzerker.

Beyond what's already here I don't need much - maybe a few more Magmadroths if I like how they play (I have 3 at the moment) and probably a few more Berzerkers and Doomseekers down the road to have more options. I want each of those to be unique so it will take a little more effort but I'm not in a rush.

The chaos warriors are in a slightly better state though it may be hard to tell. I talked about restarting this journey a while back and I did follow though on that. I put together a squad of chaos warriors, dusted off some knights I picked up a while back, found a heckuva deal on some painted chaos knights (the red guys up there), finished gathering up marauder parts and at least one of the Warcry warbands which seem to be big players in the AoS chaos books. I have some characters put together as well so while it's not all pretty yet I could play them in a 1000 point game at least - progress!

The big additions here were in the Slaves to Darkness army box that came out last fall that came with the new army book, new daemon prince, new chosen (finally in plastic!), and new "Ogroid Theriadons". That last unit is a pack of 3 ogre/troll/minotaur-looking things and I really like them so I added 3 more to make a nasty unit of 6. I used to field chaos trolls in the old days so I like having a brute squad in my otherwise mostly human-ish force and these are the new heavy hitters. I already had the prior Start Collecting box with warriors, knights, and the lord on karakadrakadrakka thing sitting around from a prior flirtation with these kinds of thoughts. Converting some of my old characters to round bases meant I had a pretty solid force right away so now the big task ahead is to finish building and get the rest of the painting done.

Then there are the Beasts! I've been bouncing these guys around for more than 20 years and I may finally get them onto the table as an actual army soon. In the early to middle years of Warhammer Fantasy "Chaos" armies included everything - warriors, beastmen, daemons,  whatever. Over the years as they expanded the range they split each of those forces off into separate armies which felt very forced at times but that's how it went. These beastmen started off as add-ons to my Chaos army that was mostly chaos warriors. The daemons I had back then eventually became a separate army and ended up used in 40K more than fantasy. The beastmen though just kind of sat. They made good gnolls for D&D but I didn't really care about building them out to be a full Warhammer army. A few years ago I seriously considered making them a "The Herd" army for Kings of War so I picked up a Cygor/Ghorgon to be a potential centerpiece but I ended up just letting them all sit in a box for the next few years. 

This year as the Sigmar interest developed and I started going through boxes and drawers sorting out fantasy parts I realized I had a pretty good amount of them. With the Beasts of Chaos battletome coming out for 3rd edition as well I figured the time was right so I started basing them up and adding up points and I realized I didn't really need to add much. I have enough old figures that are effectively Gors to make the battleline units I need. I have old metal shamans and beastlords so the characters are covered. My old metal dragon ogres are complete and while they aren't as pretty as the newer ones they are still perfectly usable here. The Chaos Warhounds I bought years ago to use as Flesh Hounds in my daemon army when the official models looked bad are still the current model for Warhounds  so why not pull them back into the army they're supposed to be in?

The minotaurs are a pure indulgence on my part - I like minotaurs, I like the current GW models in particular, and I thought an all-minotaur army would be a fun skew list to play so i started buying some. Right now I'm at 6 which will probably be one unit and I also picked up an old metal Doombull I can use to make them Battleline. This is really the only part I have spent money on with this army other than the book and it's probably the most playable of the three. 

Future acquisitions will likely include more of the giant monsters as those would be fun too. More minotaurs obviously. I'd like to get up to 18 of those to be able to throw out 3x 6-bull squads. I know Bestigors and Ungors are major parts of the army but I just don't care about them that much. One day I'm sure I'll want some but for now it's mainly what I have plus Bullgors. 

Beyond these newer arrivals I still have the half-painted-mostly-built Seraphon army in the miniatures closet from a few years back and also the large pile of Stormcast and Blades of Khorne I acquired through multiple boxed set purchases back in 1st & 2nd edition. 

There are also the 4 daemon armies that are mainly for 40K but work perfectly well in AoS too and those are actually in pretty decent shape - probably the most "done" of any of these forces. It helps that you can play them in both games. 

So yeah, this is a fairly stupid way to get into an army - stumbling into it with half-done units over multiple editions. I would not recommend doing it this way at all. The choose it/buy it/build it/paint it approach, ONE army at a time, is far more sensible. So if you're not already invested in one of these games do it that way, two armies at most so you can play games or teach people on your own. Hopefully I can make enough progress on these to feel it's worth posting about them again later this year. Maybe even play some actual games too ...

Onward!