12 Games July: Deadlands (Week 1)

Getting back on track with a new month we're gonna be looking at the original Deadlands game for July.  I've personally been really excited to check this out as it's more or less the father of my favorite system Savage Worlds.  As with a fair amount of my games I do have a player in my group very familiar with this one and while he raves about how great this game is he also warned me not to be in the Savage Worlds mindset when looking at this because while a lot fo the mechanics are similar none of them are the same.



Now week one isn't really a discussion on mechanics so I'll leave the differences I've already spotted for week 3, but I can already tell what he's talking about.  As for the books themselves I have to say the presentation is top notch.  I was going to complain about the confusing nature of the Marshal's Handbook (Their version of a DMG), but it turns out I was just reading the wrong book, Marshal's Law, which  is actually an adventure book.

Confusing name similarity aside this game is just oozing with flavor.  I will say if words like "Shootin" instead of shooting bug you be prepared to be bugged because everything is written with a western twang, but I spent a huge chunk of my life living in Texas so it doesn't get to me.  There does seem to be a fluff short story at the beginning of most of the books which if you don't know already is a bit of a per peeve for me.  I happen to think the stories belong as their own book and the rules belong in the rules books.  That said though, there only ever seems to be one, unlike reading a Shadowrun book, and always at the front of the book so skipping them isn't much of a hassle.

All in all I'm still pretty pumped about this system and honestly wishing my friend who knows it better would be running it so I could play instead, but that's not my job.  I really want to get into how fun character creation is, but that's a story for next week.  So with that I'll end it here for now.