Harrowed, the Accidental Arcane Background

I guess I'll start with addressing the point brought up in 'Badass Normal or Arcane Asskicker' (hooray, a response!). I think that the point brought up is valid but it isn't always universally applicable. The first thing to note is this, Deadlands tends to have a very high rate of turnover and there isn't much saying what happens if a new character is made, in fact the default seems to be that you start over at the base again. In games where the Marshal is a bit kinder and/or where character turnover isn't quite as fast arcane backgrounds can end up becoming far more potent, if only because after you reach a certain level of oomph as a normal it can become quite prohibitively expensive whereas the one with the Arcane Background gets to keep buying powers at 5 points a pop. This might be an area where the system breaks down a bit, but I think that in general the argument I made still stands.

I think that maybe I should bring up the Arcane Background that isn't exactly, the Harrowed. The Harrowed is a bit of an odd duck in that you don't choose it, it really does choose you, or at least it is thrust upon you. A Harrowed is a formerly living person who died, they were someone who had done enough ass kicking in life that a demon of the reckoning decided that said person would be excellent for making mischief with. They enter the person as they die, re-binding the soul to the body and then the fun starts. If you have the time the idea is to run a dream sequence, the player stumbles through their literal worst nightmare. The nightmare is a see-saw game where they and the demon in their head vie for dominion points, the values at the end are used to provide bonuses to the dominion roll (IE who's in charge). The demon might be subtle or overt but they are always hateful, always evil, and if your character is any kind of hero they will not be happy about this. Now the question that might come up is why the hero doesn't just try to end it again, after all the idea of living again is somewhat tainted by the fear of an evil being using your body to cause pain and suffering. Not to mention the obvious concerns of the suffering one is likely to endure at the hands of those wronged by the demon in your head or the risk to people you're close to. The reason is simple, and the demon will often point these out in desperation, since now if you die it faces total oblivion so self preservation is on its end.

The harrowed has some basic advantages, they ignore 3 levels of wound modifiers due to their relative inability to feel pain which is pretty handy by itself. In addition you can heal nearly any injury so long as a limb isn't blown off and you recover quicker than a normal person. Not to mention, only a headshot can take you out now, a bullet to the heart might slow the harrowed down, destroy it and they'll be stunned until they get some meat to eat but it won't keep them down forever. That alone isn't it however, the harrowed also has access to powers, some they begin with and others they can use bounty points to purchase.

These powers run the gamut, some grant further increased healing and recovery even to the poiint of regrowing limbs that were lost (though only those that were lost post mortem, if you have no arm pre mortem you still have no arm). The ability to see in the darkness, being able to call on the fire and winds to strike down enemies, control over the insects that creep over the earth. There was also the old fashioned boost to stats, letting those that chose that go beyond the normal limits of mere mortals granting them some fairly potent physical and mental prowess. There were even powers that granted extra actions or souped up existing arcane backgrounds (hucksters got extra cards for example) as well as stuff that could let you shrug off magic, walk on walls, walk through walls...there were a lot of powers. Most of them tended towards the creepy angle but that made some sense, after all you were a walking dead man animated by a pissed off demon so your powers probably weren't going to look all sweetness and light.

That alone isn't even everything, the harrowed also have the ability to 'count coup.' This has to do with the fact that the Harrowed is now a supernatural being, at least in part. In Weird West the Harrowed is the only one that can count coup, in wasted west everyone can so this one is being mentioned separately. Counting coup works like this, there are some supernatural beings that are so potent that in death they leave a bit of themselves behind, maybe it's a last curse on the earth or maybe it's just that they had so much power you get to lay claim to some of it in their death. Whatever the case you can count coup and absorb some of their essence. Now a group of harrowed has to squabble over abilities, rolling opposed spirit rolls to lay claim to the essence of the being, the winner getting it and the losers not. These powers can be minor or major, they can give small bonuses or they can grant entirely new powers and abilities. While this does depend heavily on what is faced it is arguably one of the more interesting capabilties that a harrowed has.

Becoming a Harrowed though is tricky, it isn't just a matter of dying, if that were all then whole groups of players would have their characters in suicide pacts. The truth is that first of all the character has to die and the head must be intact in death, no gray matter, no harrowed. The next step is that the player draws cards from a shuffled deck (jokers included), they get 1 card base then one extra card for each point of grit earned, grit is capped at 5 for guts checks at least but some Marshals let it keep accumulating for the sake of becoming harrowed. If the player draws a black or red joker a manitou thought they were worth using and decided to make themselves at home. There are other things that can be done and used as well, the dead mans boots net 3 more cards, there is a huckster hex that grants a greater chance of returning but also gives the demon more a chance to stay in charge after the trainsformation, shamans with ghost medicine get an extra card for every ghost medicine favor they have, and even the blessed have a gift which can allow them a better chance to return harrowed.

The harrowed is fairly potent, but there are downsides that the player and group have to deal with. A basic one is distrust, if they discover what their comrade has become they now have to wonder what or who is looking at them from behind those literally dead eyes. There is also the problem that the demon has the ability to randomly try to grab for the reigns and can royally fuck up the group if it grabs at the right time. When the player is in control the demon sees and remembers everything done, when the demon is in control the player has no bloody clue what went on which only makes for more fun. There is also the meta fact that the marshal gets an extra chip that they can use to keep various villains alive or give them better rolls, or just to use to try to help the demon grab the reigns and screw the posse over.

The big advantage the harrowed faces is that most of their powers are fairly cheap considering what they do, a new power costs 10 bounty points and then advancing it costs double the level of the power. With some of these powers you quite get your moneys worth. The other thing to recognize is that this can offer quite a bit to any character, a gunslinger can suddenly become so fast that they can't be beaten on the draw by any mortal. Or perhaps a treasured weapon suddenly becomes infused with arcane power making it stronger, far more potent and maybe adding some abilities to it that didn't exist before. A huckster can suddenly do far more with their hexes, a mad scientist can gain far greater inspiration for creating their devices, in short there are a fair number of interesting options available here for anyone.

Tricking you into Roleplaying

One thing that some people complain about in RPGs is a lack of roleplaying in their games, IE the players just want to fight or they don't seem to know how to 'play' their characters. Encouraging players that are either disinterested in it or inexperienced can be tricky. They might fear causing trouble in a game or they might not see a point to it. There are little ways, give players some kind of incentive to write backstories or roleplay but of course this can be imperfect as well. Do you reward someone for playing a jerk and how do you avoid players trying to 'game' their histories to justify overpowered things?

Believe it or not Deadlands came up with a way to deal with this again and evne managed to make it integral to the game. It starts in character creation, if you want any of the edges (including arcane backgrounds) you need to take flaws. These flaws offer ways to define a character, are you a drunk, unlucky? Maybe your character is a hero, someone who can't turn down a call for help. Perhaps they're utterly loyal to those around them, willing to follow a close friend to the gates of hell and back. Maybe they have an oath they took to do something or not to do it. In short the flaws represent traits of a character and end up either being a handle that someone can yank or a mechanical risk. There are a few exceptions, Death Wish and arguably Grim Servant o' Death being among them.

The big reason it works is this, it manages to actually sidestep many of the traditional problems in games where flaws exist. Consider games that have flaws, frequently players will either take flaws that are very unlikely to come up (IE the archer sucking at melee or spellcasting), have little impact, or the character might sidestep/ignore some of the social flaws. In Deadlands though things work a little differently, see in Deadlands your flaws can actually be a bit more important than any of your edges, and far more valuable.

In Deadlands you got fate chips three ways. One was simply that everyone drew 3 fate chips from the pot of fate (sometimes more or less depending on edges and flaws). The second was as a reward for defeating challenges based on the difficulty thereof. The final bit, and this is probably the most important, is from having your flaws cause you trouble. See, the more your flaws caused you and your friends trouble the more that fate rewarded you. Get a bit inconvenienced, white chip, get in some trouble you got a red chip, end up in a situation where you nearly died or blew an investigation because of your flaw, blue chip.

This actually did a few things, my own group wasn't huge into roleplay but roleplay, especially roleplay where your flaws got you in trouble, got you more chips that could feed powers, negate wounds, restore wind, or just get turned in for bounty points. Your flaws were a means to grow, sure feel free to take flaws that will rarely ever come up, fine with me, it just means that you won't advance as fast as the other players and that you might run out of chips when you're fighting a group of trigger happy bandits or facing down some hell-spawned abomination. Now on the other hand, maybe someone would take flaws that would make trouble for the group, earn a good chunk of chips but make things terrible for the rest of the group. Well at that point maybe they decide to fit your character with a hemp necktie or just bury them in the desert near an anthill with a trail of honey leading to their mouth. Flaws, and having the flaws affect your character, meant you had to roleplay them, had to take consequences but that you also could get some nice stuff out of it.

The second thing that helps bring roleplay in for the game is simply the Veteran edge. Veterans of the Weird and Wasted West (Or Way Out if you play Lost Colony) had to write a 1-3 page backstory for their character, what they faced, what they learned and generally what they did to earn those extra character points. Now it also comes with a random set of kicks to the head on a special table (but the Marshal is encouraged to come up with something unique if they get an idea that fits better or is more interesting than the stuff on the chart.) The backstory helps them ground themselves a bit in their character, get an idea for who the character is and where they came from. It also helps the Marshal out because they can take elements from the writeup and use it to help make the characters feel more a part of the world. In fact one of my favorite things from the campaign that I'm wrapping up was an enemy of one of the players, an enemy that in fact caused him to start on the path to becoming a Texas Ranger and ultimately to be taken down by the posse (with disturbing ease, I have one helluva tough group)

All of this together makes situations where the players will probably WANT to roleplay. And even if it starts out more as them trying to acquire chips they can come to enjoy interacting with the people that populate the game world. At least that's my view of the whole thing. Many other games I have played that use flaws and similar things have trouble on this front, I think this is part of why I'm such a fan of the classic Deadlands games but any other systems out there that offer this are of interest. Have fun and may you rarely fumble.

Badass normal or Arcane asskicker?

One of the big things that intrigued me with Deadlands was the character creation setup where you had the option of grabbing some fairly sweet powers. One of the options was taking an 'Arcane Background' these let you tap into a bit of supernatural mojo you could wield against the creatures of darkness. In Weird west there were a few different options available, the main book gave us the Mad Scientist, the Huckster, the Blessed, and the Shaman.

The Mad Scientist is a brilliant inventor, able to build things that bend or outright break the laws of science and reason, in part because their muses are in fact carrion breathed horrors that sometimes twist the poor scientists mind too much when offering inspiration and cause delusions, paranoia, etc. (to say nothing of crazy hair). The Huckster was a spellcaster that might have had the slogan 'with great power comes great randomness.' The concept was that you had learned to tap the spirit world for power, requiring you to play a hand of poker against a powerful denizen there, if you won you got their power to cast a spell, if you lost you didn't. However if you rolled badly or pulled a black joker you risked the hex going wild, power tearing you apart or your gray matter being kicked around. The Blessed kick ass for the lord, and for other high powers, Christians were the most common but there were also rules for Jews, Taoists, and Muslims. The Blessed were probably the strongest of the arcane backgrounds, if only because they had a collection of 'always on' abilities to choose from as well as invokable miracles, they had some other advantages as well but I'll get to those later. The last core option was the Shaman, in theory it was a fairly potent arcane background available only to those with native american characters. In practice... given enough time to prepare and enough relics and totems to amp your appeasement points and all that and you could have a group of guys in loincloths with clubs destroy a platoon of soldiers in body armor with gattling guns and steam powered tanks while not losing anyone. However they are probably the weakest of the arcane backgrounds, due to both the heavy amount of character resources consumed as well as the far clunkier and problematic system for using effects.

Supplements added some rather unique and interesting new ideas, the voodoo priest, the martial artist, the shootist, and the metal mage (a fusion of mad science and hucksterism). These were a fair amount different but I also have relatively little experience with them save the metal mage and that one is a fusion result, requiring both arcane backgrounds be taken as well as a few unique features. The shootist was essentially a variant of the Huckster, except in this case you channeled arcane energy through your guns. The interesting thing was that arcane backgrounds didn't quite define the character so much as the way they were used did. One person could easily play a Huckster loaded to the gills with various hexes and take edges built around being a better caster while someone else might only have a few hexes that they use to make themselves a more effective detective or gunslinger. A blessed could be a wandering preacher dispensing miracles to various lost souls, a monster hunter that kicks ass for the lord, or someone of faith that a higher power smiles on every now and again. The Mad Scientist is a bit more inevitably required to have a focus with their skills, as they have no real powers to speak of other than their inventing prowess. The Shamans are in a bit of a bind, while they can be many different types of shaman they are unfortunately strongly tied to their background moreso than others, but that might fit the theme.

This is not to assume, however, that everyone is or even should have an arcane background. In fact it is quite easy to make a very potent character that has no knowledge or use for such powers. You could easily build a gunslinger that can draw quicker than lightning, stare down a grizzly, and see a horde of death and terror and do little more than give a sigh of vexation that you might not have enough ammo. This is one of the advantages in Deadlands came from, there is actually an argument that could be made that the mundane characters were stronger than the magically powered ones, or at the very least were their rough equals.

One reason for this is simply a matter of the nature of the world. By and large the 'normals' had no bloody clue about the supernatural other than a few vague rumors here and there. Using supernatural powers in a public place is a major no-no, the lone exceptions to this would probably be the Blessed and the Shamans, though the Shamans only really count within tribal lands. The Blessed powers frequently either didn't get noticed or are the equivalent to modern faith healers (except in this case they would actually work!) Huckster powers are usually quite flashy and fairly destructive, a huckster that used his powers to drive off some bandits would probably end up lynched by a terrified town that they tried to save or they'd end up being threatened, press ganged, imprisoned or killed by either the Agency or the Texas Rangers depending on which side of the border they happened to be on. There is also the fact that the Huckster powers show flashing cards in the hand of the huckster using the hex, and remember this is in addition to the normal risks of their hexes backlashing and tearing their bodies or minds apart. A gunslinger on the other hand can just raise a pair of pistols and stare down the enemy with nothing more than a bit of cussed willpower and a good shooting arm and get a much better result from the town.

There is also a more basic principal in play, advancing with arcane backgrounds eats up character points. Raising casting skills cost bounty points, buying new powers costs bounty points, buying new edges to augment your arcane background eats bounty points. Remember that odds are they also need to augment existing skills or pick up new ones too, unless they either have an 'acceptable' background or they plan to avoid towns and heavily populated areas like the plague. Conversely the normal just needs to buy up a new regular edge or kick up skills, giving them a better chance to hit and in some cases making it harder for them to be affected. There is also a secondary edge here, though it's a bit debatable. Players get bounty points by turning in fate chips at the end of a session, fate chips can be used to restore wind, negate wounds, power abilities, etc. A player with an arcane background is likely to burn chips on powers, as well as needing more points to keep building up their armada so they have to either accept being wounded more often or advance more slowly. 5 bounty points might buy one power for someone with an arcane background but for a normal that can be more skills or a new edge. They can get more with fewer points, this also means that they can be a bit freer during battles and when they do use points they'll tend to stretch further.

I want to get more into Arcane Backgrounds in the future, both in classic and wasted west.

Deadlands, Weird, Wasted, Reloaded and more!

I enjoy a lot of different types of RPGs, I have played Gamma World, D&D (2nd, 3rd, 4th), Pathfinder, Dark Heresy, several whitewolf games (not a big whitewolf fan, just saying), a bit of Call of Cthulhu, Mutant Future, Labyrinth Lord, Rifts, etc. Now lately my main gaming group has been doing a lot of Deadlands. Deadlands is a somewhat obscure game but quite interesting put out by the folks at Pinnacle. My group plays the classic version, IE the non Savage Worlds version.

Deadlands is one of the first games I want to talk about here both because it's a game that I'm playing right now and also because it actually taught a fair amount in terms of game design, running a game, and even about aspects of different types of gaming. The next few posts are going to focus on different aspects of the game and some of my own observations and thoughts on it, as well as things I think they did really well and things that they kind of messed up. Any fans of the game are welcome to post, as are detractors come to think of it.

I think I'll start off by talking a little about the game itself. The central game is essentially a steampunk civil war torn US with cowboys and zombies. An event known as 'the recknoning' occurred during the battle of Gettysburg and weirdness started popping up all over the place. The dead began to walk, monsters of folklore began to appear, and magical power suddenly became available or more potent. The source of this is a bit more than I want to get into right here (probably a future topic) Now the thing is that by and large most people don't know/don't believe in this sort of thing and in many respects that's how the dark forces like it. A big monster charging into town might make the populace piss their pants but then a few people either get brave or angry enough to fight back and manage to kill the thing. Suddenly the people see that the creature wasn't so scary and that they can be beaten. Instead the monsters tend to lurk on the outside, a few people here and there might disappear and sometimes people see things they don't understand but most of them try to chalk it up to hallucination, accident, or some animal.

The heroes are the exceptions, these are the people that find out about the supernatural and try to push back, defending people as best they can and spreading hope. Some of these people are shamans, some are blessed by a higher power, some have learned to pull power kicking and screaming from the spirit world and a few are guided by maddening muses to create mind bending tech, and plenty more are just normal people armed with courage and a good shooting arm. Now all of this is more true in the weird west for Deadlands but the basic principles hold. The game also deals with the idea of evil in some fairly interesting ways and points out that sometimes evil can be very grandiose and sometimes in can be very banal and in both cases it can be terrifying.

The game itself is a bit of a mix of pulpy action and horror, I tend more towards the pulpy action side but that's more because I absolutely suck at running horror. That's about all I can say for now, hope to see you all again soon.

Wow, I'm back

Hey, I have returned after my long absence, mostly because I realized that if I want this to work I have to produce regardless. So that's what I will do dammit! I am hoping to come to some kind of schedule for producing posts, probably about once a week or so.

One or many?

I was recently in a forum argument that got me thinking about the question of games in terms of DMs and players. There are going to be times where a DM has restrictions in a game that will restrict the ability of one or more players to produce the kind of character that they want. The debate came up in the context of if a DM should have to compromise or if the player had to decide to give up what they wanted or leave the game.

My views on the subject have to do with how my own games go. When I design a game world I make it for my players. I often try to help people find items, feats and offer advice when they want to try to make a character that fits a particular concept with available mechanics. Now, maybe I'm more liberal as a DM. But I can also understand the argument that a DM might need to reign in certain things to ensure that the game doesn't go out of control or so that the kind of world they make can feel workable.

But, I'd like to know what others think if anyone is interested.

Sorry for the absence

Sorry for the extended absence. I think some of it was frustration due to a lack of comments and discussion here. I am probably still going to be somewhat irregular but I will try to at least make a habit of posting, though it might help me some if I know anyone is actually reading this.