Char-Gen Orgy '10 - Deadlands: Hell on Earth

Well, let's get this started!

The Game: Deadlands: Hell on Earth
The Publisher: Pinnacle Entertainment
Degree of Familiarity: Moderate; played a game or two, ran the setting once or twice.
Books Used: Just the Hell on Earth Core Rules


Ahh, HoE. Quite possibly one of the contenders for my favorite published setting ever. Now, in fairness, the rules are a bit heavy for my tastes, but not to the point of putting me off my feed -- it manages to, to me, just narrowly miss a fair compromise of realism and playability, and the wonderful, insane, mish-mash setting with its morbid black humor and quirky, gimmicky, and beloved-by-the-bard mechanics of cards and chips tend to make up the difference.

Anyway, like all Classic rules Deadlands characters, we start with the Cards... or in this case, random.org's card shuffler. And.... our 12 card hand:

Deuce of Diamonds (BALLS!), 4 of Diamonds, 5 of Spades, Queen of Hearts, 7 of Hearts, 8 of Hearts, 8 of Clubs, 7 of Diamonds, Deuce of Spades (OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE!) , Red Joker - draw for Coordination and.. Clubs?! (..not the plan, this is not the plan...), Queen of Diamonds, and the 4 of Clubs

So, we're not off to a particularly auspicious start here. Let's see what our Mysterious Past gets us.. normally the Marshal would do this. .but around these parts brainer, I am the law dog. This addressed.. the Seven of Clubs. Blackouts: this Waster has a few gaps in the old personal history and can't remember certain episodes of the past. Normally during play, the character would get the occasional glimpse of what the past.. confounding, confusing glimpses until at last the past caught up -- with a vengeance.

But lacking a campaign, we're just going to use that for all the plot-hookery we can manage, hmm?

So, after all of this is sorted, we're left to chuck two of our choice, and they can't be the Deuces (DAMN IT!) or the Joker (..wimpy little fuck, but it may represent a lot of training to compensate for a natural weakness? There's a hook...) So, this in mind, we'll toss the weakest cards left, the 4 of Clubs and its bigger brother the 8, leaving us with the following scores:

2d4, 2d6, 4d6, 3d10, 3d6, 3d6, 2d6, 4d4, 1d12, 2d10

So, we're dealing with a fairly average individual here, above average in a few places but rather below the curve in a couple others. Still, I'm getting an idea here, more an inspiration...

Playing with this, we're going to put that 1d12 into Knowledge, and get the suck out of the way by putting the 2d4 into Strength; to go with the concept dancing around in the old noggin, we'll put the 4d4 into Vigor -- our Waster is not, not, a very hardy sort. We'll explain that soon. For the meantime, we'll put that 3d10 into Deftness and the 2d10 into Cognition; we'll round out the Physical scores with a 2d6 in both Nimbleness and Quickness, and wrap this puppy up with the remaining two scores of 3d6 going into Mien and Smarts and the 4d6 into Spirit.

And thus...

Deftness 3d10
Quickness 2d6
Nimbleness 2d6
Strength 2d4
Vigor 4d4

Cognition 2d10
Knowledge 1d12
Mien 3d6
Smarts 3d6
Spirit 4d6

That done (finally), we can move on to Secondary Stats: Grit starts at 0, Our Nimbleness die type and thus our Pace is 6, Size is 6, Strain is inapplicable, and our waster's Wind is the sum of Spirit and Vigor, and thus a 10. This brainer had best stay out of fights where possible.

Now then, that stated, let's move onto Aptitudes, the skills, Edges, and Hindrances that are going to build upon the foundation set forth by our Traits above. We get Aptitude Points equal to the sum of our Knowledge, Smarts, and Cognition dice, and thus our pool to spend here is a total of 28 Points. Let's get cracking!

But wait, good Bard, you said you had a concept forming? What is it?

Well, here's the plan, waster: our wanderer was not in the best of shape, but apparently was someone important -- or so waking up in a suddenly de-powered cryogenic sleep tube would suggest, and at this point, she's identified herself as female (the characters tend to do that, with me.. sex and gender coming along as I go to work). So our lass wakes up in the bowels of some wasted ruin, the long sleep having atrophied both muscle and immune system (particularly in the downright hostile environment that the Wasted West has become), and huge swaths of the past missing from her noggin, her brainpan screaming with indecipherable tidbits of knowledge she knows could be of use -- if she could just piece together the clues! And... did she always know how to use a gun this well? Or how to put the best field medics of the Last War to shame?

Yeah, it's cliche, but if any setting is a setting for indulging in cliche and the tropes of the post-apocalyptic genre, it's the Wasted West!

So, with this in mind...

We'll start with the starting points all characters get: Climb 1, Search 1, Sneak 1, Language (English in our case) 2, and Area Knowledge (Local Area) 2. We'll put 2 each into Scrutinize and Search under Cognition-- our gal's no fool. That leaves 24 Points, so moving onto Deftness we'll put 1 into Lockpickin' and3 into Shootin', giving the latter a 'Rifles' concentration. 20 points left, moving on! Knowledge is next, and here we drop 2 into Demolitions, 3 into Medicine, and 2 into Science (Chemistry, here), leaving us at 13 Points. Our girl gets by on raw talent when she has to deal with people in a fashion that doesn't involve patching the holes in them, so we'll skip over Mien and dip into Nimbleness for 2 points of Dodge and an additional point of Sneak, leaving us at an even 10 points. If we get into a showdown we've done something wrong, so we'll pass on Quickness and move onto Smarts, putting 3 points each in Scroungin' and Tinkerin', leaving us at 4 -- Our Lady of the Deep Freeze is not all just theoretical knowledge. Lastly, we'll drop in 2 points of Guts -- if you need to know why, you've never played a Deadlands game before, have yeh brainer? Regardless, that leaves us at 2 Points unspent before Hindrances. BEfore we get there, we'll pause to apply Trait dice to our Aptitudes:

Area Knowledge (Campaign Region) 2d12
Climb 1d6
Demolitions 2d12
Dodge 2d6
Guts 2d6
Language (English) 2d12
Lockpickin' 1d10
Medicine 3d12
Science (Chemistry) 2d12
Scroungin' 3d6
Scrutinize 2d10
Search 3d10
Shootin' (Rifless) 2d10
Sneak 2d6
Tinkerin' 3d6

Whew, there's the hard part out of the way! Now, like the man who inspired me to this madness, I like to play a flawed character, so now -- onto the Hindrances! We can take up to 10 Points here, and we'll start with a Point of Ailin' -- here health's bad as we've established, and exposure to the Wasted West is not going to make it any better, which plays nicely with the Hindrance's tendency to only get worse. We'll also take 3 Points into Cautious: let's be honest here, without a plan, little miss Waster is going to be some abomination's lunch, and she's going to act accordingly! Onward we go, and we'll take another 3 Points from Doubting Thomas; given our origins, the lass has no reason to believe any of the hocus-pocus superstition that all these poor survivors seem to be obsessed with -- the Four Horsemen of the fucking Apocalypse ran roughshod over the world? Right.. - - and as far as she is concerned, there's bound to be a perfectly logical explanation for all of this -- hey, on that note, we'll slap on Tinhorn for 2 Points as well, since no one likes a know-it-all with delusions and a condescending tone, no matter how useful their high-falutin' book-knowledge may be from time to time. So, with Hindrances selected, that gives us a total of 11 points to play around with for Edges. Given our established characterization, we'll snap up Mechanically Inclined for 1 and Keen for 3, take 2 Points of Belongin's to represent the cache the Know-it-All woke up surrounded by, and 2 more Points into Dinero -- no matter where you go in the Wasted West, the services of someone who can fix both people and machinery, so a small amount of regular profit can be expected. We'll take 2 of our 3 remaining Points and put them toward Fleet-Footed to raise our Pace to 8 -- you don't have to be faster than the Abomination, just faster than the rest of your 'posse' -- and with the final Point, we'll boost Dodge a rank.

So, that done, we're left with Equipment; $2,000 from Belongin's and $400 more from Dinero -- let's go loot smart and loot S-Mart....

Survival means not taking a hit, so let's buy ourselves a Wasteland Chic ensemble of an Armored Duster ($500), Boiled Leather Pants and a Shirt to match ($200 total), a Kevlar Vest ($750) and an Infantry Battle Helmet ($500) -- for a total of $1950; we'll round out our Belongin's with 50 rounds of .30-06 ammunition, and dip into our starting funds to buy the Hunting Rifle to go with them for $150. $250 left to us, so we'll continue our previous philosophy with a good pair of pre-War running shoes for +1 pace at $100, and a pair of binoculars for the same; we'll finish with a a Water Purification Kit ($10), some Small Batteries to power it (10 charges for $20), and twenty ounces of Jerky, lest we starve rather ingloriously out in the Wastes.


And.. all we need is a name and we're ready to go... we'll have fun with out plot hooks above and say she doesn;'t rightly know it herself, and since 'Jane Doe' is a bit too plain, we'll let the Wasters name her... she's a doctor and a lunger, and since no one ever accused wasteland survivors of ingenuity...

-------

Jane Holliday

TRAITS
Deftness 3d10
Quickness 2d6
Nimbleness 2d6
Strength 2d4
Vigor 4d4

Cognition 2d10
Knowledge 1d12
Mien 3d6
Smarts 3d6
Spirit 4d6

DERIVED TRAITS
Grit: 0
Pace: 9
Wind: 10

APTITUDES

Area Knowledge (Campaign Region) 2d12

Climb 1d6
Demolitions 2d12
Dodge 3d6
Guts 2d6
Language (English) 2d12
Lockpickin' 1d10
Medicine 3d12
Science (Chemistry) 2d12
Scroungin' 3d6
Scrutinize 2d10
Search 3d10
Shootin' (Rifles) 2d10
Sneak 2d6
Tinkerin' 3d6


EDGES
Belongin's 2
Dinero 2
Fleet-Footed 2
Keen 3
Mechanically Inclined 1

HINDRANCES
Ailin' 1
Cautious 3
Doubting Thomas 3
Tinhorn 2

GEAR
Hunting Rifle with 50 rounds of ammunition (.30-06)
Kevlar Vest
Armored Duster
Boiled Leather Shirt
Boiled Leather Pants
Running Shoes
Binoculars
Water-Purification Kit
Small Batteries (10 charges)

Jerky (20 oz.)

-------

..and there's Week One. Whee.....

...what have I got myself into?

Character Generation Orgy 2010

..there's a title, for you...

But inspired by "Black Hat" Matt MacFarland of White Wolf Publishing's World of Darkness game line (old and new) and other games, and others following his example, the Bard, out of boredom, is going to join in, and endeavour to post a new character each week.

I prepared a rough list of games, though that's forthcoming once I get it in order to my tastes. For the time, it is currently fifty five games long, so.. yeeeah. What can I say, I'm a glutton for punishment, and if I keep this up I'll be doing this into 2011.

So, in the immortal words of Da Boyz... 'ere we go 'ere we go 'ere we go!

The List

WEEK 001 - Jane Holliday [Deadlands: Hell on Earth]
WEEK 002 - Buck Valentine [Changeling: the Dreaming]
WEEK 003 - Reverend John Parson [All Flesh Must Be Eaten]
WEEK 004 - Mr. Big [Shadowrun]
WEEK 005 - Elisabeth Coventry [Orpheus]
WEEK 006 - Morntor [Star Wars (Saga Edition)]
WEEK 007 - Towering Oak [Exalted]
WEEK 008 - Captain Jack Vandal [Big Eyes, Small Mouth]
WEEK 009 - "Black Mary" Corbin [Savage Worlds]
WEEK 010 - (forthcoming) [Little Fears]

You Were Warned

..I told you I'm a flaky bastard at this, right back there in the first post.

Ah well. I'm back now, maybe I won't forget again...

..yeah, likely....

Regards, and be excellent to each other.

Real Men Use Whips (Or, "Whatever Happened to the Old School?")

"Belmonts live by two rules: Run Right, and Kill Everything"

After the somber, possibly even overly-sentimental, heavy material of my last entry, I thought I might touch on something a bit lighter, but still dear to my heart.

But let me preface by saying...

Modern gamers are just spoiled, babied pussies.

Why does the Bard say this? Well, that's a complicated answer, but in short, let's start with some background information:

The Bard is a diehard fan of Castlevania as a franchise. He has been since the very early nineties, when on his old Ninetendo Entertainment System (one of the damned finest pieces of technology ever wrought by human hands!) he picked up (in a trend that would travel with him all his gaming life to date), Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse -- the trend being a noted habit of playing sequels before originals.

Now, this will not be a long retrospective on a franchise nearly old as I am, you can find a good number of those elsewhere on the web, and nor will this be covering in-depth the series known in its native Japan as Demon Castle Dracula (well, once the real name, Akumajo Dracula, is translated into English, at least), as there are equally plentiful sources for the good reader to learn of the series if they do not know of it.


No, this is mainly concerning some things I've heard scattered around various web sounding boards on the newest release in this venerable franchise, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia.

It seems that the game is too hard and thus, to some pansy-assed minds, sucks.

Now hey, as I said previously, I'm a big fan of peoples' rights to their opinions, and their rights to express them in a public forum such as cyberspace.

But by the same ticket, I have the right to call them whiny fucking pussies for their opinions.

See, I recently purchased a Nintendo DS -- a holiday gift to myself, and I am loving the quirky little system -- my opinions of Nintendo's place in the current generation of the Console Wars may not be very generous, but I will never deny they have always ruled like fat little kings over the portable handheld market -- and with the little system with its quaint two screens and its touch-screen stylus, I bought a copy of Ecclesia.

"What a terrible night to have a curse."

Curse, indeed.. especially if that curse is being too much of a student of the modern age to not appreciate good, old-fashioned, old school gaming. Especially if they are quote-unquote "experts" on the series.

If they were experts like they claim, they'd know that Ecclesia is a shout-out to we old guards of gaming the likes I've not seen since Magic: the Gathering's "Time Spiral" block.

Those of us not too young to remember (and too lazy to look into the hobby's history or a franchise's past) will know the ways of Old School well. We didn't have the flashy, newfangled high-polygon count models or digital FMV -- fuck, I can remember when FMV was a mark of almost-assured craptitude! -- to sell games. They had to sell themselves on merits of gameplay (something I wish more games would actually do, these days) or in the very least a hot license to sucker in the mass-market on what was generally a sub-par cash-in (something alive and well today that I wish would take a long walk off a short cliff). The magic balance was key -- the game could not roll over and die -- but nor could it make you put your blocky little non-ergonomic controller into your huge, bulky television's screen.

....well it could, but that did tend to hurt sales all-around since good televisions cost a pretty penny even then.

Modern gamers expect to have anything not involving a puzzle roll over and die for them if they mash a few buttons. They expect games to yield to them so as not to bruise their pretty little egos. So when a game comes along that has that magic balance, and actually expects you to kick ass old-school and not just blindly swing at something until its dead, maybe interspacing the odd block or dodge for flavoring to break button-mashing monotony... it must suck!

No my friend.. the game does not suck... you just suck.

But as I said, if you need to be able to effortlessly rape a game ten ways to next Thursday to be able to feel big about your "leet skillz".. that's your business.

Just don't belittle one of the best games I've played in ages because it beat your pussy ass and hurt your widdle feewings, and don't try to pass yourself off as an 'expert' if you can't say three sentences without sending up poseur flags to all of us real veterans.

Just go play God of War on Mortal mode again. Kratos will hide his scorn for you.

But the Bard will not!

"Hear me, Dracula! I am the morning sun, come to vanquish this horrible night!"

See? Less serious!

Regards, and be excellent to each other.

Milestones

"Remember, remember, the Fifth of November,
The gunpowder, treason and plot.

I can think of no reason
Why the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot."

Lest we forget....

Tomorrow, January 20th, 2009 will be a milestone.

The first African-American President of the United States of America Will take office, and the first Democratic Chief of State we've had here in the U.S. of A. in eight long, ugly years.

Thank fucking gods for that.

It's a historic milestone, for certain, and as I find myself growing older, I find myself realizing I truly am suffering the old Chinese curse:

"May you live in interesting times."

Most people say that every generation has their own milestone. The day they'll never forget. December 7th, 1941. July 16th, 1969. November 9th, 1989. September 11th, 2001.

I was alive for those last two, though the first of the final pair is a little fuzzy to me due to relative youth and cultural isolation (Appalachia in the Eighties, remember).

Is there a point to this?

Actually yes, but again, I tend to be long-winded and circular in my discourses. And if any of those dates are not familiar... and you're an American.... just.. Wiki it. My sentiments on the sad sack state of public education is a Howling Mad for another day.

(What's a Howling Mad? Well, the context should make it obvious, but if obviousness isn't your strong suit good reader -- you'll find out in due time when I post one.)

ahem

What this is all about -- aside to wish our new President health, prosperity, and above all success -- I voted for you, Sir, and I have faith in you and in the fact this country might yet be salvaged and even put back where it belongs in the global stage -- is to comment on something I muse about often in Meatspace.

My generation, those of us born in the early 1980s, are going to be the last generation who can clearly remember many things.

- Video arcades (they're getting ever-rarer with each year)

- How the world was before Personal Computers became popular.

- In my case, life before cable television.

- What life was like before we had the INTERNET (ye gods, that's probably the biggie right there!)

And I could probably go on. Technologically, the human race has progressed more in the past two decades than we had previously in the past two millenia combined. It's a scary thing to think about at times, but also.. quietly exhilarating. Last year, someone managed a working jet-pack. There is powered armor/mecha in the works, to a functional (if not anime-sized) degree in multiple laboratories. Cloning and stem-cell research promises to make Jurassic Park exactly what its creators called it in 1993: Not science fiction but a science eventuality.

And so much more.

But yes, so many milestones. So many things that will be forgotten if they're not remembered, not recorded, somewhere.

To those not familiar, in essence, that's what a bard is (despite the fact the true purpose only gets a tiny shred of recognition in the Dungeons and Dragons Third Edition character class); a bard is a lorekeeper, a tale-teller. A living memory of his or her peoples' oral traditions.

This bard's gone digital.

But yes.. President Obama.. best of luck, and I look forward to putting in another vote of good confidence in four years.

The rest of you? Never forget what you alone may still remember. No matter how trivial that pizza place that closed may seem, or how inconsequential that little moment of happiness with your college buddies might appear....

"Little things used to mean so much to Shelley. I used to thing they were so trivial. But believe me... nothing's trivial."

Regards, and be excellent to each other

Beginnings

"There are more things in Heaven and on Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophies."

Who am I? Now that's a tricky question, and one that I will not attempt to arrogantly answer with simple exposition. Perhaps that mystery will be unveiled fully in time to you, my (eventual?) readers. For now, I am the Bluegrass Bard, or to some, the Bluegrass Beast, in fact a beastly bard.. or perhaps a bardic beast?

Ah, rambling again. That's the first bit of my Nature (and my Demeanour.. a little gaming humor) that I shall reveal. But this would be the medium for it, now wouldn't it?

Regardless....

I, the Bard who Howls from the Hills (of southeast Kentucky -- look, see there, another little tidbit! Isn't this fun?), will be your guide through my social conscious (and conscience). And be warned now, I am a passionate, opinionated bastard. If you don't agree with my views, some of the things I say may be offensive.

Tough shit, friend. My first little bit of the whole conscious/conscience? I fucking despise censorship. Its a violation of my gods-given (yes, that's not a typo, I did say gods-given) right as an American who still gives a shit what being an American used to stand for before the outgoing administration perverted and corrupted it into the disaster we're seeing played out before us on the news now.

See? I probably just offended a good portion of our Republican readers right there! Don't worry, even though I nominally am one, I'll be sure to make a comment offensive to at least some demographic of Democrat eventually.

Promise!

Rambling again. You were warned. I'm told, by the only direct sources I've ever met personally, that I can lay that habit at the feet of my Cherokee blood.

Why am I doing this? Bloody bum-fucking boredom largely. A very long-time friend of mine, DeadlyGlories, gave me a link and suggested it. So you know...

It's all her fault!

Just kidding DG.

Mission statement? Yeah.. we'll see if I pay enough attention to this in a month to bother before we figure that one out. It'll all evolve organically I suppose. We'll leave it here for now, before I end up writing half a novel with my ramblings.

Regards, and be excellent to each other.