Deadlands is an RPG originally published in 1993. It’s been through a few iterations and currently is under Savage Worlds rules, I think.
This very old book is from the original run.
What happens if the supernatural comes back to the world during the American Civil War? Well you get gunslingers dealing with hucksters, people who make deals with demons to sling magic and Blessed running around trying to save the world with Mad scientists makings thing better (or far worse) while all dealing with blood thirsty tumbleweeds (tumblebleeds) and the dealing with the Reckoners, unknown True Evils.
The original system was its own creation, using a deck of cards including 2 jokers and multiple types of dice, it was an exciting system. Eventually the old system was replaced a free times and it’s currently published under Savage Rules.
I can only talk on the original system, quite liking the use of decks of cards for initiative and other uses. Combat could be quite slow, but it is a very flavorful system.
This is a bad photo, but it’s the book from our shelf!
I only ever got to play one game some number of years back, and it was under the savage pands rules, but I absolutely loved it.
The magic system is all flavored as mad science, so you picked your spells from the generic savage worlds book and then flavored it however you felt fit your character.
My stun spell was a little hand-held contraption I had built called a ‘gastrointestinal defortification projector’ It went ‘BWOMPH’ and anyone within 20 feet shat themselves or threw up.
I pooped myself the first time I used it in combat…
Mad Science under the original system was much more complex, almost extremely so. You designed devices yourself, and what they would do, so unique entirely (or just use one described in the books, there were several mad science books) and then the Marshall decided what poker hand you needed to make the blueprints. Which, of course, it used the poker deck! My sibling played a québécois Alchemist. Things went boom.
Not the entire magic system. There’s hexslingers, blessed, shamans, and witches too.
Magic or Powers under Savage Worlds rules tend to feel pretty generic and stale after awhile, because they all usually follow the same standard template. Weird science kind of mixes it up in that source of the powers is object-based, but it’s all essentially the same thing. You’re always picking from the same set of spells that all behave the same way, all the player does is add some window dressing. On the hand, it makes it easier to grasp going from one Savage Worlds setting to another, but on the other all the magic classes start to feel samey after awhile. Not sure about other versions of Deadlands, but that’s my impression of the SW system.
From my perspective, the original setting the…well, there weren’t classes. You could take a background that would be a ‘class’ but you bought skills so if you wanted to have Blessed powers and use a gun real well you could. But that was a tangent.
Ask the ‘classes’ felt unique. Mad science was not hexslinging was not blessed was not martial arts. It’s a major reason I could just not get into the Savage Worlds version at all.
That’s because they explicitly state in the core rules that all special abilities are “powers”.
HERO has a similar setup where you have “powers” and then you create flavor around them. HERO actually breaks out creation point discounts for some of the flavor. Like if you are a wizard who can only cast spells a certain number of times per day, your “energy projection” power (fireball) is cheaper than if you are a superhero who can shoot fire all day long.
I love the introduction by Bruce Campbell. Spaghetti with meat!
I ran a dnd campaign that was wild west themed, and I used a few plotlines from this source. The Lost Angels storyline is pretty good
I have the new edition. It still uses a deck of cards. Actually, that’s just a thing in Savage Worlds!
The game with the best name for a perk/trait ever: Grim Servant of Death.
