Western Weekends - Deadlands: The Weird West

Another feather in the cap for my Western Weekends series; role-playing games. I've previously stated that with the move to virtual table-tops like Fantasy Grounds and Roll20, role-playing games have been my primary social activity these past few months. And recently, Pinnacle Entertainment released a reboot of their landmark franchise: Deadlands: The Weird West.

Like the name suggests, The Weird West takes place in The American West, but utilises horror and steampunk elements. The exact year is 1884, but history had skewed into an alternative timeline at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. In this alternative history, the American Civil War continued for longer than it did in our history, ending at The Battle of Washngton in 1871. A massive earthquake hit California in 1868, creating a labyrinth of canyons known as "The Great Maze". It was here that prospectors discovered a superfuel known as "Ghost Rock", which was used to fuel powerful war machines. In this world, players can roam the West dealing with all manner of mundane and weird threats.

Since this is made using a system without classes, you have a lot of freedom with which to make characters. Sure, you could be a gunslinger, a bounty hunter, or a Native American warrior. You could even be a magic user of some kind:

• Blessed, pious souls whose powers come from divine entities as gifts for good behaviour;
• Chi Masters, martial artists who channel spiritual energy directly through their own bodies;
• Hucksters, who gamble with malevolent entities for powers;
• A sub-group of Hucksters, known as Hexslingers, use rune-cast guns to cast some of their spells;
• Mad Scientists, who are inspired by those same spirits to build their contraptions;
• Shamans, who get their powers through bargains with nature spirits.

The Savage Worlds system is great for cinematic games, and handles Wild West gunfights really well. It ultimately depends on who's running the game, but the system is pretty accommodating. It can be especially funny when your plans are ruined by poor die rolls.

I've been collecting a lot of different sourcebooks for this system over the past couple of years, and I'm looking forward to trying them out with either online communities or my university's game society.

On a side-note, I often say that this was the setting that made me want to become a writer. My brother gave me an earlier version of the rulebook when I was 17, but my group had drifted apart at that point. I loved the world so much that I decided to write a story in it.