Re: [DL] the problems Manitou face (slight spoiler)

[Marshal Black <marshal_black@yahoo.com>]

You are correct in that every person who dies
represents a loss in potential fear for the reckoners,
however as many other people on the message board have
pointed out there are reasons why killing is
necessary. This is a predator prey relationship the
the Reckoners have with humanity. Fear is necessary
for their survival and growth, and killing is an easy
tool to do that with. It also however serves another
function.
Think about a posse of characters for a moment facing
off against a Terror score 13 abomination which,
despite it's fearsome appearence, is actually not all
that harmfull to humans. The posse gets it's first
look at our gruesome beast and makes their guts
checks. The fear level is a whopping 5 because of how
good of a job the monsters been doing with just it's
Ugly As Sin^9th looks, so most of them fail. Failure
at this point means we are playing around in the
heart-attack central area of the Scart table. Some of
the players may die as their tickers cease, some will
lose vigor, some may age, almost all will run away.
However it's job is essentialy done, fear level has
been maintained through a fresh batch of trouser
drenching horror.
However what happens if someone made a blessed posse
members with 5d12 guts, Brave, Lionhearted, and Pious.
Don't scoff, it has happened before. The Blessed in
question gets a +4 to his guts checks and lowers the
local fear by 2 making his effective target# 12 on
5d12, and reducing the damage from the fear table by 5
points. Now this has cost him in allocation of stats,
gifts and edge points however if the creature is not
really dangerous to him so long as he can just stand
up to the beast he can eventually kill it. Yeah he may
only have a 2d8 rifle skill, but a bullard packs a lot
of wallop in ever succesfull hit, and he could always
try dynamite. 
Now the posse pulls itself together and adds a lot of
new members because at least a couple of the old ones
kicked the bucket. Lo and behold there is another
anti-fear blessed that has wandered out of the west.
Why? Because they are surviving far better then the
expert gunfighters with the 3d8 guts and 6d12 shootin
who has a coronary every time he looks at a harmless
but terrifying abomination. It is survival of the
fittest in action, with weaker but fearless
adventurers being best suited to survival and the
erradication of monsters.
Now lets compare this to a good old fashioned terror 9
werewolf on his monthlies. The werewolf leaps out,
growls boo, and sends several of the weakest hearted
members running away. Those that stay face a fearsome
foe whose bite/claw per action is going to eat their
chipstacks for breakfast. The less combat effective
blessed who does stay is killed in the ensuing fight
while the less brave companions get away. In this case
it is still survival of the fittest, but it selects
for people with weaker constitutions and less
developed bladder control since they run away. Deadly
monsters kill the brave who stand and fight, not the
strong of body but weak of heart. The Reckoners have
to exert this sort of control, yes killing someone is
a waste of good fear, but having that person lower the
fearlevel through heroic action is even worse!
Most deadlands abominations take a personal "1 on 1"
approach to killing, as opposed to mass slaughter.
making this sort of selection possible. A lot of them
require humans as food, subjecting them to the same
limitations as natural predators. Eat too many of the
hairless apes and they get scarce. When they get
scarce it gets harder to hunt them and you may starve.
If you starve, you die. Thus the Reckoners have set up
balanced eco-systems, that are resistant to "active
resistance" on the part of the food supply.

Marshal(Mad Biologist)Black



--- Patrick Downs <knick_nevin@yahoo.com> wrote:
> something occured to me awhile ago, an unpleasant
> truth regarding Deadlands, something I quickly
> pushed
> to the back of my brain because I didn't want to
> think
> about the implications, and I decided not to discuss
> it with others, but someone I was explaining
> Deadlands
> to asked me about it yesterday so now I feel I
> should
> address it:
> the Manitou/Reckoners feed off fear and their power
> is
> derived from fear, yet they do all these things that
> kill people. when you kill someone then the fear
> that
> they are generating stops, so why would the
> Reckoners
> and by default the Manitou be trying to make the
> world
> more deadly? 
> wouldn't they want it to SEEM more deadly?
> if your posse are inadvertantly raising the fear
> level
> (as my group has done from time to time) wouldn't
> the
> manitou want to keep them alive so that they can
> generate more fear?
> likewise, if a mad scientist creates a gadget that
> actually helps the manitou, wouldn't it have NO
> reliability check (until it no longer served the
> manitous' purpose)?
> I could keep asking questions ad infinitum, but I
> think you get my point.
> any thoughts?
> -doc
> 
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