Re: [DL] Hope Mongers

[Brett Dixon <balance@tubas.net>]

On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Brom Clancy wrote:

> 1)I had been thinking on a charater concept in which
<snip>

The main hing here is that to make that sort of relic reliably, the hero
would already have to be pretty amazing.

IMHO, you can cheat at cards, but you can't cheat the Reckoners, and you
can't cheat whatever forces oppose them...

I think this would hurt the image of the Agency and other forces. First,
they don't want people to even know about abominations...  Second, the
agency is, from an out-of-game context (the players know what's really
happening, even if their characters don't!) a great GM tool because of
it's fundamentally flawed nature. They don't understand the game concept
of fear levels, they just know that slavering monsters from beyond are a
bad, bad thing.

> 2)What if the Fear level table could go into
> negatives and start climbing up a Hope level chart.
> At low levels it can give players and all NPCs
> bonuses to thier gut checks ("I ain't running, ifen
> the Boise boys can shoot up walking dead then so can
> I")and at higher levels it can force the Marshall to
> lose fate chips ("You picked the wrong town Mr Stone,
> get em' boys")

Again, allowing the Fear level to get pushed too far back would, for me,
spil the mood. I rarely use the fear level rules directly (I forget!) but
I will use them more at times during my planned campaign. As such, the
players do get something of a bonus n their 'home turf' but that's
balanced as it is more directly effected by their actions. It's easy to
change the fear level of a small Kansas town with about three streets
total, much harder to mess with the fear level of a city like New Orleans.

Again, most characters (even tale-tellers with academia: occult or the
equivelent) don't (possibly can't) understand the concept of a 'fear
level' and fight it, if all, instinctively.

As usual, however, this is all my opinion. Deadlands is a horror game,
along with action and comedy. Horror, to me, is dependant on the idea that
there may be something lurking around the corner/