RE: [DL] Pickin' up the Pace

["coyote" <coyote@net-link.net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-deadlands@gamerz.net [mailto:owner-deadlands@gamerz.net]On
Behalf Of Jason Young
Sent: Friday, March 22, 2002 4:41 PM
To: deadlands@gamerz.net
Subject: [DL] Pickin' up the Pace


Am I mistaken, or are rules for Pickin' up the Pace absent from the 2nd
ed.? I saw them in my friends 1st ed., but can't find them anywhere. Is
this intentional, because of the way movement has changed, or an
oversight?

<<Snip>>

It's gone, more or less but reread page 116 of the Player's Guide for the
offical rules covering movement in Deadlands 2nd ed.

I'll paraphrase:
There are still rules for pickin' up the pace, basically you do a double
move but all of your rolls that round suffer a -4 to the die roll although
if I were running the game I wouldn't apply this penalty to die rolls to
vamoose.

Unfortunately the official rules can result in some pretty annoying
problems. Now this will no doubt ruffle the feathers of the Deadlands
purists so if you believe the rules are chiseled in stone and anybody who
points out faults or dares to suggests alternatives to the sacred mechanics
you might wanna delete this message before it causes irreparable damage to
that squishy pink and gray stuff filling your noggin.

Still with me? Good for you Hoss! Take a red chip for bein' so brave and
read on:

The biggest problem with the Deadlands movement system becomes obvious when
you run out of Pace before you run out of cards. I distinctly remember one
instance of this at Origins a few years back. I was running an adventure set
in the Maze for the good folks at PEG. One of the players who was playing a
hand to hand butt-whoopin' type of character decided to kick it into high
gear to close the distance between himself and the black hats who were
unloading some cargo from a boat on the other side of a shallow harbor. He
did a double move running twenty yards and then just stopped, having
exhausted his Pace even though he was still holding four cards in his hand.
On his next card he asked "can I move again?" and then it hit me, this poor
bastich just ran his @ss off and is now a sitting duck and he still has four
cards left. True if he's shot at he can vamoose and he can always sleeve one
of those cards but then what? Realizing the shortcoming I instituited the
following mechanics which, after a couple of years of tinkerin' and
playtestin', I have used ever since:

You may move your full Pace in yards, this may be spread out over the course
of the round.

You may do additional moves but to do so costs 1 Wind, the additional
distance from Pickin' up the Pace is equal to the roll of your Nimbleness
die (ignoring aces!!). I said die not dice, you only get one. Pickin' up the
Pace costs one of your action cards but it may be combined with another
action but at a -4 to the die roll. The penalty lasts until your next card
comes up.

It works, give it a try.

Happi Trailz,

>>Joseph C. Wolf

--
Joseph C. Wolf
Line Developer, Dark Heaven Legends RPG
Reaper Miniatures Inc.