[DL] Mad Scientists are so weak!

[Patrick Downs <knick_nevin@yahoo.com>]

I hope I got somebody's attention with that subject
heading, because I have a bone to pick with this
particular Arcane Background (AB).
I don't really think the Mad Scientist is weak, so
much as I think the Mad Scientist is the least
powerful of the ABs. Granted, a Mad Scientist is
capable of creating a time machine (in 1 to 20 years)
provided he gets a royal flush when devising the
blueprint, but generally I think the Mad Scientist has
gotten the short end of the stick for one simple
reason: the Mad Scientist has no AB-specific edges.

The huckster has Arcane Prodigy, Familiar, Old Hand
The shaman have Guardian Spirits (and so do
Voodooists)
The blessed even have Divine Interventions and
Religious Rank, though that isn't much of a special
edge the Blessed are pretty tough if you know how to
maximize your starting Miracles and Gifts
Now before someone accuses me of just looking for the
munchkin angle on a Mad Scientist I want to fully
explain where my discontent with this AB comes from.

Last year I played a Mad Scientist who was obsessed
with creating a weather controlling machine. My
Marshal was kind enough to be using the optional
Gadget Quirk rules and in order to have all of the
blueprints to create my machine I needed two royal
flushes, a full house, and two straights (he was
building several gadgets that could be combined to
create a weather-controlling machine). Three months of
game time passed and my Mad Scientist had acquired 17
insanities and still needed to make one last set of
Royal Flush blueprints. I had also played a Mad
Scientist earlier that was trying to create a water
purifier (straight flush) and without using the Gadget
Quirk rules she had picked up 12 insanities before she
got the blueprints she needed (with a Reliability of
14). 

Now I would love to play another Mad Scientist, I love
picking up insanities and playing them to the hilt,
but what I alternately feel is a lot of powerlessness
because it's so incredibly hard to make a decent
blueprint, and then you have to go through the process
of building the gadget. The Deadlands setting is
filled with Mad Scientists who are powerful icons of
the scientific community (Fineas Von Landingham,
Hellstrome, Smith & Robards, Aloysious Daniels all
come to mind) and they don't have half a dozen Loco
hindraqnces attached to them.

What I would love to see is an edge that allows Mad
Scientists to devise more stable blueprints (higher
reliabialities) or learn more from a manitou (extra
cards for blueprints), whether they know they are
dealing with manitou or not. 
What I would really like to see is the Gadget Quirk
rules to become official canon with the DL system, and
I would also like to see a very specifically-detailed
explanation of exactly how ghost-rock-powered items
work, since any edge or ability that enhances
blueprints or construction for such devices would need
to fit in with this explanation.
In the game I Marshal, gadgets operate on existing
physical laws and ghost rock is just a fuel source,
nothing more. However, nobody ever plays a Mad
Scientist since they are usually not worth the
effort/time/paper.

(slightly) frustrated
-doc

p.s.- Before somebody even mentions them, I don't want
fancy Huckster-Mad Scientist options, because frankly,
it's a helluva lot more fun to play a Mad Scientist
who thinks all of his crazy ideas are his own.

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