[DL] Re: deadlands-digest.20020803

[Doplegnger@aol.com]

<<
I'm looking to start a Deadlands campaign in the fall
and would like some advice.
 >>

My advice to you is twofold.

first, run deadlands classic.   if you run a combat heavy game, D20 may kill 
characters too fast (haven't played it, but I've seen the weapon damage 
tables for guns).   if you run a combat light game, you are going to have to 
fudge experience to get the characters advancing.   in deadlands classic 
characters start out cool, but don't improve a lot (or at least less than in 
D20, IMHO).   in D20, charaters start out kinda bad, but improve as they 
level up.   personally, I like my characters cool. also the fun props and the 
high availability of support for it (dime novels that don't need conversion, 
tons of edges and hinderances throughout the books, the whole edge/hinderance 
thing itself...)   I would recommend the players handbook/ marshall's 
handbook combo, but for the price sensitive, you can run it with just what 
you have (maybe one or more of your players can chip in for the players handb
ook, and youjust get the marshall's handbook?)

Secondly-don't start them up against supernatural things to begin with, if I 
were to start a new deadlands campaign tommorrow, I would not allow arcane 
backgrounds at all to for new characters, and they would face bank robberies 
and investigate normal things to start, then I would slowly stick in mildy 
creppy things, before working into the full blown majesty that is Deadlands.  
 (when I started my current campaign, new marshall that I was, I started them 
on Devil's tower trilogy.   yea....)   Deadlands is a game of secrets, and 
theis way you can slowly leak out small secrets as the game progresses, my 
deadlands game is running out of non-major secrets to reveal because I 
started them out with so much knowledge.   as a side note, you only really 
need lawdogs as a splatbook if you do it this way, then you can reveal the 
other ABs as you get the money to afford the splatbooks, rather than people 
wanting them right away for their characters.

my 2 cents on the matter anyway.