Re: [HoE] Western vs. Post Apocalypse was Book of the Dead: Necrotech?

["B.D. Flory" <bflory@frontiernet.net>]

Meestah Seyberth sez:

> Take a look at the way horror is portrayed in Deadlands and the way it is
> portrayed in HoE.  DL plays with the deepest fear - the fear of the
> unknown.  You don't really know what Fate is going to throw at you.
> That fear is not really there in HoE - the Reckoners have come down and
> shown themselves - what the hell could be worse?  Fate has thrown - and
> it's a fastball from hell and the count is 2/0 with two outs and nobody
on
> base - well, damn - you either swing or strike out, but by God you know
> what's coming and where you stand.

Yep.  That's something I played on pretty heavily recently.  I ran two
short adventures in one night, illustrating to my posse one of the big
differences of the two games (the one you just mentioned, BTW).

In Deadlands: Classic, the basic plot was the posse agreed to help a
widowed ranch owner find out what was killin' her herds.  Turns out,
Prairie ticks were.  I've never thrown the 'ticks against my posse before,
and they're all real good about not reading eyes only stuff, so I was able
to keep it under the hat most of the session.  Weird Scratching noises
under the floorboards, the occasional chirp from a dark corner, two of the
posse members being dragged down, in the dark...alone.  They only found at
at the very end, when the 'ticks started pouring out of every available
orifice (in the BUILDING!).

Then I ran a HOE scenario, in which the posse had to rescue a lost little
girl from the heart of a twisted, shattered Las Vegas.  Pretty
straightforward stuff; they knew going in that a hive of giant, misshapen
scorpions made their nest in Caesar's Palace.  Said hive contained such
amenities as a scorpion larder, where the scorps stored the bodies they
couldn't finish eating, and myriad other nasty places.  Incidentally, that
was right where the girl had gone, and where her widowed mother had chased
her.  BTW, the widowed mother and her daughter lived on a ranch in a past
life...

The two plots were essentially the same: protect the innocent from
something NOT NICE.

But the execution was completely different.

The first scenario dealt almost exclusively with terror; a general sense of
dread.  Toward the end it had the feeling of riding in a car, careening
downhill in the pitch dark at 70 miles per hour.

The second scenario dealt with the much more visceral horror reaction.  If
riding in the aforementioned car causes terror, than horror would be
looking at the remains the next morning (assuming a horrible bloody
accident).

It is a subtle difference, to be sure, but sometimes it is the only
difference that matters.

B.D. "Fearmonger" Flory