RE: [HOE] What is wrong with the sourcebook adventures? (POSSIBLE SPOILERS)

[Ralph Dula <rdula@ezonline.com>]

The Marshal of Oz inquired: 

>I have seen a few times on here and at the forum where people have said how
>bad these adventures are but as a newbie marshal i'm not sure i see the
>problems...could someone please (with appropiate spoiler space) tell me A)
>what is wrong with the adventures and B) if u ran them what did u change to
>make them better
>

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Okay, I tend to be one of the harshest critics of Deadlands, so I'll field
this one, including those HOE adventures not in a sourcebook.


Hell or High Water:  While not the best module in the history of RPGs, this
scenario is probably the best HOE adventure in terms of writing quality and
fairness to the players.  It gives players a good introduction to the
Wasted West, has opponents both mundane and supernatural, and the final
villian is not an overpowered monstrosity so often found in HOE products.

Apocalypse Now (comes with the Radiation Screen):  An amazingly
well-written adventure.  Truly the author put a lot of work into it.
Unfortunately unless your characters are super-experienced jack of all
trades supermen (or women) the portion of the adventure involving the town
held by the Black Hats can easily devolve into an utter slaughter of the
posse at several points in the adventure.  While everything the Black Hats
do is logical, it also makes it nigh-impossible for a starting to
intermediate posse to survive.  If this was the final encounter of the
adventure this would be okay, but as the midway point of the scenario it's
way too much.

Children O' The Atom Adventure: Besides the sidebar on why you should keep
your posse poor (apparently it's a mortal sin in a Hell on Earth adventure
to allow your posse to be well-equipped; to Hell with the fact your players
enjoy having lots of weapons and/or trinkets, keep 'em poor!) this
adventure also starts out with any vehicle the posse has being
automatically wiped out in the first encounter (hope you didn't sink too
many points into belongins' for that car).  The main villian is one of
those Doombringers that only a Doomsayer can put down for good, and there's
a mutating virus that can only be healed by Doomsayers, so if no followers
of the Glow are in your posse you are out of luck.  

Some might argue you should have a Doomsayer in your posse if you bought
the Doomsayer sourcebook; I say to those people that some of us
occasionally buy sourcebooks from Pinnacle just to show our support for the
company.  The easiest way to fix this adventure is to make the Doombringer
a regular ol' follower of Silas and make the virus curable by Templars or
other magics.

Infestations:  A well-written story comes in this dime novel, but the final
creature is just too tough, with a weakness that most players will never
think of.

The Last Crusaders sourcebook:  To quote my review of the adventure from
www.rpg.net:

1. The adventure starts with the PCs in Boise, having to leave the town and
travel to confront the
Destroyer, who is about 130 miles away. The Destroyer has several hostages,
and if your posse is
on foot all of them will be dead before your heroes arrive on the scene. 

2. Along the way to confront the Destroyer the posse must encounter an
abomination they can't permanently put down. It can end up your PCs have to
go past the monster several times during the course of the adventure, and
from running this scenario I can tell you the abomination can do major
damage to a posse. 

3. The adventure can not progress past a certain point unless the posse can
come up with some ghost rock. If the posse has no ghost rock the Marshal
must improvise a scenario detailing the posse's hunt for some solidified
souls of the damned. 

4. The final battle has the posse fighting Modeen, three Anti-Templars, and
twenty well-armed mooks. PCs who try a straight-on assault will be
slaughtered. For PCs to survive they need to know the value of stealth and
diversions while possessing a good deal of luck. The PC casualties nearly
got into the double digits when I ran this adventure, with four characters
with a year of weekly gaming
sessions under their belt getting cut down like wheat by Modeen and his crew. 

5. Modeen is without a doubt the most powerful foe that has appeared in
Deadlands: HOE. Only one thing can kill him, a sword which does STR+1d6.
Modeen has the Greater Reward of Armor of the Saints, which drops the
sword's damage to STR+1d4-5. Modeen also wears armor that provides an armor
value of 2 or 3, depending on a roll made by the Marshal after every
attack. A posse member's only chance of hurting Modeen without using magic
is to hit his unarmored head. It's a +6 to the TN for a called shot to the
head, with another +3 to the TN due to Modeen's three levels in Guardian
Angel, and since it's a fightin' attack Modeen gets to add his fightin'
score of 8 to the TN as well. That come to a total of TN 22 to hit Modeen
in his head! And that's not even counting any Defensive Bonus he gets from
the ax he carries. The only reason my posse was able to
bring Modeen down was through the use of paralyzing magic one of the posse
possessed. 

Something About A Sword:  BLOOD PRESSURE RISING!  HEAD SPINNING!  URGE TO
KILL INCREASING!  Just say "no" to Something About a Sword.  I'll let
someone else on this list point out its flaws, or check out the digest
archives from around this time last year.


I strongly recommend you check out "Here There Be Vampires" on Marshal
Lambert's website (just type his name in a search engine and it should show
up).  It's a Weird West adventure that easily translates into a Wasted West
scenario.  I ran it a few weeks ago and found it one of the best adventures
I ever ran my posse through.

Have a good one,

-Ralph