Re: [HOE] Are the books 'too big'?

[toadpooka@juno.com]

I'm sure that no single Marshal will ever manage to use all of the
material out there, but between all the people running games, I'd bet
that it all gets used somehow.  I rarely use plot hooks straight from the
book, but oftentimes, I use them as a "jumping off" point for different
ideas, or some big secret gets uncovered during the course of an
adventure, even if it isn't the object in the first place.
One issue I do have with Deadlands (and this is more true of the Weird
than the Wasted West) is that the published material tends to have a
monopoly on the cooler ideas that fit into the setting.  For example,
upon hearing a very basic overview of Deadlands, a few good ideas popped
into my head.  Among these were: a mad scientist villain withclockwork
robot henchmen, clockwork/steam power body parts, and frankenstein-like
reanimation.  I also wanted to run a campaign in which the main bad guy
was an evil rail baron who had made a demonic pact (this was before I'd
read the Quick and the Dead or GRW).  In the end, the bad guy I had
imagined was a kind of meld between Baron LaCroix and Hellestromme.  But
the important thing is that using any of these ideas would have been a
big departure from the published material, and would've required quite a
lot of rewriting.  It's not bad that the ideas were put out there, but
they were also written off as being singular phenomena (only Hellestromme
makes Automatons, only Dr. Gash makes scrapper gear).  I think one reason
why I take to HoE is that this happens less often in the Wasted West. 
Granted, the Combine is there, but you can have a small-time warlord like
Throckmorton out there as well.

--Rich Ranallo

On Wed, 27 Sep 2000 09:31:44 EDT Dusarat@aol.com writes:
> 
>     And I had this question.  Exactly HOW much of this material ever 
> ACTUALLY  gets used?  In my HoE games, I've seen it used very
sporadically, 
> and at a  rate where in 1000 years we'll actually have had some
completion, 
> funny, I've  had dates like that too.
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