Deadlands Reloaded…

Tonight was game night with some of my friends from Total Escape Games.  We opted for my first foray into Savage Worlds, specifically Deadlands Reloaded.  I had originally played Deadlands back in college with my dormmates and I am pleased to report that it is very much the same game with slightly simpler mechanics.  We were beginning to get the gist of combat and gameplay after just a few short hours, and I was already beginning to identify ways I would make my own character differently to maximize my enjoyment (we used pre-generated characters for this introductory game).

I played “Shady” Doug Liveaux, a New Orleans huckster.  The huckster class is very interesting and still retained my favorite gameplay mechanic of the old Deadlands game: casting spells by drawing a poker hand and assessing the result.  I don’t know if they included these mechanics in the old system and we just didn’t know it, but as the game progressed we realized that you could counteract wounds with Vigor rolls.  This significantly reduced the high mortality rate that I experienced in previous incarnations of Deadlands, and you could always use Fate Chips to shake off wounds as well.  I was pleased that despite some difficult run-ins with manitou’s during spellcasting, “Shady” made it out of the night largely intact.

I enjoy the tactile experience of this game, being able to shuffle a deck of cards and play with poker chips really increased the immersion for me.  The one-sheet campaign that our DM ran us through was interesting and helped us learn the mechanics with just the right amount of storyline to follow.  Next week we’re going to generate our own characters that will carry on into an ongoing Deadlands campaign, where we will trade off the Marshalling (i.e. Dungeon Mastering) duties.

The Savage Worlds game mechanics take a bit of getting used to if you’re as used to D&D as I am, however I found it equally easy to get ramped up and learn the basics within one session as I could in D&D 4e.  I’m enjoying the change of pace, so expect to see the occasional Savage Worlds related post (perhaps some compare and contrast) as the weeks march by.