D20 Goes to Hell!
No, that’s not this reviewer’s opinion of the latest campaign world to see the d20 treatment but the catchy title on the blurb on the back of the book. Deadlands: Hell on Earth is the sequel to
Pinnacle’s popular Deadlands: the Weird West series. This is a review of the d20 edition of Hell on Earth. Pinnacle is synonymous with zombie cowboys.
Zombie cowboys? I think it’ll be best to give a quick overview of the Earth that’s become the Deadlands. In the book we’re introduced the Hell on Earth through the recordings of a dying Templar called Jo. She’s taken a mortal wound while fighting a gang of Trogs from the radioactive ruins of a once mighty city and decided to pass on her knowledge of the world to whomever may find the device. This is a great way to introduce the game; it’s an educated NPCs perspective so it builds up the theme and the mood from the word go and also, nicely slyly, nothing said is written in stone. Jo’s knowledge of the world as it stands now is restricted to western America and that’s handy because that’s really the scope of the game. This is a post-apocalyptic game, a post-apocalyptic game in which the heroes battle against the possible last stroke of the apocalypse and although Templar Jo only knows about what’s currently going on in Western America she knows all about the countries which ended up getting involved in the global disaster. Jo’s knowledge of history is handy because we discover there were no "good countries" and "bad countries". A reader of Deadlands: Hell on Earth will never be able to sit back and gloat over the fact that their country was entirely innocent. In fact, the very opposite is true; the chances are that your nation was involved in stirring up the end of the world, launching a ghost rock nuke or an actual nuke.
Jo’s introduction never really spells out in black and white just what ghost rock is. Ghost Rock is an entirely mundane thing in her point of view. As is the fact that there’s the United States of America as well as the Confederate States of America, rather, there were such countries. Not any more. Ghost Rock is essentially the spirit equivalent of fossil fuel. A ghost rock nuke is a giant bomb that kills and destroys primarily through the negative, haunted energies the blast releases rather than the blast. The bomb kills people, mutates people but leaves buildings more or less intact... in fact, buildings associated with particularly powerful memories and emotions actually seem to grow back after the ghost rock nuke blast. It’s a nice touch but it’s also a handy mechanic to allow GMs (Marshals) to run scenarios in the ruins of famous landmarks. Hell on Earth isn’t strictly our Earth but that doesn’t mean we can’t exploit the best bits from our world to our best advantage.
Hell on Earth is a place where people have grown use to the dead coming back. People are used to the dead being dangerous and hungry. There are stranger things than the undead though; the game leans much of its story on the Reapers - the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse. The strange thing is that although the people who survived The End accept the presence of zombies they’re still managing to turn a blind eye to some of the stranger, more deadly, supernatural horrors. This might sound slightly odd a first but on reflection its yet another built in GM tool; it really does increase the scope of the game. You’ll be able to include "No One Believes You" style horror games if you wanted.
You’d better get used to narrator Jo’s style of speaking by the end of the introduction because the whole darn book is written in the same language. I did pick up on the Western style drawl by the end of the introduction but I’ll also admit to having something of a geographical fatigue. The tour of the west is comprehensive. You’ll go everywhere and you’ll meet lots of important people as you listen to Jo’s notes. I suspect if one of the places which the narration stops at happens to be close to you in real life (that scary place outside any roleplaying game) then you’ll have a little oasis from where to build up your strength but for an outsider like myself the whole tour was rather tiring. Nonetheless, I’d rather be tired than have a campaign setting with gaping holes in it.
Deadlands: Hell on Earth is a campaign setting. The difference between a world setting and a campaign setting, I’ve decided, is nicely illustrated by Hell on Earth. There’s more than just places of note in a campaign setting, there are people of note too. That extra brings both advantages and disadvantage. The extra people, the figureheads, really do help to build up a strong feel and atmosphere in which to run the game and the importance of that can not be understated. It’s crucial. It’s the extra ingredient that can see the rise or fall of the game. On the other hand the very importance, their very role as a definition, of these key people can get in the way. What do you do if your players decide to assassinate Silas Rasmussen, leader of the Cult of Doom? Are they doomed (sorry!) to fail from the outset? Wouldn’t that be wrong? If they kill Silas and you discover that the next five core expansion products for the line all centre on Silas evolving into something terrible and changing the world, then, as the Marshal (DM) you’ve got a heck of a lot of work to do if you wish to move with the official progress of the world. The same applies for heroic good guys. Does the presence of a named and important NPC as the head of the Templars prevent any player ever getting there himself? It shouldn’t but it’ll require a capable Marshal to deal with the situation if it arises.
There is much more than flavour text and world information in Deadlands: Hell on Earth though. There’s a whole set of rules. In fact, the book’s chapters include the Marshal’s Handbook.
The mechanics work well in the d20 system. There are nice common sense yet easily overlooked alternations to the mechanics. In the "Powers" chapters (which applies the Magic system to what are probably psychic/mutant powers but in doing so saves you the purchase of an extra book) they point out that in a traditional game wizards and sorcerers have had years (eons sometimes) to practise their art and refine their spells but those with the power in the Deadlands are brand new phenomena; things can go badly wrong. The Power/Magic system includes critical successes and failures. There’s only one race - human. These people might be mutants though. A quirk of the rules, one I really like but I suspect some traditional D&D players might not, is that its possible for the character to be a mutant for the Marshal to decide in secret whether he is. The player will know of that chance ever since he rolled the result on the character generation mutation table and I’m sure it’s the sort of thing that’ll weigh on the players mind just ready for an evil Marshal to make use of!
There are other nice little twists to an otherwise standard conversion too. Multi-classing is improved through sensible restrictions. If you are of (or have been) a class that gets its power from one way then you can’t multi-class into a class that gains its power by other means. In short, you’re only ever able to be one powered class. I sometimes wish this was true of core D&D; it never made any sense to me that someone could be a wizard who’s magical knowledge has come from years of study in ancient libraries and yet a bard who’s knowledge of the land comes through years of travelling from town to town (away from arcane libraries) and who’s understanding of "Bardic Magic" is essentially different from his wizards training.
Chapter Five, known as "Blowin’ Things All to Hell!" is the combat section; you’ll find rules for firearms all the technologically based ways to kill people here. You’ll also pick up rules for driving and driving manoeuvres here; this is important because you can run Mad Max style games (with zombie extra fun). Fate chips are introduced here too and would seem somewhat out of place except to confirm that Deadlands: Hell on Earth has a decided bias towards combat and action. Fate chips are tangible items (like poker chips, candy, coins, etc) handed out to the players for good roleplaying, good spirit or otherwise helping with the game which allow them to re-roll dice results except a natural one. They’re like mini "Fate Points" and the suggested limit is one or two per session. Although their inclusion in the combat chapter of the book does seem to confirm Deadlands as a combat heavy game it also helps address my concerns that any plot will be hijacked by tricky combat. If players role-play well, and are unlucky enough to roll-play badly, then the fate chips can help the Marshal save the game.
The detail and flavour available to the Marshal and anyone ready the book is clear. I think the character generation system also helps get the unusual genre over to the players too. The feats and skills, with their Deadlands names (for example, the feat Nerves o’ Steel, or the skills Gamblin’ and Blastin’) land the players straight in to the game world. Another great quirk of character generation is the ability to buy non-standard gear. Working shotguns that have survived the wars, the bombs and the ghosts are rare in the Deadlands; if a player doesn’t think he can afford one and enough ammo then he can buy a broken one. The effectiveness of a damaged weapon is reflected in a percentage chance of a misfire (or other appropriate malfunction) and a similar percentage then taken off the price. This is limited to a 50% reduction in price and this seems like a suitable and effective anti-munchkin mechanic to me.
The last few chapters in Hell on Earth are designed to make life less hellish for the Marshal. The Marshal’s Handbook does more than offer up more detailed rules but discusses possible game styles and storytelling tricks. After that there’s a whole chapter on the secrets of the wasted west - and it really does live up to its name and lets the cat out of the bag on many of the interesting bits and pieces of information and possible adventures that the rest of the book suggests. It’ll be a bugger if you suspect your players want the book for all its core rules and you think they’ll continue to read into the secrets section. That’s not really a huge fault of the book though: a possible hiccup perhaps. The shortage of creatures and encounters in the last few pages of the book is a bigger hiccup but still not a fault. There are just enough creatures there to spice up the game and, of course, very many of the combat encounters in the wasted west will be bandits and outlaws and otherwise entirely human villains.
Hell on Earth is a 208-paged soft-back book. It’ll tally up as $25.00 US on the cash till. That’s perhaps a little expensive given the lack of hardback but I don’t think you’re likely to notice too much after prising your wallet open since there really is a lot of rules and campaign information packed into the book. The layout is fairly standard, two columns of text in a reasonable size. Every now and then you’ll find an illustration in an interesting place, right at the top corner of a page and creeping into the white-space of the border for example or even on a page all of its own. I think the effect seems to work. Playing spot the typo works on a macro level, every now and then the entire first sentence of a paragraph will repeat itself and this does serve to throw the reader a little, especially since most of the book is in Deadland talkin’.
I liked the book. Although I have a copy of the original I’ve not had time to do more than flick through the pages and so I’m not really in the position to compare it to this d20 edition except to notice the original is hardbound and with colour plates in places and the d20 edition is not. I don’t feel as if I’ve bought a book from a company throwing a lazy lot onto the popular d20 bandwagon, I feel as if I’ve bought an entirely original RPG and this counts as a good thing.
This
GameWyrd review can be found
here.
