Way o the Dead

Better Off Dead. . . Thats what you might think after reading this creepy collection of new powers for the Harrowed! In the Weird West, its not just the monsters that come clawing up out of the ground. Heroes who are too ornery to stay buried sometimes wake from the long dirt nap as well. Those who do are powerful as Hell itself. The Way of the Dead features the Harrowed and their incredible new powers. Youll also find rules for Harrowed Hindrances as well as a casket-full of advice on how to handle these creepy cadavers in your own campaign. The Prospector also chimes in with his secret plan for his army of the dead, the magical elixir he uses to keep em in line, and some words of warning for the recently un-deceased. Theres also a full-length adventure, Dark Canyon, to help new Marshals get their favorite deaders up and shambling. And if thats not enough for you, theres full conversion rules for our classic Deadlands products to the D20 rules!

The Way of the Dead, I thought, promised two things - information on the powerful, glamorised and thus favourite character "race" of the undead Harrowed and conversion rules to turn your entire collection of original Deadlands into the d20 system. Ah. Silly me.

It’s a 96-paged, soft back, black and white book that comes in at just under $US 20.00. That’s on the expensive side. I was struck straight a way was the giant sized font the book uses. If you want to make a serious price per page comparison then you should probably take off a half dozen pages from The Way of the Dead’s total. There’s an advert in the back and so there goes another (the OGL license appears in the front but since every d20 book has one I’ll not count it as a penalty). There’s a twenty-page adventure in the back of the book too. Some people like this sort of thing, and although I rarely pay for pre-written adventures I sometimes see the benefit of them as "bonus" material. In this case, though, while I’m still searching for my d20 conversion rules the adventure isn’t a bonus, it’s filler. We’re down to 69 pages for help on the Harrowed and the conversion rules now. There are eight pages given over to this fellow called the Prospector and his plan that involves the Harrowed. That’s nice but if you don’t intend to use that – perhaps doubtful that the old man can pull it off – then we’re down to 61 pages.

So, is this 61-paged book worth nearly $20? No. It’s not worth nearly $20 at all.

However, I’ve set the book up for a fall here; as any Deadlands fan will tell you. You can’t get away with discounting key NPCs like that so easily. To their benefit Pinnacle handles this very well and presents important NPCs in the right way. Deadlands is a campaign setting in the truest sense in that it puts important people on par with important places, magical items and brewing wars. Another important NPC the book mentions is the Harrowed called Stone. This fellow is a nasty, a menace by which to terrorise your players with and Pinnacle refuse to give his stats. Good on them. If he’s that powerful why does he need stats? So your players can kill them? They’re not _supposed_ to kill them. If you can accept that then the lack of stats shouldn’t be a bother. Indeed, Stone must survive unbeaten by the players since he’s also a key figure in the future and in bringing about Hell on Earth.

So, Pinnacle has my support on the issue of not providing stats for key NPCs and clearly I don’t think that detracts from the book. I don’t agree with all of their roleplaying core assumptions though. Notably, I don’t think it’s a wise idea to have a character race which is so clearly more powerful than the others and I think it’s an even worse idea to try and counter balance game mechanics with role-playing possibilities. The Harrowed are super tough and dripping with powers; the Way of the Dead begins by introducing even more powers for them rather than, as I hoping, offering up some sort of mechanical balance for them. The idea put forward is that although the Harrowed are way more powerful there will be times when being undead will undo you. The reactions of NPCs are likely to be highly negative if you’re one of those Harrowed with a zombie like appearance. What happens if you play for months out in the wilderness where there are no NPCs with sensibilities to frighten?

Chapter Four talks about a few groups like the Texas Rangers and the Pinkertons as possible threats to PC Harrowed. It’s true, they are. I’m not won over by the inference that the Harrowed have yet another level over other characters though; even if this one is an inherently plot based. On the other hand, if the Pinkertons and the Texas Rangers are more generic groups (as they actually are) who operate against all sorts of unnatural creatures in the world then including them as suitable foes and checks against the Harrowed is simply rehashing information already available and charging us for the privilege. In the same chapter the Reckoners, the big bad guys, are listed as a threat to the Harrowed PCs. Duh! That’s a bit like having to buy an extra Star Wars supplement on Jedi Knights and finding a chapter reminding us that the Empire doesn’t like them.

Finally, by page 52 the Way of the Dead starts up a chapter on how to handle Harrowed in your game. The author makes no bones about how awkward the Harrowed can be and that’s a good thing. The advice on offer ranges from fairly weak, such as the poorly titled "Educated Your Players" section, to the better stuff where the book tells us that other evil Harrowed may turn up and cause problems as a direct result of the PCs doing to well. That might sound obvious at first but the balance of behind the scenes supernatural activity is quite a fine line in Deadlands and it’s nice to see this sort of thing make print. Bizarrely though the section on how to handle Harrowed finds itself distracted on awarding these undead heroes with even _more_ power if they’re around when a fearmonger is taken down.

Oh yes, there are supposed to be conversion rules in here too. There are a few pages of them and they begin by pointing out that it’s rather hard to convert a skill-based game to a level based game. Well I never! That’s exactly why I wanted the book. Unfortunately, Pinnacle can’t think up a particularly good way to convert the systems either. We’re left with the suggestion that the Marshal (the GM) should work something out with the players. Grrr! That’s not the sort of thing I expect to find in a book advertised as having the conversion system in! If you don’t give up in despair then you’ll find some actual mechanics to help you along, there is a suggested way of turning Deadland coordination and dice type into d20 attributes. There’s even a little table to suggest which two "old" Deadland attributes can be used to work out d20 Intelligence and Wits. There’s a matching table for skills but it’s not so helpful; the wisdom of the skill version table suggests such gems as using the d20 "climbing" skill in place of the "climbin’" skill, or the d20 "Handle Animal" in place of the "Teamster" and to use "Ride" rather than "Horse Ridin’". Phew! Thanks for the help. I don’t think I would ever have worked that out of myself!

If you’re planning on running a Harrowed heavy Deadlands game then you’ll find a use for this book.

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The Way of the Dead is the Harrowed splatbook for Deadlands d20. It's not quite a classbook, since Harrowed is essentially a template - a Harrowed is basically a normal character that died, but was reanimated thanks to an evil spirit or demon.

Unlike previous Deadlands d20 splatbooks, this is 96 pages and a whopping $20, though thank goodness I only paid $8 for it used. And like previous Deadlands 20 books, it's fairly poor in terms of physical quality, full of recycled art, and and has large margins. (To be fair, I usually recyle that line when I write a review of a Pinnacle product). I swear, I think I've seen some of the art is just about every DL d20 product. This one picture of a woman about to flip a card for instance (Even people who don't have any other DL products can tell some of the art is recycled because in many instances the artist put the year next to his signature).

The first couple pages are recycled from the original Deadlands rulebook. Basically, it's a story in which a famous Deadlands NPC (the Prospector) talks to a Harrowed (one which may have just come to it's senses). In the original book, it was a great way to introduce the reader to the setting of Deadlands. Here, it's pretty much just filler to explain who the Prospector is. After that, there's a lot more fluff, about 20 pags in total, until we get to some meat.

Harrowed generally have special powers, and there are lots of different ones. About 20 pages is devoted to them. There's not really any sort of balance to them, they range in useful from Cat Eyes, which lets the Harrowed see better in the dark, to a few different powers that allow the Harrowed to almost instantly kill people (provided they don't resist). This isn't necessarily bad, but it's something the GM has to watch out for.

After that, is about 10 pages of fluff on various organizations/groups and how they feel about the Harrowed.

Then is more fluff, mostly, and stuff repeated from the Deadlands d20 book. This goes on and on, seemingly, though some is background material new to me (info on just who the Prospector is), and some actually has some gaming relevence.

This goes on and on and on seemingly endlessly until the included scenario. It's pretty short, around 20 pages, and is aimed at Harrowed/dead characters. And begining ones. It's a pretty gruesome adventure, though it doesn't get that graphic. Still, probably not something you want to run for children or hippies.

Lastly, there are some brief conversion rules to convert regular Deadlands characters to Deadlands d20 characters, which I think also shows up on their website. Despite what they say, it's really not that hard to converted one from regular Deadlands to Deadlands d20. Most DL characters are built around a certain archetype, and most of these made it to DL d20 in the form of classes.

All in all, an okay product. Would have been better if it were cheaper, had original art, smaller margins (and less white space in general), less fluff, but as you never really see that in Deadlands d20 products, it's to be expected. So it gets a slightly below average grade of C-.