Deadlands Noir - How is it?

[frizbog]

I'm thinking about picking up Deadlands: Noir and running it with my group. Anyone have any experience with this, particularly in GM'ing it? I'm particularly curious how it compares to Daring Tales of Adventure, which is also a pulp-themed Savage Worlds setting, but really any player/GM experience with it would be helpful.

 

[innerdude]

I just bought it a few weeks ago, but due to other stuff (our current GM is running Shaintar, also bought Night's Black Agents) I haven't really had the chance to absorb it yet.

From what little I've gone over it so far, it really seems to play up the "noir" thematics in the setting rules.

 

[Celondon]

We've been playing it for the last few months. It's a lot of fun, so far. The more the players buy into the Noir mindset, the better it is, overall. I highly recommend one PC be a hard drinking Private Detective, for flavor sake.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

I've read it but haven't played. It seems like a good setting. I'm not super familiar with Tales of Adventure, but in general the noir genre tends to be darker than pulp (hence the name). Heroes tend to be more flawed and situations are more ambiguous. There's more trying to survive and get by and less having grand adventures and saving the world.

 

[innerdude]

I'm thinking about picking up Deadlands: Noir and running it with my group. Anyone have any experience with this, particularly in GM'ing it? I'm particularly curious how it compares to Daring Tales of Adventure, which is also a pulp-themed Savage Worlds setting, but really any player/GM experience with it would be helpful.

I also just noticed this is your first post on ENWorld! Welcome to the fold!

 

[frizbog]

Thanks!

 

[amerigoV]

You should watch the videos they made for the Kickstarter. I think there are four of them. Here is the first.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ_RHECW3fs

 

[frizbog]

Yep, I watched them. I went ahead and ordered the books, etc, which also got me PDF copies of the books.

Looks to be really well-done. I'm going to start prepping to run it -- I'll let you guys know how it goes.

 

[frizbog]

Thanks - Did you find anything confusing or difficult to work with, or any other advice? I've only got soft-copies right now and I prep better with paper (only a few more days till the physical books arive).

 

[frizbog]

So I ran it today with my group. It went well and we had a bunch of fun. I generally like to get players to make characters at the table together as a group, so we did that. Then we started the campaign that comes in the book and got through the first "episode" of it. The party has not yet encountered anything supernatural, and when they first do they probably won't even know it, so a couple of them were a little disappointed...they expected it to be more horror and less film noir, although that will be mixing up soon enough. So my advice to anyone thinking about starting a DLN campaign would be to set the expectations...there won't always be a horror/spooky/weird element, and there won't always be a noir thing going on.

The books are really nice and well made, and I really like the GM screen and the ability to get PDF+Hardback combos if you order from Pinnacle directly. But I don't recommend buying the action decks. They look great, but their finish is not great - the cards cling to each other and don't shuffle or deal easily.

I did have some trouble finding some things in the books. The index didn't include things I expected to find. For example: there was no obvious section in the book for how much the investigators would expect to earn for their jobs, and there was no item in the index about fees, making money, income, etc. The cases in the book don't say how much the investigators would earn for each job. Finally, we found that under the gear, there were prices for services, which included investigation, but in a context of expenses, not as income. Maybe it's obvious to others, but I had trouble finding it.

Anyway, the group is ready to do some more, so that's always a good sign.