Deadlands reloaded is out...

[pensiv]

Pinnacle had created the Great White Games imprint specifically because Shane had thought that the Pinnacle name didn't have any power anymore. However, he has since realized that Pinnacle does have brand power and recognition and seems to be moving away from the GWG brand.

As for the art. Yes, there's a lot of new art and a lot of recycled art. Basically, they wanted art on every other page, and they wanted mostly new art, but it seems that they ran out of resources to achieve that and ended up filling the empty spaces with older pieces. In a lot of the cases, this worked out great. Some of the art people may not recognize is actually from the concept art for the video game. Most of the new art is spread throughout the book, but one of my favorites is the new map.

disclaimer: I did layout design and some of the art in the book -- such as the new rail logos -- so I had to wade through hundreds of pieces of new and old art and figure out good places for a lot of them. Luckily, I had help though.

 

[Ao the Overkitty]

Just checked out the book at the game store. Looked very shiney.

It is going to end up being a big purchase, so I'm going to contemplate this for a couple days. If i do, I'll end up purchasing Deadlands:Reloaded, Savage Worlds core, and CJ Carella's Armageddon. That's run me about $92 with in store discounts. Not bad, but still enough to have to consider.

 

[scourger]

Well, I got my copy last night at my FLGS. It is a pretty book, but I'm not sure if I'll use it as written. When we played the orginal DL, we didn't use all the fantastic classes--the PCs were bascially just Western dudes. There was some weirdness, but it wasn't a feature of the game. We've had largely the same use from HOE, too. So, I may just use parts of it to run a Western game (less Weird, more West). Maybe the Plot Point books will be good enough to use wholesale in the future.

 

[Turanil]

As soon as it reaches my LGS, I will buy it. Thanks.

I got it!
I just need to make sure that my wife doesn't learn about it... (since it is an import, plus that I bought a set of five nicely pre-painted minis, I spent 60$... ).

This book looks very good, although I think it emphasizes too much on additional rules, and not enough on setting description (plus the only map is disappointing). Anyway, it will be cool to be able to play some Clint Eastwood's western (especially an Italian-like western) in a world reminding Stephen King's Dark Tower...

 

[Gothmog]

Well, I've run SW Deadlands Reloaded twice now, and I've been pleasantly surprised by the results. The SW rules have the same feel as the original, without being as clunky in some areas (multiple action cards and Wind loss, I'm looking at you especially). The only thing I'm not crazy about is the new way Hexes are handled for Hucksters (either pay power points to activate a power OR draw your poker hand), so my group has gone back to the old way. The Huckster rolls his Spellcasing skill, and with success gets 5 cards to make his poker hand, plus one extra card per raise. In addition, hucksters get one extra card per point of Grit. If you pull a Joker, you have to include it in your hand, but that means your Hex will likely go off. So far its worked well, and we've had a blast with it.

Now to get back to work on converting all the old Hexes, Miracles, Rituals, Kung Fu and Harrowed powers to SW.

 

[Ao the Overkitty]

I did go back and pick up the books a day after I looked at them. I'm a very happy gamer. I rather like Reloaded and dove right into it before reading the Savage worlds book. So, I'm going to need to go back and reread the rules once I learn them, but oh well. About the only thing I am disappointed about is the map, since it is so hard to read. Supposedly it is shaded to denote where the different countries are, but i can't see the shading at all.

 

[Felon]

And the d20 version was...bad. That's all I can muster to say about it without invoking the ire of Eric's Grandma. It was bad enough that it was pretty close to the end of Pinnacle from what I understand (in fact, a lot of stores think they DID go out of business..the fact that they changed their name to Great White Games probably didn't help).

I only have direct knowledge of Deadlands from having purchased the d20 version. Overall, I liked it, but from what I have read about the original game, much of the charm comes from using the deck of cards to determine things like initiative order. As it was, it was basically D&D in the weird west.

I'd say that some of the deck rules should have at least been incorporated as optional.

 

[scourger]

Savage Worlds keeps the deck of cards for initiative, but it's simpler. Each player gets one card (more with the right Edges) and acts once in a round (even with multiple cards) instead of rolling a dice pool to see how many cards/actions each player gets.

Deadlands Reloaded uses cards for a couple of other things like magic & gunfights (I haven't read it all).

 

[Nightchilde-2]

Now that I've gotten it and read it, I'm...impressed. I'm a hard core DL Classic kinda guy, but I really like the Savage Worlds version as well.

It gets the Nightchilde Seal of Approval.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

Did the original Deadlands use both cards and dice?

Sounds like it'd be a bit odd, switching back and forth like that. Obviously I've never played it, though.