Deadlands: Marshal’s Handbook…

I was lucky enough to run into one of my buddies at the game shop on Saturday, he had just picked up the Deadlands Marshal’s Handbook.  We’re playing in a Deadlands campaign together, and we have agreed to rotate the duties of Marshal so that anyone who wants to have a turn at it can.  This meant that it was fairly inevitable that I pick up the Marshal’s Handbook when it hit store shelves, but I was going to wait until next month.  Then my buddy let me leaf through his copy for a few minutes, and I couldn’t resist picking one up for myself.

For starters, I find the Weird West setting one of the more interesting settings I have come across in current roleplaying games.  It mixes fantasy with some anachronism and references to real historical figures, and this adds up to me always wanting to read more of the mythology.  It seems that in the old edition of Deadlands (which I played only briefly in college) there were several expansion books that gave the system a very rich history that evolved over time, and my hope is that they continue to do this with the new edition.

Curiosity got the best of me in this case, and I have to say I was excited (and terrified) to find that the Prairie Tick is included in the Marshal’s Handbook.  These critters provided one of the most insane total party kills that I have ever been witness to… a small group of ticks ambushed my college adventuring party and killed EVERYONE in fairly short order.  Reading through their description, not much has changed with the new edition… unfortunately it would be metagaming like mad if my current character just toted around a quart of castor oil!

This likely won’t be the last time I write about this book or our Deadlands campaign.  So far getting into Savage Worlds has been interesting, with any luck my skills at D&D Dungeon Mastering will translate well to this new setting and system.