It’s
Deadlands: The Weird West in a post apocalypse
Mad Max Style. OK?
All right then, there might
be a bit more to it than that. The Wasted
West story follows one of the possible timelines
from the original Deadlands: The Weird West
game. The American civil war ended in stalemate
and America separated into the USA and CSA.
The rest of the world progressed in much the
same way as ours only everything’s a
bit weirder, as the name implies.
Weird how? Well an Indian
shaman called Raven got annoyed when some
white settlers wiped out his tribe in colonial
America. Understandably, he wanted revenge
and so unleashed the supernatural power of
evil on the world. Demons, known as Manitou’s
set about causing weird things to happen such
as creating zombies or other mythical monsters.
Some people found they could use these creatures
to give themselves magical powers, but at
a cost to themselves.
One of the main differences
between the Deadlands world and our own is
the discovery of Ghost rock (no, not an ethereal
wrestler). Think super powered coal, but instead
of releasing a bit of carbon monoxide in to
the atmosphere you get a load of screaming
Manitou’s. It has led to some strange
progressions in science, but the biggest impact
it had was to cause fights, from international
incidents to claim jumping.
Now Deadlands: The Weird
West was all cowboys with special powers and
walking dead, but Mike will tell you about
that elsewhere, all you need to know is that
it’s a good game. The Wasted West game
continues the storyline in the year 2081 after
a huge war.
The war was centered around
the conflict for large concentrations of Ghost
rock, most of which could be found in the
west of America. Almost every country in the
world was aligned with either the CSA or USA.
The conflict started when it was discovered
that only a couple of decade’s worth
of Ghost rock was left so things got pretty
tense. It all kicked off with some cross border
fisty-cuffs between the Latin American Alliance
(Mexico) and the CSA.
The trouble really started
though when the CSA captured a leading LAA
officer and found out the USA had put the
finance up for the Latin American Alliance
invasion of the CSA. War between the two sides
was all but inevitable with neither side willing
to back down. As more and more countries from
all over the world got involved the fighting
got more extreme and the first Ghost rock
Bomb was used by Pakistan against India.
Ghost rock bombs are like
nuclear weapons but they use supernatural
energy to kill people and leave the buildings
standing. They didn’t quite work as
planned though. The cities became Deadlands,
areas of such fear that the physical structure
of the place was became twisted and they get
infested with all kinds of deadly creatures.
The rest of the world was soon to follow.
In the end the world was completely wrecked,
six of the seven billion people were killed.
Then the Reckoners turned
up. In the flesh, as the four horsemen of
the apocalypse. The Reckoners were the baddies
in the Weird West. They are the power of evil
that the Manitou’s serve. They need
fear to survive and so need to create areas
of fear in the world, the most powerful of
these being Deadlands. Deadlands are not only
created where the Ghost rock bombs were detonated,
they can be created wherever a particularly
powerful creature lives (or unlives) or where
some heinous atrocity or disaster takes place.
The Reckoners started in
the west of the USA/CSA (see it was the Americans
fault, not the Canadians or the Mexicans but
the Americans!) and then stomped round the
world killing people all over and generally
having a bit of a laugh. Basically, the evil
forces of the Reckoners (not the Deceptacons)
are one of the main reasons the world’s
in the apocalyptic state it’s now in.
The Good guys, well I don’t
know actually, it’s a bit of a mystery.
There are powers of good in the world that
lend a hand to those who fight the Reckoners
but it’s hard to stick a name to them
or explain how they act. They don’t
have the powers of the Reckoners though, so
let’s just leave it there.
You step in after 13 years
of post apocalyptic survival getting some
have-a-go hero type to look after. Nearly
everyone else is dead. The world as you know
it is very similar to the Wild West of the
old USA, with it’s scattering of lawless
survivor towns. One of the biggest towns around
is the Junkyard and it’s fairly in the
middle, where Salt Lake City is now.
This game has been designed
for true heroes. If you’re looking for
a game about deep political intrigue and Machiavellian
cunning look somewhere else. The game is based
on heroes trying to rid the world of fear.
You see the Reckoners feed on fear so by being
a bit sparky-like and cheering people up,
killing a couple of zombies and a Liverpudlian
Mountain Screamer (I made that up by the way)
your heroes make a name for themselves and
help fight unadulterated Evil.
Players don’t have
to do this as your common or garden humans
either. You’ve got a host of archetypes
with special powers to fight the good fight.
Fancy being an old soldier go for it. But
you could be a syker, trained in the ways
of focusing mental energy to improve combat
abilities or sneak around. Templars are psychotic
knights who only feel they should be defending
people who really deserve their help. There
are priests who worship radiation and harness
its power, road vigilantes, junkmen who create
weird devices and a gut load of others.
But unfortunately the forces
of Evil have got it in for them; and the forces
of evil are not impotent. They create evil
creatures through the power of fear. That
Liverpudlian Mountain Screamer will have abused
you in a screeching Scouse accent, ripped
your arms off and legged it with your car
stereo before your Texas Ranger can shout,
“Damn Yankee!” There is also a
chance that if your character isn’t
very nice he could get twisted into one of
the Reckoners servants.
The mechanics are almost
identical to those laid out in the Weird West,
so if you’ve got that game you won’t
struggle with this one. Character creation
sticks to the nice safe attributes, skills,
edges and flaws. These are all given a twist
though to keep them in line with the games
well-designed theme.
Poker. Stop prodding the
girl to your left and re-read it (terrible
joke). Poker, as in cards. No they haven’t
got rid of dice rolling altogether, but they
have cut down on it. Values and suits of cards
decide what the result will be. Spades come
up trumps are the best, Clubs are pants and
the other two suits fill in the stats sandwich.
You even get to use poker chips as the always-present
fate points. You pick cards for character
creation and there are a couple of jokers
in the pack, literally. Jokers are really
good (red) or really bad (black). This follows
through to the combat system, where cards
are used to decide initiative. So there is
always an element of the unknown when the
scrapping starts. If it all sounds a bit complicated,
don’t worry it’s not when you’ve
read it a few time.
The book supplies plenty
of background information for you to use when
your planning games, some extra stuff just
for the Marshal (GM) and some handy cheats
for running your games. It also gives you
a load of heinously devious stuff to hit your
mates with from mutations to a whole crate
of whup-ass monsters. The monsters range from
the run of the mill zombies looking for some
brain to munch on, to some nice original ideas
such as Blood wolves and Lurkers. It doesn’t
take itself as seriously as a lot of games
out there either, they seem to remember that
the point is to have fun and not have the
most realistic combat system EVER!
Overall the game is a fair
continuation of the Deadlands story and successfully
keeps up the western feel of the first game.
There are bound to be other post apocalyptic
role-playing games out there, but I doubt
many give you the chance to feel like as much
like a hero. So if you ever felt like being
a bit of a Mad Max character or liked the
Weird West game and want to continue it with
a Porsche and rocket launcher instead of Dobbin
and a shotgun I’d take a look.
By the way, it might not
have been completely the Americans fault,
but you’ve got to blame someone.
Reviewed By Mark Jones |
