Do you mean D20, as in the system derived from D&D 3.0, or D20, as in an original system based on a, well, D20?

If it's the former, I guess I won't be able to sell this to my group because some of them have a rather irrational hatred of all things D20! Otherwise, it does sound a bit clunky and complicated, but also quite interesting.

Quote from: Todtsteltzer;457067Do you mean D20, as in the system derived from D&D 3.0, or D20, as in an original system based on a, well, D20?

If it's the former, I guess I won't be able to sell this to my group because some of them have a rather irrational hatred of all things D20! Otherwise, it does sound a bit clunky and complicated, but also quite interesting.

As in the system derived from D&D OGL.  But I find it feels less like OGL then Mutants and Masterminds does.  

Another option - though I've never played it - is Gunslingers and Gamblers.  It is, its own system based around rolling poker dice and the success/difficulty is based around poker hands.  link to a review

There's also the BRP-based 'Aces High'... which, like Deadlands, includes some fantastical elements... but doesn't create an entire alt-history and has much less of a comic feel to it.

I like Savage Worlds well enough, but I like my Westerns without roaming undead so Deadlands never appealed to me.

That said, another good RPG for Westerns is Coyote Trail. It is very easy to learn and use. It can be used for gritty or spaghetti western types of games.

Savage Worlds is very wargamey in it's approach to play. It makes it great for giant shootouts and action heavy play(i.e. resolving a lot of combats quickly, or a large combat faster then most). Without 'trappings' the magic system is pretty generic. The combat is done tactical and quick, somewhere between Gurps and Warhammer 40k (the minis game).

It's great if you want your heroes to be significantly tougher/smarter/stronger then their opponents. It does a good job of separating the mooks from the key characters which might serve a Sergio Leone inspired game nicely.

That said, I have nothing to comment on Deadlands, having not really played or read it. Hopefully it has genre specific stuff like High Noon Duels and all that, which are not covered in the explorers edition.

I think the Sergio Leone style is all on you and your players more then the game system itself. I don't think A&8s is any more or less suited to a Sergio Leone style game then any other as that's more of a narrative style then a thing a set of resolution mechanics can come up with.

While I really appreciate the recomendations in this thread, I like what I'm reading in the Deadlands PDFs so far! The system appears to be easy to learn and encourages cinematic shenanigans, which is always a plus with my usual posse. Also, I know that at least two of the players will simply love the weird and gonzo stuff!

Well, there are quite extensive rules for duels (involving poker cards) and some shorthands to simulate longer games of poker - without having to play poker all night long. Not that there is anything wrong with that - except that I'm loosing all the time and could therefore never, ever convincingly portray a card shark.

I didn't like Savage Worlds the first time I played it. It was at a con and the game was run by the famous(?) Sean Patrick Fannon. The system wasn't explained well to me and it didn't make a lot of sense. I was also pretty anti-mini's at the time too.

Since then, I've played Savage Worlds quite a bit (my roommate is a HUGE Savage Worlds fan) and I've gotta say that the system works for just about anything. You don't even need mini's to run it either, but it does help in certain situations.

I've never played any incarnation of Deadlands, but the idea certainly appeals to me. I like Westerns, I like weird-apocalypse. I like steampunk. Shit, I play Rifts! So once I finish up my C&C Evil-Monster campaign and my roomies Sundered Skies campaign, I think I might pick up Deadlands.

I liked Savage Worlds reasonably from my recent campaign of Deadlands Reloaded, with the major exception of damage.  The minor hiccup of exploding dice probability didn't bother me, as you still always wanted the larger die.  The edges and hindrances had plenty of good choices along with some sucky ones.  

My beef with damage is that there is a strong death spiral - i.e. being hit means that you are immediately less effective, as opposed to just losing hit points.  The death spiral makes combats more anti-climactic, rather than having a rousing finish.  It also sucks to ride one as a PC, when getting unlucky early on means that you're likely to get worse and worse through the combat.  

If I play it again, I'd want to modify this somewhat.

Quote from: kryyst;457092As in the system derived from D&D OGL.  But I find it feels less like OGL then Mutants and Masterminds does.  

Yeah, I think it reaches the point of a misnomer to qualify it as D20. I think its more similar to AD&D than it is to D&D 3.5; and its not very similar to either.

RPGPundit

Savage Worlds is a pretty cool system, it's my Numba One game right now, but I have yet to play Deadlands Reloaded.  If you are going for a gritty kinda game, I don't know if I'd recommend it, but if you are going for a game where the desperado hangs up-side-down in the saddle while riding past villains givin' 'em both barrels ... yeah, that's the kinda stuff SavW is good for.

EDIT

Though the above might not be entirely recommended; while you /can/ do it, the fact that you're not taking cover during a gun fight /might/ come back to bite you, circumstances permitting.

If anything, I am impressed at the level of support Savage Worlds seems to get.  Also "Wiggy" Wade-Williams (former writer for PEG and now has his own gig at Triple Ace Games) is some sort of writing machine.

Quote from: jhkim;457199My beef with damage is that there is a strong death spiral - i.e. being hit means that you are immediately less effective, as opposed to just losing hit points.

That is one of the things I DID like about it... none of that nonsense where you rack up damage during a fight without any effect.
... of course, most everyone in our group chips their damage away, so it seldom grts to that point anyway.

My biggest beefs with Savage Worlds is that for the fast action pace that it tries to set we found that it did still get kind of bogged down in keeping track of all your abilities, this could be mitigated with action cards or even cue cards listing your special stuff.

Another issue we all generally had is that stats and skills aren't really linked.  It's purely an aesthetics thing but there seemed be no connection or reason as to why some things were stat based and others were skilled.  

Next on the list was the damage mechanic.  We were fine with the downward spiral effect.  The issue was how quickly it kicked in.  There was no real buffer.  Basically you are ok one minute then the pain starts.

Then there's the mook rules.  Though this could have just been our generally horrible luck.  But we found that the mook rules don't work well at all.  The problem was that mooks die easier, but they still hit just as hard.  So if you are expecting to wade through waves of mooks you are going to get swarmed then dead.   Where as against bosses we (the pc's I mean) generally were doing the outnumbering and clearly had the edge.

Lastly the exploding dice.  Again could have just been our experience.  But essentially what we decided was this.  It's better to constantly be trying the most ridiculous stuff because most roles in combat needed to explode to do any real damage.  So you may as well just always swing for the fences instead of just trying to hit.  Our issue with that is if you always need to swing for the fences, then that becomes the ordinary at which point it just became boring.

I haven't run/played the Deadlands Reloaded yet, but from my experience with Savage Worlds, it does have hit points, and those are you bennies - as long as you've got bennies, you've got a chance to soak any hits and their related penalties.

Quote from: jcfiala;457331I haven't run/played the Deadlands Reloaded yet, but from my experience with Savage Worlds, it does have hit points, and those are you bennies - as long as you've got bennies, you've got a chance to soak any hits and their related penalties.

That would be true, if bennies weren't also your luck mechanic as well.  It's the same problem many games that have this kind of fate/action point system.  Players are reserved into holding onto them until they really need them and not potentially squander them.  Then they blow the wad near the end of the session because they have them all left.