Product Review

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