Deadlands - The Wasted West: The Brightwood Beacon, Eposide 2

 

“Welcome to the Brightwood Beacon! Broadcasting from the Doorstep of the Daimyo, coming to you live from the base of Mount Hood with all the information you need to survive in the Wasted West!”

Part Two: The War and Judgement Day
Now that we’ve discussed the ancient history and laid the groundwork, it’s time to get into more recent events and how we ended up where we are now.
Once again, there might be some terms and phrases that might not sound pretty. And once again no offense is intended.

The Really Fast History Lesson
Now that we’ve covered the very basics of the Hunting Grounds and what happened way back when, we’re going to quickly review the last couple of centuries.
When it comes to the USA and CSA, they were able to set aside most of the differences between them and grow as brothers. That also means that slavery was abolished in the CSA (from French and British pressure, I imagine). The USA also seems to have gotten Detroit back at some point. This meant that the North American continent was finally at peace. And stayed at peace for a while.
Part of this wind down of the war was the division of the Maze. The USA controlled the north part of the Maze, NorCal, while the CSA controlled the southern part of the Maze, SoCal.
Anyway. Moving on, things kept moving on and the world started having some conflicts that led them to the first and second World Wars. The American nations were allies and members of the Allies, fighting against the Nazis. While I’ll discuss some more stuff about the Nazis in a later part of this series, just know that when you add the Reckoners to the Nazis, you get some very horrible things.
For North America, this meant that crossing between the USA and CSA was as simple as crossing the Canadian or Mexican border. It was routine and something that people did daily in many places. With peace and prosperity, technology continued to advance, and things were pretty good for most people.
Outside the USA and CSA, things also got better. Germany was put back together after the way, as was Japan. The USSR and the Warsaw Pact kept chugging along. China got its act together. And so on and so on.

The Farawar War
One of the major players in the Weird West that I haven’t discussed yet is a man named Dr. Darius Hellstromme. Dr. Hellstromme is a British inventor who moved to the nation of Desert (the former state of Utah) to get access to the plentiful supplies of Ghost Rock and created Steam Wagons (very early automobiles) to help the Saints survive the appearance of the Mojave Rattlers. Eventually, he grew old and put his brain in a cybernetic body and continued to invent and create things. Mostly weapons of war, which he sold to just about everybody. There’s a lot more to his story, which I should hopefully get around to before long.
Moving on, Dr. Hellstromme ended up getting involved in space exploration and faster than light travel. Somehow, he discovered an inhabited solar system, and it also had Ghost Rock! Of course, the inhabitants of this new world, Banshee weren’t technologically advanced, and they were living on a pile of Ghost Rock, so the Hellstromme Industries marines did a bit of genocide before the settlers arrived. As you do. There was a peace deal reached between the natives of the planet, the Anouks, and the settlers. Which was broken before the ink was dry. Tensions escalated and the settlers begged for help from the UN, so a massive task force was sent to Banshee, which included a ton of Sykers.
I haven’t talked about Sykers yet, and I will go in depth on them in another broadcast, but they’re an important part of this sordid tale. As I mentioned in my last broadcast, the Hunting Grounds are the source of magical power. Well, of course the military wanted to use that. Huckster were no good, Blessed had too many morals, and shamans weren’t exactly willing to help out the white man and his military. There was another group that could tap into the Hunting Grounds without too many complications: the Martial Artists. Using this as a basis, they found people who were sensitive to the psychic realm and started training them as masters of espionage. Now, these very powerful psychics, trained as assassins and covert operators, are sent into a meat grinder of a war. Why? Because the Anouks turned out to have powers over their own, including the ability to control people’s minds. This makes an important difference between those who came back from this war and the ones that stayed for the Last War. Just to get that part of their history out of the way.
So, this war is going on this distant alien planet, only accessible using a ring gate built by Hellstromme Industries. That means that resupply is long and expensive, and Ghost Rock takes a long time to get back. Why is that important, well, that’s next.

Rising Tensions
I know that some of you are wondering why we’re talking about some colony and war way far away from everything. Well, you have to remember that Ghost Rock is a very important resource for every government in the world. And it’s not infinite. When there was a report that came out that said that there was only about 20 years worth of Ghost Rock left, at current consumption rates, the governments of the world were more than willing to dump more resources into Banshee.
And then they started building up their militaries. Not just Sykers, but cyborgs as well. Cyborgs are made from the Harrowed, which are dead folks that have a Manitou take up residence in their noggins after death and then have to fight for control of the body with the original resident. Originally, the Harrowed could heal any injury (except for the fatal one), but there was that pesky demon in the skull to deal with. So, the arcane researchers (or Dr. Hellstromme) found a way to keep the monster under control. However, this limited how much power it could access to heal the body, in addition to the other powers they could manifest. But since the dead don’t really need their organs, as they don’t need to breathe and all they need is their brains (the seat of the soul), you could stuff them full of all kinds of cool technology. In general, there are two types of cyborgs: combat and infiltration. Both of these were used in the Last War. Other things that they started to build were powered combat armor, hover tanks, laser weapons, and irradiated Ghost Rock bombs. Those will be important later.

The Last War and Judgement Day
The Last War began on February 22^nd, 2078 when the LatAm (Latin American) forces invaded the CSA, including SoCal, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona. Led by the Mexican general Carlos Santa Anna Ramirez, they invaded city of Lost Angels, which was weird as they were an independent theocracy, and took months to conquer Phoenix. In the end, General Ramirez was captured and spilled the beans about who was helping him: US President Romero and the rest of the Northern Alliance.
Once that got out, President Romero, a former movie director, was impeached and tossed out on his ear, allowing Mary Rose Tremane to take over. She wasn’t some wilting rose, she had guts. She proved this after the CSA tried to capture the rest of California and ordered some minor strikes against CSA military facilities. Which caused the CSA president, Allen Sothby, to declare war against the USA. Which drug in just about every other major power. If you want a detailed list of the countries in the North Alliance and the Southern Alliance (the NA and SA respectively), you can look them up.
Anyway. Things started heating up. 2079 was a bloody year, with conflicts all over the world, and between the USA and CSA just about everywhere they touched. Plenty of battles along the Mason-Dixon wall, in the Maze, and anywhere else you can think of. But by the time 2080 had started, things had started to cool down, as everyone had been touched to some degree or another by the killing and conflict. A cease fire went into effect over the holidays and President Tremane went on a tour of the country, to assess the damage and build morale. Until she and Air Force One vanished on January 1^st, 2081. Her VP, Andrew Bates ended up getting sworn in after they were unable to locate the plane or President Tremane.
Andrew Bates was not the calm, cool, and collected person that his predecessor had been. He immediately blamed the CSA and demanded they turn over all of California or he would nuke one Southern city a week until they did, earning himself the nickname of “A-Bomb Andy.” Of course, he lived up to his moniker.
It was the Germans that started the ball rolling again by invading Mexico City. They ended up attacking the French embassy, which held out for a whole week, before the Germans got in and left the French ambassador’s head on the spiked gate of the embassy grounds. The French crossed the Rhine and began their invasion in force. The British then landed at Normandy (again) and fought the French forces there, and then German invaded France through Belgum (again) and then everything got started. It was Pakistan who launched the first conventional nuclear weapon on India (yeah, they both had them). And then the UK nuked France after their invasion stalled. The Warsaw Pact joined the French, and everything went to shit in Europe. Asia was already a burning Dumpster fire of conflict. And it was the Canadians that dropped the bomb first in North America, hitting Washington State and New England before their land invasion, reaching as far south as Boston in the east and past Portland to Redding, California in the west.

Reckoners Revealed
On September 23^rd, 2081, at 6:17pm Eastern Standard Time, the first irradiated Ghost Rock bomb was dropped, and it was Judgement Day. Every major, and minor, city was hit by one of these. And only after they landed did we find out what they really did. Originally designed to kill the population and leave (most) of the infrastructure intact. Well, they did. But not really. Originally a secret from the public, Ghost Rock was made from the souls of the damned and demons. When they exploded, they created a Deadland on earth. Deadlands are the “bad parts” of the Hunting Ground, driven by fear and tainted by evil. The bombs destroyed a five-mile radius at Ground Zero and then created a mile-high storm of trapped and tortured souls another thirty miles (or so, it can vary) called a Ghost Storm that’s about ten feet thick.
But that wasn’t the worst part of it. This was all part of the plan by the Reckoners to manifest themselves on earth, in the flesh, so to speak. They had been working on this since they had awoken on July 3^rd, 1863. And now, over two centuries later, they were here. And their names were: War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. That’s right, the four fucking horsemen of the fucking apocalypse.
War appeared in Kansas before going up to the Sioux Union and destroying Deadwood. After the Sioux drove him off, he was the first of the horsemen to cross the Mississippi.
Famine appeared in the Maze and fought her way to the City of Lost Angels. But the priests of the Church of Lost Angels were powerful and managed to call down a huge beam of heavenly light down on her and killed her horse. Of course, the waters of Prosperity Bay were turned to blood and the following earthquake dropped the city some hundred feet into the water. She then walked across the West until she, too, crossed the Mississippi.
Pestilence appeared in Texas and made his way across the state, leaving death and rot in his wake, until he crossed the Mississippi.
Death appeared in Death Valley, California and began gathering a massive army of the Walkin’ Dead with him as he made his way to the Mississippi, like the others.
What happened on the other side of the Mississippi? No one really knows. As they had their way across the rest of North America, those places fell silent as everyone there was killed by the various servants of the Horsemen. And then they made their way across the rest of the world. Europe, Asia, Africa, and even Australia, if you believe people. And what’s going to happen when they come back? No one really knows that, either. But there’s people who wait and watch along the banks of the Mississippi, keeping an eye out for their return, and hope they can give us some kind of warning.

And that’s where today’s broadcast comes to a close. Thanks for listening. We’ll be back soon. Until then, keep your powder dry.

Deadlands - The Wasted West: The Brightwood Beacon, Episode 1

 

The following is a new series for the Bearers of the Word, the Brightwood Beacon. I've been getting ready for a new Deadlands: Hell on Earth campaign, but since everyone is busy with their lives, I started making recordings of an in-universe radio broadcast with the world information the players need. What I'm going to be doing now is putting the scripts here, in case someone else can use them. Enjoy!

“Welcome to the Brightwood Beacon! Broadcasting from the Doorstep of the Daimyo, coming to you live from the base of Mount Hood with all the information you need to survive in the Wasted West!”

Part one: History lesson
Today, we’re going to start with the ancient history of the world and how we ended up in the Wasted West. This is going to be talking about history, religion, and the first War Between the States.
A note about terms: Given the sources for this information are from the 19^th Century, I’ll probably be using out of date terms and phrases. No offense is intended.

The Hunting Grounds and Deadlands
The Native Americans don’t have a monoculture, even if some would like to make you think they do. However, it’s from the Native American groups that we get the terms like the Hunting Grounds, also known as the Spirit World and/or the Afterlife, as well as Deadlands, Nature Spirits, and Manitou. Just to name a few.
What’s important about the Hunting Grounds is that it’s where the spirits reside. The spirits that are non-hostile towards humans are the Nature Spirits. These Spirits are connected to nature, like you might imagine. Things like Brother Bear, Brother Wolf, and so on. These spirits can be called upon by native shamans by performing rituals and appeasing them and then they’ll do some magic for them.
And since we can’t have nice things, there’s the counterpoint to the Nature Spirits, the Manitous. These spirits are demons or devils by any other name. These perverted and malevolent creatures delight in torture and creating suffering for humans, under the command of the once mysterious beings known as the Reckoners. When the calling on the Spirits, you could get one of these instead. And in places where spirits have power, Manitou have power, too. Only those with evil in their hearts would willingly serve these creatures. Which means there were plenty of them.
The important thing you need to know about the Hunting Grounds is that it is the source of all magic, good or bad, and is hope to good and bad spirits. And it’s where you go when you die. It’s too complicated to get into the weeds of it right now, but we can cover more later if you want.

The Old Ones
At some point in the ancient past, exactly when isn’t precisely known, a bunch of Indian powerful shamans got together at a pow-wow or other gathering and discussed the problem of the Manitous. In addition to the Manitous, the Reckoners would also create monsters, bringing stories and legends to life in the shadows of the world. To create fear and feed on fear.
As you might imagine, this wasn’t a good situation for people. So, these shamans, they get together, and they talk. They debate. They pass around pipes and mushrooms and cacti and whatever else. They communed with their spirit guides and each other. And these old men, they come up with a solution. They make a bargain with some of the other and more powerful nature spirits. These spirits are powerful enough to hold the Manitous at bay, but it’ll take up most of their power and the power of the other nature spirits. This will prevent the Reckoners from gaining power, but the Nature Spirits will grow quiet. And the Spirits required that these shamans, the Old Ones would stay in the Hunting Grounds with them. Forever.

Raven and the Last Sons
Now, things start rolling along. The Manitous and Nature Spirits fall quiet, and humanity is allowed to live on their own. Which might have led to the Renaissance and other advancements in Europe. Which sounds all well and good, except when you remember what happened in Americas after the Europeans arrived. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Reckoners only let themselves be quieted, knowing what would happen in the future. You can almost hear them laughing about it.
Anyway. As I just mentioned, Europeans arrived in the Americas and humans being humans, it wasn’t long until blood started being shed. Some of that blood belonged to a tribe on the East Coast of what is now America. This tribe was almost completely wiped out, leaving one survivor, a young shaman named Raven. Raven didn’t believe in turning the other cheek, and to be honest, I don’t blame him for being full of hate and rage after suffering a genocide. It can change a man. And it sure as shit changed Raven.
Raven tried to curse the white man but couldn’t get enough mojo to pull it off. He started seeking out Manitous instead of the Nature Spirits, and they in turn started whispering in his ear about how he could get the power to punish the honkeys, if he could free the Reckoners from their slumber. So, Raven spent the next century or so gathering other survivors of the seemly never-ending genocide being pushed onto the Indians. He took these young, angry men and taught them dark magics and got as much vengeance as they could. Soon enough, it was time to lead them into the Hunting Grounds, using one of the weak portals that opened once a century (in those days) in Yosemite. Yeah. That one.
These young men and Raven went to war in the Hunting Grounds, hunting down and killing the Old Ones. Since time works differently in the Hunting Grounds (and even allows travel time and space), it still may have taken them centuries from their perspective. Finally, they killed the last Old One and all of the Spirits were free.

The Reckoning (July 3^rd, 1863)
Unfortunately for all of us, the last Old One died on July 3^rd, 1863. For those of you who forgot your history from school, this was the third and bloodiest day of the Battle of Gettysburg (if you haven’t seen it, go watch the movie, it’s a good one). After his day of blood and fear, monsters crawled out of the shadows. The dead rose to devore the brains of the living. Creatures of nightmares and gunpower were born, still haunting the world to this day. Men were butchered. It was not a good time.
It was The Reckoning.
It was the day the world changed forever.
Because of these changes, the War Between the States ground to a halt, as whenever they tried to have a battle, things got… Weird. And scary. So, the war slowed down. Until it was an election year. That means that the CSA was allowed to exist long enough that the French and the British to break the blockade and effectively recognize the CSA. And then we pissed off the Canadians one time and they took over Detroit. I say they could have kept it, but that might just be because of that girl from Chicago I slept with years ago. Anyway.
Magic was now back. And people found several ways to tap into it, being knowingly or unknowingly.
The most commonly known users of magic were the Hucksters. When the Reckoning happened, people who had studied Hoyle’s Book of Games discovered a code in the rules and examples that taught them how to mentally enter the Hunting Grounds and engage in a duel with Manitous, represented as a card game, and force them to power their spells. This was dangerous in so many ways, but it was also powerful.
Next up were the Blessed. By following the rules laid down by their faiths, those with a deep connection to their religions could channel what amounted to divine power. Christians, Islamists, Jews, and even Taoists could use these powers to fight back the darkness that started to grow around them.
Another group that grew to prominence were the Mad Scientists. While they didn’t know it at the time, the Manitous whispered into their ears and used their powers to create wonderous and terrible machines using junk science and magic. And Ghost Rock. We’ll discuss Ghost Rock more in a moment, but one of the important things about the “new science” was that these inventions almost always lead to making weapons or destructive creations. Which meant that the USA and CSA were using airplanes, tanks, and chemical weapons against each other in the 1870s.
This release of magic didn’t just affect the war, it effected the Indians, as now their medicine was stronger than in had been in memory. It let them fight back against the white man. Before too long, there was the Sioux Union in what was the Dakota Territory and the Coyote Confederation in was once called Oklahoma or Indian Territory. Unfortunately, it was too late for most other groups and tribes to seize the same amount of power and reclaim their territories.

The Great Quake, The Maze, and Ghost Rock
Once the Reckoning had begun, there were more changes to the world. In 1869, the coastal half of the Union state of California suffered a great earthquake and that part of the state fell into the sea. San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angelos were wiped off the map in an instant. In their place, Shan Fan, Lost Angels, and Lynchburg rose up from the ashes. Shan Fan was created and run by the Chinese Triads, who used their now much more powerful Kung Fu and other martial arts masters as enforcers. To the south, Reverend Grimme lead his survivors out of the new wilderness and founded the City of Lost Angels, founding his own VERY Protestant church that was a government unto itself. And, even in the devastated land, was able to have massive feasts every Sunday.
The land that was once California was soon called by a new name, The Maze. This was because the land didn’t just fall cleanly into the sea, it left behind tons of mesas and tableaus that stood over the expanded sea. And in these exposed rocky bits of land, a new mineral was discovered: Ghost Rock. It was like coal, but it burned hotter and longer and had all kinds of applications. Mostly in weapons and the like, but it helped create all sorts of things. Soon, Ghost Rock was also discovered in the Watasch Mountains near Salt Lake City and the Black Hills in Sioux lands. And thus began the Ghost Rush.
Ghost Rock was also discovered all over the world, but it was found in the largest amounts in the American West. This caused Mexico to start grumbling about losing Texas and Alto California again, and the CSA President, Jefferson Davis, to declare that the US state of California no longer existed. Before long, warships from the USA, CSA, Mexico, and others turned up in the narrow channels of the Maze, along with pirates of all kinds, and the wat had a new, more chaotic front. With all kinds of crazy super weapons and destruction that followed.

 

Mastering the Game: Metaplots

 Hello and welcome back to Mastering The Game, where I prattle on about how to run RPGs and the like.

Today, I’d like to take a minute to talk about metaplots and how to include them in your games. If you’re not familiar, a “meta plot” is an overarching plot in a game or setting. If you’ve played any sort of video game, you’ve experienced a metaplot. Hell, even watching a movie, reading a book, or what have you, is just watching a plot play out. As you might imagine, a lot of people starting out running a game is probably going to try to include one and it usually goes bad those first few times. When people talk about “railroading” this is something they’re talking about, because the plot wasn’t done right. So, let’s talk about how to do it right.

City of the Spider Queen is a great example of an epic adventure

When thinking about a metaplot in your setting (be it one that you’ve created or a setting you’re running your game in), I want you to understand that your adventures are going to have rails in them. However, unlike a railroad, where you’re passively watching things roll by, you should think of it as a roller coaster. Sure, they both have rails in them, but one is an experience. One that people will seek out. I have good experiences with metaplots in games I enjoy. In fact, the three games/settings I have enjoyed the most in my time with RPGs have had metaplots and each one of them has handled it differently. My first love in RPGs, Deadlands, has a massive metaplot that spans three different games and two different planets. Recently, I’ve been getting into the Wasted West and the Way Out West (you’ll be seeing a review of that last one soon, if not already) and that means studying the metaplot the creators mapped out from the start. Not to get into too much detail, this plot is entirely unstoppable. You can’t stop it from happening, but no matter what game you play in the setting, your characters will be involved and WILL make a difference in what happens. Sure, sometimes they can’t stop what’s happening, but they are there and they are involved in the events. The prime example is the second part of the Devil’s Tower Trilogy, the Bloody Sunday event. Before this part of the adventure, the posse has been involved in a tense rescue of someone and then arrive too late to stop demons from invading the cathedral in the center of Lost Angels. And while they don’t get to stop the Big Bad Demon, they can fight the smaller ones and help save people as they flee. They feel like their actions have an effect on the world, even if it’s mostly a small one in the grand scheme of things. In the case of Hunter: The Reckoning, there’s a whole lot going on that the players and their characters have no idea about. However, Hunter isn’t about the metplot, it’s about small, Pyrrhic victories on the street level. And while they’re not going to stop things on the large scale, that isn’t what the game is about. And it isn’t how you should run the game. The characters aren’t Buffy the Vampire Slayer (although it does make for a good analogy) nor are they the Winchester brothers. The problem with something like Supernatural is that as the show went on, they had to fight larger and larger threats. While Buffy did the same, they were still in Sunnyvale and that makes a world of difference. The final metaplot I liked was in the original or older versions of the Forgotten Realms. While the modern incarnation of FR seems to have gone way off the original rails that were there, the old ones were great because you didn’t need to be port of the solutions to the problems. That’s what the novels were for. If you wanted to be a part of the Time of Troubles, there were official adventures for that. If you didn’t, you just let it play out in the background. The players could have epic adventures without causing massive, continent wide changes in the setting. And with all of that out of the way, let’s talk about the two best ways I’ve found with including a metaplot in games:

Number One: The players and characters are directly involved

For this one, I strongly suggest you have a session zero and you be up front about the metaplot and how they’re going to be involved. Let them know, in general terms, what kind of campaign you want to run and what sort of things the characters are going to be involved in. If you’re running a published metaplot, let the players know that yes, there will be rails in this game, but remind them that they’re in for a roller coaster and not a railroad. If the adventure needs a certain type of class or character, be up front that this is required and someone needs to play it. You have to have a player play this character, because otherwise, you’re going to end up just having conversations with yourself and the players WILL be on a railroad. Instead, make sure that this is a player’s role and that they’re comfortable with it. And make sure that everyone else gets a moment to shine, too. If you’re coming up with everything on your own, make sure that each player’s character has a place in the plot, either from the character they are playing or by the type of character they’re playing. Some plot points shouldn’t be tied to the priest in particular, but a priest in general, and then will grow in importance as the campaign continues. That way you can be okay if someone drops out or switches characters. You always have to prepare for that. In my opinion, this is the best way to run a metaplot. Everyone should be aware of what is going on and can work together to make it happen. The best metaplots can also be developed cooperatively, so don’t feel like you need to have it all mapped out. Maybe you’re thinking that the good king is under threat from his evil uncle and you want the evil uncle to win. You explain this to your players and one them really wants to be a spy for the evil uncle or has an idea about how to prevent this from happening, because they really don’t want the evil uncle to take over. So, you talk with everyone about it. Maybe you agree that the evil uncle won’t win in the end, or that you’re willing to leave it open ended, but now the uncle has a backup plan of causing a rebellion against the king instead and he’s at the head of it. Don’t feel like you have to give everything away but be open to change based on what the players want. If they don’t want the political intrigue, then focus more on the action on the plot. If they want the political intrigue and you don’t, there’s got to be a way to meet in the middle. Remember, roller coaster, not railroad!

 Number Two: The players aren’t involved in the plot at all

Maybe you’ve got a group of players that will make Sherman Bowties (they’re a real thing from Sherman’s March to the Sea, look them up) out of any attempt by a GM to have a set idea for an adventure. While I personally feel like these are idiots and assholes, I suppose there’s different strokes for different folks. Of course, it could also be that you started with a solid crew of six players and characters that were all set for the campaign, and then players have dropped out, new ones have joined, and there’s been so many character deaths or changes that there’s no one left who’s invested in the plot. In that case, it’s okay. You know why? Because now they’re not going to be there to stop the demon lord from opening the portal to the underworld, they’re just going to have to live with the consequences of that happening. Now that they have to fight for their lives everyday, you can circle around to making an effort to close the portal or just have a campaign about the dying light of humanity and freedom. In less extreme examples, the good king is replaced by his evil uncle and now the party has to deal with living under his thumb. They can become freedom fighters, or smugglers, or just leave for another kingdom and let things get worse there. In that last situation, you can have a lot of fun creating and expanding an evil empire in the background that will slowly take over the world. The players should be heroes, to some degree and in most games, so just keep letting things get worse and worse until they have no choice but to tackle the problem. The players and characters have agency, just like we do in the real world. We all have the ability to vote, but if you don’t (or you did and the other person lost) and someone terrible gets in office, now you can take other actions to stop the spread of evil. It’s up to you to figure out what that is… 

 Now, with all of that said, I want you to remember that every published adventure has a metaplot or narrative in them. From the lowest of killing rats in the basement to the epic heights of killing gods, every adventure you run or make up has a plot to it. There’s no such thing as an RPG without a plot. You can’t just make everything up on the spot (unless you’re really good or you’re just one of those people), so you need something to hold everything together. Don’t be afraid of making your roller coaster.