GURPS Deadlands:
Weird West
Deadlands, combines the romance and
action of the Old West with the horror of
invading Things Man Was Not Meant To
Know. Now this great background will be
explored in a series of GURPS worldbooks.
Adventure as a shootist, a card-slinging
huckster, or a prospector searchmg the ruins
of California for "ghost rock." Saddle up,
hombre. The Weird West awaits!
CURPS Deadlands
Dime Novel 1 - Aces and Eights
Aces and Eights continues Pinnacle's
tradition of merging great action-packed
stories with ready-to-play adventure
scenarios. Our first Dime Novel is a great
way to bring your GURPS heroes into the
Weird West of Deadlands!
Aces and Eights includes an bonus
16-page section of conversion rules.
GURPS Deadlands
Dime Novel 2 - Wanted: Undead or Alive
Sean Bailey was a mean 01' cuss . . . and
that was before a ghost rock mine caved in
on him. Now he's out to get even with the
people who killed him off. It's up to bounty
hunter Caleb Harling and his friends to stop
him before he turns Bailey's End into a
ghost town.
There's also GURPS game information,
so GMs can run their own adventures in and
around Bailey's End.
G UR PS Spirits
The creatures of the Other World are all
In Constantino
to surrender that po
In Constantino
to surrender that po
3 With this hex, a huckster can a
4 character to immediately reroll a
Three of a Kind
Deadhnds Shift
e else has. is pretty good (especially with a li
the Hunting Grounds). Besides, m
find that gambling
R STORIES down side, some t
but they rapidly fmd one factor they all Pose as
omrnon: they need some way to keep the amme
ple, which often ni
hid himself, labori&sly healed the terrib*
burns he had suffered, and echoed the
sometimes a plot to
process Hoyle had gone through after th& :
%st duel: hiding, studying the magic ar@, renegade hucksters t
and biding his time. A century of travel and
ace to those he hurts, but to hucksters every-
whe
mee
den text can contain sever-
coded information - in
reached that level in a
at book will not help,
better book or by long, laborious practice. This is
why hucksters are always looking for a better edi-
Here are a few ideas for themes to organize a
ne huckster. In these campaign around. Some are more fleshed-out
y be the only supernatural- than others; GMs may want to mix and match
cter, or he may be working more than one.
aman or a blessed person. If the for-
The party is part of a traveling circus, medi-
cine show, or other kind of traveling entertainment.
Their work introduces them to all kinds of places
situation that comes up. and interesting (if sometimes unsavory) people.
The clannish secrecy of performers is a great cover
for folks who dabble in unusual stuff. The show
linging and occasional cata- provides a wonderful way for the party to move
e'll want to emphasize areas from town to town, encountering adventure wher-
excel: mostly illusions, with ever they go. It can also provide experience in how
and combat hexes. to deal with being run out of town with slightly
lower stakes than a huckster often has to face.
!HAW'S CHLPREN
The characters are disciples of Enoch Shaw
(whether they are members of the Lady Luck
Society's inner circle, or just regular hucksters,
depends on the power level the group wants for
the campaign). They spend their days traveling to
Reckoning-related trouble spots and fighting
whatever evil they find. Shaw makes an excellent
Patron: he has ample resources for those times
when the party is hip-deep in trouble, and he has
an unending supply of problems for his hench-
men to take care of.
same time, the antipathy between manitou and
nature spirit makes the battle lines more ambigu-
ous: if humanity could get the manitous to change
A ~ V E N ~ SEEPS
RE
Befcire the Reckoning, being a huckster was The standard Deadlands campaign assumes These adventure seeds are shorter chunks of
that the Indians have their facts more or less sides at the cost of losing the nature spirits, would
much harder. Most &tous were under lock and plot suitable for inclusion in any campaign. Some
straight - the Hunting Grounds, manitous, the it be it? In a way> choosing science Over
key, and all the smaller manitous were cowering will work as one-shot adventures; others work
Reckoners, the Old Ones, and so forth. However, nature, hasn't Western society in Deadlands
in comers. Only the hucksters with the sheer better as significant arcs within a campaign span-
already done just that? A good-manitou setting of
cojones to sneak past the Old Ones and duel with it ain't necessarily SO. ning multiple adventures.
this sort opens up a much more complex magico-
a powerful manitou were able to get real results. political environment, which some groups may
Therefore, hucksters before 1863 start with a
base hand of two cards at Magical Aptitude 1,
MAN~TOUS prefer to a straightforwardbattle against pure evil. PWTEP!
Maybe the rnanitous don't exist at all. Instead, Another possible good-manitou scenario is The Rangers have identified the characters as
plus exhZcards levels MagicdA~ti- the Reckoning is just a side of the resurgence one in which the Reckoning, and all the supernat- s~pernatUEilassets. NOW they find themseks
and for good hex rolls. Under such cir- magic. The Hunting Grounds, the manitous, and dragged along on all sorts of unpleasant missions.
ural horror it unleashed on the world, was an acci-
c w c e s , a &Xk' e huckster would be lucky to the nature spirits are all hallucinations from the Some might find this a great opportunity to have
dent - the Hunting Grounds equivalent of an
get a Pak Magical Aptitude 7 would be necessary brain of an Indian shaman trying to make sense of industrial disaster. Abominations are mutants, ere- all sorts of adventures; others will be plotting the
to assure a normal poker hand! pure supernatural power. Magic, whether shamanic, ated by magical toxic waste. Everything that's best way to get out of Confederate territory unob-
Things were even before holy, black, or huckster, is just the process of shap- served. This adventure also works for the Agency,
happened since then has been a well-meaning but
Hoyle. The ancient sorcerers had to suffer a ing wild magic energy into action. neundead are fundamentallydoomed attempt to help. Sitgreaves although the Agency is a better hook for a one-
gong, arduous process to bend manitous to their bodies reanimated by raw magic. ~ b o k ae~ h ~has~it all wrong; the manitous are trying to help shot adventure than a longer-term plot arc.
wiII. Sorcery was similar to shamanism, but spntaneously CTeaEures.
mad scientists come up with new technologies to
dealt with mmitous rather than nature spirits; as
such, it was slow and time-consuming while
A no-manitous world is simultaneously more
and less horrificthan standard ~ ~ a d hon d the
.
make things better, but they tend to get distracted
by interesting ideas for things that go boom. Har-
W h & JUST BROWSING
remaining dangerous. one hand, it means that there isn't a vast conspir- The search for a hex can be an epic endeav-
rowed and undead will be agents of positive or, leading the party in search of books
Sorcerers use the Ritual Magic rules, but do aq bent on destroying we hold dear. the change Once the manitous learn to stop react- back and forth across the continent, following up
not buy Initiation. Each level of Magical Aptitude other hand, it means precisely that: there is no k g to physical bodies like a troubled 15-year-old vague hints of an old edition of H ~ or the~ ~
(wkster) offsets one point of the -5 pride to vast consp&y. The Union the Confederacy given a Corvette and a keg of beer. This latter see- notebooks of an old-time hexslinger who long
nario is a bit more light-hearted than most, but since cashed in his chips. meymay find them-
no reason that dark supmatu* horror selves scraping up the cash to pay for an ancient
can't go hand in hand with comedy. tome, or just breaking into the bookshop one dark
having psychotic episodes. It means that humani- The final question implied by a good-manitou fight. In the process, they may learn that the
use sorcery in the post-Reckoning period; howev-
cosmolomis why the Indians have been underground world of occult studies is an uglier
than people realized. everybody that the manitous are pure evil. Have place than they bargained for.
er, it is absurdly dangerous. There are very good they been making unwarranted assumptions based
reasons why most magic-workers were black
magicians before Hoyle.
The relationship between the Reckoners and
on their folklore? Were they duped by the Reckon-
ers to hide the Reckoners' weak link? Were they Too HOTTO HDLP
duped by the nature spirits to tar the nature spirits' The characters find themselves in possession
the manitous is mysterious. Why would the cold, of a Ranger Bible. To the right buyer, it woufd be
methodical Reckoners work their will through the old nemeses? the manitoun story a ploy by
chaotic manitous? And why do the Reckoners the Old Ways movement to cause trouble for the thousands dollars. However, to
~~~l~ institutionsof huckstering and mad science? those profits the characters will have to avoid the
keep ififormation from their agents? hordes of Rangers vigorously searching for the
Perhaps the manitous have gotten a bad rap. book. They could just turn it over, but that would
Perhaps they aren't the spirits of pure evil that involve getting the Rangers to hold their fire long
Indian cosmology leads us to believe.
Perhaps the &tous are just another kind of
s p i t - more anarchic and mischievous than the
!HE "OLD WAYSEDHS~AEY" enough to explain (to say nothing of having to
talk to a senior Ranger about how they got hold of
Regardless of the truth, it's likely that the book to begin with). This adventure also
nature spirits, but essentially nonmakious - that some prejudiced occultist, upon realizing works well with a 1769 Hoyle's or a copy of the
have been enslaved and corrupted by the Reckon- that most of what is known about manitous Short Treatise on Whist.
ers, and forced to do their dark work. It puts a dif- ultimately comes from the Indians, might
ferent spin on many aspects of life in the Weird West start spreading the idea that Indian shamans
While the Reckoners were locked
away, black magic was extremely difficult. if manitous aren't actually out to destroy the world. are telling lies about the way things really THE BIGGESTPOTIN THE WEST
Only the faintest trickle of dark energy Mad science may change from an evil conspiracy to - b e . This occultist might come to believe The Lady Luck tournament in Denver is a
made its way out. Hence, only Power a mixed blessing. The Harrowed may become less that it's really the nature spirits who are the great setting for adventures. The tournament
Investiture 1 was possible during that time. evil and more wild. Huckstering becomes less a Reckoners' lackeys. Such a story would itself is fraught with excitement: the stakes are
However, some black magicians also prac- deadly game of chess and more like bullfighting. play well in certain parts of the country, and enormous, and advancing through several
Most important, the battle against the Reck- could pose a red problem for PCs trying to rounds of high-stakes poker is strenuous enough
oners becomes less a straight-up slugfest, and round up assistance for some mystical proj- without the back-room dealing and extracurricu-
more a quest to free the manitous, thus throwing ect or another. lar activity which springs up around any major
the Reckoning's infrastructure into chaos. At the gambling event.
CAMPAIGWS 63
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