The Gaming Den

So, I picked up the old Deadlands corebook at a used bookstore for about fifty cents. I'd heard about it, but...

I'm reading through it and...Well, the setting's pretty nifty. I'll give it that. I like Western stuff (exhibit A: My huge affection for Red Dead Redemption), and tabletops could use more of it, especially mixed with other things.

The mechanics look slow as fuck to run, and the TN system looks a bit wonky in ways I haven't yet sat down to figure out.

The junk about "This section is fer yer Marshal, ye durn cowpoke" everywhere is annoying.

I'm working through the section on Harrowed, and it's nifty, but I'm also a bit irritated that it hasn't so far given you an idea to an individual manitou's personality. Is conscious communication with one possible? There's some interesting characterization if someone could actually nudge their Manitou and says, "Hey, you. What's your read on this guy? I'm carrying you around, you might as well make yourself useful."

That aside...combat looks really swingy. Hucksters sound cool, it's a neat concept but YEEEEARGH.

The 'obey your GM in all things' also grates after a while.

So, anyone else have anything to say about it? This the Den, and as near as I can tell, any given RPG has been played by at least one person on this board.

Except for Frank, who's a sort of RPG "Six degrees to Kevin Bacon" and therefore has all these weird stories about behind the scenes.

I know some people playing a Deadlands campaign. I know the RNG is an actual deck of playing cards, there are demon-zombie-things, the coal is also possessed by demons, there are critical fumble tables or something, one of the players became a yellow musk zombie by ODing on mad botany...

I'm pretty sure that Tombstone Frank from the Deadlands campaign setting is supposed to be me. On account of the picture is an actual picture of me as I would be if hypothetically I didn't have chest hair:



I used to do writing for free for the AEG people - the guys who did Deadlands and also L5R (it's my fault that the Nezumi allied with the Crab Clan, for example). And Tombstone Frank was sort of an homage to me in some weird way.

Anyway, I found some rule loopholes in L5R, and suggested some hot fixes and they threw a temper tantrum and banned me from their rules discussion mailing list and asked me to keep writing stories for free. I told them to go fuck themselves and they cut Tombstone's head off and put it on a stick. Then they used the rules fix I suggested in the next version of the L5R rules without attribution.

-Username17

[edit]Fucking beat me on the draw. Of course.[/edit]

FrankTrollman wrote:it's my fault that the Nezumi allied with the Crab Clan, for example

Hate.

I played Wasted West and not Weird West. Take Weird West and mix it liberally with Fallout and you have Wasted West. Lot of fun but the rules system sucked.

Setting was cool: I mean, Hoyle's Book of Games is your spell book, and the more original and unedited your copy the more spells you could suss out.

System sucked ass: Want to cast a spell? Play a round of 5 card draw poker with the GM. If you win you get your spell. Seriously. That's the rules.

That badge is pinned to his nipple. That seems painful, and also like it would lead to frequent snagging and tearing issues.

No, it's fine. He's a doctor.

FrankTrollman wrote:I'm pretty sure that Tombstone Frank from the Deadlands campaign setting is supposed to be me. On account of the picture is an actual picture of me as I would be if hypothetically I didn't have chest hair:



I used to do writing for free for the AEG people - the guys who did Deadlands and also L5R (it's my fault that the Nezumi allied with the Crab Clan, for example). And Tombstone Frank was sort of an homage to me in some weird way.

Anyway, I found some rule loopholes in L5R, and suggested some hot fixes and they threw a temper tantrum and banned me from their rules discussion mailing list and asked me to keep writing stories for free. I told them to go fuck themselves and they cut Tombstone's head off and put it on a stick. Then they used the rules fix I suggested in the next version of the L5R rules without attribution.

-Username17

See? I rest my case.

But damn, that sucks.

FrankTrollman wrote:I'm pretty sure that Tombstone Frank from the Deadlands campaign setting is supposed to be me. On account of the picture is an actual picture of me as I would be if hypothetically I didn't have chest hair:



I used to do writing for free for the AEG people - the guys who did Deadlands and also L5R (it's my fault that the Nezumi allied with the Crab Clan, for example). And Tombstone Frank was sort of an homage to me in some weird way.

Anyway, I found some rule loopholes in L5R, and suggested some hot fixes and they threw a temper tantrum and banned me from their rules discussion mailing list and asked me to keep writing stories for free. I told them to go fuck themselves and they cut Tombstone's head off and put it on a stick. Then they used the rules fix I suggested in the next version of the L5R rules without attribution.

-Username17

Heya, I'm actually a fan of the l5r ccg... if ya dont mind me askin', what was the rules fix you had suggested? And like, what edition?

FrankTrollman wrote:I'm pretty sure that Tombstone Frank from the Deadlands campaign setting is supposed to be me. On account of the picture is an actual picture of me as I would be if hypothetically I didn't have chest hair:

I looked up the artist's website, and allegedly it's a self portrait. (Look below and to the left of the picture)

Here's a page that has what is apparently a picture of him:

Heya, I'm actually a fan of the l5r ccg... if ya dont mind me askin', what was the rules fix you had suggested? And like, what edition?

Since they don't number their editions, I forget the name. Jade?

Anyway, the rule in question was the trait rule. A "trait" was any word that appeared on the card. Thus, an Oni that could not wear armor was armor. A Samurai who got a bonus when dueling shadowlands personalities was a shadowlands personality. This was problematic.

The fix was to invoke a Shadowfist-like rule where only the bolded text in the title or keyword bar actually counted as a trait. And even that required some additional errata to a few cards. There was a Naga Hunter (as in: a human that hunts Nagas) that needed errata to not count as a Naga, and a couple of cards that were misprinted with no space between the keywords and the text or whose keywords weren't bolded.

They threw a comical shit fit over that.

I looked up the artist's website, and allegedly it's a self portrait. (Look below and to the left of the picture)

That's certainly possible. One hell of a coincidence if true. People have asked me out of the blue if I was Tombstone Frank and I was in regular correspondence with the company at the time. Back then I used to dye my hair red and went around in a beat-up jacket - quite unlike the every day orange I wear today.

It's super hard to tell from the micro picture there, but the artist from Zynga appears to have brown eyes. Mine are blue-gray. But both of us have the stereotypical Slavic jawline.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:

Heya, I'm actually a fan of the l5r ccg... if ya dont mind me askin', what was the rules fix you had suggested? And like, what edition?

Since they don't number their editions, I forget the name. Jade?

Anyway, the rule in question was the trait rule. A "trait" was any word that appeared on the card. Thus, an Oni that could not wear armor was armor. A Samurai who got a bonus when dueling shadowlands personalities was a shadowlands personality. This was problematic.

The fix was to invoke a Shadowfist-like rule where only the bolded text in the title or keyword bar actually counted as a trait. And even that required some additional errata to a few cards. There was a Naga Hunter (as in: a human that hunts Nagas) that needed errata to not count as a Naga, and a couple of cards that were misprinted with no space between the keywords and the text or whose keywords weren't bolded.

They threw a comical shit fit over that.

Those are one of those things that seemed so common sense anyways, whoever was running the show at the time had to be retarded to cry wolf at that suggestion.

But yeah, Jade, next edition was Gold, I believe. Then diamond, then lotus, then samurai, then celestial, then emperor (not to be confused with imperial)

Once they chaged that rule you spoke of, they still had the cards' nameplates added to their traits, so the hypothetical Shadowlands Killing Devoted Samurai was still shadowlands. Thats gone now too.

fixed quote tag, I think. --Z

Could you be remembering that wrong?
If you're in med school now, and suggested that fix, you would have done so around 8th grade. That fix was definitely in before Pearl (big boxes, honor spinners built into the strongholds, about halfway through the Jade set), which was where I started playing, and that was over a decade ago.

I was in High School. Remember: I spent a couple of years working as an Ambulance medic, I am actually way older than most of the other people in my class. As for the names of editions: I don't know. I gave my L5R cards to K years ago. That particular meltdown happened over the L5R Rules Listserve, and I was connecting to it via a non-graphical interface.

-Username17

Duplicate

Yeah, that's about right then. Wow. I remember that being listed in the rulebooks, but I think it started going away when WotC took over.

New tangent: I really liked how well old-school L5R handled multiplayer games, and how many specific different victory conditions there were (especially counting events). it turned the whole thing into a game of diplomacy, instead of just finding a single powerful niche and staying there.

RadiantPhoenix wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:I'm pretty sure that Tombstone Frank from the Deadlands campaign setting is supposed to be me. On account of the picture is an actual picture of me as I would be if hypothetically I didn't have chest hair:

I looked up the artist's website, and allegedly it's a self portrait. (Look below and to the left of the picture)

Here's a page that has what is apparently a picture of him:

Hi Carl Frank here. (I know this is a super old post, and no one may read it, but anyway....) I happened across this when trying to find a picture of an old piece I did (not this one).

I did indeed do the Tombstone Frank art as a self portrait, but I can neither confirm nor deny that there was any other intent behind the character; they would not always tell me the full background of a character or anything, as due to deadline pressures, they usually only told me "what I needed to know." But I never heard that there was any intended meaning behind Frank and his story.

I'm sorry to hear that you had a bad experience with AEG. I look back on my employment there largely with fondness and nostalgia, but I know no company (or person) is perfect, and personality clashes or whatever do happen. Even if I wanted to, I can't comment on your experience because I have no knowledge of the incidents you describe.

I was tasked with creating the art for that character (possibly at random?), and since my last name is Frank, I thought it would be fun to do it as a self portrait. It is not a perfect self-portrait, but it is close, and I do indeed have blue eyes. I do (and did) have some chest hair, but for some reason neglected to show it in the piece. Ha. I even dressed up as Tombstone Frank for an AEG Halloween party shortly after I painted the piece. it is funny that it turned out looking like you, but I swear I never saw a picture of you. But the coincidence is fair for you to run with, if you identify with him.

Btw, the above link to the image on my site is broken because I changed some things, but my site (which no longer displays that piece) is www.carlfrank.com

Thanks for chiming in and sharing Carl. Your resume is almost as cool as your art. Nice touches.