We're Buff Here - Deadlands on Tabletop Day

In a Weird Mood

I'm neck deep in a Weird West mood right now.  Want proof?

• My wife and I spent the last two weeks watching Westworld on HBO.
• During that same time I've pumped about 20-30 hours into Red Dead Redemption on my XBOX 360. 
• I sent my Numenera campaign back to 1879 last week.  
• I'm planning to run a playtest of +David Baity's Dark Trails, a Dungeon Crawl Classics spin on the Weird Western for my May contribution to the DCCRPG World Tour 2017.  I had a chance to play Dark Trails at Gary Con, and it was a blast!
• I purchased The Cackler, so that I can get a little Weird West comic action going.  
• For family movie night last night we watched that Harrison Ford classic: Cowboys & Aliens.  

What started all my binging?  I gotta blame the original:  Deadlands!  

I'm really excited to get my hands on the Deadlands 20th Anniversary Collector's Edition, that will hopefully be showing up in the near future, clad in a foreboding, black wooden whiskey box!  A few weeks back I was going through some of my old, Deadlands books, while I was working on my DCC Shudder Mountain campaign.  That planted a seed!  

So for International Tabletop Day 2017 I wanted to pay some respects to the original trails o' terror, and run some Deadlands Reloaded for the Norwin Game Knights.  

I just needed to concoct a quest.  I wanted to create a quick, two to three hour introductory adventure that let our group use the new Hero's o' Gloom pre-gen characters from Deadlands: Good Intentions.  These characters are perfect for an adventure set in the City o' Gloom, Salt Lake City.  But to commemorate the sixth anniversary of our family almost moving to Kansas, I was interested in basing the adventure in Dodge City.  

I also wanted to feature a new threat to the Weird West: the Werebuffalo!

Now I could just go and write down what happened in the adventure, but for this blog post I'm going to post my adventure outline.  What, you thought you were going to get a full adventure?  Wrong blog!  

Feel free to use it in your own game, or hack it up and make it more your own.  The plot is campy and the NPC names are terrible, but maybe you can do something with...

We're Buff Here

Adventure Summary:

The PC's are customer relations personnel for the Smith & Robards mail order catalog out of the City o' Gloom. They've traveled by train all the way to Dodge City, to find out why their regular clients at "Gutter Camp" to the north have ceased to use their products. They only know two things at the start:

1. The buffalo hunters and tanners of Gutter Camp used to purchase a lot of specialty tonics and elixers that would help make the long, 16 hours easier.
2. When they arrive in Dodge City, they get a message back via a dead messenger that just says "we're buff here." 

After some investigation the party finds out the following:

When the PC's get to Dodge City, break out a map (out of the Deadlands 20th Anniversary Edition) and let the players have fun in the city.  Make this as much of a sandbox as possible.  For our game, five of the seven players were brand new to Deadlands so I threw as many weird western cliches as possible at them.  Wyatt Earp showed up for their guns, they found themselves in the Alhambra Saloon, etc...

Somehow, someway, get this information to the PC's:

• Gutter Camp has been struggling to keep staff recently. Many of the hunters have been leaving, and the company hunt leader, Grant Granston, can't seem to keep people for longer than a few weeks.
• Grant Granston was running low on cash, and while he needed to keep his staff hard at work, he may have made some dealings with a less-than-honest snake oil salesman named "Best Buy Bill."  
• Recently Grant sent a note back to Dodge City, saying "We're Buff Here." The messenger who was delivering the note died soon after, from a blunt impact to the head (a Werebuffalo headbutt).  
• Gutter Camp is located twenty miles north of Dodge City.

If the PC's want to do any more exploring in town, feel free to toss in some more encounters.  For instance, in our game the PC's wanted to dig up the body of the dead messenger.  So I let them!  Ernesto the Steampunk PC used his massive metal arm to drag the coffin out of the ground, and the posse threw it on the back of their wagon and headed north.  I placed a bill of sale for a product called "Big & Buff" in the pocket of the dead messenger.

What actually went down

Here are some of the details to the adventure backstory.  It's up to the GM to divulge the info when it seems appropriate:

• The buffalo hunters recently stopped buying their products from Smith & Robards, and instead started investing money in a local snake oil salesman named "Best Buy Bill." Best Buy Bill promised all kinds of tinctures and elixers, but at a much cheaper cost than Smith & Robards.
• The one product being given to the buffalo hunters was something called "Big & Buff."  On one hand, it makes folks super strong for a full day, without needing sleep.  But Big & Buff had a nasty side effect: it turns folks into werebuffalo. 
• Best Buy Bill would shackle the sick hunters to his wagon before they turned, using silver tethers, and then once they transformed they could do nothing to escape.  
• Best Buy Bill is taking the werebuffalo, and selling them to a twisted Confederate army officer named "Colonel Krieg". The Colonel is trying to create a strike force of werebuffalo that he can use as muscle in raids in Kansas. 
• Best Buy Bill was successful in chaining up eight of the twelve turned werebuffalo. 
• Grant Granston never drank any of the Big & Buff, nor did his messenger.  While all this buffalo turning, and escaping was going on, Grant gave his messenger a note, and sent him to Dodge City for help.  It was supposed to read "were-buff here", but some dirt got on the message, and a spec made it look like the "were" was a "we're".  Oh, and Grant forgot the hyphen.  

Wait... are you telling me this is a weak plot?  Just an excuse to do a play on the words "we're buff?"  Well... you're right.  Sorry.  But this is the adventure you signed on to read.  

The Camp

• When the PC's arrive at the camp it is in deplorable condition.
• There are four parts of the camp:
• The tents
• A stream that runs through the camp, where the buffalo hunters did most of their butchering near.  
• A wooden fence.
• An area where horses were tied up.
• Barely anything survived. Grant Granston is missing.  Or he's not.  Up to you, the GM. In my game, I left him out, and just assumed he was dead.  But that's because my PC's spent a lot of time playing around with the messenger's corpse.  In your game, maybe he's alive and can leave clues, or help with fighting Best Buy Bill.  
• The PC's can come across a surviving human undergoing a change into being a werebuffalo at night. He will lash out, while transforming, but shouldn't make it the whole way.  
• At some point the PC's will face four werebuffalo.  I had them come out of the stream.  To make it seem like they were more "were-like", I said that they were all wearing torn up clothing, like the Hulk.  

Werebuffalo

You want stats for that werebuffalo?  Well it should come as no surprise that I just did a quick reskin of the Werewolf found in the Savage Worlds Deluxe rulebook on page 142.  Just increase their Vigor to a D12, and give them a Tough Hide that boosts their Toughness by 3.  Ultimately, their Toughness will be an 11, which is pretty damn hard to beat, but hey... why not?  

Also, werebuffalo just headbutt instead of bite.  But it does the same damage as a werewolf bite.  

Tracking Down Best Buy Bill

Best Buy Bill can easily be tracked down, as he left the camp not too long ago.  If the PC's follow a trail to the east, they eventually find his mechanical horse driven cart.  

Best Buy Bill isn't a threat at all.  I used the "Scientist" archetype from the Savage Worlds Deluxe rulebook and pumped up his Toughness to a 7 to reflect a couple points of armor from his semi-mechanical body.  

His wagon comes in three pieces:

• A mechanical horse in the front.  Functions just like a regular horse, but can never needs to rest or sleep.  Runs on ghost rock.
• A middle, "crew" section.  Best Buy Bill has a pair of goons that have d6's in all their stats, and fire a pair of Lightning Blasters at the PC's if they get too close and mean harm.  Each one functions as the "Bolt" power from the Savage Worlds Deluxe rulebook, and has 20 power points.  The crew roll D8's to shoot the Lightning Blasters.
• The rear section is a chain gang of the eight remaining Werebuffalo. 

How this all shakes out is up to you.  The werebuffalo know what they are and enraged.  But they shouldn't need to be foes!  If an especially charismatic PC (like Father Houston in our game) can persuade them to fight back, let them do so.  Make it epic!  

Ending the Adventure

This part is totally up to you.  In our game, the PC's got one of the werebuffalo to fight on their side, and they freed it.  Then they freed the rest of the werebuffalo and sent them back to Smith & Robards.  They also killed Best Buy Bill.  But again, make this adventure your own.

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I wrote this adventure on the fly, and threw things together pretty quickly for International Tabletop Day.  I knew that I'd have mostly new players for Deadlands Reloaded, so I wasn't that concerned about making things too challenging.  But I'm half-tempted to go back and rework this into more of a functional "One-Sheet" style adventure.  Perhaps I will.

In the meantime, if you have any suggestions, let me know!  

Happy gaming!

International Tabletop Day 2016 with the Norwin Game Knights

On Saturday April 30th, just a short drive east from Pittsburgh, the Norwin Game Knights met at the Penn's Woods Civic Association to celebrate International Tabletop Day.  For eight straight hours our group of local gamers played all kinds of games, from Life and Monopoly to Dungeon Crawl Classics and Savage Worlds.  This would be our club's third event, held at our largest venue.  While we didn't quite max out the space, we're definitely growing!  

There were so many incredible pictures from the day, but I thought I'd share some of my favorites...

Carrie, ready to go!

Miles of epic gaming options!

I started off easy with some Exploding Kittens

Our DCCRPG setup

Me handing out 0-level characters for Grimtooth's Museum of Death

Mandatory James & Melinda DCCelfie!

King of Tokyo!

Mike running DCCRPG - Nebin Pendlebrook's Perilous Pantry

Aidan running a WondLa inspired Cypher System adventure

Craig running Savage Worlds: Accursed

Craig's son won No Thank You, Evil in the raffle

Ray, Jennifer, and James planning for next year already!?!

Celebrate International Tabletop Day 2016 with the Norwin Game Knights

What are you doing on April 30th?

If you are in the Pittsburgh area, you need to come meet up with the Norwin Game Knights as we gather together to celebrate...

International Tabletop Day 2016!

The Norwin Game Knights are proud to be hosting International Tabletop Day 2016 at the Penn's Woods Civic Association Building in North Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Saturday, April 30th from 10am to 6pm.  We're only 20 minutes east of downtown Pittsburgh, and we've got players coming in from as far away as Canada and Delaware so far!

This will be our group's third celebration of this terrific, annual event, and we're very excited to spend eight hours doing what we do best:  playing, learning, and teaching great games!

The Penn's Woods Civic Association main building can hold up to 300 gamers, and we want to fill all those seats.  

That's where you come in!  

I know a lot of my friends and followers on Facebook, G+, and Twitter are here for my role-playing game blogging, and folks, we've got some great RPG'ing planned.  In past years there have been one or two game masters, but this year we've managed to either wrangle nearly ten!  

If you show up to role-play, expect to find one of the following games:

Numenera (GM's Andrew Lyon & James Walls)

Cypher System (GM's Aidan Slakinski & Ray Slakinski)

No Thank You, Evil (GM Evelyn Walls)

Dungeon Crawl Classics (GM's Michael Bolam & Evan Blenko)

Metamorphosis Alpha (GM Michael Bolam)

Basic Fantasy RPG (GM Matthew Schuilenburg)

Savage Worlds (GM Craig McCullough)

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition (DM Aidan Slakinski)

Most of the games will be family friendly, ages 10+.  No Thank You, Evil will be ages 5+.  

Prepare Thyself

For more information about our event, or the Norwin Game Knights in general you can follow these links:

Norwin Game Knights Website

Norwin Game Knights Facebook Group

International Tabletop Day 2016 Facebook Event

Or if you are not on Facebook, feel free to email us at norwingameknights (at) gmail (dot) com!

Tabletop Day with the Game Knights

 



 

 

Still Recovering

 

I don't know about all of you, but our family is still recovering from a very busy International Tabletop Day weekend!  Preparations for the Norwin Game Knights event were weeks in the making, from coordinating tasks to promoting the special day.  We even got our event featured in the local newspaper!  Our amazing club member were on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and out in the community spreading the word and looking for gamers.  Thank you to everyone who brought games, snacks, and great attitudes!  I have to thank Andy, Jeremy, and the entire Schock family for helping with decorations on Friday night.  Cheryl also organized the food and helped find people games to play during the event.  I certainly have to thank my determined wife Jennifer, who coordinated most the logistics for the event. 

 

All I really did was show up and play!

 

 

Thanks Jennifer!

 

Tales from the Table

 

 

We had board games, card games, and other tabletop favorites on Saturday, but most of  my time was spent at an RPG table.  I ran a pair of events, and I thought I'd share a few of the high points from those sessions:

 

 

 

 

The Strange:  My first role-playing event for International Tabletop Day was a slightly altered version of "The Curious Case of Tom Mallard" featured in the back of The Strange corebook.  Since we had a short two-hour limit for the session, I turned the adventure into a chase, with Tom Mallard still in the home when the players arrived for the stakeout.  The player characters then had to follow Tom through a translation gate and into Ardeyn, experiencing an exciting foot-chase through the busy streets of Shalmarn.  My favorite scene from the event was when Steve, playing Arlo a Sharp-Eyed Vector who Carries a Quiver, wanted to snipe Tom Mallard from nearly a quarter-mile away.  Using a cypher that supernaturally extended his range, and a can of Red Bull that I allowed to translate without alteration, Arlo managed to seriously wound his target. 

 

As an added bonus, we played this game to raise money for Genre's Kids with Cancer Fund, and collected $60 for charity!  My players rock!

 

 

 

 

Dungeon Crawl Classics - Stormtroopers:  The second RPG that I ran was a wicked romp through the abandoned Mos Espa Podrace course, with a platoon of twenty-four stormtroopers, played by eight young gamers.  We used the occupation list that I compiled last week to come up with some fun backgrounds, from Death Star HR Admin to Tauntaun Tamer.  A bantha was captured, there was some player versus player conflict, and everything came to an exciting conclusion when the fourteen remaining stormtroopers confronted their target: an exiled Jedi.  Only half of the remaining stormtroopers survived an encounter where every missed blast was redirected back towards the armored soldiers.  Two players even had their stormtroopers flee, just so that they could say their characters lived! 

 

 

The Next Generation

 

What made this year's International Tabletop Day more special was that my son Cooper was finally able to participate in an event with us!   We've had him at our home game table, and he's visited the Norwin Game Knights before, but never had the chance to sit down and play.  Here's hoping he'll behave at next year's event! 

 

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How did you celebrate International Tabletop Day?  Did you go to a local game store or club, or did you stay at home and hang with friends and family?  We'd love to hear your stories and see your pictures!

 



So You Want to Start A Game Club?

In March, 2013, Geek and Sundry, through their popular YouTube show Tabletop hosted the very first International Tabletop Day.   A full day of celebrating board games, card games, role-playing games, and pretty much anything tabletop gaming related, thousands of gamers all around the world gathered in their friendly local game stores, libraries, and homes to share their love of gaming.  For so many people around the world, it was an incredible day to be out and about with their fellow gamers!  

Here in the Walls residence, it was a bit more low-key, but still a lot of fun.

International Tabletop Day 2013

My wife, mother-in-law, and two daughters ages nine and six, spent the evening playing our brand new copy of Settlers of Catan.  We thought the game looked pretty intriguing, having watched +Wil Wheaton and his pals on Tabletop trade sheep, build settlements, and compete for longest road.  At the time, we only had a few board games, and most of them were pretty traditional:  Monopoly, Life, Jenga, what you typically find in an average American household.  Sure, there was role-playing stuff in our house, but save for the occasional game, we didn't have a regular family campaign running.  

Looking back it's crazy to think about how much has changed since International Tabletop Day 2013.  This was before my first Gen Con, #GetOutAndGame, Disney Numenera, and the Living 4 Crits blog.  But it was the event that started our drive to create the Norwin Game Knights.  

While we sat around the table playing Settlers of Catan, my wife and I talked a little about how much fun it would be to have a larger event in 2014.  Given the turnout around the world, we believed that International Tabletop Day would become an annual event.  While playing games with our family was very satisfying, we really wanted to share the love that we had for gaming with others.  

First event!

It took a while for the concept to brew, but by August of 2013, we decided to create a group with the following simple parameters:

• The group had to be family friendly
• The group would be inclusive of all players
• The group would represent all tabletop games
• The group would be free

Using the local community Facebook group All About the Norwin Area, I wrote a post gauging interest in a community based gaming group.  Much to my surprise, several dozen people replied to the first post, and I quickly threw together a Facebook Group.  The Norwin Game Knights were born!  

We held our first monthly event at the Norwin Public Library in September, 2013.  My wife and I brought our two daughters, and a few Thirty-One bags full of games.  While we knew that a couple of our close gamer-friends would show, we kept our fingers crossed that some new folks would come.  Including my family, about a dozen people showed up to play Hero Quest, Risk, Settlers of Catan, Zombie Dice, and some traditional card games.  

In our new game-home!

It took a lot of promoting on Facebook, and several dozen flyers to get the word out for our October event.  We kept most of our original gamers, and even had a few new faces!  We also found our "home", in the basement of the Circleville United Methodist Church!

Numenera Night!

Given the popularity of Hero Quest, I decided to break out a "real" role-playing game that November, and ran a one-shot session of Numenera.  It was my first time playing the Cypher System, and for half of our players it was their very first time trying an RPG!  We converted a lot of new RPG aficionados that night!

International Tabletop Day 2014

Each event brought new families, new friends, and most importantly new players!  On International Tabletop Day 2014, the anniversary of our "idea seed", over thirty gamers came out to the Norwin Public Library to play, laugh, eat, share stories, and create new tales.  Most of the new attendees would become club regulars!  When the event ended, a lot of our members went home and continued to play until late into the evening.  

We haven't stopped since.  

Celebrating Irwin's 150th Anniversary Parade

Creating Your Own Game Club

Maybe you already belong to a local game club, or you have a friendly local game store that hosts events.  Terrific!  What a great way to get together all throughout the year and try new games!  But if you don't have a group like this, it may be easier than you think to create a club to share your favorite hobby!

Want to give it a shot?  Just a few tips:

• Determine a Niche:  If you already have a few locations nearby where gamers gather, what will set your group apart?  For us, we believe the "Family Friendly" nature of the Norwin Game Knights works great.
• Get the Word Out:  Use social media, community Facebook groups, coffee shop bulletin boards, any means necessary to let people know you are starting a game club.
• Find an Inexpensive Location:  After a while you may get some folks who will chip in for a better site, but when you start don't put yourself in a hole financially.  We initially looked at some pretty expensive places, such as fire halls and community centers, but decided to keep things modest.  Don't be afraid to ask your friends and family for suggestions… and maybe some favors… to find a good site.  That's how we came upon our location.  In the end, if you do get a good deal on a location, be sure to treat it with respect and take care of your new gaming home.
• Lower Your Expectations:  Unless you have a significant "in" with a lot of gamers in your community, it will take time for your group to grow.  The Norwin Game Knights' goals are simple: at least one fresh face per event.  Word will get our eventually.
• Don't Expect to Play the Games You Want to Play:  If you create your own game club, you are taking on the responsibility of being host (unless you con someone else into doing it!)  This means that YOU need to make sure your new gamers are having a good time, which may mean playing games that you typically wouldn't.
• Make Sure Everyone Has a Good Time:  See that family in the corner that came to your first event, just sitting there by themselves?  You are the host, dangit!  Go get them into a game!  At the Norwin Game Knights we try to tell our veteran players to include new gamers whenever possible.  

If you are already in a successful game club, please let us know and share your stories!  We'd love to hear from you!  

Also, as a reminder, International Tabletop Day 2015 is soon approaching!  If you happen to live in the Pittsburgh Area, the Norwin Game Knights will be hosting an 11am-5pm event at Circleville United Methodist Church in North Huntingdon, PA on April 11, 2015!  

We'd love to see you at our big event!  

Last night's Open Game Night drew more players than last year's Tabletop Day.  Boo yah!