this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2024
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Weird West
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Weird West (or Weird Western) is a genre of fiction that uses the Wild West period of American History as a foundation and then adds fantasy/supernatural elements to it. So stories where gunslingers encounter zombies, vampires, demons, robots, or any other creatures that wouldn't otherwise be present in a standard Western.
This is a community for sharing various Weird West works. Movies, Books, Comics, Video Games, TV Shows, whatever fits.
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Magic or Powers under Savage Worlds rules tend to feel pretty generic and stale after awhile, because they all usually follow the same standard template. Weird science kind of mixes it up in that source of the powers is object-based, but it’s all essentially the same thing. You’re always picking from the same set of spells that all behave the same way, all the player does is add some window dressing. On the hand, it makes it easier to grasp going from one Savage Worlds setting to another, but on the other all the magic classes start to feel samey after awhile. Not sure about other versions of Deadlands, but that’s my impression of the SW system.
From my perspective, the original setting the...well, there weren't classes. You could take a background that would be a 'class' but you bought skills so if you wanted to have Blessed powers and use a gun real well you could. But that was a tangent.
Ask the 'classes' felt unique. Mad science was not hexslinging was not blessed was not martial arts. It's a major reason I could just not get into the Savage Worlds version at all.
That’s because they explicitly state in the core rules that all special abilities are “powers”.
HERO has a similar setup where you have “powers” and then you create flavor around them. HERO actually breaks out creation point discounts for some of the flavor. Like if you are a wizard who can only cast spells a certain number of times per day, your “energy projection” power (fireball) is cheaper than if you are a superhero who can shoot fire all day long.