Deadlands Noir

by John Goff, Shane Lacy Hensley, Clint Black

New Orleans, 1935. Things are tough all over. Honest work is hard to find, and even dishonest jobs are getting scarce. The one thing that s not in short supply is trouble. From shady thugs to crooked cops to Mafia soldiers, there s plenty of characters out there looking to give an honest Joe a hard time. And that's not the worst of it. There are stories going round about things that go bump in the night. Things you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley on a darker night. And those stories aren't just coming from rummies or saps who read that Epitaph rag. Still, there are a few heroes left in the concrete jungle. Steely-eyed private eyes, fast-talking grifters, wild-eyed inventors, and shadowy houngans still struggle against the encroaching darkness. With enough moxie and more than a little luck they might just be enough to turn the tide. Deadlands Noir is a pen-and-paper roleplaying game set in the world of Pinnacle Entertainment s award-winning Deadlands universe. It includes new Edges, Hindrances, and powers, as well as new rules for handling detective work, the state of the Union and the CSA in the Depression-era, a complete Plot Point campaign, and of course, more monsters and ghouls than you can shake a smoking .45 automatic at. Deadlands Noir is not a complete game. It requires the Savage Worlds core rules to play.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Gaming, Horror, Fantasy

144 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2012

Reviews

[Travis]

Deadlands does Cast a Deadly Spell in this game, which updates the horror/western/pulp RPG to the mid-20th century and gives it a noir makeover.

Which is pretty cool! If you wanna play hardboiled gumshoes burning down monsters and cultists but balk at the nihilism inherent in even pulp-style Cthulhu games or like the specific tone of an "open magic" rather than "hidden magic" urban fantasy story, this works a treat.

Having said that, Deadlands' alternate history had not aged well, what with its "the Confederacy still exists but it freed the slaves so it's all cool" conceit, and it looks even worse as the metaplot timeline is advanced - we're getting to the point where we have to wonder if there's a civil rights movement in this setting, or a sexual revolution, or any of the progressive struggles of our own history.

You have to ignore a lot, is what I'm saying, and the tacit assumption that you *can* ignore it marks this as a game aimed, consciously or not, at a very specific audience (straight, white, male). This is a game set in New Orleans in a Confederacy that still exists - asking a thoughtful player to handwave race in that milieu is a big ask.

Still, trends in gaming have moved on and metaplot is not really a major factor anymore - people want to tell their own stories and not find themselves beholden to some sprawling (and often nonsensical) canon - Vampire/WoD seem to have ditched theirs, as has Legend of the Five Rings, I believe, with only Shadowrun being the last major holdout (and Shadowrun is a fucking mess and has been for years).

So, with that in mind, as a player or GM my inclination would be to strip out Deadlands Noir's canon elements and history, lean into the genre trappings, and just allude to the rest. Cast a Deadly Spell got away with a single title card to set up its modern magic world - you shouldn't need much more.

[David Stoneking]

I really like most everything about it. With the exception of art added from the kickstarter. Where if you donated enough, they used your picture for an NPC. Some of that stuff was really corny. But the world, maps, and plot point campaigns are really good. I highly recommend this one.