Re: [DL] deck shuffling and demoing

[Allan Seyberth <darious@darious.com>]

 >3) what adventure should i run. i was thinking of skinners the dime
 >novel but i have heard that the one from the marshal screen is good to.
 >so any recomendations.

My favorite demo scenario is to replay Nagocoches.  I have all of the 
pre-gen characters in the saloon (with a very detailed map of the saloon on 
a vinyl map) and a lot of NPCs in there.
"You are all in the only saloon in Nagocdoches, Texas.  The year is 1875 
and things have been a mite strange for a while now."  I then go into a 
brief overview of some of the strangeness - the prolonged Civil War, the 
Great Quake, ghost rock and the Rail Wars.  I then go through and briefly 
explain the characters to the players.

Then a bit of roleplaying, when that starts to go thin the action starts 
with one zombie shambling into the saloon.  From there I introduce folks to 
the core mechanics - initiative, movement, rolling to hit, etc.

Once the first zombie is down, the first hero to look outside the double 
swinging doors sees  a horde of zombies walking up.  To keep things 
interesting, I have a couple of walking dead in the mob.

The goal is to recreate the Night of the Living Dead movie - if the 
characters are smart they blockade the doors so the zombies can't get in 
right away.  Then a bit more roleplaying as the characters plan and 
strategize.  When things get dull again or if they players take off, the 
zombies bust through the wooden walls.

Oh - one thing - when a zombie kills a living person two rounds later that 
person rises as a zombie as well.  Unless of course, the person was killed 
(or receives) a head shot.

Once the zombies are in, the end is near. I've never had a posse survive 
this scenario - yet all the players seem to love it.  <shrug>  At least 
they all turn around and go buy more Deadlands books.  :)

With the rules explaining and such, the scenario tends to run for about 
four hours.


-------------------
Allan Seyberth
darious@darious.com
Deadlands fan site - http://www.darious.com/

OK, so what's the speed of dark?
                 -Steven Wright