[HoE] HOE thoughts n stuff (SPOILERS, you have been warned)

[Xotzil@aol.com]

Yo.

I read the whole book the other night (it was a LOOOONG Saturday). There are a
few things I'm wondering about.

(1) How does everyone feel about the new shortcuts for mooks vs the old one.

For those who haven't received it yet, I'll explain. The new shortcut involves
using chips to keep track of mook injuries on a stack per mook basis (each
mook gets a stack of damage chips going up to six or seven wounds (don't have
the book in front of me) where each color chip is a level. White = one, red =
two, blue = three, etc).

The old shortcut was a "hits" system. Each humanoid mook had 30 hits you'd
keep track of by using the totals rolled on the dice by the posse member doing
the damaging.

I'm not sure the new way is easier, but I'd be interested in hearing what
everyone else thinks.

(2) Drawing jokers in character creation.

Gods. This one is downright nasty. Each one of the two jokers does something
different. Drawing a red during creation gives one a "mysterious past." Just
like in Deadlands. Drawing a black, on the other hand, gives one a
mutation...and not just any old random mutation, but players choice of any
deuce in the list.

Again, for those who don't have it yet, I'll explain mutations. There is one
mutation per playing card (and as an aside, each suit pertains to the ballywig
of one of the Reckoners...which is pretty cool, in my opinion). Anything below
a nine is a Bad Thing (tm) and anything above a nine is a Good Thing (tm).
Nines give you a miss as far as gaining a mutation goes.

They also go up by value of card, so a deuce is the WORST mutation of the lot.
Aces are the best mutations to draw.

I pulled hands for seven characters on Sunday night (just for fun). I mixed
the pack each time (fifty-two pickuped them on the floor, scrambled them
around and then straightened them out), and ended up drawing a black joker
FIVE TIMES.

I don't know about making it start with deuces, as far as mutations go. I
reckon drawing a card is a little more fair, but then I seem to be in the
midst of manitou that REALLY like to mess with me.

(3) There is no (3)...yet.

(4) The new archetypes are pretty cool, although, like with Deadlands, I'll
probably see more possibilities in them when their respective books come out.
Sykers, at the moment, don't do a lot for me, but I bet that'll change when
their book is released. Templars and Doomsayers have enough possibility in
them characterwise, but their respective "powers" seem a little hard to come
up with my own gimmicks for.

(5) The Harrowed and the new Coup rules.

Um...divided. Makes sense in a way to have norms able to soak up the powers of
beyond simply because of the huge spiritual energy discharge all the ghost
bombs let off (spiritual radiation, I s'poze), but at the same time, it still
feels more like it should be the perview of the Harrowed.

Second, the Harrowed were never mentioned in the "Books you will not see
printed for HoE" list, which makes me wonder if there aren't big changes in
the pipeline for them as well. For ones that have been around since the
original Reckoning, for example.

(6) Combat

VERY nice of PEG to put a summary on one page for new Marshalls (? What are
they called now?). Will speed things up to NO end.

The only thing that I noticed here (and I never seemed to notice it in
Deadlands...kick me) is that actual weapons RANGES aren't included with
weapons. You get an increment penalty, but not a "No, you can't shoot
something past this range," number. Not a big deal, but I never noticed it
before now.

(7) Dr. Pepper.

Nice touch. Hoard the stuff while you can.

Any questions, I can't PROMISE to be accurate, but I'll give it a whack.

--jq
"Will a broken skeleton key...aw heck, there are no doors left anyway."