Re: [HOE] Time Travel question (long response)

[Theo McGuckin <tsm@jlab.org>]

>  I run a Hell on Earth campaign. I have most of the books for the Weird West 
> too. I like the way the scope of Dead Presidents sound. So I'm going to 
> purchase it and take my HOE posse back in time to play. My question for you 
> guys is what would be the easiest way to do that?
>   In my Posse there is a Templar, A Lawdog/Syker, and a herectical Doomsayer. 
> All are blessed by the Templar saints. If they all went directly back in time 
> would their powers still be available to them. I doubt the Saints blessings 
> would. I can see the Sykers powers still working for him. But what about the 
> Doomsayer and The Templars.  Should I send my posse back in time stark naked 
> through the hunting grounds? The other idea I had was to have them keep their 
> corporeal traits and apptitudes and have their essences be transferred into 
> physical bodies in the Weird West. What do you guys think?

These are the rules that I used when a syker from HoE accidently came back
with my Deadlands posse (who did a stint in HoE):

Here is the gist:
        Any syker that has the misfortune of traveling back in time to
Deadlands is going to discover that the rules are a little different here.
First off, the energy of the hunting grounds is a lot better guarded then
their used to (more of the manitous are still trapped in the hunting
grounds than in HoE). As a result using powers is more STRAINing on the
syker.
        [All powers cost +1 strain to use, so a 1 strain power costs 2, a
5 strain power would cost 6. This does not effect maintanence costs of
powers. The hard part is fighting past the monsters to get the link, once
it's established it's pretty much business as usual]
        
        The other thing that any syker new to the Weird West will discover
is that the energy of the hunting grounds is much more closely linked to
the manitous themselves (as opposed to HoE where the energy is more of an
amorphous force that permeats the spirit world). As a result the syker
will actually have to "duel" a manitou for the energy to activate his
powers.

        Unfortunately the syker has no way (he's not trained) to pick his
manitou, so it's pretty random as to whether he gets a slavering-servitor
of the Reckoners or some gremlin-wannabe with barely enough energy to
manifest. To date no syker has encountered a Reckoner in the Weird West
(at least none have and lived).
        [A syker's blastin' roll is opposed in the Weird West. Every time
the syker uses a power the marshal draws a card from a special deck. This
card is used to determine the manitou's spirit just like during char.
generation. The syker rolls blastin' and the manitou rolls spirit. The
manitou subtracts his roll from the sykers. Note: As this is an opposed
roll the syker need only net a 1 for a success (he doesn't have to beat
the manitou's roll be 5 just to get the power off). The deck is only
shuffled between sessions (or when the black joker is drawn). This
represents the fact that manitous with a 4d12 spirit are pretty rare.]

        It ain't all bad though partner...

         Fortunately, while you can't pick your manitous you can pick your
battles (and your nose). Pretty much all sykers learn that they are stuck
with the first critter they spot in the hunting grounds, but they can
always run away. In this case discretion is the better part of valor and
most sykers, if they back-off right away, suffer no ill side-effects.
        [When a syker uses a power and the marshal draws a card for the
spirit of the manitou he does not tell the syker the draw. Instead he
gives a representative description of the manitou and lets the syker
choose, based on that whether to retreat or not. If the syker retreats
there is no test of wills and no power goes off, but the syker loses 1
strain. For example: the syker decides to brain blast a bad guy. The
marshal draws and say he gets the 6 of hearts (average). "You land in the
hunting grounds and see a squat troll-ish figure standing before you. He
snarls and swings a club in the air 'What the HELL do you want?'." Now say
he drew the king of spades instead. "You are thrust into the hunting
grounds and land on your hands and knees. In front of you are a set of
hooved, red feet easily as big as your head! Your eyes slowly work their
way upward to take in a 20' tall fiery demon with a flaming sword in one
hand and a snapping whip in the other. As you crane your neck up to his
bestial head he looks down at you and smiles a toothy grin. 'Good, I could
use some lunch.'"]
        
        Finally, if you manage to wrestle a bull down and point it at your
enemies it's going to cause a lot more damage than a rat. The same is true
of a manitou. If you manage to beat down a powerful critter he's bound to
have more mojo to give you. If you stomp on a piss-ant, yer gonna get
piss-ant power. 
        [Beating a manitou may give a player extra raises if they are
really powerful. Conversly, beating a weak manitou may actually take away
raises! If the player wins the duel, then the marshal checks on the chart.
Powerful manitous may add a raise or two, average ones do nothing.
Especially weak manitous will actually take away a raise or two (down to a
minimum of a one success, they'll never stop a power from working
completely).]

        Oh yeah, one last thing. Sykers open themselves up to the hunting
grounds in whole new ways in the Weird West. This usually isn't a problem,
but if they tangle with something big or fail miserably they can sometimes
get burned.
        [If the manitou beats the syker in the opposed roll then really
bad things can happen. If the manitout only gets a raise or two you should
be fine. If he starts getting say 3+ raises the syker can take damage,
suffer additional brain-burn or other nasty effects. Needless to say if
the syker goes bust against a powerful manitou who rolls well, he's going
to be in a world of pain.]

"WHY ME?" Your asking? The reason I came up with these rules is because
otherwise sykers could brain-blast and bonerip people to shreds, while
hucksters are fighting to do a lousy 3d6 with a soul blast. The sykers
needed to be taken down a peg to balance their power.

It's really not all that complicated (really):
1. Syker declares power use
2. Marshal draws card and gives description of manitou to player
3. Player decides to back-out or duel (if he duels proceed)
4. Opposed roll (blastin' vs. spirit)
5. Determine results:
   5.1 If syker wins: 
       5.1.a Marshal tells him if he gets any +/- to his raises thanks to
             power of manitou
       5.1.b Determine results of power
   5.2 If manitou wins:
       5.2.a Marshall tells syker if he suffers any additional effects
   5.3 If syker botches:
       5.3.a Brain-burn as usual, but also see 5.2

TABLES:

Manitou's strength and appearance and effects:

Card    Stat*   Description              Effect
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
2       d4      Imp, pixie               -1 success (minimum of 1)
3-8     d6      goblin, small demon      none
9-J     d8      man-sized demon          none
Q-K     d10     large demon, dragon      +1 success (syker must win duel)
A       d12     horrific, fiend or hoard +2 success (syker must win duel)
Joker   d12+2   Unique, Death, The Devil Rare, powerful effect (win duel)





If syker loses duel (cumulative with botching):

Manitou's successes     Additional Effects (besides power failing)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
1                       none
2-3                     syker takes wind equal to manitou's spirit - vigor
                         roll
4-5                     syker takes wound to guts equal to spirit roll
6+                      syker takes massive damage equal to spirit roll


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The rules played out well and it balanced the higher power of sykers in
Deadlands with the risk of gettin' the smackdown from an irrate manitou.

I still remember the first time the syker had to face a manitou. He
appeared in the hunting grounds in front of a pignosed demon shuffling a
deck of cards at a table with one of those silly visor things on his head.
"All right, let's play a game of... WHAT THE?!?" That last part being
screamed as Duvall (the syker) leaped over the table and beganning
pummeling the poor little demon to within an inch of his un-life!
:)

For doomsayers we went much simpler:
They get 1 strain back per day naturally and don't really have any way to
up it. Basically they get it from a combination of background radiation
(cosmic rays) and the thin ghost rock vapor in the air. The good news is
that since all their energy is stored inside them (no tapping into the
hunting grounds) casting their miracles isn't any harder. Good luck
getting your hands on any irradiated ghost rock though.

For templars I'd say their powers work normally (God/Allah/Budda/etc. 
believes in them even if they don't directly believe in him), but martyr's
don't (as, as others have pointed out, their still alive).

Equipment:
I stole an idea from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (stop laughing!) called
Temporal Energy. Basically TE is all around us and it's what makes time
move forward. It's like everything it traveling in a river of time, and
the force of the river is TE. Well like any river, the further you get
from the source, the weaker the current. So the further you get from the
start of time, the weaker the TE. That means that objects that
travel through time are then subjected to different TE. Objects moved back
in time can be torn apart by TE (the cute toy boat that rolls lazy
downstream is torn apart at the waterfall at the river's source) and
objects moved forware in time are actually made stronger (less TE wearing
them down). So objects moved back in time slowly develope a reliability
roll. For every week an object from HoE is in DL its reliability drops by
1 (starting at 20, i.e. no roll necessary) until is eventually stablilizes
at 15 (if it lasts that long). This stops players with submachineguns
ruling the west. 
Living objects have natural regenerative abilities and so are immune to
the effects of TE.

Hope that helps, or at least gets your mental juices flowing.

Theo McGuckin - SysAdmin, JLab


	"Do I detect a hint of sarcasm?"
	"Are you kidding? This baby's off the charts!"
	"Oh, a Sarcasm-Detector, oh that's reeeeal useful."
	dee-Dee-DEE! BOOM!