Deadlands Huckster
Vinnie Frevert
Goto [ Index ]In Deadlands, hucksters are sorcerers with a difference: they play poker with demons. If they win, they gain control of the demons' power and can cast nifty hexes. If they lose, the price can be high: magical backfire on the huckster or his friends, insanity, even death. Thus hucksters are challenging to play, a challenge only intensified by their existence among folks likely to hang them as witches if their abilities are revealed.
Playing a huckster with original rules was even more challenging. The first I heard about these hex-slingers was when several co-workers started playing. I heard that the guy playing a huckster was constantly whining that his character couldn't do anything. Once I got the game myself, I understood.
Each huckster player has a deck of cards, and to cast a hex must draw a minimum poker hand. If he doesn't get a good enough hand, he fails; if he draws a Joker, he suffers Backlash. The original rules for hucksters (a) set hand minimums too high, making success difficult, and (b) made Backlash perilous, with but a handful of possible results ranging from "Brain Drain" (permanently dropping the hex a skill level) to "Insanity" (permanently loco).
He gave existing hexes lower minimum hands for at least some effect, making utter failure less likely (e.g., "Soul Blast" required a pair, producing 1d6 Wind damage, with damage increasing for better hands; now it needs only an Ace to do at least 1d4 Wind). Then he ruled that black Jokers always cause Backlash, but red Jokers only do so to hucksters with a level less than 3 in the hex they're attempting. It's a good rule, though 3 seems a bit low -- I'm trying it in my game, but if it makes things too easy, I'll raise it to 4. GMs need to gauge this themselves.
Goff also presents an expanded Backlash table, still threatening the worst, but also offering less damaging results like "Mystic Sputter" or "Mental Static," making it less likely a huckster will destroy himself. The only problem is the table's location: it should be at the back of the book for easy reference, not twenty-eight pages deep.
The book is packed with new hexes. Originally, there were sixteen to choose from, making most hucksters pretty similar. With over one hundred hexes, and rules for creating your own, that's no longer the case.
There's huckster history (like the tale of Edmond Hoyle, author of Hoyle's Book of Games, the huckster's bible), good advice on hucksters for player and gamemaster, new "relics" (a.k.a. magic items), and huckster-centric world background. The latter is tediously similar to earlier products in two ways: first, Pinnacle has fallen into White Wolf's old habit of taking dead historical figures and saying they're alive. That's fine if you don't overdo it; they're overdoing it. Second, we're given more secret societies for the game, also fine up to a point, but the Weird West is already so riddled with secret societies it's getting ridiculous and predictable.
Pinnacle is also getting into the habit of putting adventures in books that have little to do with the books' subjects. Smith & Robards, the weird science book, had one, and this has "Abracadabra and an Arab Cadaver," a tale of zombies, magic amulets, and Arabian evil. It's not bad, but puts a lot of faith in players acting in certain ways, and it doesn't capture much Western resonance; it could just as easily be an AD&D adventure. It has nothing to do with hucksters, unless a player is playing one, and the book would have been better with more useful material or an adventure involving an intriguing huckster NPC.
A huckster is anyone who sells something or serves biased interests, using pushy or showy tactics. Historically, it meant any type of peddler or vendor, but over time it has assumed pejorative connotations.
In Scotland, the term "huckster" referred to a person, usually a woman, who bought goods, watered them down, and resold them in tiny quantity to others who were too poor to buy quality products available at market value.[citation needed] These items tended to be in the poorer quality range, since economy was paramount. Scots burghs often felt the need to control hucksters because they operated without a stall, on the economic fringes. In particular, they were subject to accusations of forestalling, in this case, the practice of buying goods wholesale, "before the stall" and therefore before tax was paid.[4]
In England and Europe during the medieval period, the term "huckster" was synonymous with "peddler."[5][6] Hucksters and peddlers belonged to a broad group of resellers who purchased surplus stocks from weekly provincial markets and fairs and then resold them at larger daily markets or engaged in door-to-door selling.
As time passed, the distinction between hucksters and peddlers became more pronounced. During the medieval period, the term "huckster" came to refer to market-based food vendors, while peddlers referred to itinerant vendors of a wide range of merchandise. Hucksters were often women who dealt in low-priced goods such as meat, poultry, dairy, bread and baked goods, including pies and pastries. They sourced raw materials from their own holdings or purchased goods from other sellers and carried their products to the market place in baskets or on their heads. These women either lived in the market town or travelled into the market place from the surrounding area. Hucksters were at the bottom of the market hierarchy, both in terms of wealth and status, since they made only small returns.[7]
In Philadelphia, in the early 1900's, hucksters were seen as primarily men who came around with carts, horse or hand-drawn, of fresh produce. They made their presence known by crying out loud what they had to offer. In earlier Philadelphia dialect, to say "like a huckster" meant to be too loud in one's speech.[9]
The story "The Goblin and the Grocer" by Hans Christian Andersen implies that human nature is attracted to a state of happiness as represented by poetry and to sensual pleasure as represented by jam and butter at Christmas. Although the story has been mistakenly called "The Goblin and the Huckster", it has nothing to do with that term (pejoratively). The Grocer, through his haggling and bargaining, is seen as industrious because he possesses the jam and butter (sensual pleasure), and the student is seen as poor but happy because he appreciates the beauty of poetry above all else. Meanwhile, the Grocer's talkative wife and the cask in which are stored old newspapers both have plenty of authoritative knowledge to share but are paid little attention compared to the primal desires of humankind, which constantly compete for (the goblin's) attention.[10]
In the novel "The Black Stallion" by Walter Farley, the supporting character Tony is described as a huckster, in the sense that he works as a vegetable salesman in New York City's smaller streets, selling from a horse-drawn cart.
To do this, I want to make a game that extends from the Deadlands RPG setting. In Deadlands, magic has returned to the world around the time of the westward expansion of the US. Monsters roam the Weird West while the ordinary people fight back and try to survive. Of course, not all of the humans are ordinary. Some have found a way to enter into a battle of wits with the demons in the spirit world and use their power to cast spells. This battle of wits often takes the form of a poker hand, and so will the magic in my game.
In this game, all players will take on the role of a huckster, a warlock who casts their magic through the filter of a deck of cards. They are actually engaging a manitou in a battle of wits, and the amount of magical power they get is represented by the poker hand that they draw.
Combat: To start combat, both combatants will stand back-to-back and pace off 2 to 5 paces, decided by the GM (see GM Advice). While walking, they will shuffle their decks. Once reaching the end of their walk, they will each turn, cut their deck, and show their opponent the card that they cut too. Whoever has the highest card can choose to go first or second.
From there, combat continues in a turn-based fashion. The active player will draw five cards and see what kind of poker hand they have. They will then show their cards to their opponent, announce their hand, drop four of the cards, and throw the fifth at their opponent. The opponent can attempt to dodge the card. If it hits, then the person will take damage in the form of discarding cards from their deck. A duel ends when damage from a throw takes a player down to zero cards, or if a player tries to draw their first card of the turn and cannot. This means that if a player has less than five cards remaining, they can still attempt to use their remaining cards in an attack before being eliminated.
Non-Combat (Skill Checks): When a player has to make a skill check to accomplish something in the world, they have to shuffle their deck and draw 5 cards. If the highest poker hand that you can make from those cards is higher than the difficulty rating set by the DM, then you succeed. If the player took that skill as a specialization, then they get to draw 2 extra cards.
Example 1: The player encounters a locked door. The DM informs him that the lock requires a hand of two pairs in order to unlock it. The player shuffle his/her deck and draw 5 cards. If the the player drew a hand of two pairs, the player unlock the door and the DM informs the player what is beyond that door. If the player drew a hand without two pairs the unsuccessfully unlocks the door.
Example 2: The player encounters a gap between areas that they would need to jump across. The DM informs the player that he will need a hand that contains a pair. The player shuffle his deck and draw 5 cards. If the player drew a hand that contains a pair, the player successfully cross the gap to a new area. If the player hand did not contain a pair, the unsuccessfully make the jump and falls. The DM will determine any effects caused by this event.
c80f0f1006