[DEPRECATED] A Fistful of Darkness: Weird West Hack (Beta)

I’d be interested too. I’m using a poker deck in my hack for improv, but still using dice for action rolls. I’d love to find a way to use blackjack (or other) as an approach to downtime activities!

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I love that idea, so I wrote up some rules that I’ll be playtesting soon to (at least) run Indulge Vice as a Blackjack game. I don’t want to run over this thread from our benevolent author. Is there a better place on this community to post rules hacks?

Thanks for praising A Fistful of Darkness. That keeps me going and makes my day :slight_smile:
I hope the full book will reach the “fantastic” level, too, so I’m working on that.

Yes, there will be a physical option, or to be more precise a pod option because I plan to publish such a thing using drivethrurpg.com. Never did that before so it will take some time to figure that out.

Regarding timeline that’s difficult to say with some degree of certainty: 2020 for sure, I hope for Q1 but that’s very optimistic because I do writing, art, layout by myself. I managed to get more freedback from reallly cool playtesting people (your group, too?) and I try to make it the perfect game for your table. I could fiddle random tables or create art all year long, so I hope I find the right point in time where I call it finished.

Last regarding poker/card based mechanics (great spoiler ahead!): No, won’t be part of my game. Mainly because such a mechanic will need some serious playtesting regarding balancing and I never played a game before where such a thing was included. So, I just cannot pull that off because I’m lacking the experience and the drive.
Now the spoiler: I never played Deadlands (shocking truth). My creative push was a game of Shadows of Brimestone and The 6th Gun, Jonah Hex and East of West comics. I even thought that including the four horsemen was a clever idea (homeage to my roman catholic upbringing), because I did not now (then) that they are part of Deadlands, too. Maybe hard to believe but true :slight_smile:

So if you want to hack my game which is a hack of Johns game this is a cool thing in my eyes. Hack away!

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Well, a hack of a hack is totally fine. See my other answer why I won’t do it now.

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I think that workshop (https://community.bladesinthedark.com/c/forged-in-the-dark/the-workshop) is the place you’re looking for.

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Thanks, they are posted there now: https://community.bladesinthedark.com/t/using-poker-cards-instead-of-dice-a-hack-of-a-hack/960

I’ve never played or run a western themed game before myself (I came close to running Wild West Werewolf), so I’m looking forward to running your Beta.

I have a group of eight players, so we tend to really put systems through the ringer :wink:

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BTW,
I read @Gavin_Moore’s card rules and they look really solid (and cool). The Action Draw mechanic would be an easy option for anyone playing a Forged in the Dark game without too much of a chance of destroying anything. The way it is written, the statistics are the same with a freshly shuffled deck. Of course, as you draw, those statistics change…

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Hey, its been awhile since Beta1, I’m wondering if we’ll get an update anytime soon?

I’ve been watching this game closely for a while now and I’m thinking about running it for a our next season. Just curious if I should hold off a bit for a newer version or if I should jump in with Beta1.

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Sorry for the late response, had some offline time.

There will be an update but not soon because I will not publish a beta2 but the book itself. This will take some time to write, polish, create art. That may be bad news, but … the text hasn’t changed much in the meantime. I simplified the rules for Mining/Hellstone Claims (with a lot of help from @Tubal) and plan to publish the chapter here before the book is done.
Hope this helps a little bit for your next season. If I can help with something please let me know.

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Here are the new (more streamlined/simplified) rules for Hellstone / Hellstone Claims.
Amazing insight for a game with demons from mines: you don’t want to give rules about managing mines too much space IMO.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CqBj040sw30ZllwTg2vaVRpS6GLMF4ks/view?usp=sharing

Also: Preview of how the book will look like… kindof …

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Amazing job! To tell the truth, I’ve never ever wanted to play a western-setting rpg, despite being fan of western movies. I don’t know why. But your game makes me want to do it.

Also I think you’re very brave to write it directly (or not directly?) in English, as a non-native speaker. I say this because I’m writing (very slowly) my own hack in French and I really don’t know if I will have the courage to translate it in English. But I think that before publishing the book, you should have an English-speaking proofreader read it. Maybe you already have that in mind.

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Regarding western-rpgs: Same here. As a boy a was a big fan of late night western but I never had the drive to translate that to my rpg world. At that time (80ies) it was mainly dungeon crawling “roll for initiative” style. We played Boothill once and it was ok but not that great to change my mine.

Here, it was the weird stuff that did the trick: Coming from a game of Shadows of Brimestone I found the The Sixth Gun and East of West comics and I was sold.
Thanks a lot for your kind words about my game. That “oh, that is cool, let’s play that” is the effect I have hoped for. That keeps me motivated to make this a whole game/book.

Regarding language: Yes, I’m a bit nervous about that but got some good critques for the beta and will check with native speakers. I just hope that it will be good enough.

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Short status update: proof reading is in progress. Book is feature complete. Tweaking art and layout. Not sure if all will be finished 'til Q1.

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Some new art to show you that I’m still working on it. Art inspired by a playtest by Antimatter talking about giant scorpion demons. Pure nostalgia using my Elastolin outlaw as a model.
Hope you like it.

Status on the book: Proofreading 99% finished, I’m working on the character sheet update. Thousand small things to to here.

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I have to say - the current draft does not read like it was written by a non-native speaker. Your writing is very good.

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I did the release today. Yes, release. Yes, full book. Done. :smile: :smile: :smile: :partying_face:

Check out A Fistful of Darkness at itch.io, please and I hope you have a lot of fun with the game.

Still trying to understand drivethrurpg’s interface especially for the POD option. So, stay tuned for that, looks pretty tricky.

BIG thanks to everybody for feedback, support and “do it” posts. You helped me a lot!

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Hell yeah! Congrats!

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Woohoo and yeehaw! Been waiting for this one! Congrats!

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Bought and bravo. Sehr gut gemacht!

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:partying_face:

We finished our campaign a few weeks ago and had a lot of fun in the process :grinning:

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