3 new outfits and a new joker, hence the odd card number and basically confirmation that Dirty Deeds will have the remaining 3 Outfits.
Given the names of the 2 expansions, I’m gonna guess it’s going to be split across the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ factions, so LS will see Law Dogs, Eagle Wardens, and 108 Righteous Bandits (it does note ‘more options’ for the 2 new factions, while the base four just get ‘added’ to) while DD will have 4th Ring, Sloane, and Morgan.
Just a guess though, and I dunno if I really feel the 108 being a ‘good’ faction. I’m willing to bet Law Dogs and Wardens though.
Also going to be interesting to see how they split the card pool. That is, how much incentive there’s going to be for a player of one of the factions that -doesn’t- get featured with an outfit will have to buy this. The faction pack was pretty well designed (to me) so that if you weren’t interested in the Wardens or the 108, you could skip it and not worry that much. This being a full pine box though, likely to have actions/deeds/drifters that you’ll likely want to pick up. I mean, I guess the tradeoff would be likewise for Dirty Deeds featuring cards you’d want even if you don’t play the 3 featured outfits. Guess we’ll see!
Edit: So confirmation that Dirty Deeds is just a regular sized saddle bag (20 regular cards) with 3 outfits wedged in. Kind of an odd choice but I guess better than doing 3 pinebox sized sets in a row.
I would guess that 108 and Morgan should be switches around in your good and bad groups. That way you also have a new faction in each.
I wonder if this will be the expansion where AEG will catch up with releasedates? I got my hands on N@N less then a week ago and I don’t expect the faction pack to be around the corner anytime soon… but I guess it might
Why don’t you feel the 108 Righteous Bandits as a “good” faction?
I mean, the conceptual split for the factions in the game is really more about Order and Chaos, with all the good and bad bits that implies for both, but the 108’s rag-tag Robin-Hoodery fits pretty squarely in the “Chaotic Good” mold.
Because we’ve barely seen them in action, so far the fictions involving them has them A) Blocking the eagle wardens from collecting a potentially dangerous mystical artifact simply because of their ‘you don’t need wealth’ philosophy and B) Training, plus the cavorting with abominations thing (not to mention at least 1 abomination seems to extort money).
I don’t know that I’d peg them as squarely ‘good’ but more of a neutral with good tendencies. Robin Hood was about giving to the less fortunate, they seem a lot more militantly communistic than progressive rogues.
Again though, it’s just initial impressions because we’ve got so little from them. But at the least I get the feeling they’re more bandity but feel they’re the heroes in their own head, rather than active force of Good.
Note though I haven’t read Silver Linings yet, I -just- got home. but yeah, that’s my stance. I’m willing to peg them as a hero faction but not -quite- yet.(Then again the only group i could see swapping them for in the pine box would be Morgan who are much much more decidedly grey area with evil tendencies)
I’d argue, especially in a town like Gomorra, and a setting like Deadlands. Good and Evil are relative. The only truly evil entities it could be argued are those like Knicknevin and Raven. Even the Whatley’s do their part to maintain a weird sort of balance.
Deadlands operates directly around fear. The Reckoners want to bring up worldwide fear so they can cross over and transform the earth into one big Deadland, aka Hell on Earth.
Now Good and Evil obviously don’t operate directly in relation to fear, particularly because what the Reckoners want isn’t widely known or understood (And that’s exactly how they like it) except by their own agents.
So you can have agents of Good that unitnentionally raise fear because of their methods. Perfect example of this is the Agency, they work to maintain secrecy and eliminate threats covertly but in doing so develop their own mythos around Men in Black making people Disappear, invariably raising the fear level despite doing Good by eliminating the creepy nasties that go bump in the dark. This is kind of where I rank the 108 Righteous Bandits atm, they certainly think what they do is good and they’re heroes in their own mind, but they also cavort with Demons and Undead and rob people who may not necessarily agree with their philosophy of not needing material wealth. Like, it doesn’t matter if Hamshanks is the Friendliest Chinese Ogre Ever, if word around town gets out that the 108 have a pet demon that can eat a whole cow… well, they’re going to be afraid and that’s a Bad Thing and could even spawn something Worse.
Likewise, you can have agents of Evil, such as the Whatelys who actively do bad things and are even agents of the Reckoners but will also go out of their way to put down things that risk shattering the veil and revealing them, their plans, and their bosses. The scariest evil in Deadlands is not the big marauding monster or the ravenous undead, but the schemers and plotters that aren’t trying to wipe out humanity but scare the hell out of it to serve their dark masters and bring over Even Worse Things.
So, this is why I don’t rank the 108 in the same level of ‘good’ as I do the Law Dogs or the Eagle Wardens. They may do good things and protect people but their dogma is going to be at direct conflict with a lot of people and their methods may end up raising the fear around the town even though in their minds they’re doing good, which in this town leads to Bad Things Happening.
It was also because the EW’s need for secrecy made it so they refused to say that the artifact was dangerous or why, making it appear to outsiders (like the 108) like it was a bunch of jerks saying “We’re more important than you. Give us stuff.”
And I don’t see how you can see lovable Hamshanks and conclude that them having Abominations makes them evil. Look at him! He’s a big, Hell-spawned teddy bear! (The point is they take in people who have been turned down and cast away from everywhere else, which is generally a Good thing to do.)
So, and that’s his fault? You think it is better to let people languish forever in the fear of the unknown? If word got out they had a pet demon that could eat a whole cow (one time, ONE TIME this happens, and nobody lets you forget it!), they’d be afraid for a while, but wouldn’t they be better off once they got to know him? And don’t his feelings matter? Should he be made to suffer in silence and isolation, because he’s the “wrong” sort of person?
That is why I like writing for this setting. You can put non-Evil factions into conflict with each other and give pretty convincing arguments for why each one thinks it is the good guy.
Oh I’m not saying it’s bad. I quite like the 108’s angle. But I just don’t rank them as strictly ‘good’ explicitly because of that; they are the most likely to think they’re doing good and still causing bad things.
But yes, having a demon ogre is generally a Bad Thing even if he’s a Good Guy. Keep in mind, there’s also a whole tent city of sorcerers and monsters just a stone’s throw away, having a pet monster on hand is a definite liability when he can be turned into a big red Murder Machine. That’s the double edge of the setting, cavorting with anything involved with the Hunting Grounds can easily bite you back.
I think in the whole good/evil spectrum, I’d rank the groups like this, left most being Good and Right most being outright Evil
Eagle Wardens > Law Dogs > 108 Bandits > Morgan > Sloane > 4th Ring
You think that if he could actually be turned into a murder machine with any sort of reasonable effort, whoever summoned him would have let him go so easily? Ogres ain’t cheap, and if Hamshanks wasn’t such a colossal disappointment at ogreing, maybe the wizard who summoned him would have spent more effort to keep him around.
It’d be easier to build an ogre out of actual shanks of ham and animate it Golem of Prague style than to get Hamshanks to go on a murder spree.
(Just because something is involved in the Hunting grounds does not mean it can easily be flipped to be Controlled by the Manitou. Manitou make things, but then those things operate independently, even if they don’t do what the manitou want. They can try to make things that will want to do what the manitou want them to do, but most of the time, that’s as best as they can get, and even that is ignoring the whole “does Chinese Buddhist Hell even operate on those rules” issue.)
Quick question If ‘the Light Shineth’ is a pine box with 3 new outfits etc, does that mean ‘dirty deeds’ is going to be a pine box as well, as it will contain the other 3 outfits? Anyone know. Thank you.
The Great Maze book for Deadlands mentions that a fair few dime novels have been written that cast the 108 Righteous Bandits as heroic rogues doing good deeds. They’re popular with common folk, but they cause a lot of trouble for the law, big business and the like. Chaotic Good is a fitting way of describing them, and having them around would generally raise fear amongst some people but lower it in others.
Yeah they seem to be listing IOUF as a pinebox, since it was 25$, contained a pinebox size amount of cards and had outfits.
And from online shop info, Dirty Deeds is just a saddlebag with outfits added in. Frankly, I feel like the pine box should have all 6 outfits, but might be some particular reason they’re doing it this way.
Like I mentioned, there’s no actual written rule that a pinebox contains Outfits, it’s just what they did for the first one. They can literally put them wherever they want.
