The Heroic Hindrance

One of the house rules I've made for the Deadlands: Reloaded: Something Wicked This Way Comes campaign is that every Posse member must take the Heroic Hindrance in addition to the usual 1 Major and 2 Minor that a character is allowed. In return, the PC gets a 0 XP, Novice Rank Advance.

I have at least three reasons for this:

1) Deadlands is predicated on the idea that the Posse will fight the Reckoners, often for no other reason than because there is evil out there that must be defeated. Giving everyone the Heroic Hindrance means that the Posse will get rewarded with Fate Chips if they do the right thing, regardless of consequences.

2) Making all of the Posse members heroic also helps explain why a diverse group of people get together and stay together. The formation of a Posse, just as with the formation of any kind of party in any game, is often artificial. What do a vaquero from Texas, a huckster from St. Louis, and a gunslinger from the Maze have in common? If they all have the Heroic Hindrance, they share at least one common trait.

3) Finally, I've mentioned before that my group tends to be of the "kill them all, the GM will know his own" mentality. Forcing the Heroic Hindrance on them gives me some leverage when the Posse starts making plans to dynamite an entire town to take down the one Harrowed NPC that they don't like. I also can't help but think that eventually the Posse will actually join the Reckoners. I suppose that there's nothing wrong with that, but it's not the kind of campaign that I'm looking for.

As a separate point, D&D has alignments. The general expectation is that a typical party will be fighting evil and that most characters will be Good. The Heroic Hindrance functions in much the same way as the Good alignment. Likewise, Bloodthirsty  functions much like the Evil alignment. Hindrances, however, are not absolute. There not even incompatible. One could have both the Heroic and Bloodthirsty Hindrances. In Deadlands, a cowpoke might have the Heroic Hindrance, but only have it apply to white folk. The Bloodthirsty Hindrance would apply to Indians. Or vice versa.

I plan to use the Heroic Hindrance to drive the Posse and the campaign forward. We'll see how it goes.


Tim