Deadstream: A Savage Setting Mashup

January 1, 2009 No comments

During RinCon I was shooting the breeze with Ron Blessing and John Polack about doing a Firefly-type space western using Savage Worlds. Ron suggested using Slipstream, which didn’t make sense to me until I read it. The pocket universe, with dozens of habitable worlds within one “system”, is very reminiscent of Firefly’s ‘Verse. My counter-proposal was to throw in Deadlands Reloaded, and make it a horror space western.

(And before anyone says it, yes, I know about Lost Colony. Never read it, never played it, and it’s out of print. Let me woolgather in peace here, okay?)

Make some of the planetoids, or an asteroid field, made of ghost rock. That becomes the wat to hand-wave away any questionable science or fudged physics. Have the rocketships powered by ghost rock. Give some (or all) of the planets fear ratings. Make Queen Anathraxa a vampire or some other undead critter. Mix and match races and character types – I can see a Lion Man Gunfighter, a Robot Huckster, an Amazonian Mad Scientist. Tweak the cultures to reflect human cultures of the Old West, making Slipstream’s “primitive” cultures more like Native Americans for instance. Heck, make them shamanic, it’s not a stretch.

I would declare that none of the aliens traveled in on chunks of their own homeworlds. People and planets came in separately, so every world is a new colony with unwitting pioneer folk just trying to make their way and survive. With Queen Anathraxa taking the role of Firefly’s alliance, controlling most of the technology and resources, there would be plenty of opportunities for smugglers to transport food, equipment, medicine, and persons of questionable reputation.

The real question on this sort of mashup is tone. Obviously, it’s going to be pulpish, but do you want to stay closer to Firefly in tone, more in line with the Flash Gordon goofy adventure feel of Slipstream, or the horror pulp of Deadlands? I think the Firefly feel would be playing it down the middle. You can obviously just remove the aliens you find too silly (or remove them entirely, making it humans-only). You can limit magic and supernatural creatures if you want. You can crank up or tone down any of the tropes to get the mix you think works best.

Buy Deadlands Reloaded