Deadlands/Deadwood/Weird West Hack: Let's do it!

I've been thinking a lot about how rad Apocalypse World would be in a Weird West setting. I'm thinking a lot about Deadlands for inspiration, but maybe divorced from the metaplot a bit (a lot of a bit). I mostly like Hucksters using cards as spell foci and some historical stuff, like the Sioux and Texas Rangers and the Pinkertons.

Can we brainstorm this? Are people interested in helping? Are people interested in playing? I'm running an online AW game (a month or two old), a tabletop AW game (we're about to play session 2), and participating in a Google Wave AW game (a little more than a month old, I think). I have some experience but not a lot.

Any of you wastelanders out there wanna talk this out and get a task force started? I'll get started with my mission stated upfront:

A Weird West alternative history hack for Apocalypse World, equal parts Deadlands and Deadwood.

Ready go!

(crossposted at story-games)

Note: I see Michael's "Western World" hack and want to see if we have enough of a "Weird West" vibe to justify a separate project. If it turns out my ideas are redundant, I'll probably ask him if I can help with his hack instead. :)

See, as I started reading I thought "but Michael's doing his thingy over there", but then the more I thought about it, the more I realized that "Weird West" is probably closer to vanilla AW than it is to a straight up historical western hack. I'm enthusiastically commenting on his ideas over there, and I'll do the same with this one, as I always loved the Deadlands setting and vibe.

As a quick note, though, I think that you're on the right track by wanting to divorce it from the "metaplot", or hell, even their particular backstory as to where the weird came from. I'd take a cue from the Dark Sol hack (hey, look, Michael again!) where a bit of the AW approach for setting is mixed in: you get a few details and general outlines, and then you're left to fill in as a group. These days, that sort of thing is way more exciting to me than a fully developed history and major NPCs and blahblahblah.

Yup. I'm excited to see what you come up with also. And, there's totally room for a "Weird West" hack. And, if we need to cross-pollinate, that's great.

Like I said on SGs, feel free to steal liberally from anything I produce and post on the forums. ;)

Oh, and Jeff is a great help. He's got some great ideas and leaves good feedback.

Aw, shucks

Sweet! I'm sleepy. More soon.

Hey all, anyone still interested in doing this?
It's been quite a while, but I'd be happy to pitch in.

I was just fondly remembering the Deadlands setting, but I truly have no interest in playing Savage Worlds at the moment, and think this could be amazing, especially if someone figured out a way to keep the playing cards in the game...

Anyways, will start a new thread if this one doesn't resurrect anyone...

Hm, playing cards... if you have each card valued as follows...
2: 1
3: 1
4: 2
5: 2
6: 3
7: 3
8: 4
9: 4
10: 5
J: 5
Q: 6
K: 6

You can do draw 2 and keep (roughly) the same odds distribution as AW proper.
I saw roughly because you need to account for the Ace, which should do... something.
It will also change the odds, perhaps quite a bit, if you don't replace draws after you draw them (so, if you get a lot of high cards you know some misses are coming your way and vice-versa) or if you allow players to keep a hand and play cards in some way (maybe play one from the hand, then draw one).
This also opens up tricks for bonus moves based on suite, rank, saved cards, the discard, etc... while still keeping close to the basic numbers of AW...

- Alex