rush99999
LiverisGood
Olath Elamshin
puddingpunter
Izurich
Noctis
ColdAtlas
vetala
ThatLostDudeI'd say maybe lean into savage worlds, if only because OG deadlands is a product of its time, being influenced by white wolf games whichs means there's most likely gonna be some wonky math and it's going to be overly precious over its metaplot and NPCS tied to it. Plus, game design trends have like evolved over the years so there's gonna be stuff that's just kinda outmoded.
Not to say savage world is perfect, as it has its flaws and quirks. I don't if they resolved in like whatever edition they're currently using, but it involves combat, damage, and benny flow. Savage worlds has a pronounced death spiral, every time you get wounded you acquire more and more penalties to rolls and depending on how bad the hit is you can gain multiple in one go.
On one hand high level antagonists in a fight can be annoying to fight as they will either evade your hit or tank damage. So you can have rounds that are like whiff-fests or just chipping away at the enemy and slowly stacking those penalties until the fights easier and or via bennies or natural luck a player gets that one good hit that turns the table.
And when you do that it's pretty gratifying to finally crack that tough shell and lay into them. And it makes sense in terms of being a way to model exhaustion and getting too tired/hurt to keep fighting well. Which works for settings where the characters aren't like superheroes or it's like an action movie where the protags should be mowing through dudes until they meet the antagonist or one of the heavies.
But on the receiving end it can be painful and frustrating if you're the guy who's blessed by poor luck. Especially when fighting like a boss or mid-boss type as their numbers will be high enough that if you take even a moderately bad hit in the beginning not only are you that much closer to getting ko'd, it's only going to be more difficult to participate as you'll get worse on defense and offense. And also each penalty makes it that much easier to get a crit since it's based on reaching a certain difference between the two rolls.
Bennies besides letting you influence the story with them as a player have a bunch of combat utility to them. The pertinent ones being rerolls, negating wounds, and breaking the shaken status. They keep combat manageable, but the issue is GMs being stingy and running out. Cuz while you have like certain guidelines of what would earn a benny, ultimately it falls to the GM. And going without them for a bit can feel bad, as it just turns into a slog. Also the GM gets their own bennies, and it's fun to do Yu-gi-oh reverse trap card stuff with being spent to counter each other. So keep them flowing and you should be fine.
I haven't played OG Deadlands and it's been while since I read the rules so like I don't remember how durable characters feel there. Also, my experience was with explorer's edition and I got no clue what's the current version being used for the game line. So maybe the characters are a little less brittle when benniless in combat.
Not to say savage world is perfect, as it has its flaws and quirks. I don't if they resolved in like whatever edition they're currently using, but it involves combat, damage, and benny flow. Savage worlds has a pronounced death spiral, every time you get wounded you acquire more and more penalties to rolls and depending on how bad the hit is you can gain multiple in one go.
On one hand high level antagonists in a fight can be annoying to fight as they will either evade your hit or tank damage. So you can have rounds that are like whiff-fests or just chipping away at the enemy and slowly stacking those penalties until the fights easier and or via bennies or natural luck a player gets that one good hit that turns the table.
And when you do that it's pretty gratifying to finally crack that tough shell and lay into them. And it makes sense in terms of being a way to model exhaustion and getting too tired/hurt to keep fighting well. Which works for settings where the characters aren't like superheroes or it's like an action movie where the protags should be mowing through dudes until they meet the antagonist or one of the heavies.
But on the receiving end it can be painful and frustrating if you're the guy who's blessed by poor luck. Especially when fighting like a boss or mid-boss type as their numbers will be high enough that if you take even a moderately bad hit in the beginning not only are you that much closer to getting ko'd, it's only going to be more difficult to participate as you'll get worse on defense and offense. And also each penalty makes it that much easier to get a crit since it's based on reaching a certain difference between the two rolls.
Bennies besides letting you influence the story with them as a player have a bunch of combat utility to them. The pertinent ones being rerolls, negating wounds, and breaking the shaken status. They keep combat manageable, but the issue is GMs being stingy and running out. Cuz while you have like certain guidelines of what would earn a benny, ultimately it falls to the GM. And going without them for a bit can feel bad, as it just turns into a slog. Also the GM gets their own bennies, and it's fun to do Yu-gi-oh reverse trap card stuff with being spent to counter each other. So keep them flowing and you should be fine.
I haven't played OG Deadlands and it's been while since I read the rules so like I don't remember how durable characters feel there. Also, my experience was with explorer's edition and I got no clue what's the current version being used for the game line. So maybe the characters are a little less brittle when benniless in combat.