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How to Create a Character in the Deadlands Classic Role Playing Game

Deadlands is a flavorful role playing system that puts players out in an old-west style world. Consequently, everything has an old west flavor. Your skills, rather than the standard D&D skills, are things like Fannin' and Tinkerin'. Wounds don't get done to your torso, they get done to your guts. And in perhaps the most interesting change from traditional role playing systems, many things are determined by drawing cards from a deck or playing poker.

Things You'll Need

Deadlands character sheet
Standard deck of playing cards

Instructions

- 1
  Acquire a Deadlands character sheet. If you don't have one, get one from the Deadlands Home Page (link below).
- 2
  Shuffle a standard deck of playing cards, with two jokers included.
- 3
  Draw twelve cards from the deck, and then discard two of those cards. You may not discard twos or jokers.
- 4
  Assign each remaining card to a skill in the following manner: Twos are a d4, three through eight is a d6, nine through jack is a d8, kings and queens are a d10, and aces and jokers are a d12.
- 5
  Place a number before each die based on the suit of the drawn card. Clubs are one, diamonds are two, hearts three, and spades for. So if you placed a nine of spades in your Quickness skill, your quickness would be 4d8.
- 6
  Add your base die values (just the numbers after the d, not before) in Knowledge, Smarts, and Cognition, to get your point pool. You may spend these points as you like, up to five per skill, in any skill on your sheet. Your skill points will modify the base die values for each category. For example, if you have a 2d10 in Smarts, and put three points in Gamblin' (a Smarts-skill), you would roll 3d10 for Gamblin'.
- 7
  Last but not least, give your character a cool name that wouldn't be out of place in the Old West!

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