Deadlands: Reloaded uses the Savage Worlds system. We played this weekend. N ran the game and D and I were players. D was a Veteran Texas Ranger. I was a wandering Mormon priest. We kind of mucked about for a while since neither PC had strong goals. However, in order to keep things moving, we followed the standard "go hunting for wanted criminals" line. I figured that I could bring some "sinners" to justice. It wasn't the most plausible reason to team up, but it wasn't the least, either.
Despite several hinted warnings that our path was going to take us into tribal territories, we went west, only to be ambushed at the treeline of a small river. We were promptly taken out by a hail of arrows. I think D manage to shoot at least one of our attackers before going down. Despite being informed that I could let my horse "take the hit" for me, I decided against it. My character's horse, I decided, was apparently important to him.
We woke with all of our stuff taken from us, and the D's Texas Ranger was in trouble. I was given the opportunity to leave, but they were keeping my horse (whom I'd named "Faith"). Since the horse had a name, I couldn't just let it go, and I decided that it was my dead wife's horse and thus VERY important to me. I risked my life a couple of times, and with a solid Persuasion roll I convinced them to let me "work off" the horse.
In the meantime, D agreed to help the tribes unite against the US by freeing the captive Geronimo. When I finally got my horse back, I left, and unfortunately for D's Texas Ranger, I felt obligated to rat them all out.
This, of course, took me out of the game, but it felt right. Obviously, I made an effort to create a reason to stay together, but it was just too much, and really, now that I had my horse back, there was nothing left for me.
In the end, D didn't want to play again. This was the second time we were wiped out by "mooks" and it didn't feel "heroic" enough for him, which I understand. (The previous game was a total party kill). The game also lacked focus. While N was cleverly just making things up in reaction to our actions, our characters weren't strongly motivated, and even if they where, N didn't know what we were interested in to begin with. We eventually decided to try again with new characters, but with N toning down the NPC opposition. Afterward, N and I discussed setting up some player "flags" so that he would know what kind of thing we were interested in playing about. We're considering sort of a modified "Spirit of the Century" style character creation to both set up those flags and to tie our characters together. We've got three more sessions planned, and then D wants to run Kobolds Ate My Baby. We'll see how that goes.
"If you fudge dice rolls, your system is failing you!" -Sons of Kryos
"I genuinely think that some people measure their free will by reading how unhappy their GM is." - TonyLB
[dice type=fudge]3dF[/dice]