Ghost Train, Part One

Ghost Train, Part One

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have a pending publication with Pinnacle Entertainment, publisher of Savage Worlds and the Deadlands setting, among many other excellent products. I’ve used Savage Worlds over the years to play in all sorts of different settings, some homebrewed, and some from their product line. Most memorably, one of my friends has used those rules to play a fantastical pirates game set in the anime world of One Piece. Just saying that it’s a lot of fun. I’ll have to cover the post-apocalyptic adventure in the world of Deadlands: Hell on Earth that I wrote to run for local conventions in another post.

The idea for the adventure, which would become Journey Into Darkness, began when I was working with my librarian colleague in Lake Geneva for our first library-sponsored convention, Bards & Bookwyrms. I knew I wanted to run something in Deadlands, my favorite setting, as it would provide a contrast to the other games, most of which were D&D and Pathfinder. I wanted to run an adventure that was equal parts mystery and combat, and a myriad of sources inspired the published product.

The first inspiration came from a game Jim Ward ran for my library’s gaming club. As I mentioned before, I work at the library in Elkhorn, where he lived until his passing in 2024. He DMed several guest games for my club, including several set in the world of Metamorphosis Alpha, the sci-fi setting he wrote for TSR. One in particular had us playing 1st edition D&D with his own twist on a dungeon crawl.

A great friend and publishing mentor. Rest in peace, Jim.

After building level 10 characters, we went through a randomly generated dungeon created by Jim drawing slips of paper every time we left a room, with each slip containing a short description of the area we explored. He was a bit disappointed we didn’t run into his “kung fu fighters,” a notorious section of dungeons he ran where the players fought against superhuman martial artists who could punch through plate mail armor (this was imparted to me by another friend of his, but luckily, we didn’t run into them!). I died at least once during his game, but he did hand out little skulls with his initials on them to those who didn’t make it.

An excellent keepsake from an epic game! He also gave out buttons that read "James M. Ward Victim".

Though there were very few survivors, if any, by the end of the game, the idea of randomly generating a dungeon stuck with me, it was about this time that I was rewatching one of my favorite cartoon shows, Adventure Time. If you haven’t watched it before, I definitely recommend checking it out! In the episode Dungeon Train, the main characters Finn and Jake find a train in the middle of a forest where every car has a monster to fight and plenty of treasure as rewards.

That episode, combined with Savage Worlds’ use of playing cards as a significant part of the game rules, led to my idea of a randomly generated dungeon on board a train. Deadlands has plenty of precedence for ghost trains, and one of their deadliest adventures, John Goff’s Night Train and its sequel, For Whom the Whistle Blows, takes place on a titular ‘Night Train’ crawling with nosferatu, which are feral vampires. The final piece of the puzzle was a piece of artwork from Deadlands: The Weird West that cemented the concept.

It's a little hard to read the text at the bottom of the image, but this artwork is a copywritten image included with permission from Pinnacle Entertainment. Obviously, I did not draw it, or this would be an art blog instead of a writing one.

When I spoke to Jim about the concept, he loved the idea and said I should pitch it for publication, something which had never occurred to me as a possibility. One thing you will learn about me is that I work quickly, and in about a month and a half, I completed the first draft of the manuscript. I will cover the editing process in another blog post, but my hard work eventually paid off. I’ll cover the writing process in another post.

In other news, I am working on several original game concepts while editing The Last Voyage of the Charon, including a micro-RPG based on Greek mythology. Hope you had a Happy New Year!

- Tanner