Pyramid Review
Deadwood: On Location (for Deadwood)
Published by Cheapass Games
Designed by James Ernest
Cover art by Phil Foglio
Edited by Elizabeth Marshall
Six b&w Location boards and rules; $3
One of the great things about Cheapass Games is when it creates a supplement to one of its existing games, the new product is comparatively every bit as cheap as the original. Deadwood, its game of bad movie making, has expanded its studio budget by a couple of dollars and is ready to start filming On Location.
For those not in the know (or who haven't read the Pyramid review), Deadwood Studios USA is the worst movie studio in the world. It makes all manner of cut-rate cinematic bombs, most of them westerns. Players are actors, moving about the company's back lots in search of roles to fill. They start as low-level losers, but by the end of the game they can become high-end losers with better roles. Better or starring roles mean better pay, and the biggest bank is the way to win the game.
Cheapass released a series of alternate decks that could be had for a buck apiece. The studio moved from oaters to musicals, martial arts/chop-sockey flicks, sci-fi movies, and horror films, and there were new roles to assume like Unconvincing Puppet, Squid Tentacle, or the Scuba Coach. The decks also provide Distractions, a new kind of card mixed in with Scenes that, when turned over, shook things up. "Mirror Universe," for example, makes the actors start the day's shooting at the Casting Office instead of . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: June 18, 2004
Copyright © 2004 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.