Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

[Thunderforge]

In Deadlands Reloaded, there's a Soldier Edge for characters (I think Classic had something similar). It's got a paragraph that says this:

[Clash957]

Short answer: Permissive TDY

Of course that is the modern day answer. For Deadlands it could involve a small campaign area of the soldier in questions patrol zone, an special order for the soldier and his/her team to travel the west for the Department of War, or a war hero Colonel who no one going to say he can't.

Ultimately, if a player really did want to play a soldier and they couldn't convince any or all the players to turn the game into a military/horror/western, then I would work with the player.

I would find out what reasons the player has for wanting to player a soldier and compare it to the campaign I had in mind. If I was running one of the plot-point books, I would say the soldier's area of responsibility (AOR) is the that of The Maze (the Flood) or whatever the area of The Last Sons is. This would actually help me as the Marshal as the players now have an in game reasons not to leave on some other crazy adventure half a dozen states away.

I don't even see rank of the soldier making much difference. An enlisted man is part of a small unit (leading if NCO). An officer could either be leading those same men or just manning some remote out post because he/she made a general angry.

I have never ran a game without someone playing a Ranger, but never have a had a player want to be a soldier in Deadlands either. I will admit, that does alter the posse dynamics and might even lead to PC drama (the good in game kind).
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Playing: Deadlands Noir, Planescape via D&D 4th ed
Running: Nothing at the moment

[Marshalonwheels]

Yank or Reb? US or CS? Infantry? Cavalry? Artillery? New Science? rank?

some ideas

US
- infantry: the posse is wandering union frontier territory/ disputed lands. the solider is assigned to PR duty because his CO doesn't want him around but can't discharge him additionally he is responsible for the conduct of his friends and must be careful not to "offend" the union name.

- Calvary: non attached messenger. as long as someone in brass needs something to sensitive for telegraph somewhere else u can send him there. he being non attached can wander to a from places as long as someone has heard from him lately

- artillery trickier best disallow this unless you want the posse toatin' a cannon. unless hes ordered to relocate the cannon and it's old...and no armory will take it... "Here, no son! i an't taken it i'll send a dispatch to dc i think KS needs it more"

-Weird Science. "here take this for a field test"

I'll do some CS ideas yommorrow

[catalac]

well you can do what the campaign i'm playing in does. the soldier is a soldier in a unit and the rest of the party is the irregulars or out riders.
for example the gunmen and scouts are scouts, the blessed are chaplains and doctors. weird science science and armory officer(a part of this also makes him quarter master that ought to be fun), the enlighted might serve as the Chinese cook.
hucksters might be hard to fight into this unless their soldiers them selves, but with creativity.
also you want the soldier to almost always be cavalry because one your guy gets a free horse and that way the posse is mobile and can be sent on missions.

[Nordicnomad]

Having been in the military, I can tell you that people get all kinds of random and even individual assignments all the time. Twice as often for officers.

A CO's personnel are his to do with as he wants more often than not, and when he's a high enough rank the only people that can typically question him are congress, the joint chiefs, or the president. And most of them don't care what one troop is doing as long as that high ranking officer isn't using them for something illegal or over budget.

Taking a detached unit with him on his mission just required more back story. Meaning the character needs to have some intel that he's been told to investigate, a bady to track down, or an item to procure. Those are all open ended missions where he would have all the time and resources he needed as long as he checked in regularly.

For an individual, I wouldn't have them walking around in uniform alone. So they'd blend a little in civi's, be a branch like MI, CID, Cav Scout, or even DARPA where they'd have rank, resources, and responsibilities but also the freedom to execute their job without being micromanaged or having to regularly run back to a fort for guard duty.

It's definitely doable.