Back in the day, when me and my friends were just after getting our heads around Holmes' basic D&D we played a few games of TSR's Boot Hill. We'd spend time rolling up characters, walking into town and then shooting the place to pieces!
That's pretty much what the few sessions we played ended up being - and that seemed to be a general criticism of the game itself - not too much room for role-playing but a good shoot-em-up sim.
But I've got that hankerin' to pull out the ol' six-shooters once again!
Of course, Boot Hill is long gone and picking one up these days is a bit pricey (you all should remember that the Warlock is a cheap!), so I've been looking around for a easy to run, quick to learn western rpg - in other words, inexpensive rules-lite!
Sure, some of you might be saying, "hey, why don't you give Deadlands a try"?
Well, it's not cheap and it is quite heavy on the rules. Besides that, it's basically D&D in a western setting what, with the monsters and all - not at all what I'm looking for nor my cup of tea.
With a foundation of Castle & Crusaders, GFYG is quite the stripped down version and has everything you need to run a pretty decent western game in just around 80 pages. Yes, that's 80 pages for game rules.
GFYG uses a standard D20 system as opposed to Boot Hill's D100 and it's quite familiar with it's standard 3d6 attribute rolls (STR, DEX, CON, WIS, CHA, INT). There are 10 iconic character classes such as the Maverick, Drifter, Gunslinger, Doctor etc, as well as an optional class for the Wandering Monk all with specific class skills. The game is run by the Game Marshal (GM - nice!).
So after looking around a bit I've come to the conclusion that Go Fer Yer Gun! will be go rules for a western style campaign - no vampires, aliens or monsters....yet! Now, if I can just get my gaming group interested.....
Interesting. I haven't given Go Fer Yer Gun a look, but maybe I should.
ReplyDeleteI had not run across this one before but you can't beat $1. If you want something that's more "realistic" than Deadlands (and I love my Deadlands) and has some support you might take a look at Aces and Eights from Kenzer & Co. It's not cheap but you can find it here and there and it might float your boat if you want more crunch sometime.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I've read a few things about Aces & Eights and haven't looked too deeply into that one yet. Some of the others in our group like a bit of crunch but me, it hurts my aging brain!
DeleteSimon also has Blood and Bullets for S&W and I have an OSR Spaghetti Western mod on my blog as well.
ReplyDeleteAs for 'realistic' I do this two ways: first we limit hp's to 5 HD, you gain all the bonuses of higher levels but hp's freeze at fifth level. Secondly I have two sets of damage for firearms. One is multiple d6;s and open ended damage for the God is Gun attitude of the Spaghetti's, the other is more modest, 1d6's and 1d8's for most pistols, and damage is not open ended.
Cool, I'll check out both of those you mentioned. GFYG HD peak early (around lvl 5) with only 1 or 2 hps gained after that. I always feel that one shot should always have the chance of killing a character no matter what level.
DeleteI'm in!
ReplyDeleteCool!
DeleteGreat choice, I have old friends coming up in the next few days for a weekend of playing Go Fur Yur Gun.....been playing over 5 years.
ReplyDelete