American Frontier (The Old West)

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Endless Flight

Endless Flight

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Is there a Frontier game with more crunch than Boot Hill but less than Aces & Eights with no strangeness involved? Just straight up Old West like something you would see in a Lone Ranger episode? I've debated just creating my own because I haven't totally fallen for anything I've seen out there.
 
Gurps Old West, maybe? Crunchy, but I don't think it's near the extreme-crunch that I remember seeing in A&8.

Many of the "straight" Old West Rpgs I've looked at have been light-to-medium-crunch. Coyote Trail, Boot Hill 3e, some options for running Old West with BRP, etc.
 
The only one I can come up with is GURPS Old West. That being said, I've downloaded Blood & Bullets and need to take a look at it.

Later!

Harl
 
Do any of these games evoke any of the moods/traits of Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns? Not to go full-on story-gamey, but I personally love the mood of those films (especially the dramatic music, passionate backstories and influence of Kurosawa Samurai movies) and would be a fan of a game that mechanically supported that "feeling" somehow. Dramatic backgrounds and personal goals, random generators to create small villages with Troubles for a party of PCs to solve, factions (gangs, outlaws, crime families, the North vs. the South etc..)
 
I'm not sure any of them offer the mechanical support you're after. The closest thing I can think of is Dogs in the Vineyard. There is the Knuckleduster Cowtown Creator a systemless sourcebook for creating frontier towns which you can still buy.
 
yojimbouk said:
I'm not sure any of them offer the mechanical support you're after. The closest thing I can think of is Dogs in the Vineyard. There is the Knuckleduster Cowtown Creator a systemless sourcebook for creating frontier towns which you can still buy.
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Great recommendations, thanks.

I was always a bit wary of Dogs in the Vineyard (I know of it by reputation, but never read it). I might give it a second look.
 
Well it wasn't really a recommendation but the format of a Dogs in the Vineyard session is that the Dogs troubleshoot problems in settlements but these are due to demonic corruption. I had a look at the PDF and I don't think it would really help you.

Really, it looks like there's a gap in the market for a product similar to Vornheim or Augmented Reality for westerns. A set of tables to create settlements, NPCs, and threats (bandit gangs, etc.)
 
Old West is a free Ubiquity powered RPG. It has supernatural elements (although these could be stripped out) but is most useful for the lists and ideas.
http://www.mythiceras.net/node/26

Small samples:

A town has to have a reason to exist. Sometimes, a town springs out of nowhere into a bustling boomtown like the cattle or mining towns of the West, sometimes the economical spark dies, leaving a ghost town.

Typical main economics for towns are:
• Cattle: The town is the hub of an area of cattle ranching, acting as a central market and resource for the various ranches around it.
• Mining: The town‟s economy is based around mining and its related industry. It provides supplies and facilities for workers, miners, and acts as a trading centre for the materials being mined.

Old West towns vary in size tremendously but all tend to share some general features. For game purposes, settlements can be divided into four size categories:
• Town: Less than 200 inhabitants.
• Large Town: Less than 500 inhabitants.
• City: Less than 2000 inhabitants.
• Large City: More than 2000 inhabitants.

The facilities below are listed in order of the town size needed to support them, normally at least, so a town with a Hotel almost certainly has a boot hill and newspaper as well.

Small Town
• Newspaper: Usually the first thing put in place by a prospective town founder is a newspaper which can sing the towns praises and attract incomers and bring more investment in.
• Telegraph Office: A telegraph office, if the town lies on the railway.
• Boot Hill: The town‟s cemetery, usually some distance outside the town itself.

Large towns and cities have the same business types as listed in Small town, usually even several. Additionally, there are the following offices and shops:
• Assaying Office: A state assaying office values and buys gold and minerals from prospectors at standard rates.
• Specialist Craftsmen (gunsmiths, watchmakers): Specialist craftsmen tend to only be found in larger towns and cities.

Town folk like business owner and muckraker.

Weapons like Colt Walker Dragoon .45 and Colt Lighting .41.

Below is a listing of average wages (per month) for various jobs in the Old West. The values are a rough average, and can vary from place to place at the GM's discretion.
Army/Cavalry Officer $25.00
Army/Cavalry Trooper $13.00
Bartender $25.00
Blacksmith $30.00

Etc.
 
Endless Flight said:
Is there a Frontier game with more crunch than Boot Hill but less than Aces & Eights with no strangeness involved? Just straight up Old West like something you would see in a Lone Ranger episode? I've debated just creating my own because I haven't totally fallen for anything I've seen out there.
Click to expand...

Which edition of Boot Hill? 3rd has more "crunch" than 1st and 2nd and is essentially a different game with the same name. I have GURPS Old West and it is surprisingly useless to me unlike most GURPS books; part of the problem is that it tries to cover a couple of hundred years instead of focusing on something more concise. Also, what era are you looking for? Post-Civil War? The year you want to play will affect a lot. For instance, someone mentioned telegraphs and railroads; there were neither in Arizona in 1870 and I believe the first newspaper in the Territory started in Tucson in 1870, so you've got real cutoff points depending on what you are after. If you can define what you want in your game there may be some options for you. Most Western RPGs are pretty bad because the writers are concocting a bland blend of "generic Western" either because they want it to cover too much or because they were lazy and didn't want to do the work of learning about their subject. (The benefit of Boot Hill 2nd edition to me is that there is no setting material and I create it myself; the only thing I use is the 16 or so pages on character creation, fighting, and gambling.)
 
TheophilusCarter said:
BRP has Aces High and Devil's Gulch. Those might do ya' right.
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Have them both...Devil's Gulch I would recommend if you need a typical Western town in a vague location as it has a pretty good generic town with maps and personages and nicely sets the supernatural option in a separate section in the descriptions so you can use the book without the "weird west" added in. The adventure ideas I remember would need to be totally retooled as they rely on magic and the supernatural and make no sense without assuming that is real. I'd have to look at Aces High again to refresh my memory but I know I read it once and set it aside as not having much I could really use.
 
My preferred adventuring period is 1870-1880.
 
yojimbouk said:
There is the Knuckleduster Cowtown Creator a systemless sourcebook for creating frontier towns which you can still buy.
Click to expand...

Knuckleduster also has a wide variety of really nice miniatures that are not expensive. I have maybe 12 to 16 of them and would love to get more, maybe after the ides of April and I find out how hard Uncle Sam wants to screw me...:money:
 
Endless Flight said:
My preferred adventuring period is 1870-1880.
Click to expand...

Is there a particular region or area? For instance, if you want "Lone Ranger/Texas Rangers/Texas/1870s," maybe I can check and I might be able to come up with something...

The main deal with RPGs is they try to be broad so as to be useful to a wider audience, but in doing so they sacrifice a lot if you are looking for a particular game experience. That's why I prefer something like Pendragon to D&D; Pendragon is built to serve a particular experience whereas D&D is broad enough to cover a wide array of fantasy in a superficial way. Same with Flashing Blades over GURPS Swashbucklers (although the GURPS sourcebook is useful).
 
No particular region. Anywhere from Texas to Arizona is fine. The Lone Ranger is the kind of action I go for in Westerns.
 
Just picked up Devil's Gulch, couldn't resist. Looks good. Designed so that you could use it straight, or for Weird West. Provides a bit more material for the latter, for obvious reasons, but very useful either way. BRP is a good fit too, if you ask me. Recommended!
 
I have a copy of Deadlands Reloaded sitting on my shelf and half a mind to run it as a straight-faced Western, no supernatural events, no alternate history.
 
The Butcher said:
I have a copy of Deadlands Reloaded sitting on my shelf and half a mind to run it as a straight-faced Western, no supernatural events, no alternate history.
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Sounds cool. Not familiar with the game. What are the rules like?
 
Dumarest said:
Sounds cool. Not familiar with the game. What are the rules like?
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Here is a good rundown. I consider it the very definition of "medium crunch." Prep is really, really easy. It felt wonky and gimmicky when I first read it but it flows great at the game table and I ran it almost exclusively for some 2-3 years.
 
Don't let the name fool you, but All Flesh Must Be Eaten: Fistful of Zombies is a fantastic resource for western games. Zombies and supernatural stuff make up about 20% of the book while the rest is dedicated to not just the Old West, but multiple Old West genres, from Spaghetti to True Grit and beyond, and includes a host of economics for the Old West, weapons, items, skills, etc. It's fully possible to play it without the undead ever being a factor at all.
 
Marktplatz said:
Don't let the name fool you, but All Flesh Must Be Eaten: Fistful of Zombies is a fantastic resource for western games. Zombies and supernatural stuff make up about 20% of the book while the rest is dedicated to not just the Old West, but multiple Old West genres, from Spaghetti to True Grit and beyond, and includes a host of economics for the Old West, weapons, items, skills, etc. It's fully possible to play it without the undead ever being a factor at all.
Click to expand...
Agree with this, and have done this.:smile:
 
Yah, AFMBE is overlooked sometimes because of the zombie theme, but it's also just Eden Studios' core book for the Classic Unisystem (which is a damn good system, BTW, esp. if you prefer traditional game design). The various supplements are basically "insert X RPG genre here, and also zombies, unless you don't like zombies, in which case, just leave the zombies out" ...
 
I like the Streamline Edition of Gunslingers & Gamblers, but I imagine that's possibly even lighter than Boot Hill.
 
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