Systems that actualy emulate Western movies?

[jian]

I haven’t cracked my copy of Western City for a while and it’s in storage now, but it seems a good fit for a narrative game exploring the classic themes of Westerns. Or running Support Your Local Gunslinger, whatever you’d prefer.

 

[Deset Gled]

Another option is to go full Magnificent Seven Samurai and look at Oriental Adventures. The 3.0 version had decent "quick draw" mechanics (called "iajutsu focus"), and rules for "taint" that could be used for the cowboy code.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Two suggestions come immediately to mind; they're both pretty different:

Tales of the Old West (Year Zero Engine)

Frontier Scum (Borg inspired)

Frontier Scum is decidedly not in the realm of Western cinema the OP is referring to. It is an interesting game, though, as a self-described “Acid Western”. More like a Wild West game dropped into a degenerate Yellow Submarine or a Mœbius comic strip. Much heavier on the surreal than say, 3:10 to Yuma.

 

[500 Toads]

Boot Hill was meant to be that sort of game. Never poked at it myself, though.

 

[Celebrim]

Is there a system that can actually reproduce the movies of Peckinpah and John Ford? If so which one is it?

No. Or, any system can, depending on how you look at it.

To emulate those old movies and TV shows you'd have to have a table of participants who can talk and think like the characters in the movies. It's probably not the action you are trying to capture, but the vibe, the visuals, the music, and the style of the writing. It would be absolutely essential to have characters who talk together in character when planning. Talking about what you are going to do is half the dialogue of a Western.

That said, I'm not sure I'd put John Ford and Sam Peckinpaugh together as one genre. John Ford is definitely deconstructing the prior generation of singing cowboys and black and white hats, but he's never as cynical or as nihilistic as Peckinpaugh.

 

[Tonguez]

Dust Devils an indy game that uses a Poker hand mechanic and lets the high narrate the conseuqences

 

[HellfireVanWinkle]

Also, how would you differentiate Peckinpah’s high violence style from Spaghetti Westerns (also high violence, but less slow-motion blood)?

Sergio Leone's depiction of violence is similar to the kind you find in tales such as the odyssey, it's meant to emphasize the exploits of larger than life heroes, violence here can have beauty in it, it's a spectacle just like with the gladiators of ancient rome. Sam Peckinpah's violence is meant to hammer in the fact that the world is an awful and terrible place; violence here is absurd, ugly and meaningless.

None of them depicts violence in a realistic way.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Outside of the Western games already cited?

Given my preferences for HERO & other toolbox systems, that’s the path I’d take.

Most of them have rules (some optional) for gritty, dangerous combat, as well as decent firearms lists. All you need is horses…and some of those have statted them out as well.

My next option would be some kind of straight spy RPG. Dial back the tech and find horses (again), and the rest should work.

 

[Lategamer]

Technically you could use anything from Boot Hill to Dogs in the Vineyard. It's always going to be in the metaphysics, rather than the rules. With the same rules you can run anything from The Wild Bunch to News of the World. Or High Plains Drifter and Little House on the Prairie. Now that's a genre I've not seen a lot of.

(Slight self-promo for my upcoming French-and-Indian War game Burning Frontier)

 

[dbm]

GURPS has a lot of tools for Wild West gaming. The core rules give you pretty much everything you need. If you want more pre-built stuff or specific guidance on how to implement Wild West elements there was a 3rd edition Old West book, and for 4th edition Pyramid 3 Issue 74 is on the Wild West, and there are books like High Tech and Tactical Shooting which can be used for more focus on those aspects of the rules, too.