HellHound
ENnies winner and NOT Scrappy Doo
This game-a-day entry is a step away from the last two, about a game that I don't have a love affair with. I'm one of those heretics that just doesn't seem to 'get' the whole Western genre all that much. Now, I understand a Western when I see one, and I enjoy a good Western plot used in another setting; but the wild west and I, not all that close.
Westerns and RPGs obviously go together, at least in the American psyche, since so many people used to play 'cowboys and indians' and similar games in their childhood - obvious precursors to RPGs. As a Canadian raised by hippies, however, I lack even this most basic corelation between the genres.
My first introduction to Boot Hill was through the pages of my essential link to the RPG world as a kid, the pages of Dragon Magazine. There was at least one Boot Hill adventure that made it to print in the magazine in the early 80's when I was reading it religiously, enough to combine with the Sixguns and Sorcery article in the back of the 1e DMG to get a basic idea of the game at hand. One of my players in High School bought the game, but none of us were enthused enough with it to even make characters, let alone try it out.
I finally picked up my own copy of Boot Hill during my TSR RPG consolidation phase in the early to mid 90's. I got a copy of the second edition rules (1979) and read them cover to cover. As with just about every RPG I own, I made a few characters (in this case, with Sooch after a Vampire game) and we shot at each other to see how the system worked. I got the first shot off and missed, he was slow and steady, hitting me and disabling me with his first bullet. My character was doomed to bleed out in the dusty corral.
And that was about it. We never picked it back up or really looked at it again. I only looked at the game again when I got a copy of the 3rd edition a few years later in a collection of other RPGs I picked up.
The first and second editions of Boot Hill seem very simplistic, rules-wise. A set of quick character generation rules, followed by a bunch of rules to simulate gunfights. In fact, the game feels like a wargame at heart - rules for taking your little plastic cowboys and having them shoot it out with varying degrees of realism and bloodshed. The mechanics were painfully wargame-based, using points for movement, with various actions having associated point costs. In fact, moreso than the more recent edition of D&D, this game really comes close to REQUIRING the use of miniatures (something I tend to avoid in all my games). However, unlike most RPGs, the combat system was deadly - with 3 types of wounds from a gunshot, one of which is instantly fatal. The majority of the book is dedicated to these rules and to a collection of stats of famous western heroes.
This was back in the day when little emphasis in an RPG was put into actually role-playing. Even in the campaign section of the book, most of the material was the rough outlining of a pair of campaign ideas, a few maps, the aforementioned 6 pages of stats of historical gunfighters, and some rules for healing and raising a posse (the kinds of things you don't worry about in one-shot gunfight games). There is no effort spared in the rules or additional material to encourage players to add depth to their characters, the use of mental or social stats or skills.
Personally, my only teen exposure to Westerns was through the pages of Heavy Metal magazine and the Tex Arcana serial comic story included therein. Tex Arcana was very cool and every time I looked at Boot Hill, I wondered how I could recreate something similar to the theme and style of the comics, especially with players who had never read them. It was Tex Arcana that finally lead me to my second Western RPG - DeadLands... which I'll talk about another day.
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About three months ago a very close friend and one of the core team of the original Ambient d20 team committed suicide. This really struck deeply into me, and I haven't been able to concentrate on anything RPG-related since then - I haven't prepped a game, written a supplement, edited anything, or even put anything through layout. I even dropped off the RPG message boards I love, especially ENWorld.
So, I've started to think back over all the games I've played over the years and what makes gaming fun for me. And I'm collecting them into roughly 1,000 word posts about the various games, with the intent to write and post one every weekday that I'm not on the road, and then re-invest this energy into running games and writing again.
Westerns and RPGs obviously go together, at least in the American psyche, since so many people used to play 'cowboys and indians' and similar games in their childhood - obvious precursors to RPGs. As a Canadian raised by hippies, however, I lack even this most basic corelation between the genres.
My first introduction to Boot Hill was through the pages of my essential link to the RPG world as a kid, the pages of Dragon Magazine. There was at least one Boot Hill adventure that made it to print in the magazine in the early 80's when I was reading it religiously, enough to combine with the Sixguns and Sorcery article in the back of the 1e DMG to get a basic idea of the game at hand. One of my players in High School bought the game, but none of us were enthused enough with it to even make characters, let alone try it out.
I finally picked up my own copy of Boot Hill during my TSR RPG consolidation phase in the early to mid 90's. I got a copy of the second edition rules (1979) and read them cover to cover. As with just about every RPG I own, I made a few characters (in this case, with Sooch after a Vampire game) and we shot at each other to see how the system worked. I got the first shot off and missed, he was slow and steady, hitting me and disabling me with his first bullet. My character was doomed to bleed out in the dusty corral.
And that was about it. We never picked it back up or really looked at it again. I only looked at the game again when I got a copy of the 3rd edition a few years later in a collection of other RPGs I picked up.
The first and second editions of Boot Hill seem very simplistic, rules-wise. A set of quick character generation rules, followed by a bunch of rules to simulate gunfights. In fact, the game feels like a wargame at heart - rules for taking your little plastic cowboys and having them shoot it out with varying degrees of realism and bloodshed. The mechanics were painfully wargame-based, using points for movement, with various actions having associated point costs. In fact, moreso than the more recent edition of D&D, this game really comes close to REQUIRING the use of miniatures (something I tend to avoid in all my games). However, unlike most RPGs, the combat system was deadly - with 3 types of wounds from a gunshot, one of which is instantly fatal. The majority of the book is dedicated to these rules and to a collection of stats of famous western heroes.
This was back in the day when little emphasis in an RPG was put into actually role-playing. Even in the campaign section of the book, most of the material was the rough outlining of a pair of campaign ideas, a few maps, the aforementioned 6 pages of stats of historical gunfighters, and some rules for healing and raising a posse (the kinds of things you don't worry about in one-shot gunfight games). There is no effort spared in the rules or additional material to encourage players to add depth to their characters, the use of mental or social stats or skills.
Personally, my only teen exposure to Westerns was through the pages of Heavy Metal magazine and the Tex Arcana serial comic story included therein. Tex Arcana was very cool and every time I looked at Boot Hill, I wondered how I could recreate something similar to the theme and style of the comics, especially with players who had never read them. It was Tex Arcana that finally lead me to my second Western RPG - DeadLands... which I'll talk about another day.
---
About three months ago a very close friend and one of the core team of the original Ambient d20 team committed suicide. This really struck deeply into me, and I haven't been able to concentrate on anything RPG-related since then - I haven't prepped a game, written a supplement, edited anything, or even put anything through layout. I even dropped off the RPG message boards I love, especially ENWorld.
So, I've started to think back over all the games I've played over the years and what makes gaming fun for me. And I'm collecting them into roughly 1,000 word posts about the various games, with the intent to write and post one every weekday that I'm not on the road, and then re-invest this energy into running games and writing again.
