D&D General System for Steven King's Gunslinger

[Redwizard007]

With the OGL dust up, I started thinking about new systems, which snowballed to new settings. Before I knew it, I'm scouring my bookshelves for inspiration and BAM! Steven King is just sitting there looking at me and tapping his feet.

My first thought was Call of Cthulhu for various short stories, but then I started thinking about the Gun Slinger series. The setting is a wonderland of possibilities. Virtually any character from Lassie, to Batman, from Dirty Harry to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, even Merlin and Theseus can make an appearance.

Where I need help is picking the system. I've played every version of D&D since Basic and 2e, Shadowrun, WoD, d20 Modern, Pathfinder 1e, Mechwarrior, StarWars, Esper Genesis, and a handful of others that weren't even worth remembering, but nothing feels right.

So, hivemind, what are some suggestions? I prefer crunchy over rules light, but nothing is a deal breaker.

 

[Manbearcat]

Vincent Baker’s Dogs in the Vineyard.

I reskinned Dogs for a solo game of The Dark Tower long ago (and I’m going to run a solo Bladerunner game with a light reskin of Dogs as well).

Another option to look into is the Forged in the Dark hack Fistful of Darkness.

 

[Cruentus]

Savage Worlds/Deadlands sounds like it would fit rather nicely.

It might require some reconceptualizing or skinning to get some of those characters represented, but I think its possible. (I have not played much, but read the rules).

 

[corwyn77]

One advantage to Deadlands is that Savage Worlds is a multi-genre system so adding other genre mechanics is dead-simple.

 

[thirdkingdom]

We Deal in Lead, by Colin Le Sueur, is specifically written emulate the Dark Tower series: We Deal in Lead - By Odin's Beard | DriveThruRPG.com

 

[Redwizard007]

Thanks for the replies. Savage Worlds is going to be my fallback, but We Deal in Lead is tailor made for this.

 

[thirdkingdom]

Thanks for the replies. Savage Worlds is going to be my fallback, but We Deal in Lead is tailor made for this.

If you're interested, I recently conducted an email interview with the author that you can read here.

 

[thirdkingdom]

Actually, this may be of interest to you as well: there's currently an itch jam running for We Deal in Lead, with people submitting content for or based on the game.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

OP what do you want from the experience?

Some games will use mechanics to resolve the consequences of you successfully shooting a guy, other systems use mechanics to resolve whether you shoot the guy, and some systems use mechanics for both.

When you explore the ramifactions of being a lethal killer, do you want mechanics involved? Do you want mechanics that push the story toward a specific type of story, or do you want the participants to do most of the heavy lifting for that?

Because Dogs In The Vinyard is going to give you a very different play experience than Savage Worlds.

 

[Redwizard007]

OP what do you want from the experience?

Some games will use mechanics to resolve the consequences of you successfully shooting a guy, other systems use mechanics to resolve whether you shoot the guy, and some systems use mechanics for both.

When you explore the ramifactions of being a lethal killer, do you want mechanics involved? Do you want mechanics that push the story toward a specific type of story, or do you want the participants to do most of the heavy lifting for that?

Because Dogs In The Vinyard is going to give you a very different play experience than Savage Worlds.

I'm leaning away from Dogs. Looks like I am ordering both Savage Worlds for broad 5e replacement material, and We Deal in Lead as a less homebrew/reskinning intensive Gunslinger game, and if I don't like the mechanics then I'll pull as much fluff as possible and use SW.

For this particular game, I'm looking for mechanics for both determining hits and results, and my assumption is that wDiL will cover that since it's built with firearms as a core principle. For future play, I'd like something that falls in between 3.5 and 5e in complexity. I'm hoping SW fills that niche, but my shelves still have some empty space if something else fits better.