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