As the handle might suggest, I was a big fan of Hackmaster, even though the crunchy bastard was a bitch to run.  Still, my run through Quest for the Unknown was well recieved by my group and we had a blast.  Never got much beyond that, but it was my first time running anything D&D related.  Still, I loved the game, hard as it was to GM.

Finally got a chance to sit down with Aces and Eights.  If anyone who posts at the BP remembers JakeMorley, he was my GM.  As I mentioned in another thread, I made up a Clint Eastwood in Pale Rider style character - a wandering preacher who is a reformed gunslinger and gambler.  Well, he still gambles a bit here and there, but he swore off the booze cause it makes him "mad dog mean", and tries to live a better life.  The other player made a yellow-bellied side-kick style survivor who's handy with a pistol, but hates being hurt and is lily-livered deep down.  We wind up on a stage headed west, and arrive in Lazarus, the town in the main book.  I get in with the local clergy and set up a mission amongst the lawless miners and prospectors, to whom I feel its my mission to bring the word of God as lived, and be an example and a role model for them.  Being once like them, I can relate better than the 50 year old soft and cushy pastor down in the church.  

The other guy gets a job at the local claims office, since he can read and write a bit, and we don't really have any ideas where we are going to be taking this game.  We're pretty penniless and just trying to survive.  Still, we took the gunplay mechanics out for a non-game related test drive, and I really like em.  They're random and capricious, sure, but I like the "shot clock", and working a deck of cards into the system.  Its fun, and quirky.  Of course, like any immature guy, the first shot I try using the shot template is a groin shot.    I hit him in the chest, but as its closer to the heart, it looked like I was a better shot than I was.

We also played a round of Poker using the Gambling mechanics, and these felt a bit more forced, and not really well thought out - just kinda tacked on to have a "gambling mechanic".  It was the first time any of us played, so maybe we didn't get it right.  Hopefully we'll play a few more times, as this was a "filler" game between two other big long-standing games, in a week when noone else was available.  I'll be pushing for it more often, however.

Chargen was longish, like Hackmaster, and rather involved, like Hackmaster.  Still, it wasn't bad, though I wish they had gone with a whole new stat generation system than just 3d6 for Str, Dex, Wis, etc etc.

Its a fun system I'd like to take out for a more rigorous test drive.  Any one else play it?  Thoughts?  Comments?  Criticisms?

The only part I've run through is the character generation system.  I really enjoyed the mix of random, point buy, and life path type mechanics.  It's long but very entertaining.  I found it was easy to lose track of the points from time to time but that's my own accounting problem.  I lent it to one of the other players the last couple of months to gain some interest and that's as far as I've got.  I'd love to play it but would need some ample time with it in order to run it outside the basic rules presented in the beginning.

Quote from: Hackmastergeneral...I made up a Clint Eastwood in Pale Rider style character - a wandering preacher who is a reformed gunslinger and gambler.  Well, he still gambles a bit here and there, but he swore off the booze cause it makes him "mad dog mean", and tries to live a better life.

Sounds like Eastwood's character in Pale Rider crossed with his character in Unforgiven, which sounds pretty cool.

I saw Aces & Eights in my local shop a while back. Beautiful book, and I've  loved Western RPGs since Boot Hill. But I've heard it's complicated as fuck, which is a big no-go for me. The boys and I don't have a lot of time for rules-lawyering and suchlike.

How complex is the game, really? Compared to, like, D&D 3 or something.

Quote from: laffingboySounds like Eastwood's character in Pale Rider crossed with his character in Unforgiven, which sounds pretty cool.

I saw Aces & Eights in my local shop a while back. Beautiful book, and I've  loved Western RPGs since Boot Hill. But I've heard it's complicated as fuck, which is a big no-go for me. The boys and I don't have a lot of time for rules-lawyering and suchlike.

How complex is the game, really? Compared to, like, D&D 3 or something.

Chargen is almost exactly like Hackmaster, with western motifs instead of AD&D parody.

The system SEEMS stripped down in many ways outside of Hackmaster.

But like Hackmaster they have a system for EVERYTHING.  Cattle droving, gambling, etc.

Now, these things, like Hackmaster, are easy to ignore if you don't want to.

Again, we didn't get into a gunfight, so I can't speak to the combat mechanics.

Shooting a gun is a simple matter of putting a transparent template over a siloutette of a cowboy, centered on where you are trying to hit.  You roll your die, add your modifiers, and the result tells you the concentric circle you are in.  You then flip a card, and the suit and number tells you exactly where you hit.  It sounds more complex than it is, and its a neat way of doing it.  Theres bleeding and interior damage, and hit location specifics.

Its basically Hackmaster with a western motif.  The system seems pretty cleaned up.  I'll post a better review if we get around to another game, with more meaty mechanics used.

Quote from: laffingboySounds like Eastwood's character in Pale Rider crossed with his character in Unforgiven, which sounds pretty cool.

I saw Aces & Eights in my local shop a while back. Beautiful book, and I've  loved Western RPGs since Boot Hill. But I've heard it's complicated as fuck, which is a big no-go for me. The boys and I don't have a lot of time for rules-lawyering and suchlike.

How complex is the game, really? Compared to, like, D&D 3 or something.

The essentials of the system are actually reasonably simple - and they arrange the book such that the most basic rules are at the front, more advanced things in the middle, and rules for campaigning are at the back (like in Boot Hill), so picking and choosing which rules you want to use is easy.

Where most of the complexity comes in is the wide range of subsystems they provide, and the glory of that is that you only have to use those subsystems which directly come up in play. If your PCs never go cattle driving (or cattle rustlin') you'll never have to use the cattle drive rules, for example.

Quote from: WarthurThe essentials of the system are actually reasonably simple - and they arrange the book such that the most basic rules are at the front, more advanced things in the middle, and rules for campaigning are at the back (like in Boot Hill), so picking and choosing which rules you want to use is easy.

Where most of the complexity comes in is the wide range of subsystems they provide, and the glory of that is that you only have to use those subsystems which directly come up in play. If your PCs never go cattle driving (or cattle rustlin') you'll never have to use the cattle drive rules, for example.

And even if they want to go cattle rustlin, theres nothing in the rules that prevents you from using your own cattle rustlin rules, or just doing it some other way.

Its a big toolbox.  You can add, or subtract, as much or as little as you want and not break the system.  Talents and flaws/quirks frex.  You can totally get rid of them and not kill the game too much, though you want to reduce starting BPs.  Or just change it to a non-random system and ignore the "half BPs for cherry-picking".

I'm a big fan of Aces & Eights.  I'm slowly and inexorably moving closer to actually running a campaign.  I'd say chargen is a bit tricky at the numbers level, but there is a handy excel spreadsheet out there that does all the calculations for you.  That makes it right easy since it then becomes about rolls for background and choices for careers.

The core combat rules don't seem that complicated.  They are definitely crunchy, but rational and seem kind of fun.  I suspect that after a few combats, they will go quite quickly and be realistic and entertaining.  

I agree with what everyone else said about the sub-systems.  I have never played Hackmaster, but I'm not so sure about the idea that it is basically Hackmaster.  It certainly borrows stuff, but the career rules seem totally new.  They are what sold me on the game.  I get the feeling that the system and mechanics of this game was built around the genre, as opposed to the other way around and I like that.

No, trust me, a lot of the chargen mechanics (you are right about the career mechanics, though there was a nod towards "class-specific XP" that was, in some ways, similar) are almost straight out of the HM books.  They are, a lot of the times, trimmed/edited to fit the genre a bit better, but the Life Path is almost identical, the attribute charts are pretty close, and the skills/talents/quirks and flaws are, while individually different and tailored to a western motif, work pretty much the same way.

The shooting mechanic obviously is unique, and a strong selling point for the game.  The timing mechanic is unique, but we never had combat, so I wouldn't know how it works.

Its an awesome game, and I want to play it more.

It's been a while since I've played A&8 at a mini-con but the full blown combat was horrendous.  It was slow: lots of chart lookups, too much adding for fiddly actions and a lame "now serving second #82.  No actions?  Now serving second #83." thing going on.  The actual template overlay method of determining your shot was pretty cool, but when added to the other stuff it just made the full combat a mess.

IIRC there's a basic combat method which puts much of the combat in the abstract.  If I ever play A&8 for my group, I'm sticking with that.

Yeah, I agree that the full Advanced Rules are really tough to run well at conventions, unless you've already got a good GM and several players that already know how to play.  (Though I guess that could be said for a lot of games.)  

When I run quick demo games at the Kenzer and Company booth for Origins and GenCon, I usually stick with basic shootouts in the street.  Then if the player wants to explore the Advanced Rules, explain and add them as they come up.  The downloadable 'cheat sheets' on our Aces & Eights downloads page can be a big help for reference.

I took one look at the previews for it, saw that it reminded me of the kind of system FGU or Tri-Tac would have loved, and decided it wasn't for me.  I'm just not interested in a Millennium's End / Star Fleet Battles level of complexity in my RPGs.

It's complex only if you want it to be.  The game was designed with modular Basic and Advanced rules, so you can start with the most basic rules and then add on more rules bit by bit.