Quote from: Mr. Kent;787687Wow--that's a great idea! And very in-genre, too, since you always have folks in Westerns showing up to avenge their family.

Maybe there could be a "Next of Kin" table to determine what alterations to the character you'd make, and what kind of relative they'd be (Random roll encouraged of course, but you could always choose)
1. Older (+Cool or whatever you call your mental attribute)
2. Younger (+Guts or whatever you call your physical attribute)
3. Distant (maybe bonus amount of wealth or a non-standard weapon)
4. Presumed Dead (hmm not sure, perhaps a social ramification?)
5. Twin (stats are the same, but you can choose to trade a point in any stat)
6. Blood Brother (adopted into family, so stats start the same but maybe a stat adjustment, like with Twin)

So frex, Calamity Annie is cruelly gunned down by the outlaw Black Strider. Annie's player rolls a 3 on the NoK table, and later that week (or next session) her Distant Cousin Wild Jane rides into town. Wild Jane lives off in a different territory with different customs, so while Annie carried a rifle, her cousin Wild Jane wields a mean bullwhip! Now she's hellbent on revenge...

It would also be cool if there was a small chance that this applies to enemies as well. Not sure how to apply it though. Like if Wild Jane sends Black Strider's coach into the canyon and kills the outlaw, there's a chance of Strider' big brother or presumed dead son to show up down the line, with Strider's stats and the adjustments assigned by the table.

I like this!

Such a chart might also include "Famous" as a category, creating situations where a character is killed and their much more famous/infamous cousin/sibling/whatever shows up.

I rather liked TSR's Boot Hill, though it was more a scirmish game than an RPG. Fairly lethal  with some good underlying mechanics for morale and a fairly lethal system to boot.

Currently I am playtesting a new expansion/side game for Blackwater Gulch.

Also the "Legends of" series based of The Fantasy Trip has a western version. Legends of the Untamed West. Though only one solo module for it so far. Core rules are free though so can check it out without having to drop cash just to find out.

Include a section on the actual history of the Old West and one on the genre history of Westerns. The actual historical Cowboy period lasted less than a generation, but it is considered a cornerstone of the Mythology of the United States and has a lot packed in there, so it should be unpacked and described a bit in order to provide some great inspirational material for gaming.

Jason, I like that Famous option! When Wild Jane bites it whilst trying to foil Buck Strider's train robbery, her uncle Thaddeus Hawley, war hero, decides to avenge her with blood...

***

I'd definitely include some sort of Random Settlement table in the game, with things like

Features (fort, mission, mine, rail stop)
Complications (Gold rush! Plague! Terrorized by banditos!)
Name (roll 1d10 on each list and match!)
1. Coyote/ 2. Bronco/ 3. Sunset/ 4. Buffalo/ 5. Rattler/ 6. Silver/ 7. Diamond/ 8. Moon/ 9. Blessed/ 10. Storm

1. Mesa/ 2. Gulch/ 3. Canyon/ 4. Butte/ 5. Valley/ 6. Town/ 7. Bluffs/ 8. Hill/ 9. City/ 10. Point

(Welcome to Sunset Valley, Diamondtown, and Rattler Canyon!)

If you have a name generator in the back with Spanish names, you could give the option of rolling on it and prefixing San or Santa to it for the name.

Quote from: LibraryLass;787593I agree that Poker is a necessary component. It makes playing via chat a hassle but it's so atmospheric as to be worth it.

There was actually one system I read recently, Gunslingers and Gamblers, that used poker dice and based your success off of the hand you rolled (letting you make rerolls equal to what would be your bonus in other systems.) Something similar with actual cards seems like it would be very satisfying.

Gunslingers & Gamblers is IMHO a somewhat underappreciated game in the concise-but-fairly-complete western RPG niche. There's also a version that uses the Streamline system, a non-BRP d100-based rule set. The latter's the one I picked up because I am ignorant about poker but I can see why the poker-savvy would prefer the poker dice version.

The best thing I remember about Boot Hill was the list of famous (and not so famous) real life gunslingers and stats for them.  I realize that's inherently subjective, but it was really fun comparing different people and their relative strengths and weaknesses and run gunfights with them.  I don't think I've come across any other Old West games with that feature.

Quote from: LibraryLass;787593I agree that Poker is a necessary component. It makes playing via chat a hassle but it's so atmospheric as to be worth it.

I should note that while, by around the time of the Civil war, the game of poker (five card draw/stud, NOT the fucking monstrosity they call 'texas hold'em') was fairly widespread throughout the U.S., it was always more of a Southern game.

The most popular card game of the "wild west", by a long shot, was not Poker. It was Faro.

Quote from: Flashman;788066The best thing I remember about Boot Hill was the list of famous (and not so famous) real life gunslingers and stats for them.  I realize that's inherently subjective, but it was really fun comparing different people and their relative strengths and weaknesses and run gunfights with them.  I don't think I've come across any other Old West games with that feature.

The Top Trumps Western Gunfighters deck ?
those two sources taught be about John Wesley Hardin well the fiction behind JWH at least.

Quote from: Jason D;787613A proper Old West RPG should have a fairly high mortality rate, coupled with a "Next of Kin" system where a dead character could be copied and immediately re-used as a new character, with slight tweaks, as a brother (or sister).

So that way, if Leland Hawkins gets killed in a gunfight, the next session the rest of the group can meet his younger brother Winston Hawkins, who bears Leland a more-than-passing resemblance and arrives with a grudge against his brother's killer(s).

There's nothing stopping players and GMs from introducing family members in this regard, but the nice thing about this proposal is that it would systematize it, letting characters carry over some experience, and make it less odd that exactly the same character with a different name shows up.

This is essential. The reason 1E/2E Boot Hill is a terrific wild west game (I would say the best, if you judge by what it feels like to play or run a session) is that gun fights are seriously deadly. I'm not sure I've ever seen a player character survive more than a couple of rowdy adventures. Remove that, and it starts to feel like story gaming in the wild west, which doesn't interest me.

If the system in old BH seems to antiquated, I suggest BH3 or get a copy of Behind Enemy Lines (basically Traveller rules in WW2) and dial back the tech by 70 years (replace hand grenades with dynamite, HMG's with gattling guns, etc.).

Quote from: Larsdangly;788513This is essential. The reason 1E/2E Boot Hill is a terrific wild west game (I would say the best, if you judge by what it feels like to play or run a session) is that gun fights are seriously deadly. I'm not sure I've ever seen a player character survive more than a couple of rowdy adventures. Remove that, and it starts to feel like story gaming in the wild west, which doesn't interest me.

If the system in old BH seems to antiquated, I suggest BH3 or get a copy of Behind Enemy Lines (basically Traveller rules in WW2) and dial back the tech by 70 years (replace hand grenades with dynamite, HMG's with gattling guns, etc.).

I'm not even sure that the BH system is that antiquated. Around six years ago I ran a few sessions of BH 3rd edition for my group, and we had a great time. No one complained that the mechanics were broken or restrictive.

Quote from: RPGPundit;788472I should note that while, by around the time of the Civil war, the game of poker (five card draw/stud, NOT the fucking monstrosity they call 'texas hold'em') was fairly widespread throughout the U.S., it was always more of a Southern game.

The most popular card game of the "wild west", by a long shot, was not Poker. It was Faro.

Yes, but

• Few people know how to play Faro anymore. Poker is still widely played enough that any grown adult at least knows how it's done.
• Genre emulation often has nothing to do with realism.
• It's always poker in the movies (except Tombstone).
• The death of Wild Bill Hickok, 'nuff said.

Another nice resource was the old Avalon Hill wargame Gunslinger. I never liked the game much, but the mapboard was pretty cool because it had a nice map of a town with wooden "sidewalks" and so on.

And a nice wilderness map is the Outdoor Survival map that many old schoolers already own for their OD&D games.

Just a thought.

Quote from: Flashman;788066The best thing I remember about Boot Hill was the list of famous (and not so famous) real life gunslingers and stats for them.  I realize that's inherently subjective, but it was really fun comparing different people and their relative strengths and weaknesses and run gunfights with them.  I don't think I've come across any other Old West games with that feature.

In my Coyote Trail campaign several years back, in order to accurately reflect history, I simply ruled that Wyatt Earp could never be hit by a bullet in combat, and Doc Holliday never missed.

Quote from: finarvyn;788864Another nice resource was the old Avalon Hill wargame Gunslinger. I never liked the game much, but the mapboard was pretty cool because it had a nice map of a town with wooden "sidewalks" and so on.

And it is still against the law here in Amarillo to spit on wooden sidewalks....

Quote from: RPGPundit;789157In my Coyote Trail campaign several years back, in order to accurately reflect history, I simply ruled that Wyatt Earp could never be hit by a bullet in combat, and Doc Holliday never missed.

Let's call this "Boot Hill Diceless RPG."