SHADOW OF THE COWBOY
Why are there no good Western games? I’d seen that question posed on RPGGeek & Reddit, even "Ken & Robin
Talk About Stuff" covered it. Eventually that had me hunting down Wild West rpgs to check the truth. I uncovered almost five dozen core systems, not counting revisions
and new editions. Proof that the Western’s a vibrant genre? But
a closer look contradicted that. The list contained many, many single-edition, flash-in-the-pan games. In the same period other genres had more releases by leaps and bounds. Just up to
2000 we see about 14 Western RPGs, but Post-Apocalyptic had about 100, Supers 60,
and Horror 45. It even falls behind Steampunk, a late-comer genre, with two dozen
games or genre books in that time.
But the Wild West remains a touchstone the industry returns to time
and again. It has roots in miniatures and wargaming just as deeply as D&D. That echoes through many designs. Even later games often offer deeply tactical
play to simulate gunfights. I remember it as a go-to genre for introductory mini
games at local cons in the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s. The Western calls companies out,
but only a few exceptional ones remains standing even a few years after they step into the street.
I come to this list not as a huge fan of Westerns. That always
surprises me. I grew up watching older, Wild West TV shows: Have Gun Will Travel,
Maverick, The Rifleman, The Cisco Kid, The Lone Ranger, and best of all Wild Wild
West. But I didn’t really care for Western films, except for maybe later Eastwood
movies like Pale Rider and Unforgiven. I hadn’t actually seen The Good, the Bad,
and the Ugly all the way through until last week when I caught a special theatrical
showing. But I bought each edition of Boot Hill, I ran Owl Hoot Trail, and I keep
trying to figure out how I’d get Deadlands to the table. So maybe it's more appealing to me than I think?
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HIGH NOON-ISH
I’ve tried a slightly different approach here.
Rather than an exhaustive series going up to the present, I examine the
earliest games, the first fifteen. I want to gauge reader interest for taking on niche
genres (Pulp, Mecha, Western) or genres almost too large to cover (Sci-Fi,
Modern, Fantasy). If there’s enthusiasm (from readers or myself) I may return
to do further installments of this genre. I focus on printed products in the list,
skipping pdf-only releases. I consider it a Wild West game if it calls itself
that or walks like a duck. I focus on core books & systems (which is why something like the awesome Six Guns & Sorcery doesn’t appear). Besides LeGrog,
Wikipedia, and RPGGeek, Eric Hotz’s Whitewash City helped in tracking things down. Additional Note: Some of these games have real problems with representation, especially of Native Americans. I'm leaving those issues aside for the most part. It's worth considering elsewhere.
The original edition of Boot Hill offered man-to-man gunfights
with miniatures. It came in a smallish booklet, the same size as early D&D
products. TSR re-released relatively unchanged it in 1977. Finally in 1979 it popped
up on RPG gamers’ radar. D&D had done well and TSR recognized it could create
similar games for other genres. So Boot Hill became a more conventional RPG
with a box set release. The new edition offered a super-thin set of rules (only
36 pages), a campaign map for Wild West hex-crawls, a city map on the reverse
side, dice, and counters. But TSR opted to avoid a standardized system for their
early games. D&D, Boot Hill, Gamma World, and Top Secret didn't work together,
though conversions were published, including notes in the DMG.
Boot Hill managed to
hold on for a few years. I remember picking it up and trying to play. Grade school
me laughed at the town named Buffalo Chips Junction. But we ultimately
discarded Boot Hill in favor of more exciting fare. TSR supported the line with
a GM screen and five modules over the next few years. After being buried for a time,
the company dug it up in 1990, releasing Boot
Hill 3rd edition. This quadrupled the size of the rules, released as a single
soft-cover. It massively retooled the system and added much more on the
role-playing side, including rules for Stature as fame. TSR made a valiant
attempt to bring Boot Hill up to then-current rpg standards. Ultimately this crashed
and burned, with no other supplements released for the edition.
2. Wild
West (1981)
Fantasy Games Unlimited never met a genre they didn't
like. Wild West offered their box-set take on the Western, with a rulebook, map,
and reference cards. It focuses on skills, a common FGU games trait. The blurb mentions
players can choose from "Gambler, Lawman, Cow Hand, Outlaw, or Snake Oil Salesman."
I'm not sure if those are just examples, or if the game has something like classes.
Wild West claims in-depth research and
accurate detail (done in only 40 pages). FGU supported the game with a single module,
Trouble on Widow's Peak.
3. Desperados (1988)
(1988) Note the gap in publication years. Did I see Desperados on the shelf on my local game
store? I don't remember. Companies large and small pumped out many of these small,
single volume rpgs. They sat on the shelf until someone took pity or they landed
in the bargain bin. I remember visiting pop-up game stores which had clearly bought
a "starter store" package from the distributor. Invariably it included
a handful of these ultimately forgotten rpgs. Desperados seems Skycastle
Games only product product. It followed a standard approach with attributes, percentile-based
skills, and hit locations. It has largely vanished down the memory hole.
A Swedish game with at least two editions and several
modules. Publisher Lancelot shuttered a couple of years after this release. It’s
hard to find solid Info on the game, save for this: Western was complex. By that I mean deep and complicated with second-by-second
resolution. As will be used several times, it employed a plastic overlay to determine
hit location. The cover bears a striking resemblance to the poster for a film called Kid Vengeance. In a G+ post Olav Nygård explains, "Western is probably most famous for being really simulationist while
at the same time using a crosshair that makes you more likely to hit if you aim
away from your opponent. "The Swedish Roleplaying Games history site reveals
that Lancelot also licensed Western to
a Spanish publisher. A third edition came out in 1998, with some support. And even a fourth.
5. Time Drifters (1990)
An early oddball
time travelling game. I'm sure most chrono games have a Wild West component or module.
It's easy and evocative. (See the Jonah Hex episode of Legends of Tomorrow or Dr.
Who’s “A Town Called Mercy”). But Time
Drifters puts it on the front page and offers it as the only period or setting
in the book. I include it here in the spirit of completeness and since many of these
items are more “genre sourcebook” than full stand-alone games.
I've played a lot of Rolemaster. Westerns aren't what I think of when I reflect on that system.
On the other hand there's an appeal to the lunacy of RM critical hit charts. They
could easily represent the random nastiness of six-shooter wounds. But I have a
hard time imagining actually playing this. Iron Crown released several products
bring Rolemaster/Spacemaster to other genres. Mind you, there was no "universal"
version or the system or even base, separate engine. So if you wanted to play Outlaw, you’d potentially have a ton of flipping
back and forth.
Surprisingly the mechanics only take up the first 50+ pages
of the book. We get Brave. Cowboy, Gunsligner, Private Eye, and Solder as professions,
each with different skill costs. There's a stripped down list of those...followed
by a page of 52 “secondary skills.” Outlaw has some interesting ideas for RM old
hands, like handling explosives and gun malfunctions. However, the majority of the
volume (120+ pages) presents a generic Western Sourcebook. That covers tropes, campaigns,
money, a timeline, sample characters, and more. It's a decent resource and feels
they wrote that and then hitched up Rolemaster
to it.
7. Western Hero (1991)
Then we come to the Hero System version of the Wild West.
You might recognize it as it's the campaign, sourcebook, and setting materials from
Outlaw married to a new system. I'm unsure
which game version came first. Perhaps they released simultaneously. Both mention
of the back cover that you shouldn't buy this if you own the other I'm glad to see
the disclaimer. Even after looking through both, I can't decide which of the two
would fit the Western best. On the one hand, Hero has tactical maps and second-by-second
play. It could make for a solid shoot-out board game (like Gunslinger). On
the other hand, RM has colorful damage and combat, a far cry from Hero's clinical
approach.
Was there something in the zeitgeist that made the Western a
go-to genre in 1991? We saw a new edition of Boot Hill the previous year, and then three sourcebooks for generic
systems. Old West follows the pattern
of the early GURPS genre sourcebooks: material for character creation, new skills,
ideas for handling special circumstances, background material, NPCs, and alternate
takes on the genre. It's a decent resource for Westerns, though it offers more mechanics
and stats than general material. In our area several gamers used it to run "shoot
out" miniature games. The simulationist approach made that easy and objective.
Almost a decade later, Steve Jackson Games revised several of their keystone genre
books, including this Old West. That brought it more in line with a new approach
to character templates and deepened the historical material. It also made it
more useful for the GURPS Deadlands
material.
9. Far West (1993)
The Spanish rpg Far
West doesn't have the Spaghetti Western look I'd expect from. Instead the cover
has a more classic Hollywood look with "Redskins" and steely-eyed frontiersmen.
It uses a stripped down version of Chaosium's Basic Role Play (BRP) with some
tweaks. Far West has an interesting mechanic
where you can choose to act faster (like when drawing a gun) but that speed reduces
your chance of success. Though I'm unsure of how well they're treated, it apparently
had a significant section on "Amerindian" cultures and options for shamanic
magic. Far West went through two printings
with different covers, and received several supplements: two modules (Union Gold and Spanish Ballad) and two sourcebooks (Hogan's Last Stop and Apache).
Surprisingly, a new edition seems to be in the works Far West La Leyenda.
Or it may already be out, the website's immune to Google Translate. That
version has a new logo eerily reminiscent of Deadlands. Still the
website has nice art with a striking look.
I love discovering these games I’d never heard of, let
alone seen. Burros & Bandidos focuses
on the Mexican border during several historical periods, including the early 20th Century. That’s awesome; most Wild West games aim at the heyday of gunfighters and
railroads. But the Cowboy’s wane offers different but equally interesting elements.
Consider how both Once Upon a Time in the
West and The Wild Bunch present that
decline. The latter especially embraces a fatalism, with an ending that feels like
Wild West cyberpunk session gone wrong. Burros
& Bandidos had two printings- one bagged and the other in folio. Both contained
several booklets, plus charts, counters, maps and more. Sierra Madre Games simultaneously
released a single supplement, Frontier.
It’s unclear, but B&B may have been intended to work with the company’s boardgame,
Lords of the Sierra Madre.
Incidentally, finding info this was complicated by the existence of a popular
restaurant named “Burros and Burritos.”
Deadlands saved
the Wild West. It almost came out of nowhere. Almost, as Joe Landsdale’s
clearly it’s spiritual godfather with his Jonah Hex mini-series "Two Gun Mojo" & "Riders of the Worm" as well as his Razored Saddles collection. But it smartly took a decay genre and made it exciting
and fun for the table- blending the Western, Steampunk, and Horror.
Deadlands is among the first really successful genre mash
ups. Deadlands wears its gaming DNA on its sleeve. It is unabashedly a Western
and a Horror game. It engages and entangles those elements at every conceivable
opportunity. The genre conventions lend themselves to small groups of adventurers
at the margins of society fighting back on their own terms against convention and
evil.
Deadlands is among the best and most successful examples
of "cartoony horror." It keeps the crazy, 'laughing as they bury you'
energy up. GMs (or Marshals* as they're called here) can run the game tongue-in-cheek
or more seriously. Read closely and you'll see Deadlands manages some truly
awful horror, and over the course of the line they roped in many awesome writers.
They crafted some bits worthy of Lovecraft and Le Fanu. But most groups I knew ran
campaigns on the other end of the spectrum- puttin' bullets in the brainpans of
zombies.
Yet it doesn’t ignore the Western. It takes all of those
tropes and plays with them: early industrial developments, the gambler as mage,
sinister Pinkertons, Native American mythology, and people driven crazy by the
frontier. It’s a post-modern Western, but not in the vein of Unforgiven. Everything’s reconfigured, but
the message isn’t about personal failures and moral codes, but humanity’s
foolishness and the legacy of colonialism as Elder Gods. The Western tropes
aren’t critiqued so much as they’re flung against the wall to see what sticks.
As importantly, Deadlands grabbed the reins of gaming and took
off in another direction. It moved away from the twilight years of D&D and the
dark and sometimes self-important atmosphere of White Wolf. Few other games brought
so many cool gonzo ideas to the table and presented them in a super-accessible way.
It was hugely popular among YA players looking for a way to break into rpgs. Deadlands
showcases itself as dumb fun. But underneath it has some super-sharp ideas about
system and setting from some of the best designers of the time.
12. Basic
West (1997)
In the late 1990's Italian publisher Stratelibri published
a series of Basic Roleplay supplements. These filled the gap as Chaosium slowed
down releases of non-CoC items like Elric!
supplements. The line included a new BRP core book, a Jurassic Park pastiche
setting, Pharaoh's Egypt, and a licensed adaptation of the Alien universe
(!). The imaginatively named West offered
a slim (48 page) set of Western rules. It aims for a conventional approach with
three scenarios and no rules for Native Americans. There's setting material, special
rules, and additional skills for the BRP system. And of course as is appropriate
in these games, detailed new rules for guns and gunfighting.
13. Werewolf: The Wild West (1997)
Oddball coincidence or enemy planning? This came out
the year after Deadlands. I have to wonder what the lead time was? Did WW
see the success of DL and make this the next "historical" game they put
forward. Or was WtWW already in development and playtesting, making the company
sigh that they hadn't beaten Pinnacle to the punch. This game garnered a couple
of supplements, but eventually died out. They did produce a number of cross-over
adventures for the two games. I wonder if that was the first instance of that?
A "Choose Your Own Adventure" in the vein of
Steve Jackson's Warlock of Firetop Mountain
or the TSR Magic-vision modules. This is a solid book, 135 pages standard size.
According to the publisher, the game contains "…four-hundred episodes, forty
endings, and at least eighteen ways to bite the dust!" “Knucklerduster
Interactive Adventures” uses stat+skill for resolution with d6's. The Devil's Addition takes place in Abilene
with you on the trail of a dangerous outlaw. A second book, Raining Hammers: The Ballad of Johnny MacDonald dropped the following year. That
has you clearing your name by bringing the real killers to justice. It’s set in
the mining camps of New Mexico in 1883. Knuckleduster games shifted away from these
solo rpgs to more generic Western materials a few years later. Knuckleduster Firearms Shop is a generic period weapons book, with an additional essay
on the psychology of gunfighting. That's probably useful if you're into gun-love
supplements. On the other hand, Knuckleduster Cowtown Creator feels like a stronger book. It’s a universal sourcebook
for building Western towns and communities, clocking in at almost 300 pages. It
sounds like an awesome GM resource. Cowtown Creator’s still available from the company, now called Knuckleduster Miniatures. They're clearly shifted over to the wargaming side. As we've seen
before, there's a good deal of overlap between Western rpgs and miniature gaming.
15. The Legacy of Zorro (2001)
A small, 32-page complete rpg from Gold Rush Games. This landed
during the company's efforts to release many different games using the Fuzion system.
Interestingly GRG also had the generic Action!
System going at the same time. The
Legacy of Zorro came out a few years after The Mask of Zorro movie and around the time the syndicated show Queen
of Swords arrived. The latter riffed on the themes, but with a female Zorro. It's
neat to see some less traditional stories explored in Wild West rpgs. Zorro's still
a Western, but embraces a costumed crime-fighter aesthetic. I remember watching
Disney's version with Guy Williams, the dad from Lost in Space (a distinctly
non-Hispanic actor). In any case, The
Legacy of Zorro clearly aimed to be an introduction to role-playing, with perhaps
other purposes. The back cover blurb mentions that it "Promotes story-telling
& cooperation!," "Can be used to teach history!," and "Includes
color cut-out figures!"
Dust Devils (2002)
Cold Steel Reign (2003)
Fistful o' Zombies (2003)
Link: West (2003) *d20
Aces & Eights: Showdown
(2004)
Dogs in the Vineyard (2004)
OGL Wild West (2004) *d20
Spellslinger
(2004) *d20
1887 -Sob o sol do Novo Mexico (2004) *Portuguese
I have a Patreon for these lists. If you like them, consider contributing or resharing to spread the word.
History of Steampunk & Victoriana RPGs
I have a Patreon for these lists. If you like them, consider contributing or resharing to spread the word.
History of Steampunk & Victoriana RPGs
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