Boot Hill RPG

I've long loved the Old West (though oddly didn't normally like westerns) and the existence of a Old West role playing game always appealed to me.

Boot Hill from TSR was such a game.

The first time I tried to play it, though, was just using the conversions listed in the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide.

I was such an ignorant waif.

".38-40" meant a gun that could use rounds that were .38 to .40 in caliber.  Same same .44-40...  It didn't make sense, but I didn't know enough to know why my spidey sense was telling me I'd gotten that wrong.

I got that from looking at the pictures in the Time Life Old West series of books.

I did NOT get that from the DMG or the Boot Hill rules.

Boot Hill 2e doesn't list a make or model, or even caliber.  Single Action Revolver, 6-shot is an example.

It was a very simple game.

Too simple for our wants at the time.

By the time I returned to wanting to run an Old West game, I had GURPS: Old West.

I had no player interest.

So I made it weird.  I simply added magery.

In a lot of ways, the typical Western runs the same beats as the typical Fantasy RPG adventure, so I figured it'd be a good combination.  Deadlands: Weird West is an entire game with this idea in mind, it even got a GURPS 3e version.

I don't think I failed, but the players were not familiar with the technology and some of them seemed to think that a Peacemaker was either a sniper rifle or belt-fed gun.

This is despite being familiar with GURPS and what the stats meant.

I got a near party kill in an early version with a single Indian with a bow and arrow when I'd restricted the technology to 1866.  They ran their cap and ball revolvers dry and the realistic reload times really came into play.

"That's why they carried more than one pistol back then!" they all said.

It didn't get a lot better when we moved to 1877 and they got to use cartridges.

This time it was my fault and I sent a monster at them that was way tougher than I thought it was.  Total party kill.

Their next attempt went better for everyone but Anglave.  He, being unfamiliar with the historical background, had made a tenderfoot from Back East™.  He hired the rest of the party as guides to steer him through the exciting world of the frontier.

Being proper murder-hobo desperadoes, they murdered his character and looted the body.  They made this decision after spending a good portion of character creation talking about making law abiding characters this time around too!

Liars!

Still, it's a fertile playground for RPGs.

Sabers and Sorcery is a GURPS Old West world with magic, in fact.