November 22

Gaming the Wild West

In all my years of gaming the one genre that I have played the least is the Wild West. Sure we’ve done games that are like the Wild West in space but never really the western proper.  Well apart from the odd session of Boot Hill and those were very odd indeed, somewhat cinematic scenes punctuated with extreme violence; something like a Wild West version of Bottom.

A little while ago I asked the players what they would like to play and after much debating we sort of settled on doing a game in the west.

I recently asked on rpg.net to recommend me a western RPG and I received a number of suggestions for suitable replacements; from the simple to the more complicated games.  I pared the list down removing those games I didn’t care for; like Western Hero and Gurps.  I have nothing against either game and I found Gurps to be an excellent source volume but the system never excited me the way that some games do.

Of the suggestions two stood out; Aces & Eights and Deadlands.

I had prior knowledge of Deadlands and had loved the system but it wasn’t a popular choice with the gaming group so I decided to investigate Aces & Eights. My trouble started when I tried to find out which book I needed to get hold of and the main book appears to be out of print; which is a real shame.  I know its available as a pdf or three but one of the players wanted the physical dead tree edition in his hands to pore through.

So I’m going to pitch Aces & Eights and see what happens.


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Posted November 22, 2014 by GeneralTangent in category "RPG", "western

About the Author

I've been gaming on and off since about 1989 and during that period have played with numerous game systems. I'm fluent in a few, have a basic understanding of quite a few more and can get by in others. Somewhere along the way I found time to be a playtester, contribute to an unpublished game supplement and be associated with another gaming magazine written by far more talented people than I. This lead to one infamous article being written in which I followed the letter of the adventure and torched the parties river barge. I'm also listed on http://rpggeek.com as a game designer.

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