For Various Values of “Weird” and “Western”

After being told by a ton of people that I have tosee it, I finally got around to watching The Good, The Bad, The Weird. All I have to say is, if you’re looking fror a great South Korean 1930s Hero Pulp Spaghetti Western, or you just want to have a lot of fun watching a movie, this is the stuff.

This put me on a roll to look at more weird west stuff, and what do you know, there’s Stuart Roberson’s Weird West RPG sitting on top of my stack of games to review. It’s all of 8 pages long, and I balk at remarking on stuff that short because I can easily become gratuitously verbose and rack up a word count that exceeds the game itself. Plus, it’s a whole buck at the moment for the PDF, so you can read it yourself and only be out a buck and a few minutes of your time if you really hate it. I’m thinking, though, that if you like the concept of “weird” and “west” together, you won’t hate it.

You get four attributes: Fight, Grit, Magic, and Skill. You assign points to those. You pick a path: Adventurer, Gifted, Fighter, Magician. Those give you bonuses to do stuff appropriate to the path. Those bonuses go up as you level up. When do you level up? Basically, when the gamemaster feels like leveling you up. Path also determines what die you roll for Stamina Points. You know, hit points.

You get an ability for each point of magic. These can be spells, or they can be stuff like Fastest Gun in the West or Shaolin Monk. Yeah. How about both of those, plus Electromancy. Now you’re talking.

Roll a d20, add modifiers, hit a target number. Remember to add modifiers based on the target’s armor: you know, leather, furs, chain mail. (Hey! Don’t laugh! Am I the only one who remembers that scene with Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars where he had a stove plate under his poncho?) Roll damage based on your weapon.

It’s simple. It makes me flash back to the old Boot Hill RPG, it’s so simple. This is just the core rules, and we’re promised more. I want more. Especially if it comes with Mike Mignola-inspired art.

While I’m on a roll, let’s look at the Wild West Cinema RPG. This one’s more substantial, at 107 pages, and is pretty much straight “western” with no inherent “weird”. That’s okay, because if it’s based on the West of the movies rather than history, there’s wiggle room to insert your own weird.

The system is simple and seems strangely familiar. All character abilities are rated on a scale from 1 to 10. Target numbers are rated from 1 to 10. You roll “luck dice”, a d6 that gives you a bonus, and a d6 that gives you a penalty. Combine those with your ability rating and beat the target number. For example, if your skill is 5, you roll +3 and -2, the total is 6.

You pick archetypes, motivations, moral attitudes, and personality traits. Those help you earn Story Points for playing in character, and those Story Point can be used to modify your luck rolls. There are also standard Experience Points, to help improve the character, which you game for completing adventures. I like the use of that combination. Players who just want to shoot people can do that, but character who want to get into their character get a bit of an edge. Well done.

Oh, the archetypes: Drifter, Gunslinger, Indian Outcast, The Kid (illustrated with a little pigtailed girl holding a Really Big Pistol), The Maverick (gambler), The Outlaw, the Preacher Man, and the Tenderfoot (fresh off the stagecoast from back East).

I could go on, but it’s pretty standard stuff, nothing particularly fascinating or innovative. I’m not knocking it, it’s a good, solid system and I’d run it if I got called up to run a Western, and play it. Everything you need is here, GM advice on putting together an adventure, a lot of NPCs and critters, a sample adventure. If you want a really good, go-to Western game, here it is. If you’re looking for something innovative and ground breaking, this is a really good, go-to system to run a Western.

Now, someone’s going to read this and say “hey Berin, have you ever heard of Deadlands?”. Well, of course I have. I have played Deadlands. A lot. I love Deadlands. I love Savage Worlds.  If I want to run something other than the established Deadlands setting, through, I might look elsewhere rather than stripping out a lot of the setting-specific Edges and such.  Yes, I can do absolutely everything with Savage Worlds, but sometimes it’s fun to step outside the box and fiddle with other systems. For a one-shot or really short campaign, I’m going with Weird West.  For a regular campaign, I’d seriously look at Wild West Cinema and splice some stuff in. As in, not allow the player characters to have weird powers, but have them run up against magic and aliens and such.

While you’re here, pop over to the Western Gear Archives in the Downloads section and get some cool free stuff put together by Colin Chapman!