Boot Hill, 3rd Edition. This came out when I was in High School, and while westerns weren't a genre we played at all at the time, there was a catalyst to suddenly sparking our interest in six-guns. It was a film called
Young Guns II. We'd all seen and loved the original
Young Guns from 1988, and the sequel hit my sophomore year, along with a new edition of what I later learned was a TSR classic. So we scored a copy of Boot Hill and did some cowboy shit. It didn't last as long as our Ranger-heavy
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition campaign that followed the Kevin Costner
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves film, but hey, it was fun.
The original set of Boot Hill rules, much like early D&D, was sort of like a wargame with the seeds of a roleplaying game hiding out in there. Almost any time you reduce a wargame unit to a single person, you invite roleplaying. Hell, I've even imagined roleplaying scenarios in my head while playing Galaga or Choplifter! at the arcade, so it's not hard to see how Boot Hill followed the footsteps of D&D and became an RPG by its second edition, which came in 1979. The bulk of the rules were on movement and combat. The third edition was the first time it actually called itself a roleplaying game on the cover, though people were playing it as one for years. One interesting artifact of this period is the first edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide had conversion rules for Boot Hill characters into AD&D. Anyway, Steve Winter took over with the 3rd Edition and turned it into a full RPG, and that's the edition I played.
Character Creation
Characters in Boot Hill have five attributes- Strength, Coordination, Observation, Stature, and Luck. Coordination is basically Dexterity, Observation is for alertness and perception, and Stature is sort of a fame stat. 2 is wretched and 10 is average, 20 is the highest possible.
Scores are generated by rolling 2d10 and looking up a modifier. Like Gangbusters, the table is weighted to avoid truly crappy results, with a natural 2 being modified up to a 7. There are three methods for generating the stats, roll in order, roll and arrange, and roll 8 keep any 5- in order. I'll go with the first method, roll in order. My rolls are: 10, 12, 3, 11, and 13. Looking up the modifiers, that comes out as follows:
- Strength: 13
- Coordination: 14
- Observation: 8
- Stature: 13
- Luck: 8 (Luck is divided by two and rounded up, so 15/2=7.5, up to 8)
I really don't like that Observation, but the Luck score might help make up for it?
Now, here's something interesting. Skills. The beginning number of skills a character has is based on their total attribute points. Add them all up, and reference a chart. Characters with low attributes get more skills to help balance them out, and characters with high attributes get fewer. Weapon skills are rated upward from 1, and work/craft skills are rolled in the same way as attributes. This character's total is 56, right in the middle of the chart, starting the game with 7 skills.
Our character was a telegrapher in the Union Army during the Civil War, so we're going to take Telegraph, Surveying/Mapmaking, Stealth, Orienteering, Riding, Scouting, Pistol, and Brawling.
- Brawling: 1
- Orienteering: 11
- Pistol: 1
- Riding: 14
- Scouting: 12
- Stealth: 16
- Surveying/Mapmaking: 12
- Telegraph: 14
On a natural 20, our character is ambidextrous. 8, nope.
Starting funds and equipment? On page 98 it says:
For example, the Judge should provide each player with an inventory of his character's cash on hand, equipment, animals, possessions, hirelings/associates/friends/ and so on.
So... I guess it's up to the Judge, Boot Hill's term for Game Master. This character is complete, then.
The Character
Scar Andrews was just happy nobody was shooting at him anymore. At least, not on a daily basis. Formerly Corporal Wilbur Andrews, Military Telegraph Corps, Scar was content to head West and find himself an occupation that involved a lot less gunpowder and a lot more cash. Scar found himself following the expanding telegraph lines and getting a job with Western Union and a roaming troubleshooter.
Unfortunately, the "shoot" part was more common than Scar would like. Not as bad as the war, but having grown up back East in a city, the frontier was decidedly less civilized. A one-eyed telegraph man was the last person anyone would expect to be taking up his shooting irons in defense of a town, but that's exactly what happened. A gaggle of former Confederate soldiers descended on the town he was visiting and proceeded to take what they wanted. They took money, they took booze- when they tried to take a woman unlucky enough to catch their attention, he stepped in with his service revolver and killed two, driving the other three away as they had no idea how many "law men" they were facing. This earned Scar the thanks of the town, and the ire of the bandits when they heard they'd been chased off by a single ex-bluebelly with the element of surprise.
The town being between Marshalls, at it were, Scar Andrews decided he couldn't stomach leaving the townsfolk to the tender mercies of the raiders should they return.
My Thoughts:
We had a torrid love affair with Boot Hill 3e, and then moved on. I didn't do much Wild West gaming after that for a decade and a half. Then I discovered Deadlands. Played a bit of that. Like Shadowrun but in the Old West. Magic, steampunk-ish elements. As for pure Western action, it's just been Boot Hill and a little GURPS for me.
Now that I've gone back and re-familiarized myself with Boot Hill, it makes me wanna rewatch the Young Guns movies and Unforgiven and run a Western one-shot. I have several Boot Hill modules. Hell, I should have run the Ballots & Bullets module back during election season!
Seriously, though, this isn't a genre I have played a lot of over the years, but it is one that many people enjoy, and I'd gladly play in or run Boot Hill if a group were interested. I have happy memories of the games of this I did play, which were vastly outnumbered by D&D, MechWarrior, Shadowrun, etc.
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