Probably inspired by playing Hunt:Showdown 1896 on PC, I've recently been on a wild west craze. My DVD pile includes such diverse titles as The Wild Bunch, Bone Tomahawk, Wild Wild West and Westworld.
Naturally that spills over into my gaming, so I've been digging through my collection. On the tail end of the original Malifaux launch, I collected quite a few "normal" western miniatures to make my own weird west world. I've dug them out and note the somewhat chipped paint jobs and hasty natural sand bases. So that needs to be fixed.
I've also got some MDF western buildings (unpainted, unglued). Painting them seems a bit of a big job, and I'm wondering if there is a quick "finish" to put on it to darken it and make them look more... "woodlike". I'm pretty sure the MDF will soak up stuff like linseed oil (then swell/warp?) so a bit unsure where to go here.
So I'm procrastinating that while digging through my rulebooks. What will I use/adapt?
Malifaux.
OK, the obvious one. I have good memories of the very varied range of missions/objectives Malifaux had; that gave goods variety and attempted away from "kill em all." It has a very detailed and interesting lore and it's a game that seems to have survived well over the ensuing years as while it's not A tier, there always seems to be some presence locally and online. But - it's not for me. The detailed stat cards, the hitpoints, the "named" characters, the 'gamey' special attacks, the ridiculously short shooting ranges of ~12" maximum. I don't view replacing dice with cards as anything desirable, though I recall it being good in trying to get the initiative. The art, fluff and missions are useful though. Zero inclination to play the rules or print out complicated cards for each unique character - but keep out for reference.
Yep, that IS a lot of text and rules for ONE character, Malifaux. Not what I need or want for homebrew gunfighting horror adventures.
Dracula's America
An inoffensive but kinda meh Osprey game. There is a single universal stat dice (d10 to d6) depending if you are a hero, vet or mook. As usual with these genius attempts to deal away with "complicated" stat lines, you instead end up with excessive special rules to differentiate your otherwise identical d8 hellhound monsters from your d8 human cowboys. I.e. instead of 4-5 common stats and a single unique special rule per model, you end up with 1 common stat and 4-5 unique rules... The mechanics were meh, and pretty beer and pretzels but I do recall players playing a card from a hand to determine action order - kinda a bidding mechanic which I liked; and the ability to choose either taking 2 actions by one model or 1 action from two models - which was simple and kinda unique and interesting. It's not bad - and at least each model doesn't need 10 lines of text and unique actions like Malifaux and would be nice on a game night with newbies, but this one is going back in the cupboard.
Deadlands RPG
I actually dislike the Deadlands fluff - it just seems corny with "magic maze""ghost rock" and magic being powered by manitous. While it does have lots of stuff in it - mad inventors, undead, confederates, Indian spirits, monsters etc - reading through the books again has not changed my mind. It's just a mish-mash 'background' that tries to cram in too much random stuff and just hits the wrong notes for me - Carnevale for example has a much stronger, more consistent theme. However it IS powered by Savage Worlds RPG engine which is one of the few RPGs I tolerate (based as it is originally on a skirmish miniatures game). Back in the box - but it's given me an idea.
Empire of the Dead (EotD)
Not set in the wild west but the right era and theme, Empire of the Dead is a very Games Workshop+ game. This means an ex-GW writer who has tweaked the usual formula to make it slightly more modern. EotD unfortunately keeps IGOUGO rather than the standard upgrade to alternate activations, but does swap to d10 to allow more differentiation. Like Dracula's America, it would be easy/familiar to teach, and I recall some very light campaign rules. Pretty meh, though, so back in the box.
Legends of the Old West
If I'm going to get a GW-esque game, I might as well look at one modelled on their best. Using the LoTR:SBG engine, this allows heroes to have "might" and "fate" to perform heroic deeds or cheat fate and miraculously survive; it also has a more detailed campaign system than any of the others so far. The LoTR engine is less suited to a shooting-heavy game, though, and while you could probably easily enough mock-up monsters off LoTR profiles the game is purely "historical" with no monsters included. I'll put it to one side though as my kids already know LoTR:SBG so it would be the easiest game of all to play and a points system means you can roughly balance encounters.
....so I'm going to do my own thing, I think, with Legends (+homebrew monsters) as a backup plan.
As usual, I dislike reinventing the wheel so I am going to steal/borrow from Savage World's core pulp rulebook. It already uses playing cards (so beloved of Western rule writers) for initiative, so it's already got the vibe, and it has access to miniature-esque combat aimed to handle very diverse heroes, monsters and magic - with robust magic, skills and traits I can borrow from if needed.
Why Savage Worlds?
It's a good introduction to the 'dice are the stat' system i.e. characters have stats ranked from d4 (hopeless) to d12 (great) that roll against a fixed number - usually a 4+, with predicable +/-2 shifts for modifiers. It's certainly got the potential to be more complicated or gluggy than anything so far except Malifaux, but of course SW is merely a big toolbox for many genres and settings and I can easily strip it back towards its wild west skirmish wargaming roots. There's plenty of magic and monsters ready to go, as well as existing rules for lassos, Winchesters and six shooters. There's even a very rough guide to 'rating' miniatures combat-wise, to balance scenarios, and a levelling system where a dice stat is upgraded each round.
So how did Hunt: Showdown inspire this all...
Well, it's kinda a weird west PC extraction shooter (PUBG/Tarkov?) but you have to sneak/battle your way past undead and defeat and banish a demonic monster (PvE) for a bounty whilst dodging a dozen other human players trying to do the same (PvP) - who are happy to gank you and steal your bounty. I thought it had some good ideas for a wargame....
a) numerous wandering 'grunt' NPC zombies that only lock onto you at close range
b) a range of hero NPC zombies with special attacks (one zombie has a beehive for a head, tentacled things lurk in the swamp creeks, giant spiders etc)
...so the environment/terrain is threatening- maybe allowing solo gaming
c) the aim is to kill/banish a NPC monster or collect clues to get xp/$ etc
d) heroes choose from a small selection of 'gear' - like dynamite stick, molotovs, medkit, dagger etc - allowing limited customisation which they can also find via exploring
e) heroes may choose to 'extract' any time (leave via board edge) with loot
......so you don't need to 'kill em all' to win/succeed, and success may just be leaving with cool stuff, alive
I thought there were some interesting ideas for a wargame, as well as there are levelling skill/traits I could easily duplicate with Savage Worlds. And it might be fun to GM this where players pilot a small team of cowboys each where they can team up to fight monsters or gun each other down....
