two Weird West TTRPGs: We Deal in Lead + Gun and Slinger

[yhlee]

- We Deal in Lead TTRPG from By Odin's Beard RPG. (Hardcopy for purchase; alternately, PDF for purchase). This is Weird West, rec'd by telophase, with an option for one-GM/one-player or solo player play. I love the ambience of the setting, which involves gunslinger guilds and their oaths to each other, and slipstream worlds colliding into each other in a ruined postapocalyptic wasteland. I am bored by the mechanics, which are pretty much "roll vs. target number" with a few added rules around special artifact guns; the advantage is that the mechanics are bog-standard in a way that will make the game easier for savvy gamers to suss out, but I think there's a missed opportunity here for the mechanics to really engage with the milieu. OTOH I realize I am at the extreme far end of people who enjoy novel/unusual mechanics, and I suspect I'm in a minority!

- Nevyn Holmes' Gun and Slinger, a different Weird West TTRPG (PDF for purchase; hardcopies are currently out of stock). I like the mechanics of this one better (runs off a poker deck), although it's less flexible in terms of play group (one GM plus two players - one the gun, the other the slinger). I do find the attempt at progressive ideological purity to be intensely frustratingly lacking in self-awareness. At the point where you are declaring the wrongness/badness of Fighting The Other but simultaneously the game's designated "killable body" is defined to be always evil, ffs Could We Do A Logic; I do not think this is the Advanced Enlightened Position that you think it is. What you've done at this point is reskin/rename "The Other," not remove it.

This is not a game about taming wilderness or fighting back against "The Other." While there are elements of fighting back against the world, it's not to take other's lands but defending against an invading force—The Twist [a force of corruption]—and discovering answers to the transformed world's mysteries. (11)

vs. (from the GM's section)

Something connected to The Twist hunts [the gun and slinger]. The Thing That Hunts, a constant threat and antagonist, creates pressure and raises the stakes simply by existing....[I]t always connects the Slinger, Gun, and Twist. It isn't strictly the Twist's agent but it's always malicious. (77)

…that said, I like the core game fine. I just find the ideological posturing to be irritatingly self-contradictory.

Gun & Slinger also features a number of setting/rules mods (e.g. mecha, sword & sorcery via cursed sword).

Comments

[davidgillon]

Was it Deadlands was the big weird west game back in the 90s, or was there another one whose name I'm forgetting?

[yhlee]

It was one of them at least! I never played it; I have some vague awareness that there was a CCG back during the CCG boom times and mayyyyybe a TTRPG, but other than that I don't know.

[davidgillon]

I've got a niggling feeling there was a World of Darkness setting, but then there was a WoD setting for most things.

Niggle confirmed, google identifies it as Werewolf: The Wild West.

I might even own a copy, I'd have to dig in the attic to check.

[davidgillon]

And for the sake of completeness given I'm aware of it, though as far as I know it's Wild West, not Weird West, there's Rider
https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/345383/rider

(Cepheus Engine = OGL Traveller rules)

[flowersforgraves]

Yep, I had similar feelings about Gun&Slinger. I'm going to run it soon, I think? but I found that stuff pretty offputting.

[yhlee]

Oh God, it's not just me?!

Like, I could have run with either of (probably many possibilities), say:

(a) "Yep, we're doin' Wild West, we're aware that there are a ton of problems with how this time & place has been presented/romanticized in fictionalized narrative, but this is our happy place for the purposes of this game, take it or leave it." Like do people seriously play Murder Hobo Pathfinder Kill The Goblins for moral superiority gold stars?? I'm completely fine with this. It's honest; as long as people know what the game premise is, they can opt in or out.

(b) if one is going to problematize/interrogate/critique the construct of the "Wild West," do it for real rather than slapping a bunch of touchy-feely statements on top of worldbuilding and game system documentation that does not actually match the stated agenda but instead perpetuates the sociohistorical construction you claim, badly, to be deconstructing??

[flowersforgraves]

Yeah, I've read other games that do a much better job of interrogating the Western genre without the self-congratulatory tone. It's disappointing but not surprising. I think the concept is really cool, which is why I'm going to GM it anyway, but I could do without the flavor text of that aspect.

Honestly, even if they'd explicitly said "the thing that hunts is always an agent of the Twist" and changed nothing else it would have sat better with me.

[davidgillon]

While there are elements of fighting back against the world, it's not to take other's lands but defending against an invading force

Seems to me the absolutely obvious conclusion from that bit of logic is you're going to be playing the Native Americans. But that's not what they mean, and if they've missed something that obvious, what else have they missed.