I've been re-reading the second edition of Boot Hill recently. There's a lot in it that I'd forgotten and that I think worthy of comment, but I'll save that for an upcoming post. For now, I simply want to draw attention to the game's credits. In addition to crediting the game's designers, editors, and artists, it also lists the names of its playtesters, along with the characters they played. For anyone interested in the history of the hobby, it's fascinating stuff:
Jim "Gatling Gun" Ward (Julio Diego Garcia)
Mike "Hellfire & Brimstone" Carr (Dwayne De Truthe, and the Douglas Gang)
Rob "Shoot 'Em Up" Kuntz (The Moonwaltz Kid)
"Dastardly Dave" Megarry (Dastardly Dave Slade)
Dave Arneson (Ben Cartwheel of The Ponderous Ranch)
Gary "I Own It All" Gygax (Mr. G)
Terry "Hotshot" Kuntz (Mason Dix)
Tim "Elect Me!" Kask (Tim McCall)
Ernie "Scatter Gun" Gygax (Ernie Sloan)
Brian "Buckshot" Blume (The Referee)
The list is a veritable who's who of the early days of TSR Hobbies, which I suppose shouldn't really be a surprise, since this edition was released in 1979. The player nicknames are quite amusing and I suspect they relate to events from the campaign.
Appendix D of Boot Hill includes a list of fictional non-player characters, many of whose names match those listed in parentheses above, suggesting they're the names of player characters. This list includes not only these characters' names but also their game statistics and profession. For example, Mr. G, Gary Gygax's character, is described as a "rancher." That probably explains the "I Own It All" nickname above. Meanwhile, Mike Carr's character, Dwayne De Truthe, is a preacher and Tim Kask's Tim McCall is a saloon keeper and gamber (and presumably a would-be politician).
I absolutely adore lists like this. Frankly, I wish we knew more about the play of early RPG campaigns by people who'd eventually go on to make an impact on the hobby. I wish, for example, that I had a similar list for the Traveller campaigns played by the GDW crew. Perhaps I'll have to press Marc Miller about this when I see him at Gamehole Con this October.
"Elect Me!" McCall might have been running for mayor or something, but despite what some Western fiction would have us believe, sheriffs were also locally elected in this period rather than being hired, appointed, or blackmailed into the job on threat of imprisonment themselves. :)
ReplyDeleteSheriffs had zero authority beyond municipal limits (which could be hazily defined at times), which frequently caused problems when pursuing lawbreakers - especially into another sheriff's territory. Marshals, on the other hand, were contracted federal employees, and as such held authority everywhere (in theory), even overriding local sheriffs and other officials - but only within the terms of their contract. Some of those were very broad (eg pursue and arrest wanted criminals) but most were more limited, and getting cooperation wasn't always a sure thing. Most people living back then understood the difference between the two positions quite clearly, much more so than after-the-fact writers often seem to.
I assumed this was a reference to Tom McCall, the governor of Oregon and a potential third-party candidate for President in the 70s.
DeleteTim is still around , I'd ask him about this.
ReplyDeleteBoot Hill is such a fascinating entry in RPG history in that it isn't really an RPG at all. It's basically just a duel/shootout simulator.
ReplyDeleteSomehow practically everyone I know or hear of who ran or played it back in the day had a full on, gosh darn, rootin' tootin' campaign complete with ranchers, gamblers, bandits, and the works. How did we do this? It's like none of it was really in the game and yet it was. lol
Looking back to 1983-1988ish I realize that none of us - my motley band of ragtag idiots - had any interest in gaming beyond that which featured swords and trolls and deep dark caves (although we did go to see Wrath of Khan at a birthday party, that was sort of cool) or really any entertainment related to other flavors a la movies, books, tv or pop culture. But, among the other 30 flavors, a Boot Hill concept seems the most alluring. What did a full-spectrum campaign look like? Ex-CW soldier or cavalryman out of work, okay. Loomis bandits, okay. Toss in some human trafficking intrigue. Pinkerton work? Indian uprising, rowdy ranchers, taking sides in a blood feud, okay. What were the major chapters in a campaign, please, for anyone who ran a successful and engaging game. It seems as though the bones are there, but I wonder about the arc of the story.
ReplyDelete@OP: This is interesting. What strikes me is that 4 of the PCs bear the same name as their players. During this era of TSR, we'd often see initials, anagrams or reverse spellings of player names forming the names of their D&D characters, almost like an alter ego or a secret identity.
ReplyDeleteThis naming practice is much less common today of course. I wonder if back then they were more inclined to see their characters as themselves, and played them that way as opposed to characters with different personalities. That approach would align with the golden age ideal of player skill vs character skill.
If true, these players were more like character actors than actors. Abbott and Costello are Abbott and Costello whether their movie is set in the present day, Victorian London or in a fairy tale like Jack and the Beanstalk. And those films are replete with the kind of in-jokes, puns and anachronisms common in early D&D modules.
I listened to an interview w Gygax and Dungeon Delver recently on YouTube, and Gygax expounds a bit on Mr. G as well as his Gangbusters character. 38:31 here https://youtu.be/t4A1IsQY2D4?si=ju_4Dnl3YwpQ1qBL
ReplyDeleteTotally agree with Adam, above; BH might be the best example of a game that leaves absolutely 100% of the framing concepts, character roles, campaign arcs, etc. to the gamers, yet the whole thing just works. It helps that the modules were actually pretty good and they gave you a feel for how you might get your campaign moving, and once it's moving you are good to go. BH3 provided a lot of stuff that nominally should have improved it as a roleplaying game (and, in some ways, as a combat simulator), yet it didn't really click for me in the same way and I've never heard anyone was nostalgic about it. Anyway, there is a lesson here: just get the core mechanics you truly can't do without right, and trust the players will fill in the rest.
ReplyDeleteRogues Gallery (TSR 9031, 1980) listed at the back who played many famous NPCs, like Tensor, Bigby etc. this had an enourmous impact on me, and explained to me why Greyhawk stood out above the rest of the settings for me. it really was a living campaign
ReplyDeleteThe old west permeated so much of american culture from the nineteen twenties and beyond, with both children and adults. We were bombarded with tales of the old west in books and movies, Saturday reruns, TV shows by the dozens, toys, halloween costumes, and so many of us played cowboys and indians as we grew up. At least here in the States. Therefore I believe it was much easier for any of us to take something like boothill and easily make an amazing campaign out of it. Science fiction and fantasy were much more difficult because it wasn't permeated into our culture in nearly the same order of magnitude until after Star Wars. It was there, but wasn't available to us on the same sort of scale
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about the Western element in American media, although it definitely declined after 1970 compared to the previous decades, I’d hazard. But for my group, all teens in the 80s, we did not find it as easy to run a campaign set in the old West. Gunfights, definitely. But a lot of our other efforts stalled. I’d love to hear more about those of you that did better than I did.
DeleteAdmittedly, none of us were actually in the western states, nor did we have any horse or gun experience, or even cattle. And saloons, courtesans, and whiskey were all strangers to us.
I bet that with the explosion of great Western stories now, whether in video games (Red Dead Redemption, e g) or in complex television narratives, it would be a cool and easy sell today.
(I remember buying that Red Dead game for my son when he had his knee reconstructed)
DeleteI grew up in the woods in a/the southern state. Born 1972. Our particular age group and environment had a lot of war references - Vietnam for fathers and WW2 for grands - reinforced in media with the First Blood and Apocolypse and Hamburger Hills and Platoons of the day. Maybe Silverado was in there on the western gunslinging side.
Western(s) influence was just not part of our world. It is also difficult to envision a western gunslinger landscape when you live in the woods, where Predator and (direct experience with) First Blood were much more part of our everyday.
For the younger people out there, this was also the world where your mom could literally put her cocktail on the dashboard of the car for when she picked you up from school, or send you to the back of the bowling alley to buy a pack of cigarettes from a puller coin machine. Fathers actually had busted knuckles from changing the bushings on the car, or fixing something like a dishwasher or dryer or replacing a shower wall. Of course this was also the era where breast cancer killed you in about eight months and that rabies shot was six inches long and went into your stomach. Unpleasant. Good Old Days are based on perspective.
Boot Hill was the sort of thing that should have worked for us, but it just didn't. I still wonder how a successful campaign would have looked. Like Anthony, I'd like to hear more about the ingredients that baked success.
I grew up among italian and greek immigrants who came here in the 20s 30’s and 40’s
DeleteThey loved the american west and its mythology. This is before the spaghetti westerns iconified the genre
Definitely more of a silly-serious vibe with "Boot Hill," as reflected in the characters. BH1 "Mad Mesa" was a collection of western movie tropes stitched together to work as straight story or satire, complete with an OK Corral finale. I loved this game.
ReplyDeleteBoot Hill article was fun. Did you ever see Marc's account of the play-by-play Traveller game he ran (in Space Gamer)? Unfortunately that only lists first names of the players.
ReplyDeleteDo you recall which issue it was?
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