Retrospective: Ballots & Bullets

Since Boot Hill has unexpectedly caught my interest this month, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at one of its better adventure modules, Ballots & Bullets. Written by David James Ritchie – whose name I most strongly associate with the second edition of Gamma World, as well as some of the Blackmoor modules for D&D – this "special campaign module" first appeared in 1982, just as TSR was transitioning between one era in its history and another. That makes Ballots & Bullets notable on multiple levels and, therefore, a worthy subject of examination.

Like most TSR modules of its era, this one consists of a 32-page staple-bound booklet wrapped inside a cardstock cover. The inside of that cover contains a map of Promise City, Arizona in the year 1882. The map is designed to be used in conjunction with the foldout map included in the Boot Hill boxed set, which forms the central "hub" of Promise City. There are over 200 locales on the combined map and each is described in at least a couple of sentences in the module's booklet. 

Though he's not mentioned in the credits, Jim Holloway provides all the art for Ballots & Bullets, including its front and back covers. Though there aren't as many individual pieces in this module as there might be in most TSR modules of the era, what art there is plays to Holloway's strengths as an illustrator of dubious, unscrupulous, and faintly ridiculous roughnecks. In many ways, Holloway is the perfect artist to depict the Old West, especially as depicted in a roleplaying game. I feel compelled to point out that many of the characters in Holloway's pieces are based on TSR employees at the time, including Holloway himself. I suspect that's also true of rustler Mongo Bailly, who features on the module's back cover, but, if so, I'm not sure which staffer he's based upon. If anyone knows his identity, I'd be grateful.

Making off with the ballot box ...

Slightly more than half of the module – 18 pages – consists of the "Guide to Promise City" and "The People of Promise City." I alluded to the former earlier: it describes every locale on the map, from the Great Western Boarding House and Cafe to the County Assay Office to the Silverbell Mining Company and more. Some locales are detailed more extensively than others, but all provide information not just on the locale itself but also on the NPCs found there. "The People of Promise City" is an alphabetical listing of nearly all 250+ people who live there, along with their Boot Hill game statistics. Also listed is each person's associated faction within the town, how committed he is to that faction, and whether or not he is a registered voter (or candidate).

These factions are important and play a part in "The Election Campaign," which provides the backbone of the module. Promise City is preparing to hold its first election after its town charter was approved by the Territorial Governor of Arizona. The election is three months in the future and two factions face off against each other in the upcoming contest. The first is the Law and Order Faction, supported by merchants and land owners, who want an end to the lawlessness of Promise City. The second is the Cowboy faction, supported by miners and prospectors, who believe the Law and Order faction is just a front for Big Business. The player characters enter Promise City just as things are heating up.

The characters can become involved in a variety of ways, supporting – or undermining – one of the factions for their own purposes. There are discussions and guidelines for handling canvassing the town, putting up campaign posters, running rallies, heckling the opposition, and outright bribery, not to mention spreading rumors and hiring goons to intimidate the voters. The characters can likewise make use of newspapers, churches, and endorsements to advance their chosen cause. At the end of it, there's voting day itself, for which the module also provides rules to adjudicate. Whichever faction wins will impact the subsequent development of Promise City and the fortunes of its inhabitants.

I have never made use of this module, so I can't rightly say how well its contents work in play. I can only say that I found the scenario presented and the information provided to support it quite compelling. In some ways, it reminded me of Trouble Brewing for Gangbusters, a favorite module of mine from my youth and one I used extensively. Despite some surface level similarities, Ballots & Bullets is less a description of Promise City – though it is that – and more of an outline for an entire campaign set during a major event within the city. It's also a great example of the kind of thing that, according to the game's introduction, you're supposed to do with Boot Hill. I found it very compelling and wished I had the time and players to give it a proper whirl.

It's been a long time since I've read a module that made me feel that way. Make of that what you will.

Would you trust this man with the future of Promise City?

Retrospective: Mad Mesa

Every now and then, as I consider the subject of the next entry in this series, I come across one whose primary interest is not its content so much as its form. That's the case with Mad Mesa, the very first module produced by TSR in 1981 for use with Boot Hill. This fact alone makes it notable. While the module format was originally created for use with Dungeons & Dragons, TSR would eventually publish modules for all of their roleplaying lines, though most were never as extensive (or successful) as those for D&D. Boot Hill would eventually have only five modules, the lowest number, I believe, of any TSR RPG. This small number gives each published entry added weight when looking at it.

Consider, too, the module's byline: "by Jerry Epperson and Tom Moldvay." Tom Moldvay is a name that needs no introduction to anyone reading this blog, but Jerry Epperson? Who is he? That's a good question and I wish I could provide a good answer. He seems to have been a freelance writer rather than an employee of TSR, like Moldvay. He'd later go on to contribute to a handful RPG products over the years (for GURPS, Marvel Super Heroes, and Shadowrun), but doesn't appear to have otherwise left a significant mark on the hobby. Epperson dedicates Mad Mesa to, among other people, Moldvay, "who took an idea and breathed into it the essence of life." This suggests to me that Moldvay had a much bigger hand in the final product than his secondary credit in the byline might imply.

Like most modules of the time, Mad Mesa is 32 pages long and is divided into two uneven sections, along with a map on its interior cover. Here's what part of the map looks like, because it's quite unusual:

As you can see, there are numbered buildings, as one might expect on map of this kind. However, there are also numbers located elsewhere, such as on the streets of the titular town of Mad Mesa. Some of these numbers are circled. The numbers are all used not merely as part of a traditional map key but as entries in a solitaire adventure scenario that makes up the bulk of the module. Whenever the solo player's character enters an area with a number, he consults the appropriate entry in the book to see what he encounters. Entries with circles around them indicate "chance encounters," which is to say, a random encounter, the results of which are determined by consulting tables also in the book.

I find it fascinating that the very first Boot Hill module contains a lengthy solitaire scenario, which takes up 24 of its 32 pages. It's doubly fascinating when you consider that the second part of the module contains a multi-player adventure that depends on the referee's having already played through the solo scenario "so that he or she can use the information to smoothly run the multi-player adventure." Indeed, the multi-player adventure is little more than a more freeform and elaborated version of the solo adventure, which involves the characters having come to the frontier settlement of Mad Mesa just as the long-simmering feud between the Russells and the Kanes – two ranching factions – boils over into violence. 

As presented, both versions of the module's scenario are fairly open-ended and I dare say "Braunstein-like." The characters are caught up in the machinations of larger factions with their own agendas and it's up to the player(s) to navigate this as best they are able, even to the point of playing one faction off against another, Clint Eastwood-style. Of all of TSR's published roleplaying games, Boot Hill seems to have stayed closest to its original miniature wargaming roots and that comes across very clearly in Mad Mesa. Younger gamers or those simply unfamiliar with the history of the hobby might well find this aspect of the module strange, even off-putting, but I find it a useful reminder of where it all began.

Finally, Mad Mesa is worthy of note for one other reason: its artwork. TSR in 1981 had a remarkable and varied bullpen of illustrators and this module makes use of almost all of them. There are thus pieces by Jeff Dee, David "Diesel" LaForce, Jim Roslof, Bill Willingham, and even Erol Otus. It's an incredible lineup, all the more so because they're illustrating a western adventure rather than a fantasy or science fiction one. It's a pity that most of them wouldn't be employed by TSR much beyond the publication date of Mad Mesa, but, during the time they were there, they certainly left an impression.

REVIEW: Nuclear Sunset: The Southwest

If there's a recent old school game that I feel hasn't gotten the attention it deserves, it's Mutant Future from Goblinoid Games. I personally think that's a shame, because, while it is a very good retro-clone for playing Gamma World, it's actually much more expansive than that. The combination of its compatibility with Labyrinth Lord and its lack of a specific setting makes Mutant Future a good foundation on which to build a variety of gonzo science fantasy campaigns. Ironically, those two qualities may also partly explain why the game hasn't received the love I think it ought to have received, which is why I've thought for a while now that what Mutant Future needed was a solid campaign supplement to show off its possibilities.

Apparently, Charles Rice had similar thoughts and decided to do something about it by producing Nuclear Sunset: The Southwest, the first installment in a gonzo post-apocalyptic setting that takes its esthetic cues from Westerns, but whose content shows a mix of influences, including UFOlogy. I'll admit that I was quite prepared to dislike Nuclear Sunset: The Southwest. Being a big fan of Westerns, I tend to be more than a little snobby about the way the genre is so often misused and caricatured, especially in crossovers with other genres. And while a post-apocalyptic setting is a very good fit for Western themes and esthetics, I was nevertheless apprehensive. I've seen too many poorly executed Western-influenced creations not to assume the worst.

For the most part, my apprehension was baseless. Nuclear Sunset: The Southwest is a well done little setting, described in a 24-page PDF and selling for $1.99. One of its best qualities is that it takes itself seriously without being self-serious. That is, this isn't a silly setting, with mutant horses acting as lawmen or anything like that, but it's also not a setting that's so straitlaced that a funky mutant animal or plant character is an impossibility. Silliness is a big danger in post-apocalyptic settings, especially those that adopt a 50s B-movie approach to mutation as Mutant Future (and Gamma World) does. On the other hand, a big part of the fun of games like Mutant Future are the wildly improbable mutants. There's thus a fine line between inadvertently straying into parody and bleeding all the fun out a post-apocalyptic RPG setting -- a line that I think Nuclear Sunset: The Southwest walks pretty well.

This supplement details an area of indeterminate size situated in the southwest of the former United States. I say "indeterminate" because its single map doesn't include a scale, though any familiar with the region should quickly recognize its major locales: Rhino (Reno), Salt Lick (Salt Lake City), Tusk (Tucson), Vega (Las Vegas), etc. The lack of a scale isn't a deal-breaker by any means, especially when one can easily consult a real world map to determine how far Reno is from Salt Lake City, but it is an annoyance. Fortunately, there's a lot of clever and inspiring ideas in Nuclear Sunset: The Southwest to make up for this oversight, chief among them being the implication that extraterrestrials from Groom Lake/Area 51 are present in the post-apocalyptic world, now freed from the oversight of the defunct US government and engaged in mysterious activities throughout the Southwest.

Of course, the aliens present only one possible source of conflict in the setting. In addition to the struggles between various settlements, there's the rising power of New Aztekia, led by the Lord of the Sun, not to mention several power groups independent of any settlement. There's Hell's Heart, a coalition of criminal gangs; the Nightgliders, who seek the power of man-made flight; the 88th, a collection of human and android soldiers seeking to rebuild America; the Marshals, itinerant self-appointed keepers of law and order; and Uforia, which seeks contact with the aforementioned aliens. Throughout Rice peppers the supplement with adventure hooks and off-handed references to people, places, and events intended to serve as inspiration to the referee in making the Southwest his own setting.

Nuclear Sunset: The Southwest is written in clear, occasionally evocative language, though not without typos and editorial errors. It includes both black and white and color art throughout. I could have done without the colored backgrounds on each page, since they sometimes made the text harder to read. Much like Blackmarsh, Nuclear Sunset: The Southwest is more of a sketch of a setting than something more complete. Whether one views that as is a virtue or a flaw depends on what one expects out of a setting supplement. I myself was largely happy with its level of detail, though I will admit that I was disappointed that some aspects of the implied setting -- New Aztekia, for example -- get very little detail. Likewise, this product is almost entirely stat-less, which no doubt broadens its utility to players of other post-apocalyptic games, but it does somewhat call into question its being touted as a Mutant Future supplement.

In the end, I like Nuclear Sunset: The Southwest; there's the germ of a fun setting in here. I just wanted more, even if, at $1.99, it's actually quite a bargain. Perhaps Charles Rice will return to the Nuclear Sunset setting and produce additional products that offer some of the details I wished had been included in this one.

Presentation: 6 out of 10
Creativity: 7 out of 10
Utility: 6 out of 10

Buy This If: You're looking for a sketch of a setting to use as the basis for your own post-apocalyptic roleplaying game campaign.
Don't Buy This If: You have no interest either in post-apocalyptic settings or using someone else's setting for your own campaign.

REVIEW: Weird West Roleplaying Game Basic Rulebook

After science fiction, I'm hard pressed to decide whether I like fantasy or Westerns more. Certainly I talk a great deal more about fantasy on this blog than I do about Westerns, but that's more an acknowledgment of how large fantasy looms in our hobby than it is a reflection of my personal tastes. That said, my direct experience with Western-themed RPGs is quite limited, with TSR's Boot Hill being the only one I played successfully for any length of time. Despite this, I've long been on the lookout for a good Western RPG and have even been toying around with one of my own over the past year (Saloons & Shootists is its working title). So, when Stuart Robertson released a Western RPG of his own, I took notice.

Called Weird West, Robertson describes it as a "streamlined and fast playing adventure roleplaying game for weird western worlds of cowboys, kung-fu, magic and otherworldly malevolence." Now, I'm sure some of you are already disappointed to read this description. "Not another occult Western game," you may be saying. Here's the thing: it's dead simple to remove the supernatural elements from Weird West, since, in the 8-page Basic Rulebook they're actually quite few. Do so and what you're left with is a nifty little game system that, frankly, could easily serve as the basis for a wide variety of roleplaying campaigns, regardless of when or where they're set. Before I expand on that thought, let's talk more specifically about what you get in $1 PDF.

First off, it's worth noting that Weird West comes in two formats, both of which you get when you purchase the game. One is a traditional 8½" x 11" booklet; the other is a much smaller (4.25" x 2.75") folded "pocket mod." I'm a big fan of small rulebooks, both in terms of page count and physical size, so I was very pleased to see the pocket mod version. Of the game's 8 single-column pages, only two are actually taken up with rules. The first page is its title page, with a superbly evocative illustration by Robertson that, to my mind, recalls Mike Mignola's work. The last page is a Fighting Chart that cross-references a character's Fighting attribute against his target's Defense. For the chart averse, let me say now that it's the only significant chart in the game and, with the pocketmod, there's really no excuse for everyone, player and referee alike, not to have the chart readily at hand while playing Weird West.

Weird West characters have four attributes: Fighting, Grit, Magic, and Skill. Players have 4 points to allocate amongst these attributes as they wish, with 0 being an acceptable score for any attribute except Grit, which governs a character's Stamina (as hit points are called here). It's worth noting that "Magic" governs any unusual ability, not just those that are explicitly supernatural. For example, the abilities "Fastest Gun in the West" or "Horse Whisperer" are both governed by Magic. Such abilities, even the more overt ones, are still fairly limited by the standards of most RPGs, meaning that Weird West falls more on the "low magic" end of the spectrum, though, given its open-ended nature, it'd be very easy to add more impressive and potent abilities to the game if one so desired.

Weird West is a class and level-based, though its classes (called "paths") primarily determine which attributes a character increases over time and at what rate. Thus, an "adventurer" gains 1 point in Fighting and Skill every two levels, while a "magician" gains 1 point of Magic every level and 1 point in Fighting and Skill every three levels. Characters gain levels at whatever rate the referee decides, whether that be at the conclusion of every session, every adventure, or more rarely. Roles also determine which dice are used to determine Stamina and the maximum damage dealt through the use of weapons.

Combat is handled simply through the use of a 1D20 roll against a target number derived from the aforementioned Fighting Chart. Damage is deducted from a target's Stamina pool. Once a target reaches 0 Stamina, a roll is made on another small chart to determine what happens, with results ranging from "Stunned -- lose next action" to "Death." "Difficult tasks," which is to say, tasks where failure has consequences, are resolved through a 1D6 roll, with 5+ indicating success. This target number is modified upwards or downwards based on any relevant attributes. The rulebook provides many examples of common tasks to aid the referee in determining their difficulty.

Weird West is a simple, straightforward game whose old school pedigree is obvious in its flexibility and open-endedness. Though it's accurate to call it "complete," since everything you need to play is included in its 8 pages, I have little doubt that, over the course of a campaign -- or even a single adventure -- situations will arise that are not explicitly covered in the rules. Fortunately, the rules of Weird West are intuitive enough that it shouldn't be difficult to expand them into new areas. Just reading the rules, I found myself thinking idly about how easy it would be to create expanded rules for gambling and brawling. That's a testament to the solid and inviting design of this game.

I also found myself realizing just how few rules are actually needed in order to create a complete RPG. Nowadays, we tend to expect RPGs, even self-avowedly "lite" ones to be dozens of pages long at least. Weird West happily eschews such notions, focusing instead on fundamental systems that are both easy to use and to build upon. Ultimately, that's the real appeal of Weird West: it's a game that encourages tinkering but doesn't require it. As is, it's more than adequate for fast, pulpy Wild West adventures but it still leaves ample room for expansion for players and referees who like that sort of thing. It's more than worth its $1 price tag and I look forward to seeing what the future holds for it.

Presentation: 7 out of 10
Creativity: 8 out of 10
Utility: 7 out of 10

Buy This If: You're looking for a simple, intuitive system for Western adventures that you can easily add to and expand upon without any trouble.
Don't Buy This If: If you're either not interested in Westerns or prefer your RPGs to be more complex and exhaustive in their rules.

More Western Elmore Art

Since so many people appreciated the Larry Elmore artwork I posted yesterday, I'm posting three more images from that same Boot Hill adventure. I do think they nicely show that Elmore has a much wider artistic range than he was usually allowed to show in his TSR artwork, which suggests to me once more that perhaps my beef with his D&D illustrations is more with its art direction than anything else.

Forgotten Elmore

I've been thinking again, as I do every few months, about Western RPGs, and so I've been perusing my collection of Boot Hill stuff, among others. That's when I came across the 1983 module Burned Bush Wells, written by Jeff Grubb, and entirely illustrated by Larry Elmore. I'd completely forgotten about its existence, let alone its artwork, so I was surprised when I read it.

The module itself is no great shakes but I found myself appreciating the illustrations far more than I would have imagined I might. I've previously remarked that I think Elmore's style works far better for science fiction than it does for fantasy. Having now seen his Western art again, I may need to revise my estimation of his artistic range. Mind you, I've long felt Elmore's color landscapes were among his finest works, so perhaps it's no surprise that he's so well suited to Western scenes, which, to my mind anyway, depend heavily on a sense of place for their effectiveness.

Just an idle thought on a Sunday evening. I'll likely have more to say about Western RPGs in the days to come.

Pulp Fantasy Library: Beyond the Black River

"Beyond the Black River" is consistently cited as among the best of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories and it's easy to see why. Published as a two-part serial whose first installment appeared in the May 1935 issue of Weird Tales, "Beyond the Black River" simultaneously defies the facile caricatures of REH's Conan yarns while affirming the thematic core of those same writings. It is from this story, after all, that the oft-quoted line, "Barbarism is the natural state of mankind," comes, although its speaker and context are rarely presented correctly, since doing so would put the lie to the notion that Howard was merely an avatar of adolescent machismo.

"Beyond the Black River" takes place beyond the northern borders of Aquilonia, among settlers who dare to build homes for themselves in Pictish lands, a move Conan deems both unwise and, ultimately, untenable.

"... you Hyborians have expanded as far as you'll be allowed to expand. You've crossed the marches, burned a few villages, exterminated a few clans and pushed back the frontier to Black River; but I doubt if you'll even be able to hold what you've conquered, and you'll never push the frontier any further westward. Your idiotic king doesn't understand conditions here. He won't send you enough reinforcements, and there are not enough settlers to withstand the shock of a concerted attack from across the river."

Balthus, a borderer and Conan's interlocutor in this dialog, cannot bring himself to believe this claim -- until he's reminded of the way the Cimmerians destroyed Venarium, a "red disaster" in which Conan himself participated as a youth: "I was one of the horde that swarmed over the walls. I hadn't yet seen fifteen snows, but already my name was repeated about the council fires." (Strangely, he makes no mention of his family being slain by Thulsa Doom or having become a slave lashed the Wheel of Pain -- an oversight on Howard's part, no doubt)

Conan accompanies Balthus back to Fort Tuscelan, where the Aquilonians have established themselves.

There, at the fort, civilization ended. This was no empty phrase. Fort Tuscelan was the last outpost of a civilized world; it represented the westernmost thrust of the dominant Hyborian races. Beyond the river the primitive still reigned in shadowy forests, brush-thatched huts where hung the grinning skulls of men, and mud-walled enclosures where fires flickered and drums rumbled, and spears were whetted in the hands of dark, silent men with tangled black hair and the eyes of serpents.

Worse still, those "dark, silent men" have turned to a man named Zogar Sag to lead them. A wild sorcerer who spent time as a prisoner of the Aquilonians, Conan explains that "there'll be no peace on the border so long as Zogar lives and remembers the cell he sweated in." The governor of the fort thus begs Conan to slay Zogar before his designs against the Aquilonian settlements can come to fruition, a mission the Cimmerian accepts, taking with him a dozen men of his own choosing, none of them soldiers but all of them skilled foresters.

The remainder of the story describes Conan's efforts in the wilderness to find Zogar Sag before it is too late to save the Aquilonians. For the benefit of those who've never read the story before, I won't so any more about how events unfold, except that I find it hard to imagine how anyone, after reading this tale, could continue to suggest that Howard lacked either subtlety or insight. "Beyond the Black River" can't, I think, be read as an unapologetic paean to barbarism, as it is often portrayed. Like a lot of Westerns, which clearly served as its inspiration, the story regretfully suggests that civilized men are never a match for barbarians, which is why, being a barbarian himself, Conan knows how this latest clash between civilization and barbarism will end. It's one of my favorite Howard stories and well the time spent reading it.

To Clarify

Based on the comments yesterday, there seems to have been a little confusion regarding my Fridays Unplugged initiative. The idea behind it was that I'd personally shut my computer off and not use the Net in any capacity, so that I'd be less distracted and could get other things done. In the comments to the original post, someone suggested I make a single post on Friday (in advance) that would pose a question for regular readers to discuss amongst themselves in my absence, hence yesterday's "Open Friday" posting, which I actually wrote Thursday and postdated so it'd appear while I was offline.

I'm only just now starting to wade through the comments and emails I did get while I was away from the keyboard, so please be patient if you're expecting a response to anything from me. I found the time away very productive (I got to work in the garden and catch up on some other household chores, in addition to reading things I'd been meaning to for a while) and, above all, relaxing, so I plan to continue with the experiment in the weeks to come.

Briefly scanning the comments, I see lots of interest in an old school Wild West game à la Boot Hill. Being a big fan of Westerns, that's something I can definitely get behind. Indeed, it's something I'm already working on, albeit slowly. The working title is Saloons & Shootists and it's far from being ready to release for playtesting just yet, but, when it is, you can be sure I'll announce it here. Time permitting, I may talk about it a bit next week, but we'll see.